SIBERIA BOUND
Chasing the American Dream on Russia's Wild Frontier |
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Single Page Format If you can identify what is produced inside a factory by the way it smells outside, chances are the smell isn't a pleasant one. Breweries don't smell like ice-cold beer; they reek of warm, fermenting malt. Paper mills don't smell like crisp sheets of paper; they stink of simmering cellulose. But chocolate factories are exceptions to this rule. They give off the delicious aroma of roasting cocoa beans. They smell good especially in Siberia, where city air is usually heavy and dark with a mixture of black coal smoke and bluish-gray car exhaust. The Novosibirsk Chocolate Factory was an oasis for the Siberian nose.
It was less appealing to the eye. With its red brick wall, Russian flag and metal emblem of Lenin over the front door, the Novosibirsk Chocolate Factory was indistinguishable from the Siberian factories that produced some of the world's worst televisions, refrigerators, and telephones. It was also indistinguishable from the countless Siberian factories that produced the world's best automatic rifles, chemical weapons, and supersonic fighter aircraft. Only the smell set it apart.
Sasha and I stepped out of the comically cramped Russian car and scurried across the slippery sidewalk towards the entrance. We were both hunkered over against the cold. Suddenly, Sasha stopped and bolted upright, his eyes wide open.
“Do you smell that?” he asked me. “That’s the smell of profit.”
As Sasha and I stepped through the inconspicuous front door of the factory, the pleasant smell of cocoa gave way to the humid stench of bad breath. We stood in a narrow corridor crowded with thick people made even thicker by their bulky coats. We were in chocolate-factory purgatory. Judging by the long faces, some of these people had been waiting here for an eternity. In between the crowd and the door that led into the factory grounds was a turnstile that turned only for a certain few, the chosen people. The factory’s version of St. Peter was a large woman sitting behind a plate of glass. Occasionally, she stepped onto a pedal that released the turnstile, allowing in one person at a time. A man screamed at her to let him in, that he had driven all the way from Tomsk, but she yelled back at him with equal venom. She didn’t step on the pedal. The turnstile remained locked. The man finally retreated, red in the face. The woman folded her hands and cracked a brief smile.
On the wall was a telephone. Sasha looked at the list of numbers taped to the wall next to the phone. When he found what he was looking for, he took off his black gloves, tucked them into his coat pockets, and dialed (really dialed¾it was a rotary phone) the number for the deputy director.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"Nope," Sasha said with a wink.
"Then why not just dial up the director?" I asked.
Sasha smiled patiently. "Deputies are trying to climb the ladder. They have something to prove. They have to take risks. Directors don’t. A smart director would never take a chance on our plan.”
Before I got a chance to ask Sasha what our plan was, he stuck his finger in his ear and looked down at the floor.
“Zdrasvuite,” Sasha said loudly into the receiver. “I'm here with my American partner.”
Dozens of fur hats turned towards me. Wary eyes looked me over, trying to determine if I was indeed an American. I smiled, unintentionally confirming their suspicions.