How we got married

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CONTENTS

Contents 1

1 Childhood 5

2 Living in China 9

3 Rabbits 15

4 How I Ended up in Colombia 17

Love for Colombia . . . 20

5 How we met 25 The second encounter . . . 26

The third encounter . . . 28

Our seldom encounters . . . 30

How we got married . . . 32

6 Chile 41 The beginning of the road . . . 41

Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María . . . 43

Life . . . 52

7 To Norway 61 8 Mittag-Leffler and Chile 75 Sasha’s semester at Mittag-Leffler . . . 77

9 Our Parties 81

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PREFACE

To my husband, Sasha Vasiliev.

I wanted to write down these stories long ago, but did so only very recently. In our frequent trips, I would often indulge in writing travel notes, which Sasha loved to read. I enjoyed listening to his own stories, and promised to put them on paper some day, too. And each time it seemed like there would be plenty of opportunities to do so. But when Sasha was gone, so suddenly, so abruptly, with just few words over the phone, I realized that the time had come, and there was nothing else to wait for.

These notes have helped me to cope with the shock, to feel that Sasha is still here, together with his warmth, energy, sweet nonsense and such a homely smile. Nothing can be done for him now, nor will these notes change anything. I wrote them mostly for myself.

But I also wanted to share the stories with his friends, students, colleagues and, of course, his father and children.

In spite of the endless differences, we were almost an ideal couple. We were husband and wife, but also colleagues and friends. We just really loved each other. I do not know whom or what to thank for the fact that we met each other and were together during those sixteen years.

Together in the Caribbean

Thank you everyone who wrote to me in those hard days, who was around or remembered about us or Sasha. Thank you everyone who is remembering him now. This book is for you.

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4 CONTENTS I want to thank our children, especially Daria Markina, for reading through the book and revisiting the memories together with me. Huge thanks to Katya Rolinskaya for her time and invaluable help in editing the Russian text, the language and my endless “uncon- ventional” punctuation.

The Russian version of these notes appeared on Sasha’s birthday, April 1st 2017. In Russia, this day is also known as Mathematicians’ Day, which Sasha had always celebrated with a great deal of enthusiasm. I wanted to share my memories about Sasha not only with the Russian-speaking audience, but also with his many friends all over the world. This translation would never have been completed, if it had not been driven by Sasha’s former PhD student Georgy Ivanov and my daughter Daria Markina. Many thanks to them for the initiative, patience and hard work. I can say without a doubt that these notes were written by us all together. I would also like to thank Tatiana Shaposhnikova for her valuable remarks made during the editing stage.

It has been a year since Sasha passed way, but he cannot be forgotten. I hope that these memories will once again gather us around the figure of Sasha Vasiliev, always smiling and so energetic.

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chapter 1 CHILDHOOD

Strange as it may seem, I know very little about Sasha’s childhood.

I know that his father, Yuri Petrovich Vasiliev, served as an airfield technician through- out the Second World War. After the war he studied at the university, and in 1968 he defended his thesis for the degree of Candidate of Technical Sciences at the Moscow En- gineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), under the supervision of Professor Isaak Moiseevich Wittenberg.

Sasha with his parents in 1963

He is a specialist in numerical analysis and has gone through all generations of computers, from a parallel-vector computer to a modern Macintosh. He is a very cheerful man, and he taught Sasha lots of jokes and gags that were later passed on to my children and our students.

His mother Larisa Leonidovna Gromova was also a mathematician, a specialist in complex analysis. Her graduate thesis advisor was Nikolai Andreevich Lebedev, professor of the department of mathematical analysis of the Leningrad State University. She defended her thesis also in 1968. I think it was thanks to her that Sasha started his career as a complex analyst. They lived in Saratov, in the city center, in private houses that were demolished later. Sasha’s parents were quite busy with their careers, and so Sasha spent a lot of time with his grandma, mother of Larisa Leonidovna, whose name was also Sasha. They even lived in separate houses which shared a common yard.

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6 CHAPTER 1. CHILDHOOD

Sasha in the first grade Sasha loved his grandmother dearly and always said that

she loved him very much, too. She was endlessly kind to him and forgave him a lot. I remember he told me that he once became interested in chemistry and decided to obtain ammonium. In some textbook, or perhaps even a popular science book, he read that in the old times, ammonium was produced by evaporating urine. So he decided to experiment with his own potty. One can guess that grandma was not particularly happy about such experiments.

He recalled his grandma’s kindness so often that I am led to believe that Sasha inherited his own kindness and gen- tleness from her. I really like the photograph where Sasha is hugging his grandma on the threshold of their house on September 1, 1979, before leaving for his first lecture at the university.

As it often happens, memories that live longest are not necessarily the most rational ones. Sasha kept reminiscing

about their neighbor, an eccentric guy who liked to drink, who grew tomatoes on the roof of his house – because it was closer to the sun there, and often would turn on his radio for his chickens – because he had read somewhere that classical music was good for egg- laying. But the guy himself was not really fond of this kind of music, and he was turning on news programs instead. History is silent on the influence of newscasts on the egg-laying rates of domestic chickens. On the other hand, the fact that Professor Preobrazhensky from Bulgakov’s “The Heart of a Dog” did not recommend reading Soviet newspapers at dinner is widely known.

I have the impression that his “difficult” age was indeed difficult. Apparently, it coin- cided with their move to one large apartment, where he began to live together with his parents and grandma. Living with a reunited family inevitably meant that he suddenly was

Sasha with his parents and grandma

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Sasha and grandma

expected to adopt new rules. Having to make such changes at the age of 18-20, and the young man’s natural desire for freedom most likely led to his attempts at self-affirmation.

Probably, Sasha was seeking affirmation by all available means, which in fact led to cooling of his relations with parents. I think this tension lasted quite a long time, and only at a mature age did Sasha get rid of his teenage belief that his parents wanted too much from him, and he began to treat them more gently.

September 1st, 1979 He always remembered his trips to Moscow and

Leningrad, where his parents traveled for advanced profes- sional training. Together, they went to museums, exhibitions, theaters. In those trips, it seemed, his mother tried to make up for the lack of parental attention that was unavoidable in Sara- tov because of her career. In our later trips, we never missed a chance to visit a museum or go to a concert. For Sasha, the love for art was as natural as the love for mathematics, which he found quite early.

By the beginning of the high school years, Sasha was already seriously interested in maths. He studied in a school where teachers were specially selected to teach advanced mathematics and physics to talented students. Here is what his father Yuri Petrovich Vasiliev, who at the age of 90 has lost his son, recalls:

“Together with a classmate, he liked to solve problems from the ‘Quantum’ magazine, which he was subscribing to. The so- lutions were published in the magazine, and that brought Sasha satisfaction and confidence in the choice of his hobby. This

mathematical hobby eventually led to his admission to the Faculty of Mechanics and Math- ematics of the Saratov University. This faculty has a great mathematical tradition, estab- lished by such world-renowned scientists as V. V. Wagner, N. G. Chudakov, S. G. Lekhnitskii, S. V. Falkovich and others. Sasha’s deep fascination with mathematics is evidenced by the fact that he never abandoned it, despite his love for life and all his other interests, typical for young

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8 CHAPTER 1. CHILDHOOD people. His scientific interests were shaped by the complex function theory seminars at the analysis department, led by Prof. D. V. Prokhorov and L. L. Gromova.”

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chapter 2 LIVING IN CHINA

After graduating from the university, Sasha had no doubts about what to do next. He had always wanted to be a “professor”, to work at a university, to do science. Having grown up in an academic family, he could not even think about any other career. Great, then it’s time to apply for graduate school!

But not so fast – the University’s graduate school was off-limits for him, because the Communist Party and the Soviet government were busy fighting academic nepotism at the time. Note that they did not care much about nepotism at factories: on the contrary, ‘worker dynasties’ were praised and celebrated. But in educational and research institutions, dynasties were equated with nepotism.

As his father, docent Yuri Petrovich Vasiliev, worked at the Saratov University, Sasha could not be admitted to the University’s graduate school. He could not apply to the Saratov Pedagogical Institute either, because Sasha’s mother, Larisa Leonidovna Gromova worked as a docent there. For reasons unknown to me, Sasha did not try to apply to graduate schools in Moscow or Leningrad. The only remaining option was the Saratov Institute of Agricultural Engineering, a special graduate school. “Special” meant that you could write your thesis the way you wanted, supervised by whomever you wanted, but after the graduation, in order to repay your new Alma Mater for nurturing you, you would have to spend three years working at the institute.

Sasha worked with his supervisor, Dmitri Valentinovich Prokhorov, Professor of the department of Mathematical Analysis of the Saratov State University. He defended the dissertation with the Dissertation Committee of the Saratov State University three years later, in 1987. And then, long working shifts followed, where he would spend the standard 20 hours as a senior lecturer in front of the blackboard. Hence Sasha’s chronic laryngitis and gravelly voice.

The Butt with Ears

But then suddenly, a quota for an English language course in Novosibirsk was announced. But who would agree to spend six months in Siberia? Virtually no one:

some had children, wives, others just could not care less about learning English. But recently divorced Sasha, now a single young man, viewed this as a perfect opportunity to go to Novosibirsk, to stay close to Akademgorodok, one of the leading mathematical schools.

In Novosibirsk, he shared his dorm room with three other guys; they were from different parts of the county, all working in agricultural institutes. I remember he told me that one of the guys had taught him about Porfiry Ivanov’

system: they would run half-naked in the frost and pour cold water over themselves.

Later he became interested in drawing and experiments with composition. Not all of his ideas were enthusiastically received by the dorm warden, and some (such as “The Butt with Ears”) were even reported to the dean of the faculty.

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10 CHAPTER 2. LIVING IN CHINA to such self-searching attempts of young bachelor boys from agricultural institutes. Sasha remembered a visit from the warden and the pro-rector for student affairs: “They entered the room together, and the warden started racing around the pro-rector, poking the finger in the pictures on the walls: ‘You see what disgraceful drawings they are making!’ The pro-rector stopped at one of the drawings and nodded to the warden asking him to wait outside. Then he turned to me and said: ‘This is awesome, man! Do you have more pictures like this? Show them to me!’ Then we sat and chatted for a while, and the warden never bothered us again.”

This is how Sasha spent half of 1989, combining the English courses with trips to Akadem- gorodok to attend seminars of Samuil Leibovich Krushkal’. But just after Sasha returned to Saratov, another program was announced, this time a scientific internship. But the interns would have to stay not where they wanted, but where the authorities would decide to send them. This time the authorities were sending interns to China. Here, as I understand it, Sasha’s adventurous nature first showed itself: “This is going to be so cool, China, living abroad!”

So in 1991, with a newly acquired English proficiency certificate and a state scholar- ship, Sasha arrived at a university in Shanghai. The interns stayed in a special hostel for foreigners, and thanks to the Soviet money they almost lived in luxury in hungry China.

But the luxury did not last. As we all remember, the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, and with its disintegration, the new government tried to cut all possible costs. In particular, it refused to pay stipend to the interns abroad, so they were on their own now. Sasha was now only receiving the part paid by the Chinese, around 50 dollars per month. With this money, the average Chinese would happily spend their entire life, but the difference was that foreigners had to pay much higher prices in the stores, as well as other places.

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Sasha on a Chinese diet Very soon it became clear that the money was not

sufficient for survival. When the diet was reduced to a bowl of rice and a bottle of beer per day, and the body lost 15 kg of weight, Sasha started looking for side jobs.

Hostel wardens with links to intelligence services are your best friends abroad. One such cunning Chinese warden told Sasha about a film director who was recruit- ing Europeans for shooting in movies.

In total, Sasha played in four movies, including a TV series for Russian language learners, and a couple of com- mercials. But one of the movies Sasha remembered especially well. It was an art-house drama, filmed by the famous artist and filmmaker Chen Yifei, and the movie was even nominated at the Cannes festival.

The movie was elitist, with few words, telling a story about the unhappy fate of an actress who had emigrated to the United States, but felt nostalgic and shortly before her death returned to Shanghai. The movie was shot in luxurious hotels, but they worked at night to stay within budget. Thanks to his beard, Sasha played a rich Swiss banker. Before a shooting, the actors were given lots of food, and then had to pretend to be a little hungry and

play their 10 takes. Before each take the table was covered afresh, and a new bottle of wine was opened.

Chen Yifei

One night, the director ordered everyone to strip naked and take their seats at the banquet table. Seeing the hesitation of the

“actors”, he announced that he was doubling the pay for the next hour, and immediately got a nude feast with “tycoons of the cap- italist world.” That scene was supposed to show that under their clothes, these important and pompous businessmen do not differ much from each other.

Thanks to this movie, the hungry students got a chance to eat in good restaurants and experience luxurious life (for example, they would see elegantly dressed young hotel servants near the urinals in the men’s bathrooms giving warm napkins to cus- tomers who had fulfilled their needs). At the same time, they were managing to earn a living. Sasha told me that in one scene, a guy had to spend several takes hanging upside down, but his pay was tripled, so everyone envied him.

When the movie shooting was almost over, the film producer offered Sasha a year-long contract in Hong Kong. This could change Sasha’s life completely, but he said no. Sometimes he remembered this decision with a mild regret, perhaps in all seriousness imagining himself a famous actor. Sasha always wanted to be famous, popular, the center of attention - and an acting career could give him that. But he said no.

The shooting ended, the money ended, too, and he decided to go back home. However, a few more months of the internship remained, and the Chinese friends would not let the interns leave ahead of time. The Russian embassy refused to help, saying that the interns could only blame themselves for signing the contracts. They had no choice but to cross the border to Russia illegally. With one physicist guy, they first unsuccessfully tried to become

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12 CHAPTER 2. LIVING IN CHINA

At the shooting location

sailors on a ship. Then they decided to travel north to reach the Russian border, and act according to circumstances from there.

They got from Shanghai to Harbin by local electric trains. The two blond Europeans were quite noticeable in the cold, dirty cars full of Chinese peasants. The locals were car- rying their belongings, utensils and livestock. The bored Chinese kept asking the Russians annoying questions, like “Is Yeltsin good or bad?” or “Is Stalin good or bad?” The correct answer was “Yeltsin is bad, Stalin is good.” If you answered so, they would give you Chinese vodka and food. It helped them to keep warm, which was particularly important because the December cold was intensifying as they were traveling further north.

The children on the trains tried to touch the foreigners, especially Sasha’s bushy beard.

Sasha recalled that the Chinese often claimed that Europeans are closer to apes, because they have more body hair. The Chinese, on the other hand, are a more developed nation, further away from the apes, and that’s why they don’t have that much hair.

Another anecdote about the cultural differences: a pleasant-looking peasant man takes a sugarcane stalk and starts chewing it. The stalk is sweet, but hard, so he is chewing it without swallowing and then spits it out in, well, in his fur hat. When the hat is filled with sugarcane to the top, he turns it to the floor, carefully shakes the cane out of the hat and puts the hat back on. Once an hour, a cleaner appears and rakes the remnants of the sugarcane, as well as all other things people got rid of in the last hour.

When Sasha and his fellow traveler finally reached Harbin, the temperature dropped below -40 degrees and they could not afford a hotel: they were saving money for crossing the border. They tried to get into a student dorm, but the students did not let them in, afraid of being reported for contacts with foreigners. But finally, a compassionate dorm warden sheltered them.

Quite quickly they reached an agreement with Russian shuttle traders about being smug- gled across the border. At the appointed hour they were stuck under bales with goods in a small minibus and transported from Harbin to Russia. Their passports were taken away, and they were given plenty of vodka, to make sure they don’t freeze to death. Once in Russia,

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13 they got on the Trans-Siberian, and continued their travel in much better conditions.

Sasha told me that after having said goodbye to that physicist guy, they never even tried to contact each other. Apparently, the experience was so unsettling and painful that subconsciously they avoided a meeting. Nevertheless, Sasha liked to remember his Chinese epic, retelling it again and again, each time adding new details.

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chapter 3 RABBITS

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

China was finally in the past, and Sasha was again participating in the Analysis seminars of the Saratov State University. Other main participants were Sasha’s mother Larisa Leoni- dovna Gromova, his thesis supervisor Dmitry Valentinovich Prokhorov, their students Petr Pronin and Andrey Zakharov, and Sasha’s student Galina Kamyshova.

Complex analysis seminar, Saratov, 1992

But he was still working at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering. In those years, bribery was flourishing in the Russian higher education system. Provincial colleges, such as the Institute for Agricultural Engineering, were especially prone to it. Sasha awarded fake grades, turned a blind eye to rich ignoramuses, helped with exams when asked, but avoided taking money. But staying uncorrupt when everyone around you is taking bribes inevitably leads to a conflict.

Once, to satisfy a particularly eager intermediary from their department who was stub- bornly insisting on taking money, Sasha jokingly said, “Let them bring rabbits, if they really can’t help but repay us.” Things quieted down, and Sasha began to believe that his colleagues gave up on trying to make him a fellow-bribetaker. But when he came to the department one day, he found a box with two rabbits under his desk, a huge black well-bred male and a small cute female. It was love at first sight, he realized that he could not just get rid of

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16 CHAPTER 3. RABBITS them! I would say that it was his curiosity and creativity that directed him: the desire to create something new, to do something he had never done before.

Sasha began to raise rabbits. He lived in a private house at the time, “helping one lonely woman”, so putting cages in the barn was not too much of a problem. He used a scientific approach, and spent about a year breeding, feeding, skinning and butchering rabbits. To be able to feed his voracious rabbit family, he frequently toured the vegetable stores nearby on his old car, asking for cabbage leaves and other leftovers. When the rabbits had grown, Sasha learned to skin them, so he could sell their pelts. Eventually he became an expert in raising rabbits, and even helped others with advice.

One near-starving lecturer, a beginning rabbit-breeder, told Sasha about his unfortunate experience: “You know, I put once a female in a cage with a male, but she died the next morning.” For such a crime, Sasha was ready to crucify the unlucky rabbit-breeder on the nearest blackboard. “Rabbits are wild beasts, with no notion of romance, he was raping your doe the whole night, and you are still wondering why she died! One hour would be more than enough! I wish you had been put in that cage instead of her, you monster!”

I remember he kept saying that rabbits are most afraid of colds, because they can get a runny nose and then die. In fact, once in Chile, Stepan and I bought a rabbit. Our whole family built a cage for him in the garden. The rabbit had red fur and was unbelievably cute. One winter, Sasha, Dasha and I left for a conference, and Stepan absent-mindedly left the rabbit for the whole night in the garden. Our cute rabbit caught a cold and died after spending the whole previous day sneezing.

Sometimes Sasha told us about “humane” ways of butchering rabbits, saying that he had been feeling guilty for all the killed rabbits, and that for him, rabbits were sacred animals.

At our house, we have a collection of toy bunnies, made of plush, plastic, glass, porcelain.

Whenever Sasha felt sad, he would search for pictures of bunnies on the Internet and email me the cutest ones.

At some point, Sasha realized that he would never become an accomplished scientist if he were to spend his time trying to survive, raising rabbits, settling his endless romantic affairs, trying to find a place to live, trying to grow scientifically in questionable internships.

He always had an intuition for what is the best course of action in life, what should inevitably, though indirectly, lead to realization of his main dream: being an acclaimed mathematician, the center of attention, a famous man. He never wanted to be humble, on the contrary, he wanted to be recognized. That’s why after 1993 he focused on writing his habilitation thesis, which he defended in Novosibirsk in February 1997.

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chapter 4

HOW I ENDED UP IN COLOMBIA

I will try to write this story as Sasha used to tell it.

It was a turbulent time: at first, in 1991 there was no money; then, the money was given out in stacks, which people did not even open, because there was no food one could spend those kilos of paper on. In the last five years I had grown tired of living in shabby student dorms and staying at other people’s homes in both my own city of Saratov and other places, such as Leningrad, Moscow, Novosibirsk, and even China. While working on my habilitation thesis, I was not only seriously considering, but also actively looking for jobs abroad;

specifically for a full professor position, so that I could dedicate myself to research. Apply- ing for positions from Saratov, without having any connections or influential supporters, using regular mail to send letters that arrived after the deadlines expired, was giving zero results. Anyway, I kept looking for job announcements in foreign journals, such as “No- tices of the American Mathematical Society”, and kept asking my acquaintances about job openings.

José and Sveta

One day I stumbled upon an announcement about a professor position at the University of los Andes in Colombia. By that time, I was already quite good at computers and found a way to send emails from Saratov, to communi- cate with Colombia. The person responsible for filling this position was professor José Ricardo Arteaga, who had fallen in love with Russia while doing his PhD in Kazan, and then brought his Russian wife Svetlana home to Colombia.

José explained to me that if his former PhD supervisor in Kazan could provide me with a reference, then José would recommend me in Colombia and they would most likely give me the job. I quickly got the recommendation letter, started waiting for a response, and eventually gave up hope, not understanding what the Latin-American mentality is like. But suddenly, in the late fall of 1997, I received a letter saying that I had been accepted for an associate professor position and I had to come as quickly as possible. Packing is easy when you are poor, so when all the paperwork had been done, I left for Colombia.

José and Svetlana helped me a lot, teaching me how one should behave in Colombia. But I liked everything: the nature with coffee fincasin the mountains, and the sad donkeys, who were always loaded and kept chewing something, and the exotic monkey screams, and the squawking parrots.

I learned the language by my second year there. Before long, I met Christian Pom- merenke and we began working together. It was him who insisted that I absolutely should

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18 CHAPTER 4. HOW I ENDED UP IN COLOMBIA give a talk in Spanish at a little conference organized by the University of Medellín and our University of los Andes. I barely managed to write the text of the presentation in Spanish on a piece of paper; but my colleagues were happy to help me out, making jokes about my linguistic inventions. I learned the presentation almost by heart and then gave my talk.

This was the starting point, and already the following semester I was giving my lectures in Spanish.

With Christian Pommerenke

Once, we flew to Medellín to a meeting with petroleum researchers; I had already become interested in Hele-Shaw flows by that time. We came back, to say the least, with luck, because the next flight was hijacked by terrorists, and all the passengers were taken as slaves to the jungle, to work on coca plantations. Only a clergy- man and a pregnant woman were released.

The whole of Colombia was in fact divided into safety zones, and one could never know where the danger was lurking. The map of the capital city, Bogotá, was also painted with different colors. In the green zones, you could move around relatively safely, that is, if you pressed your purse against your stomach and removed any jewelry; and if you were going by car, you had to roll up the windows and lock the doors of the vehicle. Otherwise, at a traffic light, they would take all your belongings faster than you could say Jack Robinson. And it was defi- nitely in your best interests to stay away from the red zones.

We really wanted to see the country and once we decided to drive from Bogotá to the coast. At first, everything was going fine; but on one of the road swings, we were suddenly stopped by people with automatic rifles who made us roll down the window. An unshaved face came in through the window, accompanied by a gun barrel. We broke into a cold sweat, and then heard: “Guys, do you have some matches?” We were so much relieved to hear that question, that we were ready to give away not only the matches, but also all the cigarettes, and the booze and the snacks! Luckily, we didn’t meet any other guerrilla fighters in need of cigarettes or other provisions; but this incident taught us not to plan new trips without consulting the color-coded safety map first.

I was stunned by Colombian contrasts, and only there did I understand what Gabriel García Márquez got his Nobel Prize for. The surreal atmosphere of his novel “One hundred years of solitude” could be felt everywhere in Colombia. A national news program would in all seriousness report on a woman in the province of Boyacá, who suddenly saw the holy face of Christ at the bottom of a saucepan she was cleaning. The whole village took to the streets to celebrate the miracle. In another province, hunters would organize a new expedi- tion to find a gigantic, whale-sized anaconda and finally do away with the beast, because a fisherman had disappeared and they believed he was another victim of the anaconda. Such news was broadcast by the main public TV channels, and most Colombians took the reports seriously.

At the University, we were surrounded by kind and hospitable people, even though some of them were too interested in our money. Our Spanish language teacher came once to our office to borrow a small (for a professor) amount. Only later did I realize that the expression

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19

Sasha in Colombia

“Préstame cién pesos?”, which literally translates as “Could you borrow me a hundred?”, in reality, can be directly followed by “and don’t ask for it back.” Well, I didn’t care about the money, so I just gave it to her; but later, talking to other foreigners, I realized that she had visited everyone’s office and, in this way, collected the equivalent of her salary.

I had to get used to the local rhythm and quality of work. For example, I learned what the wordmañana(“tomorrow”) actually means. I once went to a secretary and asked him to make copies of some articles. He asked me when I needed them, to which I answered

“Quizás mañana” (“Maybe tomorrow?”) With interest, he asked again if I was sure that I wanted to get themmañana. Since it wasn’t urgent, I nodded affirmatively. It was not until later that I realized thatmañanais more or less synonymous with “never”, and instead, I should have asked to make the copies immediately, straight away, because it was urgent, just burning! Then, maybe, in the best-case scenario, the copies would be ready by tomorrow.

But what I remember most, is a story by another colleague of mine, Ahmed, a native of Algeria, with a good French education. Having waited a couple of weeks for his credit card and having visited the bank three times, he couldn’t take it anymore and, barely holding back his Arabic temperament, he shouted rather emotionally (almost shaking the clerk by the lapels of his uniform jacket): “It is impossible to live like this!” The clerk had plenty of experience dealing with nervous clients, so he took Ahmed to the window and, pointing to the street, calmly answered: “You see, the cars are driving, the people are going to work, the planes are flying, the electricity is working – so, it is possible to live like this.” It was indeed possible to live there, and live rather well.

Every Friday was aViernes cultural(“Cultural Friday”), meaning that already in the after- noon, everyone would start dancing, and the fun would continue until Sunday. In Colombia, I learned the expressionHora latina(“Latino hour”). The expression simply means that to be polite, you should always show up at least one hour after the agreed time (but better two). To the first party I was invited to, I came, of course, ten minutes ahead of time, deeply confusing the hostess by this behavior. She greeted me at the door literally in her under- wear. But, giving in to a “crazy Russian”, she seated me at a table with a drink and some nuts. Generally speaking, people come to Colombian parties not to eat, but to chat, dance and have fun. So after the first unfortunate experiences with strong drinks and very light snacks, I learned to first eat heartily, and then come to a party where I would spend the

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20 CHAPTER 4. HOW I ENDED UP IN COLOMBIA whole night chatting. Talking about snacks: at one of these parties, on a buffet table, there were manioc chips, salty fried plantains, which is, really, quite usual stuff, like our peanuts or pistachios; but there were also plates with dried grasshoppers and giant ants fried in sea salt, which, as I discovered later, were not that exotic at all. Anyways, it was rather scary to put them in my mouth for the first time, washing them down with anise vodka.

Sasha at a country club One thing that I always missed later was the Colom-

bian elite club system. The professors in Colombia, as well as in Chile, belong to the upper social class, the upper caste, the elite. They were invited to receptions with a strict dress code, where elegant, well-trained waiters would serve them. All university professors were members of country clubs. A country club in Colombia is a safe, nice place outside of the city with a swimming pool, a good restaurant, often with a sauna, a masseuse, a bil- liard table, and other great amenities. One pays the mem- bership fee (which is quite substantial) and then visits the club whenever one pleases. One can also invite friends to the club, to play billiards, golf, or just spend time by the pool in a sun lounger. How much did I miss this in Chile, not even to mention our egalitarian Norway!

I was renting a small apartment in Bogotá with my own backyard patio, and the landlady was a most kind person. On Saturdays, I would go around the corner to buy maize patties (arepas) and also a kind of maize por- ridge wrapped in plantain leaves (tamales). Humming-

birds would come to the garden in my backyard and I loved to sit there on the weekends and, later, to write letters. Not far from the house, there was a military hospital, where helicopters with injured soldiers would land all the time: a never-ending civil war had been raging in the country for half a century.

I had the chance to make friends with a Russian trade attaché in Colombia. He was a rather entertaining man and invited me once to pick mushrooms. On a Saturday, as agreed, he came to pick me up, but he was driving the embassy Mercedes with flags on the hood. The poor landlady came into my room whispering urgently that someone from the embassy was looking for me. In our, to put it mildly, not very affluent neighborhood, a luxury car with foreign flags was a rare sight. Well, we went to the forest in this Mercedes. The mushrooms could not be compared to the ones in Russia, but the local slippery jacks were pretty good.

Love for Colombia

Sasha loved Colombia passionately, even though he didn’t live there very comfortably, had to wash all the clothes, including jeans and bed linen, by hand, and walked the streets cautiously, pressing his bag against the belly. But there was something in his Colombian life that warmed his heart. I’ve always said that it took him only two vodka shots to start reminiscing about Colombia: how much fun it was to live there, how beautiful the country was. Do not forget that despite all the fun he had there, he wrote nine mathematical papers within 2.5 years, practically finished his first book on quadratic differentials, learned a new language, and nursed his wife back to health after her thyroid cancer surgery. If he got stuck with one mathematical problem, he would just switch to another one. I think this was the first time in Sasha’s post-PhD life, when he had so much freedom to do mathematics:

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LOVE FOR COLOMBIA 21 practically all his time was occupied with it, he didn’t have to think about where to live or how to survive until payday. For him, having to learn Spanish was not a burden, but rather an opportunity to take a break and do something different. And parties in good company of friends were just sacred!

He always dreamed about showing me the Colombia he loved. In general, he always wanted to share with me the things he enjoyed, and for him, Colombia remained the most delightful country for the rest of his life. I can’t remember when exactly this dream finally came true, probably in 2008. We visited the University of los Andes to give talks and to maintain our scientific collaboration with José Ricardo. I didn’t like Bogotá: we kept getting stuck in terrible traffic jams on our way to the university and had to inhale polluted, poor in oxygen air – after all, Bogotá lies at nearly 3000 meters above the sea level, or, according to a commercial that Sasha loved to quote, it is “2600 meters closer to the stars.” Our hosts tried to drive us around Bogotá, but no matter where we went, we would inevitably end up stuck in traffic. We had already moved to Norway by that time, and I had probably got too much used to feeling safe. But here, in Bogotá, instead of walking a couple of blocks to buy toothpaste in a nearby store, we would take the car and move at pedestrian speed for half an hour, of course driving in circles, because, as usual, there was no direct route. And all this was because the way to the store went through the red zone, where the danger was lurking.

Me and Sasha took a stroll in the city center, but it turned out that all the cozy little restaurants that Sasha used to admire, had closed down, and we did not know any new ones.

So I could only daydream about beautiful Spanish patios with elegant waiters. However, we did visit one interesting restaurant. After our presentations were given, together with old friends of Sasha’s we went to a restaurant in the outskirts of the city. It was built in the old Spanish style, luxuriously furnished with wood, with a bolero playing in the candlelit rooms. I was feeling happy already, but when the waiter, offering me a chair, asked, “Qué desea mi Reina?” (What does my Queen desire?) and, answering to Sasha’s beer order, another waiter told him, “A su orden, Su majestad” (At Your orders, Your Majesty). At that moment, I forgave Bogotá everything: the traffic, the heat, and the lack of oxygen.

A little later I realized that these phrases were used not only with guests of that restaurant, but were in fact almost the standard way to address people in Colombia. This ability to make clients happy, to be of service, is completely lost in Europe. The declaration of equality has almost erased the ability to show care, to be of service in a store, to smile behind a reception desk of a hotel, to carelessly joke with a restaurant guest. We are all equal and, therefore, “to be of service” is humiliating. I think that people in Latin America very often feel happy just because they can make happy someone nearby. I don’t know why this is considered shameful in Europe. And in Norway, this verges on the absurd: an extra greeting is not considered an act of politeness, but rather almost an invasion of privacy.

On the sixth day, despite this dinner at the restaurant after our presentations, I got depressed and was insisting on going back home; but we had four more days in Bogotá.

Then Sasha convinced José and Sveta to arrange a short trip somewhere outside Bogotá.

The guys quickly found a tourist agency and we went to a coffee growing region for three days. Believe me, if there is a paradise on earth, it is there! We spent three days on this finca, where they used to grow coffee, and which now was abandoned or, more correctly, made into a hotel. We arrived very early in the morning and, immediately, a nice young lady brought us (sweet!) freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee, probably grown here at the premises, and freshly-baked, hot bread. We spent the first day lying in hammocks under the gentle sun, enjoying the view to the jungle-covered valley, listening to squawking parrots and reading our family book to each other. Pheasants were walking around, mind-blowing colorful birds were flying by, landing on fruit trees, the names of which we didn’t know

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22 CHAPTER 4. HOW I ENDED UP IN COLOMBIA – in fact, we could hardly describe the colors of the fruits hanging on those trees. On the second day, we went to an open-air coffee museum. In reality, it was a huge garden, filled with local flowers and various other plants. When we came back in the evening, Sasha told me that I had taken 500 photographs. Of course, I wanted to do a portrait of every flower and each butterfly which was flying by.

At PANACA We spent the third day at PANACA (El Par-

que Nacional de la Cultura Agropecuaria), a zoo, or rather a resort for domestic animals! They were cherished and spoiled; cows of thirty different breeds strutted like fashion models on the catwalk, showing off their colorful bodies and ornate horns: all of them, from the common dairy and beef cattle to the sacred Indian cow.

One could pet piglets and feed them from a baby bottle. Goat kids would nag you to give them some grass. Everybody was enjoying this: the animals, the kids, and we were just filling with adoration, looking at the cute animal faces and the wonders of this animal kingdom.

Later, we visited Colombia on several other occasions, for conferences or just to see friends.

Olga Vasilieva, a professor from Cali, would always give us a very warm welcome. She is not related to Sasha at all, they just happen to have the same last name. She organizes very interesting conferences on the small Caribbean island of San Andrés, attended by up to 300 participants from all over the world.

For my 50th birthday, Sasha made my long time dream come true: they invited a mariachi

band to Olga’s house. The mariachi appeared when we were ready to enjoy the birthday dinner in a rather large Russian-speaking Colombian company consisting of mixed couples.

The mariachi came in their own van, wearing colorful costumes and immense Mexican

At Olga Vasilieva’s house With Olga Vasilieva and Mauricio Godoy

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LOVE FOR COLOMBIA 23 sombreros. And now guess which song they started with? Those who knew Sasha well, should guess fairly quickly: it was, of course,Bésame mucho(“Kiss me a lot”). He performed it so many times for all of us! For him, and for me too, mariachi were a symbol of romance and love, and this was the best gift that I could wish for myself.

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chapter 5 HOW WE MET

Where can two mathematicians meet and fall in love? At a conference, of course. We weren’t an exception. It happened at the European Congress of Mathematics in Budapest, between July 21st and 27th, 1996. Like all congresses, this one featured a large poster session, where we could present our scientific findings. On Wednesday, July 24th, I was supposed to be standing in front of the poster of my supervisor, Sergey Vodopyanov, answering questions, in case anyone got interested. To tell you the truth, people were not exactly flock- ing to the poster, and I was sitting on a windowsill waiting for the end of the rather boring poster session, so I could finally run away and enjoy a walk in Budapest by night. Appar- ently, Sasha Vasiliev was not being bombarded with questions, either, so he was wandering around the posters of authors whose names began with “V.”

A girl with a braid As I can’t remember our first meeting at all, I’ll

quote Sasha here: “I saw a young lady with a braid down to her knees, sitting on a windowsill, swinging her legs, and looking quite bored. I understood imme- diately that this was my girl.” Sasha told me later that he had flirted with me “a little” on that day and then returned to his poster to answer questions. He was, after all, a rather shy man, despite trying to over- come shyness his whole life. He was also helplessly sentimental. For example, my braid, which apparently was the thing that encouraged him to talk to me, became some kind of fetish for him. Even after many years, any attempts to shorten the braid were considered sacrilege and inevitably led to loud protests from Sasha.

On the other hand, I can vividly remember our second meeting. It happened, most likely, on the next evening. I was going for a stroll in Budapest: it was so colorful, warm and full of lights, compared to our grim, cold and unremarkable Novosibirsk of the 90s. Downstairs, in the hotel lobby, I noticed Sergey Vodopyanov with a group of young men, and tried to sneak past them unnoticed. I almost succeeded, but then I felt that someone was holding my hand. I turned around and saw a guy, who I thought looked very handsome, with a wide smile on his face. He asked me something and, as any young pretty girl, I replied with a joke and flirted a little, after which he gave me his business card. I was of course flattered

by the attention, but I could not wait to see the mysterious and romantic city of Budapest, and, besides, I had a couple of kids and a husband waiting for me at home, with all the ensuing circumstances.

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26 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET Later, I read the card: Alexander Vasiliev, Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Saratov State University, Department of Math- ematics and Mechanics. Being a lecturer (not even a senior one) at the department of Math- ematical analysis of the Novosibirsk State Uni- versity, I felt rather honored to receive such attention, and I put the card in the back pocket of my wallet. I think it was the first (!) business card that I had ever received from someone. This gesture was in fact entirely characteristic of Sasha, he wanted to be first even in such minor details as business cards, he wanted to impress, dazzle and fascinate others. As I learned later, Sergey Vodopyanov sternly cautioned Sasha that Irina had a husband and two children.

The second encounter

The second time we met was already in January 1997. Sasha came to Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk to defend his habilitation thesis. We ran into each other in a corridor of the Institute of Mathematics, and Sasha started talking to me as if I were his old friend, insisting that I absolutely had to attend his defense the next day. I was standing there, smiling, nodding my head and frantically trying to remember what this young man’s name was.

I vaguely recalled that we had met once in Budapest and that his business card had been buried somewhere in my desk drawer. I was amazed at how insistently he was inviting me to his defense. How come my presence at his defense was so important to him, given that we barely knew each other? Finally, after assuring him that I would come, I ran off to do my work. I found his business card at home, memorized the name – Alexander Vasiliev – and decided for myself that I should indeed go: he was so insistent, and, besides, attending a habilitation defense would be a valuable experience for me; I had never been to one, as I had never been invited before.

Habilitation defense

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THE SECOND ENCOUNTER 27 It should be noted that the defense was not an easy one. At first, there was no quo- rum, and it took at least an hour before they found the missing member of the habilitation committee in a meeting at one of the institutes of Akademgorodok. Otherwise they would have no choice but to call off the defense, and Sasha would have to go through the whole process all over again. Next, even before the defense started, they began nit-picking around the procedure: why is he so young (34 years old), why is he defending with this habilitation committee and not with Yuri Reshetniak’s committee, why did he give talks where he did, why did he publish where he did, and not in the journals that the committee members would prefer?

Sasha and me after his defense

Sasha answered all the questions and looked very calm and poised. Then he began his presentation. In those days, there were no slideshows – he could not even use transparencies. His posters were hanging on the wall, written in a neat, almost calligraphic handwriting, with unknown to me Teichmüller spaces and drawings of tori – Riemann surfaces. After the presentation, Sasha, rather easily, answered the remaining questions. I could not help but feel that there was a hostility to the success of this young scientist in the air: “he is an immature overconfident outsider, not one of us.”

The situation was turned around by Alexander Mednykh, who gave a speech and within ten minutes convinced the committee that the habilitation thesis was both interesting and original. After a fairly short discussion, the votes were cast, the decision was made, and everybody began congratulating Sasha.

All of that was quite new to me, and I was just sitting there, watching the defense and waiting for an opportunity to slip away and go about my usual business. But when most people had left, Sasha approached me, sat by my side, hugged me and even asked someone to take our picture: this was our first photograph together.

With Alexander Mednykh With Sergey Vodopyanov in the student dorm after the habilitation

I told Sergey Vodopyanov about the defense, and he suggested that we visit Sasha, who was staying at a student dorm, to congratulate him. As I discovered, Sasha had just gotten

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28 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET married, so we bought a bottle of cognac and a box of “Bird’s milk” chocolates, the only decent chocolate at that time in Novosibirsk.

By the time we arrived, Sasha had been heavily celebrating his defense for a while already, so I remember nothing particularly interesting from that get-together, besides the story about unloading onions from a freight train, which Sasha had to do in the morning (or in the previous evening) to pay for the banquet. I would like to remind you that we were all poor at that time, and only survived thanks to such gigs, trying to earn money here and there.

A year later, Sasha left with the new wife for Colombia. This is how his new Latin- American life began.

The third encounter

Me with a rose from Sasha

Over the next year and a half, I received greetings from Sasha multiple times: he often added “Say hi to Irina” at the end of the emails he sent to Sergey Vodopyanov. I would just shrug my shoulders at this. I had a husband at home, who had been unemployed already for several years, with all the hardships of this situation; and Sasha had just got married. With my rational personality, I could only treat these greetings from the other side of the world as a funny joke.

In August 1998, Berlin hosted the International Congress of Mathematicians. As a young scientist, I received a travel grant for the congress. Sergey Vodopy- anov had left for Berlin one week earlier, to participate in a satellite conference. He had given me the address of his hotel in Berlin, assuring me that he would find me cheap accommodation there.

On the 6th of August, I arrived in Berlin, got to Fasa- nenstraße and saw Sergey Vodopyanov with a group of people sitting outside of the hotel and drinking beer.

Among them, I noticed Sasha holding a rose. He got up to greet me, saying that he had been waiting for me. This kind of behavior could not provoke anything but aston- ishment in me. “Why on Earth has he been waiting for me?” And yet, I got mesmerized both by a young, handsome, cheerful man standing in front of me and by the pristine German streets which were bathed in sunshine.

I left my suitcase at the hotel and we went for a walk. The August evening sun was warm and gentle; we could not stop talking, it seemed like we had known each other forever.

Everything was so light, natural and easy. After half an hour, Sasha said that he loved me and wanted to be with me. If you asked me whether I had taken it seriously, I would of course say no. I rather took it as idle chatter and innocent flirtation, something that would end the next day and turn into a mere warm memory of a pleasant walk. But I did feel magical around this guy, with our shoulders gently touching, and me not thinking about anything, just giving in to this light-headed feeling of infatuation. Eventually, we got lost in Berlin suburbs, and returned to the hotel long after midnight.

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THE THIRD ENCOUNTER 29 It was our third encounter in the past 2.5 years, and each time I witnessed his easy-going attitude towards everything happening around, almost intrusive attention to me, embracing warmth and affection. At the same time, he demanded my attention, too: “by all means, take my business card”, “you have to come to my defense”, “tell me you love me, too.” He would quickly occupy all the space around me, would draw me into his interests, surround me with his presence, pull me into his geyser of life force and energy, would make me believe that dreams do come true. There was no logic in it, this could not be happening; it felt like a good French romantic novel. Sasha just wanted to be with me, he was not thinking about anything else anymore and he firmly believed that it was possible. It was fascinating me, while sucking me into a whirlpool. Already the next day, I began to believe that it could not be otherwise, that this was almost a reality. I liked everything! Sasha’s constant sparkling cheerfulness, German beer, our nights in the small neat room at Theodor-Heuss- Platz 5, lectures at the conference, huge Colombian roses that Sasha would give me in front of our astounded group of impoverished mathematicians from Russia, Rubén Hidalgo with his impossible Indian pony tail, the Fields medal that was awarded in a fantastic hall – this was one endless week of thoughtless happiness.

German beer in Berlin In a week, Sasha was leaving for an-

other conference in Poland, while my home with its day-to-day problems, which Sasha made me forget for a week, was awaiting me in Novosibirsk. I remember us sitting in a café, Sasha with his ready-packed suitcase, telling me again and again that he wanted to live with me, wanted to show me the world: “I will put all the capitals of the world to your feet!” I told him that it was all in his hands, and if he wanted us to be together, he had to do it all himself. I could only keep our feelings alive, and he could make the dream happen. I don’t remember myself regretting anything, I didn’t make any plans either, I was rather trying to per- suade myself that I would get on the plane, it would take off and all the dreams would stay here, in Berlin, behind the runway, in

another life. But already then, I was thanking my fate for giving me this week of my life.

No matter how things would turn out later, I would have kept remembering this single week for the rest of my life. Sitting on the plane, I was reading in the newspapers about the new financial crisis in Russia, the collapse of the ruble, and wished more and more to leave Russia, take the kids with me, so that they could also see this wonderful world, could experience some of this happiness.

When my children were reading these notes, Daria remembered that she still kept the colored pencils, a present that we bought together with Sasha. And the taste of the tiny Lindt chocolates, abundant in all the world’s airports, was one of their brightest childhood memories in our not-so-colorful Novosibirsk.

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30 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET

Our seldom encounters

And then, the two long years of our correspondence began. Twice a week I picked up post restante letters written in Sasha’s beautiful handwriting, in envelopes with Colombian stamps, full of love, affection, melancholy and pain. He wrote them sitting in his back yard, where hummingbirds were flying. I would sob over them endlessly, replying in letters full of the same hopes and dreams.

My marriage was going down the drain. My husband was basically out of work, but busy with his “projects,” so he often disappeared from home. I did not complain, it was easier that way. I just found a third job, as I had to feed my kids. I felt tense inside, but I had to continue to live my life. My whole existence split into two halves: the real world – working three jobs from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., kids, my moody mother, and my husband with his unrealized plans. And a different world – secretly crying over letters, and desperately longing for my sunny Sasha.

Things were, of course, not absolutely terrible – life is rich and always has many different sides, it’s important not to miss them: one should know how to seize and enjoy them. My mother’s personality is far from being a blessing, but who else would help me so much with my kids: feeding them, taking them to their extracurricular activities, spending so much time with them. I was surrounded by friends and we had parties, where we would sing, have fun, dance until midnight, and then argue in the kitchen about the right way of teaching calculus. We went to the theater, watching little swans in snow-white tutus at the Opera theater and “The humpbacked horse” at the Young Spectator’s theater. But, deep inside, we were both harboring love and the hope that everything would change and we would be together.

It was almost summer 1999, meaning that we had not seen each other for a year, and all our love was supported only by our letters. But Sasha would not be Sasha if he had not come up with something. In June 1999, there was a conference in Maynooth, Ireland, and he suggested that we meet there. I received financial support covering the conference fee and accommodation, but the flight tickets were bought by Sasha.

Sasha by an Irish pub

In Maynooth, we would not spend one moment apart. By that time, Sasha had already learned to speak Spanish, and he kept showing me Spanish- speaking groups of young folks, who were keeping together. One could see from afar that we were in love.

One day, together with Sasha and Christian Pommerenke (with whom Sasha worked in Colom- bia), we were approaching the College, and Fer- nando González (with his typical Spanish directness) asked Sasha about me, “Quién es ella?” (Who is she?). Sasha was at a loss for words, but Christian hugged me swiftly and answered, “Ella es mi novia”

(She is my girlfriend).

I remember another anecdote. Again, together with Christian, we were going to a pub (those Irish pubs seemed so exotic to me). There, we met James Milne Anderson with a couple of young people, who, for some reason, disappeared immediately when we approached. We were ordering beer, and I felt painfully shy trying to participate in the

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OUR SELDOM ENCOUNTERS 31 conversation with these two mathematical luminaries (in English!) Finally, I said I did not want beer, and then I heard Milne saying to me in good Russian:

“You know what happens to the girls who don’t drink?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Nothing!”

Sasha and Milne at our house In this way, Sasha was introduc-

ing me to the elite of the mathematical world, who were welcoming us with warmth and kindness. It was also there, in Maynooth, that we first met Hans-Martin Reimann. He looked so much like Santa Claus; he only lacked the red stocking hat. One day, when together with Hans-Martin and Sergey Vodopyanov we were eating lunch at a little restaurant, I finally realized that I needn’t to be shy when I spoke En- glish, everybody would understand me even if I made grammar mistakes.

Many of those we met, later visited us in Chile and in Norway. When Milne was planning his trip to Nor-

way, Sasha asked what hotel Milne would like to stay at, to which he replied that he would like to stay with us. Later, he said that our house was the best hotel he had ever stayed at, even though at that time our house was quite small and not particularly comfortable. Milne really appreciated friendliness and hospitality and responded in the same way.

Milne and Sasha at Bryggen in Bergen

Despite serious heart problems, he welcomed us with much warmth in his

“humble little palace” in London, as he would call his huge house, quoting some previous Russian guests. He also promised our daughter Daria that he would attend her wedding wearing a Scottish kilt. After all, he was a Scots- man and a gentleman to the core.

I can’t but tell another story, which we heard from Milne. “After half a year in Russia, I realized how important it is to stress the correct syllable in the Russian language. I liked one girl and, when I was leaving, I wanted to tell her

‘ya polyubil tebya v dushé’ (I fell in love with you in my soul), but it came out instead as

‘ya polyubil tebya v dúshe’ (I fell in love with you in the shower).”

Then, Sasha took me to London. It was so old-fashioned and classical, with red telephone booths and post boxes. We would ride double-decker buses, take pictures by flowerbeds with huge yellow roses, walk around the City and visit pubs. In one of the pubs, Sasha wanted to show off his knowledge of English traditions and ordered ale at the bar. To which the barman politely asked: ‘Which one of these ten?’ This is how we learned that

“ale” it’s not a particular beer brand, but just a type of beer. We also learned that a corner of Hyde Park can be an Arab quarter, where all advertising and newspapers are in Arabic,

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32 CHAPTER 5. HOW WE MET women wear niqabs and, apparently, polygamy is not uncommon. After Berlin, London became our most romantic city in Europe. I remember how warmly we were greeted by the owner of one small café, who recognized in us a couple in love and brought us a candle in a champagne bottle, all covered in wax, saying that he had been keeping this bottle since the day of his engagement.

One month later, we met in Iasi, Romania at another conference and then parted for yet another year. The upcoming year was full of events. Sasha found a job in Chile and was preparing for the move, but I will tell you more about it in the chapter about Chile.

How we got married

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

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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 circumstances, 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

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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