Troika (6 page)

I turn to Pepe. Want to know my wish? I ask. Pepe shields his eyes from the sun and watches the feather drift until we can’t see it anymore. And then he smiles and shakes his head and says no, Perlita, no. That’s for you, just you. And your god.

I
n the corner table of a popular restaurant that Frankmann operated, Julian sat with Kira and the old Jew. Kira ordered a feast for the table—fish stew, roasted duck, boiled potatoes, carrots, borscht, broiled venison, hot bread drizzled with butter, and a cola for the boy. Julian was mesmerized by the bustle of the restaurant: the streaks of white-coated waiters, the naval officers dining in their dress uniforms, the Party bureaucrats, the merchants, the variety and amount of food, the deference with which Frankmann and, by extension, Julian and Kira were treated.

“So,” Frankmann started, as Julian devoured a piece of delicious bread, “you need two things.” He turned to Kira. “Take notes, please.” Kira removed from her bag a legal pad and a pen. “You need two things, Julian, and we can work on both of them simultaneously. First, we need a plan to get you to the States.” Julian nodded in agreement, as this was consistent with his mother’s wishes. “And then you need to develop skills. It’s a hornet’s nest over there, you know.
And your mother wouldn’t want you fending for yourself without the right tools. Now, the good news is you’ve got strong genes, believe it or not. You have your mother’s good looks. And crafty as hell, she was. And let’s hope you have your father’s best traits.”

Julian placed the bread on the plate before him. “My father? What were my father’s best traits?”

Frankmann bellowed, “Your father? I saw him only once, when he came into town with three tigers—the biggest, most beautiful pelts I had ever seen. He’d taken them down in just one week, and word had already spread throughout our town, our
entire region
, that a hunter had done something remarkable. And because he was one of our own, you can imagine the pride. Hundreds lined the street into town, waiting to get a glimpse of the tigers and the man who had hunted them. It was all so dramatic, like you see in an opera, a
German
opera. Your father standing tall with two rifles strapped to his back, a knife on his belt, a bloody shoulder, working the reins of the troika, three horses up front, trotting shoulder to shoulder, the three of them working together, their hooves in perfect harmony and dancing proud like those Lipizzaner stallions. And in the back of the troika, in the carriage, were these colossal cats, brown and white and a brilliant orange.” Frankmann lifted a glass of wine to his lips and drank, not for pleasure, but to lubricate his throat. “Those were tough times around here, still are. The corruption, the poverty, the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats! So cowardly and pathetic, every one of them. And what they did to God . . .” Frankmann paused. He studied the boy’s face. “But when your father rode into town, Julian, that was a moment that gave everyone hope, a little inspiration that they could still strive, that they could do something otherworldly.”

Julian watched as Frankmann placed the wineglass back down on the table. He cleared his throat. “So, Mr. Frankmann, what were my father’s best traits?”

Frankmann looked at Julian pityingly. “I just told you, boy. I just told you.” Kira reached over and stroked Julian’s hair. “Kira, please, don’t baby him. We have work to do.” She withdrew her hand and straightened the pad in front of her. “Kira, I want you to go visit Dmitriev at the Family Service Bureau. He’s as corrupt as they come, so no calls or letters. Take two thousand out of the safe and put it in a bag for him. Make sure no one is around when you hand it to him and tell him I need adoption and transport papers for an orphan.” Frankmann eyed Kira as she took detailed notes. “Burn those when you’re finished,” he said.

“Of course,” replied Kira, having become a master at destroying potentially incriminating documents.

The waiter arrived and covered the table with food. Frankmann and Kira barely looked at their plates, so immersed were they in the execution of the plan. Frankmann’s ability to focus on the task at hand to the exclusion of all else had, he believed, been one of the primary contributors to his success. Julian stared at the food before him and wondered what to do—start eating or wait until the adults began. Out of caution, he chose the latter.

Frankmann continued. “I will call a couple I know in America, outside New York somewhere. I made them rich in the sixties and kept the husband out of jail in the seventies. And I always told them that one day I would collect my debt. Well, today’s their lucky day, Julian, because you’re going to be adopted by an old Petersburg couple. A husband and wife, Americans now with a fancy car and a house and cupboards stocked to the ceilings with food. They are good people, sneaky rascals of course, and they’ll protect you, educate you, feed and clothe you until you turn eighteen. How old are you now?”

“Ten.”

“Okay, so then you’ll have eight years with these people. And then, well, who knows . . .”

“Okay,” Julian muttered, trying to hold back his tears, “eight years.” Despite the years spent without his parents and the resulting acceleration of his childhood, the thought of his future and permanent emancipation terrified him.

“When will Julian be traveling?” Kira asked.

Frankmann drove a fork into his venison and cut off a large piece. “It’s impossible to be kosher in Siberia, you know. In the big cities, it’s easier. But out here?”

Puzzled, Julian and Kira stared at the old man, who dropped the meat into his mouth and chewed with great force.

“Sir?” Kira asked. “The travel plans?”

As Frankmann swallowed the chunk of meat, a rivulet of russet grease slid into his beard and mixed with the white bristles. He took a sip of water and cleared his throat. “You a fast learner?” he asked the boy.

“The fastest, sir,” Julian responded, straightening his posture in the chair.

“And competitive?”

His confidence rising, Julian nodded and expanded his chest. “Just like my father, sir.”

Frankmann cut another piece of meat and observed the boy. He had spent a long career sizing up people and had, through both success and occasional failure, developed a keen instinct that allowed him to quickly determine the strengths and weaknesses of a human being. He considered Julian’s parents, the boy’s ability to survive great tragedy, the knock on the office door, the assertiveness with which Julian demanded to be heard. “Two months, Kira. That’s all the time I will need with this boy.”

“To do what?” Julian asked as he lifted his knife and fork and prepared to cut a piece of duck.

“To teach you how to be rich.”

Julian smiled wearily and placed his utensils back on the table. “When do we start, sir?”

“We start now.” Frankmann took the pad and pen from Kira and handed them to Julian. With a linen napkin, Frankmann wiped the grease from his beard. “You see that waiter over there, the young man with the glasses? With the feminine features?”

“Yes,” said Julian, unsure what it meant for a man to have feminine features.

“Well, he came into town last week from the west, arrived by train, and he’s got a valise full of old books. Art books, history, old Russian literature, he had something by Lermontov, beautiful atlases, that sort of thing. He even had a few volumes in English, including a first edition of
Ulysses
, fourth printing. It was pretty clear from looking at the books, in perfect condition with plastic covers on them, that whoever used to own these was a serious collector. So the man pulls into town with the books and asks around, trying to find out who might be interested in buying the lot. Well, given I’m the only man in town with any real money, he ends up in my office. It turns out he’s a painter, an artist, and he came here to paint the sea and to capture the light for which we’re famous.”

Kira and Julian look surprised. “I know,” Frankmann continued, “why
anyone
would want to live here is beyond me, but that’s a romantic for you. Anyway, the young man wants to paint here for a few months, then go to Moscow with his work and join the Academy of Arts, which they say is the finest institution of its kind. So, this painter is broke, and the only asset he owns is these books that he inherited from an uncle, and he doesn’t know much at all about book collecting. So when he comes to me, I’ve got scarcity, need and knowledge in my favor.”

Just then, the painter approached the table with a pitcher of water. In deference to him, Frankmann stopped the story until the
young man filled the glasses and moved on to the next table. “Remember these three words, boy. Write them down.
Scarcity
.
Need
.
Knowledge
.” As Julian wrote down the words, Frankmann lifted a bottle of wine from the table. “This,” he said, “is a 1975 Château Lafite Rothschild. You can buy it from a fine vintner in Moscow for three hundred rubles. In Paris, it might cost the equivalent of two hundred, but in francs, of course.” Julian scribbled more notes on the pad.
Wine
.
300
.
200
.
1975
. “So, Julian, what would you say is the value of this wine?”

The boy looked first at Kira and then at the bottle of wine. He reached for the bottle and rotated it one complete revolution, reading the yellowed label with the elegant French cursive. “I think the value would be two to three hundred. Is that right?”

“Yes, boy, that would be the price, the range of prices, for this bottle in Paris or Moscow. I agree. But that is not the
universal value
of the wine.” Julian appeared confused. “What if I were to tell you, Julian, that this particular bottle was not being offered for sale in Moscow or Paris, but rather hours from the city, in the countryside, near a dacha owned by a rich industrialist?”

Julian wrote on the pad:
Moscow
,
Paris
,
dacha
. “I don’t understand, sir.”

“In the countryside, hours from the city, there are no stores that sell such a fine wine. It is not so easily available. So the wealthy owner of the dacha does not have the benefit of an alternative supply if he is not happy with the price. In Paris, he can walk into a liquor shop, and if the wine is too expensive, he walks to the next shop and buys it there for a better price. So, in the countryside, in the Russian countryside where there is only one vintner, and this vintner holds in his inventory a very small number of wines, what might be the impact on the price of the wine? Higher or lower?”

“Higher, sir,” Julian said. “The wine would be more expensive.”

Frankmann smiled. “And would that be an example of price impacted by scarcity or by need?”

“Scarcity, sir.”

“Good, boy. Now let’s alter the facts.” Julian straightened the pad and held the pen an inch above the paper. So focused was he on Frankmann’s lesson that he did not eat his food. Frankmann continued. “We agree that the wealthy dacha owner from the countryside wants this bottle of wine. He’s hours from the city and has no other way to get it, so he pays more. Maybe instead of three hundred, he pays four hundred. That we agree on. Now, let’s make another assumption. Let’s assume that not only is this rich landowner a wine aficionado who is willing to pay a few extra rubles for a fine wine, but let’s assume that in addition to being wealthy and many hours removed from the city, let’s assume that he is also an alcoholic. Let’s assume that this rich man is
addicted
to wine.”

Julian winced at the reference to addiction. He stopped writing and looked up to the old man. “An alcoholic?” he asked.

“Yes, an alcoholic. And what that means is his need for this bottle of wine . . .” Frankmann tapped the bottle before him for effect. “His
need
for this particular bottle of wine is greater than the need of the average rich dacha owner. Our buyer
has
to have his alcohol. He can’t go a night without drinking or he starts to shake, and he gets nasty and kicks his dog.”

Julian looked at Frankmann, turned to Kira, and then returned to the old Jew. “Why would he kick his dog, sir?”

Kira was alarmed. “Mr. Frankmann didn’t mean that, did he?” she said, eyeing the old man.

Frankmann recognized that his words had frightened the boy, that he had offended Kira’s sense of propriety. “I misspoke, boy. He would never kick the dog. He loves the dog. But if he simply cannot
go one single night without a bottle of wine, what’s he willing to do, boy? What’s he willing to do to get that wine?”

“He’s willing to pay even more,” Julian responded.

“Precisely!” Frankmann roared and slapped his hand on the table. Then he carved a piece of venison and dropped it into his mouth with great satisfaction. The old Jew raised his wineglass and took a luxurious gulp. He lifted the linen napkin from his lap, snapped it in the air, and wiped his lips. “And
why
is he willing to pay even more?”

“Because he
needs
the wine, sir.”

Frankmann patted Julian on the top of his head. “Well done. Now let’s alter the facts one more time. Let’s make this a ’73 Lafite instead of a ’75. And let’s say that this rich alcoholic dacha owner thinks of himself as a real wine expert. But let’s also say that his knowledge of fine wines is not as extensive or as accurate as he thinks. He thinks he knows more than he actually knows. He’s blinded by his arrogance, which is a common affliction among the wealthy. Myself included. So, the buyer knows that Château Lafite is one of the finest, most famous vineyards in the world and has been for hundreds of years. But what he doesn’t know is that there were a few years, 1973 being one of them, that were not up to snuff. Not terrible, but certainly not the caliber of what one would expect from Rothschild.” Frankmann paused and took another gulp of wine. “Let’s also say that the
seller
of this wine is a true expert. He knows everything there is to know about wine. And he knows that only the most sophisticated connoisseurs will know that ’73 was a hard year to make good wine.”

Frankmann noticed that Julian had barely touched his food, so he reached across the table and grabbed the pad. “You’ve written enough,” he said to Julian. “Just listen now. Eat, eat.” Julian hesitated, then tore the leg off the duck before him. “So,” Frankmann continued, “we have a seller who knows something that the buyer doesn’t
know. We have a transaction in which the buyer thinks the wine is more valuable than it actually is, that the ’73 was as good as, say, the ’75. And the seller suspects that the buyer might not realize that ’73 was a bad year. The seller has more knowledge than the buyer. And when one party has more knowledge than the other, what happens?”