Louder Than Silence

By Vesta Spivakovsky

This story is a mixture of judicial arbitrariness, blind spots in the law, slanderous dramatizations, and unfair accusations. It is a conflict that has gone beyond the boundaries of one family and linked the fate of hundreds of people across the country and beyond. This is a story that has been long overdue to be told and a subject that desperately needs to be addressed.

The author of the book - Vesta Spivakovsky - a journalist, columnist, television and radio host - faced a problem that became a very real disaster, but remains invisible to most citizens of the country. In 2010, her ex-husband took upon himself to forever alienate her from her daughter.

This book is not just an authorial confession. Its task is to bring the problem of family kidnapping and PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome) into the field of public discussion. It is dedicated to parents who are in a similar situation but do not despair and do not give up. And also to all those who care about it at the legislative, social, and personal level.
"Family kidnapping" in Russia not only shown a considerable hole in the legislation but became a full-on disaster, invisible to most citizens of the country. The lack of reaction of the legislation forced Vesta to make public, her personal tragedy in order to again force the government to pay attention to the lack of existing legal mechanisms in resolving family conflicts.

According to international human rights organizations in Russia, between forty-seven and fifty-five thousand minor children disappear every year. "Family kidnapping" in Russia is still not regulated at the legislative level and is discouraged as a topic of discussion in the current political environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667811024

Book preview

Part I

CHAPTER 1

‘Darling,’ he smiled at me tenderly, ‘I miss Eksusha too, but I am sure that we are acting in the right way. She needs the opportunity to wean from us a little and spend time with her grandmother. Soon our little homebody will start daycare, and neither you nor I will be there.’

I nodded. Things have just got a little easier. Maybe my attachment to my child is really stronger than average.

Roman took a small envelope out of his pocket and said: I know you are tired. You take care of our child every day and still have to find time to work as well. Due to it, maybe, it is hard for you to adapt to the situation that Eksusha is with her grandma now, and I work out of Moscow. I believe she needs to learn how to spend time without us, and you and I have much to think over. I want to veer around in my mind so that I can understand you better. I want my beloved wife to be happy with me. The children will spend the summer with their grandparents. I also lived with my grandparents until I was seven years old, and I came out fine. He spoke in a smooth and calm voice, combining awe with sternness in an unusual way. I realized that my husband was right as he always used to be. His light brown eyes were beaming with an unexplainable intensity. I decided it was due to his stressful job and anxiety about our future and continued staring at him in silence. I felt warm within. In my heart, gratitude grew for his love, tenderness, and support, especially when they were so critical to me. Finally, he placed my hand on his large and warm palm and continued more decisively: I promise everything will change in our life. We only have to decide where we are going to live and where Eksusha will attend daycare. And now, my dear, I have a surprise for you. He handed me the blue envelope that he was holding in his hand all this time. I stared in an uncomprehending way at my caring husband for a little while. Then I took the piece of paper out of the envelope and read it. It was a travel reservation made in my name to the island of Bali. I was completely stunned.

‘Roman! Do you want to send me to Indonesia? ‘What about our daughter and my trip to Novorossiysk?’ I jerked my hand back.

Something went wrong again.

‘Svetlana, you need to have some rest by yourself, without Eksusha. You deserve it’, Roman chose his words carefully, ‘It will help you relax and get rid of troubling thoughts. Eksusha is enjoying her time with her grandmother, and I promise I will bring them to St. Petersburg when you return. The main thing for me is to see the light in your eyes again, and I will take care of the rest.’ He smiled and held me close to him. I had no energy to argue.

We parted warmly. Roman was in a rush to catch a train to Moscow. Having received my silent consent to accept his gift, he refused tea and left. However, after a 14-hour flight to Indonesia, I discovered that neither my husband’s Skype nor his phone was inside the coverage area. I could not get in touch with him. What could that mean? Did I make a mistake calculating time zones? Did someone cut the cable by accident while laying gas pipelines around Moscow? Possibly his iPhone was stolen? It seemed as if my husband just vanished, having sent me eight thousand kilometers away. He showed zero interest if I had reached my destination or what was going on with me. Things got even more frightening when Roman failed to show up at the Moscow airport to meet me upon my return. He knew that I did not have enough money even to reach St. Petersburg. As I was on maternity leave, Roman took control of all my money. How could he not take care of me? How could he have accepted the circumstances when I found myself in a strange city without money to get home? Is he dead or hospitalized? I rushed to St. Petersburg, having borrowed money from friends in Moscow for a ticket. I immediately started calling Ira, my university groupmate, but her responses were curt and uninformative: ‘Eksusha is okay. Roman? I haven’t seen him.’ Having scraped up some money, I bought the ticket to Novorossiysk.

Suspicions swirled in my head. What signals have I missed? My friend from the university worked as a model. Her daughter is eight months older than Eksusha. Our motherhood happened on parallel tracks, except that I had a husband and she did not. I made a deal with my mother-in-law that Ira would spend some time in her house as a guest. How could I take into account the fact that my friend went on vacation to the same place where Roman was likely to be? When I looked for Roman, Ira kept saying she did not know where he was. She noted that Eksusha would walk around as if she was lost. Larissa (my mother-in-law) was as mean as a junkyard dog and badmouthed me all the time, and that Ira herself was trying to keep neutral. What should I say to her when we meet? Doesn’t matter. Soon everything will clear up. Soon I will see Eksusha, give her gifts and seashells that I collected for her on the beach while counting the days until I could see her again.

CHAPTER 2

On August 20th, on a train from St. Petersburg to Novorossiysk, I kept coming back to my last meeting with Roman that coincided with our wedding anniversary. Despite it being a workday, my husband flew from Moscow to spend it with me. Having noticed how much I missed our daughter, he still begged me not to be offended by my mother-in-law; despite her twice using relatives visiting as an excuse, she was insistent on handing in my ticket to Novorossiysk. She assured me that Eksusha was doing fine, that they had an excellent relationship, and she does miss her mother, as most children do. Having been raised in an authoritarian family, I never questioned her or doubted her sincerity. As soon as Eksusha left with her grandmother, my heart turned as heavy as lead. I could not eat, sleep, or focus on anything. Once I even called an ambulance, but the doctors did not find anything. They prescribed something and suggested that I calm down. Having found myself in an empty apartment alone with my daughter’s toys and books, I could not bring myself to start working on projects that I dreamed of for a long time. The photographs had already been printed on large canvases, and my works’ exhibition was about to open. Besides, another project of Midrash* club’ which was the idea I got during the educational trip to Israel, was looming around the opening. No matter how hard I tried to get myself together and focus, I failed. I only lived to meet my daughter and for my trip to Wide Balk (Shirokaya Balka), where she was staying. However, that particular summertime dragged on excruciatingly slowly. It reminded me of a bad dream from which I had no chance of waking up.

Therefore, when my beloved Roman came, hugged me and said: ‘You are a wonderful mother! Thank you for our beautiful girl!’ I could finally breathe out. Then, just as five years ago, he knelt as if about to propose to me again and held my hand close to his lips. I wept silently, refusing to understand why I had to stay at St. Petersburg and could not go and see my child.

CHAPTER 3

The hero city of Novorossiysk is a port city on the Black Sea that gained battlefield glory in WWII but has now turned into a sleepy provincial town populated by workers and bored sailors’ wives. Foreign sailors are the only bright spots, and even those, like colorful and strange sea creatures, come from warmer oceans and do not linger long. Sometimes other visitors come, and I am one of them. According to official sources, Novorossiysk’s population numbers three hundred thousand people, not counting illegal labor migrants. This town reminds me of another town around a naval base – Kronstadt on the Baltic Sea or even some of my native St. Petersburg neighborhoods. An hour by car from Novorossiysk gets you to tourist meccas of Anapa and Gelendzhik – former ancient Greek trading posts and now famous resort towns of the Krasnodar region.

Out of the whole gaggle of tourists, only a few linger in Novorossiysk, undaunted by its landscape’s brutalist architecture. However, it is impossible to lounge away in the sand as one does in Anapa, for example. The Brezhnev era’s military construction dominates the skyline – the oil terminals, the anti-aircraft systems, and the naval bases. They say that even satellite photos of this town are classified material. Novorossiysk is the largest and the most important port in Russia. The city of sailors and stevedores divides itself into Kubanites and Kubanizers. It took me some time to understand the meaning of this division. One thing was clear – the Kuban natives were nothing like the reserved and austere residents of St. Petersburg. They are as different from each other as the Italians differ from the Spanish. The Krasnodar natives used to refer to St. Petersburg eggheads such as myself as ‘emotionally frigid.’ I do not hold grudges and, in fact, chuckle in return. I am, in general, difficult to offend. I owe my childhood to a strict and authoritarian professor, who was my father. My therapist once advised me "to root out this unnecessary magnanimity.’ Maybe I should, perhaps not. One thing is clear – there are people of peace, and there are people of war. I can be a fighter if I need to. Nevertheless, I do not enjoy the battle.

Novorossiysk is a provincial town built in the heyday of the Soviet regime. Here the long-gone regime follows you everywhere and looks at you from every wall. It is evident in the streets’ names (the central thoroughfare is Soviet, flanked by Victory, Heroic Snipers, Heroic Paratroopers, Naval Auxiliaries, and Sailor with Grenade). The regime has got the faces of labor heroes staring at you from the ‘honor boards’ on squares in front of former cultural centers. You can see the regime traces on the list of vacancies in the main local paper ‘Novorossiysk worker,’ in the mass turnouts for the May 9th Victory Day celebrations, and in the local military history spots where the young people go on dates.

A casual visitor would be hard-pressed to find some local flavor in Novorossiysk. Even the elderly lounging in yards is typical. All people are alike in a strangely Soviet way, and no one is eager to stand out, as anyone who does is frowned upon. The boredom of the port city pierces through everything like a blade of steel tempered with sun and icy winds. No color in the urban landscape must be hell for a photographer.

I come out to the seaside sidewalk and look around. Two concrete power plants stand out like a grey spot among the crowd of brightly painted port terminals, like a rotten tooth in the mouth of the largest bay on the Black Seashore. The sidewalk is covered with new tiles (they say that the town mayor’s family deals in tiles). The usual Black Sea landscape is the urban beach and the sand spit, with several cruise boats around the harbor. Passing several constructivist sculptures, I approach the shoreline. Somewhere here, an episode of the wildly popular comedy ‘Diamond Arm’ was filmed, and the sculptured representation of the film’s characters attests to that. For further authenticity, the sculpture is set right at sea. The locals say that the scene with the boy walking on water was filmed right here. I do not believe the stories for tourists, but I know that this sand spit can be used to turn away from the port city and imagine oneself in the pure open sea.

The famous sightseeing spot called ‘Seven Winds’ makes me realize that the industrial landscape, combined with some resort town trappings, does not bother anyone. The ruins of a Turkish fortress cast a shadow over hastily parked cars with tinted windows, where couples in love can have some privacy.

I always feel the city through the moods and habits of its inhabitants. Even in heroic Novorossiysk, with its triumphant history, the living fabric of the present plays no lesser role than skeletons in our closet. Any city can change when its inhabitants are willing to learn and change. However, the fashions and notions of Novorossiysk residents, especially combined with utopian Soviet architecture, seem utterly deplorable to me. The riffraff criminal elements wear white t-shirts and red moccasins and carry baseball bats in their car’s trunks. It is as if the long-forgotten action flick Brigade is still the rage here. The lacquered girls – all sporting long nails and high heels, gather in schools like fish and move deliberately from bar to bar. Casual style is not accepted in these parts; moreover, it is roundly condemned. If you are not sporting the word RICH in sequins on your chest, you are a worthless loser. People here think everyone, regardless of family situation or age (let alone personal inclination), must dress as if they are going to a ball. Girls have their own ‘bat in the trunk’ – cheap gold and sequins on every part of their body. Any venture out of the house, especially to the city market, obligates women of all ages to wear so much jewelry that they resemble Christmas trees.

The Krasnodar region residents are known throughout the country for their greediness, and they are not embarrassed to demonstrate it. Even close relatives here fight like cats and dogs over a strip of land. People cheat their family members as easily as one breathes or walks on the street. The judges and prosecutors live much better here than their colleagues do in Moscow.

The streets of Novorossiysk are crowded with foreign-made cars. If you want kitsch, the Krasnodar region is the place to go. At first, it surprised me that people here have golden fillings. Now I understand that they do it out of greed, not to be fashionable. Golden dental fillings are something you can take to the grave with you, unlike other property.

The locals’ idea of fun is limited to watching TV in sports bars, computer games, and light drug use. People swallow TV advertisements eagerly rather than ignoring them. The state of being sick and tired of TV has not reached these parts yet. The tastiest gossip is carefully preserved and joyfully brought to the generous Krasnodar table. Everyone is trying to make an impression on others. You do not have to be successful, but you have to take part. This rule, while ridiculous and pitiful to me, has the force of religious dogma here. Arriving from St. Petersburg wearing sneakers and a denim skirt, I find myself studying local chic culture in an anthropologist’s position. It is useless to try to explain to the locals the concept of ‘dressing comfortably.’ In the glaring absence of anything else of value, people polish the appearance until it starts shining as if turtles polish their shells before the rain starts pouring.

This high school atmosphere seemed, at once, quaint and silly. Therefore, I started thinking of this city and its inhabitants as one thinks of an awkward teenager who still has a lot of growing up to do. I completely forgot that teenagers could be particularly cruel to anyone who is not like them.

CHAPTER 4

One cannot find some bread in Novorossiysk shops in the evening; all of the fresh baked goods have already been bought in the early morning hours. There is only one supermarket, and it is located across the city from me. Strangely, I found this supermarket to be an oasis of civilization and went there to indulge in nostalgia for St. Petersburg. For some reason, only next to this whale-like building (same design all over the country), I could imagine myself at home and calm down a little.

However, this time, I found myself in Novorossiysk without a car, so I had to move around on foot. Instead of the supermarket, I descended towards a lonely roadside kiosk and bought some milk and butter (hello, Ayurveda!).

I am holding a folder of paperwork under my arm… no visiting hours today at the police or local prosecutor. Monday in Novorossiysk is barely a business day, let alone visiting hours. During one of my visits to Novorossiysk, I accepted the kind offer of my friend Rita. I stayed at her very large home, sharing living space with her enormous and loving family and numerous pets. It had a homier feel than Soviet-era-built hotels and hostels, where hot water ran only up to ten o’clock in the morning. Here I learned the hard way never to believe anyone’s promises. The cardinal rule here was ‘Promising to marry does not equal marriage.’ Being a trusting individual, I sometimes got into a hobble, e.g., having relied on the word of a kind police officer, I only discovered that he had never intended to show up. I paid a shady criminal type figure to help me retrieve my child, only to see that money wasted as well.

Soon after I settled at my friend’s, I discovered that the water had to be drawn from a well, and the toilet was in an outhouse. However, the water was accessible 24 hours a day, unlike the high-rise apartments where water was only available at certain hours. Looking at Rita’s four children who had never had a cold, I became convinced of the therapeutic power of raising children the natural way.

Rita’s house stood on the hilltop that was officially known as The Second Hilltop (Vtoroy Bugor). Private homes stood behind tall, impenetrable fences.

I approached the makeshift taxi stand and boarded a taxi that already had several passengers. Looking at their tired faces, I realized that they must be locals commuting from work. It seemed as if they were waiting for me to be the fourth passenger so they could pool the money together and pay the driver to drive up to the Second Hilltop.

We are departing in silence. The young Armenian driver is knocking the rhythm of the music in his earphones on the steering wheel with his fingers. The car is slowly climbing the steep incline, and the passengers are pressed against the backs of their seats.

‘How much do I owe you?’ I ask the driver.

‘Fifteen rubles,’ he replies with almost no accent.

Our car crawls slowly up the narrow and poorly lit street. The passengers silently leave the vehicle one after another. The mechanism is smooth and predictable. This young taxi driver acts more like an old buggy driver who has spent a lifetime cruising around the town and memorized all the people’s faces and streets there and which road everybody lives on. The thing is that Novorossiysk is a small town. Every resident knows all the taxi drivers: the faces, the detailed biographies, and the indispensable play-list of Armenian musical hits. I am staring into the darkness, trying not to miss my stop.

The cozy and named after the Soviet heroes’ lanes, entwined with ivy and planted over with walnut trees, are sleeping under the starry southern sky. Houses behind the fences are hung with satellite dishes with the same TV channel’s emblem where I once worked as a talk show host. The satellite dishes are glinting, invitingly reflecting our headlights. At every taxi stop, the barking of dogs can be heard from the dark. The roads of the Krasnodar region are strewn with dead animals that no one ever picks up.

I am the only one left in the taxi, and the driver inquires cautiously:

‘And where are you going, young lady?’

‘Till the end,’ I reply. For some reason, I am convinced that the very top of the Second Hilltop is my destination and the end of the taxi route. I try to resemble a local, but to no avail: one look at me is enough to realize that I am not. However, with every visit, I grow deeper and deeper into this sunburned land.

‘You need Kharkovskaya Street? That’s not the end, the taxi driver’s mood seems to have improved, and he decided to participate in my game. ‘Don’t pretend to be a local if you are not one.’

‘So, where is the end?’ I inquired, thinking that Kharkovskaya Street is the last stop before the town limits, and the road follows into a suburb called Wide Balk.

The Novorossiysk suburb of Wide Balk means more to me than just a point on the map. I often compared the road to Wide Balk with Montenegro because of a beautiful mountain highway that cuts the landscape into endless floating hills and limitless sea. What a breathtaking view! Below the overpass, you can see vineyards and whitewashed houses. Further, beyond the Sorcerer Mountain, you can get a sea view and a single oil barge as if inserted to complete the landscape. Here the pure unadulterated resort Romantics begin, for which the tourists come. The steep curves make you hold your breath, and the atmosphere of serenity and eternity comes into the car through the open window. That was the only right way. That was true freedom. Irresponsible freedom. To depict it more precisely, it was WILL. That road to Wide Balk, filled with youth and lightness, remained in the past and is lost forever, assuming that time can be divided into layers.

‘Wide Balk is the end!’ joked the taxi driver, or maybe he decided to make a quick buck off me.

‘Oh, yes. Wide Balk is the end of all ends!’ I agreed, realizing that the taxi driver found the best way to express what was going on with me.

CHAPTER 5

Having ridden up to the Second Hilltop, I scared all the local dogs that were quick to react to strangers. My friends were not home, and there was no bread. The bare wall contained nothing but a calendar where the date was marked – September 13th, 2011. I felt a bitter taste in my mouth.

I placed down my luggage and walked down the Second Hilltop looking for a food shop. I saw nothing extraordinary in that – the road was only inclined 25-30 degrees, but the ascending and descending cars slowed down, and people stared at me from the windows with genuine surprise. People here do not walk. They ride the taxi even when they need to buy groceries. At the top of the Hilltop, I heard the familiar Armenian music and saw the familiar young driver who collected passengers and started down the hill.

The Moon stared down at me through the tree branches. I walked back to the Second Hilltops with warm pitas. It was not difficult. Suddenly, I remembered everything connected to today’s date. On September 13th, exactly one year ago, was the last moment I hugged my little one. No other memory do I find so difficult.

CHAPTER 6

Schirokaya Balka (Wide Balk) was not only the end of the road, leading from a port town to numerous sanatoriums and resorts, but also a virtual wreath placed on the grave of my past. Precisely there, the colored film stopped abruptly as some unknown device jammed it. Instead of the usual image, the screen was showing ripples and zigzags. Then the film made a screeching sound, and the screen went blank. Even now, several years later, it is hard to overestimate the influence that the broken film projector still has on my life. That day pierces my memory over and over like a poisoned arrow.

On August 20th, 2010, I boarded the train from St. Petersburg to Novorossiysk. Two days passed quickly as I was busy trying to make sense of the events of the preceding days. On the one hand, I was looking forward to seeing my daughter, from whom I had never parted for so long, for the whole summer. On the other, the last conversation with my mother-in-law would replay in my head. Larissa answered my questions as if I had no connection to my daughter and I did not exist at all. ‘It must have been the parental instinct,’ I said to myself, staring outside the train window.

‘That must have been expected,’ I tried to think calmly and logically, imagining my mother-in-law being fully immersed in caring for her granddaughter. The first point is that Eksusha is a lovely and intelligent child. The second, Larissa gave birth to three sons and had been dreaming of a little girl through all her life. I remembered the look on her face when she visited the hospital and saw our newborn daughter the very first time. She used to come every day even though her help was not needed. And I asked Roman to limit her visits. Larissa carefully preserved her great-grandmother’s handmade dresses and spent the last summer lovingly dressing Eksusha in those dresses. The third point I was pondering over was that everyone knew how motherly feelings could be transferred to grandchildren. That was especially true in Larissa’s case, as their grandparents raised all her three sons. Larissa was busy pursuing her Diploma, and it was clear how her motherly feelings were suppressed and how long they had been waiting to show themselves.

Throughout my five-year acquaintance with Roman, we vacationed at Wide Balk every summer as the Black Sea shore was his childhood home. If you were to believe the tour guides, Wide Balk’s gardens bordered the national parks, the Koldun Mountain, and the former residence of the Queen of the ancient kingdom of Bosphorus. Roman and I explored the surroundings together, descending into historic caves and loving each other. We collected pinecones that we preserved as cherished mementos of those hot summer nights. Before Eksusha’s birth, I kept a photo diary of my long-awaited pregnancy against that beautiful landscape background. Eksusha first came to Wide Balk when she was six months old. Under the hot sun, her first eight teeth started coming out – all at once. That time was heated in all senses. Eksusha did not sleep well, neither did I. However, the most challenging part was getting along with my mother-in-law. She would just come over and unceremoniously take Eksusha away from me while she was sucking my breast. Despite my barely concealed outrage at this, Larissa insisted on weaning at six months and gave herself airs of a benefactor, who was coming to rescue the exhausted newish mother. Only Roman, who came on occasional visits when he had time off from work, could reason with her and sternly cut her down to size. She could not be reasoned in any other way and nursed her grudges quietly but carefully.

Having returned to St. Petersburg after the summer vacation, my mother-in-law had never missed a chance to stay alone together with her granddaughter. I rarely asked Larissa for help, but I knew that she would not refuse. The daycare, which she found, was located in the same block as the apartment building where she lived with her husband and sons. When all the paperwork for daycare was complete, my mother-in-law suggested that we let Eksusha spend the summer with her at Wide Balk.

By then, relations between Roman and me were strained, and we needed time to deal with the disagreements that had accumulated. My photo exhibit was about to open, and Roman was about to start a job in Moscow. We were also going to pay off the loan we had taken when we had found out about our impending parenthood.

My relationship with my mother-in-law had always been tense. Larissa’s behavior did not change even when Eksusha began to openly refuse walks with her and even acted as if it did not occur. Some voluntary advice and unexpected visits to our home were growing in frequency, and only Roman could curb some of his mother’s interference in childrearing. Nevertheless, since there was no way to avoid the summer trip to Wide Balk, we weighed all the pros and cons and decided to send Eksusha along with her grandmother. Larissa was elated and began preparations, which oddly started with a list of about a hundred diseases that could occur to an absolutely healthy Eksusha.

CHAPTER 7

It was some minutes before arrival to Novorossiysk, and I waited impatiently for the moment when I could jump off the train armed only with a small bag. The following memories are written down like a witness statement.

At 10 a.m. on August 22nd, 2010, I stepped off the train onto the Novorossiysk train platform. I hailed a taxi and, without stopping at the central marketplace to buy fruit, started to Wide Balk. I had almost no luggage – only children’s books, gifts for Eksusha, and her beloved Cheburashka.I held the toy tightly in my hand as if Cheburashka could somehow help me hold on to the reality that was rapidly slipping away. Does Eksusha still think Cheburashka is a girl? Despite the anxiety gnawing at me, I managed to smile at the fluffy big-eared creature, regardless of its gender.

The car stopped near the house, where I was a guest numerous times. The neighbor Nelly, as usual, began arguing with the taxi driver, unhappy that he drove through the ‘strictly private’ gate. I paid no attention to this classic Krasnodar argument. Contrary to my expectations, no one came out to greet me, and the house looked empty.

‘Eksusha! Roman!’ I called out. Then I calmed down, thinking they went to the beach. Excursions to the sea in the morning were a part of family traditions.

The taxi driver continued arguing with Nelly. I was knocking on the door until my mother-in-law appeared at the door. Having glimpsed the expression on her face, I drew back in horror. Her face betrayed no joy or even indifference. It was outright hostile.

‘There you are! Where is Eksusha?’

My mother-in-law pursed her lips and remained demonstratively silent, casting glances at the neighbor-taxi driver conflict and me. Then she started muttering quietly under her breath and looking anxiously into the roadside bushes as if someone could be hiding there. Nelly, the neighbor, closed the gates and blocked the taxi driver’s exit. She probably decided to show him who was in charge there. The taxi driver huffed and puffed behind the steering wheel. He started the car, leaned over the front window, and reversed decisively while showering Nelly with prime Armenian curses, the meaning to which only he knew.

‘Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.’ This phrase was written on the rearview mirror in the taxi. Only then the meaning of those words dawned on me. My mother-in-law’s appearance left no opportunity for interpretation. It is here where the film of my life began to rip into pieces. The movie projector screeched and broke down, chewing the last piece of the movie with the useless part of the script – the part that contained some polite phrases, a kiss on the cheek, and the long-awaited happy end.

Having seen that the neighbor had distracted from her fight with the taxi driver and paid attention to us, my mother-in-law loudly announced:

‘Eksusha is not here! You should have come earlier, dear. You wonder somewhere, only God knows where, and abandoned your child to other people to take care of!’ At this point, she gave a dramatic look to Nelly and other neighbors who were lounging under the walnut trees next to their houses.

‘Just look at yourself!’ She measured me from head to toe with an icy stare. ‘Can you be called a mother?’ She looked at the unwitting observers again.

‘Where is my child?’ I heard my voice and realized that the situation became irreversible. Having held a pause, my mother-in-law concluded her triumphant speech:

‘Eksusha is with her father. But don’t dare come here again and look for them’.

Suddenly it became quite still. I yelled that I would go to the police and ran off. The gates opened immediately. My mother-in-law kept screaming something to get the effect ‘What kind of a mother are you?’ But I saw nothing and heard nothing. These words were too late to run after me. I rushed down the hill, running on the steep staircase. I kept falling, like a satellite that had been knocked off its orbit. Having run through a grove near the Ocean sanatorium, I finally ran out to the path, then to the road. I ran to the local police station at the very end of the impossibly long Wide Balk beach. It turned out that the taxi driver was following me the whole time. He expressed a desire to give a statement to the police, realizing that he witnessed something horrible.

Suddenly I found myself inside a small hut on a pebble beach. Two young police officers, clearly suffering from the heat, looked up from their paperwork and gave the taxi driver and me a surprised look.

CHAPTER 8

‘So you say your husband is in Moscow now, working?’ – The young policeman asked lazily. Tears welled in my eyes, obscuring the policemen’s faces and everything in general. His partner tried to calm me down: ‘Don’t worry, young lady, everything will be fine with your child.’ Later his colleague announced confidently after speaking to someone on the phone:

‘Your mother-in-law says her son is in Novorossiysk, and the child is with him.’

We all exchanged surprised glances.

‘I don’t get it! What’s going on?’ – The air in the police station was so hot that I could barely breathe. Someone brought me a glass of water. ‘Eksusha has been spending the summer in Wide Balk with her grandmother, my mother-in-law. Roman, my husband, works in Moscow and installs gas equipment’.

People on the beach and children with colorful inflatable mattresses were passing the windows, which gave the whole situation a Kafka flavor. ‘In four hours, I have a train back to St. Petersburg, which I’m supposed to board on with my child. Eksusha is about to start daycare in a week…’ A cellphone call interrupted my monologue, and the police officer went outside.

That was the first time I found myself at the police station, and I hoped that the officers would see to it and help me get hold of my child. For some reason, that was not happening. The man with a cellphone returned to the police station, sat behind the desk, and addressed me: ‘We have summoned your husband; he is about to come. You can wait on the beach and might as well take a swim. It’s so damn hot.’ The taxi driver wrote his phone number down for the police officer and disappeared, searching for more lucrative clients. It was a regular family quarrel, as the police officers and the taxi driver thought in unison. For them, it was also strange how none of the participants in that quarrel appeared to be drunk. Those St. Petersburg people are so weird.

Roman did not come at once. Having finally arrived, he showed zero interest in me and headed straight to the police officer’s shabby wooden table. I was delighted to see him. I felt relieved as he was alive and probably did not have enough time to reason with his meddling mother. I waited for him to embrace me. I rushed towards him, but the look in his eyes frightened me. He looked at me as if I was a stranger. I did not understand what was going on. Having regained some of my senses, I saw Roman give a stack of papers to the police officer and whispering something super-confidential in his ear. Despite the summer heat, Roman was wearing a blue suit, which I did not remember buying for him. I was sitting in front of them and staring at my husband, who was so near and dear to me but, for some reason, was pretending to be a stranger. What did I miss?

‘This individual,’ Roman pointed at me with his left hand and continued with uncharacteristic pathos, ‘All the summer, she was hanging out somewhere and showed zero interest in her child: she practically abandoned our little girl.’ Finally, Roman was looking at me directly. ‘You know where she vacationed?’ The police officers were shifting their heads between Roman and me as if following a game of ping-pong. ‘She did not visit her daughter throughout the whole summer, and/ do you know where she had her vacation (insert a dramatic pause)? She went to Bali!’ The officers did not know what to do with such crucial information. Roman obligingly provided them with an explanation: ‘The island of Bali is a magnet for drug addicts and people looking for sexual adventures!’

The police officers began to sweat. Roman continued triumphantly:

‘She is a cult member. That is why I took our daughter, and now she will live with me in Novorossiysk where I work’, and again, he handed a piece of paper to the officers.

I felt like pinching myself to wake up from the absurd nightmare, from which neither the spectators nor the participants could find a way to escape. The police station, Wide Balk, the heat, the end of August, the young police officers, my husband, who was always so loving and caring always, but for some reason not then. Why am I keeping silent? Usually, I was strong enough to stand up for myself. Now I feel paralyzed. My weak spot was the aversion to conflicts and a lack of desire to prove myself. Roman knew that. He caught me completely unaware.

I tried to hide inside myself from injustice. I have often mentally come back to that moment, wondering what I could have done in another way. If I had not suppressed my feelings but rather let them explode in his face. If I had flown at him, reaching for his throat or just refused to leave Novorossiysk. What would have happened? My belligerence left me, and I felt paralyzed. I could not stand up for myself, did not know how to express the pain and the anger that had overfilled me. I was afraid to engage in open conflict in front of strangers. Roman took full advantage of my helplessness and mercilessly grounded my dignity and resolve into dust.

The police officers listened to Roman’s speech and advised me to file for divorce as soon as possible and have the divorce court determine custody of the child. For that moment, there was nothing they could do to reason with one parent while the parents remain legally married to each other.

I had only a few hours left until the train for St. Petersburg was to depart. Roman launched into an accusatory speech again. It was not directed at me. It was aimed at the police officers, who could not grasp why the apparently normal, upper-class, and an educated couple were quarreling in such a manner.

Then, suddenly, even for myself, I slapped Roman on his face. It had about the same effect as drawn curtains would to protect from a nuclear blast, but Roman did not expect even that from his wife, who had hardly ever even raised her voice. For a moment, I managed to rip the mask off him. Behind a triumphant smile, his overblown ambitions, insecurity, and resentment were hidden. Was I the one who had caused this resentment? Or did it have deeper roots? I saw the answer on Roman’s face. His resentment belonged to a little boy who was afraid of being of no use and no interest to anyone.

Roman turned away and started towards Wide Balk. I ran after him, imploring him to stop. ‘Where did you hide our child?’ I was sobbing, staring at his back. The beachgoers stopped and stared at us. The police officers looked at each other, pondering how this would end and whether they should notify their superiors. Taking into consideration that no official complaint was lodged, I was almost gone. Only entreaties were left.

‘Roman! Please, let’s discuss this. Let’s talk it over! What’s going on with Eksusha? What’s going on?’

My legs were trembling, and my head was spinning. Roman was taking long strides like the soldier of the honor guard on the Red Square. The only response he deigned to give me was curt and merciless:

‘I have decided. Eksusha will live with me. We no longer need you’.

CHAPTER 9

What does the Earth feel when some unknown force rips a living tree out of it along with roots? The Earth screams in pain. But even though no one can hear this scream, the void becomes a vortex into which everything around is pulled. Any other sound cannot drown out this scream. It is silent but heart-wrenching.

I barely managed to catch the St. Petersburg train. The police officer’s voice was ringing in my head: ‘You need to file in the family court as soon as possible.’ That phrase was the only clear point ahead that gave me direction and strength to put one foot in front of another. The two days on the train, I remember them in flashes… A strange woman in my compartment is giving me valerian drops. I am sobbing on her shoulder. My chest is compressed and ripped at the same time. I am holding my left arm to my side as if pressing the bleeding wound. Some doctors enter at one of the stations and examine me, but I can’t tell them anything. I can’t sleep. I can’t even climb up to the top rack. I can’t eat. I can barely breathe. How am I going to live? My body keeps on living to spite me, and it keeps failing me. In the last two days, I aged a lifetime.

Along with the rhythmic noise of wheels, my child’s name continually resonated inside my head. The consciousness latched on to memories of Eksusha as a patient latches onto an oxygen tube. Someone in the compartment caresses my head with a gesture of compassion. This Kafka absurd is not an oddity, not a result of someone’s carelessness. I was deliberately tricked, and everything was prepared in advance. War was my new reality. I did not know how to live in this reality, what to do, and whom to ask for help.

CHAPTER 10

Back in St. Petersburg, I did not waste a moment. I rushed to the first law office I saw. I took a kind of juridical dictation from a weird lady; I put together a complaint and ran to file it in the district court. I ran to the local child protective services. Then to the police investigation department. Then to the phone company to get a printout of calls I made to Wide Balk throughout the summer. To the crisis services for domestic violence victims, the NGOs, to the offices of city council members. I have yet to learn to hold back tears, and at times, I barely believe the words that come out of my mouth.

‘My child has been stolen from me, and they are hiding her from me.’

All I get in response is sympathy, and I move on, from one office to another, idealistically supposing that I am just knocking on the wrong doors. Every day I consistently visit official organizations. I learn to write complaints and affidavits, and I learn this new language of war – dry and bureaucratic. The language you need to address a bureaucrat if you want to be heard.

Finally, I acquire my first ally, a lawyer named Sasha Smirnoff. He frequently cooperated with a local crisis center for women who had been victimized by spousal violence. I first learned of this center from a random flyer I had taken from the elevator of a friend’s apartment complex. At the moment, I was boarding that particular elevator, and I thought that it had never crossed my mind that I would ever need the services of such a place. Somehow, I found myself immediately dialing their number. Sasha waited for me in his office and impressed me thoroughly. Young and ambitious, he got to the very essence of the situation and asked