Fellow Travelers

by James Cook

  I knew what he was thinking; that the Fausts were no better than all these Russians. Gitlow seemed to realize what he’d implied and tried to take some of the sting out of it. “The party never has had any money,” he went on, “and if it weren’t for people like your father, I don’t think we’d have survived all these years. He bought us our headquarters on 12th Street and only last year an office building on Union Square. He came up with the bail a few years ago when they tried to keep me in jail.”

  I never liked defending my father against anyone, but I found myself trying to defend him against charges Gitlow had never made.

  “Pop’s not one of your parlor socialists,” I told him. “When he was young, he worked in a steel mill, and that’s where he developed his political attitudes. He was outraged by how the company exploited the men who worked there, and he always tried to get them to assert their rights. But I don’t think he ever thought it wasn’t right for somebody to hold onto the things he had earned for himself.”

  Gitlow said he certainly didn’t either.

  Sure.

  I was glad when they were gone.

  Until then, I had never really thought of it, but Pop was a compulsive collector. He had started out cluttering up our house in the Bronx with antique medical instruments, things like forceps, scalpels, and syringes, and moved on into drugstore paraphernalia—even those tear-drop containers of colored water that used to hang outside the stores. In Moscow he had graduated to works of art—Renaissance nudes, antique statuary, even ikons and ecclesiastical garments, and wound up with Fabergé eggs, fans and hand mirrors, jewelry, silver.

  I’ve always thrown away anything I no longer have any use for. I don’t keep old records, letters, or photographs—if I did, my recollections would be more detailed and probably a lot more accurate. My office is as spare as a monastic cell. I’ve always thought of myself as somebody who likes to travel through life light, disturbing as little of the world around me as I possibly can. Maybe if you start out in life without anything, you like to surround yourself with reminders of how far you’ve been able to go.

  In October, after the Comintern meeting came to an end, Manny got a call one morning from the General, Tania’s father, Boris Churnuchin, suggesting we all have dinner that evening at the Grand Hotel. Even Manny didn’t know what was going on. “Something’s happening,” he said, “I don’t know what, but something.” There was a note in his voice, alarm, apprehension, reticence, and I didn’t like it.

  Oddest of all, the General had invited all three of us—not only Manny and Pop but me. I’d never been a part of the group. I saw the General at family affairs, either at Red House or the Churnuchin mansion, with Tania, Yelena, and Mama Eva, but I wasn’t a director of the aspirin company and never attended the meetings at which my father, brother, and the General discussed its affairs. Something was wrong, and being invited didn’t mean I was moving up in the world.

  And so that evening, as if nothing out of the way were happening, the four of us gathered together in a private room in the Grand Hotel. The hotel outdid itself with hors d’oeuvres and sandwiches, caviar and salmon patés, Westphalian ham, raw pork and sausages, cognac, vodka, Champagne. We sat in those plush overstuffed chairs before the large-paned windows overlooking the street, nibbling the appetizers, drinking vodka, and talking politics, mainly the overriding news of the day: Stalin’s success in consolidating his control of the Communist International.

  The mood was unexpectedly pleasant—lethargic, relaxed, companionable. In the distance, you could hear the ragged American-style orchestra playing jazz in the main dining room, and every time a waiter would enter or leave, the notes of the latest jazz hit of the day would swell through the open door and then fade away again.

  Hallelujah, come on get happy

  Hallelujah, come on get gay.

  The General began telling his latest dirty jokes. They were often difficult for me to grasp, depending as they did on puns or ambiguities my Russian was too infirm to grasp. But not Pop and Manny. They laughed uproariously at everything the General had to say. There was one, though, I still remember after all these years—about the French, German, and Italian soldiers offering a Russian girl money to look up her skirts. Each paid the girl what they thought the gander was worth, with each soldier paying more than the one before. Then a Russian soldier came along, took one look under her dress, and tossed her a kopek, the very smallest coin in the Russian currency. Where others had seen her knee, her thigh, all the Russian had seen was Lenin’s beard.

  A lot of these jokes were perilously close to being subversive, the way jokes always are. The General would break off whenever one of the waiters came into the room. Everybody believed that they were informants for the secret police, reporting whatever transpired in their presence, including “Did you ever hear the one about …?” It occurred to me that that may have been why the General had picked the Grand for his dinner meeting. He wanted to ensure the discretion of his announcement and the propriety of our response.

  The waiters rolled in dinner on a cart, and we settled down at the large round table in the corner. We’d all had too much to drink by then, but you’d never have known it. Everyone suddenly seemed rigidly controlled. Edgy. Careful. We spoke a little too rapidly, picked up the terms of the conversation a little too quickly.

  We had moved through the soup,. the paté de foie gras, the veal with mushrooms and sour cream, the truffles. Finally after the dessert had been taken away, we settled in for our farewell brandies and cordials.

  I had been waiting for Pop or Manny to turn to the General and say, Get to the point, Boris. You didn’t just invite us here for the pleasure of our company.

  But they didn’t get a chance.

  The General put down his glass, wiped his large droopy moustache with his napkin, and flashed a mechanical smile.

  “I invited you here this evening to inform you of a conversation I had last evening with Minister Litvinov.”

  “At last, the main course,” Pop said, with an equally quick smile. “I thought you were never going to get around to it.”

  “It is not easy for me, Johannes. We have been together for so long, we have been such warm friends, and I hope what I have to say will not imperil that friendship.”

  “Only unfriendly acts can do that,” Pop said, his eyes glowing with unaccustomed brightness.

  The General poured himself another snifter of brandy and elaborately inhaled its fragrance.

  “Last evening I was directed by Minister Litvinov to inform you that as of January 1 of next year the government will take over the Faust aspirin combine.”

  You could practically see the blood drain from Manny’s face.

  “Just like that,” Pop said.

  “Just like that.”

  “Even though we have authority from Lenin himself to undertake such a venture?” Pop said.

  “Lenin is no longer with us.”

  Pop considered that, drew in his breath like a sigh, and said, “And what kind of quid pro quo can we expect?”

  “None,” the General answered.

  “That’s unacceptable. We will insist on some alternative concession.”

  “There will be no alternative concession. You understand, Johannes, this is none of my doing. It’s a matter of government policy. The government intends over time to eliminate any and all foreign holdings in Soviet Russia. Averell Harriman has already given up his manganese mining venture, and the British have relinquished their Lena Goldfields project. Even the Hammer pencil concession has been nationalized. So it’s not just the aspirin business that is being taken over. The government is reasserting its rights to the Soviet people’s heritage whatever it may be.”

  “Trotsky goes out the front door, and his economic policies come in the back,” Manny said.

  “I wouldn’t quarrel with that,” Boris replied, breaking off when the waiter came in to begin clearing the table.

  Hallelujah. come on get happy

&nb
sp; We’re waiting for the judgement day.

  “I have done some service to the Soviet people,” Pop said when the waiters had gone, “and the government cannot simply ignore all I have done. We will want an alternative concession.” Pop’s shaven head was bathed in sweat.

  “There will be none. I’ve already told you that.”

  “Bullshit,” Manny shouted.

  “That’s enough,” Pop said.

  “I’m only beginning,” and Manny went right on. “Faust aspirin has been an enormous success, not only for us but for the government. Litvinov can’t possibly think it was the government’s role that was responsible. What will the government gain by throwing it away?”

  “I would hope,” the General replied, “that the enterprise is sturdy enough to survive on its own. Otherwise we might be forced to raise charges of industrial sabotage.”

  “We will want some compensation,” Manny protested doggedly.

  “There will be none. The government has no resources for such a thing.”

  “Then take them out of the profits,” Manny said. “I never heard of such bullshit.”

  Pop clenched his teeth, a muscle in his cheek jumped. “We must at least be permitted to withdraw our assets from the country.”

  “In that area, things are perhaps negotiable. We will have to see.”

  “And who will take over the operation of the aspirin monopoly?” Manny asked.

  “That decision has not yet been reached, but the probability is that it will be someone with some knowledge of the operation.”

  “In short, yourself,” Manny said.

  “I have some such expectations, I admit. But that is not the point, my friends. This is not some scheme on my part to take over the enterprise you have so ably developed, this is a matter of government policy at the highest level and if I seek to advance my own interests in these circumstances, you must not conclude that I maneuvered to bring it about. I am, after all, exposed to considerable risk myself.”

  “I accept that,” Pop said.

  “I don’t,” Manny retorted. “You have an obligation to see that we come out of this situation whole. We’re not just friends and business associates. We’re bound together by bonds of marriage and family.”

  The General inspected his fingernails and reached for his brandy.

  “I do not intend to sit back,” Manny went on, “and let us be stripped of everything we have built here. We’re not finished with this so quickly.”

  “Later then,” Pop said.

  The General poured himself a tumbler of vodka and raising his glass into the light, “I would like to offer a final toast to Jack Faust, his beautiful wife, and his two admirable sons, to myself and my daughter and my wife: The advancement of our mutual self-interest in these most difficult of times.”

  We all drank to that and smashed our glasses against the hearth in the time-honored Russian fashion.

  It was an exhausting farewell. We had just been robbed of everything we had, and we had to sit and smile as if we had all enjoyed it.

  The General saw us into a cab in front of the hotel.

  “We will work something out.” the General said to my father, and closed the door of the cab upon us.

  It was like all the air going out of a balloon, and the effects of all that vodka began catching up with me.

  “That sonofabitch,” Manny said. “That lousy sonofabitch.”

  “A little compassion, Manny,” Pop cautioned.

  “Compassion! When I think it was my idea to bring him onto the board. It wouldn’t hurt to have a General in the family, it’ll be a protection against the present and a bulwark against the future. Some bulwark.”

  Pop didn’t say anything for a long moment. And then “What if we’ve been a bulwark for each other? Without us there may not be anyone or anything to protect the General anymore.”

  “Against what?” I heard myself saying.

  “Whatever may happen,” my father said softly.

  Tania had known all along. I tried to tell her the next morning, over breakfast, but there was nothing to tell. I was drugged, hungover from too much vodka and too many cigarettes, and I found myself getting unreasonably irritated with her.

  “You must have known it couldn’t last forever,” she said.

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “Don’t you ever pay any attention to what is going on in this country? Times change.”

  “I pay as much attention as I need to.”

  “Well it’s not enough for you to know which side of the street the traffic moves on. Stalin is gradually taking over everything, and we’re going back to the way things were just after the revolution. He’s taking the country back for us, from all the speculators and small businessmen who have been running it since the days of Lenin’s New Economic Policy. It’s time we put a stop to it. You’d know that if you ever bothered to read the newspapers.”

  “I’ve been aware that was happening. I’m not that obtuse. But it never occurred to me that anyone named Faust could ever be counted among Russia’s enemies.”

  “I’d guess it never occurred to anyone named Faust either. Viktor, you can’t help yourself. It’s in your blood and heart and mind, in the way you look at the world. You Fausts are not Russians, you are not really communists, and anyone who is not one or the other is our enemy.”

  “Including some Russian communists” I asked.

  “Some people don’t deserve to be called either Russian or communist. Mayakovsky had it right: He who sings not with us today—is against us.

  Sunlight was pouring in through the windows overlooking the courtyard. It made her eyes dance and her hair gleam like gold. I couldn’t believe this was happening. We were sitting there in our room and talking as if we were strangers.

  “You knew this was going to happen and you never told us.”

  “I told you a thousand times. I didn’t know when it would happen. I told you when the Hammer pencil concession was taken over that this was the beginning of a change of policy. But you didn’t listen. You never even heard me.”

  “I just can’t understand why you never said it outright. It’s part of our life, Tania, not just mine, part of ours.”

  “It’s your life, not mine, and always has been.”

  “My god,” I said, “don’t you understand anything. It’s what we all live off of.”

  “You live off it, not me. I’m no parasite. I work for the press office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That’s what I live off of. I don’t care what happens to the Faust businesses, all those other things you spend your life worrying about. I don’t care about any of it.”

  “Your father’s no better than we are. He’s the one who’ll be running the company when we’re gone.”

  “My father is even worse. You can’t help yourself, you’re foreigners. But my father’s Russian, he’s got no excuse.”

  “We mustn’t talk like this to each other,” I told her. “You know Manny, Pop, and Boris, invited me to dinner with them last night, I can’t figure out why.”

  “But that’s obvious,” Tania said. “They want you to do the work. I can’t talk anymore now, Viktor. I’m already late, it’s almost seven, and I’ve got a meeting at the ministry at seven-thirty.”

  Tania was right. Pop and Manny put me in charge of the negotiations with the government over the takeover of the Faust aspirin business. I spent most of my time trying to find ways and means of shoring up our position against the oncoming disaster, trying to discover what assets I could remove from the aspirin company without detection, what funds I could move out of the country or into tangibles. But there wasn’t much, and it was now a state crime to attempt to move gold out of the country.

  To my surprise, Pop assumed the commanding role in all these matters. Manny proposed, but it was Pop who disposed. However outraged we might be, Pop made it clear that publicly the split must seem to be entirely cordial. We didn’t want to suggest to the outside world that the Soviet gov
ernment was becoming unfriendly toward foreign investment. The country still needed it, at least when there was no alternative.

  The announcement I concocted for the press corps provided a neat and I hoped plausible explanation of what had happened. In order to maintain the business, Faust Aspirin needed large infusions of capital, which was true, and the Faust interests just didn’t have the capital to provide it. Which was only partly false. So, in the interest of both the corporation and the government, Faust Aspirin was gladly ceding control of the operation to the Soviet government.

  But not right away, and not without plenty of negotiating. I spent weeks going over the details of the operation with the government’s representatives, a team of three bureaucrats from the Ministry of Commerce, settling the value of every paper clip and tableting machine, every supply contract and distribution agreement, so that the government would know precisely what they were getting and Faust American would have a basis for making claims for compensation.

  The aspirin business had been yielding over $2 million a year—net—close to two thirds of which we kept for ourselves. I won’t deny that I had always done everything I could to protect our share from the government. For me, maximizing the returns from the venture was simply my job. For Pop, it was a means of supporting the causes he wanted to support. And for Manny, it was simply our right: we had worked hard to create the business and deserved to be rewarded for what we had done. That was the implicit agreement we had made, and Manny was determined to make sure the government recognized that.

  This time I was worried myself. I had a wife and two children now, as I had not when we lost the trading business and if we were forced to go back to the United States—especially without the businesses we had cultivated over nearly a decade—I wasn’t at all sure what would happen to us. I wasn’t sure it hadn’t already happened.

  Tania didn’t want any more children. We had reproduced ourselves, and that was enough. I had given her all she ever wanted of me, and she didn’t want anything more. Even more unnerving, she made it increasingly clear that she considered the children her children, not ours, hers to shape and rear and mold to her prescription, as if I had had nothing to do with their creation.