GETTING MARRIED THE AMERICAN WAY: A Russian Thriller Using Western Recommendations

Transplanted onto Russian Soil by Natalia Art

Since childhood I dreamed of marrying a handsome courageous man like my cousin, the sailor. When he and I walked along the streets women gazed at us enviously, in spite of my then young age. My man did look good in his white trousers, blue sailor-shirt and -- oh joy, joy and terror -- his real dagger. Years passed, but no more sailors came my way and I reluctantly closed the door tightly on recollections of a five year-old girl in the company of a chic man in white trousers and carrying cold steel. I decided I'll take what comes! Real men are always in deficit and deficits, as we know, come under that Soviet rule: take what they give you. However, one has to act scientifically and here Margaret Kent's textbook on "How to Get Married" was very useful. According to this great American woman, all men are alike the world over and resemble animals, so you only have to teach and break one in for the others to follow in herds. Like dolphins. Before this book came into my hands, it had already been published in l8 countries and everywhere it worked. Were our men worse than gullible American dolphins? If you approach them correctly and with love (only caresses, no talk about money), oh and before than you should feed them (that I guessed all by myself, otherwise no animal is teachable), then you really can, what the hell, get married. With palpitations I studied the fail-safe Western method, then I started transplanting it into our Russian soil -- and my thriller began. Jumping ahead, I will tell you that now I personally have doubts even about the undisputed recommendations for Russia of the IMF [International Monetary Fund -- this article was written before August l998], although money is an altogether different story. Russian originality is that special case where the ways of Western experts can do little to help, whether it is the well known Michel Camdessus or Margaret Kent, also well known. But to go back, I understood to marry according to scientific method and no one could stop me. Do they in the Wild West know that in our country the security services and their secret places are referred to as "boxes"? It was in these "boxes" that the brightest minds and most cultivated people worked who were capable only of inventing secrets -- military secrets, outer space ones, medical and other kinds of secrets. Because along with Margaret Kent, my friend Katia was also preoccupied with my future, I could rest assured about the one to be chosen. Once Katia appeared before me looking stern and decisive, like the ghost of Hamlet's father (they were about the same height, only Katia appeared without a cape and a sword) and drawing from Margaret Kent's immortal book of which I was then reading a chapter on how to talk intelligently with cultivated people, Katia announced, "Tomorrow you are coming to my place and you will get acquainted with Mikhalich. Since we cannot find your equivalent in this life (at this point I recalled my dazzling sailor-cousin), we will take Mikhalich because we've got to create a personal life for you, stupid. So be quiet and listen." I had been memorizing the same advice from the pages of the great Margaret: "Make it seem, when he is talking with you, as if he is conversing with himself." Kat'ka added to this some Russian details, "Mikhalich is a man from a 'box.' and recently divorced. He has a good apartment, but in the middle of the room are shelves with copies of the magazine 'Knowledge is Power' going back over 20 years. Don't even think of discussing this with him, otherwise you will never get married. Kat'kina's threat took effect (it is torture for me, I am silent only in my sleep) and gulping some water, I went to the secret Mikhalich. He came to our encounter with a briefcase of secrets and right away I got discouraged. Where were the flowers? I have to say that flowers are the true crazy fixation of the Russian woman. She can sleep on ice, live in a straw hut, look after an idiot husband for 30 years, if only he thinks once in a while to give her three daffodils. Recently a woman acquaintance of mind threw out her fiance, a "new Russian," only because on March 8 [International Women's Day] he got the notion of coming to her with a ton of caviar instead of a bouquet of roses, and now no one can restore their relationship, not even Western bestsellers. Just when I wanted to push away Mikhalich, he, secretly glancing around (maybe as a well known builder of flying machines, he has a "tail" watching him), pulled out of his secrets-briefcase three half-wilted daffodils. I was completely happy -- I was ready to follow him onto the ice, to a straw hut, into outer space, but Mikhalich (known to the world as Igor Mikhailovich, and I won't tell you his last name or the West will recruit him) took me home with him. On the way he said his wife was a bitch, that she kept buying herself sweaters and dresses (here I was taken aback because immediately I felt a dangerous likeness between me and that woman) and she wouldn't allow Mikhalich to buy a rare beautiful curiosity, a stamp from the Third Reich. It turned out that my "fiance" was an interesting man with many interests besides his work -- yachts, mountains, those cursed stamps, walking in the woods. I took heart: it meant he would seldom be at home, and at last I would study English and in general would perfect myself. In the corridor we came upon a barrel -- there was a bar there and no one in it. "I haven't finished carving Bacchus," explained my secret fiance, pointing to the figure in wood with one as yet unshaped leg which was lying on his bed in a laid back sexually-inviting pose -- in place of underpants, he worse a bunch of grapes. Mikhalich said he hadn't had time to finish the Bacchus. ... "We will drink Bulgarian wine and eat freshly preserved fish," and thus Mikhalich announced our cultural program. He pointed with a royal gesture of generosity to a bottle of the cheapest Bulgarian wine on the table, and when he started to open the tins of preserved fish, there was the sound of escaping air as from a champagne bottle. When he saw my concern, he said "Don't be afraid; they are fresh, I prepared them in the Brezhnev era." Since there was no salad, we ate some green onions growing on the windowsill. Everything proceeded scientifically as in Margaret Kent's book: Mikhalich conversed with me as if with himself (thus did I learn about his small salary and the intrigues of his jealous colleagues because no one designs better flying machines than he does -- woe to the Americans) and I listened to him with such a heart of compassion that I was becoming Mother Theresa by the moment. In the middle of the room, like a sinking ship, stood the bookshelves mentioned by Kat'ka with the magazines "Knowledge is Power" and over my right shoulder I heard the wings of my guardian angel, "Keep quiet, stupid, or you will never get married." Margaret as it were nodded agreement with Kat'ka, who ordered me when circumstances got difficult to pronounce such phrases as: What an interesting accent you have. How wonderfully tall you are. That is a beautiful ring on your finger -- what is the stone? Secret Mikhalich did not fit any of these world standards: he speaks Russian without an accent; he is shorter than I am, and there is no ring on his finger, the latter because he is from our celebrated realm of science and not from the criminal economy. Therefore, after the second glass of wine, I ventured to speak out. "What an interesting accent you have, I said impudently to Mikhalich. Right away, he became reserved. "As for a ring, there's nothing to say. How about throwing your "Knowledge is Power" magazines out the window. And I am also a bitch and I don't care a hoot about stamps of the Third Reich. I want to live now and as a real human being." Mikhalich took this all in his own way, understood that the cultural program was finished and that it was time to begin the secrets of love. Again with a royal gesture, he pointed to the bed where Bacchus lay and said, "Stay, and if things go well with us, I will finish carving him." "No," I explained to Mikhalich, "polygamous marriage is not for me, and Margaret Kent didn't say anything about trio love." Taking my half-wilted daffodils, I disappeared from the life of the secret Mikhalich, unceremoniously quickly. [Her story continues in this vein. She goes through two more men -- Vasya, a simple worker whose dream was a harmonious life in a birch forest, and Mark, who wanted to take her to Israel and kept wanting to know, among other things, if she was Jewish.] I finally did get married and it happened very simply. There is an exclusive Russian way, tested long ago by the reformer, Peter the Great and not known to Western experts, because it was tested on the potato, when it was first brought into Russia [Russians rebelled, saying they would never eat something grown underground, and now the potato is central to the Russian diet.] I simply said to my chosen one the magic Russian phrase, "I will NEVER marry you!" That was all. Immediately he got furious (how can it be that he is rejected?!), and then he got going, and every week in an ingratiating voice he offered his hand and heart until I accepted. The poor fellow thereby settled his own fate, because in no way, not in any kind of dream, did I resemble Mother Theresa. But I did get married, and the great Margaret knows nothing about this Russian method of achieving it. A few days ago at a conference I glanced with pleasure at a tall nice-looking NATO general with a ring on his finger who was explaining to Russians why 600 small-but-American bombs were better than one-but-Russian anti-tank mine. And now I am worrying about questions of disarmament and how best to achieve this: to talk to him about those things that Margaret advised -- his height, and his accent and his ring -- or to use the Russian "potato method.?"