FLASHES – Chapter 4 – Dad

Part One – There (Eastern Hemisphere)

CHAPTER FOUR – DAD

At the high school, dad studied very well and graduated it with honors, or, as they would say in my time, with a Gold medal. Then it meant admission without exams to any university of the USSR. Dad entered the Medical Institute along with his school passion Rima. Rima was a very attractive girl from an educated and wealthy family. Her mother was a dentist and her father was an engineer who traveled to work in France. I think that Rima’s parents did not considered handsome, but poor Wulf Neiman an appropriate husband for their daughter. Rima’s mother’s friend, also a dentist, chastised the Neiman family after her daughter’s quick divorce with my father’s absolutely financially unsettled elder brother Abel. I believe that the classmates were in a close relationship, although once, in the old age, Rima, being the third wife of my father, mentioned that she spent a summer vacation at the sea together with another boy before him. I was a witness to this conversation. Dad changed in the face and asked, “But how did your mother let you go with him?”

Rima laughed, satisfied with herself, “Just like with you! In both cases, I said that I was going with a girl from my class.”

One way or another, at the institute, the young people cooled off towards each other, and dad “braking bad”. What this mean is hard to say, he was always a womanizer. One thing is clear, he did not study enough and flunked the exams. Are you kidding? During the war? According to family legend, the military commissar saw him on a park bench with a girl and drafted him into the army. I think that the very fact of recognition, suggests that the personality of Wulf Neiman was familiar to the military commissar, and I believe, not because of girls, but because of documented failed exams.

Dad was drafted into the army and sent to the air defense of Baku. It was incredible luck. Thirteen people were drafted into the army from my father’s senior year. Of these, only my dad survived. During the war, the Germans made only a few raids and dropped only two bombs on Baku. Therefore, dad could successfully continue to retake exams already on the benches of other parks. During his service in the air defense of Baku, he met and fell in love with my mother. In the city, she was the first beauty, her name was Dina, and they called her Baku’s Dina Durbin. It was impossible not to fall in love with her, but at first Wulf was unlucky, he had too many competitors, including the nephew of the Iranian Shah, who studied at the Oil department of Geology Institute.

Then my father married another woman. But after a year or two he got divorced and continued the assault on the bastion. And he did get his way. Dina’s parents did not seek marry with the Neimans, but all the arguments of the parents were shattered by Dina’s only argument, “Since Wulf has been courting for me for six years, it means that he is really in love with me!”

There was either no wedding, or it was modest one in the family circle…

In 1950 or 1951, being a decorated officer and having a school certificate with honors, my father decided to enter the military medical academy in Leningrad and finally become a doctor. Alas, the dreams did not come true. Despite excellent papers, the historical moment was wrong. In plain words, dad was told, “There is no place for Jews in the academy! Admission is denied!” Dad was smitten. He said that he was going to climb Leningrad’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral and jump off from there. I believe in the first, but I don’t believe in the second. By nature, we have similar reactions, and I can’t imagine such pathos from him. The fact that “they” (in the broadest sense of the word) were bastards and anti-Semites, I have no doubt, but also play along with them? Never! Apparently, dad finally decided so, because he married a beauty, gave birth to an heir and thought about how to support a family?

During the day, dad worked in the factory, and in the evening he studied at the university at the Department of Economics. Smart people advised him to invest in the production of above-plan unaccounted goods. Well, the father-in-law sighed: “Risky, but the daughter’s happiness is the main thing,” and borrowed money for this. And dad became the head of the workshop that produced… fishing rods at the FISHUNT factory (Fishing and Hunting Society). It is clear that in order to make money on fishing rods worth 7 kopecks a piece, it was necessary to force the whole country of Soviet Union to fish. But the plant had many workshops and produced a variety of goods, including weapons… And gradually the invested money began to generate income.

We began to live better, went to resorts in the summer, and exchanged our old one-room apartment for a two-room apartment. My parents even decided to have another child. Well, I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even understand the essence of the matter, reproaching my mother, “Look at your belly! You can’t drink so much soda!” And my mother only looked at her young protector with loving eyes and smiled with her dazzling smile.

The new decade began with two phenomenal events. At first, I had a sister, about whom the story is ahead, and then Khrushchev visited Georgia. This visit became “fateful” for our family. Here is how it was.

A couple of years before the visit, instructions from the Politburo of the Communist Party began to arrive. They said how to arrange a reception worthy of the destroyer of Stalin’s foundations. It was decided to handle him an award weapon – a saber. Perhaps the idea belonged to a former cavalryman, or imperial traditions were being revived, but the saber should not have been usual. Certainly not magical, but unique. There was a factory in Georgia that produced weapons. Of course, from ordinary, not high-alloy steel. But the Politburo had good connections, and they shared them. The director of FISHUNT was brought together with the director of a tank plant in Russia, who was obliged to supply his colleagues with the very best steel.

In addition to an unprecedented blade, an unprecedented decoration was required. The director of the Baku Jewelry Factory was instructed to provide saber makers with diamonds and emeralds worth four million. When the director asked, how he should draw up a shortage of four million, he received an answer, “As you wish. It’s your problem!”

He was a quick-witted man and, after he handed over the precious stones, he shot himself.

Khrushchev liked the saber very much, perhaps he even waved it (I would wave it at least once in his place). But that’s not the point, the process has started! Two generals, directors of factories, turned out to be smart businessmen. At FISHUNT they learned where to get the best quality steel, and at the tank factory they discovered the market price of steel. The director of a later decided that the tanks supplied to African countries would do quite well without heavy armor. It will even better serve the cause of peace!

Participants’ incomes have increased significantly. Dad bought a used Russian car Moskvich (Imagine, I even remember its plate number, unlike my modern expensive cars). He began to build a cooperative apartment in a prestigious area of the city, changed furniture and even purchased imported cutlery for the future spacious kitchen.

But the Prosecutor of the Republic was replaced. And the new one had a fresh look at business. He met with the director of FISHUNT and demanded that the annual allowance of one million rubles, which pleased the former prosecutor, be doubled. Perhaps the new prosecutor, like dad, wanted to change the knives and forks in his kitchen.

The general refused to double the bribe. He said, “We can’t permanently hunt!” Then the prosecutor promised to show him… something in rhyme! Speaking in legal terms, he threatened to start an investigation. And, as man of honor, he kept his word.

The shareholders arranged a council and decided that in order to maintain conspiracy and firmness of spirit, it was necessary to send “on the run” the most soft-hearted businessmen. They were my dad, who had already been working at another enterprise for a couple of years, and the elderly accountant Lazar Tillman.

Everyone feared that Khrushchev would again, as happened recently, intervene in the trial. He might add on a retroactive power to the imprecise laws of the USSR and achieve the capital punishment to the plunderers of socialist property. Or he himself might blow their heads off their shoulders. He’s had the thing to do it with.

That is how dad disappeared from the family. Everyone thought that it is for a short time, but everything turned out differently. Very soon after the first interrogations, one of the shareholders decided to testify. He was a front-line soldier, he claimed that he would endure, even if they would drive needles under his nails, but the atmosphere of the prison oppressed him, the investigators pressed psychologically, the family and his lawyer persuaded him to reduce the term with a sincere confession. In a word, he broke first. And then an avalanche began: everyone tried to bring the evidence on others to save oneself.

But the director-general declared to the prosecutor of the Republic, like middle ages Russian Prince-knight Svyatoslav to the enemies-Pechenegs, “I’m going to attack you!” Or, in modern terms, “If you arrest me, I will reveal you bribes!” The Prosecutor of the Republic did not expect such a turn. This was out of the question. Therefore the Prosecutor used a proven Stalinist plan – to blame everything on a gang of Jewish plunderers. At the head of the business was a very smart man and entrepreneur, Rabinovich, who developed a scheme for the functioning of the enterprise. He managed to play a madman during the process, deflect charges from himself and, having added a million to the bribe to the prosecutor of the Republic, he achieved an acquittal for himself. An assessment of unrecorded products in the store determined the damage to the state of fifty-six thousand rubles. And since embezzlement, starting from fifty thousand, was considered a crime on an especially large scale, all the defendants present at the trial received a maximum sentence of fifteen years. Absent Wulf and Lazar Tillman received nothing but “popular recognition” – all the defendants blamed everything they could on them.

Poor Lazar died of a heart attack on a train station bench in Syktyvkar. He had heart problem and he tried as he could delay the sad end. At home, he was constantly monitored by a young talented cardiologist, later a double PhD, father’s friend Omari Mgeladze, who periodically went to Lazar’s house daily to take cardiograms. They believed that this could somehow help the patient. But another thing was interesting: once Omari complained to Tillman about the complexity of the visits – how difficult it is to get to the patient with the cardiograph.

“Buy a car,” the businessman advised.

“I don’t have money for this,” the doctor replied.

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll lend you a sum, and you’ll pay it back,” Lazar found a solution, accustomed to solving much more complex financial problems.

However, he was mistaken, believing that a personal doctor is somewhat different from business partners. When the wife of the fugitive Lazarus, who had no means of subsistence, asked Omari to return the money for the car, he did not hesitate… refused.

“It was a gift from Lazar,” he explained. “Where does the poor doctor get the money from to buy and pay for the car?”

​The Dad continued to hide from the judicial authorities. The All-national search did not help: it was conducted just as well as everything else in the country, and the family, no matter how they dreamed of the soonest return of their husband and father, was still not going to give Wulf to justice.

Once, my sister Maya, who was three or four years old, was playing with the neighbor girls and boasted, “My dad sent me presents!”

The girls’ mother turned into a pure hearing and attention. The case smelled of the extradition of a state criminal and the due reward.

“Show me, Mayechka,” she asked in a honeyed voice, “how does your father love his daughter?”

The poor child went home and brought gifts from dad to the balcony. They turned out to be… a hammer and nails. Here even the insidious woman shed a tear.