The cost of a sweater

I'll never know for sure. But I'm pretty sure that the price for that rich, warm, gorgeous Afghani (or was it?) sweater I was almost persuaded to buy 29 years ago would have been higher than the thirty American dollars I was asked to pay. My first trip to Moscow. December. 1980. As Ellen Goodman once wrote, "the last westerner to be invited to Moscow in the middle of winter was Napoleon. And we know how that turned out." My visit was enchanting and successful. The snow sparkled on the trees, the steam rising from thousands of boilers looked magical. Gorky Park had none of the sinister connotations it has in the novels of Martin Cruz Smith. Skaters skated, sledders sledded, and the golden domes of the Kremlin towers and cathedrals gleamed. I cleaned up on cut-rate Mischka the Bear Summer Olympics souvenirs. As you may remember, the U.S. had boycotted those Olympics because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Tourists stayed away in droves. So sweet little bears filled the shops and I brought home marble bears, wooden bears, and lots of Mischka pins. They still show up around here and make me smile. Day three. Ukraine Hotel, Moscow. One of the statuesque and Stalinesque monstrosities that loom over the skyline. It felt so Soviet, so completely Soviet, right down to the bugs in the walls and the monitors at the doors and the "floor ladies" who kept your key whenever you left your room. It was Advent and, as a guest of the Russian Orthodox Church, my meals were strictly in keeping with the Advent fast. Lots and lots of fish. No meat. Creamy red borscht. A menu that most Moscovites could only dream of. After dinner, I took time to browse the Berioszka shops in the magnificent lobby. More bears. An amber pin. Carved toys. Marble angels dancing together. Lots of tiny inlaid boxes. And an attractive man, also shopping, who became very chatty, friendly, as we wandered from one display to another. Finally, far away from the attendants, he spoke in a low voice, "I have sweaters, Afghani, and carpets, my room. You see. Room 712." If I didn't have a heart for adventure I wouldn't have been in Moscow at the height of the Cold War in the first place. So his invitation was a temptation that I could not resist. I dragged a colleague along. We wandered the halls a bit, a labyrinth of hallways that turned in on themselves and led to elevators that took us up and down and finally to Room 712. Sure enough, this charming, exotic, Omar Sharif-looking character was waiting, offered us tea. "No thank you." He was in Moscow, he said, from Afghanistan, a civil servant learning how to rebuild his country's infrastructure according to the Soviet plan. And he had a room absolutely stuffed with carpets, woolen blankets, mittens, and sweaters. It was his own private store, and the prices were attractive. He showed me a sweater, a heavy, fisherman knit type, with a marbled pattern, tan and white. It was very very nice. And I stood there thinking, wow, what a story. "Yeah, I bought this on the black market from an Afghani in Moscow who was there officially to learn to be a good Soviet diplomat but was secretly critical of the USSR and running his own underground scam market out of his hotel room." The sweater had a flaw. Not a big one, and it could have been repaired by a good knitter. But I hesitated. He lowered the price. In fact, he kept lowering the price so much that I began to wonder. Just how desparate was he to unload this sweater? He spoke of supporting his family at home. But I knew the rules, the protocols. How would he get this money back to Kabul? And, moreover, how would I get this out of the USSR, through customs, when I left in a few days. Still, the story was compelling. Every time I shook my head and said, "no," this inky voice inside said, "oh, go for it!" My friend, Fran, shot me looks that said, "DON'T" and finally I thanked "Omar" profusely for the generous offer but said that it would not be possible to buy a sweater, or mittens, or a large carpet, either. He was crushed. We backed out the door and took our leave. We left the hotel for a brief walk -- that's what you did when you needed to talk without 'minders' or 'ears' listening in. Perspective. The frigid air and the wide boulevards gave me a necessary perspective on the experience. What had happened in there? Was I being set up? I'll never know for sure. But probably. Given everything, what are the odds that he could have been selling all this loot with impunity. What would I have faced when the train crossed the border in the middle of the night again at Brest? It was a good idea to not buy that sweater. But I miss it every single day.

Rubles? Who needs rubles?

The tiny white Polski Fiat with a lawn-mower motor putt-putted its way along the leafy lane and sputtered to a stop in front of the warehouse. Only then did we look at the gas gauge and see the needle hovering close to E. Neither of us said a word. It was one of the most humiliating ventures I'd ever been part of. Waiting in that prefab warehouse built with American money were soaps and meats and medicines, all sorts of necessities of life. My hard currency, American dollars, real money had been deposited into an account bearing my Polish friend's name. He could go in now and choose what he wanted, needed, had gone without for months, even years. My friend, a prominent and accomplished writer, with an earned doctorate and years of professional success, was thrilled beyond belief to find soap -- SOAP! -- and rice and tins of sardines. We left with good lean sausages, hams, some basic over-the-counter medicines like aspirin for his father, and probably even a few rolls of toilet paper, I don't quite remember. It was 1982. It was horrible. But wonderful. The Soviet-style and imposed, clunky economy in Poland in the 1980's failed. The country could not feed its people. "This is our last butter," he told me at dinner. And what he meant was, this is the end of the butter. For the month. Until I get more ration stamps. There is no more butter. At all. For two weeks. I stood one day in the market and cried. I wanted to buy bread. There wasn't any bread. Twenty years ago on Thursday, June 4, Poland voted for food. For bread. And butter. For dignity. Their money became real, convertible on the international market, useful. I read two articles today, June 2, 2009, from the Polish press, both from the same publication, Polityka. One is current. Poland is one of the three countries in the European Union with positive economic growth this year. They are struggling like the rest but surviving, holding their own. How ironic. The other article is from 1986. It laments Poland's debt crisis, even within the Soviet bloc. The Polish economy relied on the Russian ruble, and the community of other Socialist nations. I pasted a small part of it here, in translation... (The IBEC was the International Bank for Economic Cooperation, the Soviet bloc's financial connection to the 'outside' world and within its boundaries. CEMA referred to the community of Socialist nations within the Soviet bloc.) Here is an excerpt of an interview. [Question] "What credits has Poland obtained recently from IBEC and what is the role of the Bank in settling the Polish debt?" [Answer] "Because of the economic situation and particularly its complexity early in the 1980's, Poland was not able, and is still not able, to fully repay its indebtedness to its CEMA partners. Our bank assists importantly bygranting planned term credits to balance payments so that Poland's economict ies with its partners can develop normally. So that Polish import, which at the moment still exceeds export, can be paid for without hindrances. On anannual scale, credits for Poland make up 25 percent of the total sum of credits granted by us to CEMA countries. I would like to emphasize that recently, and especially this year, a favorable tendency has appeared, the tendency to reduce Poland's ruble debt to our bank. The basis of this tendency is the growth of export to CEMA countries due to the policy,conducted by the PZPR, of increasing Poland's share in the socialist international division of labor." Huh? That reads like ancient history now. It sounds like gobbledy-gook. To be honest, the response didn't exactly make any sense then either, despite the skill of the interviewer. How do you explain the inexplicable? These days, when I go to Poland, there are no humiliating trips to the warehouse. I buy all the butter I want, at the shop on the corner. (Don't tell my doctor.) The lawn-mower motors are saved for those machines used to cut grass. And the teeny tiny white Fiat has been replaced by a late model, sporty green Nissan with a gas tank that stays full. Happy anniversary, my friends! Ya done good!