March 10, 2021

The Rumour

I have since cut down a lot but there was a time when I used to have quite a lot of sugar with my coffee. This prompted friends, family, and the occasional waiter to make a joke which I heard so often that I would often be surprised if it was not made at all.

“Why don’t you have some coffee with your sugar.” Which is funny enough and I laughed the first hundred times I heard it. 

This story is from back before I cut down. I think it might have been in 1990. I was having a cafe latte, the Israelis call it a cafe affouch, an upside-down coffee, in one of those outside patios which line Dizingoff. At the table next to me was an older man, with a trimmed grey beard and beat-up black beret which was more working-class than bohemian. He wore a suit as these old-timers tended to but had, in a tip of the beret to the country where he was now living, removed his tie. He had availed himself of the free newspapers which the cafe provided to its patrons-he had the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, both in English, plus one in what I presumed to be Russian and another in Hebrew. It looked like he was going to make an afternoon of it. I did not begrudge him. I too had nursed many a coffee or beer for the better part of an afternoon in order to lengthen an enjoyable stay.

The cafe had those cylindrical sugar packets you often see in Europe and I had already poured a couple into my coffee and had ripped the opening of a third. I had seen him eying me and had the feeling he had been biting his tongue. That he had something he wanted to say.

My Hebrew was not that good but I had kind of figured out what the equivalent of ‘why don’t you have some coffee with your sugar was in Hebrew and so that was what I was expecting him to say when he finally addressed me.

But when he did address me, it was not in Hebrew but in a Russian accented English.

And what he said was “You should be shot for using so much sugar.”

Which was funny. And would have been funny. Had he not been so serious. But I laughed anyway.

“If you don’t mind me asking.” He said, “what is it you do which allows you to be so generous with your sugar?”

We both knew the sugar packets were free. But we also both knew what he meant.

“I’m a writer,” I said. I wasn’t. But I could have been.

“A writer,” he said “hoo whah. Well, Mr writer. If you have a few shekels to buy me a chocolate babka, I will tell you a story about sugar.”

I had a few shekels.

This is the story he told me.

The rumour started at the chess club on Suvevorov Street. Not in the club, but on the roof of the four-story building that housed the club. A mid-March day had burst into double digits, Boris insisted it was 12 degrees, and tables, chairs and boards had been moved onto the roof in order to soak in the rare Moscow sun. Some of the men had taken off their shirts. All were men who should not be taking off their shirts even when showering or in the sauna. But it was 12 degrees and the sun was shining, Sicilian Defences were being played, Queens were being sacrificed and shirts were being discarded. Eventually, it was just Larianov and a man we knew only as The Bull for reasons which were not clear. Nothing in his physique, for he too had bared his torso, where dangled a gold star of David, would lead anyone to think it was an apt nickname. So we watched and kibitzed and insulted each others’ play and flabby bodies until someone, it was probably Boris, it was nearly always Boris, said he heard there might be some sugar.

Both Larianov and The Bull stopped playing, even slapping down a meaty hand on the timer so no one would be penalized, and looked up at Boris demanding to know what he knew and where he had heard it from.

Like a fine piece of art, every rumour had its own provenance, often long and circuitous and complicated but, unlike a painting, which only needed one shady ownership to put the entire provenance in question, a rumour only needed one credible monger in its coterie to make it viable. In this case, it was Micha. Boris said he had heard it from Micha. Micha had a cousin who had a friend whose mother-in-law worked as a cleaning lady at a dacha, a summer house, on the Caspian Sea belonging to a Party member. It was not, all things considered, for a Russian rumour, that many degrees of separation, which gave us some optimism but mostly we were buoyed because it had come from Micha. Now Micha’s average on rumours was still well below the Mendoza line - less than 1 in 5- but the key was he had been right about his last rumour, the raincoats. Now none of us had gotten a raincoat, though we had all stood in line, some of us for eight hours, mostly in an ironic pouring rain, but there was no question that there were raincoats to be had- we had seen people coming out of the store happily waving a washed-out red raincoat which from even where we were standing, back near the end of the line, we could see were clearly too small for the lucky recipient and would only fit a child, but they were raincoats nonetheless. But Micha had been right the last time and, in the rumour game, in the Russian rumour game, you were only as good as your last rumour, so now his sugar rumour, by way of Boris, carried a little bit more weight.

“I bet it is Bulgarian sugar,” spat out Anton Mickeilovitch “I wouldn’t feed Bulgarian sugar to my dog.”

We all knew Anton Mickeilovitch did not own a dog and that he would likely give his left arm for a kilo of Bulgarian sugar but nobody pushed back because Anton Mickeilovitch had lost his wife and his brother in the last year and we all knew that even a kilo of sugar, Bulgarian or otherwise, could not sweeten his bitterness.

“Maybe it will be Latvian sugar,” mused Larianov as he moved his knight to b7. This drew a hearty laugh from the crowd. Latvian sugar had near mythical aura about it. It was said that Khrushchev had built a factory just outside of Riga which produced such fine grains of sugar that they were like a Tahitian beach. Not a rat dropping ever made its way into the giant vats. His cook made him khvorost, angel wings of fried dough with powdered sugar, every night for dessert. None of us had ever seen it. None of us had tasted it. Had never known anyone who had seen it or tasted it. Even if it did exist, there was no way it would land into the hands of us patzers. Still, it was nice to dream.

No, if the rumour was true, and we were a long way from that, it would be Russian sugar. More brown than white. More pebble than grain. The factory was close to the Aral Sea which caused many people to say more salty than sweet.

In Moscow, nine out of the ten times we stood in a line, we did not know what we were standing in line for. Moscow was a city of people lining up for things. It did not matter what it was because it was surely something you needed. Because we needed everything. Or, at the very least, something you could trade for something you needed. Most of the time, you would get to the front of the line and they would have run out of the thing even before you knew what the thing was. Most of the time, you wouldn’t get to the front of the line.

Boris’s Misha rumour was of no use without knowing where this sugar would be distributed. Which store. Which stores. The sugar would surely not fall from the sky.

The sugar was the rumour.

The store. Well, the store was the information.

All the chess players on the roof understood that the rumour was as free as the air they breathed. They also understood that the information was no longer useful information if everyone knew about it. This was how it worked. They were not bitter. Even Anton Mickeilovitch, who could give the marror we ate on Passover a run for its money, was not bitter about it. Not more bitter than he already was. We knew there was a long line to wait in even before we could get to the line we would stand-in. If there was sugar and if there was really a location where it was being sold, the cleaning lady would know first and she would tell the people she would tell. They would then, in turn, tell the people they would tell. She would likely tell her son-in-law who would also tell the people he would tell and they the people they would tell. Maybe the son in law would tell his friend, Misha’s cousin, and maybe then maybe Misha’s cousin would tell Misha who in turn tell Boris. By then, a lot of people would be standing in line for what they hoped to be low-grade sugar the majority of the world would not feed to their dogs. While in line, but not a minute before, they would tell friends and family in the hope that when there would be another line they could say “hey remember when I told you about the sugar.”

By the time Boris found out from Misha where the sugar was being distributed, there had been many more rumours. Everyone had a mother-in-law. Everyone had a cousin. Most of us had friends. Boris was my friend so I found out before he got in line but a long time after most of the rest of Moscow also got in line.

We knew after an hour there was no sugar. Not Latvian. Not Bulgarian. Not Russian. But an hour was not a long time and although we were not near the front, we were certainly not all the way in the back. And the sun was shining, a couple of us had brought our chess boards, and a couple of others had brought some vodka. This is only to say that when The Bull walked up and said he had heard a rumour about a line for tractor parts, nobody paid him much attention. We all lived in the city. None of us owned a tractor. And although we could maybe trade a tractor part for something else, we had pretty much decided to settle on the two sugars in the bush. So we all said no and returned to our games but then The Bull nudged me with his knee and said I should come with him to get a tractor part. And I said, I don’t want a tractor part. And anyway, it is not a tractor part but a line for a tractor part. Then The Bull held up his own portable chess board and pieces and said “I will spot you a pawn and a bishop.

And I thought that was a strange thing to say because The Bull really hated to lose and although he was a much, much better player than me I was good enough to beat him if he spotted me a pawn and a bishop. So I went with him.

With that, the old Russian man drained his coffee and delicately wiped the chocolate babka crumbs from his beard and moustache. He had told this story before. This is where he paused for dramatic effect. I was ok with that. I didn’t mind being a pawn in his game.

“Did you get a tractor part?” I asked.

He shook his head no.

“Sugar?” I liked this ending. That would have been my ending. Sugar at the tractor parts store. So classic.

But he shook his head no.

“So nu?” I asked, invoking the ancient Yiddish admonition

He smiled and said “Exit visa.”

Exit visa.

“That’s how you got out of the country?”

“Yes.”

“And the tractor parts store?”

“Was the Brazilian consulate. The Bull, whose name was Meyer Meyerovitch, had heard a rumour of 20 exit visas. He was number 19 and I was 20.”

“Good story,” I said.

“You will write it?” He asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “I will write it.”

And now, nearly 30 years later, I have.

The end.