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After about a half hour of hearing about Tasha's Madonna like, calm aura of spiritual well being, and how she actually deigned to smile on the fortunate Nil when he spontaneously grabbed one of the ritual-performance drums and did an Alaska Native style Raven Dance for her with pounding accompaniment and cawing sounds, I am pretty well ready to believe Nil is smitten in earnest. Each day over the next few weeks I am given a blow by blow account of whether Tasha smiled today, or even (my God!) spoke with Nil, and how he judges his suit is faring. Nil is approaching Tasha with such an attitude of groveling worship, that I begin to fear he will get nowhere. But then one day he comes dancing into the kitchen with raven caws and flapping hands:

"SHE KISSED ME!!!"

So things rapidly proceed from there. I no longer have to fret over Nil's meals because Tasha is cooking him three meals of organic whatsits a day. Nil meanwhile is trying to write punk songs with violent lyrics, but they turn into drippy romanticism instead. Punk's muse does not sit comfortably with love-for-all-time, alas. It is all extremely cute, but so sudden, all their friends are predicting both will forget the other a month after our stay in Russia is over.

Then it is January 1994, in Fairbanks Alaska, the only American town where it is regularly darker and colder than St. Petersburg in Winter. I have just returned from my third trip to St. Petersburg, when Nil comes into my office all excited and flushed:

"You'll never guess! You'll never guess what I've done!" he says in a sort of joyful hysteria.

"You are engaged to Tasha." I reply, it is a statement not a question.

"Whoa! How do you know? Do you have ESP or something?"

"Nil, you have spoken to me of nothing else since June but Tasha-Tasha-Tasha. You tell me every time you call her, about, say, once a week? Last week in Russia all she talked about was Nil-Nil-Nil. What else would put you into such a state?"

"True. How do I get her a visa?"

This is when the real fun begins. You see, getting a fiancée visa is one of the most hellish, lengthy and expensive proceedings imaginable. Nil, realizing this, tries, against advice, to circumvent this ordeal by getting Tasha a tourist, business or artistic exchange visa. All of these fail most miserably and waste several months. Finally Nil sets to work on a fiancée visa, sending in everything but the kitchen sink: A statement of support, old tax returns for him and his family, visa fees, Tasha's birth certificate, old marriage certificate and divorce certificate.

However, fiancée visas take about six months with all things going well, so it's still in limbo when in July of this year I come again to St. Petersburg, this time to live for a year. Nil exhorts me to take care of Tasha, and Tasha to take care of me, so it's no surprise when I rent Tasha's spare room and we attack the visa problem together.....

Here I get to see this romantic tangle from the other side. Sure enough, Nil does call once a week, usually at some obscene hour like four in the morning. Tasha, far from getting angry, gets flushed breathless and dazed. She tells me how well Nil is tuned into her feelings: "He has a great soul." Tasha takes me out on the balcony one morning to see a huge spider in her window. "Isn't it beautiful, it looks like a sign from Nil." Sure enough, Nil calls that night to tell Tasha he had a dream where he was a spider looking out for her. It is truly weird.

I am not one who believes in signs and portents, but I'm always amazed that when I'm with people like Tasha who do, signs and portents miraculously appear. As she had predicted, the approval of the American half of the visa application fell exactly on Nil's birthday in July. "I'm afraid I may not get my approval till my birthday in October!" She says. "I was born on the 26th, I got my certificate (M.F.A.) on the 26th, I was married to Boris on the 26th, my son was born on the 26th, and I got divorced from Boris on the 26th too."

Other "signs" appear as well. Nil, for instance, has played the part of a raven spirit in some of our Alaska Native shows in the theatre at the University. He makes raven noises and does Raven Dances at the drop of a hat. To my everlasting amusement, whenever things get bad, we have the local ravens here in Russia doing positively weird things, seemingly to provide Tasha with cosmic reassurance messages from Nil, whenever we grow downhearted with the visa struggle.

Probably the worst time is in August when we wait the whole month for word from the American Embassy that we should drop everything and go to Moscow. It is like being a character in The Three Sisters. Nothing can be done till we go. Everything will be solved when we do. But day by day passes, and no letter ever arrives, and we repeat to each other in chorus each new day "Ah, if we could only go to Moscow!" It is most frustrating in a Chekhovian sort of way.

Then September rolls around, and the letter at last comes, not with an invitation to Moscow, but with a new stack of forms to be completed, warning of another stack to follow, and daunting information about costs: $200 for a visa! Where is Tasha to earn the money? The new Russian customs regulations have suddenly made it impossible to sell her paintings to tourists or to foreign galleries, practically wiping out her income, just when she needs it most. We rush around and try to produce tourist art: amber and glass necklaces, lacquer boxes and painted landscape miniatures, then take it to a touristy "Art Shop" to sell. We are both amused when we go in to it how fast the sales girls pick up the cue of my foreign clothes and pounce on me as a potential customer. "Do you know about lacquer boxes?" The quickest one asks in perfect English. "Well, yes, actually." I say, "I live here. And, um, we were looking to sell you some stuff." The irony is not lost on the salesgirl, who, smiling, takes us to the counter where the guys in shiny suits appraise our work. Irony on top of irony, Tasha's actual artwork can't sell to the "Art Shop" but my bead necklaces do. So American tourists get, not the work of a real Russian artist, but the bead-stringing of a fellow American, marked up from my 30,000p price to the 115,000p price of the shop.

Rubles richer, I offer to lend Tasha the necessary cash for her visa. Again, Nil, mystically in tune with Tasha, calls that night, and asks me if he should send her money. "I just had this feeling Tasha needs it." He says. "But for now, I'm a man in love. Can I talk to my Millochka?" I surrender the phone and discreetly leave the kitchen when Tasha, whispering soft nothings into the receiver begins to turn pink. Later after Nil has hung up, Tasha, looking as sleepy and satisfied as the cat after swallowing the canary, says "Nil, he knows what I need or want before I know it. I feel a real spiritual connection with Nil." And so I hear about the manifold perfections of Nil's soul, and how he intuits things about Tasha, living on the other side of the polar ice cap...

However the worst item in the stack of Embassy info is not the cost, but a little slip of paper Tasha is supposed to give to the militia in every town she's lived in since the age of 16. The militia is just supposed to read it, look on the wall to make sure her face is not on a WANTED poster, and sign it. Problem is nobody wants to sign it. Tasha spends over a month going to every militia office in the city trying to find a militia officer who will sign it without requiring her to use threats or bribery. Better still, Tasha was born in Alma-Ata in Kazakstan, and lived there till she went to college. This means she needs one of these forms signed there too. Problem is, Alma-Ata is about 3,000 miles away in what is now a foreign country. Tasha calls her Mom in Alma-Ata who agrees to pick up a FAX of the paper at the P.O. and give it to the Alma-Ata police to be blessed. The police tell her Mom that they will send the paper to Tasha via the Militia in St.Petersburg. Several weeks later, after looking in all the militia offices in the city, she finds them.

"Tara, I know where they are!" she tells me.

"Where?"

"The KGB has them."

"Whaaat?!"

"The KGB. I'm going to pick them up today." she announces brightly.

"At the KGB? THE KGB???" I shout in amazement. I ask eagerly: "Do you want me to come?"

"No. But can I borrow your leather coat? KGB guys like leather coats."

Alas, they don't like my leather coat enough, and won't give her the papers.

"I think I am the only person who ever came in and just asked for them," Tasha says "they looked astonished. They say only `official persons' can pick them up, and that I should tell somebody from the Embassy in Moscow to come to Petersburg to pick them up!"

After a month of struggling, she at last finds a sympathetic Militia Detective-Inspector who not only gets her the local Militia blessing, but actually goes to the KGB to get her Alma-Ata papers on his day off. At last her packet is complete-or is it?

"We're from THE GOVERNMENT, we're here to help you." Throughout this experience, Tasha has had the notion (bred of spending most of her life under an oppressive totalitarian government), that THE GOVERNMENT, any government, is out to "get" you at all times. So every time the U.S. Embassy would throw up another hurdle for her visa, Tasha thought it was being erected on purpose in order to harass her and find an efficient excuse to illegitimately exclude her from marrying Nil.

I, the naive American, who believes that government is supposedly set up to help you, get annoyed at these hurdles for the opposite reason, they seem inefficient at excluding undesirables like criminals (who could simply bribe somebody at the KGB for false papers), while being quite efficient at causing problems for honest persons like Tasha. So when another hurdle arises, we both get annoyed, but for opposite reasons.

And so it comes to pass, that the second packet with Tasha's appointment date for her interview, medical forms, and, yes another 1/2" of forms, does not arrive. And lo, though we call the Embassy in vain, and harass our poor local postal workers daily, the packet is not forthcoming......

By mid-October, weary from living in our perpetual Chekovian state (although the business with the Militia and KGB was pure Gogol), we have at last had it with waiting and simply go to Moscow to demand the papers in person. As out-of-town folks, we have to find it in one of my guide books, and go wandering map in hand till we see a big office building surrounded by a walled compound. I point to the building, nudge Tasha, and say

"I think this is it."

She looks up, and says, "But the map says it's over this way."

"Tasha, look at the windows." I prompt her, and she squints at the faint outline of words through the tinted glass announcing "GOD BLESS AMERICA" in four foot tall masking tape letters. She looks at me, with a baffled expression, "Why do you think they did that?" "Probably some CIA or Marine security guys got bored one night and decided to play with masking tape." I say.

After speaking to a studly Marine guard (with an amazing inexplicable resemblance to Igor Chernevitch, one of the star actors of the Maly Theatre in St.Petersburg) we find that this is the uninhabitable "bugged" New Embassy building, so we are told to go around to the almost offensively cheerful bright yellow Old Embassy building.

As we do so, we pass the Embassy dumpster where two well dressed guys are rifling it of American Garbage. Tasha and I speculate whether they are KGB or simple scavengers. Tasha suggested it was one of each working as a team:

"Hey Misha, I'll trade you this microfilm I found for the broken Cuisinart."

I propose that they are both out of work KGB guys who realize they can make money as scavengers doing their old work:

"Hey Misha, how come when we were looking for microfilm all we found was broken Cuisinarts, and now that my wife wants a Cuisinart, all we find is microfilm?"

"Murphy's law, man."

The Embassy won't let Tasha in without an appointment (how is she supposed to get the papers without me I wonder?) so I stand around in Immigration section on her behalf for an hour, while Tasha waits frozen and forlorn outside in the snow. The inside of the Embassy however, is wonderful, you instantly know you have stepped on "American Soil." The armed Marine guarding the main entrance, far from looking like the Jean Claude Van Damme clones Russia uses, is a seriously cute, curly haired, 5' 2" Southern Gal who speaks clear concise Russian with a slight drawl. The minor diplomat who answers questions at Citizen Services is not a scowling lady bulldog in a bad suit, but a handsome young man in a violet silk shirt, sporting a gold earring. Already, I suspect Russian's coming there might say, "You know Toto, I don't think we're in Kiev any more."

The clincher is the huge American Cultural Icon: There is a Coke machine right there, glowing with light and humming softly, that only accepts $1 bills.

Back in Immigration there are two "cases" left from the morning, both nice middle aged couples adopting Russian baby girls. One couple, from Minneapolis, look like prosperous Republicans. They are in a pelter (or rather Mom is, Dad is calm, holding the cute, big-eyed girl,) because "Alexandra Elizabeth" is a preemie, and they want to take her to a doctor ASAP because Mom is worried for her. "Alexandra" is, of course, perfectly happy and calm: Sucking on a huge bottle of formula like she intends to eat it bottle and all. Stuck for the last week in isolation because of low birth weight, her eyes roll around to look at Dad, anxiously trying to bounce, or wrap blankets, or pat or do anything she desires...the huge eyes look like she's been in a habitual state of worry for all the days since her birth, and now, the look is "Wow! I get this? I mean, I can ask for a Mustang Convertible for my Sixteenth birthday, and I'll get it? Hey guys, issue me that Visa! These two folks are cool!"

The Baby for the other couple is bigger, but just calmly sleeps, also in Dad's arms. It strikes me as funny, that in both natural birth and adoption, Mom feels she should do the work, while Dad, is just in thrilled awe over the baby. The second couple are upstate New Yorker's, that are the very picture of well-to-do Liberal Easterners: They are "dressed down" in horribly expensive natural fiber Land's End shirts and sweaters, flawlessly faded Levi's, short salt and pepper hair, and wire rimmed glasses. They look as though they have flown, as is, straight from Martha's Vineyard. Unlike her Nancy Reagan suited counterpart, this lady is the picture of calm, despite the fact that her four year old son is literally bouncing off the walls and furniture.

I ask "Which is harder, childbirth or paperwork?"

"Having been through both, I'd say paperwork is, definitely."

So this little sleeping girl will go to New York to be raised a recycling, eco-conscious, liberal Democrat, while wide eyed Alexandra will be enrolled in the Rainbow Girls and want to rebel against going to private college. And Eighteen years from now, they'll end up at Columbia, meet, share an apartment (because they have so much in common) and become friends, never guessing that they'd met before. The Republican parented Alex will envy the other's ability to go out on dates with long haired boyfriends who wear crosses in their ears. The little Democrat will wish her parents had let her eat steak and potatoes, and bought her a convertible. And both will wonder, what would it have been like if I hadn't been adopted? Or been adopted by the other parents?

And all this lies in the future for them. Now they only know they are wearing clean Huggies and sucking on Gerber formula, and these big strange folks are making cute noises at them and they like it. Babies understand the important things in life: eating, pooping, sleeping and warmth. The rest, roots and identity included, are gravy. Clean diapers come first.

So I wait, and wait, while the paperwork of baby transit is worked out. In the meantime, behind me, Barbie and Ken in matching green L.L.Bean Fall clothes appear, wedding rings on right hands in all their blonde perfection. Obviously happy, obviously just married, obviously met while working for American Express doing lucrative work. Problem is, which is which? Which half of the perfect Aryan couple is applying for the visa? I listen to their speech. His is perfect English, hers is softened by a Southern sounding accent. Is she another Born-Again Russian Christian like my friend Helen who learned English from Southern Baptists? No, while waiting in line we talk, and I find she's from Atlanta. I think of the line from My Fair Lady, his "`English is too good,' he said, `that clearly indicates that [he] is foreign.'"

I mention to her that I am getting papers for another couple to get a fiancée visa. She looks brightly at "Ken," and he looks back at her, equally dreamy, like a Pepsodent ad, and she says "Yes, isn't it fun?" I choke down a giggle, since I don't think either Nil or Tasha regard Embassy paperwork as "fun." But then they aren't doing it like these two, arm in arm, in matching clothes, like a boxed souvenir set of "Barbie and Ken Go To Moscow to get Visa's." I mentally save up their cuteness to tell Tasha later to cheer her up.

After presenting her with the 1/2" wad of forms that are the fruit of my hour's waiting, and seeing her grow pale with horror, I figure she definitely needs cheering up. I drag her frozen unresisting body to McDonald's, and spend a week's grocery money getting us both the height of American cuisine. Then I tell her all the funny stories of folks in line as I stuff her with French fries to reduce the green pallor that the stack of forms have brought on.

"From here on it is simple," I explain, "there are two things that will win the day: Cheerful persistence and money. Don't get the idea that they are out to get you, just keep asking `What do I do next?' and `Where do I go to find out?'

Then we shell out money for the hostel, money for the doctor's test, and money for the visa, we just keep handing it over till you get the papers."

Tasha looks unconvinced, but well enough to tramp to the clinic to get her $110 medical exam. Afterwards we wander around GUM, the great glassed in department store on Red Square, and a Raven(!), mysteriously living inside the store, lands on a perch overlooking Tasha's head and regards us with an "Are you OK?" look. This cheers Tasha up better than my pep-talks, and she happily treats me to a Coke at the cafe overlooking Lenin's Mausoleum. As we discuss making a return to Petersburg to save on hostel fees, two more Ravens hop their way across Red Square to ge a closer look at us up in our window. I point this out, and Tasha looks at them, and then me, and does her best beatific Raphael Madonna smile.

Late that night we pile onto the Red Arrow train, to go back to Petersburg. I keep getting the weirdest feeling I should talk to the two nice nerdy guys sharing our sleeping compartment. But the problem is, I speak almost no Russian and they absolutely do not speak any English. Tasha, who could translate, fell unconscious the minute we lay down, but I continue to get the feeling I should tell these total strangers our personal business---a thing I ordinarily would advise train travelers not to do.

Somehow, out of the far reaches of my brain I unearth enough Russian to explain our situation to these two, they keep asking more, and I keep telling them more, till at last they tell me they work for OVIR, and "they want to help." Now me, I'm just a dumb foreigner, I don't know OVIR from KGB, but I suddenly intuit, OVIR=Russian Passport/Visa people, and so I wake Tasha and tell her, and (holy cow!) I'm right. Tasha also has a minor Russian visa problem that these two guys solve right then, just by knowing the right information. They also give us tea and chocolates and tell us about their own Moscow adventure:

It seems they were the paper-pushers ("NOT state security! They hasten to assure us,) that accompanied the state security guy who had the fun job of extraditing a multiple murderer back to Ulan Bator for trial. (One guy to guard, and two for the paperwork?) They quickly convince us they are too indiscreet to be KGB by showing us all the receipts for transit that it was their duty to collect and return to Petersburg. After an hour we all fall unconscious, and don't wake till the hall guard snaps open our door at dawn.

We spend a weekend back home, then chug back on the Arrow to Moscow again for Tasha's "interview" appointment, which, as Tasha foretold, has landed exactly on her birthday. Since the train would get us there too late for her appointment on the day itself, we have arrived a day early and check into the Moscow hostel.

At the hostel we encounter two fellow tourists with romantic troubles of their own. One is the living embodiment of The Great White Hunter in an old jungle movie: Half Aussie half Afrikaaner accent, tanned profile resembling the cartoon Dudley Dooright, broad hairy chest, unselfconscious racist speech, he has clearly walked out of the pages of an old Rider Haggard novel for our amusement. He is speaking to a Hugh Grant clone in a hockey jersey, a laid back Canadian who is, true to stereotype, "so polite."

But oh, the sexism of the conversation! White Man has apparently tossed much of his fame and fortune (so he says) overboard in the aftermath of a failed relationship, and is raging on about the whole female gender. He is now determined to avoid female company lest he get "more behind" in making his fortune in the world. He is heading back down under to the home of the marsupials, via scenic surface transport on the Trans-Siberian Express, Chinese rail, and ultimately Trans-Pacific steamer, to resume his efforts at carving a fortune out of the Outback and the indigenous people, which he persists in calling "Abos". "Hugh" is trying to tempt him out to a night club, but White Man will have none of it: "I just have one more day till my train leaves, and I'm trying to keep it in my pants till then."

"Hugh" looks embarrassed to think that his offer of beer and dancing was presumed to include "loose women" in the package, and blushes and stammers hasty assurances of the respectability of the offer. White Man belatedly realizes that all his anti-ex-girlfriend ravings, as well as his lewd assumptions about the nightclub, may sound a bit sexist to us women in the room, so he attempts to counteract his previous remarks with: "You know what they say: `Men are like public toilets, they're either taken or full of s____ ."

After that uplifting thought, they both turn around and go into a discussion along the lines of the old "Russian women are desperate and submissive and all want to marry foreigners" myth that seems to pervade American newspaper columns and Western male thought. They go on about this for some time, oblivious of Tasha's nationality or circumstances. They are on the "all Russian women just want to marry foreigners to get out of Russia and enjoy Western material comforts" part of this myth, when I notice Tasha twitching slightly behind her book. I fear she may be getting upset, since Tasha is dumping friends, family and a great apartment to live in what she thinks is a cabin in the woods with Nil, whose income is derived from dish washing at the University cafeteria. In other words, Tasha thinks she is giving up material comforts in exchange for love-in-a-cottage in Alaska. I look closely at my twitching roommate, and behind her book she is quietly.....choking from suppressed laughter.

Before she loses it completely, I interrupt the guys. "Don't you know," I say, "women everywhere are desperate, not just in Russia. But as for being submissive? Why? I mean, what's the point exactly?" The guys seem to agree with each other that "Western women have too many expectations." I ask, "What expectations?" Their reply only confuses me further, however. The thing they seem to like about Russian women (in myth) was that they imagine Russian women would expect to stay home and cook dinner while "Hugh" and the White Man hack their millions out of the bush and natives. What I can't figure out is why they think that Western women, who expect to hack out their own millions to add to the pot, have "too many expectations," when those that they think expect to be supported entirely by their husbands they think "have less expectations." I point this out, and they look to each other commiseratingly as if to say "She'll never get it, it's pointless to try explaining," and simply go on defining their imaginary ideal Russian housewives as having "less expectations," to my utter confusion.

Both men apparently have money to spare, and so feel that female adoration is their God given right. "I think a man should be allowed to have as many wives as he can afford to keep," White Man says with perfect sincerity. "OK," I reply "but can I have as many husbands as I can afford to keep?" I ask. "I don't see why not." "Actually, I'd settle for one." "Why just one?" He asks, he likes BIG things and sweeping statements, "One" just sounds too little to this huge guy sprawled out over two chairs. "Well I'm a professor, so I don't get paid much. And I'm a woman, so I get paid less than male professors, so I'm not sure I could afford more than one. Besides which, even though I think I can afford one, there don't seem to be any available." He doesn't know quite what to make of this, he had been poised to argue with me if I'd made a sentimental or moral argument, but no money? He clearly doesn't know what to do about that.

So the conversation takes an abrupt shift onto racial relations in Australia, with White Man pontificating on what he called the "Abo Problem," (ie. there are very angry Aborigines and very nervous white settlers). Still thinking along matrimonial lines, I cheerfully suggest that the two hundred year old "Problem" should be solved by the settlers and natives inter marrying until everybody comes out medium brown and can relax. White Man just looks flabbergasted at me as though I'd just suggested he mate with a kangaroo, and the conversation grinds to a halt.

So "Hugh" fills in by telling his own love story, and it's transcendent:

"Back in college I took a course in Russian Literature, and I read War And Peace. Of course, I fell in love with Natasha, the heroine, so good, and pure and beautiful...in my mind you see. I basically fell in love with Russia from afar through the beauties of Russian Lit. So when I was in college, I developed this fantasy. Even then I'd heard about the Moscow nightclub scene, and so I dreamed of going to a glittering Russian nightclub and meeting a beautiful Russian ballerina named Natasha and asking her to run away with me. I told my friends, and it was a great joke to them all, but secretly I always kept this fantasy.

"I don't mean to say I obsessed on it or anything. I just went along in my normal life. I've had a few girlfriends, I even got engaged once, though it didn't work out, and I didn't take the fantasy seriously, exactly. But still, I had it.

"I've been to a lot of different places, lived in Kenya, Thailand, and now London. And a couple of weeks ago I finally came here on a holiday, met some friends, and went to the clubs. And then, one night, in a club, I got introduced to this beautiful girl, and we hit it off right away--you know, one of those connections you get where you feel like you've known each other for years? But it was really noisy in the club, and I hadn't heard her name when she was introduced, and one of her friends came over and talked to her and I thought she said her name. So I say `I'm sorry, It's so noisy in here, I didn't catch your name.' And it turns out that her name is Natasha. So I'm beginning to get the theme from the Twilight Zone softly playing in my head, when we get into a discussion of our jobs. I find out that she's an out of work ballerina! So we go on talking all night, I mean, we really hit it off, but by now the Twilight Zone theme is running full blast in my brain, and so I'm scared and I don't tell her.

"The next day I spent the whole day struggling with myself trying to figure out if it's destiny or something, and I should ask this girl I've just met if she wants to run away to London with me?! I can't eat or sleep, it just seems so crazy. So I meet her at the club the next night, we start talking again, and it's so wonderful, I mean, we just get along great, and so I get up the nerve to tell her my story. And then I do it. I ask her. So then we both spend the next two nights thinking, worrying, can't eat, can't sleep, it feels right to do, but sounds insane. And finally, two nights later she says `Yes.'

"So the last week we've been trying to get her a visa so she can come. The problem is, the only visa it seems I can get her to the U.K. is a fiancée visa, and that would mean we'd have to get married within nine months, and neither of us is ready for that. I mean, my God, I just kissed her for the first time two days ago. She's a nice girl, and, well, we are not even so far that I would think I should kiss her on the neck!"

It is very reassuring to see that despite his fantasy life, he isn't jumping in too fast.

"But still, don't you think I really had to ask her under the circumstances?" he asks us all gravely. We all, White Man included, bob our heads in solemn assent. It is clearly a case of real life being cosmically influenced to resemble the movies, and, as such, it requires he do the romantic movie ending thing. He shows us a small photo of Natasha then. It is clear he is making the right choice. There she is, an obviously innocent, young, sad-eyed girl, with long dark hair and a wistful, half tragic smile, a Tolstoy heroine to the teeth, the last creature on earth one might reasonably expect to find in a night club.

I hope it's a trend. I mean, it would be nice, if, in response to all our collective wishes, life would oblige us all by becoming like the movies. I wish mine would. Ah well.

So the next day Tasha and I head off to the Embassy again. This time having Tasha's appointment in writing so we both get in. The Immigration Section is a zoo, or rather a playpen, with five American couples, five Russian babies and five sets of adoption officials. There is amazing noise as the cacophony of five sets of American adults trying to speak in mangled bits of Russian, competes with the crying, laughing and screeching of five toddlers.

Tasha just has to sit and wait for her name to be called, but she is dressed to the teeth, and in nervous fidgets. "I need to go ask about importing the cat to the USA in Citizen Services right now, can I leave you here?" Tasha nods, and so I zip round the corner to the "American" section with the glowing Coke machine, and get in line.

Ahead of me is a small, white haired, eighty-something babushka with a worn wool coat, little knitted beret, and a long owlish nose on which no glasses repose. She has an old red Soviet passport with the name Feldman on it, and a clear, pure, educated, Brooklyn accent! She is nearly having to shout to be heard through the bullet proof glass as she endeavors to explain her passport problems to the frazzled looking clerk.

She is trying to get a new American passport so she can visit her daughter, who is now living in Queens. "When did you loose your American passport, Ms. Feldman?" the man asks in a Russian accent that advertises his status as a naturalized American.

"I think it was taken around the time I was given Russian Citizenship in 1937." The clerk, briefly looks up from the woman's papers to discern whether she is serious.

"When did you come here?" He asks, mildly incredulous.

"In 1932. I and my husband came here to teach English in `32. Then in 1935 my husband was told if he wanted to keep his job he needed to apply for Soviet citizenship. Otherwise we would be deported. There was the Depression in America, and we had a baby coming (my daughter) so he applied and got citizenship in 1935.

"Then in 1937, with the war coming there were developments." she says with an intensity that implied we should understand that the developments to which she refers included, but were not limited to Stalin sending foreign nationals, Jews, and intellectuals such as herself off to the gulags by the train load.

"And I was told that if I wished to keep my job, and be allowed to stay with my husband in Russia, I had to apply for Soviet citizenship. So I applied."

"Now at this time it was a rather involved matter to apply for Soviet citizenship." she informs the young man in history teacher style, "You had to fill out the forms and then wait, because the Supreme Soviet had to vote on each case. So I filled out the forms, and for a year we were very nervous. There were lots of developments, Hitler was taking over Europe, there was talk of war, and things here were very unsettled." she intones calmly, a miracle of understatement, "Mr. Feldman even told me at one point that I should take the baby and flee leaving him behind, but I wouldn't do that," she informs the young man with a steely determination, still present after over fifty years passage of time. "And a year later," she says, with some pride, "I was informed that I had been approved by the Supreme Soviet and I had Russian Citizenship."

(Yes, she had been blessed (?) with a Soviet passport, and told she had been a citizen for the previous year, and yes, Comradette Feldman, the Supreme Soviet says all is well with you and family and job.)

"Did you give up your U.S. citizenship at any time?" the clerk asks her with a beady eyed look, he now knows she must have been one of those foreign 1930's communists who came to Russia in droves, most of whom quickly left or were packed off to Gulags. He obviously does not approve of her, but is too timid to say so.

"No." she insists firmly. He looks disbelieving, but too intimidated by her sharp eyed stare to feel comfortable arguing with her, even from behind bullet proof glass. I can see his point. I am usually most protective of cute little old ladies, but this woman strikes me as the sort that would be more valuable protection on ones side than a Mafia enforcer, two tanks and an Uzi. She just has this look like "though she be but little, she is fierce," that must have been responsible for her managing to live through the last sixty years in Russia.

"Well, with your birth certificate, we can get you a US passport pretty quickly. However you will need a new Russian external passport to exit Russia. This one is an internal passport, and out of date."

"I thought if I got my American passport it would be enough."

"It is, for the American government, but not for Russia."

"And I thought we had changed so much," she says with the only wistful piteous sound I heard her use. Then she resumes her grim determined tone: "But apparently, not enough."

I find myself in the odd position of apologizing for OVIR to her, "Actually, if I were to go out of Russia without a visa or with an expired visa, they would charge me a fine for every day over my original visa time I'd gone. It's usual. And you don't want them charging you $50 a day for every day over your original 1932 visa you stayed!"

"No." She lingers for a moment, packing up her papers and I get up the nerve to say "I think, Ma'am, that you have, and you have had, a most interesting life."

"Yes," she says with calm sincerity "there have been many battles, so many battles. But it always has been interesting." And she leaves.

To the young man I say "I have something comparatively stupid and easy to ask you: Does my cat need a rabies shot to come home with me?"

"No."

"Ok. Thanks."

I must say my life problems are much easier to deal with than Mrs. Feldman's. Still. Eighty-something or not, she seems still to be gallantly able to overcome any obstacles. I admire that.

After returning to Immigration I watch Tasha do her "interview" at another bulletproof window. It goes very quickly, and Tasha, face covered with astonishment, comes up to me and says "THEY SAID YES!" in a tone that makes me realize that she had genuinely expected they were going to say no.

"I need to come back a five o'clock with $200, and then they will give it to me!" She is trembling all over with a combination of joy and astonishment.

"This requires a celebration. Wait here." I race back to Citizen Services, pop a $1 bill in the humming Coca-Cola machine, and it spits out a can so cold it hurts my fingers. I run back to Immigration, and hand it to Tasha, a symbolic "Welcome-to-America" gift.

We then go outside and snap photos of each other triumphantly holding the can of Coke in lieu of the visa in front of the Embassy.

Again we end up at McDonald's, but this time in a better mood. We recognize people there from the trip before, and I recognize a German man who I'd seen living in St. Petersburg the previous Summer. It seems like everybody in the world (or at least everybody in Moscow) eats there as least one meal a day. The biggest McDonald's in Moscow sells more burgers than any other McDonald's in the world, so this may even be true. It's said that each Moscow McDonald's serves over 100,000 customers daily.

"It's secret communism!" I say to Tasha "It's communal kitchens for the feeding of the World urban proletariat!" She giggles, still high from her successful interview, and I launch into a monologue about how living here shows one how much better and closer the so-called "capitalist" USA got to making and spreading true socialism than this whole fake "communist" state ever did.

"Here it is all show, and slogans, and mosaics in the metro, no actual communal kitchens for us proles, and what passes for communal kitchens are mostly just lousy cafeterias with insufficient cutlery."

Tasha is ready to collapse with happy exhaustion from her emotional ordeal, so I roll her home to the Hostel for a nap. On the way I point to the Levi's for sale in a store window and quote from Lyubov Popova's 1918 Manifesto on the Clothing of the Future: "`The worker's coverall will be the garment of the future!'" I say. "You know, Popova was right, but I think she'd be amazed to hear how we got there."

At four we are both dressed to the teeth in my fanciest beaded evening gowns, preparing for another wild evening at McDonald's to celebrate Tasha's birthday, and hopefully, after our trip to the Embassy, her visa acquisition. Once we pay the huge $200 fee, McDonald's will be the most we can afford.

By four thirty, all of Tasha's paranoid fears of visa rejection have returned. We walk in the fading grey light of sunset through thick choking ice fog to the Embassy, looking in store windows to kill time before the appointment. We both feel the pinch of the $200 fee keenly, me as temporary lender, Tasha as reluctant debtor. The foul smelling darkness and waiting are beginning to oppress us both with irrational worries. I look around (now hooked as well as Tasha) for a Raven-sign of reassurance, but no hopping bird pops into sight. Instead, before us, in a gun store window is a huge, stuffed glass eyed raven, the kind of giant black bird only found in Alaska and Siberia. I try to nudge Tasha into taking this as a good sign, but the beady glass eyes in the huge black corpse, are anything but reassuring.

Shivering with cold and foreboding we once again travel to the Embassy. I sit and wait as Tasha does the last bits of paperwork. She quickly finishes, and comes over to me with a strange expression on her face that is obviously excited, but otherwise unreadable.

"Quick!" she says, "We have to leave now!"

"What's wrong? Did you get the visa? What's wrong?"

"Yes, yes, I got the visa," she assures me with a conspiratorial smile, and shows me the rainbow colored page of her passport, "But let's leave---now." she adds urgently. I privately think she is taking her government paranoia to an excessive degree, but follow her as she rushes out in delighted haste.

Outside she hisses to me in a whisper "They didn't charge me!"

"What?"

"They wouldn't take the $200! I was afraid they would change their minds. That's why I wanted to leave so fast." She feels like she just got away with something. Her behavior all makes sense now. But why not take the money, I wonder? Won't they figure it out and send her and Nil a bill? Why wouldn't they take the money? They are the GOVERNMENT for God sakes, they ALWAYS want money!

I begin to question Tasha as we walk in the fog towards the metro: "Tell me exactly what happened."

"I just got up there, and gave him my receipt for my passport and the $200, and he gave me my passport with the visa stamp, but he wouldn't take the $200!"

"What did you do?"

"I said, `Don't I need to pay?' and he said `no', and just smiled at me, and gave me my $200 back." She looks at me for a moment in amazement, then lights a cigarette, "So I just took it, got you, and got out, before he changed his mind." She bounces in place with suppressed glee.

"He smiled at you?" I say seriously.

"Yes. It was really funny." Tasha's experience doesn't include a lot of smiling government officials. "Maybe we can afford to go out to dinner at the Metropol and not just McDonald's!"

We walk in the foggy darkness towards one of those seven giant Stalinist wedding cakes that dot Moscow, as I think about her words. The building looks like a Gothic fairy tale castle with the tops of the towers disappearing into the mist above our heads. "He smiled", I think, hmm.

"Tasha," I say "I think I've figured it out. Somebody at the Embassy noticed from your papers that today is your birthday. So they must have just quietly waived the fee as a kind of present."

"You think so?" her voice asks incredulously in the shrouding darkness. In the dim light, her face is unreadable. I see the tip of her cigarette glow with an intake of breath as she considers this statement. Then the smoke flows out with relief. "You know, I am beginning to like American Government."

[Note: This is a fictionalized account of a real visa struggle of two friends of mine. Nil and Tasha were married in 1995 in Alaska.]

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