I have been interested in Russia since I was 15 and I think I share their fatalistic view of life. I flew on the Russian airline Aeroflot from St. Petersburg to Moscow, in spite of several warnings not to do so (international Aeroflot flights are safe, but not domestic ones). I figured if my number's up, its up. There are flights every hour between St. Petersburg and Moscow, mostly empty. You know how most jet airplanes have a big plastic slide in case of an emergency landing? On Aeroflot planes they have a rope. A sign says, "In case of emergency, grab hold of the rope." I swear I am not making this up. Anyway the flight attendants made up for any shortcoming of the airline.

    I began corresponding with my wife, Mira, on the Internet in March 2000. In May I went to meet her in Kiev, but first I went to St. Petersburg for two weeks.
    I chose St. Petersburg in part because it was the setting for Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", and I wanted to see the places described in it.  When I arrived in St. Petersburg, I felt as if I were in a state of Grace.  It was not a feeling that came upon me suddenly, but that I gradually became aware of.  I did not feel invincible, on the contrary, I felt vulnerable. I have no idea where this feeling came from, and I did not question it. I adopted a rather naive, "I'm just a stupid American" persona.
    There were 21 hours of daylight ("Byeluyu Nochyu", or "White Nights") and I think it makes everyone in St. Petersburg a little crazy. The city also had its 298th birthday party. They say the 300th anniversary celebration will be the party to end all parties, and I believe it.
     I went to a Russian Language school in St. Petersburg for one week. I was signed up for two weeks, but I couldn't stand sitting in a little room studying while the city awaited outside. Also there was teacher at the school who wore the same black clothes every day and a haircut that made him look like he was in the Gestapo.
    I asked someone about him and they said that he was a Russian Nationalist, that is, a Fascist, and he regularly met with his comrades, at the school and elsewhere, to denounce Jews and non Russians, among other things. I asked what would happen if I challenged him and the person said, in all seriousness, "He will send some people to beat you up." The owner of the school was Swiss. Since the Swiss tolerated the Nazis in World War II, this was too much deja vu for me, and I wanted no part of it. I thought of going to the owner of the school to protest, but I realized that I could not, as this would endanger the job of the person who told me about the Fascist teacher, and such jobs are rare in Russia. So I just called in sick the second week of class and left St. Petersburg early.

    I stayed with a retired teacher in her apartment in the center of St. Petersburg. She had been to Cuba in the Soviet days, so she spoke a little Spanish and no English. We conversed in  a kind of Spanish, Russian, pantomime language. She was a young girl during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II (they call it the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945, so as not to be confused with the Great Patriotic War against Napoleon. Russians are justifiably proud of having repelled both Napoleon and the Nazis). She said that she only remembered playing in bombed out buildings and not having enough to eat. I asked her if she thought the New Russia was better than the Soviet Union and she said definitely, yes. Which is the minority opinion according to my unscientific survey (I asked several people this question).
    I think that Russians miss the Soviet Union for two reasons. One is that being a Superpower gave them, in their eyes, prestige in the world. The other is that in the Soviet days everyone had a job, maybe not the one they wanted, but they had a job, they had a place to live and enough to eat, even if they had to wait three hours in line for it. Today there are few jobs, apartments may be stolen by the Mafia, and there is not enough to eat. In the Soviet days there was little to buy in stores. Today you can buy anything, but few people have any money.
    Lyudmila was 63, but she was still attractive. In the morning she wore only a thin nightgown, and I could see the outline of her still slim form as she stood next to the window, making breakfast. We had some frank discussions about politics and history, sitting in her tiny kitchen.  One day I told her that American men have myriad words for a woman's breasts. She said Russians only have a few and told me what they were. She said Russian men did not share American men's obsession with the female breast.
    In the evenings, Lyudmila would sit on her bed in her nightgown, watching television. She loved detective shows. Although television is boring in any language, sometimes I would watch it with her.
    When I left St. Petersburg I left Lyudmila's apartment early in the morning so that I could take the Metro to the airport. When it was time to say good-bye, we hugged each other for a long time.
    "I will miss you," I said.
    "Never mind," she said, looking embarrassed, something I had not seen before.

    A small group of students took a short walking tour of St. Petersburg one day. As we were leaving the school, one of the administrators, Masha, (I always greeted her, "Masha, Masha, Masha...", but I don't think she understood) said to me "Molodyetz!" I asked her what it meant and she said, "Good boy, well done!". Then she called me a "friend to women and children."
    Crossing a large, mostly deserted plaza next to the Winter Palace (Peter the Great's winter home), a woman and her daughter followed us, begging. Her daughter, about 5, walked next to me. She was not very clean but she was unbearably cute, so I patted her on the head. My companions on the tour moved a little bit away from me. I could not help but be struck by the contrast of the shameless opulence of the Winter Palace and the poverty of this family of two. The girl stayed with me so I stopped walking and gave her all of the change in my pocket. The girl quickly ran back with the money to her mother, who was standing a few feet away. My companions moved much further away from me.  The woman and her daughter smiled and thanked me, then seemed to vanish into the empty plaza. My heart broke into a thousand pieces that rolled around all over the plaza. It took me quite a while to retrieve them all.
    Later we were in a restaurant and I said that I had no change because I had given it all to the little girl. No-one said a word.

    There was a flower stand at the Metro station near the school, so every day I bought flowers and gave them to one of the women at the school (a different one each day). I gave the receptionist, Lena, two yellow roses. Later I realized that I had made a huge faux pas, as it is bad luck to give an even number of flowers in Russia. I apologized to her, but she said it was OK, it was just a superstition and no-one paid much attention to it. Lena apparently rarely bathed, but for some reason I found her aroma intoxicating. I would figure out ways to stand next to her so I could take it in.
    On the wall next to her desk were several flyers, some in Russian and some in English. The English in the flyers was rather fractured, so I asked Lena if I could correct them. She said yes and I took a pencil and made several corrections. I never did find out if the author appreciated my efforts.
    I am so annoying.
    One day the woman selling flowers said something to me that I did not understand. I asked her to repeat it so I could remember it and ask someone at the school what it meant. She had said, "Give them (the flowers) for happiness." The next day a new flower stand had appeared, and I never saw that woman again.
    The kitchen at the school was run by a mother and daughter, Nadyezhda and Natasha. Nadyezhda was unfailingly cheerful, and Natasha was a no-nonsense kind of person. (One day I asked her why she had not brought my soup and she said, "Get it yourself.")
    People would gather on the stair landing outside the school to smoke, talk and stare out the window.  On the day I gave Natasha flowers, we were on the landing, and she was having a heated discussion with a man I assumed to be her husband. I understood nothing, so I did not feel too badly about staying there, finishing my cigarette. After a while Natasha stormed up the stairs. Her husband called out to her, "Natasha, Natasha!", but she resolutely ignored him and went back inside.
    Shortly I went back inside and as I passed her in the kitchen I pointed to my heart and asked if she was OK. She nodded yes. I mentioned the incident to someone else and she pointed out that they might have been discussing my gift of flowers. Oh well.
   Nadyezhda means hope, so I wrote a little poem in Russian for her. It went something like "People cannot live without hope, I cannot live without Nadyezhda (Hope)." I think she liked it.

    One morning while  walking to the Metro I passed a girl standing next to her bicycle. She was about 12.
    "Nice bike," I said.
    She looked up and gave me a look that was so innocent and at the same time so seductive that it took my breath away. Later I saw her riding her bicycle on the street and she gave me a big smile.
    Perhaps because their life is so difficult, Russian women seem to have everything figured out at a very early age.

    I could not sleep so I wandered around Nevsky Prospect most nights. It got dark around midnight, and Nevsky Prospect became a very different place. One night, an old woman approached me, saying "Young girl, young girl!" Out of curiosity I asked her how much.
    "1,000 rubles ($40.00)," she said.
    "No, thank you," I said, and moved on.
    I passed a nightclub (klub noch'), music blaring, and I was curious to go in. The bouncer stood outside, wearing a flak jacket. Did I really want to go into a place where the bouncer thought it necessary to wear a flak jacket? I wanted to go in but only if I could borrow the bouncer's pistol, which was not bloody likely. I never did go into any nightclubs.

    I went into a restaurant one night. The only people there were a group of about six, and two young women. Music was playing on loudspeakers, and one of the young women danced to it. She was dressed in tight black pants and a light blue sweater. She held her legs together and moved her hips up and down in time the the music. She danced so provocatively that I could barely stand to watch.
    The other young woman sat a table and I caught her eye. I  pointed to an empty chair at my table. She gave me a matter-of-fact look and pointed to an empty chair at her table. I went and sat next to her.
    The dancing woman sat down.
    "My name is Vera," she said. "That means 'belief'".
    "In English your name would be Faith," I said.
    She was very lively and her companion was very quiet. She said they had been to London, although they could not have been more than 20 years old. Vera asked me what I was doing in St. Petersburg and I said that I was attending a Russian language school. Vera asked me to say something in Russian. I was so tired all I could think of was, "I speak a little Russian."
    Vera asked me what I was going to do next and I said I just liked to wander around the city at night. She said it was sad that I was alone, and that I should  go with them to a nightclub. I politely declined. They stood up to go and I felt like saying to them, "You are young and smart and your future is limitless. Don't throw it away," but I just said "Have fun." They went out into the night, running and laughing. I headed for home.

    One evening about 10:00 it was still light out, and I began walking away from Nevsky Prospect. Within a block or two I was in a poor neighborhood of run down Soviet era apartment buildings. I stopped to rest on the steps in front of an abandoned supermarket. Suddenly I was surrounded by six or seven boys on bicycles, demanding that I give them "Mo-ney, mo-ney!". I pretended not to understand them. They stopped demanding money but did not leave, just milled around. After a few minutes I spoke to them in Russian and they were shocked. They put down their bikes and gathered around me. They sat close together, almost on top of each other. I asked them how old they were and one boy who could not have been more than 10 said that he was 14.
    I said, "Nonsense, your balls haven't even dropped yet," but of course he did not understand. The leader of the group appeared to be about 14 but said he was 18. I suspected they were telling me this because they wanted me to give them cigarettes. Most of them were named Dmitri (Dima).
    One of them mimicked the way I spoke so I took a bottle cap and threw it at him. It hit him right  on the nose. He grabbed his nose in disbelief and fell silent.
     My Russian was not very good at that point so we sat in silence or they talked among themselves.  I could tell that they were mercilessly teasing each other. They kept asking for money or cigarettes or anything. I gave the leader a five dollar bill. They stayed in front of the super market and I headed back to Nevsky Prospect. They called after me, "Vanya, Vanya" and said something that I knew was teasing, but could not quite understand.

         On the night of St. Petersburg's birthday party, I got stuck on the "other side" because they raise all of the bridges across the Neva River from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM for ship traffic. In an outdoor cafe I sat down at a table I thought was unoccupied, but the occupants soon returned. When they realized that I was an American they invited me to join them. They were 4 or 5 young people and one, Maria, wanted to practice her English, which was already quite good.  She asked me to meet her the next day and gave me careful directions as to where and when. The she said, "In Russia we say good-bye like this," and kissed me on both cheeks and the forehead.
    The next day we were to meet at the Sports Bar she managed, "Cafe Zenith."
    When I arrived at her cafe, she came out of the back room, wearing a print summer dress. She was very beautiful.  She looked somewhat embarrassed. She said that she was a proper Russian girl and did not usually drink, that was why she kissed me that way the night before and was very embarrassed about it. I said it was OK and tried not to look at her as if I was about to devour her. I brought a Brian Setzer CD and she put it on. Its a classic Rock'n'Roll album and we began to swing dance, but she soon wanted to dance American style, separately. We danced to a couple of songs. I gave her the CD.
    A friend of hers came by, a very drunk young man. It was clear she had affection for him but was also exasperated by his obnoxious, drunken behavior. He had a wife at home and soon I told him to go home, his wife needs him. By this time Maria had to close up, so we parted company with the drunken friend and I walked Maria to the Metro station.
    The next day we met on Nevsky Prospect in the afternoon. I brought her flowers and I was several minutes late. As I rushed down Nevsky Prospect, I passed the street portrait artist who had done my  portrait a few days earlier. He had also gone out of his way to help me use the public telephone, which I could not figure out. I gave him one of my flowers and hurried on. I found Maria and she chastised me for being late.
    Maria showed me her favorite places in the area, having grown up in St. Petersburg, and she was very proud of "my city". As we walked there were, as usual, many pretty women, dressed in short skirts and six inch heels. She said that not all Russian women were like that, and that she would never dress that way.
    Maria was 20 years old, but she had already been to Israel and Turkey, and was returning to Turkey the next week to work at a resort.  We went to Michaelovsky Park and sat on a bench, enjoying the pleasant afternoon, watching some boys play football. I sang Maria a couple of songs that I made up.

Khorosho (OK), here we go, down into Dante's Inferno.
When we ride on the Metro,
Maya lyubov tol'ko dla Papa (My heart belongs to Daddy).

    This was inspired by St. Petersburg's subway, or Metro, with its long escalators going deep into the earth. When you get on the train a voice solemnly intones, "Caution, the doors are closing", and I could not help but think, yes, the doors are closing on Russia.

Ya lyublyu zhit' v America,
Lyudi tak Ya v America,
Vcyo ne stoit v America
Zaplatim evo v America

This was my very rough translation of the first stanza of West Side Story's "America":

I like to be in America,
People like me in America,
Everything free in America
For a small fee in America

   Maria looked at me for a long time and said that I was very strange.
    She told me about her family. Her parents were still together and her father was a mechanic. She said he was a very unhappy man, not mean to his family, but very dissatisfied. She said that he was 45 years old. I did not have the courage to tell her that I was older than her father.
    We stopped into a cafe to have coffee. The waitress took Maria's flowers and put them in a vase on our table. We talked for a long time. Eventually she said that she had to go to work, so we parted standing on the sidewalk on Nevsky Prospect. We hugged and kissed each other on both cheeks and she was gone.
   Later I realized that we had left her flowers on the table in the cafe.

    One man I met in an outdoor cafe invited me and 3 or 4 friends at his table to his apartment, which was a short walk away. One of his friends wanted to stay in the cafe. As a way of saying good-bye I tried to teach him how to high-five, but he thought that I wanted to fight him.
    The man was a well known composer and we listened to his extremely depressing compositions and drank beer. His apartment was one large room with a ceiling at least 18 feet tall and windows from floor to ceiling. Some how it was still dark in the middle of the day (I think it even faced south), and I wondered what it must be like in the winter. One of the men came with a stunningly beautiful woman, Julia, a kindergarten teacher. True to Russian form, the men ignored her while I tried to put my eyes back in my head.
    One of the men spoke a little English. He asked me to tell him my favorite anecdote, that is, joke, and he would translate it for the rest of the group. I chose Garrison Keillor's penguin joke.
    Two penguins are sitting on the ice in Antarctica. One penguin says to the other penguin, "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo". The other penguin says, "How do you know I'm not?"
     The man tried to translate but I could not explain "tuxedo", so I don't think that they understood.
     After a while a policeman who was a friend of the composer came in.  He was tall and powerful, yet like many such people, had a vulnerable air about him. He sat down, took out his pistol and laid it on the table, its barrel pointing right at me. I jumped  up and moved away, pointing at the pistol. Everyone laughed for five or ten minutes about this. The policeman picked up the pistol and worked the chamber to show that it was not loaded, then offered it to me. I declined his invitation to hold it and everyone laughed some more.
     I think it is interesting that people who have very little are willing to share it, while those who have a lot, not so much.

    One day on Nevsky Prospect I came upon a street demonstration. A group of women were holding signs, protesting Russia's war in Chechnya. One said "Soldier's Mothers of St. Petersburg" and "League of Women Voters", another, "Who will answer for the crimes in Chechnya?" An obviously drunk man, also obviously used to being that way and in fairly good humor, was chastising the women for their protest, saying that he was a veteran of the Russian Army.
    However as I watched them converse there was much smiling and laughing on both sides. They seemed to be using humor to defuse the tension between them.
    I spoke with a woman who said she was the President of Soldier's Mothers of St. Petersburg. She spoke fairly good English and said she had been in the US, New York, I think. She said many of Russia's problems today can be directly attributed to the military draft. (Russia's first-rate Naval Academy is in St. Petersburg). Young men turn themselves into alcoholics and drug addicts to avoid it, she said. Those that are drafted are subject to a rather lawless and violent culture in the military. (This made sense to me because my Russian Professor in college said that when you arrived in the Soviet Union, you knew you were in a land without law. Lots of rules, but no law.) They then bring this behavior home to their families, and this is why there are so many single mothers in Russia. I wanted to speak with her more but I was already late for dinner with Lyudmila.

    At the Russian Language school they employed a woman, Lena, to arrange various tours for the students. I told her that I did not do group tours, and was going to go exploring by myself Saturday. She told me the best place to go, then offered to take me there. She wanted to practice her English, which was pretty good already. Lena was rebellious, she refused to use a patronymic (middle name based on one's father's name).
    We went to Strelna, a small village outside of St. Petersburg. She told me to meet her at the train station, and she was nearly an hour late. She appeared just as I was about to give up waiting. We boarded the train and arrived in Strelna in about an hour. We walked towards the Baltic Sea, past farms and a cemetery, and a small monument to six priests murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. It was like a small shrine and it was kept with fresh, carefully arranged flowers. We came to a beach with a large ship's hull on it. It was not quite warm enough to swim, but it was a beautiful day. We crossed a small stream and I tried to explain to Lena the difference between a  "creek" and a "river". Later she pronounced "creek" like "crack" which produced a hilarious miscommunication between us.
    We found a log on the beach and sat down. I asked Lena if she minded if I took my shirt off, and she said it was OK. I laid down on the beach and we relaxed and talked, enjoying the warm sunshine (even in summer it is often cool in St. Petersburg).
    From the beach we could see an abandoned Imperial Palace. St. Petersburg was the capital of Imperial Russia and almost every Czar insisted on building his (or her) own palace. A few are now restored, but most are abandoned. From a distance I felt as if I could see this palace slowly sinking into the ground. It took us several minutes to walk there, on a dirt road lined with trees on both sides, making an arch over the road. A lazy stream ran next to the road. It was so peaceful, it was easy to forget that the rest of the world existed.
    The palace had a long, narrow pond in front of it. In the center of the palace were three high arched passageways, designed for large horse-drawn carriages, leading to a once beautiful courtyard  At the top of the center of the palace building the Soviets had placed their ubiquitous Hammer and Sickle symbol. I think it was the only thing they did to this palace besides board up the windows.
    We  stopped at a restaurant in Strelna for supper. I overheard the waitress speak a little English so I said to her, "You are very beautiful."
    She said, "You too."
    We went to Petrodvoretz, a restored palace with gold leaf statues everywhere. The museum was closed by the time we got there, so we just wandered around the grounds. (I did not go to a single museum in St. Petersburg, preferring to just wander around, watching people. OK, I was watching the most beautiful women in the world. I'm a pig.) I decided I preferred the abandoned palaces to the restored ones. We were accosted by a Finnish man and his Russian girlfriend, who was dressed in the European (that is, revealing) style. The man was loud and drunk so I was loud in return. When he addressed his girlfriend as Tanya, I said "Ya tebya lyublyu, (I love you), Tanya!". She was embarrassed and tried to pull her boyfriend away from us. As they retreated I said, "Prostitye menya, (forgive me), Tanya."
    Lena told me a joke: Special Agent 007 approaches a beautiful women at a bar in Moscow and says, "Bond. James Bond."
    The woman extends her hand and says, "Off. Fuck Off."
    It was an incredible day and I thanked Lena profusely for it.
    Lena invited me to a concert of the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra the next evening. They chose for their repertoire several songs from Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story." I thought it ironic that they chose a play about gangs, when Russia was being taken over by gangsters. The spectacle of this excellent Symphony Orchestra, playing in a grand hall with marble columns and gold leaf, while their country was falling apart around them, reminded me of the story of Caligula. I asked Lena if she knew this story and to my surprise, she did. She had even seen the movie "Caligula."
    After the concert we went to a Ukrainian restaurant. A band was playing Ukrainian folk music. The hostess showed us to our table, but before we sat down, I grabbed the hostess and began to dance. She laughed and protested that she had to get back to work. So I dragged Lena out onto the floor and we danced. Soon a few others joined us. When we sat down, I kept yelling "Hey!" in time to the music. I'm sure everyone thought that I was drunk, but I had not had a drink.
    Lena was 36 and had two teenage sons. She was divorced and her ex-husband had little to do with his sons. Lena said she wanted to have another child, a daughter. She told me that she saved her money for a long time so she could by a bicycle, which cost $250.00. After a while it was stolen from the storage space in her apartment building. She was angry and sad about this. She said she loved her country but it was sliding into anarchy, and she grieved, being able to do little about it.
    Most Russians have a very frank attitude towards sex, and Lena and I had a frank discussion about it, and about the relations between men and women in Russia. I said it seemed like women were oppressed, even though in the Soviet days they were (theoretically) equal. She said she thought men were worse off, because women used sex or the promise of sex to get money or things from them, and to deceive them.
    Lena said that in a society where money has little value, such as the Soviet Union, sex becomes currency. For example, officers in the military would have their wives sleep with Generals, so the officers could get a promotion.
    At the table next to us, a young woman wore a black leather halter top, black miniskirt, fishnet stockings and four inch heels. Try as she might, her halter top would not stay where it was supposed to. I said to Lena, "She might as well take it off, its not working out anyway."
    Our waitress was pretty, but she never smiled. I knew this meant she must have a beautiful smile, so I asked her to smile. She did and I said, "See, it lights up the room!"
        I am so annoying.
        When we left the cook asked me, in flawless English, if I enjoyed their little restaurant. I said that I did, very much. As the hostess was helping us with our coats, she gave me a big smile, as if to say she had enjoyed my antics. I hope she did.
    The day before I left St. Petersburg, I returned to the school to say good-bye, as all of them had been very nice to me. When I arrived, Natasha came out of the kitchen, gave me a stern look, put her hands on her hips and said, "Gdye?" (where have you been?)
    "Shopping!" I said, and showed her some of my loot from that day's shopping trip. I asked Natasha, Nadyezhda and Lena to take a picture with me. I also asked the woman who had been my teacher, Tanya. Because there were three Tanyas at the school and she was short, she was called Little Tanya, which I thought was funny because her breasts were anything but little. Anyway, she said, "I am not pretty, you do not want me in your picture." I felt like saying, "I didn't ask if you were pretty, I asked you to be in my picture," but I let her have her way. I quickly said good-bye to as many people as I could, and left.

    From St. Petersburg I flew to Moscow. I had a six hour layover before my flight to Kiev. While waiting I talked to a woman who was drinking beer at 9:00 AM. Alcoholic women are unusual in Russia, but she clearly was one. She showed me pictures of her family, a husband and two children. She was interested in why I was in Russia and I told her about Mira. She was pleased and congratulated me. She got on a bus to Moscow.
    When I went to Kiev I wanted to find a wife. I was not expecting to fall in love or have a fairy tale romance, although that's what happened. Mira and I spent almost three weeks together and came to know each other gradually. Suffice it to say I went through more changes, in those three weeks than in my previous 30 years of adulthood.
    I arrived in Kiev in the late afternoon. At the last customs station, the officer, a woman, said she was tired, wanted to go home and just waved me through.
    I saw Mira in the crowd in the waiting area. We hugged, the rope separating the arriving passengers from those waiting, between us. I went to go around the rope so I could greet her properly. But when I went around it she was nowhere to be found. She had come with the woman, Lyudmila Pavlovna, who had introduced us, and a young man, an interpreter. They had not seen her leave either. After a few minutes she re-appeared. She seemed overwhelmed. She would not look at me. She did not look at me until we got to Kiev, about a 45 minute drive.
    We went to Lyudmila Pavlovna's apartment. She wanted me to stay there with her and started showing me around the apartment.
    I said, "Just leave me alone with my fiancee!" Finally she got the message and Mira and I were able to be alone for a few minutes.
    Mira and I stayed in Lyudmila's apartment that night. At 6:00 AM, I went into Mira's room and woke her up.
    I gave her a diamond ring and asked her to marry me, in Russian, a phrase I had practiced over and over. She said yes, but it was clear she did not quite believe me. That day we moved to Mira's apartment.
    Like most Soviet era apartment buildings, Mira's was very run down. The elevator did not work half the time, and there were no lights in the stairwell. Mira's apartment was on the 11th floor, and on the landing someone had thrown out a picture of Lenin. I saluted it whenever I went by.
    She had a kitchen, bathroom and one other room. The kitchen had an enclosed balcony, and I enjoyed staring out the window at the city and smoking. Kiev has many trees and in the spring it is very green.
    We would sit in Mira's kitchen and talk, using a dictionary and an electronic interpreter, a very slow process. We would talk politics and about our plans for the future. We knew it would take a long time to get Mira to the US.

   We went to Yalta for eight days, staying in the Hotel Yalta, the (almost first-class) Intourist hotel. Our hotel balcony faced west. Crimea is mountainous and our view was across a valley to a steep hill, with a cute little church on it, its cupolas glowing in the sunshine. We went to see this church and Mira lit a candle and said a prayer. Outside of the church there was a poster, and I tried to translate it. It described the evils of abortion and had a rather graphic picture.
    Mira liked to go down to the beach early in the morning when there were few people. She called me "morzh" (the walrus) because I spent so much time in the water. She would chastise me for going out too far. We usually spent all day on the beach, reading and swimming. Staying at the hotel there were several couples, older Russian men with young, beautiful girlfriends. The men had tattoos and Mira said that meant they were Mafia.
    One day a single mother and her daughter, about 7 or 8, were on the beach. The girl played in the shallow water with a ball, her mother talking to friends. There were no other children on the beach , so I began to play a game of catch with her. Her mother looked on and said nothing. We played for a long time, the girl never tiring of our game. Eventually Mira wanted to return to the hotel room so I said good-bye to the girl.
     We had to buy  return airline tickets at the travel agency in the hotel. Because Mira spoke Russian, she usually arranged everything. I became frustrated because this injured my male ego and I never knew what was going on. I told Mira I would handle buying the tickets.
    When we got to the travel agency desk, the clerk looked at us and began talking to Mira, and Mira replied. I reminded Mira of what I had said, and she stepped aside. I went into the next room to buy the tickets from the travel agent, a woman. Mira waited outside but at one point she came in, wanting to explain something the woman had said.
    "Get out! Get out!," I shouted, pointing to the door. Mira thought this was hilarious but went back outside. After I bought the tickets, I apologized for my behavior to the travel agent.
    Back in Kiev, we had to go to the Office of Marriage Registration to get a copy of Mira's divorce decree (she was married briefly several years ago).  Part of Kiev's public transportation system is provided by mini-vans with established routes. We took one of them to the Office of Marriage Registration. It was a warm day and I dozed off on the way.  When we arrived and Mira told me we were there, I was slow in responding. One of the men on the bus said something, and everyone laughed. I knew it was good-natured laughter, but I insisted Mira explain it to me. She said the man had said, "He does not want to go!"

    I left Kiev in mid June. At the airport, as we approached the first customs station, two Ukraine militiamen, dressed in fatigues and without weapons, as most were, asked me for my passport. I gave it to them. They looked at it and one said to Mira, "He does not have the correct stamps. That will  be 2,000 greven ($400.00), please." I knew they wanted money but not how much. I was thinking, "I'll give them $20.00 and they will go away, no problem. I don't mind. Really, I don't."
    But Mira flew into a rage.
    "You thieves! You bandits!", she cried. "You have taken my apartment and all of my possessions" (which was true, they had). "What more do you want from us? We have no money!"
    "Ma'am, calm down," one of them said quietly.
    "I will not calm down!" And she didn't.
    We were in a large, fairly crowded room and by this time everyone was looking at us except for the customs agents who were desperately trying not to notice what was happening. I put on my "I'm-just-a-stupid-American" face and observed the proceedings with a kind of detached amazement.
    Eventually the militiamen retreated in the face of Mira's onslaught, handing me back my passport, with apologies. Her rage was genuine but her strategy was the correct one as the militiamen were looking for an easy mark. They did not want a lot of hassle. Mira and I had to part at the first customs station, so we said good-bye. She could have stayed and watched me as I waited in line for the second customs station but she did not. I knew it was difficult for Mira to say good-bye.
    Later she told me she met a woman on the bus back to Kiev whose German fiancé had been relieved of $100.00 by the militiamen.

    I went to visit Mira for a month in December, 2000. We went to a Russian style "sanatorium" (health resort) in Livadiye, Crimea, near Yalta. Livadiye is where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt held their Yalta conference in Feb. 1945, to decide how to carve up Europe among themselves after the war.
     "Sanatorii Chornemorye" was reserved for the KGB in the Soviet days. Now it is privately run and anyone may go there, but I am sure I am the first American to stay there. After we arrived I became a minor celebrity for this reason, but most Russians scrupulously respect each other's privacy, so few people approached me on their own initiative. One person did wonder why I was staying there and not in the Hotel Yalta.  I met one woman who had lived in the US for a short while.  She was a psychologist, and she said what she liked best about America was LA's theme of "Celebrate Diversity". Her husband used to work for the KGB.
    We met a group of young couples that worked for a real estate agency in Donetsk. They all wore the black leather that is the uniform of young Russian toughs and toughettes, so Mira thought that they were Mafia. But I took them at face value and they were very nice. In a restaurant one of them took out a dollar bill and began to sign it. I pointed to it and said "Dolzhno dvadtzat" (should be a twenty) and he gave me a sour look, but continued to sign it, then passed it around. They all signed it. He wrote on it in English, "Friends from Donetsk."
    The proper way to drink Vodka in Russia is to make a toast and drain a full shot glass. I stood up and said, "Mi tebya lyubim (We love you), Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin)!". They all groaned and one of them explained, very seriously, how Lenin was not of their generation and so was of little interest to them.
    One of them was also named Vanya and he seemed very open so we became friends, of a sort. Once he invited me to drink Cognac with him in the Sanatorii bar. Mira came looking for me and Vanya said, "Here comes your control."
    "I like it that way," I said, downed my Cognac and said good-bye.

    On New Year's Eve the Sanatorii laid out a meal that took several hours to finish. Shortly before midnight, the television was turned on, and the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, was giving a speech. He kept talking until after midnight and most people ignored him. The dancing was to begin at precisely 1:00 AM.
    There was a rather good rock group of three musicians. Everyone began to dance, mostly American (just getting out there and moving around) style. The men in our "Friends from Donetsk" group were too cool to dance, so I danced with each of their girlfriends. Then I grabbed Vanya and began swinging him around the room. He was too drunk to really protest.
    Vanya's girlfriend, Julia, insisted that he pour Champagne all over her, which he did. She then came up to me, rocked forward on her hips so her chest stuck out, and said, in English, "I am covered with Champagne", slowly tracing a line in the Champagne on her upper chest with her finger.
    I never before felt as if I could get into so much trouble in one instant.
    "Yes, you are," I said, and turned away.

    One evening we stopped into a church in central Kiev. It had murals of scenes from the Bible on every wall. Above the entrance was a painting depicting Lucifer's Fall from Heaven. Lucifer stood in the lower half of the painting against a blood red background. He was dressed in black, with black Angel wings. His posture was straight, but not proud. His face was pale and handsome, no horns, just a young man, 16 or 17, clean-shaven. In the upper half, God and some angels looked down on Lucifer. Next to Lucifer were some people or Angels, looking at him expectantly.
    His expression was spellbinding, and betrayed awareness of a vast emptiness, that he viewed rather dispassionately, or perhaps with contempt. His eyes seemed alive with the possibilities of his future, yet haunted by them as well.
    This Lucifer was at the beginning of his journey, like any young man leaving home. His destiny felt inevitable to him, but he also knew that it was not too late to choose another path, but soon would be.
    I identified with Lucifer because I have also felt an emptiness, and I know that if you feel it long enough you ignore it or view it with disdain. I have also felt that my destiny is inevitable. I could choose another path, but I don't.
    I stood there staring at it for what seemed like a long time, people bumping into me because I was standing near the entrance. Eventually Mira found me and we looked around the rest of the church. Mira lit a candle, said a prayer, and we left.
    I can still remember Lucifer's face clearly.

    Most visa applications for former Soviet Republics are processed in Warsaw. In May, 2001, we had an appointment for an interview at the US Consulate. I went to Kiev to get Mira. We took the train to Warsaw.
    We arrived in Warsaw at 6:00 AM, after 20 hours on the train. We had all of Mira's possessions in a couple of suitcases, and our own suitcases. A man with a cart offered to carry our luggage and find us a taxi. When we got to the taxi I noticed it was not an official taxi, and I knew something was not right. I had failed to agree on a price before we set off, so I just kept handing bills of Polish money (zlotych) to the luggage carrier until he said it was enough. As he walked away I realized that I had given him $75.00. I ran after him and demanded my money back. He still held it in his left hand, and he pulled it away from me. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and shook him, hard.
    "Give me that money!", I shouted.
    He looked hurt and gave me about half of it back. The taxi driver had put our suitcases in his car.
    "Get them out! Get them out!" I shouted at him, and he did. As he drove away I called him a thief, in Russian. He too gave me an injured look. I asked Mira to find an official taxi while I guarded the suitcases.
    The next morning we went to our appointment at the US consulate. Eventually we were told that Mira could pick up her visa at 4:00 PM. We went to an outdoor shopping district and picked out Mira's  wedding dress. Later we stopped at a small cafe and shared a beer.
    We left the cafe and as we crossed the street, I was walking slightly ahead of Mira. I heard her call "Vanya!" and I looked to my right. A streetcar was bearing down on me. I had no idea how fast it was going and I thought, "This is it, the end of the line", then the streetcar hit me.
    I think the worst part about it was the sound it made. I was thrown to the ground and the next thing I knew the train had stopped. I was looking up at the conductor who was not making a move to help me, in shock, I suppose. I knew I was not too seriously hurt because I was immediately aware that I had lost my wallet, an item I became constantly aware of while traveling.
    Nevertheless I stayed on the ground for a few seconds to catch my breath. A crowd quickly gathered. I stood up and people were handing me back my papers that had scattered all over the street. But my wallet was still missing. I realized it might be under the streetcar, and it was. An ambulance, then the police, arrived. The ambulance driver asked for my passport and I gave it to him. I knew if I went to the hospital, it would cost me a bundle, so I refused to go. As proof of my right to do so I marched in place, exaggerating my movements.
    To my horror the ambulance driver then gave my passport to the police, something I definitely did not want to happen. One police officer asked me to sit in the back seat of his car and I did so, reluctantly. At this point I noticed that my right elbow had swollen to the size of a small melon, and I tried to keep it hidden with my body.
    One of the officers put my passport in a little notebook, then put the notebook on the dashboard, in front of the steering wheel. He got out of the car and I thought, "this guy is very stupid or he is testing me", as I could easily have grabbed my passport, grabbed Mira, and made a run for it. I would have done just that had I been by myself, but Mira was not dressed for a run from the police.
    Instead I asked him to give me my passport back and he refused. The streetcar hit me at about 3:00, so it was clear we would miss our appointment to pick up Mira's visa. I was sure we could pick it up the next day, but it was outrageous that the police were holding us when I had done nothing wrong.
     When it became clear that they were going to hold us for a while, I cursed them roundly in Russian and English (most Poles understand some of both languages). I do not know how to curse in Russian, so I called them "thieves" and "evil authority". I figured we were done for and I was not going to go down without a fight. I was very angry, and more than a little afraid for myself and for Mira. I hid my fear by nursing my anger into rage.
    Later I asked one of them if I could go to the bathroom. He looked around at the nearby storefronts and shrugged. So I set off in search of the cafe we had stopped in earlier. The police looked on in amazement but made no move to stop me. I found the cafe and used their bathroom. I asked the barmaid for some ice, and when I showed her my arm she gave me a bunch of ice and a towel. I returned to the police car.
    The first police officer turned us over to a police officer from the public transportation department. This officer was so jovial and nice that it annoyed me and I determined to be as difficult as possible until he stopped being so fucking jovial.
    This officer wanted to take us for a ride and I was terrified of going anywhere with  them. I did not know what they would do; all I knew was that the police in Poland are thoroughly corrupt and worse than criminals.
    They drove us to a field in an industrial area and I was sure they were going to execute us. At one point they drove on (yes, on, not next to) some railroad tracks and I thought, "This is great, I'm going to be run over by a train twice in one day." By this time the jovial officer was becoming annoyed with me, and I smiled inwardly with smug satisfaction. For some reason the driver of the streetcar was in another car parked in the field. I spoke with her briefly and asked if she was going to lose her job, and she just shrugged. Soon we were on our way to the police station, all the way across town.
    When we got to the police station we were ushered into a little room. An interpreter was brought in, the most obsequious little man I ever met. He explained that in Warsaw walking in front of a streetcar was a misdemeanor and would I be willing to pay a fine.
    "A fine! A fine!", I cried. "Are you INSANE? I get hit by one of your streetcars and I have to pay a fine?" I paused for breath. "Can we leave if I pay this fine?"
     He said yes and I asked him how much it was. He said it was 100 zlotych ($25.00). I decided to pay it although I considered it extortion.
    The interpreter then said, "Are you happy now?"
    "No, I am not happy," I said.
    He said, "You should be."
    As we were leaving I asked the interpreter if he knew what "fuck" meant. He said yes and I said, "Well you can tell them (the police) for me, fuck them!" We walked outside and I cursed the police once more from the sidewalk. The first officer I had encountered was also standing outside and he looked at me with an injured expression on his face. By this time it was nearly 8:00 PM, the police had held us against our will for four hours. We set off in search of a taxi.
    The next day we picked up Mira's visa at the US Consulate. We were deliriously happy, having worked toward this moment for a year.  Some couples have to wait two or three years. But our process was delayed in no small part because the Mafia was monitoring Mira's mail, coming and going. They would steal her letters, or delay their delivery. Often they arrived having already been opened. They were doing this because Mira knew who had swindled her out of her apartment, and she sued them in court. She showed me where the apartment was and it was a nice one, by Kiev standards. One of the people she was suing was murdered (these people are serious). They would also call her on the telephone and threaten to kill her.  When Mira bought a new telephone, she found a bug (no, not an insect) in her old one.
    We were having trouble communicating with the US Consulate in Warsaw, so I called the office of my US Senator, Gordon Smith, and asked for their assistance. Within a week we had an appointment for an interview at the Consulate.
    Mira has a strong sense of justice. She even attended a rally protesting the policies of Leonid Kuchma, the President of Ukraine, which turned violent. President Kuchma was elected in a democratic election, but because he is in league with the Mafia, the only political advertisements in the Media were his.
    Mira has suffered more than anyone I know. You could not imagine what she went through, much less tolerate it. Yet she is basically a very happy person (and all this without therapy). I am truly blessed.

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