Chapter
Twenty-Three:
One
Day In Moscow
“So
you better go back to your temples, your bars, your massage parlors
One
night…makes the hard man humble
Can’t
be too careful with your company
I
can feel the devil walking next to me.”
-Murray
Head
That night was a replay of the one before, minus the horror show ... we talked about the same things over and over again in an effort to make sense of what had happened to us. Daniel slept a little; again I didn’t at all.
In the early morning, at 5:30, Gennady, Sergei, Lena and the driver showed up to check us out of the Hotel Mikos. We received $150 back for our hotel room and $1,200 in cash — the only refund, to date, that we have received from anyone, in either the U.S. or Russia related to Cyril’s adoption.
We
were not able to find out about the arrangements for Cyril’s
body; all we knew is that cremation was out of the question and perhaps there
would be a marker for his grave — if that. We weren’t even offered a Christian burial for him.
Daniel noted a grumbling in his stomach as we got up that morning. He attributed it to the early hour and the relative lack of food over the previous few days, on top of all else that had happened.
We picked Linda up at her hotel, and she climbed in the back with us.
We were all quiet. I had a feeling that the less we said, the better off that we would all be.
Our guides were subdued as well. Linda Wright, Daniel and I were going to have a lot to talk about in
Moscow. Linda had already decided
that she was staying at the
Hotel Belgrade
with us, and not returning back to
the Grand Marriott where she had stayed before flying to Perm on Thursday.
At the airport in Perm, Gennady and Daniel drank a beer and shared a cognac toast, the traditional Russian farewell; Sergey the driver stood off to the side, and Lena and Linda sat speaking.
Before we went to the gate, I pressed a $100 bill into Lena’s hand; I told her that she had earned that money and not to let her boss know I had given it to her. She told me that I would come back to Russia.
I
told her in no uncertain terms that I would never return to that country; Russia
had not only taken my dreams the first time I had visited, it had killed my son
the second. I could never return (I actually would, but that’s another story).
Our flight was called and Linda, Daniel and I walked out to the tarmac.
As we were waiting on the barren pavement, a cold, Siberian wind was blowing. The wind was like a knife; it literally cut right through our heavy coats and boots. Linda said to me “It is so cold out here! I don’t know what we would have done with babies out in this!” I started laughing.
Then, a drunken man, hearing us speaking English chimed in — “Hello! How are you!” He also said something about JFK airport.
We could smell the alcohol on his breath. It was only seven. The sun had not quite come up yet.
Goodbye to Perm! Linda stood close by me, looking around as we waited in a
rough line waiting to board the plane with our drunken Russian fellow passengers. One
comfort was that we could speak and read Russian to make the plane ride
go a bit smoother.
The three of us arrived at Vnukovo Airport at approximately 7 a.m., due to the two-hour time difference. We were met once again by Dmitri and Julia who looked like we all felt, and we proceeded to the Belgrade in relative quiet.
Julia and Dmitri made the check-in arrangements while I sat making sarcastic comments to Linda in the lobby. When we were in our rooms, Dmitri asked us if we wanted to be driven or taken anywhere; we told him no, that we could get around just fine on our own using the subway.
He nodded, and
left us. That is the last time we
ever saw him.
Before she left as well, Julia told us what time to be ready to be picked up the next morning for our flights.
Darned
if it couldn’t have been right then. One
day in Moscow. The city of my
nightmares.
It was during this time that Daniel’s stomach upset finally became out-and-out
diarrhea, which would become worse as the day wore on. Since he had been the
one to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Cyril, whatever nasty virus that had
helped bring Cyril down was now eating its way through Daniel. I remained symptom-free.
Due to his illness, he chose to stay in our room and try to rest a little. He was immobilized for a while and had to drink two or three liters of bottled water to replenish himself.
Linda Wright had some medication, a prescription antibiotic that she had gotten from her doctor in case of just such a malady, that she gave Daniel. It seemed to help a little bit.
Linda did not want to “explore” Moscow. She’d had it with Russia.
She looked down from her hotel room window at the cars whizzing by, driving aggressively. “Look at the way these people drive! This is crazy!” She was going through major cultural disruption.
I told her that Moscow had improved substantially since the last time I was there in 1990.
She gave me a
funny look. “This is an improvement?”
Daniel woke up and managed to go take a walk down to the Arbat, Moscow’s pedestrian mall, before the virus hit him again. He felt well enough to try to have a hamburger at McDonalds, desperately wanting something familiar, and strolled around looking into all the shops.
All we have of our trip from Moscow are things Daniel bought — the Cyrillic keyboard, the black boots and a T-shirt that Daniel purchased on his little jaunt, showing the Moscow subway system (he said he’d wanted to get one on his first visit, but that wasn’t available back then). That was it for souvenirs from Russia.