COLUMNISTS

Deidre Dare

I met a man on line. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm an old-fashioned girl and you will misinterpret that sentence. What I mean is: I met someone in a queue.

It all began last month, when I was standing in a long line to get through passport control at Sheremetyevo to get on my flight to Paris. Deciding that I would definitely marry for a fourth time if the gentleman in question had a diplomatic passport that would permit me to sail through Immigration, I perused my fan mail on my BlackBerry to pass the time.

In some circles, due to my relationship with the enigmatic King of Spades, I am considered an Isadora Duncan of our time (and the King, I suppose, a modern equivalent of the tormented poet, Sergei Yesenin).

Duncan, an American dancer, drawn to the promise of the Revolution, moved to Russia and opened a modern dance school here. She hoped that communism would free the world of poverty and oppression and wanted to be a part of this dramatic social experiment.

She and Sergei, 15 years her junior, married in 1922 despite Duncan scorning the institution of marriage. It is believed that Soviet officials encouraged the marriage, hoping that Duncan's fame might protect Yesenin, a militant communist, from both political and physical attacks abroad. But I like to think she just fell hopelessly in love.

A Russian journalist named Alex, invoking the Duncan/Yesenin union, had sent me what was to prove to be an ominous e-mail.

His was a lovely and supportive note, but it concluded: "My point is that while many American men marry Russian women just for their looks and their housewife agenda, those few American women who marry Russian guys find them interesting because of their enigma and their intellect. The worst part, however, is that those unions hardly survive."

Curious and still having a long wait ahead in my line, I did a little internet research to find out what happened to the couple. Their marriage provoked scandal after scandal while she was on tour in the US with the rowdy poet and was a catastrophe. 

After their formal separation in 1925, Yesenin hung himself in his room at the Hotel Angleterre in St. Petersburg, writing his suicide note in his own blood. Duncan died two years later, when her long gauze scarf got caught in the rear wheel of a sports car she was driving and strangled her.

Sighing over the tragedy of it all, I handed my passport to an official and eventually boarded my plane. I didn't take any of it too personally or become alarmed about my own situation, as Alex had also pointed out that the reason American women won't hook up with Russian men is because "We Russian men have bad PR among Western and American girls, because we drink, abuse and cheat." Yet none of these were faults of the King of Spades.

However, while I was abroad, my relationship with the King of Spades unravelled. But it did so in an extremely and (as Alex might have predicted) enigmatic way, so that when I found myself back waiting in the line at Sheremetyevo a few weeks later,

I couldn't be quite certain where we stood.

I could only obsessively wonder what was in store for me once I got through passport control, but I felt, in my heart of hearts, that the relationship was probably over.

That kind of mental anxiety isn't sustainable for very long. As my BlackBerry had run out of power and I'd finished my book on the flight, I was eventually forced to turn to the Italian gentleman in front of me and strike up a conversation about Moscow to pass the time.

We chatted for a while until at long last we were at the front of the queue.

"How about a drink tonight?" the Signore suggested.

I hesitated. After all, it was slightly possible the King of Spades was waiting for me on the other side with roses and champagne.

Then, Signore's turn came up and he whipped out an interesting-looking passport.

"What kind of passport is that?"

I asked him.

"Diplomatic," he answered.  "I just liked talking to you, so I didn't use it. Anyway, tonight?"

Well, as we know, when God closes a door, he opens a window.

"How about 8 o'clock?" I replied with a smile, giving him my phone number.

It wasn't so much the prospect of a new romance that made me smile. It was the prospect of sailing through Russian Immigration.

xxoo

DD

Deidre Dare's sExpat columns and "Moscow Minute" video reports can be viewed online at: www.deidredare.com