SIBERIA BOUND
Chasing the American Dream on Russia's Wild Frontier |
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Single Page Format Sasha continued to yell into the phone, "We'd like to discuss a proposal. Could you arrange for us to get past the front gate?" He nodded twice, then yelled our names into the phone. He had to repeat my name three times. He hung up the phone and punched me in the arm. "Looks like you might owe me a bottle of vodka before the day is done," he said just as the phone rang next to the large woman gatekeeper. She nodded and hung up the phone, then called out our names, mispronouncing mine.
The faces in the crowd glowered at us as we maneuvered towards the turnstile. The woman wrote out paper passes for us. It gave me a sense of déjà vu, as if I were back in high school and had just been handed a hall pass. The feeling was one of simultaneous empowerment and belittlement.
We walked through the door that many of the loiterers would never reach. We found ourselves back outside, but within the factory’s walls. As I squinted my eyes against the light and cold, I saw a chaotic and cluttered scene, except for a row of dump trucks so clean they could have just rolled off the assembly line. Why a chocolate factory might need so many dump trucks, I couldn't figure out. And if they did need them, why weren’t they being used? A large brick smokestack with metal belts circling the shaft every ten feet or so cast a long shadow across the yard. Wooden barrels lay scattered about the grounds. It looked more like a 1920’s bootlegging operation than a 1990’s chocolate factory. We walked into a four-story brick building on the other side of the courtyard and quickly found ourselves at the door of the Zam Director.
Sasha knocked once, but he didn’t wait before opening the door himself. A solid man in his mid-forties sat behind a small desk. A young woman dressed in a chocolate-stained apron sat in a chair opposite him. She had been explaining something when Sasha interrupted her by opening the door. The man instructed the woman to come back later.
She stepped out. We slipped in.
After very brief pleasantries and handshakes, Sasha got down to business.
"Why isn’t there any smoke coming from the factory’s smokestack?"
I hadn't noticed if there was or wasn't smoke coming from the smokestack.
“We have a raw materials shortage right now," the sturdy man answered. "We are only working every other day.”
While I had been busy counting dump trucks, Sasha had been gathering useful clues. I resolved to be more observant.
I surveyed the room and its contents, looking for useful information. The deputy director had four telephones on his desk. Every so often, one of them would ring. He’d hold up a stout finger to pause the conversation, grab the phone, listen for a few seconds, bark out a command and slam down the phone. He had a receding hairline that he didn’t bother to comb over. His tie was loose around his neck and his sleeves were rolled up.
“Vitaly Victorovich, what do you need?” Sasha asked deferentially.
“Cocoa beans,” he said.
“Alexander Richardovich,” Sasha pointed to me, “represents an American company that can supply your factory with cocoa beans. Isn’t that right, Alexander Richardovich?”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Of course we can,” I agreed clumsily, then silently scolded myself for being such a dimwit. I was ruining the deal. Wait a second, what deal?