To Sing Frogs Chapter 30d

Celeste and Julia outside TGI Fridays in the Moscow airport

Smoldering, I sat in the chair with Celeste on my lap while Julia spoke with baby-face. The white and chrome chairs were plastic on steel and most of the service windows surrounding the place were empty. It felt like the DMV. I should have been more thankful for having bypassed the hoard of people outside. It was a mob (which translates as “line” in Russian). In Russia the shortest distance between two points is a crowd. I should have been grateful to be there with almost no one else in the lobby and a consular that was doing all he could. I wasn’t.

“John, he’s ready. Please come up.”

“Are you ready to go home?” he asked me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Yeah. Paperwork gets crazy over here. Your agent told me the trouble. I put in a call to the Russians to see if we can expedite a visa approval. I can finish your adoption paperwork for the U.S. side now so you won’t have to come back here.”

A Scout is helpful.

“As far as anything on the Russian side all I can do is make requests. I’m afraid I’m not much use today.”

When will they modify the Scout Law to include useful? “Thanks. I know you’re doing all you can.” I really was sincere but that didn’t decrease the frustration level.

“Good luck, Mr. Simmons. Don’t worry too much. Things are frustrating here. It will work out though. These situations always do.”

I thanked him again, picked up Celeste, and started toward the exit with Julia following.

We all piled back into the van and Julia spoke to the driver in Russian. I only recognized one word; Marriott.

“Nyet,” I interrupted from the back seat. “Nee Marriott.” My grammar might not have been right but they both understood.

“Where do you want us to take you?” the coordinator asked.

“To the airport.”

Julia sighed. She paused. Then she told the driver to take us to the airport. An argument erupted between the two Russians. Obviously the driver saw no point in wasting the rest of his day. Julia knew I had tried to be respectful of her time in the past so even though I was being a jerk, and she knew my plans were futile, she stuck up for me.

The driver swerved the van into traffic, mumbling under his breath. He must have belonged to the same religion Stass did. The two guys prayed the same.

 

 

“Knowing you, there must be a plan,” Julia said, a few minutes before arriving at the airport.

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me your plan.”

“The plan involves things you don’t like to talk about.”

“I was afraid of that. I need you to tell me in detail, what you intend to do.”

It wasn’t complicated. First I’d play stupid, like Celeste did when they told her Amy was leaving. Julia rolled her eyes. Russians had worn the hair off that tactic ever since Ivan the Terrible.

Okay, well, if it didn’t work I’d take the passport back for my own inspection and look for the stamp I had just learned didn’t exist. When I returned the passport there would be five hundred dollars in it. I’d tell the officer I knew there should be a stamp and it might be expensive to hire someone to get it. Maybe someone could get the stamp on another piece of paper and mail it to me. I’d ask if the officer knew anyone who might be interested in performing such a service for $500.00.

“You’ll never get the stamp.”

“Seriously, Julia?”

“You’re right. Of course you don’t care. You’re not going to offer to ‘bribe” anyone, though.”

“A bribe? Julia! That would be wrong!”

The coordinator was a little bit relieved. At least I knew how to carry out my plan without doing anything “illegal.” She gave me a fifty-fifty chance when the driver dropped us at the curb and unloaded the luggage.

“Thanks for your help,” I said while holding out my hand to shake.

“No. I’m coming with you.”

I told her I could handle it. She must have been relatively confident I wouldn’t succeed. The coordinator said she didn’t want to come back for us. I told her that returning wouldn’t be necessary. If I didn’t make the flight I’d catch a cab to the Marriott and call her. Still, Julia insisted on coming. “I really do want to help you, John.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the board of flight schedules hanging from the ceiling. Then we went to the counter. Check-in was seamless.

We had some time to kill so we got lunch at TGI Fridays. Home was so close yet still so far away.

“I can’t go with you any further,” Julia said as we approached the area for luggage examination.

“No big deal. I travel all the time. We’ll be fine.”

“I’ll wait here until the flight is in the air. If you don’t come back, I’ll know you made it. If you do come back, please tell me you’ll be willing to work on another plan.”

“No sweat. I already have another plan.”

Poor Julia. She sighed and asked me what the other plan was. I’m sure she was hoping I didn’t have a gun. I pointed at the list of flights on the lighted board. “There’s an overnight to Vlad. It gets in about 10:30 in the morning. From there Stass and Anya can take me to the passport office. Even in Russia it shouldn’t take more than six hours to get a passport stamped. If we can’t get out on a flight to Seoul on Friday, we’ll make it for sure on Saturday.”

“You won’t need to extend your visa! Celeste won’t have to leave you!” I winked. She picked up Celeste, hugged her, kissed her forehead, and gave her little tickles. Celeste squealed with delight. Then she held out her pictures. “Mama! Kawcha!”

The coordinator put Celeste down and shook my hand. She promised me she would wait until we were in the air. If fate weren’t on our side, she’d help me change my tickets. Then she told me it had been a pleasure working with me. Good employees always know when to lie.

 

 

“Eet say heer der ees modder and seestra. Ver ees modder and odder geerl?” The immigration officer looked up at me through her cat-eye glasses while Celeste sat on the counter. Our travel and adoption documents were splayed out in front of the border guard. I stood with one hand holding Celeste and the other inside my pocket clutching five one hundred dollar bills. My thumb was frantically rubbing Benjamin Franklin’s head for good luck.

“We were all supposed to leave last Sunday but there was a problem with this child’s passport. It had to go back to Vladivostok to be fixed. My wife, son, and other daughter left for home Sunday.”

“Vaht ees problem vid passpoort?”

“They had her marked as a boy. She’s a girl.”

The woman quickly re-examined the passport. It seemed to be in order. Then she went back to checking the other documents. We stood there and waited. Waited. Waited. And waited. The woman continued with her inspections. I was sweating bullets while trying not to do all of the things officers are taught to watch for when profiling those who should receive further questioning. The only way I could keep it together was to ignore the situation and play with my little girl. I pretended to steal her nose.

“Mama! Kawcha!”

I gave her little tickles.

“Mama! Kawcha!”

I attempted to engage in a game of patty-cake even though Celeste wouldn’t let go of the photographs. It didn’t work.

“Mama! Kawcha!” This time Celeste slid the pictures under the glass where she had seen me hand off the documents. “Mama! Kawcha!”

The woman looked up and for the first time, smiled. Any other response would have been impossible. Soon, sounds of Russian baby talk filled the air. My daughter was happy to be recognized.

“Mama! Kawcha!”

More Russian baby talk. Then the officer slid the pictures back to Celeste and resumed her work. It took forever. When you’re standing at an international border and trying to sneak a child out of Russia, “forever” is equal to about ten minutes. Finally the woman put Celeste’s adoption documents back in the folder. Her passport still looked up ominously from the counter. The officer quickly went through the two or three papers from me, browsed through my own overused passport, and slammed the ink stamp several times between it and the papers.

I tried not to gasp. If I wasn’t successful the officer didn’t appear to notice. I had just exited the country. Celeste had not yet made it that far. This was a problem I hadn’t anticipated. My arm was still around my daughter with her sitting on the counter. An international border ran between us. I felt beads of sweat running down my back and didn’t know how much longer I could keep them off my face. My documents slid back under the window and I took them, bracing my hand on the counter so it wouldn’t shake. The blue covered passport went into my pocket on my side of the border. The red one remained half a world away. The officer picked it up again and began a reexamination.

OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

She thumbed through the pages one by one. There were only three pages with anything on them. That didn’t stop her from continuing.

Come on, come on, come on…

            “Mama! Kawcha!” Celeste slid the photos back under the glass.

More baby talk. A smile. More baby talk. Then the sound of an ink stamp thumping the red passport.

 

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