Operation White Birch – Part 6.2
Tea time troubles
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You can find Part 6.1 with a short recap below:
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“I see. Quite an interesting take”, said the Brit, turning his face to me. Dazed and confused, I nodded and gazed into my tea. There was a hairline crack running in the middle of my porcelain cup.
“I know, right?”, smiled comrade Lisitsyn, our host, “Some genius came up with this brilliant idea. Now, we have to approach this brand new concept with attention, so take all the time you need with your preparation. We’re going to provide you with reading materials from Western Europe and North America, so that you can study and learn from their advertising strategies: what do they sell? How do they sell it? What needs, desires, and wants do they appeal to, in order to sell it? And also newspapers and magazines, of course. Should this method prove successful, we’ll deploy it in South America, Asia, and Africa. Today, there’s a cargo coming in a couple of hours on the train from Helsinki at the Finland Station …”
“I volunteer for its safe receipt and delivery!”, said Baranov, jumping out of his chair.
“Comrade, you should go whether you want to or not, since you’re the one in charge (God help us!). Take this young lady with you. Sweetheart”, Lisitsyn turned to me, “Please go and check the cargo carefully, because some prankster always puts more in it than we had bargained for. Use your feminine intuition to confiscate any improper material, and dispose of it discreetly. We don’t want a ‘Playboy1’ situation all over again, are we clear, Baranov?”
“Sheesh, cut me some slack! The boys and I had to see what was that all about, it’s called research, in case you don’t know. And I have to say, I wasn’t impressed. It was like the Literary Journal with boobs. Pages upon pages of gibberish on the death of the Novel, and the inevitable decline of Western civilisation, or the metaphysical implications of a game of baseball, whereas all I wanted to see was Tallulah from Tallahassee, welcoming us to her bakery to admire her perfectly risen buns. I had the boys make copies for our archives and future references. I thought they were going to keep only the photos, but they insisted on printing the literary interviews and politics articles as well, the pervs. Then we sold the magazines on the black market2, made a tidy sum, so I sent the boys to enjoy their holidays in Crimea. Good times.”
“You did what!?”
“Aw, come on, don’t act all innocent. Why do you think there are forbidden texts circulating all over the USSR? We get ourselves your samizdat3 Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, what have you, and we sell them here on the black market, or sneak them out of the country for hard currency. Big freaking deal. The intelligentsia get what they want, we get cash, everyone’s happy. And if you really don’t want people to read banned books, just go and make them compulsory reading, and sure as hell they’d rather die than do that.”
“You’ve got a good point there, sir”, I said, amazed by such rare glimpse of common sense.
“See? Even Miss Bluestockings agrees with me!”
“OK, just shut up. You can go now. Your new home on Griboedov Canal is ready to welcome you. There’s a small surprise for you, Baranov, you’re going to love it. Goodbye, comrades, and good luck!”
The Brit looked pale and exhausted. “You two take the car, I’ll go home by myself.”
“Are you sure, sir? You don’t look very well. We can bring you home, and then go to the station. It’s still early for our train.”
“Thank you, my dear, but I need to clear my mind. We’ll have a good talk later, just the two of us.”
“Hey, do you mind, you dummies? I’m freezing my ass here”, shouted Baranov, “Meet Misha, our new driver. Whenever you’re ready, young man.”
A lanky, smiling young man my age opened the car’s door for me. I sat beside Baranov, who was thrilled at the prospect of his surprise at home and our precious cargo from Helsinki.
“And after we’ll have successfully completed this operation, sweet cheeks, I’ll embark on another quest: I’m going to find you a husband!”
“I’m fine, sir, thanks, you don’t have to. I’m still young.”
“How old are you, 23? Sorry to break it to you, but you’ve almost got one foot in the spinsterhood grave. Nah, listen to me, it’s time for you to stop fooling around. I’m going to make an honest woman out of you. I know, I know, you might have entertained the thought of marrying me, but I’m not available, babe, deal with it. You’ve had a taste of my love and I might have ruined you for other men. I made you discover the pleasures of the flesh …”
“With all due respect, sir, you weren’t the first one.”
“Well, that much was obvious, you naughty girl. But I’m sure I was the best, the Gold Standard. You’ll have to lower your expectations on that front, sweetie pie, but enough is as good as a feast. Don’t worry, be happy. Now, let me write down a list of your pluses and minuses, and we’ll work from there. Let’s see: not a beauty but, thanks to my positive influence, looks prettier these days (well, somewhat easier on the eye), still fresh, toned, healthy and in her fertile years – so this counts as a plus. Personality: allegedly smart, but strong opinions on pretty much everything, pedantic, talks back, often inexplicably grumpy – definitely a minus. How do you feel about becoming a Hero Mother? Like, having 5 sprogs or more?”
“No freaking way!”
“Oooh, I guess milady doesn’t want to give up her beauty sleep and trim figure. Minus. Do you appreciate a spotless house? Do you enjoy cleaning, dusting, washing?”
“Love a spotless house, not keen on cleaning and stuff like that.”
“Minus! Can you, at the very least, cook?”
“Not really, no. But I love eating, if that counts.”
“For the Party’s sake, you’re such a spoiled brat! Marrying you away, now that’s a mission impossible! Misha, would you believe her? What am I going to do with her?”
I could see Misha in the rear-view mirror. He looked back at me smiling, his sea-green eyes like twinkling stars.
“I think she’s perfect, sir. And I don’t mind cooking.”
This is not so far-fetched. Allegedly, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s son Yuri, serving as First Deputy Minister of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade from the mid-1970s, was involved in black marketeering: “Black market ties arose indirectly through foreign trade channels, where officials under Brezhnev routinely facilitated gray-area imports of consumer goods—scarce in the USSR—that were resold illicitly to elites and speculators, fueling a shadow economy estimated to rival official GDP by the 1980s.”
“The term samizdat (‘self-published’) was coined in opposition to gosizdat (‘state-published’), a word stamped on every official publication. Samizdat encompassed a wide range of informally circulated material, and took various forms: political tracts, religious texts, novels, poetry, speeches and music. A related term is tamizdat (‘published over there’) – material smuggled into the USSR, such as ‘x-ray’ phonograph records of prohibited music, including rock’n’roll and compositions by banned émigrés. These soon appeared on the black market.” See this article on the BBC News website.
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Now we seem to be getting to the nub of it. And the footnotes are as telling as the motivations and and scheme of this dastardly yet lovable group of ne'er-do-wells. Will this commercial caper come up trumps? We can only wait for the next ep. T
The Merchant's Wife at Tea is a stunning work of art, Portia.