You are alone

Or you are fifty, you do not like the noise of a big city and crowds of people, you live in the solitude in the suburb of London, you have an audit business, a three bedroom cosy house in which classical music records sound, birds sing behind your windows, you write a detective novel at leisure, your life is arranged, but lonely, your old mom still dreams about grandchildren and each time you visit her she looks at you with a silent question: "When?"

Once a girlfriend comes to you and asks you to go with her to the meeting with foreign fiances in the Hollywood Nights club or she is afraid to go alone, and you refuse saying that your mom should call you tonight and also you have already started your laundry.

Or after listening to your beloved Parting Symphony by Haydn in the Evening on weekend you go out into the garden where a nightingale does not sing, the night is dark, the stars do not shine, a thunderstorm approaches, you feel anxious and lonely and your detective story does not write itself, You think that if children and someone dear were beside you it would be not scary to meet old age and it is certainly time to take non-standard actions.

You still resist saying that you have nothing to put on and that you never visit clubs, but your girlfriend opens your wardrobe and pulls a dress out of it by the sleeve, and giving up you tell her that you will never put on this dress to any decent place, you get out another one instead.

You switch on the computer, fill "international dating" in the search Engine and travel in a virtual space till late at night looking at the photos of women in erotic poses with artificial smiles on their faces thinking that all that vulgarity is not for you.

The get-together where your girlfriend brings you may at best perplex: Lots of beautiful, well-dressed women and some Americans, mostly middle-aged. Modest women just sit at the tables talking to each other as if they had come there just for that, the women who are more courageous hang around Americans trying to attract their attention by any available means. You Look at it all with a smile, giggle with your girlfriend, ask her when to go home, but suddenly an American with an interpreter asks your permission to sit down at your table, he smiles, says he is in Russia for the first time he asks if you could show him the city.

On one introduction site you suddenly find a sad story about a Russian Girl looking for her love around the world and the tears appear on your eyes, You understand that you have looked for such a modest and non-brave girl for All your life and without any hesitation you write to that agency, entrusting your destiny to it.

You do not notice how you agree to show the American around the city.

Writing to the agency you describe yourself as transparently honest, intelligent, talented, sensitive and kind as a child. Your kindness is active and reasonable: instead of throwing a coin to a beggar and forgetting him at once you take him to a restaurant to feed him and to set him on the right path, you do not understand why the women of all the world complain of the men who drink, watch stupid football on TV and play cards, but making a choice the women themselves prefer careless dazzling idlers to positive and staid men with rich inner content, such as yourself.

You take days off for the American which you had planned to use for your mother's kitchen-garden.

You look for a woman who does not exist in the world - a beauty with a figure of a model, though short because you are not tall yourself, lively company whose wit is intended primarily for you, an educated lady with a successful city career who still prefers a solitary country life and quiet evenings for two with the accompaniment of classical music and birds songs to the noise of a big city.

You take the American to the Hermitage and Russian museum, you tell him of impressionists and Russian art, he is not very much aware of it all, but he obediently follows you holding your hand as if in the kinder-garten when the teacher formed the children in couples.

Being a perfectionist you do not agree to any compromises, after all you Can offer much to your right lady that's why she should correspond all your requirements.

Before his departure the American proposes to you, he asks you to come to him on a fiancee visa, he looks at you humbly, he says that in general he is not mortally lonely, but his adult children have their own life and though he had not found warmth and kindness in his previous marriage, but he still hopes for the future.

There are miracles in the world and one of them happens soon - a woman exactly as you looked for or maybe even better enters the office of the agency you have signed up.

First you think how your mother's kitchen-garden will do without you, but A highly developed sense of responsibility does not allow you to decline a person who searches for your support, you promise to visit him to see if everything works out, you just ask him if it is possible to return if it does not work.

Everything coincides: the appearance, career, love of classical music and even a habit to a country life - the woman's mom lives in the country and the daughter often goes there to help.

You tell your mother and relatives about the American and to your great surprise they all are very happy, they call you a fiancee and the American - a fiance, they approve your departure saying that you have so few chances to arrange your life in Russia, you are even a little disappointed as if they wish to get rid of you so soon.

You are happy with such rare good luck, still you cannot believe in it, You try to clarify some details - a found woman likes elegant pretty clothes, so with the figures in your hands you exactly schedule your budget for her and explain that you will hardly be able to provide for it when your children are born as the dresses from Versache are expensive in England, but the woman says that it is possible to raise children in jeans, then she will see, she is accustomed to make her own money and maybe she will be able to find a good job in England.

On the Eighth of March you get a wonderful bouquet of eleven dark-red roses.

Having finally decided to believe in the reality of what has happened you ask, just in case, if your woman prefers a money transfer to the bouquet on the holiday to buy what she really needs, but the woman replies that she will buy what she needs herself, nobody has given her flowers for already a hundred years and having complained of the usual impracticality of people you also send her eleven dark-red roses as you know that red roses in Russia are a symbol of love and their number should be only odd.

Following your habit to do everything conscientiously you run to the English lessons and to an Internet-cafe to reply to your newly found American Fiance 's letters and habitually overcome all the bureaucratic obstacles Collecting necessary documents for your future visa.

Now, when it seems everything is discussed, you have nothing else but to plan your trip to St.Petersburg and you book the tickets and ask your chosen lady to find an apartment for you, as always she reports exactly and in time, but instead of joy and gratitude a strange feeling of anxiety the definition to which you cannot find rises in you.

All the papers are finally collected, the language is learnt not badly, And the interview date is already appointed, your fiance comes to take you to America, but you are so exhausted trying to complete everything in time, rushing to your mom and back, fighting with the bureaucrats, learning irregular verbs that you have already no strength to become happy with your fiance's arrival and you catch yourself on the feeling of sincere amazement what a relation this strange person bears to all that hustle and bustle filling your life in recent months.

This feeling of anxiety even increases on the day of your departure to Russia, it seems you start to understand its nature - an energetic and active woman who waits for you in St.Petersburg has nothing to do with an elusive image of a timid girl from the story which inspired you for your search and though your suitcase is already packed and it is time to leave for the airport you sit down at the computer instead, reread the story and then look at a pretty and tough face of a strange woman on the screen.

You remain in the hotel with your fiance, he wishes to kiss you, but Having started back you turn away as it seems to you completely out of place.

In your mind your understand that it would be more reasonable not to give Up to your mood and to go since the ticket is bought, but something stronger than you does not allow you to move from your place.

Your American fiance sends you home being deeply hurt.

You think how to explain your non-arrival to the woman who already waits For you in the airport, how to leave yourself a loophole just in case and Having thought up a move as in a detective story you create a new email address belonging to your fictitious friend.

You try to explain yourself, you prove that you have just become tired, But he unerringly detects that the main feeling which had moved you to Complete a long process of arranging the visa was your habit to finish everything you have started and clearing up your relationship you both become late to the plane and miss the interview appointed in the Embassy.

You write to the woman from a new address as if on your friend's behalf That you had flown for an urgent audit to South America the day before and had undergone an audacious attack of the drug mafia in a Mexican bush and that now you lay unconscious in a small hospital in the suburb of Monterrey.

You come home and throw yourself on the coach desperately crying under the amazed exclamations of your mom and family who lay the table to celebrate your departure to America.

With a sinking heart you wait for her reply and finally you get it: the woman politely thanks the "friend" who sent her a letter and expresses her condolences, taking notice of the similarity of the friend and yourself as writing style of letters of both is identical.

Your relatives leave, your mom goes to bed and having fallen silent on Your coach you think that you will still have the same work, business trips, Your mom's kitchen garden, then you will retire not having made happy even one person on the earth.

Having winced, you turn back, you think how she had guessed, you are captivated by her, you feverishly write her another long letter on behalf of your made up friend and having thought up something new from yourself too, but she never more answers.

Having suddenly got up from your couch in the middle of night you look at the clock and understand that just two hours remained till your fiance's departure to the airport, you remember his sad eyes, you feel so sorry for him and for your own lonely destiny, and having somehow dressed up you run out, rush through a night city, fly up to his apartment door, but still cannot press the ring button, come down and drag yourself home.

As previously you write your detective novel at leisure, you listen to birds' songs and classical music records, you look at a pretty face of a woman on a computer screen, you read a story of a never existent girl, two of these images do not lay together and yearning in vain you dream of the impossible.