Chromosome Set

CHROMOSOME SET

The phone rings. I pick up the receiver.
"Mishka, hey!"
A familiar voice. From childhood. But whose—I can't recall.
"Remember Gerka?"
"Gerka!!! My God... Where are you calling from?"
"From prison."
"What do you mean?"
"Very simple. I've got a good cell. Two rooms. A phone. A TV. A VCR."

...Gerka had always dreamed of getting rich. Even as a child, he managed to trade hard candy wrappers for wrappers of "Mishka Kosolapy" chocolates. Mind you, he always got beaten up for it afterwards. What kind of scams didn't he try to drag me into back in our youth! His head was always full of the boldest, most absurd ideas. Every hooligan in town knew him, though he was never a hooligan himself. Once he told me about a plan to break his father out of prison. It seems his father was implicated at the time in the infamous Doctors' Plot.

Gerka was very fat and just as kind. Once, when I got beaten up and was lying in bed, he brought the guys who had beat me up to my house so they would apologize. He was convinced that this would make me feel better. Later it turned out that he simply paid them with the money he had been saving up for his father's escape.

After school, Gerka unexpectedly took up singing. And immediately did so loudly, in an operatic voice. That was the era of Magomayev worship. Anyone who sang like him was invited to concerts and paid good money. Singing with an operatic voice was profitable back then, which is why he took it up. Gerka told everyone how he had studied in Italy with Muslim. Though to this day it remains a mystery to me where he learned to sing so loudly...

Soon he realized it was far more profitable to sing in the Far North. And so he left there for a couple of years. Struck it rich. In whatever far-flung corners of our vast Motherland didn't he organize the most audacious moonlighting gigs, selling his own tickets made out of two-kopeck postcards cut in half! Moreover, on each half, without beating around the bush, he wrote in his own hand: "One ruble." And stamped it with a seal carved out of an old boot heel by some local Lefty craftsman in exchange for a bottle of Riga Balsam. When I look back at the homegrown, pre-emigration Gerka, I always think: one shouldn't rashly claim that we lived in an era of stagnation. That’s not true. There were minds that were restless, brilliant, and turbulent. They, by the way, paved the way for perestroika. It’s no coincidence that many have now been awarded medals for the very same things they used to be locked up for...

In short, I always knew Gerka's future was prison. But I never imagined it would be near New York and with a telephone.

When asked how much time he got, Gerka didn't answer. He didn't want to talk about unpleasant things. I can understand him. According to some rumors, he got a hundred-odd years; according to others, only 80. I can't vouch for the reliability of the rumors. But in America, that's entirely realistic. Over there, one law doesn't exclude another, and all the sentences are added up.

As it was explained to me, Gerka from Riga and his friend from Odessa produced counterfeit dollars. What's more, they produced them on stolen paper, and applied the print with stolen ink. Because it wouldn't even cross a Soviet person's mind to actually buy ink! When they were caught, to top it all off, they had been speeding in someone else's car while intoxicated, and on top of that, five of them had driven past five "Do Not Enter" signs. In short, it all piled up!

Emigrants love to tell stories about him. Upon arriving in America, he tried to sing. But here nobody cared whom you had studied with in Italy. Without thinking twice, Gerka, with his Soviet mindset, went into American business. After which he went completely broke. He tried to organize screenings of Soviet films for emigrants, like: Wedding in Malinovka, Zozulya with a Diploma, The Battle on the Way... But the rent had to be paid. And only five or six former Soviet communists would show up to the screenings, out of a desire to plunge once more into their heroic past. Finally, my kind fat friend threw his hands up at everything and decided to get rich quick! And the simple way!

American newspapers wrote about the trial. Native Americans were stunned: first, by how much counterfeit money our guys printed in two days. Second, by how they did it. The simplicity, resourcefulness, and sheer audacity simultaneously offended and fascinated the Americans.

They printed the counterfeit dollars on a Xerox machine!..

A multi-color Xerox machine had existed in America for many years. Americans foolishly thought you had to work on it to earn money. But it turns out you don't need to work on it—you just print money directly.

Many, many new things did Americans learn with the arrival of our emigrants in their country.

For instance, that gasoline can be diluted with water... The report on how this was done at a Russian gas station in Brooklyn became a scientific revelation even for American scientists. Up until then, they assumed it was chemically impossible—carburetors would stall. But apparently, any fellow of ours with a third-grade education can give the entire American chemical industry a run for its money on certain issues. Turns out, you just have to know how to dilute it. The scheme had already been perfected back in the Motherland, and it couldn't be simpler: you dilute good gasoline with medium-grade, medium-grade with bad, and bad—with water...

Apparently, our man has grown sharp from poverty, just as their man has grown dull from plenty...

Americans don't just dislike our emigrants. They cursed the day they invited them in. Well, serves them right! For so many years they had been shouting: "Release your dissidents to us! Give them freedom!" Well, they gave it, they released them. But it turned out: none of those who were shouting could even begin to imagine just how differently our people think. I believe the third wave of Soviet emigration to America is the most serious provocation against the West!

...In a restaurant, a Russian emigrant is sitting next to me. Unexpectedly, he pulls a bay leaf out of his pocket, lights it on fire, and drops it sharply into a shot glass of vodka.
"Why are you doing that?" I ask.
"I'm driving... So it won't smell."

Apparently, cunning is in our person's genetics. In his chromosome set. Because the only things passed down by Soviet people from generation to generation were poverty, deviousness, and enthusiasm.

That is why America, with its free enterprise, turned out to be fertile black soil for our mindset. You're not allowed to take paintings by renowned artists out of Russia? Is that really a problem for our emigrant? They figured out how to invite the artists themselves. Feed them, pay their per diems, split the royalties fifty-fifty, just as long as they paint right here in America, in emigrant attics. And many—

Right now, in connection with perestroika, our emigrants' imagination has completely run wild. Especially in cooperation with our co-op operators. Joint hunting grounds for American millionaires are opening up along the Volga. The poor millionaires pay thousands of dollars for such hunting trips. While our people lead them in through a hole in the fence in exchange for a bottle given to the gamekeeper.

What don't our great minds try to peddle to poor Americans for dollars! It got to the point where they published an advertisement claiming that an infusion made from cow kidney stones is especially beneficial for male potency. And here you simply can't do without friendship with the Soviet Union, because kidney stones only form in Soviet cows. It seems to me that the souvenirs popular nowadays among the American public—pieces of the destroyed Berlin Wall—were actually pried from the pavements of the Russian immigrant district.

They say that the FBI has currently created a special department to investigate what is going on in New York's Russian neighborhood.

Legends are already circulating around the globe about this district as one of the most "entertaining" places on Earth.

Brighton Beach... Simply Brighton... The Atlantic Ocean shore... They say that decent poor black folks once lived here. History shows that whenever black people moved into an area, everyone else would move out. This is the only case where the black residents themselves left after the Russians arrived. Rather, they didn't just leave—they fled. Our people drove them out. And the impoverished blocks blossomed with restaurants and shops... Neon signs flared up in Russian: "At Rima's", "Odessa", "Kiev", "Rus", "Yasha & Sons"... Music went rolling along the boardwalk.

"...Skyscrapers, skyscrapers, and I'm so very small..."
"...It's not too late, it's not too early, I'm sitting all alone outside the restaurant..."
"...Coachman, don't drive the horses so fast..."

A wealthy Yalta with an Odessa temperament and Kharkov taste. Only in Yalta people vacation in season, while on Brighton it's all the time.

And, of course, the restaurants are more thug-chic, the faces merrier, the songs rowdier, and the jewelry on the women weightier. Only our people walk around America draped in gold from the crack of dawn. In each ear, an ingot the size of DneproGES! Luckily, there is no OBKhSS here. And in the evening, a restaurant. And revelry! But what revelry! It seems to me that the feeling of sheer happiness from having left the Soviet Union will last many of our emigrants for the rest of their lives. That's why they party every single day as if it were their last. That's it! Tomorrow it's back to the Soviet Union...
"...Coachman, don't drive the horses so fast!.."
They broke free! Struck it rich! Free!

On Brighton, the Russian language reigns supreme. Some don't even bother learning English. A certain Aunt Frida came into an American shop and was genuinely outraged:
"Vhat is dis? Ve've been here six years, and Americans still don't speak Russian?"

At times it feels as though our people didn't come to America, but America came to them. And Aunt Frida wasn't so far from the truth. American police officers in the Russian district are learning Russian. Complete with swear words, no less. Because our people curse there just like back home. The cops think that's just how the language is

Ordinary Americans are afraid of Brighton Beach. They are scared of the blasting restaurant music and alarmed by the dancing. They aren't used to seeing flushed faces passed out face-down in salad bowls for the night. And forget about ordinary folks! Even the American mafia doesn't know what to do with the Russian mafia. Not a single Chicago gangster ever sets foot in the Russian neighborhood. He wouldn’t know where to park his car. If he leaves his black Rolls-Royce on the street for just seven seconds, our guy, in true homegrown fashion, will use those exact same seven seconds to scratch that world-famous three-letter word into it with a nail.

Recently, in the line outside the American embassy in Moscow, some Georgian shouted at an official:

"Why is our paperwork taking so long?!"

And the American official lost his temper:

"Because I don't want you," he yelled at the entire line, "coming to my country!"

And you can understand him...

On Brighton, they even replaced the new American payphones with old ones. The new ones had been designed "for the benefit of mankind." To save people from tossing coins in throughout the call and getting distracted, they improved the design. You drop in an initial quarter, you talk for seven, ten, thirty minutes... When you finish speaking, you hang up, and the payphone rings. You pick up the receiver, and a robot tells you how much more you need to insert! They picked the wrong suckers! And it wouldn't be so bad if our folks just walked away. No. They also need to experience the pleasure (or, as they used to say, a sense of deep satisfaction) of having put one over on someone, even over the smallest trifle. That’s why our folks still pick up the receiver, happily yell: "Go to hell!", and only after that... do not walk, no, they run away "with a sense of deep satisfaction."

It is no accident that I keep writing "our folks, our folks, our folks." They truly are our people. First and foremost—by their chromosomal set.

Some celebrate May 1st out of habit. Many celebrate both American holidays and Soviet ones. I asked whether they went out on demonstrations on May 1st.

Jokes aside, someone actually joined the American Communist Party. They say that due to Perestroika, members will soon be transferred directly from ours to the American one, provided, of course, that an official request arrives from their party...

You can change your surname, your first name, your face, your Homeland, but you cannot change your chromosomal set.

The highest number of tip-offs and denunciations in America comes from Brighton. That's the chromosomal set.

At a neighboring table in the "Rus" restaurant, a beer bottle opened against the edge of the table foamed up. That, too, is the chromosomal set.

Someone offered to sell me a radio ripped out of a car. And the restaurant hostess takes me into the kitchen:

"Buy a coat!"

Only one of our people could be a black-market speculator in a country that has everything.

"I’ll let it go for seventy dollars!"

I can see the coat is worth at least three hundred dollars. Expensive fabric. Brand new...

She points with her eyes toward the corner of the kitchen. A gypsy is sitting on a chair there. Stolen goods. Americans arrogantly think they have solved the problem of shoplifting. Their research institutes spent years working on a solution. And they solved it. Prices began to be printed on tags with encoded magnetic strips. If you don't demagnetize them, they beep at the store exit doors. A human being cannot demagnetize these strips on their own. You have to know the code. At the checkout, the computer scanner both reads the price and demagnetizes the strips at the same time. So for those who paid, their purchases don’t beep at the door—only those who bypassed the register trigger the alarm. Research institutes worked on this problem and, as they thought, cracked it. Fat chance! Our people simply rip the tag with the magnetic strips off and walk out with whatever goods they like. And that's all!!!

We are an invincible people! Americans are beginning to understand this. And, I think, they will never go to war with us.

I realized we were invincible when I saw how our people buy bananas at a supermarket. Self-service. You put the bananas in a plastic bag, the bag goes onto the scales, and the scales talk. They tell you how much you owe. And print out a receipt. You stick the receipt onto the bag and head to the cashier, who charges you according to the receipt. Yes, that’s how Americans do it. But what about our folks? Our people place the plastic bag on the scale along with the bananas and... lift the bunch up slightly by hand! The dumb American scale immediately spits out a receipt charging only for the weight of the plastic bag. And only an American cashier—just as intellectually challenged as his scale—cannot comprehend why a massive bunch of bananas costs just a few cents.

Of course, among our emigrants, there are plenty of respectable, educated intellectuals who left for ideological reasons rather than just to stop fearing OBKhSS in the morning. They speak English. Among them are writers, artists, doctors, and entrepreneurs who are respected by native-born Americans. There are also poor folks among them, living hand-to-mouth. But the chromosomal set of our people is visible not through them, but through the majority of our emigrants. Naturally, the children of this majority will grow up different. They will know English. They are drawn to computers and good films. They will grow up American. But their parents can no longer be changed. They are ours! They weep when they sing Russian songs. They love the language of their childhood. They love our performers. In restaurants, they request the newest Soviet hits.

"...Without you, my love, the earth is as small as an island..."

Emigrants love their Homeland from afar. As one of them put it: "You can live in any state, but you only have one Homeland."

Even those emigrants who high-mindedly disparage Brighton, who live among Americans and appear to have irreversibly Americanized—even they, at least once a year, drop by Brighton. To them, it is a little corner of the Homeland. Here, they will be insulted with heartfelt sincerity, turned away by the doorman at the restaurant entrance, overcharged by the waiter, and told by a policeman where to stick it. But they will also be fed in true Russian fashion: served sturgeon, pelmeni, and genuine black rye bread brought over by visiting relatives, all at once.

Most of all, emigrants ask people to bring...

Yes, Brighton is a piece of the Homeland! Here, they still sit in kitchens and have heart-to-heart conversations in a genetic semi-whisper about the troubles in Russia. But here, people can also help you, and understand you—whereas smiling Americans will never understand.

Brighton is a corner of the Homeland.

Yet most of all, emigrants long to visit the real Homeland. They want to show their old friends what they have become. So everyone can see their cars—long, very long ones, right out of the movies they watched over and over in their youth.

So everyone can see their earrings, dripping with bright gold.

"...For now, my love, you must fly with only one wing..."

An emigrant is a person with one wing. A massive, sweeping wing, but only one.

That is why they love this song. Listening to it, they feel their own opulent inadequacy, their wealthy imperfection, the revelry of an unfulfilled happiness...

Our emigrants in America resemble a child raised without a father by a wealthy black-marketeering mother.

Gerka is one of our people too...

"Unfortunately, Mishka, I won't be able to come to your concert today. I don't know the prison guards here well enough yet..."

Gerka had lost both wings, but he kept the most important thing: a stubborn sense of Soviet optimism.

"No big deal... What's a hundred years anyway?! They promised me that if I behave myself, they’ll knock five years off my sentence, maybe even ten!"

Over the phone, I can hear people hurrying him along.

"I have to go," he says. "Time for lunch. I get special food here. They treat me with respect."

I realize that, just like in childhood, he is lying. That's his chromosomal set. He is almost certainly calling from an administrative office.

I remind him of how he once brought over the guys who had beaten me up so they could apologize to me. Gerka’s voice drops. He remembers Riga. And maybe the money saved up for his father’s escape. And even though they say American prisons are more comfortable than our Fourth Directorate sanatoriums... It is still a prison. And dollars aren't candy wrappers!

P.S. A month ago, I learned that Gerka had been released. Nobody could explain to me how that happened. Apparently, the chromosomal set had "done its work" there as well...

Russian Business, or The Eighth Wonder of the World

Our people turned out to be surprisingly adept at business. No joke: a country that produces nothing ranks first in the world in the number of commodity exchanges. This is the second greatest audacity of our people, right after the October Revolution.

— Tell me, your joint-stock company trades with the West. What exactly does the West buy from us?

— What we produce better than them: metal shavings, sawdust, and shattered glass.

Nobody in the world expected such agility and resourcefulness from our people.

If selling aluminum to the West as raw material is forbidden, they figured out how to sell soldier aluminum spoons. And since there's also a ban on exporting timber, they pack each spoon into a small wooden box the size of a tiny coffin.

When beer bottles run short, they figure out how to pour beer into plastic bags. A double benefit! In the past, the blokes would get plastered on beer and smash each other's heads in with the bottles. Now they drink a couple of baggies, blow them up, pop each other on the forehead, and disperse peacefully. Without injuries or bruises.

Whatever hasn't the world considered the eighth wonder of the world: the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, Venice... Now it is universally acknowledged: the eighth wonder of the world is Russian business!

One joint venture even managed to sell our warm winter blankets to Panama. What's more, the Panamanians themselves still can't understand why they needed warm blankets when even at night their chickens lay hard-boiled eggs.

It's completely unclear who started the rumors about the degeneration of our people.

About ten years ago, some police department chief was speaking on TV. He said: "It's not true that there is no talent in Russia. There is. Plenty. But they are all behind bars." Then they showed a guy who, while in prison, invented a way to print money. For the seven years he was locked up, they couldn't find his contraption. As he was finally being released, they asked him. Turned out, he built it right into the cell door. Open the door—a tenner drops out of the frame. Close it—a quarter-ruble. Slam it in anger—a hundred-ruble note pops out. A genius! Everyone acknowledged it. Congratulated him. And slapped on another five years!

That is the very essence of our business boom. Where did the talents flood from prison? Straight into corporate structures and business. Whoever did ten years is a president; whoever did five is a vice-president. The only place that supplied more people to business than the prisons was the Central Committee. So who are our businessmen now? The CC and the ZKs!

And foreigners cannot comprehend where, in just two or three years, the Russians got all these businessmen in unpolished shoes and neckties that look like torn dog ears, sporting party apparatchik faces straight off the poster "Have you signed up to be a trolleybus driver?" At the same time, any of them, without any computer—in his head or, at worst, on an abacus—can calculate in about eight seconds what his net profit will be if he sells two barges of galoshes in China in exchange for a brick-making production line, which he will install at a bought-out collective farm using a bank loan acquired through a bribe amounting to the price of the former regional party committee's finest socialist realist canvas sold to the Louvre, entitled "Budyonny at the Bedside of the Ailing Gorky with His Entire Cavalry."

And that is the whole mystery of the eighth wonder of the world.

Someone is sewing the kind of peaked caps Lenin used to wear.

Someone taught Murzik the cat how to sign payroll sheets.

Someone is dealing in Titian paintings. Swears they're all originals, since he bought them from Titian himself.

The guys from yet another joint venture managed to buy up furs from northern natives in exchange for expired lottery tickets. They explained to them that this was the new Russian currency.

Someone else set up a USSR–France joint perfume venture. The perfume is French; the bottle is ours—an old kefir bottle.

Everywhere you look, it's business!

Trolleybuses are plastered with ads for tourist trips to Greece for $2,000. As if the people riding the trolleybus could afford a trip to Greece for $2,000?! If they can go to Greece at all, it's only on that very trolleybus.

— Tell me, as chairman of a joint-stock company, do you believe today's business benefits our ordinary people?

— Of course. Recently, we traded our submarine to Zimbabwe for 150 disposable syringes. Two syringes even made it to the collective farm where I was born. The collective farmers are very grateful to us for them. They say everyone's been using them for a second year now. Even though in Zimbabwe, before us, they had only been used for three months.

However, the greatest achievement of our business is advertising!

"If you deposit money in our bank, you will have only one problem—how to get it back!!!"

Our people endured the Germans, the Poles, and the Tatars; suffered through the Communists; now the hardest trial remains: homegrown business. If, even after this, we're left with at least a few tree stumps, shavings, sawdust, broken glass, and trash, then we will truly be able to proclaim: "How rich you are, destitute Russia!"