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The Ivan Aufulich Papers
22. Vanya Gonafiksit
In the Soviet Union, officially, there are no private businesses; all enterprises are owned and operated by the state, for maximum quality and efficiency. Unofficially, the quality and efficiency of state-operated enterprises sometimes leaves much to be desired, which explains the springing-up of little businesses catering to the needs of those with more exacting demands and the means to indulge them. And of course there are some businesses, even in the law-abiding Soviet Union, that the state cannot be seen to be running, even when that state is a significant customer. Such is the enterprise of Vanya Gonafiksit ("Vanya" is a diminutive for "Ivan"), who runs a clandestine used car, salvage, and repair business and, not put too fine a point on it, a chop shop. It is to people like Vanya that people like Feodor Sehdahn go when they have stolen vehicles to sell, and people like Stepan Itvilya go when they need to replace such vehicles.
Imagine Stepan's dismay when he went to replace his stolen cab, and a not-to-bright assistant of Vanya's showed him that very vehicle, still incompletely disassembled. Stepan and Vanya had what the diplomats call a "frank exchange of views", so frank that the large adjustable wrench, with which Vanya at last brought the discussion to a close, never adjusted properly again. And now is when the story gets interesting.
Vanya, with the calm that only the self-satisfaction of victory can afford, did a little nosing and listening around (not *too* much, you understand; it is not a good thing to know too much), and discovered that Stepan was somehow under the wing of V. R. Nahtamyuzd -- just how, it is perhaps better not to inquire too closely, but cabbies hear and see much that might be of interest to someone as deeply intriguing as V. R. Nahtamyuzd. Stepan, had his outrage permitted, might have discovered the same about Vanya -- it is often convenient to have a distinctive vehicle disappear completely and reappear only as untraceable parts of several others.
So Stepan went to Grandfather (an honorary title) to complain, and Vanya went to explain, and both of them should have known better than to trouble His Grisly Eminence with petty disputes. They were fortunate indeed to have found him in an expansive mood, having just dispatched several of his most annoying opponents to "serve on a collective" -- as fertilizer. So he merely took them aside and showed them -- *something*. What it was neither ever discussed -- indeed, Vanya never uttered another word for the rest of his life, and Stepan's beard turned instantly and permanently white. They were both ever after on their very best behavior toward each other, despite Vanya's crippled knee and the dent in Stepan's skull. And their example serves to this day as an object lesson to others of the minions of the arch-plotter.
©1997 Grant Schampel