It Takes Certain Flair to Become King of the Line

Perched on a pillar base in front of the Aeroflot ticket office, with scores of people craning and straining to catch his every word, Arkady Mekertumov is king of the line.

With the leadership of an orchestra conductor, the wind of a former professional trumpet player, the memory of a computer and the instincts of a trial judge, Mekertumov is probably the most renowned line leader in Moscow.

His is a uniquely Soviet vocation.

He holds court every weekday evening at dinnertime, running the pereklichka --or roll call--for the more than 3,200 people seeking Aeroflot tickets to the United States.

“In fact, it is a lot like conducting an enormous orchestra,” he said.

Alternately scolding, cajoling and flipping through page after page of handwritten names in his plump notebook, he keeps track of the dizzying stream of people who join the line, move up in its ranks and drop out after buying their tickets or giving up.

“He’s a jolly robber,” one member of the queue said, adding that with his gold teeth and throaty accent, Mekertumov seemed to combine two stereotypes, the ripe humor of Odessa with the crooked charm of the Caucasus.

However, the member said, Mekertumov also maintains strict order: “He’s a dictator. He can make the crowd do anything he wants.”

Mekertumov has no formal authority, only that bestowed on him by a crowd that knows that without his organizing abilities each of its members would have to push and shove day after day to get the tickets--and still run the risk that corrupt, back-door deals would steal them away.

A refugee from anti-Armenian violence in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, Mekertumov took over the line last fall, saying he would volunteer for the unpaid job while he waited for his own ticket to America because without a residence permit, he is not eligible for paid work in Moscow.

Members of the line are convinced that he makes money on it somehow--probably by taking payment for informing people when stand-by tickets suddenly become available or by pushing special clients upward on his list--but few seem to begrudge him the profit.

“If a person takes on such work, he should be compensated for it,” said Igor Rivkin, a computer sales agent who got his ticket to New York after several months’ wait. “Aeroflot doesn’t pay him for it.”

Mekertumov denied that he makes money on the queue, but said he believes that Aeroflot administrators are now trying to “break the line” to get their own hands on what could be a very lucrative racket.

In a midday interview, Mekertumov described the struggle under way between Aeroflot executives and an “initiative group” representing the line: Aeroflot has decreed that it will soon begin selling tickets to would-be visitors to the United States for a mixture of dollars and rubles, and that emigres will have to pay totally in dollars. So few people have sufficient dollars that the line would all but disappear.

The airline also wants to sell any leftover tickets for rubles on an ad-hoc basis, he said, doing away with the line altogether.

“It will be a scandal and a bazaar,” Mekertumov said he told Aeroflot.

It would also be the end of what has become a Moscow institution.

“Everyone says this is the only place where there is normal organization,” he said with pride.