Posted on June 04th, 2003 06:36 PM by admin

by Irina Borisova submitted by Introductions by Irina

Just yesterday, when I looked through my old files on a book shelf Ludmila Moeva's picture which somehow found itself in one fell out into my hands, and today I received an email with the news that Richard White was badly ill and doctors were afraid of the worst. Life itself often builds subjects and creates endings, so I will just let the following story dictate itself.

Richard White was one of the first clients of ours. After his unlucky trip to Russia for a bride he appealed to us with the request to translate and forward his letter to a woman the correspondence with whom for some reason had been previously interrupted. This woman lived in a town, in the centre of Russia, which has traditionally been considered the city of women because of a weaving factory situated there. The woman's name was Ludmila Moeva.

I have not kept their letters, since then my computer has crashed several times, but maybe it does not matter as the most important is still kept in memory. Richard White was about 50, he lived in a house in a dense forest in the state of North Carolina, he was invalided out on pension as a veteran of the Vietnamese war, he had a small business, restored and sold antique cars, sometimes, as a professional-sapper he was invited to a military camp to train recruits there. Richard White planted vegetables in his kitchen-garden, fed deer, his only guests, coming to him from the forest, he also had a computer switched on to Internet and, consequently, a wide circle of email pen-friends, both Americans and Russians. In his picture Richard White resembled either a famous portrait of Ernest Hemingway, or Cooper's hunter-pathfinder -- he had a beard, wore a heavy amulet on a leather lace on his broad chest, a sporting gun on his shoulder. Richard White's life was rather lonely though activities of different kinds and Internet friends relieved it. Being fifty Richard White decided to marry and as there was no appropriate bride in North Carolina Richard fastened his gaze upon Russia.

I don't know why his first trip to our country had not worked out, I remember only that he shared his impressions of cockroaches in small Moscow apartments. Ludmila Moeva, an attractive brunette with an unfriendly face whom Richard started to write to, was about forty, previously she had worked at a weaving factory, but when the factory closed Ludmila started to sell bread in a kiosk near her home. She had a son at school and she did not speak English at all. Richard White was mostly worried by the latter. He was especially perplexed because the deceased Ludmila's grandmother had taught English in the university. Ludmila's personality was unclear from her letters to me too: very often a person is completely open in their letters and it is easy to imagine their individuality, but sometimes, as in Ludmila's case, everything is hid in a fog of uncertainty. On the one hand Ludmila had intelligent parents, she wrote without mistakes, often made digressions into Russian history and literature, true, that not deepening too much, maybe copying generally known passages about great Russian poets and tsars from her son's school textbooks. On the other hand, she had no education except higher school, in spite of her grandmother who had taught English Ludmila did not know even elementary English Grammar, her opinions were often harsh and categorical as a person with a narrow range of interests might have.

American men like to raise the educational level of their Russian girlfriends by sponsoring their English Language studies: I think many Russian women, even those who have not married Americans, started to speak English thanks to their transoceanic friends. Richard White was not an exception, he also sent money to Ludmila for learning English, I remember there were some complications with its transfer, Ludmila had to go to another city to pick it up as there was no Western Union office in hers.

Richard White's character was neither agreeable nor easy-going. Being fifty, he had passed Vietnam, he had remained alive in combat, but had lost his health because of the agent orange drops sprayed from the planes on the friendly soldiers according to the government instructions. He grew tired of fighting with officials who still did not wish to admit the government's fault for Richard and people like him, for some time he has adopted sarcastic and even cynical opinions, he did not any more see life through rosy glasses, however, he did not give up either his fight with bureaucrats or his desire to create personal happiness. Richard White did not hope to have his own children in a marriage, but he was very much interested in Ludmila Moeva's son's hobbies. Richard was happy with the child's interest in cars, in his letters Richard gave birth to the idea of teaching the boy everything he could do himself and eventually to pass his business to him. Richard was a practical person and in spite of his rather modest budget he built up his house for the future family, he constantly restored either the roof or the plumbing, he made different additions to the house. In their letters Richard White and Ludmila Moeva constantly discussed the prospects of their future family life, the occupation Ludmila could find for herself in America, school where her son would study.

Their first serious conflict happened when Richard suddenly wrote to Ludmila that he could not visit her in summer as he had promised previously because he had spent too much money for a new roof, he said that instead he would come in half a year, in winter. I was uncomfortable to translate Ludmila's response. It reminded me of a scene which I once witnessed on in the embankment in a Southern town I had visited once when a Ukrainian beauty walking along the shore, made up till impropriety, adorned by lots of many-coloured beads and other costume jewellery , having heard an exclamation "Good Heavens!" directed to her, broken from someone, had immediately turned around, placed her hands on her hips and, having unerringly located the woman who had said the incautious words, cried: "What do you mean? Why Good Heavens? Am I really worse than you?" and chasing the victim, shamed her for a considerable time yet for all the beach.