The clever Elsa happily signed the release, wrapped the cash in piece of cloth and put it in a drawer in another room, and then hid the ring in a different safe place – and hid it well, you won’t ever find it. She poured her newfound relative a cup of coffee with a piece of her famous coffee cake for the road, saw him off to the gate, and rushed back inside.
She locked the door and started thinking.
To the neighbors, of course, she revealed nothing, only said that the German tourist stopped by her place by accident, and kept thinking. And the more she thought, the more she grew scared. It’s a big, terrifying thing, you know – having foreign currency in your own home, and having gotten it from a foreign German person on top of that. But – what are you going to do? – she tormented herself for a week, and then decided to act. She couldn’t stand it anymore. So she went to the bank, showed them a copy of the gift document, certified by a notary, told them everything, and asked to have a foreign currency account opened in her name.
You can imagine the response. They dug around in all their books, called somewhere higher up, leafed through their manuals, never, of course, found anything, and finally said:
“You’re not allowed to have one, in accordance with such-and-such order, issued on such-and-such date, end of story.”
Elsa went home in low spirits. Visions of prison and freight-trains rolling somewhere very far away haunted her. She was scared to be alone in the house, and too afraid to write to her son and, God forbid, get him mixed up in this trouble as well – he had nothing to do with anything, his name and last name were both Russian, and he didn’t even speak a word of German... Which, of course, never stopped anyone before.
She was scared.
And rightly so. They came. Meaning, at first, just like the last time, a single officer came: a field-operations KGB Lieutenant Sidorov. He started off mildly, but later, when she wouldn’t tell him anything, raised his voice and threatened to dig up her old file: “We’ve got everything about you all written down!”
That’s when Elsa confessed, and told him how things were: that her uncle had died, and she had not seen this uncle since she was little, and no one knew where he went and where he lived, so she was shocked to get this inheritance, but she’s a smart woman, she was born here, and she’ll die here, she’s not about to move anywhere from her Motherland, and that’s why she only got ten thousand dollars for giving up her portion of the estate – mind you, she didn’t say anything about the ring – which ten thousand dollars she, as an honest citizen, hurried to put in the bank, but they turned her away.
“You should have called us right away, citizen Hoff. It wasn’t proper to hide this, but alright, no harm done – we were informed anyway. Let’s go ahead and take care of this right away; I’ll come back tomorrow, say, after four, with an accountant. We will accept your dollars with all the proper documentation, of course, and will exchange them for five thousand rubles you’re due according to the current official exchange rate: fifty Central Bank kopeks for one dollar. You did well to refuse the other things: it doesn’t really behoove a Soviet citizen to have property abroad.”
That’s where he slipped – that was too much. Elsa was smart – she smelled a rat, she knew their kind: last time they confiscated even brass tea-glass holders, and now they were turning down a car and a villa just like that? She didn’t let anything show, of course, but she got this sinking feeling inside. She saw her guest off to the gates, saw that he had come in the police car with the flashing light, and began to have some serious doubts.
But – the good Lord was looking out for her: her neighbor, Grishka Panyukhin, her son’s classmate, stopped by to borrow a tenner for a bottle and to ask, among other things, what “that cop from the double” wanted from her.
“What cop, Grishka? From what double?”
“Aunt Elsa, would I lie to you? I just got out of there – spent two years staring at that mug at the gates, I’d know him anywhere.”
“What’s a double, Grisha?”
“The slammer, Aunt Elsa – the city jail.”
“All right, Grisha, I’ll give you a ten, but when are you going to quit drinking?”
She hesitated, digging in her wallet unnecessarily long – trying to decide: to tell or not to tell? Grishka had a good heart, her Andryusha liked him, only Grishka fell in with thieves, and got burned. She couldn’t see another way out – she wouldn’t find anyone else to stand up for her. So she told him.
“Aunt Elsa, are you kidding me? Dollar’s now worth two and a half rubles, and he’s giving you fifty kopeks! Well, that’s a neat trick, you son of a bitch, and where did he get the uniform, Aunt Elsa, he’s just a stinking sergeant, who does he think he is?! Oh, this is good. This is a stroke of luck, this is awesome – so, he’s gotten greedy, he’s too good for what the brothers pay him to sneak things into the slammer, he wants more. All right, let’s play...”
And they made a plan.
The next day, just as they had agreed, a GAZ pulled up to Elsa’s house right after four o’clock, but the “lieutenant” got out of it alone, without the promised accountant.
He came in, apologized dryly that the accountant could not accompany him, put his briefcase on the dining table, pulled some papers out of it and a “Paid” stamp, and arranged it all neatly on the table. Neither did he neglect to produce a stack of banknotes in a white bank wrap – five thousand rubles.
“All right, citizen Hoff, let’s get it done.”
“You’re right about that, let’s get it done. Come on, Katso!” Grishka yelled, jumping out of the wardrobe. From the other room, like a hawk, Katso swooped in – Grishka’s friend, about the size of Aunt Elsa’s wardrobe. The boys knocked the poor “GB officer” down, shook him a bit, and fished his police badge out of his pocket.
“See, Aunt Elsa, and you were scared! Out with him, let’s take it to the street.”
Outside there was a ruckus. Grishka paid a bunch of Gypsy kids to gather a crowd. The boys dragged the fake inspector out of the house, bared his behind, and tethered him face down to a bench. Then they gave him a hundred good lashes, to the crowd’s great amusement – Grishka and Katso did a nice job there. Afterward, they explained the lay of the land to him – to keep mum, or else, they had plenty of witnesses, and they would pack him off to jail at the slightest provocation. Then they kicked him into his car and let him go, only Grishka took his briefcase as “material evidence.” With the five thousand in it.
Later, Katso quietly exchanged Aunt Elsa’s dollars for twenty-five thousand rubles (she gave Grishka the “GB” five on the spot, as they had agreed) and disappeared. No one ever saw him again.
The next morning, Grishka, naturally, woke up famous. People said he even got a laudatory letter from the double. The fake GB-man quit his job in great hurry, and left town – folks wouldn’t let him be. They ragged the girl from the bank who’d dated him for a while for months. Clever Elsa wasted no time either – she put the money to work: put a new foundation under her house, got hot water, raised a heated greenhouse and a garage, bought her son a Dnieper motorcycle and a Sony tape player. Andryusha, however, when he came back from the army, yelled at his mother at first: the dollar, by then, was running between one-to-five and one-to-seven, but cooled off fast – Grishka threw him a couple of welcome parties and they had themselves a grand old time riding the bike around town. They played hard for about six months, and then Andryusha straightened up – his German blood must’ve made itself known – he passed the exams into the Polytechnic and got into books. Grishka also settled down – he now cuts meat at the market.