Chapter Thirty-Five:

The Sordid Tale of the Tape

    Behind the façade of quiet patience we tried to find the answers to unanswered questions.

    If we couldn’t get Cyril’s autopsy report, we could at least find out what Lena, Gennady, Dr. Kolodkin, and some of the medsestra were talking about on the video while we had been cooing over Cyril, the long discourse among themselves that they didn’t bother to translate for us.

    We knew we needed professionals for that task. We both understand Russian but were at a loss to translate all of the speedy exchanges, possibly using highly technical and/or colloquial terms.

    However, some of the phrases that we could hear intrigued us as to the possible import of the conversation.

    We didn’t think they were discussing the weather or their favorite soccer teams’ fortunes. You can hear at one point the word “Amerikanskiy” and at another the repeated admonition “im skazayte ...” — “Tell them.”

    So they were clearly discussing us, and Cyril. But what might they have been saying?

    First, we made copies of the video. Then, as we had so many other times, we got on the Internet and looked around for a translation service. 

    Very soon we found Hudson-Neva, Inc., located not too far away from us in New York’s Capital District.

    We talked on the phone with the owner. Translating and transcribing a taped conversation was not what he had originally had in mind when he had recently set the business up, but he realized an opportunity when he saw one, and after hearing our story was very eager to help us out.

    Due to some technical difficulties on his fledgling company’s part, circumstances beyond his control, it took him longer than he had expected to get the work done.

    But, on April 27, his company delivered. We returned from an outing to find, awaiting us in our email, a Word file of the transcript.

    We both eagerly scrolled through it, trying to match up the bits we recognized with what was going on on the video.

    Right at the beginning there was an interesting tidbit: A medsyostr, comforting Cyril who has apparently just been awakened, says “ He looks like the grandson ... one year ... blond ... Face is very much like his grandmother’s ...”

    Did that mean that the worker in question was personally acquainted with Cyril’s birth family? 

    If so, why wouldn’t the orphanage have taken better care of him? Was it because they knew he’d be placed out to an American couple?

    Someone, either this medsyostr or another one, speaks with Lena and describes what sounds like a medical crisis narrowly avoided in little fragments: “toxic ... alcoholic ... infection ... another 10 seconds and he’d ... at his grandmother's ... and if at his grandmother ... if ... hemnostesia ... especially with years.”

    Was this again Cyril being described?

    A little further on, another interesting wrinkle comes to light.

    After the director remarks on how Cyril has all his good fortune ahead of him, which Lena did translate for our benefit, he asks “Do they want to take him now or after the court hearing?”

    She responds “They want to take him now if that’s possible.”

    We were never told we had this option. While taking Cyril back to the hotel was not something we were prepared to do that day, and probably wouldn’t have changed anything that later happened, this does suggest that we had more control over the process in Russia than we had been led to believe.

    After a slightly cryptic exchange between Gennady and the director (“We’ll take care of all the other issues later,” “Yes, I took care of that ... when they face it. For today all the accounts are being closed. I have no idea how these things are resolved ...” are they talking about money, or the ultimate point when we would be given Cyril’s full medicals after the waiting period was up?), the conversation veers into some talk about the administration of the orphanage system.

    And then the bombshell drops:

THE DIRECTOR: The situation is as follows: we have resolved the issue with Anatoly Mikhailovich. There is a whole new structure that takes care of that and there is a new decision to create a whole network of institutions ...

-What do we do with those children? We've got twelve children with Down Syndrome. The situation is unpredictable. We have so many children from heroin addicts.

    When we read this we were just stunned. So many people had obsessed about their children having the impacts of maternal alcohol use that they had completely overlooked the worrisome implications of the many news stories and reports at that time about the increase in heroin use and HIV infection in Russia.

    Did this explain Cyril’s condition? The director goes on to discuss what effects it might have had if his mother had been using, which he didn’t seem entirely sure of:

    If the mother takes heroin, the chances of hypotrophia are 50 percent and 100 percent of all cases are hepatitis. Also some traumas of the spine. 

    In our case everything seems symmetrical, which means that it is not just some part of the brain but that the whole system is deficient. See, he is stretching his feet out. It is the deficiency and it is not peripheral but all of his system is affected ...

    Hypotrophia is, of course, low body size, which Cyril had. He had appeared more like a three month old than an eight month old.  He had tested negative for hepatitis.

    Also on the tape was a conversation we had at the orphanage the day of the court hearing, the day of Cyril's fever.

    After being advised of the fever by a nurse, the director says:

    We should leave him here. We have professionals here who will look after him. They can come to visit him every day. We'll make a schedule for them. I am here on Sunday at ten. We will make up a schedule for them. When they tell you that you can take him, you can take him.

    Which “they” are they talking about? Again, that was authority we didn’t know we had, if he meant us. And if he didn’t ...

    He goes on:

– It is a viral problem. It apparently started last night. If the temperature is OK tomorrow , you should be able to take him then.

Just give me the time when you want to take him. That way it will be better for me. If you do not know, that is OK, too. Take him any time that is convenient for you.

    Again, we were never told that we could have done this. We asked about what sort of medicine he might need, and Dr. Kolodkin told Gennady:

    This is not a big problem. We use American Tylenol. If they are sure that they can handle it themselves they should take the baby now. If not they should leave him at least until tomorrow.

    We then made our decision to leave him in the orphanage until he was over it (Would that have made a difference if we hadn’t? Despite what we know now, we’re still not sure. It seems likely that he may have been a goner already, even before we came).

    Dr. Kolodkin, it seems, was as deluded as we were concerning the severity of Cyril’s illness.

Just a virus. Nothing serious. but that will be the last trouble before a happy life. Nothing serious. But it would be better if he were watched. He does not even have 39° C [101.6º F].  It is just a virus.

We'll take care of him. Tell them that they can go to bed and sleep well. I'll be here on Sunday at ten and will look at him myself. If tomorrow they make the decision to take him, let them take the baby.

    Once again, we’d like to reiterate that the next day, when we showed up, Cyril was still sick and it was intimated to us that it would be better to wait to make the decision to take him back to the hotel that day as the director was not around.

    Before we stopped the tape, Lena noted Cyril stretching his legs out again and asked “Is that how it is always going to be?”

    “Yes, for a while,” the director responded.

    Indeed.

    ***

    There was no smoking gun, really, as it didn’t tell us anything specifically about Cyril that we didn’t already know or suspect.

    Nonetheless the balance of power had tipped in our favor again, and only we knew it. We knew a horrible truth about the orphanage Denise Hubbard had placed a few children from, including her own daughter, that we’re sure many of the parents who adopted from it in late 1999 would love to have known (We remain equally sure that Denise, who should have known it if she had any understanding of the concept of due diligence, didn’t).

    We could have quite easily shouted it from the mountaintops then, but aside from Anguel’s continuing adoption we decided we would keep it to ourselves until the time was right.

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