Cyril comes to America: an overseas adoption

Commonweal, July 12, 2002 by James J. Uebbing

Russian telephones, depending on your frame of mind, can be an annoyance or an adventure--not unlike the country itself. On our first night in Moscow, sodden with jetlag and fatigue, my wife and I were jolted awake near midnight by an unfamiliar staccato chime.

"Da?"

I couldn't make out what was being said.

"Do you speak English? Pa angliyski?"

"Yes, two hundred dollars U.S.," the voice assured me. "Are you to like girl for night?"

I hung up the phone.

"Who was it?" Anne-Marie asked.

"A call girl."

"At least she had the decency to phone ahead."

Two months earlier, the connection from Moscow was much worse, which was understandable insofar as we were driving along the Taconic Parkway in upstate New York when Anne-Marie's cell phone rang. The Russian coordinator of our adoption agency wished us a Merry Christmas and had just succeeded in explaining that our application had been approved when her voice dissolved in static.

"It's these damned hills," I complained as we zigged along a nasty curve outside Carmel. "Try calling Barbara."

Anne-Marie got through to the agency's U.S. office and asked to speak to our caseworker. Yes, she had just talked to Moscow herself. Yes, there was a baby available for placement. A boy, eight months old. Anne-Marie relayed each bit of information to me as I accelerated to pass a minivan full of Hasids just outside of Fishkill.

"Where?" I asked. "In Moscow?"

"Where is he?" she shouted into the telephone. We were going around Bear Mountain and I was afraid she would lose the connection again.

The caseworker shuffled through her files.

"Novosibirsk. In Siberia. You should plan on leaving sometime in February."

At the airport in Moscow, our interpreter and driver found us fighting off a platoon of taxi touts and put us in the car. Marina, the interpreter, was a university student in her early twenties; Sergei, the driver, was of indeterminate middle age. During the long ride to our hotel, Marina began to go over procedures with us.

"I hope you declared how much cash you were carrying to customs," she warned us. (We had.) "Did they stamp the declaration?" (They did.) "Could you show it to me?" (We were happy to.)

Then she handed me a folder. "This is registration for the hotel. Please fill out now, as you will be saving the time later on. Sometimes desk can be very busy."

The Hotel Russia is extremely large (I seem to recall seeing the name in a Guinness Book of World Records entry) and has "Brezhnev Era" all but carved over the front door. With more than five thousand rooms it is hardly ever full and will probably never turn a profit (the municipal government, which owns it, plans to tear it down as soon as the demolition funds can be raised). At the reception desk, Marina went to the front of the line and said something to one of the clerks, who was at that moment refusing to acknowledge an extremely excited young man pounding his fist on the counter and pointing to one of the soldiers sitting at a table by the elevator. As the young man continued to shout, the clerk took our papers and handed over a key. Marina walked us to the elevator and pointed to the soldier sitting at his desk.

"You will have to show this to him each time you go upstairs."

"What was that man so upset about?"

"It was not to do with you. He was angry that they would not let him bring a girl upstairs. You must call me tomorrow to arrange flight to Novosibirsk. May I borrow a pen?"

She wrote out her telephone number on the back of a baggage claim.

"Is this Montblanc?" she asked.

"Yes it is," I admitted. "It was a gift."

"Very nice. Who would not to love such a gift?"

I said something noncommittal as Sergei passed by with the smaller of our bags.

"Sergei likes cologne," Marina added helpfully.

Novosibirsk, like Cleveland, comes as a pleasant surprise the first time you visit it. Flat and sprawling, it is like all Russian cities made up largely of cheaply built concrete apartment towers, but since there is far more land to spread them out here you do not carry away the overwhelming sensation of squalor that is almost unavoidable in Moscow. A local ballet troupe is justly famed, and there are a number of other institutions and landmarks (the railway station, the circus, the research park, etc.) that are "second only to Moscow" in size or importance.

There is a point in Novosibirsk that is said to be the geographical center of Russia. Now that they have rebuilt the tiny church that Nicholas II once raised on the spot, it has become a tradition for couples to be photographed there on their wedding day. One afternoon, while we were waiting to receive our court date, Anne-Marie and I walked through the icy streets to visit the spot. A young man agreed to take our picture and walked part of the way back to our hotel with us afterwards. When we told him we lived in New York, he nodded gravely.

"My father lives in Brooklyn."

It was a common response. Just about everyone has some close relative living abroad, and many Russians told us that remittances sent from abroad are the only thing that has averted universal destitution during the past ten years. In a country where 5,000 rubles ($160) is considered a good month's wage, a few twenties sent through the post now and then can make a great difference. I asked the boy if his father was happy in America.