Loves me, loves me not
Last year I eloped in secret. I married my Russian boyfriend so he could stay in Canada longer. My parents would have objected, saying I was too young, the relationship was a temporary byproduct of my semester abroad, and Slava was just after a Permanent Resident Card. I felt their judgement leaking through the telephone line when we talked and oozing out of their self-righteous stares when we visited. They would never have understood, but I knew that Slava was my soulmate. Somehow we had found each other, had been united by fate, for better or for worse.
I met Slava at Leningrad State University. My roommate Sage, a Goth graduate student whose eccentricities and bravado captivated me, introduced us at a party in the international student dorm. He was tall and thin, leaning with one knee bent, propped against the wall, brooding. He lowered his leg and stood his full 6’5” tall as we approached. I only came up to his shoulder and had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. They were hazel, almost translucent, gentle and complex. I immediately wanted to touch his long, dark, curly hair, and while he didn’t smile, the left corner of his mouth worked nervously in a friendly way.
“Privet,” Sage greeted him and introduced us in her annoyingly flawless Russian. They had met outside the dormitory trading Russian lacquer boxes and matroishki for cigarettes and Western music cassettes. Sage had said, “You would like this guy Slava. He plays basketball and his nickname is Dlinii.” We had laughed hysterically at the nickname, which translates literally to “long” rather than “tall.”
“Privet,” he addressed both of us.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m too tired to speak Russian. Do you speak English?”
“English?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“English, a little bit,” he admitted and took a long, leisurely drink from his fresh Baltika beer.
I started talking about Russia, what I liked and didn’t like. I talked about University of Toronto, my family, and how much I missed toilet paper. Occasionally I peeked to see if he was listening, and he was. He kindly stood alongside me, silently sealing a connection that felt safe.
Our romance moved at a 1950s pace. We watched movies, without subtitles or popcorn, and I unsuccessfully willed him to put an arm around me. I coyly badgered him into inviting our group of Canadian students to his 21st birthday party. His mother and grandmother huddled in a tiny kitchen at the ready to refill lovingly prepared potato salad, marinated beet and pickled herring salad, open-faced sandwiches on black bread with butter and a single slice of cheese or salami, pirozhki with ground beef, and a honey cake. We drank vodka and danced, I flirted shamelessly, and Slava’s eyes told me the attraction was mutual.
We took long walks after my language classes, discussing history, art, and the Cold War. I loved that he could talk about anything, his unassuming knowledge of literature and the arts colored our mundane conversations. Every evening, freshly showered after basketball practice, Slava knocked on my door and inquired if he could enter. We sat innocuously on my bed and listened to music, learning words to each other’s favorite songs. After six weeks he took my hand as we strolled around Catherine’s palace grounds in Pushkin. Then one night, giggling, tipsy, and teasing, he called me kiska (kitten). His sweet sincerity lit a spark in my stomach that heated my cheeks and made him entirely irresistible. Finally, he leaned down to kiss me, releasing weeks of steamy pent up attraction.
By the end of the semester, we were hopelessly entangled in young, desperate love. The excruciating goodbye was made bearable only by my promise to bring him to Canada as soon as possible. During the six months necessary to secure a tourist visa and plane ticket, we talked twice a week, sharing the burden of $3.00/minute phone calls. We wrote soulful, yearning letters that drifted six weeks, carrying our smoldering passion across the ocean. Long distance was agony, my entire body and soul ached day and night. I couldn’t do it again and so I married him.
Eloping seemed insignificant, a little white lie that saved everyone from unnecessary worry. But it quickly morphed into more elaborate mind-games as I tried to manufacture an opportunity to marry in public after a more acceptable courtship. Securing a research fellowship that allowed us to head back to Russia for a year created the opportunity. Hence, eight months after the secret wedding, before leaving Canada, we announced our engagement to be married in Russia.
— — -
Once back in Russia, we waited an acceptable two months before staging a fake wedding. Family and friends dressed up for formal photos at the Wedding Palace, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Vasiliostrovsky Island Point, and other obligatory spots in what was now called St. Petersburg. These along with photos of our festive wedding dinner, prepared with warmth and motherly love, arrived in Canada four weeks later.
Our newlywed paradise was just as pleasurable the second time around. We spent two weeks in bed and another two weeks taking daily strolls for coffee in the morning, fresh beer in the evenings, and parties with friends at night. But eventually the romance cooled along with the fall weather. I turned to my research and Slava turned to his opaque entrepreneurial activities that kept him out late, sometimes all night. We argued about his nightlife and then about other things. By December, I found myself alone more and more, tired of the cold, empty bed, and bored with my research. So, two days ago when my friend Mila said she was going home to Siberia for a week, I asked if I could go along.
Tarko Sale was once a labor camp in Northwest Siberia, a stop along Stalin’s unfinished Northern railroad. Today the small town is home to a major oil producer. I immediately took the metro to the central Aeroflot ticket office and found out the flight from St. Petersburg to Tarko Sale, via Tiumen, cost the equivalent of $25 for Russian citizens or $350 for foreigners. Being a student, I didn’t have $350. I did have $25 though, and Mila had a friend who looked a little like me.
By the end of the day I had my plane ticket and Nadia’s passport in my hands. We both had a longish face, brown eyes, and straight hair, but the resemblance ended there. There was also the problem of my foreign accent. I sounded Estonian. We came up with a great cover story: I would be mute. Mila was taking her mute friend Nadia to Siberia. Mila would present both passports. My long bulky coat and rabbit hat would hide my face, and my silence would conceal my voice.
— —
As we stand in line at airport security, Mila is surprisingly calm. We had taken every precaution, but suddenly I think that maybe I should have learned some basic Russian sign language. At least we could have practiced pretend-lip-reading.
Fear drips down my neck releasing a damp wool smell as an officer examines our internal Russian passports containing St. Petersburg residence permits. My arms tingle with apprehension; my mind is jumpy and alert. I reason that since I am mute, I should also act simple-minded. I circle my head, looking around with childlike curiosity, examining my surroundings as if I had never seen an airport while conveniently avoiding the officer’s gaze.
The collar of my coat is now soaked; surely something is wrong. This is taking too long. I am more nervous than when I smuggled a joint on a flight from Leningrad to Moscow back in 1990. I’ve watched Midnight Express. I know about the gulag. I am fully aware that passport fraud is a major criminal offense. Yet here I am.
Finally the officer hands Mila our passports and casually waves us towards security. We step ahead and a family takes our place with the dull document official. As Mila walks through the metal detector I notice it is unplugged from the wall. But I follow Mila, and the family follows me, one at a time when signaled by a uniformed agent’s nod. I guess we are all pretending.
In Tiumen, we transfer from a jet plane to a small 10-seater prop engine to cross the frozen tundra. We fly low and the night sky lights up miles of flat, empty, snowy desert. I spot some campsites, two-to-three tents and tiny figures, both human and reindeer. I spend the entire flight glued to the window, wiping in turn it and my glasses from a relentless breath-induced fog.
After a quick, uneventful descent at sunrise, we deplane and walk through the Tarko Sale airport in less than five minutes. I drop my disguise, Mila assuring me I am free to be a tourist now, and we walk in silence on snow-covered roads that crunch and squeak with extra-terrestrial sounds. We pass a dozen free-standing, single-story houses, each with a steady stream of smoke rising from a small chimney pipe and frost-covered windows. Attached to the original wooden structures, the houses sport a variety of clever additions cobbled together with a mish-mash of building materials. Sheet metal in every color and texture is soldered together with metal plates and bolts, clumsy stone walls are sealed with cement mortar, and rustic log walls shine with glossy veneer.
We turn into a faded wooden clapboard house and open a crooked side door. We enter into a rather large, warm kitchen where Mila’s mother Svetlana is making dumplings. She gets up, wipes floury hands on her generous apron, and greets Mila with a warm hug and wet kisses on each cheek.
“Mila my dear, you came home to see your mother,” she cries. “You look so skinny! What is the matter? Why aren’t you eating,” she scolds, and just as quickly continues, “Oh Lord my little girl is home, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord.” She makes sure the door is securely shut and sits back down while Mila and I unwrap and change from warm boots to communal slippers. “Who is this? Who is your friend you brought to visit?”
“This is Amber. She is a student from Canada. She is staying with me for the week,” Mila explains, prompting another cascade of greetings, hugs, warm wishes, and welcomes.
“Hello,” I introduce myself in basic Russian, “Thank you so much for inviting me to your home.”
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Svetlana responds. “Now go put your things away. What are you going to do? You will probably take a walk. Have some tea first,” she orders in a motherly way and sits back down to work. We join her for tea and I watch her mixing dough, grinding the meat and vegetable filling, cutting out dough circles with a glass, folding, stuffing, and then crimping the edges closed. Each night our supper consists of Svetlana’s simple meat dumplings (pelmeni), Borodinsky black bread, and tart cranberry-like fruit drink (mors). That first night I expect Slava to call and check on me, but he doesn’t.
The next morning when I awake, Mila’s brother, Ivan and her father, Sergei, have already left for work. Mila tells me they work somewhere in town, and I don’t ask where. Between Tarko Sale’s forced labour camp history and active natural resource industry, classified work is to be expected. Also, in 1993 many Russians are wary of the openness heralded by Gorbachev’s perestroika and remain staunch Communists. Despite being open to Western business and media, day-to-day life is still shrouded in secrecy. If I have to be careful where I take photographs in St. Petersburg, Tarko Sale demands even more caution.
That night Mila and I go to bed early after a full day of small town Siberia. We had walked along paths in between six-foot tall snow banks and we cross-country skied through a sparse forest that had never been seen by another Canadian, or so I imagined. Lying in bed, tired from the fresh air and jet lag, we hear Sergei and Ivan arrive home. There is stumbling and argument, and then we hear the door slam as Svetlana casts out Sergei. With indifference, or perhaps acceptance, in her voice, Mila tells me that Ivan is following in her father’s careless alcoholic footsteps. I immediately think of Slava’s drinking and recent overnight absences. Impatient for him to call, I open the flip phone he gave me in case of emergency and dial. But there is no answer.
Svetlana cooks a family dinner for my third night. Mila covers the table in a beautiful white lace cloth. In addition to pelmeni and black bread, there is a plate of marinated herring on toast. Next to glasses of mors are elegant crystal pedestal shot glasses, a bottle of vodka and several bottles of beer. At the end of the table stands a stack of porcelain dessert plates and a tort made with six layers of moist sponge cake slathered with luscious butter and sweetened condensed milk cream in between. The house is warm, the table inviting, and I am anxious to sit down when Ivan and Sergei walk in. Ivan is huge and hulking, the ultimate personification of a Russian bear. Sergei, in contrast, is a grey-haired, short, and stocky Papa Carlo. They greet me without a smile and seem serious but pleasant as we sit down. We begin with the herring and cheers to good health and friendship. Between the cheers there are long uncomfortable silences that I long to break.
Eventually unleashed by the vodka, I start asking questions about Mila’s family and Tarko Sale. I ask how many generations of their family had lived there, hoping to hear some dramatic stories of the Communist Revolution, families torn apart, and grandfathers falsely imprisoned. Everyone continues to drink and eat. Undeterred by their reticence, I talk a little about Canada, but mostly I ask questions. I want to know what they think of Gorbachev, perestroika, Yeltsin, and the new Coca Cola plant outside St. Petersburg.
I chatter onward, oblivious to the surrounding silence. My naïve monologue isn’t interrupted until I say, “Communism is a noble ideal. It was an amazing experiment. Do you think it was worth it?”
I pause for a breath and Ivan looks up. He stares me straight in the eye and says in an icy voice, “You should be careful what you say. You might offend someone.” Ivan looked back down at his food, the conversation over.
“Oh, um, I see,” I stutter, suddenly realizing that Sergei and Ivan are Communists, their silence a condemnation of me, an ambassador of Canadian capitalism in their house. I look to Svetlana and Mila, but they are concentrating on their food,
I quickly excuse myself and retreat to the bedroom, wondering how badly I offended and whether I should try to leave early. I dial Slava. No answer.
How could there be no answer when he always carries his phone in his pocket?
I continue dialing and Mila soon comes to bed.
“Mila, I am so sorry,” I apologize profusely. “I don’t know why I kept asking questions. I didn’t mean to offend your family.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she responds, climbing into bed fully clothed.
“Are they communists?” I whisper, unable to stop myself.
“Don’t worry about it,” she repeats and begins to brush her hair. “Tomorrow let’s walk to the Cultural Centre,” she continues, but I’m not listening. I keep dialing Slava, needing him to pick up and tell me it is alright. I continue dialing all night, periodically nodding off, then waking up and punching the numbers again and again. We don’t have a land-line in our rental apartment, and I think about calling his mother, but shame and fear stop me.
In the morning I discover Sergei and Ivan have gone hunting, so luckily I won’t have to face them my remaining four days in Tarko Sale. Several times a day Mila and I leave the toasty warm cottage to walk about the village, the cold sharp enough to freeze nose hair in seconds. Mila proudly shows me the city hall and school. We watch a gaggle of children toboggan down small hills on baking trays, satellite dishes, and garbage bags. I occasionally hear the tinny motor of a Lada or moped, but virtually everyone gets around on foot, which is how I meet the locals: Russian, Siberian, and even three reindeer roaming in a pen alongside a small house.
Each of these extraordinary community scenes is muted by incessant worry that something has happened to Slava. I call repeatedly, but he never answers. I can’t understand why he isn’t picking up, why he hasn’t called to see how the trip is going?
Isn’t he curious whether I made it through document control? Isn’t he the least bit concerned that I could be wasting away in a prison in Siberia?
I try to make sense of the situation but only become more and more paranoid. Maybe he really did just marry me for documents. Maybe he planned to send me to Siberia where I would have an unfortunate “accident.” Maybe he won’t be there when I return to St. Petersburg. I would have to go back to Canada in shame, everyone reminding me, “I told you so.”
Feelings of dread that something happened to Slava and that my marriage is a sham morph into a creeping anxiety about the trip back to St. Petersburg. Should I go to the airport as the Canadian tourist now known by everyone in town or as mute Nadia? The people who work at the tiny airport must have seen me or heard about me during the week. Maybe this is how Slava planned to get rid of me.
— -
Svetlana says a long, tearful good-bye, insisting we sit for a moment of silence before our departure. As we walk to the airport I get more and more nervous despite Mila’s assurances that the return trip will be easy. I take deep breaths and assume my alternate identity. The airport is full of young men I met during the week, now wearing military uniforms and carrying Kalashnikovs. Still unable to decide if I should look for familiar faces or hide, I keep my head down.
The document check is excruciatingly slow, but I perspire my way through. When we are waved forward, I look through the metal detector to see Ivan standing in a security uniform, legs spread in a broad, menacing stance. Our eyes meet. He is cold and expressionless and I freeze in place. At his nod, Mila walks through nonchalantly and takes a seat in the waiting area by the gate. There is no greeting or acknowledgement. Ivan nods at me, steely-eyed. I look to see if the metal detector is plugged in, hoping that this is all be a formality, a game of pretend. It is plugged in. Ivan nods at me again. Another passenger now standing behind me, I have no choice but to step forward.
I look down at the tiles and walk through, praying for no beep and no call for me to stop. If there is I don’t hear because I just keep going, sit down next to Mila and busy myself with the contents of my purse.
Only when we are in the air do I sense a gentle easing in my shoulders, and the knot in my stomach loosens slightly. But I don’t feel safe until we clear domestic immigration back in St. Petersburg. And even then I tremble with uncertainty, unsure if Slava would be there to greet me.
— -
We had agreed to meet at the baggage claim. I scan the arrival area while waiting for my suitcase. Slava is not there. I collect my bag, but still no Slava. As we walk outside, I can’t feel my legs. I look down at my feet searching for solid ground. My mind is numb, unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that Slava isn’t coming. I want to be furious with him, but instead I am cold and hollow, like an abandoned child.
At the curbside, I raise my eyes to scan the landscape and almost burst into tears. There are Slava’s sparkling eyes, walking towards me, a head above the arriving passenger masses. Within moments his confident strides reach me. He wraps his arms tightly around me, lifts, and twirls me around, saying “I missed you so, so much. My phone was stolen. I couldn’t wait to talk to you again. My dear, dear wife. Don’t go away from me ever again.”
As he puts me down, our lips meet and we reconnect with a slow passionate kiss. For a time I can’t let go, I need to absorb the scent of his skin, the scruffy stubble on his cheeks, his strong arms, and the knowledge that we are together. I repeat over and over to myself, Thank you, thank you, Universe, for having my back. I kiss him everywhere until he pulls me off, laughing that I could miss him so much after just one week.
— —
The adventure and drama behind, I busy myself with research, house cleaning, and cooking. Slava is home by bedtime and beside me in the morning, and I find peace in our renewed connection. We keep the apartment warm and I start lighting scented candles called “serenity” and “a walk in the forest.” In the evenings we drink tea, watch television, and ready side-by-side.
Two weeks after my return I am in the kitchen boiling potatoes and chopping pickles for a Russian potato salad when I hear a phone ring.
“Slava,” I call. “Slava, your phone is ringing.”
When he doesn’t respond, I peek into the other room, but it is empty. The bathroom lights are off, so I go to the window and look for him in the courtyard. The phone stops ringing as I spot Slava sitting on a bench talking on his mobile phone.
Strange. Did I imagine a phone ringing?
The phone starts ringing again. I listen and follow the sound back to the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards trying to find the source. There is one cupboard we have never opened. It is full of towels and linens that belong to the apartment owners and it is the last place I look.
Sitting on the floor, I open the door and the ring instantly gets louder. I push aside a stack of dish towels, reach behind a pile of bath towels and feel something hard and plastic. I close my fingers around a mobile phone and a wave of panic washes over me. The ringing stops just as I hear a key in the door.
“Amber,” Slava calls, shutting the door behind him.
His footsteps advance towards the kitchen.
Frozen in fear, I pull my eyes away from the stack of towels and glance back in Slava’s direction. As his footsteps approach, I turn back to the stack of towels. My hand is shaking as I feel around and locate the phone’s power button. I push it once and hear the phone power down.
Without a sound, my hand lets go and releases the phone. In the next second I extract my arm, push back the towels, close the cupboard door, and stand up to greet Slava just as he enters the room.
“Hello dear,” I reach up to kiss him. “You must be cold. Let’s have some tea,” I offer.
