Nazis. But here’s where it may get tricky for you: Universal’s policy states that any attempt to blackmail or bribe its officers must be reported in writing. I’ll write a report telling them exactly what happened.”
“I can’t stop you reporting this,” Boris said. “Ivan’s a survivor. He made it through Stalin’s purges, the war, and the dangerous time after Stalin’s death. He knows where all the bodies are buried.” Boris laughed a little. “Ivan is one of the freest men in Russia; no one gets in his way.”
“I see.”
“Ivan can make trouble for you. Maybe a passport problem. You were born in France but travel under an American passport. Sorting that out might take a day or two. Given the way you dress and talk with that fancy accent, a few nights in police custody might be tricky.”
“Okay, I’ll go along with Ivan since Universal’s management is eager to be the lead American bank in the pipeline project.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Boris said.
“Being blackmailed pushed everything else aside. And until now, Universal’s credit decisions were none of your business.”
“Yes, of course,” Boris said. “I’ll tell Ivan that you’ll see to it that Universal approves the deal. Our taped conversation in your room will prove that. Then all that is left is to listen to Ivan. He always goes back to the old days before the war when he was coordinating actions against the Whites in Europe.” The Whites were royalists who fought the Communists during the Russian Civil War that followed the Revolution from 1917 to about 1922.
Boris offered me a cigarette.
I had quit years ago but took it.
“You’re one of the lucky ones,” he said. “Your family got out. My grandparents were sent to the gulags because they were landowners—kulaks, enemies of the people. But they were peasants with a few hect-ares of land and some livestock.”
“Lucky? Out of two very large families, I’m the only one left.” I tried the cigarette and was dizzy.
Boris said, “Adrian Romanovsky was captured toward the end of the war. According to Ivan, when the Germans retreated, Adrian Romanovsky went to an estate his family owned before the Revolution and waited. He told the Red Army interrogators that he was a czarist officer, then a White officer.”
“And?”
“An officer, he demanded to be shot. Ivan said that Adrian Romanovsky was hanged. The hanging was slow.”
“Why in God’s name…”
“I don’t like this any more than you do.” Boris shook his head. “Ivan is my ex-father-in-law; that’s a primary reason why this is happening.” Boris studied his cigarette. “This is all about Ivan’s hatred; I’m afraid you’re going to listen to it.”
I ground out my cigarette. “You may tell Ivan that I have no intention of listening to his odium.”
“Odium?” Boris said. “Have you thought about updating your Russian?”
“I have. What else does Ivan know?”
“After the Whites were defeated, Adrian Romanovsky and his young son, Andre, fled to Turkey. A year or so later, they reached Paris. Adrian became the leader of a White émigré group that assassinated Soviet agents operating in Europe. The young boy, Andre, was a child prodigy and would become an important mathematician. When the Germans invaded France, Andre was evacuated to England and worked breaking German codes. Your mother, Tatiana, worked for a major Parisian art gallery; she came from one of the original boyar families—princes, going back to Kievan Rus. Her family name was Trepoff. The files end when Andre and Tatiana, his wife, left France and went to the University of California with their young son, Alexander Andreivich—you.”
“What else did Ivan say about my mother?”
“Not much, but I know the Nazis used Parisian galleries to plunder museums and private—that is, Jewish—art collections. German terms were: take it or leave it. Should you leave it, we’ll take it and send you to the gas.”
“What did Adrian Romanovsky do for the Germans?”
“Counterpartisan work.”
I wondered about my mother’s brother, Alexander Trepoff, who returned to Russia with Adrian Romanovsky and vanished.
Vanishing—a theme that runs through Russian folk tales and history:
Olga was gathering mushrooms in the forest and vanished,
Must have been the wolves.
A knock on the door one night and Sergei vanished,
The wolves again.
Since Boris hadn’t mentioned Alexander Trepoff, neither would I. Perhaps his file never existed, or perhaps he and his file had vanished. “The Germans were killers back then,” I said.
“People who assisted them had various motives. However, some were as bad as the German, others even worse.”
“I’ve read that Russians are possessed by Russia. My grandfather going home to die was quite Russian, wasn’t it?”
Boris’s smile was tenuous. “You should keep him in your mind that way.”
“I hope you’re as honest as I think you are.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Boris gushed. We clapped each other’s shoulders and brushed cheeks. “You’re ashamed of being Russian?”
I didn’t know many Russians. My parents had avoided the Russians in Paris. The only Russians I met in California were at the Russian Orthodox church in San Francisco that my mother and I attended. Most of the parishioners were émigrés bewildered by the upheavals that flung them to the other side of the world. They clung to one another, but my mother refused to socialize. When I asked why, she said they weren’t our type; we were special Russians who’d become quite rare. I missed her point and thought the two special Russians lived in the intimate world my mother and I had created.
Descending in an elevator, I hoped that I had read Boris right; if not, things would get far worse, and soon. Boris asked me to arrange appetizers and vodka while he spoke to Ivan. I greased the concierge with a pack of Marlboros, an unofficial currency that was better than rubles or dollars. The concierge called the bar, then minutes later, a waiter and I entered the conference room.
I filled the short-stemmed glasses with icy vodka and said, “Za vashe zadarov ye! (to your health!)” We downed the vodka.
Helping himself to the pickled mushrooms, Ivan asked, “How do I address you? Your Honor or Your Radiance?” Czarist terms of address for the aristocracy. I didn’t answer, and Boris poured another round.
As he was about to repeat his question, Ivan’s cigarette cough rumbled into a phlegmy spasm, his skin went rusty-scarlet, and his eyes watered. Probably a formidable man in his youth, Ivan was in his seventies, and his lungs were racing his liver to see which went first. He lit a cigarette and gulped the vodka. His high Slavic cheekbones made his blue eyes look small. A common complaint among Russians: small eyes.
Russian
