Chapter 6: Back in the USSR, Part I

July 10, 1991, Stockholm, Sweden

“You have no idea how happy you’ve made me these past few days,” Pia said as she packed her bag.

“I’m glad we could reconnect after all these years,” I said. “Come visit us in Chicago!”

“It won’t be the same,” she sighed. “This was like, maybe, what it might have been like to be married to you.”

That was an interesting revelation. After all these years, she was STILL thinking about that? About something that couldn’t even work for Sofia who had moved to Chicago to be with me.

“I could never be the one-woman-man you needed me to be,” I said.

She laughed, bitterly, “Neither could Johan. At least YOU were honest about it.”

“You could still give me his address!” I offered.

“Tempting, but no. His word is worthless and he’ll have to live with that. To me, that makes him less than a man.”

“I don’t exactly have a perfect score in that regard,” I said. “We talked a lot, but I left out quite a few of my personal failings.”

“But you admit them? And you try to fix them?”

I nodded, “Not always successfully, but yes.”

“That’s all we can do in this life. Whatever happens, you gave me something very special these last few days. To know what it’s like to be loved and treated as someone special. And Marta saw how you treated us. And how Jesse treated us. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “And by the way, you’re sexier at twenty-nine than at seventeen!”

Pia laughed, “Sadly, for women, that’s about the limit. Men get distinguished-looking. Women get old!”

“You’ll always be beautiful to me,” I said.

“And the sad part is, you really mean that, but now you’re going to Russia, and then back to your wives.”

“Come visit, Pia! I think you’ll like my wives, and Marta will have fun with my kids. Just teach her a bit of English and I’ll teach Jesse, Birgit, and Matthew a bit of Swedish!”

She smiled, “I’d like that.”

Jesse and I accompanied her to the train station, and watched as the train eventually pulled away, waving until she was out of sight.

“I like her!” Jesse said. “She’s nice!”

“Yes, she most certainly is,” I said.

I took his hand and we started walking towards the subway station.

July 11, 1991, Stockholm, Sweden

“Thank you for everything!” I said to Lars and Annika as Jesse and I brought our bags into the living room.

“Next time, don’t stay away for nearly six years!” Lars requested.

“We won’t. I have a sneaking suspicion that Jesse will want to come back and see his new friends. And Birgit already asked about coming here. I’ll need to bring her eventually, for obvious reasons.”

“Keep sending us pictures of her,” Annika said. “She’s a special girl and she’ll always be welcome here! Perhaps someday she’ll be an exchange student like you were!”

“Talk to me in ten years or so!” I said with a grin. “Jesse has a couple of years on her, so he’d be the first, if he’s interested.”

“Russia! I would go to Russia!”

Lars, Annika, and Karin all laughed. Karin had taken the day off, but Kristian had a legal case he had to attend to. Kjell was usually in daycare, but Karin had brought him along to say goodbye. She and Kjell were taking us to the airport in her car.

“I think we need to get going. You don’t want to be late for your flight to Leningrad!” Karin said.

“We’re going to St. Petersburg!” Jesse corrected.

Lars laughed, “How does someone as liberal as you are, have a Tsarist son?”

He was using ‘liberal’ in the classical, European sense, so I didn’t take offense as I might have in Chicago where it meant something very different.

“I’m a Tsarist as well!” I chuckled. “If there’s a choice between the ‘Reds’ and the ‘Whites’, I’ll pick the ‘Whites’. But also, we attend a Russian Orthodox Church on occasion and my and Jesse’s friends there are émigrés who refer to the cities by the old names, including Tsaritsyn.”

“Which city is that?” Karin asked.

“That’s the old name of Stalingrad, which is now Volgograd.”

“You were in Russia a few years ago, right?”

“Yes!” Jesse said. “Moscow! To a wedding! I danced!”

Everyone laughed.

“Me too, but the vodka made doing those Russian-style dances a bit difficult!”

“Dad fell down a lot! It was funny!”

“I’m sure! How did you meet this girl?” Lars asked.

“When I was living here. I met her in Austria on the ski slopes during our spring holiday. Her dad became Trade Attaché to the US and we became close friends. She works for the foreign ministry and she married a Red Army Colonel. That’s the wedding Jesse is referring to when he made friends with a bunch of soldiers from the 1st Guards Tank Army!”

“You certainly have not had a boring life!” Lars observed. “But we’ll let you go! Have a safe flight!”

I shook hands with Lars, got a hug and kiss from Annika, and then Karin, Kjell, Jesse, and I headed down to her car for the drive to the airport.

“Jesse, I want to talk to your dad in Swedish,” Karin asked. “Is that OK?”

“I guess,” he said.

Karin switched to Swedish.

“We didn’t get much of a chance to talk without either my parents or Kristian around,” she said. “How are you? I mean really, how are you?”

“Good. I’m finally learning the lessons from that beating you gave me at Nilssons Gård seven years ago.”

“That turned out to be a watershed week in both our lives. We came so close but couldn’t quite close the gap. Kind of like you and Bethany the next year.”

“Very much like that,” I agreed. “Katt was right about me being a fucking idiot.”

Karin smiled, “No, you were a boy who was trying to figure out what it meant to be a man. Just like every other boy in the world. From everything I’ve heard this past week, I think you finally have it figured out. You’ve become a man I respect. I still love you. I never stopped loving you. But you couldn’t give me what I needed then, nor what I need now. But my God, you WERE a fucking idiot back then!”

I smiled, “You made that abundantly clear when you slapped me across the face. I deserved that, too.”

“I think I called you a self-centered asshole back then. That’s not true anymore.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I chuckled. “I’ve made plenty of stupid mistakes over the years.”

“I’m curious, what’s up with you and Pia?”

“Just two lovers reuniting after a long time apart. Did she tell you what happened with her boyfriend?”

“No. I really don’t know any of your friends well enough to have that kind of conversation. It was fun to get to talk to Katt and Tina, after having heard so much about them. They have some VERY interesting stories! Pia was more aloof, except from you.”

“She was betrayed by her boyfriend and I think it really hurt her very badly. Perhaps in the same way I hurt you. I did my best to talk to her and help her.”

“Talk,” Karin giggled. “I know about your TALKS. Oh my God I know about your talks! You may have been a self-centered asshole, but oh God could you make me cum!”

“Making love to you, once we got past that whole ‘Birgit’ thing, was, without question, some of the best sex I’ve ever had. I still love you, Karin Andersson - always and forever. I hope you know that.”

“I do,” she said, with a brief pause. “But it wasn’t enough, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

July 11, 1991, St. Petersburg, Russia

As we walked down the rolling stairs from the SAS plane, we were greeted by a man dressed in an Italian business suit, but with a KGB pin on the lapel.

“Welcome to the Soviet Union, Mr. Adams! I am Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Head of the Committee for External Relations! I was asked by Parliamentarian Ivan Konstantinovich Voronin to meet you.”

“Good afternoon!” I said.

“Follow me, please,” he said.

As had happened in Moscow, we were led through a separate set of doors, and directly to an office where a KGB Border Guard and another man in a business suit were waiting. Our passports were checked, and then Mr. Putin led us to a limo, then watched as it quickly whisked us away towards Vanya’s tony apartment in the outskirts of the city.

“Stepa Rayevich!” he proclaimed in a booming voice.

“Vanya Konstantinovich!” I replied, though my voice was not nearly as deep as his.

“And this must be Jesse Stepanovich! He has grown!”

“«Привет»!” (“Hello!”) Jesse said, using the one word I’d been able to teach him on the flight over the Baltic Sea.

Vanya laughed, “Very good! We’ll make a Russian of you yet, Jesse Stepanovich! Stepa, Let me get you some tea, and some juice for Jesse.”

We followed him to his study and tea was brought in for Vanya and me, and a glass of apple juice for Jesse.

“Tanya and Dima will arrive tomorrow evening, with Larisa. I’m sure you understand they are busy in Moscow.”

I nodded, “I do! How is Anya Vasilyevna?”

“Good, good. She will be here soon. For today, I thought you would like to relax from your journey. Tomorrow, you will have a special tour of the Hermitage. My niece is a docent and specializes in Russian art. She lectures at the university. She will take you and Jesse to the museum. She also has a little boy about Jesse’s age, though unfortunately, he does not speak English.”

“We dealt with that problem in Sweden. Jesse managed so long as the adults mostly spoke English around him.”

“I want to learn Russian!” Jesse interjected.

“Very good! Dima said he has some soldier friends who want to see you on Saturday!”

“He managed to arrange for Vasily Vladislavovich and Yuri Anatolyevich to be here?” I asked.

“Yes. And several other officers you met at the wedding. Some of them are unable to come because they cannot get leave, but Dima can pull a few strings for the others!”

“How is his new assignment?”

“He is happy to be in Moscow full-time. I am there most of the time as well, when Parliament is in session. Anya mostly stays here in Leningrad; she greatly prefers it to Moscow.”

“All the pictures I’ve seen of the city are beautiful, especially the Winter Palace and the churches!”

Vanya laughed, “You and your churches!”

“I like church!” Jesse said.

“We attend a Russian Orthodox Church occasionally,” I said.

“Yes, Tanya has told me this. The Church is not so despised now as it was before Gorbachev. I could arrange for you to go to a service on Sunday morning, if you wish.”

“Yes!” Jesse said.

“It will all be in Russian, Jesse,” I said.

“But the same? With icons? And incense?”

“Yes. In fact, the liturgy will be exactly the same, just in Russian instead of in English. Even the music will be the same.”

“Yes! I want to go!”

“Jesse, I think that might be a problem because the party won’t be over until very, very late!” I said.

“Oh! I want to dance! I can go to church at home!”

That totally didn’t surprise me. I would have loved to go to church in Russia, just to experience it, but that would have to wait for a future trip. I wasn’t about to deny Jesse his time with the soldiers, and I doubted I’d get cut any slack by Dima and his friends by saying I was going to church, because, for the most part, only old women went to church in Russia.

We spent a quiet day with Vanya and Anya, and at my request, we took a walk to a nearby park so Jesse could run around for a bit. I’d missed my run in the morning, and discussed with Vanya a route I could run before breakfast while I was in St. Petersburg.

“It is not so bad as when you were in Moscow,” he said. “You will not find the Militia watching you every step of the way.”

I chuckled, “I don’t recall the Militia watching us every step of the way!”

“Because you are not a spy! If you were properly trained, you would have noticed the KGB and Militia watching you all of the time!”

“They must be better than the FBI, because I pretty much always knew when they were following me!”

“Yes, well, the Soviet Union was better at that. I am happy we are not watched so closely now. You should encounter no problems running along the route I specified.”

July 12, 1991, St. Petersburg, Russia

As I jogged through the streets of St. Petersburg just after 6:00am local time, I noticed much more activity than we’d seen in Moscow, and found the city to be much more ‘Western’ than Moscow had been. I knew the political changes had affected the atmosphere, so to speak, but there was no question that the former capital was a Western-facing city. Another thing I noticed was many more Russian flags than Soviet flags. Times truly were changing.

Back at Vanya’s apartment, I showered, dressed, and found Jesse sitting with Anya and Vanya at the breakfast table. I sat down and at Vanya’s invitation, helped myself from the platters in the middle of the table.

“Jesse was telling us about his brothers and sisters,” Vanya said. “And about playing ice hockey.”

“He just started hockey, but he’s been skating for a few years.”

“And he says he will start school soon.”

“Kindergarten. He’ll start in September. In the US, that’s the grade before the first year of elementary school, but it’s not mandatory in Illinois.”

“Here, most children are in state-run daycare, so it is informal until they begin their primary education,” Anya said. “Larisa goes to one in the foreign ministry with other children of diplomats.”

“Jesse will go to a State-run kindergarten,” I smirked.

Vanya laughed, “So, the capitalist succumbs to the socialist ideals!”

“We could afford private school, but Jesse’s moms and I think it’s better for him to go to school with kids from the neighborhood. He already has plenty of friends that need to drive to visit him!”

I heard the door buzzer and a minute later a pretty platinum blonde woman about my age walked into the kitchen with a young boy in tow.

“Good morning, Uncle Vanya!” she said in English, I was sure, out of deference to me and Jesse.

“Good morning, Veruschka!” he said.

“Stephen Rayevich, this is my niece, Vera Olegovna, the daughter of my younger brother. Veruschka, this is Stephen Rayevich and his son, Jesse Stepanovich.”

“Jesse Stephen!” he corrected.

Everyone laughed.

“Jesse, do you remember I told you about Russian names? You know my middle name is ‘Mark’ but they use your grandfather’s name for me. I gave you my first name as your middle name like the Russians do. And they change it to ‘Stepanovich’ since ‘vich’ means ‘son of’.”

“Yes! Now I remember! Jesse Stepanovich!”

“Jesse Stepanovich, this is Eugen Marcus,” Vera said in very clear English, with what sounded like a London accent.

I involuntarily raised an eyebrow as that was not a Russian name - it should have been Evgeni Markovich, or something similar.

“«Привет», Jesse Stepanovich!” Eugen said. (“Hello”)

“«Привет»!” Jesse replied. (“Hello!”)

“His father is East German,” she said, noticing my expression. “Well, German, now, I suppose. My son has a German name, not a Russian one. I am not with his father now.”

“Your English reminds me of an acquaintance from London,” I said.

Chapter 7 »