You are alone

You are alone, you are about forty, your girlfriends are married and have
children, visiting them you give chocolates to their children and listen
to their speeches about their husbands and about their children's diseases.
Only a fluffy grey cat waits for you at home, you live in the centre of
St.Petersburg in a neglected communal apartment, you work as an engineer,
you often go on business to a city where your mom lives, you worry about
her, you constantly call her, but when you are with her you are irritated
with her moralising and her habit of overstraining herself in her
kitchen-garden, you are tired of fussing there and back, you are tired of
your room which you have no time to renovate, you have no time for
yourself, you wish to change your life.

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.