My uncle, Hafis Salich, served time in San Quentin as a Russian spy. Honest.
My mother’s family had to leave Russia when the communists took over. Born in Moscow, she was seven years old when they left. At least, I think so. My mother’s birth date was listed as January 1,1917. I have been told that is a guesstimate, that her birth records had been destroyed. My grandmother, Hadicia Salich, lived with us the first seventeen years of my life. Did she forget? Do they have a different calendar in Russia? Never have understood.
My uncle Hafe was ten years older than mom. The family ran a hardware store, had a country estate, and sided with the czar and the White Russians. When the communist revolt succeeded, they had to flee Moscow. I used to tell this great story about how my grandfather had to sneak his family aboard a train going through Siberia, and how he himself took a bullet in the thigh as he was climbing aboard. The last time I mentioned it to my mother, she said it wasn’t true. My poor creative writing classes.
From Russia they moved to Japan. My grandfather worked very hard and in several years had established another prosperous hardware business. Then they lost everything in an earthquake. His whole store was destroyed, and everything they had was invested in the business. A broken man, he moved his family to California and got a job as a janitor at the University of California in Berkeley. He still held that job when he died several years later. (My mother met my father at that school.)
My uncle was a brilliant man. He spoke seven languages (not sure how fluently). In California he got a job at a munitions plant, and in 1929 he was convicted of selling secrets to the Russians. Time Magazine had an article about him. My sister Diana looked it up once for a school project. He served about two years in San Quentin.
His life turned out to be a waste. He became a Certified Public Accountant in San Francisco and had a nice house near Lombard Street, but he went through three wives and a whole lot of alcohol. He died of cirrhosis of the liver.
My only lasting memory of him: he was visiting our house in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania and he was showing off his literacy in French, holding court in the living room with a drink in one hand. My sister Diana (who had to be in elementary school) pointed out that he had mispronounced a French word. He stared at her, blinked, and said, “You are absolutely correct.” During the rest of his visit, he must have retold that story seventeen times, always ending it by poking his finger emphatically in the air and saying, “And she was right. And she was right!”
My mother used to tell me that I most reminded her of her brother Hafis. We both had mean-looking eyes. Yikes.
Addendum: I just found out from my sister Meredith that he was sentenced in 1939 to four years, but only served seven months. And it wasn’t San Quentin, it was a prison in Washington. Damn! I’ve taken the ferry past San Quentin at least ten times, often thinking nostalgically about my uncle. (And Karen says my eyes don’t look anything like his.)
I’m in favor of White Russians also. That’s how my daughter came into the world.