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Road from Suzdal — Chapter 19

Last updated on 2024-10-31

Chapter 19: Worth Staying, Worth Fighting For

Rudy tried to speak again, but his head throbbed, his vision tunneled, and he sank back from recognition into confusion. I crashed the bike, I can’t get Ksenia home… but the bike is parked in the cabin, and what is Galya doing here in the woods? No, I fell… I fell out of the bell tower and Ksenia didn’t catch me, so call… call the Captain, ask him to fix the computers, I’ll wait at the lake, the moon will come up, Ksenia, raft to town, get us two more bottles, the Captain can fix Galya’s hairdryer…

*     *     *

In the two months after he arrived at the Institute, Rudy laid his hands on every book available to the public in Irkutsk—thirteen of them—on computer networking. Three were useful. He made friends with a bookseller on Sverdlova Street who let him look through her catalogue. He found a few promising foreign titles, but by the bookseller’s best guess, if ordered, they wouldn’t arrive until sometime between September and the Lillehammer Olympics. Rudy ordered an American programming manual—a full day’s salary, in dollars—mostly to thank the bookseller for accommodating him as much as she did.

What he couldn’t learn on paper or from trial and error with the equipment he was installing, he found online. Online—he’d never used the word before, but it became central to his new work. The Institute had one terminal, in the basement of the Physics building, connected to the “World Wide Web” that Galina Filipovna had mentioned. Vitaly was a programming hobbyist; amidst managing the Institute’s physical plant, he’d drop into the basement, log onto the terminal, and search for software and write and test code that could help the director analyze her data. Since it was Rudy’s job to connect the new computers to this network, Galina Filipovna authorized Rudy to access the terminal and the global network without limit outside of office hours. Online, with a few eager tips from Vitaly, Rudy found answers to most of his questions, in text files from Lausanne, London, the University of Kansas, and a dozen other places where technicians often as new to this technology as he was were cobbling together the body of knowledge that explained what they were doing and how to make it bigger.

By August 27, he had networked the 21 computers, partitioned one processor as a dedicated file server (Galina Filipovna resisted surrendering that one workstation until Rudy convinced her that one server was necessary to achieve her goals), connected all of the machines to the World Wide Web, installed text browsers (Lynx, from new acquaintances in Kansas, who had no idea they were helping a fellow American) with individual logins and weekly data quotas, and patched each computer’s operating system with code he borrowed from a system administrator in Munich to allow users to switch from typing in the built-in Roman alphabet to Cyrillic. Vitaly, who dropped by the Fizika building daily just to lend a hand and tell Rudy how impressed he was with the American’s work, volunteered to hack the word processor and math module to create optional Russian menus to toggle with the built-in English menus. Galya wouldn’t need the Russian translations, but other users would, especially the students.

The Institute delivered paychecks at the end of each month. Rudy, Vitaly and his crew, the other professors, and everyone else on campus got paid on time, rare clockwork in the new Russia.

Galina Filipovna herself handed Rudy his August salary, in cash, on August 27, after she asked for a 30-minute demonstration of everything his new network could do. She also asked him to walk her through the physical work, the cables running along the corners, the new outlets neatly covered and painted, the conduit running straight down from the server closet to the hard connection with the phone line in the basement. That connection was the weak point in the system. It would do for now, but if Galina Filipovna wanted to add more terminals and more simultaneous users, the Institute would want to install new lines dedicated to data… or simply do without anyone placing a phone call from campus.

“The system is everything I asked for, and more,” said Galina Filipovna, handing him an envelope with a thick stack of ruble notes complemented with five $20 bills. “And in the time you built this network, I was able to theorize seven new particle interactions. Time well-spent.”

“Thank you, Galina Filipovna. I have learned a great deal on this project.”

“I respect a desire for learning. Learn more—stay with us.”

“Stay? In Irkutsk?”

“At the Institute, yes. Our network will only grow. Every building, every department can benefit from this information technology. Look at everything you learned ‘online’. Imagine what we can achieve collaborating with our peers at other universities, accessing the latest research instantly instead of waiting weeks for the academic journals to arrive, introducing our own research immediately into the flow of current academic discourse. And when we build the Ring… well. More computers, more access to this Web, more work for a specialist like you to keep the system running smoothly and unobtrusively.”

Galina Filipovna turned and headed up the stairs, toward the light of the main floor.

“Besides, Vitaly likes you. You work well together, like brothers. Will you stay?”

Rudy followed Galina Filipovna automatically, lost in thought as she led him up the steps, down the hall, and out the east doors to the big steps that looked out on the wide, leafy campus courtyard. It was one of the prettiest places in a city barely clinging to order in the post-Soviet chaos.

Building the network had absorbed Rudy’s attention, and he hadn’t given any thought to what would come next. For over a year, he’d lived without any clear stopping point. The cabin, the lake, Irkutsk—he’d come to each with the assumption that none would last, that each was a resting point before returning to the road.

“For how long?”

“As long as you work well, as long as you wish.”

Of course, what Rudy wished, if he wished anything, if he asserted any will or direction, had to exist within necessarily quiet limits.

“You know, Galina Filipovna, I have no work visa.”

“I knew that in June. Keep this network working, and I do not care. If I do not care, no one will care.”

“I… did not expect this.”

“Of course.” She looked at the mountain ash lining the sidewalk and the pines dotting the courtyard. “Students arrive next Friday. You will need to find a new room. I understand the difficulty of finding suitable accommodations in the city. Listen: clear your room, stow your things here in the basement. Take your motorcycle—the weather will be beautiful all weekend, and days after that. Fill your eyes and ears and lungs with the road, with Siberia at its finest. Then come back. By… next Wednesday an apartment will be ready for you, if you decide to stay.” She took Rudy’s hand and shook it. “Thank you for your hard work. I hope you will do more for us. Do svidanye.”

Rudy watched the director descend the stairs and stride to the north gate for her pre-lunch walk around her Kremlin.

*     *     *

I’m on the motorcycle, I’m camping, can’t be trouble, no bandits, no bears, I just… the water… yeah, that’s why my stomach hurts, the water, it feels like someone punched me in the gut, but it’s the water, I should have used Ken’s filter, Ken, where’s the filter, Ken, I’m sorry, I should have stayed…

*     *     *

Rudy packed light and rode hard that afternoon, getting to Sakhyurta, the village across from Baikal’s Olkhon Island, by suppertime. He caught the crowded evening ferry across and rode away from the other campers and hikers to a quiet spot on the desert north shore to watch the sunset and sleep. In the morning he rode to Khuzhir, where he bought bread and benzin at a station where one of the two pumps had burst its metal skin and poured its mechanical guts onto the ground. He rode to the northern end of the island, where he stashed his bike at the edge of the forest and spent half the day hiking the desert terrain around the entire cape. Back at the bike, he ate a late lunch, then rode another trail south and west, deep into the pine forest. The rest of that day and all Sunday, he stayed in the forest and didn’t see or hear another human soul. He slept outside each night, for the first time since he’d come to Irkutsk. The breeze and his bug spray kept the mosquitoes at bay, and he slept soundly. Monday he rode back through the dry, rugged terrain to the ferry, crossed the lake, and spent two more days riding and hiking along the tributaries of the Angara in the deeper forest north of the lake. Rudy wore Ksenia’s blue scarf every day.

The ride, the hike, the nights in the open were all calm, clear, and refreshing. He felt all of Russia thrillingly big and open, all around him, as he had in the bell tower at Suzdal, as he had on every good day on the road since he launched north with Ksenia. There was so much to see, so much that just two years ago would have been forbidden, impossible.

But now Galina Filipovna was offering him a chance not just to see but to create, and to help her create. He did not understand the equations she scrawled on her boards—Rudy chatted with Kolya, the graduate student in physics who came early each morning to transcribe Galina Filipovna’s work before she arrived and set to new sketching and hypothesizing, and Kolya could offer him only the most general sense of the questions her math and someday her particle collider could answer. But Rudy understood from conversations with Vitaly and from the intense aura Galya emanated, an electricity that reminded him of Ksenia, an energy that had taken the Institute by storm when she arrived two years ago, that she was building far more than her own CV. With her equations, she was building the foundation of a great endeavor, a project that motivated her every word and every step. Everything she directed to be done on her campus, her personal Kremlin, was essential to her grand plan.

Rudy was just building a computer network. But that network mattered to Galina Filipovna. It mattered to her plan, and she wanted Rudy to be part of that plan. Galya’s Kremlin pulled him like Suzdal’s bell tower had pushed him. The bell tower said go; this Kremlin and its director said stay.

On Wednesday morning, he boiled the last tea in his pack, tied his red bandana around his neck, and headed back to Galya’s Kremlin. He told Galina Filipovna he would stay. She gave him a key to an apartment several blocks away and a list of work that needed to be done by Monday.

*     *     *

For over two years Rudy did what Galina Filipovna told him, and more. Technically assigned to Vitaly’s operations team, Rudy concentrated primarily on the new network and the computers, for which Rudy every day sought new techniques and new gadgets on the great new novelty of the Internet. But Rudy expanded his portfolio to get his hands on the infrastructure of the entire campus. As long as the network ran well, Vitaly and Galina Filipovna allowed Rudy to explore the rest of the campus and do whatever physical work needed doing. Power lines, water pipes, concrete, windows, library bookshelves, the exterior brickwork of the Kremlin itself—Rudy had touched all of these things, making his own priority lists of repairs, patching, demolishing, replacing, and when he wasn’t sure what to do or how to do it, shadowing Vitaly or falling in with the outside contractors hired to do the work, watching, helping, learning (and, with the contractors, forging ahead when their men dawdled) so he could do it himself next time. In two years, he became a reliable general handyman and troubleshooter, spotting problems early, doing everything within his abilities and the continuing unpredictabilities of the Russian supply chain to minimize the time that NA REMONT signs hung in front of campus facilities and machinery.

Hang NA REMONT on me, Rudy thought as Galina Filipovna stung his bloody forehead with a vodka-soaked handkerchief and cradled him against her chest, waiting for him to recover his wits and help answer her question, a question filled more with anger than fear: “Now what will we do?”

Her anger, anger he feared she could direct at him, with justification, pulled Rudy into focus. He was three years out from Suzdal, two years plus since he’d come to Irkutsk. He was on the floor of Galina Filipovna’s office. Vitaly had dragged him in from the corridor. And Rudy hurt like hell. He could see what he’d gotten himself into… and what he’d gotten Galya and the Institute into… with the Dmitris.

Two days ago, Rudy had hit the Dmitris, the collectors, both of them. The Dmitris visited the Institute regularly, scowling and smelling of cheap aftershave and expensive alcohol. Their function was well understood by campus administration. Since before Rudy had arrived, the Institute had labored under a simple financial arrangement with the local mafia. The Dmitris collected payments, sometimes rubles, more often shipments of “lab equipment”, and their boss kept trouble away from the Institute. Rudy rankled at the arrangement—everyone in the know did—but winters were cold and summers thick with mosquitoes; what sense was there in complaining? Suffer and do what’s necessary to go on.

But that week, the Dmitris demanded too much. A little scowlier, a little drunker than usual, they quoted higher fees. They laid their hands on Galya.

Every time he heard the Dmitris were coming, Rudy found cables to test or lights to rewire or paint to scrape or balusters to tighten in earshot of Galina Filipovna’s office. This time, when he heard the first stinging slap, he dropped the network cable he was resplicing and ran to Galya’s door. When he looked in, Dmitri Zenko was pushing Galya back against her desk while Dmitri Okalev was moving to shut the door. Without thinking, Rudy bashed the door against Okalev’s nose and charged straight at Zenko. He grabbed Zenko by the collar and the belt and pulled him back, sending the thug pinwheeling toward the hall. Rudy spun on Okalev and found him looming stupidly toward him, one hand covering his bleeding nose, the other clenched in a wavering fist. Rudy caught that fist in both hands, brought it up sharply behind Okalev’s back, and shoved him out the door into his partner.

“Get out, goat shit!” Rudy stormed them both, keeping them off balance with unexpected resistance, raining insults that commanded them as effectively back, out the corridor, and out the building, as the kicks and slaps and shoves he delivered. In the parking lot, he knocked Okalev aside and laid Zenko out on the hood of the shiny black Audi their boss gave them for business calls. “The arrangement is simple,” Rudy snarled, hardly thinking of what he was saying. “We pay, you protect. That’s all. Touch Galina Fillipovna, and you’re done. Go away!” Rudy lifted Zenko from the hood and pushed him face first into the driver’s door. Both men scrambled to get in their car. Rudy planted his heel firmly onto Zenko’s ass and heaved, causing the goon to conk his skull once more before falling into the car. They drove away hastily.

Rudy went upstairs to check on Galya. She was standing at her desk, hands trembling, face red. “Are you o.k.?”

The director nodded, then turned and stared at her drawn curtains. “Why?”

Rudy understood she meant his actions. “They went too far.”

“They will go further now. What will we do?”

Rudy didn’t have an answer that day. He had thought about alternatives before—he knew Galya and Nina and most everyone else in the top ranks had—but he had never worked them out to practical conclusions. He understood why Galya was trembling, not so much because of what the Dmitris had tried to do, but because of what they and their bosses were now sure to do.

Now, two days later, struggling up from his own beating—jumped by both Dmitris in the hallway, blindsided, slugged and kicked senseless, dumped right at Galina Filipovna’s door—Rudy still had no answer. He could hardly think, let alone respond. He could barely nod as Galya cradled his bruised and cut head and called him, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”