Disappearing Into the Woodwork

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2010-11-02T08:45:00.002+02:00

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Introduction

2009-11-10T07:19:00.001+02:00

Behind the Iron Curtain

One Woman's Journey to Self-Realization

This is the story of one woman’s life journey, the journey to a deeper understanding of herself, to the dark side of her soul as she dealt with her dependence on alcohol, and back up to the light. The journey brought her to the Soviet Union in 1981, a country still behind the Iron Curtain, where her soul-searching began. The story charts her spiritual journey as she seeks to find the core of her sacred feminine soul.

Behind the Iron Curtain

2009-10-20T10:23:00.007+03:00

Prelude

Every life is a journey along the evolutionary path of the soul. If taken consciously it may lead to a higher level of vibration, an inner awareness and knowing that we are all one, each being a small drop in the universal ocean, separate on one level, but also an integral part of a single whole that moves and acts in unison, each of its parts affecting the entire entity.

This is the story of one woman’s journey at this particular stage in her spiritual evolution. Her Ego is still too large, it needs to be subdued in order to be of true service. She still needs to come to the complete and profound realization that everything is not about her. She is still too self-absorbed and vain. A case in point. She is vain enough to think her story may be of interest to other people. Yet, on the other hand, she felt an immense urge to put her story out there, an urge that could not be denied and motivated her to write it all now and not keep putting it off until some mythical later date.

She has just turned fifty-one and now seems the perfect time to turn inward. She is not completely in the third stage of life yet, she cannot yet call herself a Crone, but she has passed through the Maiden and Mother stages.

The journey has begun.

Chapter One: The Soviet Union

2009-10-20T10:17:00.007+03:00

It was just too bad she had left her heart behind the Iron Curtain. Or perhaps it was not so bad at all, it just meant that things would be very different from now on.

That was in the summer of 1981 after she returned to the States and realized she had left a vital part of herself behind. She intuitively sensed that she would never be the same again, and if she never returned it may tear her apart. But the reality of returning seemed so remote, so unlikely, so impossible. But she was running ahead. First, she needed to go back to February 1981 when she first set foot on Russian soil.

The cold marble sterility of Sheremyetevo airport in Moscow was rather startling. It formed a sort of vacuum, a no-man’s land between where she had come from and where she was going. The smooth shiny gray expanse of the near-empty interior was reminiscent of an ice rink, she felt like running headlong across its pristine expanses, twirling pirouettes around the starkly immobile pillars, sliding and gliding along its polished floors. But she felt the foreboding stare of unseen eyes, stern and hostile, unrelenting and accusing, from somewhere she could not be certain and it sent a tremor of uncertainty that was not entirely unpleasant down her spine.

And then it was over, once beyond the sliding glass doors, huddled into a rather ancient dimly lit bus along with all the other students, and off into the dark wintry streets of the Soviet capital, that sinister scene faded and she saw a very different world. Despite the late hour and the copious February snow, the streets were alive with people in dark coats and hats scurrying along from store to store in the hope of filling their shopping bags with whatever might be available that day. The place was a-boil, like a massive anthill, each dark dot moving purposefully toward a destination unbeknown to anyone but it.

And a wild feeling of unfathomable joy and anticipation filled her. Here she was in a land of bans and prohibitions, a land of mystery locked behind the mythical Iron Curtain, a land with a bad reputation, where chains clanked, prison doors clanged, lack-luster eyes in gray drawn faces gazed forever downward, or so was the idea, but all she felt was an immense sense of liberation and exultation, the wild exhilaration of just having climbed on a roller coaster and feeling like she was in for a breath-taking and gut-churning ride.

The dorm building on ulitsa Volgina.
The dormitory she was to live in was in the south of Moscow, but the institute itself, The Pushkin Russian Language Institute, was in the center of the city, not far from the American Embassy. This meant a forty-five-minute trip every morning on the metro to get to class. And if she wanted to have breakfast at the Intourist Hotel first, where they served a smorgasbord every day for four rubles (an absolute steal), she had to be up and out of the dormitory by seven o’clock. And the smorgasbord was a darn sight better than eating the rather insipid and unappetizing fare offered at the dormitory cafeteria. Also, when she first arrived in Moscow, she was always worried she might not get enough to eat. She was seized by the unfamiliarity of being in a new and strange place where nothing was routine and the same as what she was used to at home. So just to be on the safe side, it was best to fill up in the morning and then if nothing else came along during the day, at least she wouldn’t starve. Of course that all backfired and by the time she left four months later, she had gained so much weight that she could only fit into one pair of cord dungarees that had been ample and baggy when she first arrived. But enough said about that.

For the moment she was thrilled to walk into the Intourist Hotel on many a morning before class, just breeze on in there as though she were the bees knees. Ordinary Russians from the street couldn’t do that, they would be stopped at the door and asked for identification. But she in her otter fur coat, which her mother had so kindly given her before she left (which in turn had been passed on to her mother from her grandmother on her father’s side), was a foreigner for sure, so no one asked her for identification, but waved her graciously on. How elating it was! So on she would breeze into the dining room where the buffet table just groaned with all kinds of Russian delicacies and where she would proceed to fill up for the day. After all, four rubles was nothing for her – a couple of dollars at the official exchange rate and only a dollar at the black market rate. What a bargain!

The Pushkin Russian Language Institute
Classes themselves were a bit of a bore and she did not give them much time or attention. She certainly did not rush back to the dormitory afterwards to get on with homework like most of the rest of her group did, not to mention the Middlebury crowd. They really were a serious bunch! They were the ones with the excellent Russian who even talked to each other in Russian out in the street, on the bus and in the metro, and I think they were even supposed to speak in Russian to each other in the dorms as well. That was the way it was back home in the States at their Middlebury Institute. A really prestigious place known for putting out high-class Russian specialists. She heard that the students had to speak Russian all the time on campus and you could be expelled for slipping into English! She couldn’t believe it! She heard one of them tell the story of how one guy was expelled because he forgot the rules and sang in English while taking a shower. That really cracked her up. Anyway, she was not one of them and learning Russian grammar while poring over textbooks was not the reason she had decided to try out for this program. And it certainly wasn’t the reason she had come to Russia. She wanted to learn Russian from real Russians, explore the city and have fun, not spend the whole time sitting around in the dorm with other boring Americans. Luckily her roommate was of the same mind. So after class, instead of going back home, they would set off exploring.

One of the first places they found was the Café Sever on Gorky Street, the main drag in the center of Moscow. It was an ice-cream and champagne café. That’s right, all they served was ice-cream and champagne. Oh, you might be able to get a bar of chocolate as well, sometimes, or some mineral water. But the big attraction for her was the champagne. Just imagine the luxury of sitting around in the middle of the day drinking champagne, just for the hell of it! And the other thing about most Russian cafes and restaurants was that although they brought you a menu and usually a rather elaborate one with pages and pages of different items, nothing you might want to order was actually available. So it was best just to shut the menu and ask, “What do you have today?” Usually there was one flavor of ice-cream available and one type of champagne, either semi-dry or semi-sweet. She preferred the semi-dry, but would never complain, semi-sweet would do just as well.

If they did not go to the Café Sever, another favorite place was the Ukraine Hotel on the Moscow River. It had a café on each floor. They were never all open at the same time, so you had to ride up and down in the elevator until you found the floor where the café was open at the time you wanted it. That was a trip in itself, riding up and down in the lift and roaming the thick-carpeted silent halls and corridors, looking for an open café. There you could get good cups of strong coffee and order some open-faced sandwich or a pastry. It was in one of these cafes on some floor of the Ukraine Hotel that she met her first Russians…..

She was sitting with her roommate, Lenny, drinking coffee and minding her own business, when two Russians strolled up and asked if they could join them. Well, since it was her aim to meet real Russians and converse with them in real Russian, of course she would not act all prim and proper and tell them to go away. The spokesman, Igor, although a somewhat sleazy-looking character, not very tall, rather skinny, with shaggy dark hair and a mustache, had something sultry and attractive about him. The other, Boris, turned out to be a Pole who was visiting the capital. He was really funny and also had some trouble speaking Russian, which made him immediately lovable and appealing, and he had one phrase he was fond of repeating that kept everyone laughing. Of course, she could not have known it at the time, but Igor was a black-marketeer out looking for a way to hoodwink unsuspecting foreigners into changing dollars into rubles unofficially at a supposedly better exchange rate than the official one. He also speculated in deficit goods. But such concepts were way beyond her innocent naivety at that time and she blithely went along with whatever these new friends offered. Igor had a very annoying way of switching to English though when he started talking figures. He obviously had numbers down pat so he could converse with foreigners who knew no Russian. But his atrocious accent grated on her ears and she kept telling him to speak in Russian. Plus he would snort through his rather beaky nose when he spoke in English. It really put her off!

After sitting for long enough in the café, Igor and Boris suggested they go some place for dinner. She was all for it. This was the beginning, the beginning of a whole new world for her, she always felt so elevated whenever she was wined and dined. In the weeks that followed, she saw many of Moscow’s restaurants and always felt the same excitement. There was never any rush. They would book a table for the whole evening and there was always a live band and dancing. The most important part always seemed to be the appetizers, which of course were accompanied by vodka (for the men) and champagne or wine (for the ladies). But since she was a foreigner, drinking vodka with the men was seen as something amusing and entertaining, rather than something to be scorned. So she would end up having both, vodka and champagne, and loving the sense of emancipation that came with the alcohol. Her natural shyness would disappear, the alcohol would loosen her tongue and rid her of her awkwardness about speaking Russian and her desire to only open her mouth if she knew she could get the sentence out without making a mistake. She would transform into a young woman of abandon and allure, she felt as though the world were at her fingertips, she was unabashed and courageous. She was no longer the goody two shoes who always did her homework and got good grades, who always obeyed her parents and tried to please, who was afraid to say boo to a goose or cross-talk anyone. Here in this new and strange land, away from her family and everyone who knew her, she was a queen. She was free to be someone else, free to let loose the passions she felt in her soul, free to laugh, dance, get drunk, talk to strangers, allow unknown and beguiling men to escort her around restaurants. And she also had the advantage of being better dressed that most of the other Russian women. Not that dressing fancily was something she bothered about, she did not try to keep up with the latest fashions or dress like a femme fatale. But there was definitely a difference between her clothes and the clothes of the Russian women. And she could see them looking at her and wondering with envy in their eyes.

One time a while later, when she had been in Moscow for a couple of months and the weather had already become spring-like, she was out and about on Gorky Street without a coat, wearing a deep pink velveteen jump suit her mother had given to her for her birthday before she left. Unbeknown to herself, she had been spotted and was being watched. And then she was followed home. She was very surprised when a short while after arriving back in her room, there was a knock at the door. She opened to see an attractive young Russian woman (how she had wheedled her way past the concierge on the first floor at the front door was a mystery—she was experienced obviously) smiling in her face and asking to come in. She explained that she had seen Ellie on Gorky Street in her jump suit and immediately knew she was a foreigner and had followed her back to the dorm. She wanted that jump suit and did she have anything else she would like to part with? Ellie went through her wardrobe and showed the visitor a few things, she was delighted and took them in exchange for a couple of jars of black caviar. Ellie naively agreed, she just could not refuse, and she thought the caviar would make a nice gift for someone back home. Genuine Russian caviar was a deficit commodity which was not readily available in the shops, it could only be found in certain restaurants for the elite. So she thought she was getting a good deal, and the young woman was obviously so thrilled with the jump suit that even the fact it had been a birthday present did not dissuade her from going along with her and accepting the caviar in exchange. But she failed to notice that the caviar was in jars that were not sealed properly, looked more gray than black, and once safely home proved to be far past the prime of freshness. She had to throw it out.

But back to the restaurant.
She caressed the stem of the vodka glass in her fingers and watched how the light played provocatively on the gold band painted around the rim of the glass. These glasses with their gold bands were to become a talisman for her. There was caviar and soft rolls with creamy butter. A delicious mushroom concoction in a small silver crucible topped with melted cheese. Different salads with sauerkraut, potatoes and vegetables dressed in sauce. And she looked across at the dark strange man opposite her, her eyes aglow with mischief and desire, a mysterious smile playing on her lips. And he seemed enraptured. She loved how when clinking glasses before drinking she was told to look into the eyes of the person she was clinking with. Eyes would lock in a sort of secret pact and the vodka would go down in a fiery lick, at first searing her throat, but then filling her belly with a warm and incredible feeling of pure joy.

The appetizer course and drinking vodka, accompanied by various toasts, would go on for a couple of hours, interspersed by trips to the dance floor. By the time the second course, or main dish of the evening, was served, no one could give a damn. No one was hungry any more, although it seemed people ate. But she could never be sure any more. She would be floating somewhere in a different world.

That first time though, after she and Lenny, her roommate, had been wooed and won over by Igor and Boris, they went to a floating restaurant on the Moscow River in the style of a steamship. There were small and rather cramped rooms inside, not particularly fancy or inviting, and then places out on the deck where people went to smoke and take the air after the stuffy interior. She did not smoke but she liked the smell of tobacco and found a man who smoked very attractive. Men who didn’t smoke were not real men in her book. And smoking breaks were always frequent and lingering, making the evening stretch on endlessly, so she was happy to stand by and watch while the men smoked. And she could look at the way the light reflected on the water and again feel that heady dizziness from just being there, it was all so intoxicating.

After the restaurant, Igor invited them home, to the apartment where he lived with his parents. What transpired makes it hard to understand why he did this. Why did he invite foreigners to his apartment when it was taboo? She had very dim memories of how they actually ended up at his home. But she remembered that the drinking continued and there were also some joints passed around. All caution was thrown to the wind so it seemed. The joviality continued until Igor’s father came home and, after realizing who his guests were, summoned his son for an explanation. Igor was gone for quite a while and came back ashen-faced. His father, he explained, was some bigwig in the Communist party who held some high executive post, and he had ordered the foreigners off the premises immediately. She was confused and deflated. But surely he knew the danger, why had he so deliberately gone against the rules? The upshot was even worse, but she only found out about that several weeks later. Igor himself had been thrown out of his apartment by his father for his disobedience, he was forced to find himself another place to stay, which was not easy in those days. She could not believe the trouble they had caused. And it was then that she realized she was in over her head. This was no place to take lightly, no place to breeze around without a thought to the consequences, this was a dark and sinister place with its own laws and its own rules, rules that were totally incomprehensible to a foreigner, someone who was not born and raised there.

They had been given a prep talk by their group leaders the day after they arrived. A set of instructions, do’s and don’ts. Mainly don’ts. Like don’t go straight to any of your Russian friends from the American embassy. Don’t call any of your Russian friends from the phones in the dormitory or institute. The message was clear. Foreigners seen leaving the embassies were tailed, phones at places where foreigners lived and studied were bugged, conversations were listened in to. And there were black Volgas outside all the main hotels and inconspicuous men in gray suits. They all sort of blended into the background, but they were there, and the feeling of being watched was sometimes palpable.

But that did not stop her, she still paradoxically felt that sense of liberation and freedom, as though some inner door in her soul had opened and she was free to fly to the heights she always dreamed of.

Vladimir on the Golden Ring - Shrovetide celebration
What was so alluring about the place? She just felt something awesome there right down to the marrow of her bones, in every fiber of her being. About a month into the semester, all the groups of foreign students studying at the institute went on a bus trip to Vladimir and Sudzal, two beautiful towns rich in history and culture on what is known in Russia as the Golden Ring. On the bus, she sat next to the leader of the Middlebury group. He was a Brit like herself who had lived for a long time in the States. So she felt a bond with him, both of them being ex-pats. He seemed to like her too and was very happy to sit with her and answer her questions. The main question that burned inside her was this. Did he know of any Westerners who voluntarily came to live in the Soviet Union? And not just come a live for a while because of their job or some other work, but who voluntarily chose to spend the rest of their lives there, who fell in love with the place and wanted to stay there forever. Yes, he had heard of such cases, he answered. “But most of those people seem to disappear into the woodwork,” said he. The image of a wooden house out in the country immediately arose in her mind. She could see the beams, the solid roof, the porch, the trees around it, the smoke curling from the chimney. Yes, that image satisfied her, it filled her with a wild yearning, almost sadness. Would she ever be able to fulfill that dream? So even then, even before what happened indeed happened, she was thinking about how she wanted to come and live in Russia forever.

Lake Baikal
Igor added to her cherished thoughts when he told her about Lake Baikal with its water that was so clear you could always see the bottom. An image of sparkling pure water came to mind, rippling in the sun, and through it multicolored rocks and shells, a sandy bottom aglow through the amazingly clean water. Yes, one day she would look at the bottom of that lake through that glistening water.

The Pushkin Monument
Although her relationship with Igor had shaken her up as much as filled her with pleasant surprises and memories, she continued to see him. Even after all the unpleasantness with his father. One evening in mid-March, after she had been in Moscow for six weeks, she was to meet him in the vestibule of the Pushkin metro station. She arrived on time, he was waiting for her, as were a couple of other friends. They stood and chatted for a while, but no one seemed in a rush to move on, what were they waiting for? A lively fellow with a curly blond afro, lisp, and short fur coat made of artificial leopard skin kept them entertained. Alyosha, as he was called, was particularly interested in her and told her they were waiting for another friend of his. About ten or fifteen minutes later, he appeared, she first saw him as he materialized, head, shoulders, followed by slender jean-clad hips and legs, up the escalator. He had the most striking blue eyes she had ever seen. She was mesmerized. She felt instantly drawn to him, and a spark of recognition seemed to register between them. But he was also so alien and reticent. There was a reluctance about him, as though he wished he were somewhere else. So this was the foreigner he had been dragged out of his sick bed to meet. (He told her years later that the last thing he had wanted to do that evening was go out to a restaurant with someone he hardly knew and did not particularly like, Igor that was—they only had a nodding, very superfluous acquaintance—and some foreigner. He had a fever and was up to his eyes in work, he would have much rather stayed at home. But Alyosha had been so insistent, he had finally succumbed to his pestering.) He also told her later that evening that he would have known she was a foreigner anyway, since it was not normally in the way of Russians to smile so much or have such white teeth. And she was wearing her grandmother’s otter fur coat and a wolf fur hat. Igor had been generous enough to give her a wolf fur hat, since she had found a buyer for one of his fox fur hats. He speculated in fur hats, but he had given her one for free. How proud she was of it. Although it was not a lady’s hat, it was the kind of hat men wore, but she didn’t care – it was beautiful, thick and abundant, and it suited her down to a tee.

After the introductions (his name was Ivan) and in a swoon from her love-at-first-sight experience, their small group set off in search of the evening’s adventures. She remembered huddling into the back seat of a taxi, she in the middle, squeezed between Igor and Ivan. All she was aware of was how close Ivan was, she could feel his taut thigh pressed up against hers. She could not have cared less at that moment if Igor dropped off the edge of the earth, she could not think about him any more, she no longer cared. The first stop was a beriozka shop near the Rossiya Hotel. Beriozkas were the state-run shops that only foreigners with hard currency had access to and where items were sold, particularly in the supermarket department, that ordinary Russians may have never seen their entire lives. Of course, Russians with hard currency could shop there if they took the risk. But it was hard to camouflage the fact they were Russian and being in possession of hard currency could get you a turn in prison, so it was a great risk indeed for a Russian to venture into a beriozka shop. One of the attractions was the abundance of fresh fruit, pineapples being particularly popular. Most of her other student friends would buy pineapples from the beriozkas whenever they went visiting their Russian friends. But the reason she was going to the beriozka was for booze, Amaretto (the nectar of love, as Ivan later told her), and Camel cigarettes. Alyosha also asked her to buy him cigarettes, he wanted More, he was fascinated by their length, slimness, and color. Nothing at all like any of the cigarettes available to the ordinary Russian. He just doted on her because she would buy him those cigarettes. That evening she was happy to please and again that thrill of excitement hummed through her veins as she felt the delicious unfamiliarity of all that was going on around her. Later she would feel ashamed that she had the privilege of buying things that ordinary Russians had never seen in a month of Sundays never mind have the money to purchase. What made her so privileged? Just because she had had the luck to be born in the south of England and then lived for years in the United States, just because she was from the West and did not live under communism? Once, when she left one of the beriozkas, then called Sadko, laden down with plastic bags bearing the Sadko emblem, which stuck out like a sore thumb, she was so overcome by the injustice of it all that she swore she would never go back there and buy anything else ever again. Especially when she saw Russians coming out of the local supermarket just a few doors down the street with their string shopping bags holding a few rather dismal-looking gray-wrapped packages. She went in just to have a look. Yes, there was some cheese and butter, tins of sardines, and bottles of mineral water, but not much else. She had just come out of a place almost right next door, but with blank windows and no sign on the door, ordinary Russians were none the wiser, they did not know what lay behind those white painted windows, where the shelves were groaning with almost every delicacy under the sun. It was just so unfair.

Kalinin Prospekt
But for the moment, squeezed back between her two beaus after stocking up with Western goodies, she was far from such thoughts. They were soon racing off through the Moscow streets for yet another evening of merriment and wonder. The restaurant was called Oktyabr on Kalinin Prospekt. She often caught Ivan watching her, eyeing her appreciatively, although he did not say much and seemed rather shy. But after they were seated and the vodka drinking began, he seemed to relax and sometimes tried to talk to her. Her Russian was pretty abysmal and she couldn’t really keep a conversation going, but the vodka again loosened her tongue and put a sparkle in her eyes, so talking did not seem that important. Later she found out that he had been reticent because she was supposedly with Igor, and he didn’t feel comfortable chatting her up in the presence of a rival. What to her surprise though when suddenly the band announced that the next song was for “Our guest from sunny Texas” and began playing Hey Jude by the Beatles. Ivan said he had ordered it especially for her and invited her to dance. Before she was able to accept though Igor grabbed her hand and led her to the dance floor. No! This was not what she wanted! Ivan had ordered the song for her, he was the one she wanted to dance with. She was devastated. That sneak, Igor, he was just as slimy in manner as he was in looks. She was put off him forever. She did manage to dance with Ivan later though, the band played the song again, and they slow danced to it. He was so awkward, she could tell he was not used to dancing with a partner.

By the end of the evening, she knew she had to see him again. They ended up going to someone’s apartment, he wanted her to spend the night, it all seemed like a dream, as though she was in a fog and had no clue what was going on. It was as though she were looking at everyone from the inside of a fish bowl, everyone was talking, mouthing words, laughing, drinking, but she could not hear or understand a thing. She just nodded and smiled, let them do with her what they wanted, drive her here, drive her there. She did not stay the night, Igor insisted on taking her home, but instead she ended up in a taxi with Ivan and Alyosha, traipsing off to the other end of Moscow where they lived. She had no idea at that time that her dormitory was right across the road from the apartment they had visited after the restaurant. This was Irida’s place, she was an older woman and obviously used to having all kinds of guests drop by at any time of the night or day. That’s why everyone came to see her, because her door was always open and vodka was always available, along with talk and merriment. She was an old friend of Ivan’s from way back. Ivan always came to see her when he was partying. But that night Ellie did not know she could have been back in her dorm room in ten minutes. She hadn’t the foggiest idea where she was, she just let herself be led. So she traveled home in a taxi with Ivan and then the taxi driver brought her back to the dorm. But the next morning she discovered that her wallet was missing, she had left it in the taxi along with one of her gloves, which had dropped to the floor when Ivan removed it to kiss her hand in parting.

She had Alyosha’s phone number. She called the next day, and yes, she had left her wallet and he wanted to return it, rather Ivan did. So a date was set up to meet again.

She was so sensitive and impressionable. She often likened herself to a chameleon that changed its colors to suit the situation and the environment. She could quickly change from one passion to another. What was vitally important and drove her entire being onward one day seemed insipid and insignificant the next when some new and more enticing or challenging thoughts filled her mind. So it was now. She recalled leaving the States.

She wrote in her diary on Friday, 31 January, 1981: “Boarded Eastern flight to Philadelphia. Left Mum and Dad waving in the lobby, saying goodbye was as meaningless as ever. I am suddenly alone, taking responsibility for myself for the next four months. An outer calm hides the turmoil inside, even from myself. This is the person I shall care for, cherish and look out for in the months ahead, and return loving more deeply. I will manage. I love Jason, and this, with the knowledge of his love for me, will sustain me.”

Yes, Jason. Their relationship had only just started to bud, but she felt very sustained by the new love she felt. Another diary entry of 6 February, 1981, written in recollection after they had already parted. “It started in the early hours of an October morning. While others slept, the stirrings of a new feeling awoke in her, and the petals of her heart unfolded. In the hazy dark before a wooden cottage, their lips met, and for the first time after ages of wanting they held each other in an embrace. In the sleepy warmth, after dimmed lights, too much wine and too much talk, they held each other under her thick quilt, in the brown coziness of her little house. She was thrilled, he was so gentle. She felt like a princess, he her knight. Many nights after that, when the budding rose, moist with dew, slowly opened within her, she thought of him as her knight, or her Greek sculpted sylph. Whether or not it was his chivalry, or his slender, almost delicate frame which reminded her of something formed from marble, or something deeper, something from his essence, his creativity, which turned her thoughts to the great thinkers of ancient history, with their fine hands sculpting fine forms, or their minds forming rare and beautiful thoughts that attracted her, she did not know. Whichever thoughts were the most appropriate, her man was a marvel; an exquisite combination of both the fine, white, knightly sculpted figure and the deep and creative mind. She loved his world of books. The way a book could come alive for him and work positively in his life, shaping his goals and desires. She longed to share his secret world of words and language, the world that made him the person he was, the person she admired, adored, and loved. This world had an enticing aura, one of mystery, enlightenment, unpredictability, and excitement. She felt that his life and world of books was something worth sharing, something that would never fall into a rut, something to invest some time and energy into, something to spend some heartache, worry, tears, pain, love, warmth, feelings, emotions, happiness, sadness, joy, and triumph on. It was unsure yet noble, weak yet strong, and it was what she wanted. It appealed to her sense of adventure and excitement, the lure that distance places had for her, a step towards the fulfillment of ideals which were still clouded and far away. Yet she could not lose track of her own identity, her own reason for living. But she loved him, and it scared her, it made her think about what she really wanted, and her heart was still full of tension and unresolved questions. Difficulties lay ahead of that she was sure, but loving him could never be wrong, it only made her happy, made her feel like a princess in the arms of her knight.”

So with this uppermost in her mind after leaving the States, all the greater was her confusion and inner turmoil when she found herself in Moscow chasing after another man, yearning for his attention, and seeking out a new meeting with him. There was so much contradiction and turmoil in her soul aroused by this wild and unfathomable country. She was filled with an unutterable recklessness, ready to do things she never dreamed of or thought she was capable of before. What a paradox, in a place where her guard should have been up, where there were so many shady places, so much she did not understand, so many invisible barriers, she felt like throwing all caution to the wind and just gallivanting on, heedless of everything. And although she felt even then somewhere deep in her soul that this was her home, that this was where she wanted to be for the rest of her life, the likelihood of it ever coming to pass was so remote it did not even bear thinking about. So again the recklessness and dare-devil intrepidity gushed to the surface, if she was only there for four months and would never be back again, she had to go to the hilt, squeeze every last drop of adventure and excitement out of this experience while she was in it, for she would never have the chance again. And she just could not get over the feeling of empowerment she felt. Never before had she felt such confidence in herself. The language was a barrier, there was no doubt about that, she felt inhibited and wished she could talk like most of the other students around her with their better schooling and more intensive language courses. Her Russian courses had not prepared for such in-depth and impressive command of the language. The only thing her two years of study in England had given her was knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet. But she had managed to pass the O Level. Once in university in Texas, she started again from scratch. But her first professor, a Stalinist labor camp survivor who had miraculously escaped being executed by a firing squad and fled the country, had very different ideas about how to teach Russian. No grammar rules, said he, just listen to how I talk and you will know instinctively the right endings and verb conjugations. All well and good if you are living in the country and conversing every day. That’s how a child learns, by listening, absorbing, and repeating. But it hardly served well in this situation and as a result she never learned the basics of Russian grammar, never laid a solid foundation for future use. And she never had any speaking practice either. Until now. So she felt unsure of herself, especially when around the other students and during classes at the institute. She would cower in the back row hoping never to be called upon to answer questions. But once out on her own with her new Russian acquaintances, she felt wings of power unfold again. Her clumsy Russian was not a hindrance, rather Russians found her quite charming, and after a few shots of vodka, she didn’t care any more and would rattle on as much as she wanted. Often about taboo subjects like the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. What she actually said she could never recall the next day, but after that particular conversation about Afghanistan, Ivan gave her a book that laid out the Russian version of the whole situation. She never really understood it all until years later, so brainwashed was she by the West’s version. Now though, she felt empowered, empowered to talk about things she had no inkling of understanding about when her tongue was loosened by vodka. And her Russian friends only found her attempts to wax political amusing. “Kak ty govorish!” they would say with a twinkle in their eyes. But she could talk. There was no doubt it was within her capacity and so she soared on the crest of a mighty wave.

Most of the serious talk went on while they were drinking. She would accept everything that was offered her – champagne, wine from the light Georgian and Moldavian varieties to the heavy port, beer, and of course vodka. Her heart soared when she sat at the table surrounded by her friends and kept pace with the men, being clapped on the back and encouraged, told that she was “nash chelovek,” that is, “one of us.” Not a foreigner with different morals, customs, and traditions, but with a Russian soul, just like them. She felt an immense sense of belonging.

However, the drinking sometimes got to her. She found she became intoxicated very quickly, especially if she drank vodka, and often she would wake the next morning with no recollection of what she had done or said the latter part of the evening. She would remember how it all started, the joviality, the laughing, toasts, jokes, general merriment and mirth, but at some point things would get hazy, she would see and feel from a distance, as though she were watching it all from behind a glass, she was not really there. And then there would be blackouts. She knew she continued to function at these times, that is, she never passed out physically, but her mind was out, she had no further memory of what was said or done. She remembered asking Ivan about this, was it normal? He assured her it was, it happened to everyone, it was just the brain’s way of taking a rest, dealing with overdrive. So it was nothing to worry about. It did not put her on the alert, it did not caution her or warn her that perhaps she should just quit drinking. She enjoyed it too much. She enjoyed the liberation and unshackled feeling it gave her, the sense of belonging, the feeling of having the world at her fingertips. The drinking never made her physically sick, her mind would just go blank at some point, but that was apparently just a defense reaction, her brain’s protective mechanism kicking in, it was okay.

However, much of the way Russians drank appalled her. She still seemed to be able to stop at some point when she felt she’d had enough. Or she would just have to go to bed and sleep. Sometimes she would ask Lucy, the student who had been appointed head of their group, to make an excuse for her not showing up to class, say that she was sick.

There was a time at the dormitory when all the students decided to hold a big party for all the different groups of English students. She ended up drinking more than she should have and after being invited to continue partying with some of the Brits the next thing she remembered was waking up the next morning in her own bed fully clothed and with some cassette tape lying by her pillow, one she had lent the Brits the day before. She had no recollection of how she got there. Her roommate told her later that she had noticed her standing in the kitchen in a catatonic state, but she did not recall what she had done after that and how she got back to the room. Probably on zombie auto pilot. But still this triggered no warning signals, nor did it give her the slightest inkling that perhaps it was time to stop drinking so much.

The Kosmos hotel - a favorite hangout
She loved to walk the city streets in the snow and sit in the parks at dusk reflecting and soaking up the wonder of it all. One such evening in March, when the snow was still thick on the ground, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon, she walked in Gorky Park and sat for a while on one of benches. The dusky pink sun as it set that evening mirrored her heart, that mystery, that deep hushed silence, the pink quiet, she was completely content just sitting and watching, drinking in the calm and feeling a quiet joy in just being alive. What had happened since she came here was hard to explain. Very subtly, but very definitely, things had changed, she had changed, her outlook on life had changed. Life had become more complex, yet clearer and simpler. She felt she was beginning to grasp, experience, and understand feelings and ideas that were before just vague dreams, distant and unrealized. Life seemed to take on purpose and focus. She felt as though her destiny was beginning to take shape before her eyes, that she was becoming aware of who she really was and what she wanted out of life. A strong feeling of herself arose within her, she felt that no matter what happened, where she went, what she did, she was herself, true to her own purpose, aware of what was dear to her, what made her tick, what made her heart beat, what was important to her, what made her aware. All the superfluous things in life were falling away and she was looking into a crystal clear pool where she could see her reflection in all its reality. She was a worthwhile being. Looking back now, thirty years down the road, she was amazed at the insight of her young 23-year-old self. She was in the same place now, but she had not stood still, to get to where she was now she had had to go through hell, lose herself in the suffocating clutches of alcohol, take a discomfiting and often searing trip to the dark side of her soul, before she was truly able to regain herself, her worth, and her power. Sitting there on the park bench in 1981, she could not have known all this, she could not have known the journey she was about to embark on, could not have known how these four months were to awaken all the putrid, horrific, unthinkable deep and dark sides of her along with the bright, love-filled, beaming sides. She could not have known that she would take a journey to hell and back before finally finding that calm shore with its clear water for which she so yearned. Her insight back then was incredible though.

She wrote in her diary at that time: “Nothing will come without tears and pain, yet it will all be worthwhile, and I will look into the water that is so clean you can see the bottom and hear the solitary birds cry over the dusky pink marshes at sunset and feel the peace, contentment, and breath of life as it fills and elevates me. I will have my life of feelings, emotions, impressions, inexplicable joy and devastating pain. I will feel the warm dusk envelop me, see the last rose fade and the twinkling lights of the evening appear, see the reflections, the beads of life, the sweet breath, hear the sigh of peace and fulfillment and cry these tears.”

But there was such a contrast. She could also see the other side. Despite the calm and content in her soul, the outside the world, the harsh reality of Soviet life, often bore unpleasantly down on her. She saw a demeaning and denigrating way of life, she saw how the individual was downtrodden, humiliated, and despised, what little worth human values had against the cold gray unfeeling mechanical Soviet machinery. Yet she also understood that it was only a façade. That is was artificial and therefore destructible, it could never really crush or beat down the true hope and love that could be nurtured in the heart if people so desired. There was nothing “out there” that could defeat what was “in here” if what was “in here” came from a courageous and willing heart. So the outward rigors and deprivations of Soviet life did not faze her, she saw them as surmountable hurdles, not vast stone walls or iron hurdles that could not be brought down. The Iron Curtain was only an illusion after all. A figment of the imagination built to create the semblance of estrangement and alienation, separating men from men, women from women, women and men from each other. In actual fact it did not exist, it did not exist inside, it did not stop her from pursuing her dream of carving out a life for herself here, “behind” it.

So she continued to see Ivan. She was the initiator though and insisted on meeting with him again. She wanted her wallet back. She arranged a meeting through Alyosha and arrived outside the apartment building where Ivan lived the next day in a taxi. As Ivan told her many years later, he was sick, in bed with a high temperature, that had become even worse since the day before. So when she arrived in the taxi and wanted to see him, it was the last thing that HE wanted. But the wallet had to be returned and he had to explain that he had used some of her money to pay the taxi driver the night before, so he was now in her debt. And in spite of everything, he was obviously intrigued by her and willing, regardless of his fever, to sweep her off again into Moscow’s snowy streets. She had little memory of what happened that day. They must have gone somewhere and been drinking again. She only remembered going into some apartment building in the center, one of the old buildings with a wide stone staircase leading from floor to floor and the ancient type of cage lift. Halfway between each floor was a window with a broad windowsill spacious enough to lie down on. She remembered sitting on one them with Ivan standing in front of her, pressed against her in her avid embrace as she kissed the living daylights out of him. The friends they were with surreptitiously moved up a floor higher to leave them to enjoy their intimacy in peace. Later she ran and laughed through the snowy streets, rolling in the banks of snow piled up at the sides where pathways had been cleared for walking. She was wildly in love with Moscow, in love with life, and, it seemed, in love with Ivan. She lost her makeup purse in one of those snow drifts that night and was unable to buy any more. Cosmetics were hard to come by in Moscow those days, she did not recall every looking for or seeing any in the stores. Her roommate gave her some blush and she used it as eye-shadow, thinking it better than going without any makeup at all, she felt naked and unattractive without it. But Ivan did not appreciate the way she looked in it, he would only chide her and tell her that her eyes were all red again. He thought it was from drinking too much.

She loved being with him though. Mainly because he was so undemanding and not overbearing like most of the other Russian men she had met. Igor could get very overbearing, inundating her with questions, making plans for things to see and do, wanting to fill her time with all kinds of entertainment. She found it all too much at times. But Ivan was different. He was quiet and gentle, it seemed. He did not ask her too much, but often told her all kinds of interesting stories, historical facts, he wanted to share his country and people with her. And she knew so little! He was not too demonstrative with his feelings though, never bought her flowers or presents when they met, only once she remembered, he picked her a bunch of lilacs, when the bushes bloomed in May, along with other greenery and blossoms growing in the yards. He spoke to her of nature, of how he enjoyed fishing and mushroom picking, he shared those parts of himself that she found she understood and could share with him. Although there was a lot she did not understand, she felt a kinship with him, she felt comfortable with him on some deep, soul level.

Then there were the times he totally repulsed her and she wanted to run from him as far as possible. He would often drink too much and then something would change. He became a different person. She saw this graphically over the May Day holidays. She spent those days with him and saw a very different person after he had been drinking for two days straight. She remembered being at the apartment of one of his friend’s ex-wives. The woman was rather bitter and obviously envious of these Western girls who had come to visit. Her eyes showed a malice and coldness. But they drank and sang Beatles songs at the piano. She felt happy and gay. But Ivan became morose, clingy, demanding, he talked of his gray existence, his hard life, how the Soviet system pressed down on him and crushed his freedom, so he had to find his own escape through vodka. She could not fix that for him, it was not her fault that he had been born here and she there, she could not wave a magic wand and make everything right for him. He seemed like a lost child looking for his mother at such times, she wanted to shake him and tell him to grow up. Pouring vodka down his throat was not the answer. He talked of suicide and she felt a wall rise between them. She refused to mother him and treat him as a child. She could not stand to see him so downtrodden. The penetrating blue eyes that so thrilled her at times became lackluster and alien.

There were also times when she was totally disillusioned and felt she never wanted to see him again. He became unpredictable. They would make plans to meet, but he would not show up, and she would not know if and when they would meet again. So she found other ways to entertain herself.

Neskuchny Sad
One of the group, perhaps it was her roommate Lenny, discovered the Uncle Sam’s bar at the American Embassy. Lenny even started going out with one of the marines there. In those days, entry into the American embassy was uncomplicated and unhindered, all you had to do was wave your Western passport in the dour face of the guard on duty and you were in. It was a little Western haven in the outside alien Soviet world. You could get regular American fare in the café—hamburgers, French fries, hotdogs, Coca Cola—and the marines were all great fun and friendly, eager to meet other girls they could talk to in their own language. Then there were discos on Friday nights, so their whole student gang (the ones who did not have their noses endlessly stuck in books in the dorm) became frequent visitors. One evening a couple of the marines invited her and Lenny to go in one of the embassy cars for a ride around Moscow. What a thrill! They all piled in and took off through Moscow’s wide empty nighttime streets, some rousing Western music playing as they went, one of the marines had a cassette player with him. They stopped at Neskuchny Sad, a park by the Kremlin walls on the Moskva River. They were gay and noisy. They got out, leaving the Russian chauffeur in the car to wait for them, while they went off to explore. What laughter and joviality. They were acting with an abandon uncommon even among young people in those Soviet times. Young people did not hang out in the streets after dark, especially not drinking and smoking, nor were they loud and uninhibited. Unbeknown to them, however, they had drawn attention to themselves. How long they had been gallivanting, she did not know, before someone, one of them, saw a strange sight. Perhaps she had seen it first. She recalled moving off with Lenny in search of a place to take a pee and when she turned, there she saw it. Silhouetted against the night sky, which was lightened from the street illuminations, she could see the dark shapes of official caps, all in a row, their flat tops almost in a perfect straight line, and they were moving closer. Stealthily but surely, a ring of unknown and almost unseen Soviet officials (the KGB?) was closing in on them. The warning signal was given and they all ran pell mell back to the waiting car, tumbling in and telling the driver to drive away as quickly as possible. She could only hazard a guess at what might have happened had they been caught. Perhaps they were just curious and nothing would have happened, but better safe than sorry. Whew, a close call was all she could think.

A few days before she was due to leave, she and Ivan went to a dog show and then walked in the woods, she was in awe of their beauty. She loved the birch tree groves, the way the slender, silver trunks stretched skyward, so exquisitely pale and alluring. Later she thought of a silver birch grove as her temple, it was the place she felt most in contact with her inner spirit, with the Source of all that connected her to the rest of the universe. She and Ivan had not seen each other for a while and a bashful silence would fall between them, as though they were uncomfortable in each other’s presence and wished to be alone, but then the communion would return as they looked again into each other eyes and he pulled her close and hugged her. The woods were warm and moist, the birch trees so tender and lovely as they walked in the lush green. She felt as though she could have wandered there forever, sleeping in the long cool grass, admiring the pretty wild flowers, the pale birch tree bark, and the abundant foliage, smelling the scent of the woods and feasting on nature.

She spent the evening with Ivan, Irida and Alek. She and Ivan walked arm in arm in the scented evening air, everything so green and beautiful. She wrote in her diary later: “It had just rained, the sun was setting, the sky aglow, the rain clouds dispersing in the soft, pink hazy light. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of burning orange through the trees, the tops of the old, heavy stone, beautiful buildings were picked out in detail by the sinking sun. In the park the air was fresh and washed clean by the rain, full of the scent of apple blossom, lilac, damp grass, and earth; the scent hanging in the still evening air, full of the promise of warm summer languid days still to come, still more refreshing rain storms and beautiful, peaceful, long Moscow evenings such as these.” Another fragment from her diary after they were back at Irida’s: “Ivan was so attentive, so gentle, we laughed a lot, drank, ate good soup and healthy greens. We sat in the kitchen, as Ivan prepared the food, Alek was so entertaining, I love these people, it will be so sad to leave. Ivan wants me to stay and make a baby.”

There had been no vodka the last time she saw him, which was probably just as well. The tears he searched her eyes for were not there. They may have been welling somewhere far enough below the surface, but there was nothing to trigger them and make them flow. She kept them well hidden and realized the futility of indulging in harrowing farewells. He told her he didn’t want her to leave, that he would miss her. But both of them knew the impossibility of their being together, that she was to go back to her other world from where she was unlikely to return. Of all the places in the world to leave, this was one to which she had the least likelihood of ever returning. So he told her he loved her as a friend, implying that loving her as a woman was taboo, it could not be, there was no point in dreaming. She promised to return, she promised to write, but would she be able to come back? Did they have a future? This was something she, neither of them, could know.

Later on the plane home, she thought about how she could never explain to the ones she loved, her parents, her fiancé waiting for her, the connection she had made with the people there in Moscow. The kindred bond she felt with Ivan, a man of alien blood, upbringing, views, culture, and thoughts, was beyond description, beyond words. How could she now look Jason square in the eyes, how could she face him, she did not even know if she wanted to see him, she did not know how she would react. He had written to her almost every day for the four months she had been gone. Endearing notes filled with the daily happenings and his love for her. There had been times during this whirlwind semester when she had yearned for him so badly, missed his solidity, his familiarity, his rock-strong permanency, longed for him to whisk her up and away from all this madness, all this crazy frivolity, all this confusion, uncertainty, incredible incomprehension. He had been busy applying to grad schools for her while she was gone. He loved her, he was dependable, he didn’t drink vodka, he didn’t disappear with no explanation, he didn’t say he would be gone for an hour but not show up until the next day with no apologies, no nothing. Like that was the way people normally behaved, it was normal and nothing to get in a tizz about. But now she did not know how she would respond. Would she want to rush to him with open arms, or would she want to push him away, repulse him? She was not sure she could face the intensity of him. And she knew it would be intense. She needed time to adjust, get used to the fact she had parted with Ivan forever, get used to knowing that it had been lovely while it lasted, but now it was time to get back on with real life. She was emerging from a dream. It was as though she had been in a fantastical world conjured up by her imagination and now she was waking up. That world was dissipating like a fog, the wisps slowly turning into nothing as they evaporated in the morning sun. It had all been an illusion, but she needed time to recover. She needed time to catch her breath after her rollicking roller coaster ride, a ride that had turned the world as she previously knew it upside down. She was leaving her heart behind the Iron Curtain and things were never going to be the same again.

Chapter Two: Back in the U.S.A.

2009-10-20T10:05:00.004+03:00

Arriving in New York was one of the most unpleasant experiences she had ever had. She was exhausted and felt frumpy and overweight in her gray corduroy dungarees, which her Russian friends had told her looked like “work clothes” – rabochaya odezhda. Not a compliment, that was for sure. And on top of everything else, because she had a British passport, she could not go through the U.S. citizen gate with all her student friends, but had to go with the non-citizens and other “aliens.” She used to laugh at that choice of word. When she later got her Green Card it described her as a “Resident Alien” – as though she had arrived from another planet! Well actually that was not so far from the truth. But now she was faced with a long wait and an even more unpleasant surprise. While in Moscow she had had to get her visitor visa extended. So now she had a large colorful stamp in her passport from the American Embassy in Moscow. The American customs people did not like the look of it, very suspicious they thought that someone had had their visa extended in Moscow, the Soviet Union. She was removed from the line and taken off to a room and told to wait. She was to be questioned. How humiliating! How absolutely awful! Here she was returning from a land of bans and prohibitions, a land of non-freedom, a land where human dignity was so frequently trampled, to the Land of Liberty and Democracy. Didn’t the Statue of Liberty stand in the harbor at the gateway to the United States of America, the Land of the Free? So why was she being interrogated as though she were a common spy or some second-class citizen? Okay, it was a formality and she did not have an American passport, but surely this was the free world, this was the West, where was the dignity? She was crushed, she was devastated, she did not belong here either. This was not her home. Was she forever doomed to roam the earth in search of a place she felt accepted and welcome? A place she could call home? It would be years before she realized that her real home could only be within. That sacred place she would later know and recognize as her spiritual home, the place she connected with her Source, the Source of all that is. But for now, faced with this humiliating situation, she managed to give satisfying answers to the officials’ questions and a couple of hours later was released into the lobby where her anxious parents were waiting. All the other passengers on the flight from Moscow had long passed through, she was the last to emerge and her parents were getting very worried. She rushed toward them, flinging herself into their waiting embrace, the dam of unshed tears that had long been building inside her finally bursting and gushing to the surface.

Her parents stayed in New York, they were there on some business, so she was free to fly on home to San Antonio on her own where Jason would be waiting. She was excited now by the prospect of seeing him, she felt relief that she would finally be back on familiar ground. But she was not prepared for what was in store. He rushed her from the airport to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Oh, this was something you could not get in Moscow! This was something she had missed. The tangy dips, the corn chips, guacamole, salsa sauce, nachos, and of course the salt-rimmed glasses of pale green Margarita. Once settled across from each other over plates piled high with spicy delicacies, he popped the question. He asked her to be his wife. Inwardly, her jaw dropped and she felt a vast void open in the pit of her stomach. NO! Her inner voice screamed with all the force she could muster. This just could not be. She was not ready. Her whole being rose up and repelled this possibility, the very thought threatened to tear out her heart. She did not know what registered on her face, but she told him quietly that her initial response was negative, that she needed time to think. He was obliging and gave her the space she needed.

She thought about it for almost a month. Most of that time she spent in Houston at her parents’ house. And it was enough time to awaken feelings of longing, feelings that she was missing this man very much, that something was lacking in her life. The feeling she had had before Moscow of her love opening like a budding rose returned. She felt again the rippling of love for him in her heart. She asked him to come and visit. And in the pool in her parents’ back yard, she said she had changed her mind. The answer was YES. It was the beginning of July 1981.

They celebrated their wedding on September 5, 1981 at the Little Church of La Villita on the River Walk in San Antonio Texas, with the reception just across the road in the Cos House. She had dreamed of an outdoor wedding. She had wanted it to be somewhere out in the country in some lovely and picturesque spot. Texas was so flat and it took a lot of imagination to find real hills even in the Texas Hill Country. But there was Enchanted Rock, a huge mound in the middle of nowhere that espoused magnificent sunsets. This was the place, she thought, when they visited one day, panting as they struggled to the top. But then she thought of trying to ascend in high-heeled shoes and a wedding dress, not to mention dragging all the guests up there, and where would they put the tables and champagne? She had to face the fact that although it was a lovely, romantic idea, it was totally outrageous and she would have to abandon it. So the Cos House with its outside patio would have to do. There would be shelter if it should rain and the colored fairy lights strung from the beams would substitute for stars.

Interior of the Little Church of La Villita
The wedding was simple, inexpensive, but very creative and tasteful. Her mother made her dress of creamy silk and the rainbow-colored chiffon bridesmaids’ dresses for her sisters. All they ordered were the cake and the flowers. The food they prepared themselves. Nothing elaborate. For some reason she had a vivid memory of the melon balls Jason’s sister scooped out using a special gadget. They were attractive and unusual. And the highlight were the cascarones – empty eggshells filled with confetti, then to be cracked on any unsuspecting head, a Mexican tradition. She and Jason spent a few weeks preparing them, carefully chipping the tops off the eggs, draining out the contents, washing and drying the shells, dying them, filling them with confetti, and closing the hole in the top with a colorful sticker. It was a fun joint task that kept them happy for hours and made for great amusement among the guests at the wedding reception.

On her wedding day she drank too much champagne and ran barefoot along the San Antonio River Walk after most of the guests had left. They did not leave on their honeymoon that day, they spent the night in the Four Seasons Hotel, a vast luxury. They got there after midnight and she called room service to order more champagne. She was told the bar was closed and liquor could not be served to the room. She was very disappointed and quite affronted actually. What a cheek!

A week later, they loaded all their earthly belongings into a U-Haul trailer, hooked it onto the back of their rather ancient red Pinto and set off for California, where she was to continue her Russian studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

They spent about ten days traveling across country, stopping at national parks to camp along the way, and hitting the Pacific Ocean at Morrow Bay. The last part of the journey took them up magnificent Highway One with its majestic views of the Big Sur Coast.

Highway One
They eventually found an apartment to rent in Seaside – the cheap and rather tacky area of the Monterey Peninsula and at a distance from the institute. Well it definitely did not have the glamour of Pacific Grove with its beachside condominiums and homes with a view, and it was certainly not Carmel, that fairytale grotto for the rich and upwardly mobile. Nor was it Monterey proper that catered to the rather classy and moderately wealthy. Seaside was for the working class, for those who scraped by on the minimum wage, and for students like herself. It was not the best, but it would do. She acquired a bike and would cycle to classes along the eucalyptus-lined roads, so fragrant after any rain. And the beach was just a stone’s throw away. She and Jason jogged or walked there most days.

MIIS proved a challenge. But then she rose to challenges. Although not without a struggle and much heart-searching. It had been a breeze to get into. Her Russian professor at Trinity in San Antonio, the one who had encouraged her to apply for the semester course in Russia, had an old catalogue. Her husband had once thought about applying to MIIS. There was an application form in the back which she tore out, filled in, and sent off. In return they sent her a more recent application form and soon after that she received notice of her acceptance. So here she was attending classes. And the classes were small and taught by native speakers. Very soon her bubble of confidence deflated. Even after her “practical” experience in Moscow, she was faced with the sober realization that her Russian was abysmal. And one of her Russian teachers was a real battle ax, very unforthcoming with her encouragement, and very severe. There were often times when she wished the floor would open up and swallow her as she struggled pathetically with her sight translations. She was ready to give up and leave.

She told Jason about this half way through the first quarter as they took their daily jog and walk on the beach. This is no good, I am way over my head, she complained. Let’s think of something else. He was taken by surprise and the last thing he wanted to do was uproot and go somewhere else (where could they go at this late stage in the game?), but he gave a good show of trying to be calm and logical. With his patient and steady reasoning he was able to change the wind in her sails. He told her he was with her in whatever she might decide, but that they should not give up quite that easily, why not keep trying. And she agreed.

The solution came when she faced the truth that she would never be an interpreter. Oral translation, simultaneous interpretation, even consecutive interpretation were not for her. She would never sit in a booth strapped to earphones in the UN. But she loved to write, she had a knack for writing, she loved the written word, and if she had the time to ponder over word choices, look things up in the dictionary, think calmly and unhurriedly, she could produce something worthwhile. Of course, she needed to understand the original first, but she discovered that her main asset was her love of her native language and her ability to express herself in it. She vividly remembered a general assembly in the institute’s main auditorium. The director of the MIIS was giving them a pep talk. To be a good translator, he told them, you have to love your native language in every way. If you have never written long letters home, if you have never kept a diary and done a lot of writing, translation is probably not for you. He was describing her to a tee. She remembered the pages and pages of letters she wrote to her parents, especially when she was in Moscow. Her father complained he had to get out a magnifying glass to read the small cramped print that would not all fit on the sheet of paper or postcard she was filling and would spread out into the margins at the top and bottom and up the sides of the page. She could not write enough. And she was an avid reader, there were so many books she had read and enjoyed, so many different authors and genres, that she would not count or list them all. So what if she dropped interpretation, picked up German again, and concentrated on written translation with two foreign languages? That was the solution.

After that things were wonderful. She had a talent, she could do it. She didn’t feel like disappearing through the floor anymore. And even though that one professor was still rather harsh and scanty with her encouragement, Ellie rose to the occasion and decided that instead of letting this woman crush her spirit she would show her just what she was made of. And she did.

Interlude: Vienna, Austria

Back garden at 444 Leopoldsstrasse, where she and Jason rented an apartment
Along with some more of the German students, she and Jason spent the second year of her MIIS course in Vienna, Austria, studying at the University of Vienna, to polish up her German. It was a very special time for her and Jason, although not easy. They made the most of it on the small amount of money they had. A student loan helped them to pay for it all, but they were still very frugal, although they did not deny themselves the luxury of traveling and seeing as much as they could. They discovered the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera House) that had standing room for 50 Schillings (the equivalent of about 50 cents). They could not pass up the bargain and would go there several times a week to see all kinds of wonderful ballets, operas, operettas, and even catch famous singers like Jose Carreras and Maria Callas.

Vienna State Opera House

Some entries from her diary show the various stages of transition she went through and how Vienna was a city that never really captured a place in her heart.

Oct. 5, 1983
“Cold and damp. I am planning on going to class today, although I don’t know what to expect or where to go. I have to wait until F. (Jason’s brother) sends whatever the university sent me (hopefully an acceptance) before I can register. At least I know that much, but it’s like drawing blood from a stone finding out anything around here, and the university building looms impressively but impersonally. Each day feels like a marathon, it is exhausting and sucks the energy out of you. We pound the streets, swallow the cold, damp air, despair and sigh. The city is so alien and narrow, clamping tightly shut the edges of its life, closing its doors to strangers, looking inward upon its own mold and death. To draw a smile or some warmth is like trying to curl up and sleep after the covers have been wrenched aside and the morning air crisply takes hold of your toes – the only warmth left is what is inside you. Everything takes so much effort, nothing is laid at your feet – you can’t expect this, but couldn’t it be a little easier? My sensitive heart stares aghast at this world, and wilts and cringes under its icy fingers. No one wants us, no one cares – all are too busy with their narrow concerns, their heads in the sand, the dull drudgery of their lives wrinkling their skin and bending their backs lower against the biting wind. The people plod in dreary colors through their frosty lives and never think that a smile or kind word could lighten the burden of their days. Sternly they look at the world through blind, stone eyes and turn their heads to the past where ghosts dance in eveningwear and silently applaud the final act. Alive, keen minds are lost, the vital sap of life may run thickly in other lands, but here the beauty and vibrancy of lost centuries is only a tarnished luster, the brightness of their bygone youth. No bright knowledge opens doors to the warmth of its heart – the great oak doors are closed on damp mustiness where the smell of the grave turns the alert, questing mind away. Dead brown leaves clog the rushing waters of life and leave a stagnant pool of stillness.”

Nov. 17, 1983:
“It was night in Vienna. I looked down on the city from the Stadtbahn and saw how gentle the whole scene was. Soft rays from headlights and street lamps bathed the streets and the buildings in a subdued glow. People bustled about, trams clanged by, and everything had the warm, cozy atmosphere of people doing last-minute shopping before Christmas. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see snowflakes, it was the scene from a book, a children’s book about a city, a book about the safe coziness of ordinary people’s lives. The stations we stopped at were old and dimly lit, as if the Stadtbahn were Vienna’s oldest and first form of public transportation. I could have been on a train traveling across Siberia, stopping at the tiny, rundown stations, sitting on the floor of the bare carriages with the peasants and their bundles. It felt so remote, so strange, so dreamlike, as if I were in another land, at another time … I feel as though Vienna is slowly working its way under my skin, into my heart and soul and changing me. All of a sudden classes and my academic progress here do not seem as important. I am battling against the tide anyway, translating German into Russian, I am attempting an impossible task, so why not just accept it and flow with it. Just being here is better than if we had never come. Whatever happens, I will leave here richer and more fulfilled than if we had never set off on this adventure. … Reality is much more confining and restricting than dreams – one would have to be a person of unlimited physical energy and strength and be in possession of endless time (in other words superhuman, supernatural) to be able to accomplish all the tasks you set yourself in dreams. A simple mortal cannot perform the impossible. I should be content with my lucky lot in life, count my lucky, beautiful, shining stars, and smile on a world which is not so lucky.”

10 February, 1984:
“Vienna is snowbound. Snow on rooftops and trees, snow slushy and soft in the streets, snow brown and ugly trampled by cars. We have made three trips in the snow, each time it was deeper, denser, more permanent. It reminds me of childhood winters, as taken for granted as rain or shine, just something to be put up with, exciting at first with snowmen and snowballs, then dreary and damp with soaked Wellingtons and wet clothes. Something to watch and admire from afar, but not so charming in everyday life with cold toes and gray skies. Its melting was like a sigh of relief because spring peeked through those crystal drops and sunshine made the white turn clear. Our walk today was beautiful in the silent woods, nothing can create an atmosphere like snow, but it is also sinister and deathly, penetrating and overpowering. It clings and will not leave. I try desperately to see beneath, to capture life and breathe warmth. It penetrated my brain and boots, making me want to laugh hysterically at its volume, its sheer volume, weight and oppressiveness – it was everywhere and just would not leave. Vienna cloaked in snow removes itself even further from my heart, like an ice princess, so beautiful, but deadly. I cannot love Vienna in the snow for she is too cold and cruel, too barren of feeling and vitality to ever be endearing. Our walks in Vienna’s snowy suburbs were magnificent and grand, but my heart ached and yearned all the more for sun and warmth and freedom. Snowbound Vienna is sobering and stealthy, sealing any charm behind shuttered windows and locked doors.
Aside from loving and hating snow, our expeditions have been most enjoyable. Wintry ruins in Baden with pine woods and slanting sun on creamy snow – a dipping winter’s sun creates unusual light effects which lend themselves well to romantic dreams. A children’s play park in Bisemberg with a view across the Danube to Leopoldsberg, Kohlenberg, and Klosterneuberg. Shadows on the snow from the hazy sun – walks in wintry woods do have their charm.”

They also traveled further a-field, into the Eastern bloc, to Budapest and Prague.

Prague in the spring

In her diary she wrote on 2 November, 1983: “We are on the train back to Vienna after a five-day stay in Budapest. … Budapest was a frenzied hub of people against a background of smoky skies, a slow, heaving river and the solid stone of an ancient and noble history. The grime and spittle of the much trodden streets of Pest contrasted with the majestic solidity of Castle Hill, Liberation Monument, and St. Gellert to symbolize the stifled drudgery of life under communism and the proud and stubborn spirit of the Hungarian people. For Jason and I the most lasting memory has been the walks along the Danube after dark. Budapest was not electrified by a single neon bulb at night, but glimmered in the waning yellow glow of a candle, like the moon past its prime. One night the Parliament, Castle Hill and the Chain Bridge were lit up, not brightly and garishly, but subtly like lights glowing faintly in the fog or viewed through a fine gauze, like the yellowing of old lace, the dull luster of burnished bronze, the mellow richness of autumn. It gave an air of mystery and romance like that evoked by old brown photographs of times gone by. The plenty in the stores and the ‘fashionableness’ of the Hungarian people surprised me after my experiences in Moscow. It seemed as though the people did not want for anything materially. It could have been Austria had someone not known better. To me, however, the mark of socialism was all too evident. A gray, spirit-destroying pall seemed to pervade the air, it could be seen in the people’s haunted expressions, the specter of communism and Russia’s iron grip caught in people’s eyes, it weighed on their shoulders and made them stoop against its oppression. The carefree joy, the jaunty step, the bold expression so common in the West were all painfully missing. The crippling drudgery of life under socialism, the frustration of desires, the crushing of aspirations for a better life were all to be blatantly read on the people’s faces, in their demeanor and stance.”

Prague seemed even more oppressive and under the weight of communism. They traveled there in the spring and even though the city was abloom, she still felt that sense of life being held in an iron grip. The train was to go on to Moscow. How she wished she could have traveled on to its end destination. In one of the department stores in Prague she heard Russians talking. It was like balsam to her ears. She moved closer, pretending to be interested in some of the items on a shelf nearby, just so she could listen to them talk. Prague was not Moscow, but it was as close as she could get at that time, and it awoke new stirrings and yearning in her heart.

After the year at the university was over, they took a hut-hopping trip in the magnificent Austrian mountains. Then they traveled by train through Switzerland and France to England and Scotland, visiting old friends and her relatives there.

A year later, she successfully completed the course at the Monterey Institute, then spent another two years writing her thesis, a translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Notes on the Cuff into English. She found a publisher in Ann Arbor, Michigan that specialized in translation from Russian into English. She wrote to them and asked if she could translate something for them that they would then publish if they found worthy. She would not be paid for it, but she would be in print. She dreamed in those days of becoming a literary translator, but no author or publisher would take a beginning translator fresh out of school seriously if they had no published works to show. Ardis accepted her conditions and after she completed her translation, they published it. In 1986, she received her Master of Arts degree in Russian and German Translation.

After she passed the professional exams at the end of the course work but had still not begun her thesis work, another long-cherished dream came true. She became pregnant. She and Jason had been talking about it for quite a while and she had wonderful visions of herself walking barefoot and pregnant on the beach. She could not wait for this to happen. They prepared carefully for the event. She went to see a gynecologist for pregnancy counseling and religiously began keeping a chart of her menstrual cycle, measuring her temperature every day and checking for other signs of ovulation. The first month nothing happened. After all their endeavors, her period came as usual. It was a blow and she decided she must be trying too hard. The following month, she resolved not to be so consumed by thoughts of getting pregnant and decided to dive headfirst into her work instead. She had plenty on her plate, her thesis translation and some professional work one of the Russian professors, who also had his own translation agency, had given her. This time it happened. She was pregnant. Her beautiful and wise daughter made her entry into the world on March 6, 1985, just four days after Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU and later President of the Soviet Union. Perestroika was about to begin. Later, this always seemed symbolic and significant to her. It marked the beginning of major changes in the Soviet Union. It began to open its doors to the outside world. And yes, her newborn daughter was indeed a wise being. She recognized this almost instantly. She remembered vividly the thoughts that came into her head when she first set eyes on her after she made her emergence from the womb. “This child is going to teach me more than I can ever teach her.” And so it came to pass. They named her Ursula. It was her choice. She read D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow many years ago while still in school in England. The description of Ursula as a young girl in that book had struck such a chord in her heart that she told herself then, “if I ever have a daughter I will call her Ursula.”

Apartment in Pacific Grove - second floor up the back steps
While he had long been far from her mind, Ivan began to consume her thoughts again. After they returned from Vienna, they found an apartment in a more respectable and comfortable part of the Peninsula. It was in Pacific Grove, just down the hill from the Defense Language Institute and just up the hill from Cannery Row. Later the Monterey Bay Aquarium appeared at the foot of the hill and she spent many a happy hour there with Ursula watching the fish. The beach there was cozier too. Small secluded seaweed-strewn inlets among the rocks where she would take her baby to play and sit in the sand. She loved watching the otters smash mollusks against the rocks on their chests as they swam on their backs. And there were plenty of seals too. It was here that her mind filled again with thoughts of Ivan and she began to recall in detail their time together in Moscow. Her dreams and yearning were triggered by reading back over old diaries she had kept during that time. It all seemed so illusive, beautiful, a whole other dream world that beckoned and lured. Such sweet memories. She even began writing him a letter as she sat there on the beach, but it never made it as far as the post office. She had sent him letters and even photos soon after her return in the summer of 1981. But she had never received a reply. He had most likely forgotten her and was living his own life. She did not seriously think she would see him again and did not strive for that. She was just happy that she had those memories, that he lived in a small corner of her heart, and was grateful for the time they had shared together.

Beach at Pacific Grove
But she did want to return to Moscow. One of Jason’s friends was a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and he happened to have been appointed to a two-year stint as the paper’s foreign correspondent in Moscow. He had invited them to come and visit. They thought about it, made plans, but the timing was just not right. She had not finished her degree, they now had an infant daughter, and then Jason’s father had a stroke. His mother was also frail and ill, she could not take care of her ailing husband on her own, so the decision was made to move back to Ocala, Florida, the town where Jason had grown up, the town where his elderly parents lived and were now in need of care.

On May 24, 1986, she wrote in her diary: “I still think of Ivan, but have not written and the burning desire to do so has subsided. I am still consumed by going to Moscow though and wonder if we have irretrievably lost our chance now that G. will soon be leaving. The desire to return to Europe eats at me still, maybe it is just because we are planning a move, and if we didn’t have to go to Ocala, we may be free to at least go to Vienna. Perhaps it is just the elusiveness that attracts me, but I cannot deny the adventure and uncertainty I yearn from life, I don’t want our lives to be predictable, I want spontaneity and wonder. I feel we can have it if we remain flexible and young at heart. Our daughter seems to respond to change and new environments, we should take advantage. I wonder if we will ever get to Moscow, now the idea of living there for two years seems appealing. Perhaps the only solution is to have another child to curb these adventurous feelings, they still threaten to tear me apart.”

In the summer of 1986, they packed up a U-Haul again with all their earthly belongings, hooked it onto the back of their brown Pinto (the red one had been back-ended by an illegal Mexican driver who took the corner too fast and crashed into it as it sat parked by the curbside outside their apartment) and headed back across country from California to Florida, stopping on the way to visit all the national parks and sights they could fit into their itinerary.

Ursula and the Apple
The three years in Ocala Florida were very productive for her at a soul level. She was lucky to have found a translation agency while she was in California that was willing to continue working with her and send her translations after she moved to the other side of the country. She began working for them courtesy of one of her Russian professors at MIIS who personally knew the guy who owned it. He was a Russian expatriate too and was just starting out in the translation business in San Francisco. He did not offer much money, but she was in no position to bargain or turn up her nose either. She was still green behind the ears and lucky to have someone willing to take her on at all, a young whippersnapper just out of school. And there was no Internet in those days, computers were just becoming the rage and she had one of the first Apples. Modems, the latest technological innovation, appeared after she had been in Florida for a year or so, but she did not have much luck using her first one. Technology was something quite beyond her grasp. So it was snail mail. Or rather Federal Express. She would receive Russian texts in the mail, translate them on her computer, print them out, then FedEx them back.

Soon after they were settled into Jason’s parents’ house with the elderly couple in tow, she did get pregnant again and on 23 July, 1987, her second beautiful daughter was born. She had immediately found a support group of women with children the same age when she came to Ocala. She attended a play group and had met some wonderful women with like-minded ideas about bringing up children. They all had one child around the same age and were expecting their second. She had never really joined groups before. But she felt an immense loneliness and need for company when they arrived in Florida. She was no longer in the midst of the campus atmosphere, going to class with other students, working hard to finish her thesis, with no spare time to think of anything else. Now in this new world, still not settled in her translation work, with a young toddler on her hands, she yearned for and sought out friends with similar experiences. And she was so blessed to find these women. First she attended structured classes at a local church, then when their children outgrew the age for those groups, they would meet on a rotation basis as each other’s homes. They also arranged a babysitting club, and later there was a reading circle they attended at the library. Through one of her new friends she found the Birth Center in Gainesville run by midwives who were advocates of natural childbirth. Right up her alley. She and Jason attended childbirth classes there. Her pregnancy was a time of budding spirituality and awakening to the callings of her soul. She made so many discoveries and had so many insights during this time. She did a lot of reading and was very in touch with the growing presence inside her. She meditated, exercised, nurtured her body and mind, prepared herself consciously for this birth. She had done this the first time too, when she was waiting for her first baby to come, but the first time is always so different. A time when there is no past experience to rely on. So she was unprepared for what was eventually to come. Although she had wanted a natural birth without hospital interference and medication, she finally had to be induced since, according to the doctor, she was two weeks overdue and way too large for any normal baby. Medicine made its forceful intrusion. The birth, hospital interventions notwithstanding, went normally, although it was longer than necessary, and the pushing phase was worrisome, since nothing seemed to be happening, no progress was being made. Was the baby too big to get through? Her doctor told her afterwards that she had arrived expecting to deliver the baby by cesarean, but thankfully the head was already showing by that time. So her daughter made her passage into the world through the birth canal. The second time, she was determined to do it all naturally and did not want a hospital birth. So the Birth Center in Gainesville had been like manna from heaven.

She wrote in her diary on 2 August, 1987, about a week after the birth.
“We didn’t realize it, but Claire means Light, and this is what she is, a ray of pure light, filled with light, and lighting our lives. My spiritual awakening during the pregnancy made me more aware of her soul and her presence as a conscious, feeling being within me. Sometimes I was overcome with the feeling of how special she is, an exceptional being whose soul had chosen us as channels to incarnate through. My decision to go to the Birth Center in Gainesville was somehow the first step along the path to the greater spiritual awareness which unfolded during this pregnancy. The fears I had about giving birth in a homelike setting soon abated and I became convinced that this was the right thing for me and that everything would go well. The power of positive thinking really worked, there was never a shadow of doubt in my mind that things would go perfectly.”

On the eve of the day her second daughter was born, she was sitting on the kitchen floor playing with Ursula. It was time for bed and she struggled to her feet to start clearing away the toys. As she stood she felt a warm trickle of water run down her legs and she look down to see her bare feet in a spreading pool of clear liquid. Her amniotic sac had burst. The story of this birth is one of joy and tranquility, it all went better and more smoothly and painlessly than she could ever have dreamed. The contractions started around 4 am after an initial trip to the Birth Center to make sure it was indeed amniotic fluid. It was, but her contractions had not yet started. She was sent home. She had no need for the castor oil bought on the way back to Ocala at midnight in a deserted Eckerds where no one, thankfully, was witness to her sopping dress and the trickle of water that continued to drip and leave a trail wherever she went. She awoke around 3.30 am with the knowledge that things had started. Around 5.00 am they set off again for Gainesville, leaving Ursula with her sister, who had come over to spend the night. Settled in cushions in the car she visualized herself rising to the crest of an ocean wave as each contraction built. Then breathed out in relief as each wave subsided again and ebbed away. She breathed in deeply and calmly each time with her eyes closed. Jason later told her that he thought she had fallen asleep, that the contractions had stopped. She recalled the early light of the new day as she looked out of the car window. The pale twinge of the last of the moon visible against the dusky pink sky. She thought about how she would sink into the hot tub when she arrived, how the warm water would buoy her along and take away the last of the struggle. But someone else was giving birth in the tub when they arrived. She would have to go upstairs to the bedroom on the second floor. At the foot of the stairs, she was overcome by an incredible irresistible urge to push. This was Jason’s shining moment, all his training at childbirth classes went into the words of encouragement he gave her as she stopped on the bottom step, gripping the banisters, unable to go on. “Don’t push, blow!!” he urged. She blew, quick sharp short spurts pushing her breath outward so that the inward urge to push would be assuaged. It worked. The moment passed and she was able to climb the stairs and get into the comfortable bed, just as though she were at home. Half and hour later the rays of the morning sun finally spilled over the horizon and filled the room with soft golden light, the midwives pulled a full-length mirror up to the foot of the bed and she raised her head to see her daughter emerge into the sun-filled world. She reached down and caressed her head. Then she took her daughter in her arms and brought her to her breast. It was perfect bonding, simple and complete.

Ursula and Claire
Soon her sister and Ursula joined them. Ursula, usually reticent and quiet in new surroundings and with new people, was ecstatic. She skipped up and down the corridor between the birthing room and the bathroom where Ellie and Claire were now luxuriating in an old fashioned bathtub on bowed legs, exclaiming: “I have a new sister, I have a new sister!” and lovingly laid out on the bed the clothes she would wear when she emerged from the tub. A few hours later they were all back home again in Ocala, their small family of three now expanded to four. And the delight and love were immense. This was the answer. Her feeling that having another child would quench her yearning for Russia had indeed been perspicacious. Now with two small daughters her days and mind were filled with new wonders and new challenges. She was consumed with their upbringing, she wanted to give them as much as she could, she wanted the involvement and the bonding, the time shared together as they grew and blossomed. She read to them, she took them on walks to the pond and the park, she sang and danced with them, she lit candles at bedtime and they prayed, she did arts and crafts, fed them natural foods, introduced the idea of leaving gifts for the fairies and angels before they went to bed and had to come up with a myriad of ideas for gifts in return. But it was all magical and fulfilling. In the time left, she translated and saved money, and Jason worked evenings as a waiter and saved money. They had a shared goal. As soon as they had enough money they would go to Moscow. So a percentage of each of her translations and a percentage of his tips were put aside each time, until finally they had the sum they thought would be enough.

In the meantime she had been in touch with her student friends from the Pushkin Institute days. The girls she had gallivanted with. Through one of them she found out that Lucy, the head of their student group who had always covered for her when she was “sick” and in no state to go to class, had married a Russian and was living in Moscow. After making a few phone calls and by a piece of sheer luck really (that sort of information was not normally given out over the phone), she tracked down Lucy. Did she call her in Moscow? She must have, snail mail would have taken too long. Anyway, Lucy was delighted to hear from her and said she would be more than happy to have her husband issue her an invitation to visit. The beauty of it was that since Gorbachev had taken the high seat, it was much easier to visit the Soviet Union. You didn’t have to be a tourist with a strictly set itinerary and live with a group in a hotel, you could be issued a private invitation to come and see friends or relatives and live with them in their home. So the wheels started turning, the process was underway. But naturally it did not go as quickly as she would have hoped and liked. It was a frustrating time. She thought they would be able to leave by the summer of 1989, but in November they were still in Ocala and the invitation had still not arrived. Then there were holiday delays and other intervening circumstances. Finally, Lucy sent the invitation for the beginning of 1990. So it would be later rather than sooner. This gave them more time to pack up and sort out all the loose ends in the States, so it was really for the best.

On 18 November, 1989, she had a dream about Ivan. She was in Moscow again and he saw her in the street and recognized her because she was wearing that same fur coat. They explored a hotel together hand in hand, so happy to be together, she saw his face turned toward her at one point and it glowed with love. Then some helicopters flew over and a huge ladder fell down from which descended some strange men, they had come to destroy. She and Ivan managed to find somewhere safe. In a meditation later, she was in a dark tunnel and Ivan came toward her and said it would all be alright, then they passed through a crack in the wall into a beautiful garden. This all had rather an upsetting effect on her, she denied the fact that she wanted to return to Moscow because of Ivan, the strength of her feelings for him scared her, and thoughts of returning to him and abandoning her family were the last thing on her mind, this was something she could not accept. But she questioned her motives for going. Was she subconsciously seeking a reunion with Ivan and still actually thinking of having a life with him? The thought appalled her. If this were so, then she would do better to stay at home. But she told herself that this was not her motive. She just had a strong attraction for Moscow, she wanted to return there to work, and then they would see. And anyway any real thoughts about a life with Ivan were pretty ridiculous at this point, after all she had had no contact with him for nine years, how could she count on anything? How did she know she would even see him again, let alone share a life with him even if she did? Anything could have happened in the interim. One of the scenarios she conjured up in her mind was she would return to find him happily married, but willing to be her friend. She would show up on his doorstep one day to be greeted by a prosperous and fulfilled family man, become friends with his wife, show each other their children, who would also become friends, and their two families would live in harmony and friendship forever after. What a dreamer she was, what an idealist. Or other thoughts would come up. He had drunk himself to death. Or perhaps he was in prison (after all, they had not been particularly cautious, she had phoned the American Embassy from Irida’s apartment, she had not been careful about covering her steps when she left that apartment and returned to the dormitory, which after all was right across the street, they had done nothing to hide their relationship, and the KGB had long arms and sharp eyes). But what good were these kind of thoughts? So she pushed them all aside and concentrated on the overwhelming task of packing up all their earthly belongings yet again, only this time into as few suitcases as was realistically feasible.

They had a garage sale and sold off as much as they could. Jason’s father had had another stroke and this time was confined to hospital, his other sisters and brother would take turns caring for his mother, so the house in Ocala was to be sold. They thought they were taking the bare essentials with them, computer, books, dictionaries, clothes, toys (the toys could have been left behind but she wanted her daughters to have things they were familiar with). They filled ten suitcases. With this load, they set off for Miami on 31 January, 1990 to board a Virgin Airlines flight to London and then take the train to Scotland where Jason and the girls would stay with her aunt and uncle while she went on a two-week scouting expedition to Moscow. The fact she was going on her own first “to check it out” filled her with such immense excitement that there could be no doubt about what she wanted. She wanted to see Ivan and the butterflies she felt in her stomach threatened to raise her off her feet with the beating of their wings and transport her to nirvana. Her rune card called for Patience, Perseverance, and Foresight through Discomfort and Inconvenience will come Growth.

Miami Airport on first leg to England.
On the way to Scotland they stopped in Sheffield to see her best friend from high school. They spent a wonderful week visiting old friends, going to pubs, taking the girls to the parks, and making trips to the shops in the town center. Doing all the things she did when she was growing up there. It was fun to touch base.

Chapter Three: Return to the Soviet Union – Reconnaissance

2009-10-19T15:56:00.004+03:00

On 14 February, 1990, she waved Jason and her girls off at the station in Falkirk and set off on the first leg of the journey. She would take the train to Edinburgh, where she would change to Sheffield and there catch a bus straight to Gatwick Airport. She left her family in two minds, part of her was filled with an incredible excitement that this was finally happening. She felt an immense love and respect for Jason that he was allowing her to do this, that he was permitting her this freedom, this insanity, for how else could it be named? Leaving everything behind, burning bridges, and heading off into the unknown, to a strange almost forbidden land, where nothing was familiar. She did not even know if she would find a job, how would her girls adjust to the severe realities of life behind the Iron Curtain? She had just uprooted them all and replanted them on alien soil. And it was all okay. Jason condoned her actions, how could she not love him for that? But she also felt a wrench at leaving them, how would her daughters manage without her? She made a tape-recording for them to listen to while she was gone, telling them of her love for them, that she carried them with her in her heart, that she had not really left them and would soon return. To make it worse, Claire fell asleep on the way to the station, and she did not want to wake her to say goodbye, so she had to leave without doing that, it did not feel right, she was torn. But she was happy with the arrangements at her aunt and uncle’s. The girls had responded well and it had snowed the day before, a new experience and excitement for two Florida gals.

However, the journey was very hairy. To her chagrin she discovered when she arrived at the deserted bus station in Sheffield late in the evening that she had misread the bus timetable and the next bus would get her to Gatwick too late to catch her plane. She struggled with her heavy suitcase across the street to the train station. There was a train to Manchester with a 00.30 connection to London Euston—a slow mail train—that was due to arrive at 5.00 am. She decided to go for it, there was no other choice, although she would be cutting it very close. In Manchester she was lucky to get on the London train early before all the West Ham football fans crowded on for their trip home after a match. It was a rowdy trip. However, she overheard another passenger saying he was also going to Gatwick, so she asked if she could tag along and catch a taxi with him. What a piece of luck. Luck, because they shared the taxi fare, a whopping 52 pounds, which she would not have had enough money to pay for by herself. She made the plane with 10 minutes to spare.

Moscow was as overwhelming and wonderful as she remembered. The wide snowy streets, the quiet mystery of it all, everything seemed larger than life, and oh so familiar. There was still the secrecy and undercurrent of excitement, like you just never knew what was going to happen next. Lucy met her at the airport and whisked her off to a restaurant for dinner where a whole crowd of other people awaited them. It was one of the new cooperative venues that had become popular since Gorbachev took the helm. Entry by invitation only. She was back!

Fatigue took its toll and despite her thrill at being swept up again in the embrace of this enchanted land she could not help feeling awkward and out of place. She was reluctant to use her imperfect Russian and felt shy and uncomfortable with Lucy’s husband, as though she could not put two sensible words together and join in the conversation. She felt strange. But the next day Lucy helped her to find phone numbers of publishing houses, places she could call to find out about translating work.

And she called the number she had for Ivan. It was Irida’s number, at least the one Irida had had back in 1981. She dialed and heard a girl’s voice on the other end. She asked for Ivan, the girl said there was no one by that name there. Normally she would have just hung up in confusion and disappointment. But for some reason she began to explain herself, saying it had been so long since she had been there, he had probably moved and please excuse her for the disturbance. The girl on the other end suddenly exclaimed, “Ellie, is that you?” It was Irida’s daughter, Tasya. Ellie had met her a couple of times back in 1981, the last time when they had gone to that dog show at the end of her semester stay. Tasya had only been 14 at the time and did not live with her mother, which was why they had not met that often. But Tasya recognized her voice! She said Irida was at work and to call back later and she would give her Ivan’s phone number. So this is what she did, and Irida was overjoyed to hear her. She said she had already called Ivan and told him she was in Moscow. So it would no longer be a total surprise, she had wanted to hear his response to a call from her totally out of the blue. Now he was prepared. She called the number Irida had given her and could not believe she was hearing his voice on the other end of the line. He told her he had been expecting her (this was before Irida had called and told him that she was indeed back), that he had had a dream about her not that long ago and he knew she would be returning soon. That clinched things for her, she knew that something beyond the ordinary bonded them. She had also had a dream about him and had seemed to contact him in her meditations. It all jived for her. They arranged to meet in a couple of days. She had already made other arrangements for that weekend, so their rendezvous would have to wait until Monday.

How she lived through those days, she didn’t know. She could not sleep or eat, she was so nervous and often overwhelmed with doubts that she was doing the right thing. Jason and the girls seemed so far away, in a different world, a world that was no longer her reality. This was her reality here, in Moscow’s expansive frozen streets, in a cocoon of self-denial, or in a place that pointed her further down the road toward her destiny. She was so confused, but nothing could stop her now, the cogs were already turning, the mechanism had been launched, there was no turning back. Ivan was waiting for her, he was still available after all these years, still waiting for her to return. From their phone conversation she found out that he had been married and was now divorced. He had a seven-year old daughter. He lived in the same place as before, in the building where she had arrived in a taxi to retrieve her wallet and see him again back in 1981, only she had not known then that this was his permanent address, that this was where he lived most of the time. He only rented a room at Irida’s and spent time there when he was drinking and needed time away from his family—his mother, sister, and niece. His workshop was at his mother’s, this was where he had his sewing machines and sewed clothes that were not available in the Soviet stores for his clients. And Irida’s was a haven for other things. She had not known that until now, so it was not surprising that he had not been at Irida’s when she called. It was not his home number.

She wrote in her diary on 19 February, 1981.
“I am meeting Ivan in a couple of hours and I am so nervous I can barely think straight. I have been sleeping badly and feel like a bag of nerves. I felt so sure about this on Saturday, but now I’m wondering if I am doing the right thing. I will not be able to rest easy until I see him and find out the scoop. I fluctuate between feeling all-powerful and outgoing to feeling like a little timid mouse. I guess the main thing about it is that I feel so duplicitous, like I don’t want anyone to know what I’m going, and I hate that feeling, but this is something I have to get out of my system, so I have to go for it, I just wish I felt more rested and less nervous. Oh well, I guess it will all work out for better or worse, we’ll see.”

They met on the platform of the metro station near Irida’s. He was waiting for her, she was a few minutes late, and he anxiously searched the crowd streaming from the arriving train trying to spot her. She was there and it was as though they had never been apart. He had not changed and he told her that she looked just the same too. Just as he remembered her.

And afterwards she wrote:
“It turned out better that I could have ever expected. We are soul mates, that’s for sure.”

Those two weeks were full of portent events. Although she herself felt so at home and familiar in her surroundings, she spent a lot of time trying to picture everything from her daughters’ viewpoint. How would they react? What would they think? Would the climate and the environment not be too harsh for them? Her overall conclusions were that they would manage. She was encouraged by the children she saw being pulled around on sleds, spades in hand for playing in the snow, their rosy cheeks aglow, bundled up in woolen hats, scarves, mittens, and felt boots. She thought her girls would rise to the occasion and fit in.

She managed to find a phone number for Progress Publishers and went to see them. The head of the English Translation Department remembered her resume (she had mailed it from the States months ago) but he confirmed her suspicion that dealing with potential employees long distance was not their style. You had to show up in person and only then might some decision be made. No one was going to reply to a fat envelope with a resume and translation samples from some unknown body thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe. This she had suspected, which was another reason she had so badly needed to come to Moscow, to show up in person and say here I am, hire me. She did some work for them and they were satisfied. But nothing could be decided at such short notice, not by March 2 at any rate, which was when she was due to leave. They suggested she return again on a private invitation for a longer time, at least two months, then they would see what they could do.

By lucky coincidence, but she did not believe in coincidences, to everything there is always some divine order and pattern, so it would be better to say, by some serendipitous flow of events, another friend from the student group of 1981 was also in Moscow at that time studying at Moscow State University. She invited her over to eat spaghetti with other students in her dormitory. There she met another student who knew a Russian lady looking for someone to translate her book. This woman had written a book about a scandalous court case involving some physicians who had been imprisoned without a fair trial back in Stalin’s time. Her father had been one of those physicians. Ellie made arrangements through this student to meet the woman. Her name was Natalie and, after immediately taking to each other, they came to an agreement that she would translate the book. During the course of their meeting Ellie explained her situation, that she was soon to leave but was looking for a way to return with her family for a longer time. Natalie offered to invite her back to Moscow. Yes, yes!!

Another serendipitous event. While she was living in Florida she used to subscribe to a magazine called Mothering. It could be described as a magazine for mothers with alternative views about bringing up children. Mothers somewhere out in left field like herself. It was very enlightening. Several months before she left for Russia, but after she already knew she would be going, there was an article in the magazine called “Conscious Birth in the U.S.S.R.” and a letter to the editors from the author of the article, a certain T. S. in Moscow, Russia. The article was about natural childbirth in the Soviet Union, specifically about underwater birth. She was intrigued. And although her thoughts were far from having another child, she wrote to the editors of the magazine and asked for the full address of the article’s author, explaining her situation. What to her delight and surprise when they not only responded promptly with the address, but also said they had another article from the same woman that they had translated into English and wanted to publish. Could she take a copy of it with her to Moscow and deliver it personally to T.S. for her approval? You bet! So during that first week in Moscow she also tried to track down this woman. The address she had was not clear and her first attempt to find it by looking at the map, going to the nearest metro station, and trying to find the street ended in failure. Lucy suggested sending her a telegram. So she did, giving Lucy’s phone number. The very next day she received a phone call from T.S.’s husband. They had moved into a larger apartment, their address had changed, but the telegram had been forwarded, they would love to meet her.

And what a trip! She could not believe she was here in Moscow visiting a family with four children (practically unheard of in the Soviet Union in those days) who were into the spiritual aspects of childbirth and talked about how they traveled to the Black Sea with pregnant couples so that the mother could give birth in the sea. Their latest project was to try and attract dolphins to draw near during the birth process. They said that dolphins are intuitively aware of women in childbirth and if they are summoned by special sounds they will draw near and “participate” in the event. It all sounded too good to be true, and she imagined herself being that woman giving birth in the sea in the presence of these gentle mammals. Victor, the husband, talked of all sorts of things, things so familiar, yet so strange, so strange to be hearing from a Russian. Why did she think that? Russians are very spiritual and very close to nature and the intuitive meaning of life. He told her how Patriarch Ponds, which is where Master and Margarita, Bulgakov’s brilliant novel and dear to her heart, opens, is a very mystical place, how the Earth is a living organism in which Russia is the heart and America is the spine, and at some time in the future Russia will once again become of spiritual center of mankind. She spent the night at their apartment since they were still talking far into the small hours. She slept fitfully and was awoken by a powerful message that the stone her mother had given her to take to Moscow had to be placed in Patriarch Pond. This was part of web-weaving, when a stone is selected in one part of the world and taken to another part of the world. There it is left in a sacral place and a stone selected from there is transported on to the next place. With these thoughts uppermost in her mind, she left early in the morning while everyone was still asleep.

Her second week in Moscow was spent exclusively with Ivan. Lucy and her husband left for Hawaii on vacation, leaving her alone in their apartment. It was perfect timing. It gave she and Ivan the space and freedom they needed to explore their relationship after the intervening years of being apart and all the changes that occurred for them. It was the time they needed to realize that they wanted to join their lives together. She had finally overcome the shame she felt about meeting with Ivan. A prudish voice within her told her it was wrong for a married woman to be allowing her passions to run amok with another man. Especially since there had been nothing wrong with her marriage until now, she had lived in harmony, love, and understanding with Jason all these years and they had jointly brought two lovely girls into the world on the strength of that love. There seemed no earthly reason to rock the boat and bring her former life tumbling down. Apart from this magnetic irresistible attraction to Ivan, a man at once so distant and so near, but a man she now knew deep in her soul she could not live without.

She recalled the first time he had accompanied her back to Lucy’s apartment after they had spent hours walking Moscow’s streets, along the Moskva-River embankment, all the way from Kalinin Prospekt to the Oktyabryaskaya metro station and then from there to where Lucy lived in Novye Cheryomushki. As they approached her apartment building, Lucy had just happened to come out to get something from her car. Ellie saw her and suddenly spurted away from Ivan so that Lucy would not see she was with a man. Ivan was flummoxed, what was wrong, why had she darted off like that, like a scared rabbit? Indeed, what was she scared of? That Lucy would criticize and judge her? That she was breaking some rules, that she was not permitted to love another man if she were married and had pledged her heart to the first? Who could judge her, who could criticize? She feared ridicule and derision and shunning. She needed to have permission to follow her heart. Then she saw the stupidity of it. Lucy was a wild one herself, she would be the last to judge. In fact, once the truth was out, she was delighted and encouraged her to pursue her heart. So she was no longer worried about Ivan coming to spend the week with her in Lucy’s apartment. And by the time Lucy returned, she would be gone.

Back home at Lucy’s on the evening of the day before she was to leave, she dozed off for a while under the influence of all the wine they had consumed at Irida’s. When she awoke, Ivan was sitting next to her, still awake and still drunk. He told her he had been watching her while she slept, that her face was like an angel’s. They went into the kitchen and he made strong tea for her. When she said it was okay for him to continue drinking, he told her she was a model wife and he wanted her to be his. So the pact was clinched. She would return to him in Moscow and they would join their lives together. This finally felt right. There had been times over this past week, a time of getting to know Ivan better, when he had invited her to come and see how lived at his mother’s, that she had doubted it would all work out. Ivan wanted to show her his world so that she would know what she was getting herself into. All he had was the room he slept in and his sewing machines. Was that enough for her? The material side did not bother her at all. The fact he lived in one room of a three-room apartment with four other people did not faze her. The fact that she still did not have a place to live was the least of her worries too. But at one point she wondered about the physical gulf that separated them, the gulf that separated their two cultures, their two worlds, was the distance to great? Could the moral, mental, and psychological gap be bridged? Ivan felt he had so little to offer, surely she would not agree to live in such conditions? But the closeness that meshed their souls was too great to be ignored. There was too much beyond the physical distance, too much kinship at the soul level, too many joint lessons to learn together to deny them joining their lives. And she felt she might be able to make his life easier, that she might be able to offer him something to break the old pattern.

So with Progress’s promise to give her a job should she return, Natalie’s promise to invite her back with her family, and Ivan’s promise to build a life with her no matter what, she left Moscow and returned to Jason and the girls in Scotland. Naturally the journey was one of low spirits and fatigue. So much buzzed in her mind. Now that she knew for sure that her destiny was with Ivan, how would she face Jason? How would everything work out? What indeed did the future hold? There were so many questions and uncertainties. On the journey back to Scotland she comforted herself with a book Ivan had given her called “Interrupted Flight” by Marina Vladi, the wife of Vysotsky, a Russian bard. Their story was so similar to hers and Ivan’s, she read it and her heart overflowed, it was as though she had Ivan right in her hands as she read the book. He had also inscribed it for her “Read, and think.” Ivan was a big Vysotsky fan, he had given her an album of his songs the first time she had been in Moscow, in 1981, and she had often listened to it the intervening years letting the music fill her with fond memories. How wrenching it was to leave once again. But this time she was leaving with a purpose, she had some definite plan, some reason to come back, she just did not know how long it would all take.

Now began the most excruciating time in her life. The waiting….

Chapter Four: Britain—The Excruciating Wait

2009-10-19T14:24:00.003+03:00

Aunt and uncle's house in Scotland

Her girls were so pleased to see her upon her return. Claire stroked her face and looked lovingly into her eyes. It was Ursula’s fifth birthday a few days later and she loved the Russian gifts Ellie had brought for her, especially the set of nesting matroshka dolls, beautifully painted with a gold and blue pattern intermingled with white flowers. Naturally, the girls had missed her and wanted to be with her all the time now she was back in the family fold. Jason had managed superbly while she was gone, he had kept them entertained and happy. But now they wanted their mother, and she tried her best to give them the attention they deserved. She also felt very guilty that she was so duplicitous with Jason, that her mind and heart were full of Ivan, that there was nothing she could do about it. She did not want to hurt Jason, she wished he did not love her so much, that he did not care. And he was being so accommodating, he sensed her inner turmoil, that she was struggling with something, and wanted her to have the time and space to adjust. So he kept his distance in his undemanding and unassuming way. For some reason, this infuriated her and finally when she could stand it no longer, she yelled at him about it. He assured her that he was okay, that he just wanted her to recover from her obviously emotional journey. She was in two minds about spilling the beans right then, part of her wanted to tell him straight out about Ivan and all she had been through, while another part told her to wait, to be cautious, she did not want to burn her bridges. What if she told him of her feelings for another man, then nothing came of it? What if by the time they returned to Moscow, Ivan had changed his mind about her? If nothing was going to work out with Ivan, why should she hurt Jason’s feelings now by letting him know she was in love with another man? They discussed their options for the waiting time. They did not know how long it would take for Natalie to get all the paperwork done at the Russian visa and immigration office. They had to decide where they were going to stay. Some light was shed on the situation when her aunt made it clear they could not stay there indefinitely, that they were expecting other guests, so she, Jason, and the girls would have to free up the room.

Road where they took walks near house

Other times she felt so undeserving of Jason’s love and consideration. She was being so duplicitous and unfair. She wished he would be meaner and less nice to her. It was the inner turmoil that got to her most. Her mood swings were hard to handle. She would plunge into dark despair, feeling that nothing would ever be right again, she would not have a life with Ivan, but the thought of a life without him was more than she could bear. Then she would be filled with joy and light again, with a certainty that it would all work out. There was a place down the road from her aunt and uncle’s, a gate along the avenue that led into a field where sheep grazed. She would go out jogging and stop by the gate to meditate. Sometimes the sheep would draw closer and eye her with curiosity. At these times she would make contact with Ivan on the astral planes and she would always be filled with a sense of his love and his longing for her return. The peaceful inner knowing she experienced at these moments was what kept her going. She had also managed to get through to him on the phone from her aunt’s house and given him her phone number. A couple of nights later she was already in bed when her aunt called up to say there was a woman on the phone from Moscow. It was the operator, Ivan was on the line. He was trying to help speed things up at his end, but what could he do, he said someone he knew had a contact at Progress, but it was not up to Progress to issue the invitation, so what speeding up could be done? He told her that they would decide what to do (meaning how the two of them would work things out) after she came back, that it would be up to her. So he still doubted whether she would want to stay and share her life with him. The main thing was to get back to Moscow.

They visited her great aunt in Uddingston. Ellie thought maybe they could stay with her. The aunt was happy to agree at first, but a couple of days later Ellie received a letter from her saying that she had changed her mind. Having all of us, especially the girls, to stay for an indefinite amount of time would be too much for her. They would have to make other plans.

Eventually they decided to return to Sheffield, her friend Jane said they could come back and stay with her and her family until they decided where they would go. They contemplated Vienna and wrote to some friends they had made there while she was studying at the university. But soon a letter arrived saying that they could not accommodate them for more than a weekend. So they decided to look for somewhere to rent in Sheffield and she would also look into getting some translation work.

They found a place in Tinsley, the advantage was that the landlord did not want to rent long term since these houses were about to undergo major renovation. That made the rent cheaper. So it worked out well all round. Finally they were in their own place again, although this did not comfort her, it even scared her, since she was not sure how she was going to be able to live with the lie that they were no longer a happy and harmonious family. She just could not be kind to Jason. She allowed her irritation to show in all her communication with him. She knew she was being ugly and unfair, but she just could not help herself. All her thoughts, yearning, and inner being strove in another direction, it was difficult to remain anchored in her true center and not allow herself to be buffeted by the storm of her emotions.

The other major drawback was there was no phone. She would collect change and try and call Ivan from a call box when she was out and about. It was always frustrating when she was able to get through but find he was not home. She managed to have a couple of satisfying talks with him though when he reaffirmed his love for her and that he was waiting for her return.

She also found some translation companies willing to send her work. One of them was right in Sheffield. She was quite amazed that she had been able to swing that. Plus she was working on the translation for Natalie. The editor from Natalie’s publishing company in New York got in touch with Ellie by phone to tell her she would be going to Moscow at the beginning of April and wanted to take the finished translation with her. She also agreed to take their invitation applications with her to give to Natalie, if Ellie had them by that time to send her. Ellie and Jason were in the process of writing to the Soviet Embassy in London to ask for application forms and it was taking forever. Finally on March 27 the application forms arrived. A few days later the finished translation and the application forms were safely handed over to Federal Express and on their way to their destination.

Now the really worst time set in. She had done everything in her earthly power at her end, now the ball was in the other court. How long it would take to process the invitation applications and receive an answer was something she just could not know. So there was no point in trying to second guess. She would just have to wait and grin and bear it. Grinning and bearing it were the hardest things she had ever done.

Life in Tinsley was like living in a war zone. They lived in a row of terrace houses with a tiny back yard. Most of the neighbors were Pakistanis and her girls would ride on the swings, roundabout and slide in the nearby playground with the local children. It was quite a change from the time she lived in the same city during her school days. They lived, if not in the posh part of town, at least on a street with fairly large semi-detached houses and upper middle-class families. She did not really think of herself as a snob, but she remembered that back then Tinsley and Attercliffe were parts of the city to be avoided, the sleazy end of town. And living in a terrace house was considered below her dignity. But here she was thrilled to at least have a place to stay and it was roomy enough, with a small kitchen, dining room and living room downstairs, two bedrooms on the second floor, and even a third floor with an attic under the beams and a gable window that looked out onto the park. This room was her haven. They set up the computer there and took it in turns to work. One day Jason would entertain the girls while she worked on her translations, then she would do things with the girls while he worked on his book. It was a perfect arrangement. Then there would be joint trips up the street to the washateria to do the laundry once a week. They would stuff everything into backpacks and head on up the hill. The girls would be treated to a bag of penny sweets at the sweetshop to keep them happy while the laundry spun.

On the days she spent with the girls while Jason worked they would catch the double-decker bus at the end of the road and go to visit Jane. These bus rides were an exciting adventure for her girls. They would always have to climb the stairs to the upper deck and sit in the very front seats, which offered a superb view of everything round about and down below.

Jane had just given birth to her second daughter and Ursula and Claire would enjoy going over to play with her toddler and see the new baby. They would go to the park together and walk in the woods that were right behind Jane’s house. They were so beautiful in the spring, with daffodils and crocuses blooming. Ellie also found a Waldorf school in Sheffield and inquired about Ursula being enrolled. She had been intrigued by Rudolf Steiner’s teaching while living in Florida and had wanted to homeschool her girls using a Waldorf curriculum. There was a Waldorf school in Gainesville, where Claire was born, but it was private and the tuition was too high for her to afford. But she would take her girls there to participate in the celebrations and would celebrate the festivals at home with them, setting up special tables at Christmas and Easter, and sewing them dolls and angels stuffed with lambs wool and made of natural materials. When they left for England, she had ordered lots of the beeswax crayons and aqua paints to take with her, so she would have an ample supply. She was sure she would not be able to find such things in the Soviet Union. However, the teacher she spoke to at the school in Sheffield said it would not be wise to enroll Ursula for such a short time, it would be very unsettling for both her and the other children in the class. So again Ellie had to content herself with taking her girls to the school to join in the special festival celebrations. The school was in a beautiful setting and it had a very calming and inspiring effect on her soul to be back in that atmosphere.

These trips gave them a welcome reprieve from the upheaval and commotion that often disturbed them at home. Due to the renovations their house was always crawling with workmen and the entire street was soon covered in scaffolding. Once when up on the roof one of the workers put his foot through the ceiling of the girls’ bedroom. They had not covered anything in dust sheets as they had been advised and were faced with a huge cleaning job, there was dust and chunks of plaster everywhere. Another major inconvenience was that they would have to keep moving from room to room while the workmen did what needed to be done. Once they were confined to the tiny kitchen for a couple of days. It was all very awkward, but then it was also temporary, as soon as they could they would be heading back to Russia. This was the only thought that kept her going and kept her head above water through all the trials and tribulations.

One of the biggest problems was the phone. Once they eventually had one installed it would keep getting disconnected as the workmen would often accidentally sever the cable while working in the street. So often she would be waiting for Ivan to call and getting more and more frustrated that the phone was not ringing, only to discover the pathetic thing was dead. Nor did this help with her work. Calls from translation agencies about potential work would not reach her on time. But one way or another they managed. Little by little she spilled the beans to her family. She wrote her mother a letter telling her all that had happened in Moscow. She received a surreptitious note back from her in a general parcel for the whole family. It was tucked into a book for her. How subtle her mother was and how supportive and understanding. She never once expressed her concern, she was always in favor of whatever her “wayward” daughter took into her head next. She told her years later about how she recognized her singleness of purpose in those days. How she saw that she had a goal and she was going to go for it no matter what. Even if she did not know herself what the final outcome would be, her determination to follow her dream was phenomenal. There was no stopping her or getting in her way, so her mother felt all she could do was join her.

She also revealed more to Jason. She had hinted before that they were headed into a precarious situation and Jason, none the wiser, had met her caution with enthusiasm saying he was all up for an adventure. Finally though she felt she just had to let him know about Ivan, that she had met him again and there was things she needed to settle. However, she couched it all in rather vague terms. She had done a past life recall before they left the States. And one of her past lives had been in Russia. She had been a gypsy girl in that incarnation, the daughter of the gypsy baron. She was a dancer and kept all the men entertained. Her father had picked the man he wanted her to marry, but she had fallen in love with a youth from the nearby village. She could not obey her father and bring herself to tie the knot with the man he had chosen for her. She made preparations to run away, surreptitiously helped by her mother who was on her side (there she was again for her!). But her father discovered her scheming before she had the chance to escape and sentenced her to death by strangulation. She was filled with a knowing that the youth had been Ivan. They were denied a chance to be together during that lifetime and were now being given a second chance. She did not tell Jason that she wanted to share her life with Ivan this time, but she told him she felt there was some unfinished business with him from a past life, some karma to be resolved, which was why she wanted to go back. Jason amazingly accepted all of this and said he was willing to go along with her. He said he would always love her no matter what she did.

So the time passed in ups and downs. There were desperate down times when she felt so lost, confused, and uncertain she was doing the right thing, followed by uplifting times when she soared on wings of inner knowing, certain of Ivan’s love for her and empowered by the knowledge that it would all work out. She resolved herself to the fact that it was going to take a lot longer than she anticipated for them to return to Moscow. She had translation work to keep her busy and was thankful for the income it generated. She allowed her doubts to overwhelm her at times but she never gave up hope. The times she did managed to talk to Ivan on the phone assured her he was still waiting.

On July 25 Lucy called to say she had their invitation letter, that is the approval they needed to go ahead and apply for their visas to go to Moscow. Ellie had made arrangements with Natalie to pass this vital document on to Lucy. Lucy had lots of contacts and found someone leaving the Soviet Union for the West who would take this approval with them and mail it to their address in Tinsley. So now she had to wait for the mail to arrive. It arrived on August 1 and they sent it straight off with their passports to the Soviet Embassy. They were planning to travel to Moscow by train so there was still the problem of getting transit visas for Poland. So once they received their passports back from the Soviet Embassy, they had to send them off again to the Polish Embassy. They finally arrived back on August 21. And Jason went in to the travel agent’s to book the train. Another blow awaited her when Jason reported back that all the trains to Moscow were booked up until September. This was something that had just not figured in her plans. There was nothing they could swing that would get them to Moscow in the next few days. Finally they booked a flight for August 23 and ordered a minivan taxi to take them to the airport in Manchester at 4.30 that morning.

Chapter Five: Back in the U.S.S.R.

2009-10-18T16:04:00.006+03:00

She had been in touch with Ivan by phone over the past couple of weeks. He had asked about coming to meet them when they arrived but then changed his mind. He would be out of Moscow until August 26 and she found that she was relieved. She could get herself and her family settled into their new place in Moscow without worrying about meeting him straight away. She bought a jacket for him and ended up arguing with Jason about it. She had bought a jacket for herself as well and Jason had made some snide remark about how nifty they both would look walking around Moscow in their new jackets, and she sensed the pain behind the derision. Although later over wine he told he was not really upset about that. He was becoming more involved in the church. Their American pastor from Ocala came to England on a visit and Jason made a special trip to Oxford to see him. Later she found out he had confided in him about Ivan, so he was obviously concerned and saw Ivan as a threat to their marriage. But still nothing deterred him from going through with their plans. She wondered later what she would have done if he had put up some resistance, if once he had found out that there was another man in her life, even if he did not think she would leave him, he had said let’s forget this and go back home. What would she have done then? She would often in later years feel that it served him right, that his acquiescence had been his downfall, if he had not acted like a doormat to be stepped on and walked over, if he had put up a fight for her, perhaps she would have listened and not been so determined to have her life with Ivan. Of course, it served no purpose thinking that way, what if this, what if that, obviously this was her destiny. But she would not help feeling that Jason’s spinelessness had permitted her in the end to act the way she did, that his altruistic love was not for her, that a man without some punch in him could not hold her for the rest of her life. So even though the guilt would overwhelm her at times, she could not help but feel that Jason had also had his part to play in the final denouement, that even though he would never have pushed her away himself, he did nothing to hold onto her either. His relationship with the church and God was growing stronger, while she was moving away from the traditional church, and she had been for a long time. They agreed to disagree about this as well. He was willing to see things from her point of view, but she had the feeling he was only humoring her. He would never try to prove his point, impose his views on her, but she always sensed that he felt he was right and there was no dissuading him otherwise. And she had no desire to change his mind or make him come round to her way of thinking, but it drove a rift between them. Their spiritual paths were headed in different directions, he was becoming more and more a Jesus man, a Bible-quoting Christian, while she found this hard to swallow with her Unity indoctrination and leaning more toward the metaphysical, reincarnation, and many other beliefs that could only be described as being out in left field rather than in the mainstream. She was just no longer on the same spiritual page as Jason. Perhaps they could have lived with this, lived happily and in harmony raising their daughters, but it was not enough. It was a dead end and she had to go on, move forward, not stand in one spot or even regress. Later she realized that this was a catharsis, it was the beginning of her journey to the dark side of her soul, but she needed to make that journey and make it now, at this point in her evolution. She had reached a turning point, a milestone along the way that required a decision.

So the call of her soul pulled her back to Ivan. He was so different from Jason, really he was uneducated and uncultured (or so it seemed to her, although later her opinion changed, he was self-educated and that sat very differently in her book), from a broken home and one where alcoholics seemed to be the norm. He had no steady job or prospects, nowhere of his own to live. But her heart yearned for him. Common sense was thrown to the wind. If she had really stopped to think, to use logic, to reason things through, would she really be going through with this? What was pulling her to him with an intensity that just could not be resisted?

They arrived in Moscow on 23 August, 1991. Natalie picked them up from the airport and took them to her apartment in Sokol. They were to bed down in the library, which was her father’s room, but he lived elsewhere and only came to use the room and do some reading on rare occasions. It later transpired that she had failed to tell him that she had invited foreigners to stay. And this was just as well, since he was dead set against it, and although Ellie and her family never saw him, when he found out the truth, he told them over the phone to clear the premises. But that would not be for another month or so. For the time being, they set up beds for sleeping on the library floor and there was also another small room, a box room large enough to hold only a bed, where she ended up sleeping. She was happy to have this room to herself, although she sometimes shared the bed with one of the girls. Things felt very strange and she would not be able to reach Ivan for another couple of days. She called Irida and found out he would be back in Moscow the next morning. In the meantime, Natalie showed them around the local shops. Ellie was rather discouraged to see that the selection was even sparser than it had been in February. They managed to get through the registration process at the Central Visa and Immigration Office, and she was pleased that the girls seemed to be handling it all very well, although they would get tired from traipsing around and subsequently hard to handle when traveling on the metro. They also got used to standing in lines at the store to buy whatever was available that day. At home they would replay the whole scene, setting up their matroshka nesting dolls in a long line and “talking” in Russian. The words made absolutely no sense, but the intonation was spot on, the girls were speaking in a language they did not understand but with a pitch and melody that was pure Russian. And there were parks nearby with wooden swings and slides, so she was able to take them out for walks and playtime in the fresh air.

Parks near Sokol

On Saturday morning she called Ivan. He had arrived back in Moscow at 6.00 and was asleep. He said he would call back later and around midday he arrived in a taxi to pick up her and girls to go over to Irida’s for a small get-together. It was not the kind of reunion she had envisioned, but she was content that Ivan was willing to include the girls in their rendez-vous, that they should be doing something together, this seemed very legitimate. Although the girls were shy and reticent, Irida brought out some of Regina’s toys (Tasya, her daughter, was now married with a daughter of her own – a dark-eyed curly-haired beauty) and the girls happily played while she sat and drank champagne with Ivan and the other adults, basking in the joy of being with him again. It felt very different though having the girls with her, she felt inhibited with him and could not let herself go as she had in the past. Ivan also had plans to go and pick up his daughter from the station. So even though they could not bear to part, he had to take her back to Sokol again. But they arranged to meet again later that evening after he had finished taking care of his other business. This time they loaded up with vodka and amaretto and headed for his apartment. Sunday was Natalie’s birthday and the woman from the publishers in New York, whom she had sent her translation to, was in Moscow. So there were plans to have a party and talk over the project. She had every intention of returning to participate. But it was not to be. She was already in the power of alcohol, although she had no understanding of that at the time. She and Ivan began drinking, first just the two of them and then they were joined by some friends. The brother of one of his friends who she had met back in 1981 lived with his wife in the same apartment building as Ivan, just one floor below him. The party continued on the next day. It was time for her to be getting back to Natalie’s but she was already so drunk and could not imagine how she would get there. They ended up going to the friend’s apartment downstairs, at some point she blacked out, awoke several hours later in a strange bed and groped around looking for Ivan. The brother’s wife took her back up to Ivan’s apartment and she was horrified to find out it was 3.30 am, so there was no point in going home then. The drinking continued and although she slept some more, Ivan was still drinking as other friends showed up. One was Alyosha, the matchmaker from her student days, the lisping afro in the short leopard-skin coat. He was full of surprise that she was back and with Ivan and could not stop rubbing it in that he was the one responsible for getting them together back then. Eventually she had to go home. The girls were still asleep and Jason was not very happy with her. He had had to apologize for her absence in front of Natalie’s guests, saying she had been kidnapped by some Russians. The upshot was that the translation was never published, whether it had anything to do with her absence that evening, she had no idea. Natalie never spoke to her about it and not long afterwards left for the States. She never saw her again.

An outing with Ivan and his daughter to Gorky Park

She wrote in her diary:
"Now many years down the line after much water has flown under the bridge and I am much wiser, I see this graphic example of how alcohol made me its slave. Once it was in me, I lost control. I was full of certainty that I would return to Natalie’s in time for the party, but once I started drinking, I was no longer in control. I was a slave and dropped the reins that guided me sanely through my own life. At that time I saw no reason to stop, it did not put me on the alert, it did not caution me, I was blind. I loved the seeming sense of freedom and emancipation alcohol gave me, all our heart-to-heart talks took place over a bottle of wine, alcohol helped to mellow me out when the intensity got too overbearing, when I let my anxiety over my future get the better of me. My spirits always lifted and I felt calmer after having a drink. I drank on the plane going to Moscow and this lulled me into a sense of false security. Ivan and I drank nearly every time we saw each other, what else would we do? Drink, talk, listen to music, have friends over. The time we were apart was for work, taking care of business, spending time with the girls, but once we had some time together we abandoned ourselves to drink, exploring each other’s bodies and minds, it could not be done any other way. The alcohol was essential. And I was so unaware. Drinking had never been a problem before. Oh, I might get drunk on occasion, feel lousy the next day, not want to drink again for a while, but it was never an urge, an obsession, a necessity. It did not replace normal living. Now I could not imagine having a normal time with Ivan if we were not drinking. The alcohol awoke some deep longing within us, opened the gates of communication, we soared to a different plane. We could enjoy each other’s company without alcohol, but the excitement, boldness, and spirit weren’t there. And I was totally oblivious to the danger, saw no need to be cautious. I could not understand that as soon as I allowed alcohol to enter my body, my thoughts and actions were no longer my own."

One day followed another as they settled in. The strangeness gradually dissipated, she knew she had made the right choice. She was home and she did not want to go anywhere else, that was the overwhelming feeling. She was living on the edge and it was thrilling and breathtaking in a way that made her certain she could live no other way. And although she could not see Ivan as often as she wanted, just knowing he was here, close by, that they loved each other and wanted to be together was enough to bolster her through the down times of frustration.

When she did see him though things were better than she could have ever imagined. Of course, nearly every time was accompanied by drinking. But they would always talk, listen to wonderful music, make love, share meals together, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of friends. He wanted to help her with her translations, he wanted Progress to hire her, he wanted it all to work out for her so she could stay. And she was so physically attracted to him. She could not take her eyes off him and would be swept off her feet at the sight of him every time they met again. He had a black leather jacket he wore that set his blue eyes off even more, she just swooned. How could someone so handsome find her beautiful too.

September 5 was her and Jason’s ninth wedding anniversary. She had told him a couple of days before that she no longer felt the same way about him and did not see a future for them. He was bitter of course and as the rain fell on that anniversary day, he stood by the window and stared dismally through it, watching the raindrops run down the pane was like watching their past life disintegrate and dissolve before his eyes. He bought her roses, but there was no champagne or restaurant, as there had been every month on the fifth since their wedding day. He had wanted to go to McDonalds, but the weather had changed their plans. There was no point in standing in line in the rain waiting to get in. He went to bed early without even talking to her.

She continued to do translations for Progress but they had not given her any final answer yet. There were some problems now with hiring foreigners, they could no longer pay their way home should they wish to leave or were dismissed. At the end of September though she signed a contract for two months with the promise of an apartment and then the possibility of extending it later. If she was happy with the fact they could not guarantee her anything, if she was willing to work and not have her trip home paid for at the end, they were willing to hire her. But was she ever planning on going home again? Unlikely, so this small hitch was the least of her worries.

Jason had become involved with the chaplaincy at the American Embassy and would attend Bible studies there a couple of times a week, as well as go to the services on Sunday. He seemed to gain great succor from this.

Things came to a head at the beginning of October. Natalie’s father became more insistent about them moving out of the apartment and freeing up the rooms they were occupying. Natalie’s husband, left to hold down the fort after Natalie flew off to the States, had been kind to them and obviously felt uncomfortable about his father-in-law’s prejudices. He may have spoken up for them and intervened on their behalf, allowing them to continue living in the apartment, had it not been for an early morning phone call from Ivan, who happened to be drunk. He asked for Ellie and when he was told she was still asleep, obviously made some rude reply. Ellie was not asleep and heard the conversation from her bed. She was mortified. Especially when Natalie’s husband confronted her with the fact and told her that he had changed his mind about their staying on. He decided that Natalie’s father had been right, they should leave the apartment and as soon as possible. Luckily it was at this point that Progress stepped forward with a definite go-ahead to move into one of their apartments.

So on October 5 they moved into a two-room apartment courtesy of Progress at Yugo-Zapadnaya in the southwest part of the city. She had joked that this is where she would end up again. It was not that far from the dormitory where she had stayed when studying at the Pushkin Institute. The Russian authorities liked to have foreigners tucked away on the outskirts of the city out of harm’s way. But it was almost the opposite end of the city from Ivan, although it was close to Irida’s. She lamented that they would not be able to meet at his place any more, but he said they would meet at Irida’s.

Ivan helped them to move and she even thoughtlessly arranged a time for he and Jason to get to know each other. She bought some cranberry vodka and thought the three of them would sit companionably in the kitchen and chat amiably together. How insensitive she was. Jason wanted none of it. Of course he was civil and courteous to Ivan, but it was obviously painful for him to see them together, see her so enthralled with Ivan, so totally happy to be with him, how could she expect him to sit down and drink with them as though everything was perfectly alright, as though this was not the man that was tearing their family apart. How totally selfish she was being. Her mind and thoughts were consumed with Ivan and how often they could meet and how much time they could spend together. She was so happy to have their own apartment though and liked the area of town it was in. The air was fresher and there was less traffic and noise. There were woods nearby and she explored the shops and market. She finally felt more settled and confident that something would work out.

One of the clouds on the horizon was Ivan’s drinking. She often could not get in touch with him and then would find out he was drinking, or he would start drinking with some friends and promise not to continue, but then call the next morning drunk having been up all night. In one of these states he insisted she come over and meet his mother because he had told her he wanted to marry me and she wanted to see her. So although she had planned to work that day she dropped everything and got a private car to take her to his apartment for 25 rubles. He continued drinking the whole day and she along with him. And he wanted to keep going so they went to Sadko, the beriozka, for more booze. He fell asleep in the taxi on the way so she decided to take him home with her. She was so delighted to have him sleeping with her in her own bed. The next morning they woke early, took a shower together while the girls still slept, and then he went back to bed while she worked. The girls were curious and kept peeking in on him. So these were the new arrangements that transpired. Her new love, the man she wanted to marry, coming and staying in the same apartment as her husband, whom she had already abandoned physically, mentally, and spiritually, and her two girls, whom she loved dearly and wanted to spend as much time as possible with. This seemed to be the only solution, it was the only way she could still be there for the girls and see Ivan too. They would also arrange times to do things with Rita, his daughter. All of them together like a new bone fide family. He and she and their children. Jason’s pain she chose to ignore. She did not even really know how he was feeling. They must have talked, he always helped her with her translations when she needed, he was always there for the girls, but how she must have trampled on his heart.

One time in mid-October she told Ivan how she could not live without him, but did not see how she could live with him either, since he drank so much. He told her when they lived together they would heal each other and both quit drinking. She still did not think she had a real problem. She did not drink as much and there always came a time when she wanted to stop, especially when he was no longer with it and she needed to keep her wits about her to deal with him. There would be some arguments and scenes as well, when he got so drunk he wanted to leave and go off without her, these times devastated her, she did not understand. She cried a lot. But nothing he did seemed to diminish her love for him, she always came back around to the realization that being with him, no matter what pain and suffering it may cause her, was better than living without him.

There were food restrictions in Moscow. They had introduced a ration system and Moscow residents were issued a card for buying food at the store. There was a list of how much each person was entitled to posted in every store. One day she was at the big supermarket near the metro buying groceries. She had several items in her cart, a couple of boxes of noodles being some of them, as she waited in line to pay, some carts of long spaghetti were wheeled out and everyone dived for it. She went along with everyone else. When she arrived at the check out to pay, the cashier told her she was over her quota, she could not have the boxes of noodles and the spaghetti. She felt like a criminal! She tried to say she had children (the quota was higher for families), but her girls had not yet been entered on her card, and since she had not brought them with her, the cashier would not believe her. She felt so humiliated and cried all the way home. When she told Ivan, he said she should let him do all the shopping for her, but that was so unrealistic. Later they would laugh about it since this was a very similar situation to one Marina Vladi, Vysotsky’s wife (she described it in her book), had faced when she came to Moscow and was trying to make a life with her Russian husband.

On November 5 she went to the British Embassy for a pregnancy test. It was positive.

Chapter Six: Michael’s Birth

2009-10-18T15:43:00.002+03:00

Perhaps this was the clincher, although she had not planned it this way. Of course, she was thrilled to be pregnant from a man she loved, but everything was still so precarious. She already had other translation work from people on the side, that is, nothing to do with her main work for Progress, and the money was much better working freelance, so she knew there was a demand for her here, and whether or not Progress could keep her on permanently did not seem to be a major issue. Ivan was supposedly working on getting an apartment of his own, so housing did not seem to be an insurmountable hurdle either, although she did not remember thinking or worrying about it much. She felt lousy physically at first, cried a lot, complained to Ivan that she did not have the energy to work. Unthinkingly he suggested an abortion, she hung up the phone on him. When she called back, he said he had not wanted to upset her, that it was not what he wanted, he wanted what was best for her, and if she felt the pregnancy was interfering with her work, perhaps an abortion was the solution. But he thought in the way of people brought up in the Soviet system. She was not a puritan when it came to morals, she had had an abortion before, when she stupidly got herself pregnant at 21 and had no intention of joining her life with the father of the baby, it had been the only solution then, although she had sworn to herself before that if she were ever stupid enough to find herself burdened with an unwanted pregnancy she would give birth anyway, almost by way of punishment. Luckily she had changed her mind on that count when it actually did happen. And although she felt a deep hole inside her for a long time afterwards, a feeling of loss and unbearable sadness, she did not ever really regret it, she knew it had been the right decision at the time. But now in Moscow joined again with Ivan there was no way she would get rid of his child. A child from a man she truly loved was a gift too dear and precious to shed. She never ever considered an abortion, but she did like to complain about her feelings. Ivan often parried her so well when she got like this, he never allowed her to wallow in self-pity, he did not comfort her, but always tried to give her some practical advice. If she cried, he told her to go into the bathroom and wash her face in cold water and not come back out until she was calm. He would not rise to her tears, he could not handle them, he did not know what to say, how to comfort, seek comfort from the person who caused your tears, he would say. And who had caused her to cry? No one but herself.

Her mother was upset when she told her. She had been so supportive about coming here in the beginning but she had changed her tune when the reality set in. She could not help worrying about how it would all affect the girls, could not help thinking how frivolous and headstrong her daughter was being, diving into such unknown and uncertain waters and throwing all common sense and caution to the wind. That was only natural, she could understand her mother for her motherly and grandmotherly concern. But she chose to ignore it and keep plodding her own path.

She contacted T.S. again and that was a boon. She invited her to come for childbirth classes and consultation, and also participate in the trip she and her husband and other like-minded friends were planning for that summer to the Black Sea. She would give birth to her baby in the waters of the sea in the presence of dolphins. Might her dream really come to pass?

In March of the following year Progress supplied her with a larger three-room apartment in the same building. Jason, she, and the girls were still all together, and Ivan would come over whenever he could. They all managed as one family. Her girls would fantasize for a long time after the divorce that they all lived together in the same big house. She, Ivan, their new baby on one side, Jason, the girls, and later his new wife, on the other, and they would freely move back and forth to visit each other.

She and Jason got a divorce in May. She was eight months pregnant and stood in the court room before the judge with her swollen belly. Jason brought along an interpreter. After listening to their reason for divorcing as different life views, incompatibility, irreconcilable differences, she charged them both 100 rubles, saying they were both equally to blame. She for getting pregnant by another man, he for letting his wife get pregnant by another man. Jason’s main requirement was that neither she nor the Soviet authorities would do anything to prevent him from taking his daughters out of the country should he so wish. The authorities assured him it was his private affair. She assured him she would not interfere with whatever he and the girls wanted. That was the least she could do for the pain she had caused him. It never entered her head to do otherwise.

She arbitrarily calculated the date her baby was to be born from the date of her last period, as was the norm. The first week in July. In early June, she and Ivan went fishing. He took her to the lake outside Moscow where he had been going every summer with friends for the last ten years. This was where he had been last summer when she had called from Tinsley and talked to his sister. She had told Ellie that he had gone fishing and she had seen a vision in her mind of him in the woods, water sparkling through the trees, she had seen him so clearly, although it seemed he was in a drunken stupor, but she could feel the power of nature all around him and could feel his presence within her. They went with Ivan’s friends from downstairs, Konstantin and Natasha. They camped in a different spot along the shoreline of the lake, other friends had taken the place he usually stopped and they wanted some privacy. But that was the place, she recognized it from her vision. This spot was to become a place very near and dear to her heart, it had a special energy that drew her back over and over again. It was to play a significant part in their future life together, they would continue to fish and camp at this same spot on the lakeside for years and years to come.

After a couple of days, Konstantin and Natasha wanted to go home. Ivan did not want to, nor did she, she had planned on staying a week. But Ivan was worried about her being so pregnant, he wanted her to go back to Moscow. She would not have it, she wanted to stay with him, so he gave in. But he often disappeared off down the shore to the other camp of friends and drink. She would tail along after him sometimes, she felt at home there, although she would not drink much. Everyone took her under their wing, the women were so friendly, especially one, they swam naked together out of sight of the rest of the company. She enjoyed sitting around with everyone, smoking fish, making pancakes, which she tried herself. Ivan was proud of her. He calmed down, happy that he had not sent her off with his neighbors, content that she was there with him, even in her physical state. One time Palich, the leader of the group, took her to a nearby village so she could phone her girls. They bounced over the field in his Niva, her stomach heaving at every lurch, might she give birth right there? She held on though.

A week later Konstantin arrived to take them home. She was dropped off at her apartment in the southwest of the city and he went back to his in the northwest. These partings always wrenched at her heart. When would they live together all the time and not have this visiting relationship? They made their preparations to travel to the Black Sea with T.S & Co. They were due to leave all together, a group of around 15 people, on 24 June, that would give them a couple of weeks to become acclimatized and prepare for the birth. Ivan went along with her, although he was leery and thought it madness. He insisted that she have an ultrasound to make sure the baby was healthy and lying in the right position. Everything was fine, the baby was head down. The doctor did not tell her whether it was a girl or a boy. She later found out that he had told Ivan.

On the evening of the day before they were due to leave, she was at home packing their cases. Ivan was at his mother’s apartment doing his own packing and sewing the cloths they would use as diapers – pelyonki. The train was due to leave at 2.00 pm the next afternoon. She called to say goodnight to him and went to bed. Around 3.00 in the morning, she awoke with severe cramping. She knew that feeling, it was birth contractions. She called Ivan, but there was no answer. She called Konstantin, he answered and said he would go and wake Ivan. He called back to say they were on their way. She called T.S. What should she do? T.S. suggested getting plane tickets and she would deliver her in flight if push came to shove. What? No, things were moving along too quickly for that. T.S. told her to come on over to her apartment, she would give birth in her bathtub, or they could set up the aquarium she had for giving birth underwater, a large Plexiglas box-like contraption that could be filled with water.

Ivan and Konstantin arrived in about an hour and they set off for T.S.’s, which was in another part of Moscow another hour’s journey away. She recalled reading in one of her alternative birthing books that if a woman felt she was going into labor early and wanted to stop the contractions, she should drink some strong liquor. She asked Ivan to buy her a bottle of vodka and she began drinking it in the car. Perhaps she could stop the contractions long enough to get to the Black Sea? Pure insanity! So she drank, and Ivan along with her, but the contractions continued. Once at T.S’s they drew her a bath and she lay there in labor. The aquarium contraption that T.S. had mentioned was at the birthing center and the keys were with one of the other members of the birthing company who lived in a different part of Moscow. Ivan and Konstantin set off for the keys. She lay in the tub and continued her labor. She was fully dilated, but pushing did not seem to be getting her anywhere. The men returned with the aquarium and set it up on chairs in another room. Now they needed to fill it with water. They did not have a hose, so started filling buckets and pouring water in by hand. She should be giving birth at any moment. There was no way they could fill that contraption on time, and then how was she to get into it? She guffawed with laughter at the thought that they would need a crane to lift her over the side and lower her in. What other way could she heave herself into that Plexiglas box perched on four chairs? No, she would just stay where she was. There still seemed to be some problem pushing, the head was not showing. T.S. came in and examined her, the head was just a little to one side of the birth canal, not quite properly aligned to make its exit. T.S. probed around and made some adjustments and a couple of pushes later a huge healthy boy came into the world. It was 9.45 in the morning. They did not cut the cord immediately, as was the custom with T.S. and her midwife teaching, and she brought her beautiful baby to her breast. Ivan came in to see them, already mellow from the vodka. He had been sitting in the kitchen calming his nerves. He said he had picked the name Michael after the doctor had told him they were going to have a boy. And they would not use the Russian version, Mikhail, but strictly call him Michael, after the English fashion. She liked it. Ivan and Konstantin went to get her girls and bring them over to see their new brother. They were all going to the Black Sea together, only now they had to change their train tickets. It was decided that the rest of the party would leave as planned and they would change their tickets and join them as soon as they could. She and Michael moved to the bedroom, T.S. massaged her baby and corrected his spinal cord, gently aligning the vertebrae. After the cord had completely finished pulsing, they cut it and took the placenta outside to bury it in the ground with a rose bush planted on top. Alexei blessed Michael and placed a small icon around his neck. The girls were thrilled and sat on the bedside next to her and the new baby, marveling at him. Soon the rest of the company left for the station. And she, Ivan, Michael, and the girls were left to themselves. She put the girls to bed and she and Ivan stayed up the rest of the night drinking. They took a cold shower in the morning and managed to make arrangements for taking the train the next day. They changed their tickets for a sleeping compartment. That was a much better arrangement than the open carriage seats they originally had.

The next day they set off, the five of them with their luggage, much more of course than they really needed and they badly regretted they had taken so much with them when they arrived in Novy Svet on the Black Sea, where the going got really tough.

Chapter Seven: The Black Sea

2009-10-18T15:30:00.005+03:00

They managed really well on the journey. She was so glad they had a compartment to themselves, the five of them together. Ivan was so helpful with Michael, they would go to the bathroom together to change him and wash his diaper cloths. They made a comfortable bed of pillows and blankets for Michael to sleep on. They were all cozy and happy. The first real stumbling block did not arise until they arrived in Simferopol. The courier was there to meet them, but without the promised car. They would need to find a local driver to take them to the campsite. This took a while. It was hot, the girls were thirsty, and Michael needed to be fed. She had no earthly notion how they were to find someone to take them to their destination in the hubbub of a foreign station, but she let the men take care of that while she watched the children and the luggage. She rose to such occasions and did not let herself get irritated and frustrated like Ivan. And eventually they found a driver willing to take them. The scenery was just breathtaking, it reminded her of the California coast, Highway 1, where she had studied in Monterey, but it was even more beautiful and wilder somehow, absolutely stunning. They stopped along the way to buy fresh cherries from the roadside vendors, there was fresh fruit galore.

The next surprise came when they were dropped off at the place they were to stay. A steep craggy cliff dropped away from them down to the sea, their destination lay at its foot, a rather precarious downward scramble awaited them. With rucksacks on backs, cases in tow, a two-day-old infant cradled in her arms, and two small girls to watch, they began their descent. Gravel and small stones slipped out from underfoot making it necessary to sit down and scramble along on their behinds at times, but slowly they somehow managed to wind their way down. At around the half-way point, they came upon a flat shelf-like area in a clearing. Some of the party had set up tents here and suggested that they too stop here to camp, the rest of the way down to the beach was even steeper than the first half of the journey. They agreed and set up their tent. But it was not too satisfactory being such a long way from all the action. Ivan wanted to drink and the person he could best do that with was the video operator. His tent was down on the stony shore. She wanted to be with Ivan, her idea of a loving husband right after his wife had given birth did not jive with the way Ivan was behaving. And she had no desire to stay in the tent with her newborn while he went off drinking with the rest of the company. So began her scrambling back and forth, now on her own, now with Michael in her arms, following her wayward husband here and there. At some point she lost it and collapsed in tears. One of the other mothers in a tent nearby took pity on her and told her to leave Michael with her. She would even feed him if necessary, she was still breastfeeding her own ten-month son, so she had milk to spare. She could see that this new mother was not going to calm down without her man and thought it better that she scramble around after him without an infant in her arms. She gratefully consented. With swollen eyes and a promise not to cry any more, she spent the rest of the night with Ivan and the operator man, sitting under the stars on the seashore, totally exhausted physically and morally and wondering what on earth she was doing. This was not Jason and not what she expected their first days after the birth of their child to be like. But here she was.

The next day they moved their tent down to the water’s edge. It was much better to be down with most of the crowd than having to scramble back and forth. The girls slept in the small tent and Ivan set up a canopy for the two of them and Michael to sleep under. Michael slept under it during the day when the sun was hot and beat down mercilessly on them, but at night it was better to sleep out under the stars. It was warm enough, the air soft and mellow, the nights gentle and caressing. These were the best times. She would lie in Ivan’s arms and they would look at the deep dark night sky full of an amazing number of stars. At these times he was attentive and appeasing. He was hers.

Often during the day he would be gone. They did not have return tickets to Moscow. The rest of the group would not be returning for a couple of months. But they could not stay that long. Ivan did not fit in with the rest of the group, there was a lot of friction, he did not like T.S. and often came to loggerheads with her. He would not be able to stay for more than a couple of weeks, and anyway her mother was due to visit from the States. They had to buy tickets home as soon as they could. So he would go off every day into town with whoever was going for supplies. He needed to phone, he needed to arrange for money to be sent. This was 1991, the era before cell phones and other technological conveniences. They were cut off from the rest of the world, everything had to be done by actually going and doing it. So she would swim with her children and half-heartedly do the exercises and underwater swimming with Michael that T.S suggested. She was not really sure this was right, but she did not want to stick her neck out and be a party-pooper by refusing to join in. So she went along. Michael seemed to respond well, so she continued to swing him around, duck his head under water, and do all kinds of seemingly unnatural exercises with him. It was okay until T.S. insisted she do the same thing with her girls. The underwater swimming part that is. Ursula had always feared the water and the sea since she was a toddler. She remembered picnics on the beach in Florida when Ursula would get panicky about the waves coming in and sweeping away their blankets and food. Sometimes she would have hysterics and refuse to get out of the car and venture onto the beach. Swimming was also a problem, especially putting her head under the water. It made her scream and panic. But T.S. told Ellie that she should force her to do it in order for her to overcome her fear. Ellie was to sit on a rock out in the water with a chocolate and wait for her while Alexei swam with her on his back out to the rock, diving with her under the water as he went. Ursula seemed to be in shock at the end of it all and for years Ellie felt she had traumatized her. (Later she found out that Ursula did not have very clear memories of the incident, she did remember getting the chocolate, but did not remember it as being a traumatic experience. She had clearer memories of another incident, when Ellie yelled at her for getting her hair wet again in the salty sea water after she had just washed it in fresh water.)

After that her breasts became hot and swollen, she got a fever and had to lie for a day in the shade. She was made to fast and drink her own urine. She also had a vaginal infection that would not clear up. Plus she had torn during the birth along her old episiotomy scar and T.S. had unsuccessfully tried to stitch her up. All the stitches had come out during the train journey. But she believed in self-healing. And once she realized the reason for the stoppage in her breasts was the resistance she felt toward T.S. and her instructions to do things she did not feel were right for her, she decided to tell her that she would not follow them any more. She did not feel comfortable. She knew her daughter better. Ursula would not be forced to swim underwater any more. T.S. accepted her views. She felt relief and the next day her breast infection subsided. The fasting and urine-drinking also seemed to help the vaginal infection, it cleared up too.

She learned a lot during those two weeks. She learned about having expectations, or rather about not having them, she learned about listening to her own body and healing it by changing her thoughts. She wanted Ivan to act a certain way, the way that fit her expectations, but he did not. So she fretted until she could fret no longer. She felt she was impatient with her girls. She was not caring or loving enough, her thoughts were always elsewhere. Ivan would often be off drinking with the video operator, he shared a tent further down the shore with a young girl from Vladivostok. She was about five months’ pregnant and had joined the company to learn more about underwater birth, thinking she may try it herself. The father of the child was not in the picture though, or so Ellie discerned, he was a navy man who was away from home most of the time. Ivan seemed to find a common language with her, she would often join him on his trips into town when he was on his ticket-hunting expeditions. Ellie was sure this girl had her eye on Ivan and would plan her own trips into town to coincide with his. Once, again when he had been drinking, he had gone into town for more vodka. On the way back down the steep slope, he had stumbled and fallen, the vodka bottles in the rucksack miraculously remained intact, but he cut the inside of his forearm on a sharp stone when trying to break his fall and it appeared some gravel had been caught in a vein. Again they were left to their own devices as far as dealing with medical issues was concerned.

He brought gifts for the girls, animals made of shells and some sweet cakes with honey and nuts from the market. The girls were thrilled, they had not had anything sweet since they had been at the sea. One of the animals had broken in the fall though, but Claire said she could glue it, couldn’t she? Ivan also brought red roses for her and handed them to her with a hug and kiss in front of everyone. So the young pregnant girl could forget her fancies.

And Ivan liked to be on duty in the kitchen where he was busy doing something constructive. He always liked to be doing something. He could not sit at home with her and their new son. Once there was a storm. It took them by surprise and was so different from the calm, hot, sunny weather they had been having. Ivan was off drinking and she was left to handle the children. She had to go off to take care of a personal need and at that moment the wind blew up. Her girls were alone in the tent and had a fit of hysteria. She was not there to comfort them. When she got back to the tent she found Alexei in the tent with her girls calming them down. Ivan was nowhere to be seen. He showed up a while later, after the wind had settled somewhat and the hysteria was over. He was mellow from drink and told her how well her brown tanned feet looked against her blue flip flops.

She decided she would not depend on him for anything. She would manage on her own. When some of the party decided to take a trip into Novy Svet, visit the local sights, and have a meal in a restaurant, she took the girls and went with them, leaving Michael with some of the other women on the shore. Ivan did not want to go with them and had some other business to take care of, although he was around to keep an eye on Michael too. She would have liked them to take the trip together, but this was just not something Ivan could do. She understood this at some level and did not push it, but her heart felt heavy. There was so much still in their relationship that baffled her, but she was learning to accept that she could not change him, she could only change herself and accept him the way he was, if she wanted a life with him. Live and let live.

Many years later she found this piece of writing stowed away in one of her old diaries. It was written in her mother’s hand but she did not know where the actual quote came from. Her mother must have given it to her even many years before that. It struck such a chord with her and she realized that these words must have long been etched on her soul and resounded deep within her.

“COMES THE DAWN
AFTER A WHILE YOU LEARN THE SUBTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOLDING A HAND AND CHAINING A SOUL AND YOU LEARN THAT LOVE DOES NOT MEAN LEANING AND COMPANY DOESN'T MEAN SECURITY; AND YOU BEGIN TO LEARN THAT KISSES AREN'T CONTRACTS AND PRESENTS AREN'T PROMISES.AND YOU BEGIN TO ACCEPT YOUR DEFEATS WITH YOU HEAD UP AND YOUR EYES OPEN, WITH THE GRACE OF A WOMAN, NOT THE GRIEF OF A CHILD; AND YOU LEARN TO BUILD ALL YOUR ROADS ON TODAY BECAUSE TOMORROW'S GROUND IS TOO UNCERTAIN FOR PLANS, AND FUTURES HAVE A WAY OF FALLING DOWN IN MID-FLIGHT. AFTER A WHILE YOU LEARN THAT EVEN SUNSHINE BURNS IF YOU GET TOO MUCH. SO, YOU PLANT YOUR OWN GARDEN AND DECORATE YOUR OWN SOUL, INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO BRING YOU FLOWERS.”

There was some wine one day. Someone had brought several bottles of the local wine and she was given a large glass of the deep ruby liquid. She sat alone on the seashore drinking it. Again Ivan was off somewhere. One of the other men in the company came to join her, they sat companionably talking. Very shortly, Ivan came up behind them, he acted as though he needed to ask her something. She could tell he was not very pleased that she was sitting drinking wine with another man, but he did not interfere. She felt a surge of triumph inside her.

Eventually he managed to buy them tickets for the return journey. The day before they left he was drinking all night. He slept most of the way in the train home, so this time she was left to her own devices. She managed the trips to the toilet to change Michael and wash diapers on her own.

Chapter Eight: Life Back in Moscow

2009-10-18T15:17:00.003+03:00

They arrived back in Moscow in time for her mother’s visit. She had several vivid memories of that time. First, her mother was exposed for the first time to the realities of her life in the Soviet Union, but she saw it all from a different perspective and Ellie took offense, or at least became very defensive, when her mother spoke of how difficult life this side of the Iron Curtain was. That was not Ellie’s perspective at all. This conversation arose after Ellie took her mother on several shopping trips, the culmination coming when they went to Detsky Mir, the large department store for children in the center of Moscow, Children’s World. They went to buy some things she needed for Michael and were faced with long lines, a very scanty selection of merchandise, and the entire specter of a huge echoing cavern with endless stone stairways, its vastness filled with nothing save hordes of frustrated women looking for something, anything, of some value for their children. Ellie did not remember finding what she came for and they did not join any of the long lines for whatever it was everyone else had decided was worth buying. But she remembered how appalled her mother was at the thought of Ellie having to face this “torment” every time she needed anything for her baby. Ellie was not fazed though, this was just an external attribute of life here, it did not bother her, she did not see it as an insurmountable hurdle, it was just another idiosyncrasy of Soviet life. It did not mar the overall impression, in fact it added spice. But why did she feel piqued that her mother seemed to focus on the physical hardships rather than see the inner joys that this life brought her? And naturally other trips to the local food stores did nothing to enhance her mother’s impression of everything. But Ellie just could not see it that way. And she felt disappointed that her mother did not share her enthusiasm. Hence her defensive reaction.

Granny with grandchildren

Then there was the time she waited for Ivan all day. They had not spent that much time all together since her mother’s arrival and her mother had voiced the desire to meet Ivan’s mother. Ellie watched from the kitchen window most of the afternoon to see if she could spot Ivan walking toward their building from the bus stop. At times she thought she recognized him from afar, the way he walked, someone of his approximate build and height, but each time she was disappointed, it was not him. Rather late in the evening, when she and her mother were already turning in for the night, Ivan arrived, and he was drunk. She was so pleased to see him that she did not care what state he was in. She sat on his lap and hugged him. But her mother was very disturbed. It brought up all kinds of unpleasant memories associated with her own past situation with Ellie’s father. And later she surprised Ellie with her question: “Why don’t you love yourself enough?” These may not have been the exact words, but the meaning was clear, Ellie was lacking in sufficient self-respect if she chose to link her life with such a man. Ellie was taken aback and found herself reflecting in bafflement on words that aroused conflicting emotions from deep within her. She had never associated her love for Ivan with her love for herself. She knew about his shortcomings, but this did not diminish her love for him. She tried to accept him as he was, weaknesses and all.
She found out many years later that Ivan had begun drinking that day because there was no way he could comfortably acquaint his mother with Ellie’s. He was ashamed of his own mother, because she too drank and he did not want Ellie’s mother, whom he respected so highly, to see this. The only way for him to deal with it at that time was to get drunk himself so he would be in no state to arrange the meeting.

A couple of days after her mother left, there was a state coup in Moscow. On the night the defenders of “democracy” set up barricades before the White House (the affectionate name a l’ americaine for the Russian government building) and tanks roamed the streets, Ivan was there in the midst of it all. When he came to see her late that evening, he said she would probably have to leave the country. If the Communists regained the upper hand, life in the Soviet Union would become unbearable, it would mean the return of the Stalinist labor camps with all the ensuing consequences. This, as usual, was the black way Ivan painted life. She was filled with apprehension. She would not be sent away and she did not want Ivan to talk this way. Could this life she had so desired be so abruptly and rudely snatched away from her? But by the very next day, it was clear that Yeltsin and the “new democrats” had triumphed. The Communists had been driven from power, the country would now pursue a democratic path of development. There was universal jubilation.

Two weeks after this, Ivan came home with news that he had been to see a doctor. He had been fitted with a special intravenous capsule that was incompatible with alcohol. If he drank, he would die. This is what he told her. She was relieved that he had taken the initiative and only informed her of his decision after the deed was done. He did not drink for three years.

While they were at the Black Sea, Jason was supposed to be looking for another apartment. As convenient as it was for all of them to live together, she felt that now she had a new baby and wanted Ivan to live with them permanently, it did not seem quite right for them all to be living under the same roof. Ivan seemed inhibited by it and still spent most of the time at his mother’s, where he had his workshop, only coming to visit when he had some time off from sewing for his clients. He had not yet risen to the thought of moving his sewing machines to her apartment.

Time passed. She continued doing translations for Progress. Some of the members of the Black Sea expedition also contacted her to ask for help with translations into English. As a native speaker she was in demand. So she had plenty to keep her busy. Michael thrived and grew, but he did not talk. He had one word, “Mam,” that he would use for every occasion with different intonations. She always knew what he wanted to say, so he had no use for other words. Ivan was not around enough to really bond with him. He did not talk to him in Russian, and she only spoke to her children in English. Ivan joked that he would learn English along with Michael, but that never happened. Thus began her role as “interpreter” and “go-between” in the relationship between Michael and his father.

Jason found another apartment to live in and also a job. He was also preaching at an evangelist church for Russians. It was there that he met Julia. Actually, first he met her fiancé, Steven. This was when they were still living in the two-room apartment. The fiancé was a Russian who spoke decent English, so he and Jason hit it off. Jason invited him over for Thanksgiving that first November after they had moved into the apartment at Yugo-Zapadnaya. Steven brought Julia with him. Steven was a Jew who felt he was being persecuted here and had decided to emigrate to the States. He did not inform Julia about his plans until the day before he was due to leave. She was so emotionally traumatized by this news that she lost her voice. Jason came to the rescue. First counseling her and then falling in love with her and marrying her.

We are running ahead though, this did not happen for another couple of years. In the meantime, Jason moved from one rented apartment to another. The girls spent time traveling back and forth between her and him. Once she went to see them at one of the rented places where he was struggling, obviously lonely and pained. She did not want to see his pain or recognize what she had put him through. She was deeply depressed by what she understood that day. But this was what she, both of them, had chosen.

By the time he married Julia and moved in with her and her mother and brother, they had found an English-speaking school for the girls. The School of Tomorrow run by American missionaries. It seemed like a dream come true. Until then, when the girls were staying with her, she would attempt to school them herself using the Waldorf material she had brought with them. She enjoyed the times of creative pursuit, coloring with beeswax crayons, painting, sewing felt gnomes to use during math lessons, using her imagination to make up fairy stories. She also continued to set up the festival tables on special occasions. But it was getting harder to devote herself wholeheartedly to this and she was already having doubts about its wisdom. She saw the legitimacy of having teachers who were not your parents. Mother was always mother after all. She thought that it was important for her children to have other authority figures in their lives. That formal teaching and home upbringing should be carried out by different people. The School of Tomorrow was close to where Jason and Julia were now living. So it made sense for the girls to live with them during the week and come to visit her on weekends.

Chapter Nine: The Birth of Twins

2009-10-18T15:07:00.001+03:00

By this time she was pregnant again and looking at the possibility of a home birth. She and T.S. had grown apart, she had seen through her façade and realized that she had put herself at mighty risk giving birth under her supervision. T.S. was not a professional midwife and although she claimed to have attended 100 births (this could well have been true), attending was not the same as knowing all the ins and outs of delivering babies at home. She was put on the alert at first when T.S. had been unable to sew her up properly after her old episiotomy incision opened again during Michael’s birth. She had never had to do this before. Ellie found it hard to believe that Russian women were so supple that not one single woman during these supposed 100 births had ever had to have an episiotomy. Then her doubts about her professionalism were reinforced when she realized that she had been a target of advertisement for her. T.S. had been hoping to make money on her, taking a video of her birth in the Black Sea that she could then sell in the West. When things did not work out as planned she did not sense T.S.’s immediate cooling towards her, but Ivan did. He told her later that he had immediately noticed T.S.’s change in attitude toward her when she ended up giving birth in her bathtub and not in the Black Sea as planned.

Something else also clinched it. While they were there, on the shoreline, in full appreciation of the conditions, the steep precarious climb down to the beach, never mind back up again, they wondered what would happen if a woman had complications during the birth? Perhaps the umbilical cord would be wrapped around the neck, perhaps the baby would go into distress, perhaps the mother might hemorrhage? What then? What medical backup was there? What would T.S. do in such a situation? Nothing, was her answer, she would act as though she were a casual observer, she just happened to be on the beach at the same time, she did not know the woman and had no responsibility for her. And who could prove otherwise?

She would never be using T.S.’s services again.

She did not particularly look for a doctor or midwife to deliver her at home though. Nor did she go to see a gynecologist for checkups. Lucy was now living close by and her other good friend, Ida, who had been studying at Moscow University in February 1990 when she came on her two-week scouting trip, was in Moscow again. They came over for dinner one day. She was in the last trimester. She was huge. Ida commented that it looked as though she was going to have twins. She did not pay much heed to this though. She had heard it before. She always got huge during her pregnancies. Her first doctor had said the same thing. Nothing to take seriously. However, this time things were different and soon she realized that just maybe Ida was right. There seemed to be too many thumps and prods for one child, too many elbows and knees protruding in rolling lumps when she lay on her back. And she still had almost three months to go, but her belly seemed to be full-term size already. And there was an immense heaviness she had never felt before. She decided to go for an ultrasound.

And indeed there were two! And they were breach. A home birth was out of the question. Ivan made arrangements through his doctor friends for her to give birth in a hospital. They agreed on a price - $1000. The head physician was planning to travel abroad for some treatment himself and needed the dollars. The hospital was at the opposite end of Moscow, which was par for the course. She went for a checkup in February. All was well, only there was talk of her being admitted a month early in order to keep an eye on everything more closely. This she could not accept. She could not leave Michael for that long. The next time she went for a checkup she was eight months along. Another ultrasound confirmed the term – 36 weeks. Again the doctor talked about early admission, but did not insist. She went down to see the nurse for her routine checkup. Her blood pressure was high and she had some edema, swollen ankles and fingers from excessive water retention. The nurse said she would have to be admitted as soon as possible, meaning right now. She called the doctor to get his instructions, but he had already left. So she told Ellie to go home and call back in the morning. She would arrange it with the doctor. She should come in the next day expecting to stay until she gave birth. Her whole being resisted. This just could not be.

The next morning she got up as usual and went out to the store with Michael to buy some milk. On the way home she felt the familiar cramping. There could be no doubt, she was in labor. She woke Ivan and told him they needed to get going. It was 1993, there were fuel shortages and you couldn’t just go to the gas station and fill up when you wanted. Ivan kept a supply in his garage. But the garage was near his mother’s apartment in the northwest, while the hospital was in the northeast. After traveling the whole length of Moscow to get gasoline for the car, they would then have to travel the whole breadth. So once more she found herself in a car and in labor – this was the third time in a row – with Claire on the way from Ocala to Galveston, with Michael on the way from her apartment to T.S.’s apartment (again the breadth of Moscow), and now with her twins. By the time she was admitted and being examined by the doctors she was fully dilated. There was no stopping the birth now, even though she was one month early. They would have to go for it. And the babies were still breach. At 2.00 pm, Tom came into the world feet first – never had she felt such pain, never had she screamed so loud, she saw him lying on a metal tray as they took him away. He’s alive, was all she heard the doctors say. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she had the second one to deal with. He was now lying crosswise. The doctor managed to turn him, but again with his feet down rather his head. They decided she would not be able to deliver him independently a second time so they sedated her. She felt as though she were floating somewhere down a river, she knew she should be helping to do something important, but she did not know what. When she came to out in the corridor, the nurse told her she had two fine boys – 3.75 kg and 2.50 kg. Both weights were quite acceptable for single babies, never mind premature twins. What if she had kept them in the oven for another month? They may never have made their way out so easily. How grateful she was to that doctor – she had been allowed to give birth vaginally and with the minimum of medication even though she was having twins and they were breach. She must have been born under a lucky star.

She cried though when they would not bring her babies to her room. The nurses said they had to stay in the nursery for observation, she could go and see them, but they could not stay with her overnight. No one understood her need to be with her babies right from birth. She did not want to be separated from them, but this was new for Russians. Most Russian mothers were grateful for the time to rest and sleep after the birth, grateful that their babies were in the competent hands of the hospital staff. But this was not for her. She knew the bonding she wanted with her children after birth, they had to be together. And there was nothing wrong with her twins, they were premature, but well developed and healthy, she knew there was no reason for them to be separated from her. So she cried and a sweet nurse tried to comfort her but could not understand her pain.

She visited her babies constantly in the nursery the next day. She was the only mother there and the nurses kept telling her not to worry and not to keep coming. Eventually they got so tired of her, they allowed her to have them in her room. Since she had paid hard currency for the privilege of giving birth in this hospital she had a private room, for which she was grateful. Her babies were brought to her and she was not separated from them again. And the hospital staff left her alone, she left the bottled water they brought for extra feeding untouched, she breastfed her babies on demand. She marveled at them and basked in the joy she always felt after giving birth. Ivan sent her goodies. He was not allowed to come in and see her himself or bring Michael to see his new brothers. Husbands had the dubious privilege of standing out in the street below the hospital windows and being shown their newborn sons or daughters through the glass. The day Ivan came and stood under the window she was in the middle of changing one of them, so could not hold them up together to show him. She showed him one, then the other. Michael had fallen asleep in the car, so he was unable to see her and understand that his mother had not abandoned him forever.

The day, a week later, when Ivan came to pick them up and take them home, Michael acted very strangely. She came out with two swaddled bundles and Michael did not smile at her or greet her with any joy. Ivan had left the bassinet in the car and went out to fetch it. Michael made a beeline after him. He did not want to be left with a mother and two strange bundles, particularly a mother who had disappeared for a week without letting him know. They bundled the two red-faced parcels into the bassinet, then into the car. She and Michael sat in the back seat with the bassinet. Michael was dour-faced and wouldn’t look at her or smile at her when she tried to speak to him. Eventually she just talked to him, pouring out all that had been going on since they last saw each other, apologizing for not being able to tell him where she was going for so long. It had happened so quickly and he had fallen asleep in the car on the way to the hospital, so she had been unable to say goodbye properly and tell him what was happening. But now he had two new baby brothers, she had had to stay away so she could bring them into the world. And look at how cute they are. Michael stared at the two swaddled doll-like figures in the bassinet, they really did look rather funny. Slowly a grin began to spread across his face, she smiled back, he looked at her and she smiled into his eyes, they looked at the twins and his smile turned into a chuckle, then into a full-fledged laugh. They both laughed together. They were friends again, he had forgiven her.

Her daughters met them at home. They immediately ran out, shouting “Which one’s mine?” Seeing their mother again was not as exciting as having a real live baby to look after and what a piece of luck that there were two and they could have one each. Ursula took Tom, the older one, and Claire, Greg, who was fifteen minutes younger. Oh it was so perfect. She had these two wonderful helpers. Ursula would take Tom and burp him while she fed Greg, or the other way around. Having twins seemed so much easier than any of the other three put together. They were peaceful happy babies.

The twins were born on 23 March, 1993. On 9 February of the same year, she and Ivan officially married. They had been unable to do so until then. She could not recall precisely when, but at some point Ivan told her he had a secret. He did not reveal it immediately. It must have been after they arrived back from the Black Sea and after life began to assume some semblance of order following the putsch that he told her they could not get married yet because a stamp in his passport showed he was married to someone else. It was a marriage of convenience. Someone he knew who lived in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (one of the former U.S.S.R. republics) wanted to obtain official permission to live in Moscow. She was married herself, but had temporarily divorced her husband and entered into a fictitious marriage with Ivan to get Moscow “propiska” (official residence registration). Once this happened, they would get a divorce and she would remarry her husband. This had been the arrangement a few years ago. Nothing had come of it and in the interim Ivan’s Dushanbe acquaintance had changed her mind and decided she did not want to live in Moscow after all. But it still took time for Ivan to get an official divorce.

They did not have a wedding or do anything fancy. They went to the marriage registration office, signed some papers and were told they were man and wife. There were no other witnesses, no flowers, no music, no special clothing, no rings. The woman who performed the signing ceremony looked rather dubiously at her swollen belly and wished them a long and happy life together. But Ellie felt she did not really believe it, in her look she read pity, another couple getting married out of necessity. How could she know that in her heart welled the greatest love she had ever felt. Konstantin and Natasha came over and they made a meal together. The girls were there too. Ivan was still not drinking. She was not drinking either because of her pregnancy. But they had been making homemade wine and had put some in champagne bottles. It was fizzy just like champagne and much more potent than they realized. Natasha got very drunk and Ivan felt it his duty to take she and Konstantin home. She was devastated. This was supposedly their wedding night and he wanted to leave her and go home with the guests. If he took them home, he would just stay at his mother’s. Again she would be left alone. She cried and caused a scene. His duty to their guests was greater than his duty to her as a wife – she would come up against this sobering realization for long years to come. She was still dealing with it now. Now she understood it better, but at that time she could not, and she could not accept it. He told her that if he did not take them home he would never forgive himself or her and their relationship would be tarnished forever. They compromised. He would run them home but come back to her. He arrived back late and disgruntled. He was with her but all the romanticism had gone out of the evening. There would be no romantic lovemaking and quality time together. This was something she also had to reconcile herself to and would meet in her relationship with him over and over again. She had much to learn about taming her ego.

Chapter Ten: Making a Living

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She continued working for Progress, but also found other freelancing work. Lucy, who was still in Moscow, gave her a good lead with an American law firm. She knew the guy in charge and put in a good word for her. They paid $15 dollars a page for translation work. They took her on and soon she had a new computer. Within a short time, she was making enough money for them to buy a washing machine, a car, a refrigerator, and all because of the extremely advantageous conditions at that time. The dollar-ruble exchange rate was fantastic. If her memory serves her right, they bought the car, a second-hand Niva, for $1,000. After the state coup and the collapse of the old Soviet system, life in new “democratic” Russia with its transition to a market economy began slowly but surely changing. At the beginning of the 1990s though, they were living in a time warp. The old system had collapsed but the market had still not engaged. So the old prices were slow to rise while she was lucky enough to have a salary of the future. In this time warp, in this gap before the old caught up with the new, before the new washed away the old, she was riding a wave of prosperity. It did not last for long, but they took advantage of it and gained.

A year did not pass before the guy who had so kindly taken her on at the American law firm left, and the new people were not so amenable. Every time she called they said they did not have any work just now, but would call as soon as they did. They never called and she soon stopped calling them. She still had her work at Progress but she was in no way swamped. She could work and care for her children at the same time. She relied on no one. She wanted to hire a nanny, a housekeeper, at one point, and actually found a lovely lady. But after she came a couple of times, she realized that she could do it all herself. She did not need her help. And money was often scarce or practically non-existent by this time. They had their car though and Ivan would go out and work as a private taxi driver. That was the norm in Moscow. Hardly anyone used the regular “official” taxis. It was the usual procedure to flag down any car in the street and agree with the driver on a price if he was willing to take you where you wanted to go. This was a customary way for Russians with cars to make some extra money. You could make a real living on it if you took it seriously and went out in search of passengers day and night. Ivan did not devote his whole time to it, but it certainly helped out when she did not have enough work or was not paid that much (which was the case at Progress). Plus they had more mouths to feed and prices were gradually going up. And it was still hard to get all the food they needed. There were times when she had to go out to the store before ten o’clock in the morning to be sure she could get milk before it all sold out. She never really minded standing in line, even with her small children, although it was the custom for women with children to be encouraged to move up to the front so they would not have to wait with crying babies or rowdy toddlers. She always felt embarrassed at this and didn’t like being told by kindly grandmothers and other well-meaning women behind her to go on up to the front of the line and not torment her children. She would wait thank you and her children were tolerating it fine. The ladies who worked in the shops could not help but notice her, she stood out among the ordinary crowd, and soon was on nodding and smiling terms with many of the locals. One woman even brought her a bag of clothes, things that had been hers and she no longer needed, not only children’s clothes but also some of her own things for Ellie. She accepted them gratefully and wore them. She was not one for going shopping for herself and knew that it was not worth spending a lot of money on children’s clothes. She would always shop at second-hand clothing stores for her girls in the States and always passed on the clothes her own children had outgrown. That was run of the mill for her and nothing to turn her nose up at or be ashamed of. Later she would go to the milk kitchen for government freebies for her babies – packets of milk, kefir, and tvorog. As her children grew she took their old clothes and left them on the table there. They would be snapped up by the other mothers in seconds.

Ivan moved his workshop to their apartment at Yugo-Zapadnaya. Now he was living with her all the time, he could do his sewing here and did not have spend time at his mother’s. But most of his clients were women and she found this very hard to handle. Before the market arrived in Russia, attractive women’s clothing was deficit, and women would come to Ivan to order clothes they could not buy in the shops. Of course, this meant measurement and fitting sessions, women dressing and undressing in front of him. She found the thought very disturbing.
One woman who lived in their apartment building cottoned on to him and would come to him with orders. Mainly to redo some items she had already bought that did not fit properly. A short black leather skirt, then a golden shimmery thing she wanted to wear to a dance. Ivan would remake them to order, he had a good eye for a woman’s figure and made things fit like a glove. He had sewn quite a few things for Ellie as well. She had a black mini skirt he had sewn for her that was the envy of every woman who saw her in it. It fit her so well. But it tore at her insides when he would make things to fit like a glove for other women and they would parade in front of him and he observe and size up as the fitting session proceeded. She would sometimes be seized by fits of totally unjustified jealousy. Ivan was a professional and was only interested in sewing as well as he could and producing a perfect product for his clients. But he saw how she suffered and his female clients became fewer and fewer. Later she felt guilty when she asked why he was sewing so little these days and he told her he could not do it when it made her so unhappy. That was part of the truth, but another major reason was that the demand was no longer there. After the market arrived there was clothing galore for women, although if he had really wanted to and she had been able to accept it, he could probably have still made a decent living as a private tailor, sewing customized items for all manner of the fairer sex. As it was though, most of the sewing he did in those days was for their children and for her. He sewed winter coats, pants, dungarees, jeans, blouses, and skirts. All his professional talent went into sewing for the home, the family, which really helped the family budget as well, in fact it was a real godsend.

So it was that they switched roles. Ivan liked cleanliness and order, something she was not used to in a man. And the beauty of it was that he would keep everything clean and orderly himself. She had never been one for housework. She would do the bare minimum, always feeling that time spent with her children was more important than time spent keeping the house clean. Mostly that was just a waste of time anyway she felt, for it would only get dirty again. She did the basic cleaning and that was all. She was never fanatical about it. She was delighted to discover that Ivan cleaned floors, vacuumed, washed clothes, ironed, and even cooked much better than she did. And what is more, he seemed to do this effortlessly and with the greatest efficiency. It would take her twice as long and with less satisfactory results to do what Ivan seemed able to do with the wave of a hand. And he always derived great satisfaction from it. By this time their washing-machine had broken down and they could not get it repaired. There was no extra money for a new one. So Ivan would wash all their clothes by hand. This went on for several years and he did it willingly. He was very philosophical about the situation. She worried at first that he would feel it beneath his dignity that she was the breadwinner and he the househusband. But it suited him. They were both happy with the situation. She liked making the money and not having to worry about keeping the house clean as well. And he could continue living according to his own schedule as he had always done. He was always busy, but on his own terms, and could make extra money taxi-driving or sewing whenever it was needed. It was a perfect setup.

It is paradoxical how the memory works. Now, looking back, Ellie had more vivid memories of the times she was left on her own, left to her own devices, left to depend on herself. She recalled the times she waited in desperation for Ivan to come home more vividly than the times they were together building their home and family in harmony. But really those times outweighed the desperate ones. Would she have stayed had it been otherwise? She never thought seriously, even once, about leaving. Somewhere deep in her soul she knew that this was her destiny. This was where she was supposed to be. And her destiny was with Ivan, no matter how she might despair at times over the way he behaved. She was not perfect either, and she could only deal with herself and her own shortcomings. The bottom line was that she loved Ivan and wanted to share her life with him. She could not imagine it any other way. He created situations in which she was able to come to a better understanding of herself. She needed the lessons he offered to continue along the evolutionary path of her soul.

Chapter Eleven: Pleasure Time

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The local supermarket

In 1996, Ellie’s mother visited again. This was a time of family cohesion. The only time all of her children had the opportunity to spend quality time with their grandmother. She was the only link to Ellie’s past life in the West. Her boys were to grow up not knowing her side of the family. Ellie was unable to take them on visits to the U.S. and her family were unable to visit them in Russia. One time in primary school her boys were asked to draw some pictures for a psychological test. They drew trees without roots. So her mother’s visit in 1996 was a huge success. She bonded with Ellie’s boys (the girls already had a close relationship with her) and appreciated the changes that had occurred in Russian life. People smiled in the street in response to her smiles of greeting, people walked with their heads up, there was more color and joy. The stores were beginning to fill with products. Markets abounded. Her mother was pleased to see that Ellie was now able to get just about everything she wanted. She no longer needed to send her packages of deficit goods.

Poklonnaya Gora
They went on all kinds of excursions together – to the zoo, to Gorky Park and the new amusement park that had opened there, to the new outdoor exhibit site in honor of Victory Day – Poklonnaya Gora, out into the country for a picnic, for walks in the woods. Now it brought back fond and sweet memories, for it was the last time to date that they had all been together and it proved to be the end of a lull before the storm in Ellie’s slide down into the dark side of her soul.

The Moscow Zoo

Her mother left before their summer fishing trip that year. And it was on that trip that Ivan’s dry spell came to an end. The two years recommended by the doctor had stretched to three and may have continued even longer, but at one point while they were fishing, she lost it and yelled and screamed at him for not helping more with the boys and how she couldn’t handle it any more. Another couple were visiting them, and they always drank. They were sitting by the fire and drinking now, while she ranted and raved in the tent. Ivan joined them and grabbed a bottle of beer. When she questioned him, he told her he needed it to calm his nerves. The hiatus was over. He now decided he could drink again, albeit “only beer.”

Those fishing trips were a major event in their lives. They visited the lake outside Moscow every year without fail. It was the same lake she had been to with Ivan when pregnant with Michael, and the tradition had never been broken since. They even went the year the twins were born, when they were only three months old. But that did not daunt them. The bassinet from the double pram was strapped onto the roof rack and off they went. She would marvel in later years at how they managed to get everything into the car. They would remove the back seat and the space it left would be filled with blankets, food, and children, one layer on top of another. In the first years, the early 1990s, they would go for a week at a time, perhaps going two or three times over the summer, but they would have to take everything with them. There was no guarantee of getting the supplies they might need at the shops in the local village. So they had to take everything they thought they might need with them. When the weather was good it was easy. The boys ran around naked, there was no need to wash clothes and diapers, dress them, tie shoes. They would run free and barefoot. Life was a blast. Things were harder if the weather was bad. Rain meant sitting in the tent or dressing up in raincoats and rubber boots. Her fingers would chap and it was hell tying shoelaces and fastening buttons. But usually the weather was not bad for long and everything could be hung out to dry. She gave in and eventually took disposable diapers with them (when they were available). At least then when the weather was bad and they had to be dressed, she did not have to worry about keeping clothes clean and dry. And at night they were simply a godsend.

The pleasures of these trips certainly outbalanced the woes. She was always very conscious of wanting her children to be outdoors as much as possible. At home in Moscow, she would take them out twice a day whenever possible, either to the local playgrounds or to the woods. At the lake though, it was heaven, since she did not have to make any special effort to get everyone dressed to go out. Her children could run around in the fresh air all day long. They soon learned to swim and row the boat. They were able to keep themselves amused, there were woods to explore, trees to climb, berries to pick, fish to catch, wood to gather, fires to make, earth to dig. Nature embraced them all with its generosity and kindness. They all turned as brown as berries, hair, eyes, and skin aglow. If she and Ivan had not used the time to abuse beer, there could have been nothing more idyllic.

When they were not fishing, there was mushroom picking to look forward to. They would go on day trips out into the forests around Moscow. It took her a while to learn which mushrooms were edible, which ones to pick and which ones to pass by. Her boys became experts long before she did. And she found it hard to stay oriented in the forest. She had absolutely no sense of direction, and it was hopeless trying to show her how to use a compass. She would try not to get lost by staying within shouting distance. But that did not always work. Once she wandered off too far a-field with the boys in tow and could not find her way back to the road. When she did find it, she discovered there was a deep channel of water to be negotiated before she could reach it. This was not where they had crossed into the woods. Shouting was to no avail. No one responded. She had obviously wandered too far. She tried to fight down the panic. There were wild boars in the woods and she had three small boys with her. Would she have to spend the night and how would she manage? She tried not to show the boys how panicked she felt and decided not to walk any further, but wait. Eventually she heard Ivan’s shouts, he was looking for them. He had returned to the car for a nap. (They always left early in the morning on these trips, before dawn, and Ivan would often not have slept beforehand.) This was why he had not heard her initial shouts. Luckily he had not napped for long and had immediately set out in search of them as soon as he awoke to find they had not returned to the car. She laughed in relief. It was many years though before she learned to use a compass and find her bearings. But these trips continued to inspire her. She loved being out in the quiet and deep of the forest.
Back home, Ivan would clean, cook, and seal all the mushrooms in sterilized jars. He was an expert. If it was a good year, they would have enough mushrooms for sumptuous soups and salads to last until the next season.

Chapter Twelve: The Road to Hell

2009-10-17T16:34:00.000+03:00

She had continued to drink during the three years he was dry (apart from when she was pregnant), but she could handle it, she didn’t have a problem, so there was nothing to worry about. Once left on her own, when the twins were only a few months old and Michael was also napping, she had drunk a bottle-and-a-half of vodka all by herself just to understand what Ivan felt like when he kept on drinking even after he was totally drunk. She wanted to see what it was like to be in his shoes. She was lifted to the heights of ecstasy at first, and then things got hazy and hairy. She flooded the bathroom because she forgot to put the drainage hose from the washing-machine over the edge of the bathtub. She threw up and had very vague memories of cleaning up and taking the mess out to the garbage chute by the elevators. She called Ivan and he understood by her drunken slurring voice that he needed to get back home. A very bad way to make him come and stay by her side where she wanted him, but it worked. But it was only an experiment, it didn’t mean she had a problem. She was okay. When Ivan didn’t drink, she could manage. She could drink and be left unscathed.

But now their communal drinking began again. If Ivan began without her, was drinking somewhere else and came home drunk wanting more, she would go along with him, joining him as he drank. At first, after he went to bed and passed out, she would stop too. But later she would continue drinking without him. She felt a great freedom then. He would be out of it for twenty-four hours and she was free to do as she wished. While the boys were still babies and toddlers, she didn’t do much. She stayed at home, she took them out for walks, she was with them. Sometimes she would be hung over, but she was there.

Something else about Ivan she learned very early on. He was not a family man. Without any experience of family life himself, how could he be prepared to have a family of his own? He had grown up without a father, so had no role model to go on. He just did not know what to do at first. Did not know what was expected. He was not used to the responsibility full-time fathering entailed. She knew this and accepted it. She managed fine without it. But he gradually got used to it and began to rise to his role of head of the household. He had not particularly welcomed the news that she was pregnant the second time, he even suggested an abortion, but she said no, she wanted to give birth. She asked if he would leave her in that event. He said he would not. So that was that. She would give birth and he would accept it and be there for her and their children. The fact that it was twins actually clinched the matter. From then on he became the proud father of a large family. Families with three and more children in Russia get special privileges. They are honored and admired. And gradually he took more and more responsibility. Later he would even thank her for giving him three sons. So she learned how things can change. How gently, without forcing it, life can be shaped to suit one’s needs. It was very hard, and she tried not to demand anything, she tried to go with the flow, taking things as they came, without expectations and being too needy.

So they plodded along. However the drinking became worse. She could not beat him, so she joined him. But things backfired on her. There was violence and fighting. Arguments and tears. They would start off well enough. She would finish a major translation and get a big fat paycheck. He would successfully manage some business, it didn’t really matter what it was, she could not even recall all the “excuses” they would come up with for deciding to take some time off and relax and go out to buy beer. There would be a new video to watch, shrimp, salted and smoked fish, other delicacies – just the thing to be washed down with cold refreshing beer. The boys would come into their room to see how much beer they had bought this time. If it was four big bottles they began to worry. So they would buy only two. But that would never be enough. No matter how often they told themselves that this time it would be enough, they would drink two and call it a night, it never worked. They always had to go out for more. And that was when the trouble started. In the early 1990s it was still hard to get everything you wanted. But there was usually a joint somewhere in the neighborhood that was open 24 hours, especially for the drunks who needed to keep going, needed a chaser, needed to keep up the pace after they started, or needed to take the hair of a dog in the small hours of the night or early morning. If they were still talking to each other at this point, they would go out together. But sometimes they could not stay close by. The bug would get them, and they would have to be on the move. They would have to seek out more excitement and company, go and visit someone, travel from one end of the city to the other in a taxi. She would swear not to do this, go off in the middle of the night and leave the boys, promising herself to be back before they woke up in the morning. Most times she was, but not always.

But it was worse if they argued, which they often did, and he decided to go off without her. In revenge she would go out by herself into the neighborhood and she would always find company. And since she also always had money, she got herself the reputation of “sponsor.” She would buy everyone vodka and everyone loved her. Often she would go to bed if Ivan left her, but wake up in the early morning still drunk and wanting more. If there was anything left, she would drink it, but that would just get her going again and she would have to go out to keep the momentum going. And again she would meet the local drunks and again they welcomed her with open arms. Whenever she felt hurt and rejected by Ivan, she felt accepted and loved by these drunks.

Later, after he came home and they had managed to sleep it all off, Ivan would scold her for her behavior. He was very against her associating with the locals. Although he would do it himself, and sometimes they would drink with them together, should things turn out that way, and even invite them home. She thought it better to be home, even though drunk, than off somewhere where her children did not know what had become of her or where to find her.

And each time afterwards she swore to herself it would not happen again. She would stop this way of drinking. She would change her ways. But when the next opportunity arose, she would be ready, she was looking for another occasion to drink. This time it would be different. This time she would stay in control. But it never worked.

She tried different tactics. She would only drink at home and without Ivan. But no, that did not work either. Looking back now, she could not recall when and where it was she overstepped the line. When did it happen that she went from drinking when she wanted to and not drinking when she didn’t want to, to drinking whether she wanted to or not? She could not fathom it. She didn’t want to, but she kept on doing it. She had been overtaken by some demon. Something had gotten into her head, into her blood, and was playing all kinds of nasty tricks on her. And as soon as alcohol entered her body she became a different person. It took over her heart and her mind. All the good intentions she had flew out the window. She tried to experiment once. She wondered just how much alcohol it took to completely switch her thoughts around. From staying at home and being a loving mother and wife, to not giving a damn and only thinking about how she could get more to drink. How much did it take? The answer, it turned out, was very little, almost nothing. The first shot, the first glass, the first bottle and she was different. She lost her mind.
Chapter Thirteen: States-Side Interlude

In 1998, Jason and his Russian wife returned to the States. Julia had been offered a scholarship to study and teach music at a university in Moscow, Idaho. What a hoot! They were moving from Moscow to Moscow! They left along with Ellie’s two girls and their own son who was six months younger than her twins. There seemed to be no question. She did not stand in Jason’s way, as they had agreed when they divorced. On top of everything else, his good reasoning was that the girls were not getting the education they needed at a Russian school. They had moved from the School of Tomorrow, which upped its tuition and became just too expensive, to a local Russian school. The girls rose to the Russian, they were pros by now, but Jason felt their English was suffering. Fair enough. And the girls did not seem to object. They wanted to go back to the States with their father. She did not recall any talk of them staying behind with her. Indeed, it suited her just fine as well. She had her three boys to deal with and her drinking. Her girls would be in good hands and out of harm’s way if they left the country with their father. She would feel less guilt and more able to handle her situation herself, or so she thought. Missing out on her girls’ teenage years was just the price she was going to have to pay. She accepted it.

In 2000, she went to the States herself to visit her family. This was the first time she had left the country since moving to Russia. It was a wonderful reunion. Her three sisters, who lived in different parts of the States, all came to Houston and they managed to carve out one day when they were all together. She will remember for the rest of her life the time they sat, just the four of them, out on the patio in her father’s backyard by the small jacuzzi and talked, shared, laughed, and cried together. How she loved her sisters, they were some of the closest and dearest women friends she would ever have. Two of them also had a drinking problem. Her youngest sister was not long sober, but doing well. The other, her closest sister who was just 18 months younger than Ellie, had stopped drinking early, in her twenties, and now had many years of sobriety under her belt. Ellie did not really talk about her drinking problem at this time. She felt no compulsion to drink here with her family in a totally different environment. Her father was sober too after battling with John Barleycorn for years and going through rehabilitation. Drinking was a touchy subject in the family. Those who could not hold their liquor did not drink any more. She had no desire to either. She was safe, she was okay, she could control it.

Chapter Thirteen: States-Side Interlude

2009-10-17T16:22:00.001+03:00

In 1998, Jason and his Russian wife returned to the States. Julia had been offered a scholarship to study and teach music at a university in Moscow, Idaho. What a hoot! They were moving from Moscow to Moscow! They left along with Ellie’s two girls and their own son who was six months younger than her twins. There seemed to be no question. She did not stand in Jason’s way, as they had agreed when they divorced. On top of everything else, his good reasoning was that the girls were not getting the education they needed at a Russian school. They had moved from the School of Tomorrow, which upped its tuition and became just too expensive, to a local Russian school. The girls rose to the Russian, they were pros by now, but Jason felt their English was suffering. Fair enough. And the girls did not seem to object. They wanted to go back to the States with their father. She did not recall any talk of them staying behind with her. Indeed, it suited her just fine as well. She had her three boys to deal with and her drinking. Her girls would be in good hands and out of harm’s way if they left the country with their father. She would feel less guilt and more able to handle her situation herself, or so she thought. Missing out on her girls’ teenage years was just the price she was going to have to pay. She accepted it.

In 2000, she went to the States herself to visit her family. This was the first time she had left the country since moving to Russia. It was a wonderful reunion. Her three sisters, who lived in different parts of the States, all came to Houston and they managed to carve out one day when they were all together. She will remember for the rest of her life the time they sat, just the four of them, out on the patio in her father’s backyard by the small jacuzzi and talked, shared, laughed, and cried together. How she loved her sisters, they were some of the closest and dearest women friends she would ever have. Two of them also had a drinking problem. Her youngest sister was not long sober, but doing well. The other, her closest sister who was just 18 months younger than Ellie, had stopped drinking early, in her twenties, and now had many years of sobriety under her belt. Ellie did not really talk about her drinking problem at this time. She felt no compulsion to drink here with her family in a totally different environment. Her father was sober too after battling with John Barleycorn for years and going through rehabilitation. Drinking was a touchy subject in the family. Those who could not hold their liquor did not drink any more. She had no desire to either. She was safe, she was okay, she could control it.

Chapter Fourteen: The Road to Hell Continues

2009-10-17T16:14:00.001+03:00

She traveled back to Russia with her girls and their brother. They were to spend the summer with relatives. Ivan met her at the airport without their car. She instinctively knew as soon as she saw him there waiting anxiously for her, not alone, but with his friend Yuri, that the car was not in the shop for routine repair, as he told the other Russian relatives there to meet them off the plane, but that he had crashed it while drunk. She heard the story, all very plausible, about how he had held off until the last. Friends had dropped by to visit; Palich, the head honcho from those early days, with his wife and daughter. They often came by to visit them at their campsite at Mozhaisk now that they had a summer house nearby. And they came with vodka. Ivan would not drink with them. He knew he shouldn’t. But later Palich and his wife argued and Palich left, stranding her, along with their daughter and her boyfriend, at the lakeside. They decided to spend the night. So now that Palich had left in a huff and Lena was left to drink on her own, Ivan decided to keep her company and did what he promised he wouldn’t. It should be okay though, just a little, and in the morning he could take them home. But the daughter and her boyfriend went off for a ride in the boat and overturned it, soaking themselves through and through. There was nothing dry for them to change into. So Ivan undertook the heroic task of driving them back to their dacha (summer house) already the worse for wear from vodka. It was not far and the road was a country one and mainly deserted. He got them there okay. On the way back, he started to feel sleepy, he was losing it, he would pull in at the bus stop just up ahead, there was a siding off the main road where he could stop and rest. About 100 yards away, he dozed off completely and drove the car into the ditch. Later he showed her the place. Literally 10 feet away from the spot the car fell was a huge concrete block. He had just missed it and overturn the car on the grass. The car was a mess, but he luckily escaped unscathed. He left the boys at the fishing camp with other friends who had come to visit and asked Yuri to drive him into Moscow to meet her. She had bought Amaretto at the duty free in Seattle before they left. They drank the potion of love all night and marveled at being together again. The next day they all set off back to the lake. She slept most of the way, barely conscious of what was going on. Other Russian relatives joined them, Julia’s brother, their aunt, and a cousin with her girls and husband. They all drank, and she could not stop, she ended up being an embarrassment to them all. She disgraced herself by drinking with the men while her daughters and the other female relatives looked on and shook their heads. Claire wanted her real mother back.

It would have served her right if she ended up at the bottom of that lake. And she could have quite easily. One time some people stopped by who were camping right across from them on the other side of the lake. They invited them over. She and Ivan were already drinking, so the invitation was enticing. The same demon had already taken up its place in their heads, the one that always urged them on to new adventures once the drinking began, demanding that the party continue. So they set off in their boat for the other side of the lake. There was a big gathering there, several families sharing a cook-out with all the trimmings. They joined right in and drank to the point where all reason left them. They decided to set off back in their boat for home. She remembered falling over the side, Ivan too, they could not keep the boat upright with the two of them in it. Luckily one of the sober members of the party saw their plight and came to the rescue. He rowed them back across the lake, towing their own boat behind. She shuddered every time she recalled that incident and what might have happened had they tried the same thing with no one to come and save them.

In 2002, her girls came to Russia again and this time they all went to Lake Baikal together. So her long-cherished dream was to come true. She was to look into the water that was so clear you could always see the bottom. Her girls had met a Russian family in Moscow, Idaho. The girl spoke poor English so Claire became her constant companion, helping her to translate, and they became fast friends. They were a mixed American-Russian family too. The father was American and the mother Russian. They lived part of the time in Irkutsk and part of the time in Idaho. They had a summer house on the shores of Lake Baikal and invited them to visit. Claire was very fretful before they left. She missed her father and was not happy about going on this trip for so long with her mother and Ivan. She would be celebrating her 15th birthday while they were gone and she and Ivan shared the same birthday. Before they left Claire cried tears of worry and pain, complaining to her mother that she would be drinking with Ivan on that day, since it was his birthday too, and she would consequently have a horrible time and did not want to go. Ellie reassured her, promised her that she would not drink. And she was indeed sober on that day, on the birthday, they were all sober, and Hank, the American father, had arrived. They all celebrated together. It was good. But before and after she could not keep her promise. She drank and she drank worse than before. She could feel herself losing it, she could not stop, she would sneak to the store during the day and drink on the way back so that no one knew. Sometimes she would drink with Ivan and keep on going the next day. Once they went to visit one of the neighbors, a friend of Hank’s, and she got so drunk she could not stand, she came home with her face all scraped from embracing the pavement. Ursula talked to her when she had been drinking for the second day in a row. She was coherent, but drunk. She told Ursula that she knew she had crossed the line, that she had a problem, and that she would take care of it. She still remembers to this day how she felt at that point. She admitted she was alcoholic, but she knew she would lick it. She would change her ways, she would not let this beast defeat her. There just had to be a way out.

So this was a turning point in her consciousness. She had long felt the lure of Baikal’s crystal-clear water without understanding why. Now it seemed to be a sign. The water was like a mirror reflecting back to her some hidden part of her soul, allowing her to see it and recognize it for what it was. She had descended to the dark side of her soul and now it was time to turn around and begin the ascent back up to the light.

Chapter Fifteen: Change of Status

2009-10-17T16:00:00.000+03:00

In 2003, things changed as far as her registration status was concerned. Until then Progress had renewed her registration every year. She could have become a Russian citizen as soon as she and Ivan were officially married, but she just never took the plunge. Things were okay as they were, so she just moseyed along without really thinking about it. How was she to know that things would change? Until push came to shove, she had not really given it much thought. No, there had been times when she had seriously thought about applying for Russian citizenship. But there was the stickler of having to give up her British citizenship to do so. She knew deep down in her heart that she would be able to keep her British passport, but every time she talked about getting Russian citizenship, people looked at her in horror. And give up your British citizenship? Only someone definitely not in their right mind would even consider it. And Ivan was against it. What if she needed to leave the country in a hurry, with a Russian passport she would be stuck. Her British passport was her free ticket out of here. But what could happen? A war? Another revolution? A return to the Soviet past? The Iron Curtain coming down or going up again, this time never to crumble again? All of the above seemed highly implausible. And even if something of that sort were to happen, she would certainly have no desire to flee the camp, jump overboard and swim for freedom without him. Did he really think she would ever agree to that? Even for the sake of the boys? And the boys were growing and had minds of their own, they were Russians through and through with no desire to live in the West. So what was all the panic about not losing her British passport? What difference would it make? She could see no earthly reason for holding on it and every reason for being able to live on a par with other Russians in the country she had chosen to make her home. Things were changing in many ways. Paradoxical as it was, things had been easier for foreigners under Soviet power. Things were more equal. Foreigners were treated with greater respect and if they lived here they were entitled to all the rights and privileges of Russian citizens. No one questioned her right to receive child benefits for her children with a foreign passport during Soviet times. But later, a few years after the coup and after shock therapy had come and gone and people began to screw their heads back on the right way and think differently, she was shocked to find that her foreign passport often made her a persona non grata. She was no longer welcomed as before and did not have the same rights. Her photo and name were removed from their large-family identification card. The child benefits no longer came into her bank account, they came into Ivan’s. She could not get free medical insurance and she had no right to buy an apartment. So many things.

This was when Progress told her they could no longer extend her registration, she would have to make other arrangements. Of course, she could. She was married to a Russian, had three Russian-born children, she had every right to attain permanent residence and then citizenship. But she was not prepared for what they told her when she went to inquire. She didn’t think she would have to leave the country in order to be invited back in by Ivan and only then begin the permanent residence application process. And it was not a matter of going straight ahead and applying for citizenship. First it had to be temporary residence, then permanent, and only then could she apply for citizenship. And the process was long and grueling. But first she had to leave the country and wait for an invitation to come back. And she had a week to do it. Her registration was about to expire.

Luckily she had just received a large sum of money for a translation she had done over a year ago. It was a major work, but there had been problems with the clients, Chechens and Daghestanis, who after the work was done decided they didn’t want to pay. So she and her editor kept the translation to themselves. No pay, no translation. Then suddenly, a year later, they were told that payment would be forthcoming. She received $3000, which was enough to buy a ticket for the States. If she had to wait at least 6-8 weeks for the invitation application to be processed, she may as well go and visit her family.

So teary-eyed she left. This was also at the peak of Ivan’s disgruntlement with her over her drinking. He had already told her that he would refuse to give permission for her to travel with the boys to the States if she should decide to take them there on vacation. And although any such harsh words from him always stung her to the quick and she would always take them very seriously, she was to learn over and over again in the ensuing years that his bark was always much worse than his bite. He would say such things when he was hurting himself, but they had no substance, they always came out in the wash. And traveling to the States with her boys also turned out to be a pipe dream. It had been a fond hope every year. She would take the boys to see their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. But it never transpired. Her father to this day had never seen his grandsons. But now, faced with this daunting prospect of leaving and waiting for Ivan to invite her back, she was filled with doubt and remorse that her drinking was driving such a wedge between them. Perhaps he would not want to invite her back? She would leave and that would be that. But her fears were groundless. Immediately upon her departure he began the paperwork necessary to issue her the invitation and tried to get it all done as quickly as possible.

First she visited her daughters in Atlanta. Then went to Houston to visit her mother, father, and sister who lived in Dallas. There was also a trip to visit her younger sister outside Memphis. These were the two sisters who had managed to deal with their drinking problem. She talked to them at length about their experiences and her own. She talked to her mother openly for the first time about her own fears. Her fears that she too was an alcoholic. She did not talk to her father though. He thought that Ivan was the alcoholic and that she needed to deal with the anguish of being the wife of an alcoholic. He did not suspect that she was having trouble herself. And she decided not to enlighten him. She did not drink at all at this time, again being in a different environment with her family members who were sensitive to the subject of alcohol helped her to put the clamps on her own cravings. She was a chameleon she thought, changing her colors to suit the environment she was in. When she left to visit her non-alcoholic sister in Alaska though she roamed the airport somewhere between flights looking for a beer. She was too self-conscious to go and sit in a bar by herself, but she walked forever from one end of the airport to the other in search of a place she might buy some liquor. On the trip back to Houston too, after she had said farewell and still had some time before her flight, she overcame her reluctance to sit alone and went into a small bar at the airport for a couple of beers. She acted as though it was perfectly normal, and so it was for any normal person who might want a drink. She did not have a stamp on her forehead telling the world she was an alcoholic, so why should anyone pay any attention to her and think it strange? This was when she finally admitted to herself that things really were not right with her. And she could not battle this by herself. A short time later she received the invitation confirmation from Ivan. She was free to return to Moscow. She was so homesick, she so longed to get back. Nothing in the States could hold her any more. This had become crystal clear.

Chapter Sixteen: 2003 – Light at the End of the Tunnel

2009-10-17T15:25:00.002+03:00

She arrived back on the same day as before – 23 August, only this time in 2003. Things were subdued back home. Ivan and the boys met her at the airport. There was no drinking to celebrate her return. Ivan too seemed to understand that it was only poisoning their lives, that if he drank, she would drink, and when she drank things got hairy. So their abstained. They abstained until 30 September when Rita turned 21. They drank together then went over to see her and made total fools of themselves.

So the old patterns returned. Ivan would no longer drink the next day though, he seemed to be able to sleep it off and not want to continue. She could not do this. At the beginning of October she was drinking for the third day in a row. She had begun with Ivan, he had stopped the next day but had agreed to go out and get her more beer. When she still didn’t stop the next day and rudely demanded that he get up and go out for more (after he had taken away her apartment keys and hidden her money so she couldn’t go out herself), his patience reached the end of its tether. He got up, tried to make her get undressed and go to bed, ripping her favorite sweater. She tried to retaliate, she was outraged, but it was useless. She could fight no longer. She had reached the point when it was time to take action to change an unacceptable situation, when she finally realized that enough was enough. She looked up a self-help program for alcoholics on the Internet and, overcoming her reluctance and doubt, went to meet other likeminded souls with the same problem on 20 October, 2003.

The way her boys’ eyes lit up when she told them she was seeking help for her drinking instantly filled with the certainty she was on the right track and there was no turning back now. Her father was also delighted, proud even, when she told him. This was not what she had expected. She expected disappointment, even despair, that yet another of his daughters had been bitten by the green snake. But no, instead she was buoyed along on his rapture and encouragement.

She immediately felt she was taking the right path. It all felt very familiar and comfortable. But it was not easy. Ivan did not understand at first, he didn’t see that it was all or nothing. If she was indisposed to alcohol and had decided to stop drinking, she couldn’t just pick up a drink again whenever the occasion arose and expect to get away with it. And it wasn’t a matter of willpower. About six weeks later, he came home with a bottle of beer, for himself, saying he needed to wind down. She felt peeved, but did not protest, although she couldn’t fathom why he offered to pour a glass for her as well. They went to bed and he drank lying next to her, annoying her and preventing her from sleeping with his slurping and chomping on chips. But soon she fell asleep and so must have he. She awoke in the morning to find an almost full bottle of beer still standing by the bedside. He had only drunk one mug. Strange, she could only think that without her for company he did not have the spirit or desire to continue, or maybe he really was just very tired and one mug was enough to do the trick. She asked him what to do with it. He told her to go and pour it down the sink. She went off to the kitchen with it. But no, she could not bring herself to do it. She decided to hide it in a cupboard. Let Ivan think she had poured it out and later, when the opportunity arose, she would drink it. She had been planning to go meet her likeminded friends that evening and told herself she would have to call it off if she drank that beer. But that could not stop her. The insanity was already well ingrained in her brain. She did not wait very long, soon she was sneaking drinks from that stashed bottle. But she did not go too far. Her desire to change her ways and break this vicious circle was stronger. Plus now she had support, and people were depending on her, she had promised her children that she would stop, and she knew life with Ivan would become intolerable if she did not eradicate this poison from it. So again for a while she was sober and tried to make headway with her spiritual growth. She knew she had lost touch with that spiritual side of her that had awoken and begun to blossom during the early years of her marriage in the States and particularly during her pregnancy with Claire and the ensuing years. But after coming to Russia and getting involved with Ivan again, a door had closed. She had closed the door to the higher realms in order to make the journey down into the dark depths of her soul, to meet the other side of herself, the rebellious and uncontrollable parts of her that needed to have their say. Now the door back up to the light was opening again and she had to get her foot in before it slammed shut forever. This she knew, even though only at some elusive intuitive level.

So she continued working on herself and she was anxious to rush ahead and discover what it was in her past life, in her formative years, that had led her to drink, what shortcomings of character, what insults and past experiences had led to this fatally obsessive behavior. She discovered a great deal. But the most valuable thing she discovered was that she was her own worst enemy. That no one had done anything to her to make her act this way. All her phobias, insecurities, low self-esteem, and self-pity were of her own making. She had chosen to feel and act that way, no one had made her. This gave her a feeling of empowerment, this meant she had the power to choose a different way, a different way of thinking, a different set of behavior patterns. She couldn’t change overnight and knowing all this was quite different from actually doing something about it. But the ground had been tilled and the seed sown. She had a set of tools to work with and she was reweaving the threads of her inner being, regaining contact with her inner core, that radiant part inside her that was connected to the whole of the universe. If she kept her sights on her inner purpose, she could not go far wrong.

She kept this up for six months. She was jubilant. Ivan never brought alcohol into the house again and didn’t drink out of the house either. This was a true miracle for her. She had never tried to make Ivan stop drinking, she had only been very concerned about the way he drank, and when they became mired down in the whole alcoholic nightmare together she even began to fear for her own safety and sanity. He could get so out of hand when he was drunk and she never thought he would see that he had to stop. But after she had made the decision, after she had understood the futility of going on the same way, after she had said she was going for help, Ivan stopped too. He did not see the wisdom of the path she had chosen, he was strong and did not need support, he had his willpower and knew the consequences, he did not have the craving any more. She never thought that the word “alcoholic” would never apply to her, but now she had accepted it, she even welcomed the name. It suited her, she felt comfortable with it, she had somehow found a niche for herself in this world, a place she felt at home and well.

Chapter Seventeen: The Green Snake Does Not Want to Die

2009-10-17T15:16:00.000+03:00

Then she ran out of steam. She had done what she wanted, run the race, crossed what she thought was the finish line, although this was a journey for life, but she had not fully understood that yet. It was June, 2004. She had accomplished so much in the past six months, done so much soul-searching and digging into her past. She now had a clearer picture of herself and what had led her to drink the way she did. She was high and dry. She had done what she wanted to do.

Ivan and the boys went to take some stuff to Lena’s dacha. She was disgruntled, Lena was still a thorn in her side, she still could not fully accept the fact that she and Ivan were just good friends. She was jealous of the time Ivan spent doing things for her, the effort he put into helping her, just jealous of the fact there was another woman worthy of attention and concern in his life. There had to be some catch, something she was not seeing, oh what a perfect example of how she would let a thought seep into her mind and then blow it out of all proportions. She was at home alone for a day or two. She decided to drink. And she drank so that Ivan knew nothing about it when he came home the next day. Oh, this was something new! If she could do it once, she could do it again, she could do it any time she wanted to when the right opportunity arose.

The next time was when she came back to Moscow for a few days to work while Ivan and the boys remained at their fishing campsite. This was a perfect opportunity. They were far away and out of the picture. She had three whole days entirely at her own disposal. She would work for a while, do what she needed, and then go out for beer. And she found a Czech beer that didn’t give her a headache and didn’t make her want to go out the next morning for more. She could drink a few bottles in the evening without any dire consequences. She jumped up fresh as a daisy on the morning she was to return to the family without so much as a trace of yesterday’s beer fogging her mind or pressing on her temples. So the pattern set in. For the next six months she would sneak drinks here and sneak them there. She would buy a couple of cans to take to the woods, buy a couple of cans when she went out to the store and find some dark driveway or secluded corner to stop and guzzle them before she went back home. Sometimes she was not careful about popping the tops and spilled some on her shopping bags. Once one of the boys mentioned the smell. She thought she was being so careful. Buying cans that were easy to open and could be disposed of before she came home. And she always had chewing gum or mints in her pocket in the hopes of disguising the smell. But there were always telltale signs and she felt so duplicitous.

And once she started, she could not always stop, there were times when Ivan came home to find her already past all caring. There was a special offer going on at the local supermarket, if she bought a certain amount of food she could get a free gift. One of the gifts was a bottle of wine. She gathered points from buying groceries and stashed the free wine in the cupboard “for a rainy day.”

This was absolutely insane behavior, since she worried constantly about Ivan finding it, and she didn’t want to drink it anyway, but nevertheless felt an immense comfort from just knowing it was there, just in case. In case of what? In case she would suddenly be overcome by a bout of self-pity? In case Ivan went off on his altruistic business, helping friends who were lifelong and in need, when she wanted him to stay home? In case she felt so down that only chug-a-lugging that poison would lift her spirits again? Hah, lift her spirits, that was laughable. That was the biggest illusion of all, that spirits (ethyl alcohol) could lift spirits (human emotions ensconced in the soul). It was the other way around, only spirit (the soul) that could overcome spirits (ethyl alcohol” - “Spiritus contra spiritum” as Carl Jung so aptly indicated. Alcohol could not put to rights what was wrong in the human spirit, her soul, only working with her spirit could help her overcome the havoc alcohol was playing in her life. Lifting her spirits with alcohol was only fleeting, transitory. That feeling of being lifted on unseen wings after taking a drink became shorter and shorter, until she hardly felt it at all. The alcohol hit her blood stream and shortly thereafter her brain and the door slammed almost instantaneously shut. There was no raising her spirits, there was only an almost instantaneous plunge into darkness and despair. But knowing this was one thing, and doing what it took to stop the alcohol from running down her gullet was quite another. There was no rhyme or reason. It happened contrary to all reason, that was the paradox of it and the cunning, baffling essence of her disease.

Chapter Eighteen: Out Onto the Fairway Home

2009-10-17T14:55:00.001+03:00

This seesawing continued for another year or so. She despaired of her duplicity, her sneaking around, her trying to hide that she was still drinking. Then one day Ivan drank again. They were in the throes of trying to get officially registered in the apartment from Progress. The whole situation surrounding the fact that they were only in their apartment courtesy of the company she worked for weighed on Ivan and he was determined to officially legalize their status. Progress had been going through many ups and downs, gone bankrupt, and then picked itself back up from the rubble, now with only a handful of employees, shuffled around from here to there. During the time she had been working for them, they had moved their offices, or been forced to move their offices, from a spacious suite in the new building, to a few less spacious rooms in the old wing, to a cramped outbuilding in the back yard of the premises on Zubovsky Boulevard. Who knew how long it would last, maybe they would close down entirely and throw her out of her apartment. She seriously doubted this would ever happen, and they had always assured her it never would. But you just never knew. Things were changing and at a faster, unpredictable pace. It was better not to wait until some unexpected turn in events threw some undesirable trick in her face. Ivan was right, they needed to become legally and officially registered in their apartment.

Also she had so much other freelance work now that was paid at much higher prices than Progress could offer her. But due to her loyalty, due to the fact she was living in “their” apartment, not “hers,” she continued to do the work they asked her to do, getting paid next to nothing and very irregularly, very reluctant to keep doing it, but unable to tell them to go take a hike, she was not going to be at their beck and call anymore. And the people at Progress themselves offered to help make the apartment theirs. They told Ivan to gather all the necessary documents and they would see that they were submitted to the right place and people. Things seemed to be heading in the right direction, until one fine day when Ivan asked how things were progressing, was there hope of registering officially any time soon, he was told that no, the situation had changed and the apartment would never be theirs. Forget it. So they decided to battle the bureaucracy on their own.

Luckily, since they were classified as a “large” family and entitled to certain benefits, one of which was an apartment, they were already on the waiting list in the area of Moscow where Ivan was still officially registered at his mother’s. They began writing letters to various government departments, pleading their case. They had everything in their favor – Ivan was a native Muscovite who had lived for at least 40 years in Moscow, they had three children, two of whom were twins. This was also a special case. During Soviet times, the birth of twins automatically meant an apartment and no one had annulled that law after the Soviet Union collapsed. So began the trudging around, knocking on doors, phone calls, making pests of themselves. Ivan was a real stickler and kept badgering everyone until he got a positive answer.

They knew a family in their same apartment building who were also trying to get their apartment legalized. Only they were not Progress employees and the father had a rather strange way of going about this business. He would drink with the locals, try to wheedle information, and had certain contacts among the City Duma deputies. At the beginning of July 2006 he had found out some invaluable information from one of these deputies while drinking with him that day and was willing to share it with Ivan. At a price, naturally. Ivan would buy him more beer and he would spill his beans to him. Wouldn’t Ivan also want to drink with him, she wondered, as Ivan got ready to go and meet him. He asked her for money to buy the beer. No, he did not want to drink, he would just buy the guy the beer and get the information from him. As dubious as this seemed, she did not argue. The green snake had reared its ugly head inside her once again. And later, when she had finished her work for the day and Ivan had still not returned, and she saw he had not taken his cell phone with him, she knew for sure that he was drinking with that guy. So that meant she could go out and indulge too. She went out to the local wagon on wheels right at the corner of their building. She only had to cross the yard, she did not even have to go through the excruciating business of showing up at the store, waiting in line with beer bottles in her cart, sweating anxiously in the fear that someone she knew would see her. She brought it home and began to drink, waiting in anticipation for Ivan. She had made a round of the neighborhood while she was out in the hopes she might find Ivan and their neighbor somewhere close by, but to no avail. After midnight he called from their neighbor’s apartment, he said he had been drinking (but she knew that from his voice), he said he knew she had too (how? Intuitively, said he), that he was about to leave the neighbor’s and for her to come out and meet him in the yard. He still had some beer left. So they met and sat there on the bench, almost like old times, only this time it was much more companionable. She talked to him about what she had learned about the disease of alcoholism in the past three years and, although he was skeptical and stuck to his guns about it all being a matter of willpower, he seemed to take some of it in. He even used words she was used to. Let’s just presume we’ve had a temporary slip, said he. Tomorrow we’ll start anew. They went quietly to bed.

But the next day, she had to go out for more. Ivan slept on and when he awoke, she was gone. She found some old drinking buddies when she went to the store. Friends she liked and had not seen for a long time. They were delighted to drink along with her. She had just finished a major translation before the drinking began. It had been hard and taken a lot out of her. There was poetry to translate and a song by Vysotsky. And she had translated it by herself and was so proud since Ivan had always insisted that no one, she in particular, would ever be able to translate Vysotsky. His meaning was too deep and only those born and raised in the Soviet communist system would ever be able to see to the core and understand the essence of what he said. But she had translated this one song herself because all the translations she had found on the Internet did not satisfy her. Other poems she had found previous translations of as she sat and waited for Ivan to show up that evening they both drank. The morning after she had called the client and said she was ready to hand in the translation and get paid. This was quite foolish, but the woman had said she was not sure when they could meet and would call back later. All being well, it would not be that day. She was in the woods though still drinking with one of the buddies she had met, when her woman called to say she could meet her that afternoon. How she managed to travel to that metro station, meet the woman, get her money (and not arouse any suspicions), she did not know. She later analyzed that “normal” people whose heads are not filled with alcoholic thoughts every minute of the day and are not looking around for it are hardly going to notice anything slightly amiss, especially if they are not expecting it at all. She did not know this woman to speak of, they had worked together on one big project, but Ellie had always been the epitome of good reason and reliability. Okay, so today she seemed to be in a bit of daze, but she did not reek of alcohol and she was not falling about. She was talking and acting pretty reasonably, and even if the woman did notice something, she was cultured enough not to let it show. The main thing was she still enough in her right mind to know she had received a large sum of money and stash it away in a safe place. She had made sure to take her special pouch that she could hang around her neck and stow under her sweater. And this all happened without Ivan knowing anything. He was off on one of his calls for help again. He had gone to pick up a friend at her dacha, so he was well out of the way for the time being. She took the money home and went back out to continue the party.

There was a crowd on the grass near the polyclinic, some of them she knew, many were new, young faces she had never seen before. Everyone was friendly, some played chess, people were interested in her, although she talked about her attempts to stop drinking. One woman told her she was too serious and thought too much. She was overcome by the emptiness of it all. The spirit of merriment was not there, there was none of the daring and abandonment of the past years. She felt like a fish out of water. What was she doing here? These people were all so alien and the talk was totally banal and uninteresting. And Ivan was looking for her. He was back from the dacha. Later she found out he had sent Greg out in search of her. He had seen her with the company by the polyclinic. She came home at some point and went to bed. The next day she had to have more beer to clear her fuzzy head, but she went to meet her sober alcoholic friends. Again she felt the emptiness of her state. Enough was enough. She has never had a drink since.

Chapter Nineteen: Wonders Will Never Cease

2009-10-15T11:59:00.004+03:00

However, the real turning point came when she decided not to hide her desire to drink from Ivan anymore. One of the greatest temptations came when he went fishing for a couple of days, when he would be gone overnight and she thought she could get away with it. Her first thoughts as soon as he left would be to go out to the store, she could tipple away during the day and no one would be any the wiser. She was no longer under anyone’s watchful eye, although that was an illusion too. Who was watching her? No one was watching while she was not drinking, no one knew her inner state, her obsession, so what warning signals could there be? Her family lived on in sweet oblivion unaware of her inner struggle. So again, she was her own worst enemy, she was the only one to provoke situations where she thought she might drink. No one else could do that, it all depended on her inner state, the strength of her inner core, her ability to remain grounded and in her center, no matter what.

An opportunity came a couple of months later when Ivan was planning to leave for a day or two. Her head filled with unnecessary thoughts again and she decided to tell Ivan about them. She told him about how she always had the desire to drink when he was gone and how she was worried about being able to resist this desire. He did not understand at first and reacted with irritation. “So I have to stay home and look after you? Make sure you don’t do anything untoward?” No, that was not what she meant at all. She did not need him there holding her hand, making sure it did not reach for a drink. She just needed him to know about her struggle. And it was amazing, just that fact, the fact that he knew, changed everything. Once it was out in the open rather than hidden inside, she was free! A.A. Milne may have meant something different when he wrote: "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it," but this seemed to apply very well to her in her circumstances. She knew with certainty that now she had voiced her fears out loud and brought them out in the open and let Ivan look at them she would not go out and buy any liquor once he was gone. She had found a safe harbor, the truth once out for all to see had a very different quality than when it was kept in the dark and unknown recesses of her soul. Could it really be that simple? But it was. The craving was gone. The loophole had closed. There was no one left to kid, least of all herself. By saying the words aloud, she had neutralized her obsession.

Now that the obsession had left her, her vital energy was free to be used in more creative pursuits. What was more, it was not only her energy, but Ivan’s as well. He also seemed empowered by the fact he was no longer drinking. Despite all the obstacles and seeming impossibility of it, they finally received official authorization to live in their apartment. An official permit with all the relevant stamps. Ivan and the boys were able to officially register in it and then privatize it. Soon the apartment was theirs and after she got her permanent residence permit, she was able to register there too. A couple of years passed in a frustrating struggle with the bureaucracy during which she was threatened with deportation because she had not left the country when the deadline of her temporary residence permit expired. But she already had her documents in for permanent residency and it was not her fault they had failed to process them in the allotted time. She was totally unaware that she was supposed to have left the country in that case. As it transpired, the immigration inspector was only trying to cover up for his own negligence, he knew that he was to blame and did not want Ivan to take the case higher, or even worse, to court. So it all blew over and she finally received her permanent residence permit.

So after 16 years, they were all finally officially under the same roof. And even though it was just an official formality and had not interfered with them living together in reality, it just seemed to clinch the matter and give them peace of mind. Now their destiny did not depend on anyone else, on the charity and goodwill of Progress, on the whims of the times, on the changes in the laws. They had a firm base, they owned their own apartment. The next step was get her Russian passport, then she would really be a full-fledged resident with all the ensuing rights. By this time, Ivan had changed his attitude, he was just as anxious as she was, he wanted her to get Russian citizenship as soon as possible.

And another dream came true. They bought a new car. How well their old one had served them, but it was falling apart and just too small. Even going fishing now in the summer was questionable, there was hardly enough room for the twins in the back seat, and Ursula was back in Moscow, she wanted to come too.

As for the car, she never really thought it would happen so soon. They had talked about it for a few years, but she was doubtful they would ever have enough money at all. She was done with credit cards and did not want to take out a bank loan, she believed in living only within the available means. If they had the money in hand, they could spend it, if not, it went against every grain of her being to borrow and live in debt. There was talk though of taking out a delayed payment plan. It all sounded very good on the surface. They would pay a percentage of the price up front and then pay the rest in monthly installments over an agreed length of time. No extra interest or added fees. But nothing is ever that simple and there is no such thing as a free lunch. It all became very clear, when Ivan started looking into it, that delayed payment was a mire they would regret ever getting into. They counted their savings, they had the bulk of it already in hand, the rest was generously provided by Ursula and Rita. Okay they would be in debt for a while, but it was a whole different thing being in debt to family members who were not fussy about when they were paid back and were not going to demand interest than getting involved with the bank. They went for it and were soon the proud owners of a beautiful silver-blue five-door Niva, the same make as their old car but longer and roomier. Now they could make plans for their summer fishing trip.

Their favorite place at Mozhaisk was sadly already out of bounds. They had last been able to go there three years ago. She had been amazed at how the past had failed to haunt her, that she could happily spend time there sober without the ghosts of the past making things difficult. It was a magical place, she felt that to her core. The sad thing was that she had realized it too late, they had come to this same place year after year for so long, and she had always yearned for something different. Now that a new building project had cut off the road for them and they were no longer able to go there, she realized the full extent of the loss. This was the perfect place, this was their place, but now it could no longer be theirs.

They needed to find somewhere else. And now with the new car they were able to travel further a-field.

They spent the summer of 2008 at Lake Seliger, a beautiful spot full of history and enchantment.

She continued to make all kinds of discoveries about herself, gradually making her way back to her inner core, to her sacred feminine soul. She rediscovered her bond with nature. She had always felt at her best on their summer camping trips, swimming every day, going about barefoot, dressed in as little as possible if the weather permitted, natural, in abandonment. Now this bond was becoming more intense and she felt this immense need to spend more time in nature, live in nature permanently, she dreamed of a house in the country where she could live forever. She recalled the Middlebury group leader back in the Moscow student days talking about people from the West who voluntarily chose to live here “disappearing into the woodwork.” That was her! That was what she wanted to do, find her small niche in a wooden house in the country with water close by where she could swim whenever she wanted. Where she could step outside into the grass with bare feet, where she could see the sunset, the moon, the stars, feel the wind, hear the leaves, breathe in the sweet fresh air. And these were the times she was most in harmony with Ivan. When they were off in nature together, either fishing or mushroom-picking.

They were actually in harmony most of the time these days. She had changed and so had he. Or perhaps he had always been that way, but she needed to change before she could see it. Whatever the case, for her Ivan had mellowed and many of the things she found hard to deal with in him in the past were now no longer an issue. She had always tried to accept him as he was, but now that alcohol no longer interfered and muddied the waters, she had a clearer vision of herself and of Ivan in her life.

She had wondered on numerous occasions about whether she would have made this journey to the underworld, whether alcohol would have played such havoc with her life if she had stayed in the West. And there were times she wanted to “blame” Ivan. If she had not met him and not started drinking with him….but “if” is a very precarious word, it stuck out like a sore thumb in her vocabulary, did she not believe in it. There was no such thing as “if,” there was only what was and is. To everything there is a rhyme and reason, in everything there is perfect and divine harmony and order, nothing ever happens by accident, there can only be legitimate coincidences. This was her credo. So there was no point in wondering how things might have been and what might have happened if….. Everything had happened the way it was supposed to. Now she saw that so clearly. Her relationship with Ivan had opened her eyes to her true self, helped her to see to the core of her own pain and dis-ease and find a way to heal herself. Healing of course was relative. She could not be fully healed in this lifetime. Complete healing meant her soul had reached ultimate perfection and no longer needed to manifest in a body. She was still far from that. But the purpose of each life she incarnated in was to climb higher up the spiral of spiritual enlightenment, reach a higher plane of self-understanding and self-acceptance. And this time, Ivan had been the one to help her on her way.

Now looking back on it all, she realized that it could not have been any other way. She had always been intrigued by the phrase “One person’s pain is another person’s purpose” and for a long time she took it the wrong way. She thought it meant that one person in a marriage or love union took on the other person’s pain and healed it. That’s what she thought she was doing with Ivan. She could see the pain in his soul and she felt it was her purpose to heal it for him, that was the reason their lives had joined. Later though her mother shed new light on the phenomenon and she came to understand it differently. Although she was still not sure she had it right. But now it looked more like this. By recognizing Ivan’s soul pain, she could heal her own. We are all mirrors for each other. And Ivan merely reflected her own pain for her so that she could see it and heal it herself. There is nothing we can do to heal another person, that is their own job, but in as far as we are all a single whole, how we heal ourselves as an individual has an effect on the healing of the whole.

Epilogue

2009-10-15T10:51:00.004+03:00

How are things today? Things are harmonious and happy. Things are moving along. There was a time in the past when she felt that Ivan was the main reason holding her in Russia, and if something should happen to him, if he should disappear from her life for whatever reason, she would leave, return to her family in the West, taking her children with her naturally. But as time passed, her thoughts on this count had changed. She could not imagine living in a place where she could not hear and speak Russian every day. She still had the feeling that she was standing on the edge of a precipice and it was so inspiring and uplifting. It kept her on her toes, always prepared for what might happen next. She could not imagine living in a place where she did not feel that. And now her boys were teenagers and real patriots, Russians through and through, they did not want to live anywhere else. If her thoughts turned to imagining life without Ivan, it was still a life in Russia, she would not leave even if he were not by her side. She would soon have a Russian passport and be a bone fide Russian citizen with all the ensuing rights and privileges. And she had inwardly freed herself from her attachment to her British passport. She did not need that passport any more because she did not want to live anywhere else, nor did she particularly want to travel anywhere anymore. If all the borders throughout the world closed tomorrow and everyone had to remain for the rest of their lives in the country they were living now, she would be very happy in the knowledge that she would be staying in Russia forever. It was her country of choice.

Her work was going well. She had not totally freed herself from Progress, but she had hardly done any work for them for over six months now and had let them know that she really was very busy with other better-paying work. She hoped that they would finally realize that she was not going to work for low pay. She had decided to state her minimum rate as $15 a page and not settle for anything less. She was no longer indebted to Progress because of the apartment. The apartment now belonged to Ivan and the boys and no one could throw them out, so she did not need to grovel around doing work for a mere pittance just because she was living in courtesy housing. But it had taken her so long to free her conscience from this obligation. She had felt so morally indebted to them that it was hard for her to refuse work. But they had deceived her so often, promising more than they could actually offer, paying her salary with immense arrears, sometimes not paying what they had promised at all. And she did not feel she could continue playing a game she had long grown out of due to politeness. She was growing spiritually, moving up the ladder, and ties of the past that entangled her and prevented her from moving on had to be severed. So no matter what happened from now on, the stage had been set, it was the beginning of the end of her long years of cooperation with Progress. She felt they had been good for each other. She had certainly gained. She had been given work and an apartment when she most needed it. When things got rough for Progress and most of the editors and translators abandoned ship, the editors continued to call her and offer her work. The old director of the English department opened his own translation agency and offered her work there. Another editor received freelance offers and asked her to work on her team of translators. She was still working for that editor to this day, it was her main source of income and both the volume of work and salary were growing from year to year. She felt settled and happy with her work situation, there always being just enough income to meet their family needs.

Living with Ivan was still a challenge. She had always thought it was their drinking that was their common bond, it had accompanied them through all their pursuits. And all their heart-to-heart talks and soul-searching had taken place under the influence of alcohol. But now that it was no longer a part of their lives, she was delighted to find there was much more, that they were even closer and even more in harmony than ever before. Heart-to-heart talks took place while they walked in the woods together or during fishing and mushroom-picking trips, and her soul-searching was much more productive and illuminating without alcohol to cloud her mind and slam the door in her face.

There were times of friction, of course, and often they were significant. They did not see eye to eye on how to bring up the boys, for instance, and were often at loggerheads. Ivan was very strict and immediately clamped down on what he considered digressions. He expected the boys to do well in school, study hard, and show good results. This did not always happen and so there were sanctions and restrictions. Ellie found this hard to accept. Her way was much softer, more lenient, more acquiescent and obliging. She did not see the point in limiting computer time or insisting that the boys be home at an early hour. But she conceded that this might not be the right approach and tried to understand Ivan’s methods and abide by them. These problems had not arisen with the girls. First, they had not lived together as a family during their adolescent years, but her girls were just different. Independent, intelligent, bright, knew what they wanted and went for it. Things were different with the boys. They were introverted and quiet, they seemed to live in a different world. She wanted them to do well in school, choose a field of study that interested them and inspired them, be successful and lead the lives of their own choice, but they did not know what they wanted, so they seemed to drift, hoping for the best, and there was no knowing if that would happen. Ivan tried to control the process and that did not seem to work either. They were in the midst of those difficult years when boys turn into men, she could not see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. Her only desire at the moment was to somehow smooth off the sharp corners created by Ivan, make things easier, gently guide and encourage. She wanted her children to learn from their own mistakes, take responsibility for themselves, move ahead confidently in life. Being a mother of boys was proving much harder than she thought. Sometimes Ivan seemed overly oppressive and she felt she would manage better without him, but then on second thoughts, she probably could not. Between them they would reach a balance.

Every love union has a purpose, but only those lasted in which each of the two souls received precisely what it needed from the other soul in the union to evolve. Some souls may come together for a while to evolve part of the way. This had been the case with Jason, but they exhausted their need for each other at some point, so had to part ways. Then there was the physical component of love, the passionate component. People may say that it is transient, has no real substance, and does not really count when it comes down to what real love is all about. But she thought it was important. Passion was important. That physical attraction that did not wane over the years acted as a spark that kept love alive. If passion turned to repulsion, the love that is customarily implied between a man and a woman would not be long in dying. Compassion, caring, friendship, and respect may still remain and even become stronger, but if there is no sexual attraction, the chemistry that keeps couples together through thick and thin disappears too. The passion she felt for Ivan was still alive.

Kindness was also a major element. She had not been kind to Jason. She had not been magnanimous toward him, she had felt and seen his pain, but she had not wanted to show him the kindness he deserved. She had been impatient, irritable, frowning, and short-tempered with him. His acquiescence had irritated her even more. If only he had shown his anger, risen up against her, instead of always agreeing and being obsequious. But if she had loved him, she would have been kind. There were many things about Ivan that irritated her and rubbed her up the wrong way, but when it came down to the bottom line her heart always filled with kindness and compassion for him, a gentleness that passed all understanding. So they were still together to this day.

What she had truly learned at this point in her journey though was her desire to retain her self-respect. The words “To thine own self be true” resonated deep and sonorously within her. Whenever thoughts crept in, as they were sure to do, that one day, somewhere down the line, if she were to find herself in other circumstances, she might drink again, she immediately cancelled them out with another purer thought that this would be tantamount to self-betrayal. Were she to drink again, she would be canceling out all she had achieved in her spiritual journey to this point. She would be spitting in her own face and that thought she could not bear.

"You may fool the whole world down the pathway of Years.
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears,
if you've cheated the Gal in the Glass."

Author unknown.

She still cherished her dream of a house in the country. Ivan had a small painting in a wooden frame of a small snow-bound house, smoke curling from the chimney, on the shore of a lake with a forest in the background. He had shown it to her after she returned to Moscow the second time in 1990. If she stayed this time, said he, he would find a house like that for them to live in. She had stayed.

“’Come to the edge,’ he said. They said, ‘We are afraid.’ ‘Come to the edge,’ he said. They came. He pushed them, and they flew…”

- Guillaume Apollinaire

So the journey to her sacred feminine soul continued.