In May 2000, when Sasha’s Chilean visa was ready, he came to Saratov to see his parents and to make the divorce from his wife official. He wrote to me that he would come to Novosibirsk on June 6th. I had to prepare for his visit. The train form Moscow, through which Sasha was traveling, was arriving in Novosibirsk at five in the morning. I did not want to think about how Sasha would have to spend two hours in public transport to get from the train station to my apartment. Luckily, my old friend Olga Saburova came to my rescue. We met Sasha at the train station on her white Lada, making jokes about a prince on a white horse. Olga drove us to my apartment and left for work, politely refraining from questions. Almost nobody knew about Sasha’s existence. After my divorce, the kids didn’t even want to hear about me possibly getting married again. So I told them that a friend from Colombia was coming to visit me. Thankfully, I had always had more guy friends than girl friends, so it looked quite natural. My mom knew that a guy who had proposed to me, was coming, but I preferred not to tell anything at all to my girlfriends.
This is how Sasha appeared in the apartment where I lived with my mom and kids. It was about 6:30 in the morning, and he said he would now make breakfast, because he was terribly hungry. When I tried to protest along the lines of “Hospitality obliges me to…”, he
A candle in a champagne bottle, covered in wax
HOW WE GOT MARRIED 33 asked me to sit down in the corner and just be with him, saying that he would do everything himself. I recall he started on nothing less thanpirozhki. He made the dough, and began preparing the filling – I don’t remember which filling exactly. Daria was the first one to wake up, she came silently into the kitchen, greeted and lay down on the bench, with her head on my knees. She, as far as I remember, had a fever and therefore was observing Sasha without saying a word. In her 13 years, she had never seen a man cooking in our kitchen, and apparently she did not know how to react. Then, Stepan came jumping into the room and froze on the threshold. Sasha said he had brought a gift for him, a portable cassette player. Dumbfounded, Stepan uttered, “Wow, this is quite a gift…” and disappeared into his room, probably studying the gift’s insides or going through his sparse cassette collection.
A little later, my mom came – she had spent the previous night at my brother’s place. She immediately started to explain Sasha that he was doing it all wrong with thepirozhki, and together with Daria, we braced ourselves for a little inter-kitchen conflict. But Sasha some-how managed to avert the conflict, and my mom waved her hand indifferently at Sasha and left, saying that she would be back soon.
In the meantime, Sasha took his guitar, which he brought from Colombia, and played a funny children’s song. Then he performed a couple of Spanish songs, probably making the first significant breach in the wall of the kids’ resistance to the presence of a new man in our house.
I recall that at some point I had to leave for the children’s room – tears were brimming in my eyes as I was watching the idyllic scene with a man, whom I really only knew through letters, making us breakfast in the kitchen, happily chattering with the kids and looking at me in adoration. I was sitting alone in the room trying to hold back the tears, and I could not believe that it all was happening to me. It had been way too long since I could count on somebody; there had been no one, besides my mom and kids, who I could expect to help me, and I had to decide and do everything on my own. Daria understood instinctively what was going on and came into the room to comfort me; she just stroke my head and didn’t say anything.
Sasha’spirozhkicame out delicious, which even my mom had to admit. When the dishes had been washed and the kids had left to play outside, we were sitting with Sasha in silence.
I had to ask, “Are we going to get married?” - “Well of course”, he said. This is how our next, one of the most hilarious stories began.
We went to the civil registry to apply for a marriage license. Sasha, looking at the girl behind the desk, told her, “We need to get married.” She replied politely: “You submit your application now, and then the wedding ceremony will take place in three months.” Sasha said to her in return: “No, you don’t understand, we need to get married now.” The girl, somewhat taken aback by such insistence, began to explain that in exceptional circum-stances, the marriage could be registered within three weeks, and asked delicately whether the bride was pregnant. To which Sasha, who had heard that everybody accepted bribes in Russia, imagined himself for a moment to be a Colombian drug lord and asked directly:
“Tell me, how much money should I give you to get married right away?”
I noticed that our girl grew pale and disoriented, as she realized that she was openly offered a bribe, and was about to either faint or scream for help. I had to push Sasha aside and take the initiative. As I realized a little later, after 2.5 years in Colombia, Sasha had lost touch with the rapidly evolving Russian reality. I explained to the girl that Sasha had an employment contract in Chile, and that June 10th-12th was a long weekend, and that we were leaving for Moscow on the morning of the 13th, to apply for Chilean visas for me and my kids. As Chile is a catholic country, we could only get the visas if Sasha and me had been officially married. The charming girl was completely on our side and said that the absolute minimum waiting time before the wedding ceremony was three days. However, looking at
34 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET Sasha’s employment contract in Spanish, she said almost in tears: “Unfortunately, I can not take this contract and enclose it as a supporting document to accelerate the processing time:
I don’t know what it says and nobody here would understand it.” We were already quite tired of going from one office to another, so we answered in unison that we would bring a notarized translation in three hours. But then another problem came up: the registry would stop accepting applications by that time. And if the application got registered the next day, the three days processing time would have been over on June 10th, which was a Saturday!
We almost got hysterical, but the girl, looking at our desperate faces, suggested almost in a whisper that we come very early next morning, before everybody else, so that she could backdate our application to June 6th, and then she would register the marriage on June 9th.
We found a translator and got the contract translated into Russian for an additional pay (this time, extra money did not make anyone pale). After having read the translation critically, Sasha tried to argue with the local translator, saying that some sentences did not mean exactly what the translation said. A disagreement with a rather self-assured lady was brewing, but to my question whether this would make any difference at the registry office, Sasha said, “Of course not”, and we retreated quickly. On the one hand, I think he wanted to impress me with his Spanish skills, and this was not hard at all, as I didn’t understand a word of it. On the other hand, he quickly realized the uselessness of the argument and backed off, avoiding a conflict. Besides, Sasha always tried to do everything as well as could;
his personal motto, which later became our family motto, was, “If you are doing something, do it well.”
Just married! (June 9th, 2000) The next morning we were waiting outside
of the registry office already half an hour before its opening time. The smiling girl opened a big book and said: “Well, give me your documents.”
We presented our passports and divorce certifi-cates; I had one such certificate, and Sasha three.
Conventional wisdom would of course say that Sasha should not be marrying a woman with two kids. When I tried to explain that the two kids posed a certain problem for him, he said: “If a man really loves a woman, he will also love her kids, they are her children, after all.” Of course, he could hardly imagine what it means to have kids, and his idealistic views changed over time; anyway, he became a real father to my kids, survived their adolescence and much more. It was similarly unreasonable for me to marry a man with three failed marriages behind him. But his love for me was so expressive, and we both turned out to be hopeless romantics. As in every family, we had our ups and downs, but we always tried to stick together. The last up-swing was in the summer and autumn 2016, just before Sasha passed away.
So we got married on the 9th of June 2000, without witnesses, without long speeches and even without wedding rings, we just could not afford them: all the money was spent on tickets
and paperwork. On the way home, we bought a bottle of sparkling wine and drank it in
HOW WE GOT MARRIED 35
Picnic with friends at the Ob Sea
the apartment with my mom. Daria got sick and we brought her some natural juice. The
“Colombian lord” was paying for everything, played the guitar and kept charming all of us.
The next day, we had a picnic with my friends on the coast of the Ob sea. We ended up not telling anybody about our marriage, keeping it secret from the kids. I introduced Sasha as just a friend, even though everybody could easily see that we were in love, and everyone was happy for us.
On June 13th we left for Moscow, to apply for Chilean visas – we all had to visit the embassy in person. We were traveling from Novosibirsk all in one compartment of a sleeper train, and Sasha was telling us stories about Colombia and China and played guitar for the kids. He had learned a number of funny songs specifically for this occasion, which he now was performing for them. They liked him better and better. I don’t remember what we did those two days on the train, probably played cards and other games. I remember only that the kids kept asking Sasha what various things are called in Spanish, and Sasha would answer. It was then when the first phrase in a mix of languages was born in our family, which later almost became the norm. I think Daria tried to steal some of the instant noodles from Stepan’s plate, to which he said, protecting the noodles with a hand, “Muévete from my lapsha” (Get away from my noodles).
We stayed at a hotel, and Sasha was showing us Moscow. But on the very first day, we had to visit the Chilean embassy. The day before, Sasha explained to us that we all would be considered blond in Chile. Well, all right, Sasha and me are blond even here, in Russia; Stepan is red-haired, and he can be rightly called blond, but it seemed impossible that brown-haired Daria would be considered blond, too. But when we saw the Chilean security guard, apparently a South American Indian, Daria uttered, “Yes, I really am blond.”
Having submitted the documents at the embassy, we had a whole week for sightseeing in Moscow. It was our first family trip; we went to the Red Square, saw the famous Tsar Cannon and Tsar Bell. At the VDNKh park (“Exhibition of Achievements of National
Econ-36 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET omy”), Sasha and Stepan got into a plane and began to “pilot” it. It was hard to tell who was enjoying it more; Sasha always turned into a little child when he got close to cannons, cars and other boyish entertainments.
And what a trip to McDonald’s we had! It was the only McDonald’s in the country. The kids were squealing with excitement when they heard about this idea. It was the first time I saw them standing in line happily, even though the line extended for about a kilometer in the neighboring streets. The excitement kept growing until it reached its peak when they finally received their plastic trays padded with advertising paper, hamburgers wrapped in paper and dripping with fat, a little cardboard box with fries and a huge paper cup of ice sprinkled with Coca-Cola. It was perfectly obvious that they had never eaten better-tasting food, and that they wouldn’t want to see or know about anything else for the next ten years.
Sasha and the children at McDonald’s
The very first night in the hotel, we revealed to the kids that we had got married. They did not object at all but said that now they wanted to celebrate a wedding. We promised firmly that we would arrange a wedding. We were going to this for our 10th anniversary, then for the 15th, but kept putting it off, believing that we would have time for it later on.
After Moscow we headed to Saratov: we had to meet the parents. I kept asking Sasha how his parents reacted to his idea of marrying a woman with two kids. He said that they probably understood that he was really in love with me. He also said that the fact that I was a mathematician and had a PhD played an important role, this was some sort of a sign of quality, indication of equality to their son. Larisa and Yuri gave us a very warm welcome. We also met Leonid, Sasha’s son from his first marriage. The kids, especially the boys, played together, running around the Victory park. Everything was peaceful, natural, without quarrels, lectures on morals and codes of conduct.
It was my first and last visit to Saratov. Being always on the move, we never got a chance to go there together again. Sasha went alone, or his parents would come to visit us.
HOW WE GOT MARRIED 37
Our first family photograph
In our honeymoon trip
About three days later, we left for our five-day “hon-eymoon trip” on a steamboat, and took the kids along.
The steamboat went down the Volga river from Saratov to Astrakhan and back. If you have not been on such cruises, you may not know that there is always a recre-ation host on the boat, who tries to entertain people as much as possible. On one of the days, he arranged a com-petition between married couples. Before we could ob-ject, the kids pushed us to the stage to participate in the competition. They were enjoying every part of the com-petition, and we just didn’t have a choice. Apart from us, there were four or five couples competing, but, natu-rally, we won. I remember that we could name without any hesitation each other’s favorite dishes: fried potatoes for me and herring with cookies for Sasha. Other small details, such as the partner’s favorite color, did not cause any difficulties, either. I still can’t understand how we managed to learn all these details about each other. Our duo became, however, the highlight of the program. We were asked to sing, or read a poem, or to entertain the audience in some other way. First, together with the kids, we preformed in Spanish a children’s song “los pollitos dicen…” (the chicks say…), which we were learning on the train and in the Moscow hotel. Then Sasha played on the guitar the traditional Russian dance “Tsiganochka” (“Gipsy girl”), and I danced for him; after all, he had never seen me dance, but had only heard about this second educa-tion of mine. The Spanish song and the “Gipsy girl” won everyone’s heart and we won the contest.
When we returned to Saratov, Sasha put us on a train to Novosibirsk and flew to Chile
38 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET
Beverly Hills Our student’s defense At home
to “build the nest” as he would say. He began working there, rented an apartment, would find out about schools for the kids, and, in general, was fulfilling his family responsibilities.
Sasha tried to fulfill his promise of “putting all the capitals of the world to my feet”
literally. We traveled a lot both for work and leisure. His curiosity always drew him out of the house, he would very easily get enthusiastic, make plans, buy tickets, look for interesting places and sights. But then, he would quickly begin missing home, and with time he wanted to go back home sooner and sooner. He liked our house, especially the last one in Norway, into which we both put a lot of effort. One time, boarding a plane to go to yet another conference, he complained that he wanted to go home already. Who knows, maybe we would have become homebodies.
HOW WE GOT MARRIED 39
In Cannes
In Norway
chapter 6 CHILE