When Marina first came to our agency she seemed quite an ordinary woman; true, that she was from those who did not inquire about the details, did not searchingly look into my eyes deciding if it was possible to trust me their destiny or not, but gave themselves to a new idea to marry a foreigner and to leave Russia unconditionally and right away.

The picture she brought was not the best and I recommended our photographer to her, and in a couple of days she came again with the picture from our photographer and in future she always followed all my recommendations and fulfilled everything fast, exactly and without delay. Soon we put up her on our web-site, and she started to receive letters and to write herself. Having started translating her letters I immediately understood that she was an unusual woman, she had the definite gift of writing, her letters were long, rich in content, with brightly expressed individual style. I found out from her letters that she was a higher manager, that previously she was always a pupil obtaining excellent marks both at school and at the university, that actually she was a self-made person and that her parents had schooled her to get her own way. From her letters I also found out that she had married early, gave birth to a son, then divorced because her husband was not very much interested in his family and behaved unworthily. I found out that after the divorce she graduated from the university, started her own business, made a career and, having achieved much in her life, understood that career was not the most important in a woman’s life, but family was.

She strove for perfection in everything: her son studied in the best school of the city which gave excellent education, on weekends she took him to a theatre or a museum to raise his cultural level, twice a week she herself visited a swimming-pool or a gym to keep herself fit. Having started to correspond with Americans she immediately took English lessons and she studied as responsibly and seriously as she did everything else, she even asked me to send her copies of translations in educational purposes to study them at home and to deepen her knowledge of English. And she wished to fall in love and to marry the most optimal way.

First, once she understood that Russia was not the place where a woman might live really happily and properly and, in the second, she dreamed about a serious, thoughtful and successful husband who would not often be found in Russia because serious and thoughtful men were more often destitute here, and there was such a competition for hand and heart of successful men if they were available and not criminals, that even she, with all her persistence and fascination, did not manage to make her way through.

She started to correspond with an American Jerry and though previously he corresponded with another girl, Tamara, and Marina joined the Marathon race at its final stage as a backup, she quickly got around her competitor. Tamara believed in telling fortunes and in destiny, she wrote sincere heartfelt letters to Jerry, but in comparison with Marina’s letters in which she could pass the finest shades of her emotions and feelings Tamara’s letters were as simple as a sparrow in comparison with a bright exotic bird. Tamara wrote how monotonous – home -- kindergarten – work her days passed, how she lacked male care, how she hoped that she would be finally lucky and would meet a reliable and faithful partner for all her life. As for Marina, she wrote Jerry how the city glowed in hot June days and how grey granite had not time to get cold during short white nights, she wrote about summer pouring rains which so loudly rolled in old St.Petersburg courtyards-wells that it seemed that a locomotive crashed on several square meters of asphalt. Marina wrote about magical New Years in St.Petersburg when Father Frost flied to us from Laplandia, she wrote that life was like a striped mattress, and if it was bad yesterday, it would be OK today. It does not even need mentioning that Jerry was charmed by her letters and dreamed about meeting her not less than meeting Tamara to the devotion of whom he got accustomed long ago.

 According to a preliminary agreement Tamara was to meet Jerry in the airport, but on the next evening after his arrival Marina should took him to the opera theatre. But it happened so that Jerry was late for the plane and arrived the day later, and having called me on his way, he asked me to arrange everything so that Marina with whom he was going to visit the theatre that day would also meet him.

A simple-hearted American Jerry who, like the majority of his fellow-countrymen was accustomed to regard life pragmatically, could not suppose what a storm of emotions he caused by that decision. Marina, being aware of a long-lasted Jerry/Tamara’s correspondence, immediately appreciated all the advantages of the start that destiny gave her. On the contrary, Tamara could not grasp why she was not directed to go to the airport to meet long-waited Jerry because of such a trifle as his lateness. Though she knew that Jerry corresponded with another woman as well, she still could not believe with her heart that Jerry, who had written her so many warm and friendly letters, who gave her so many wonderful bunches of flowers, was capable for such a betrayal. She preferred to believe that intrigues of ill-intentioned people were entangled here and, suspiciously looking at me she told me a couple of not very friendly phrases after which I, in turn, thought badly of Americans misunderstanding Russian soul. Tamara still decided not to believe in what her heart did not wish to believe and also went to the airport.

The American Jerry was embarrassed when in addition to Marina whom he expected to see and therefore recognized among the crowd by her dazzling dress, one more woman approached shyly holding out a rose to him, and only few seconds later he understood that it was Tamara. Neither Jerry, nor Tamara realized how everything happened next, but then Marina who had been accustomed to crucial moments in her business mobilized herself completely, and after a few friendly smiles and polite words to Tamara, Jerry already rode towards the city in Marina’s car and Tamara followed him with her eyes being sick at heart.

And the most unforgettable week in Jerry’s life began for him then – the most charming, attractive and unpredictable woman he knew was beside him. Tamara tried unsuccessfully to struggle along to Jerry on phone, her lonely rose faded forgotten on the magazine table. As for Jerry, he sat in a theatre box that time his head turned by the odour of Marina’s French perfume, he went boating with her along the rivers and channels of St.Petersburg and her waving curls touched his cheek in the wind, he stood with her the bridge of Kisses looking at trembling reflections of buildings in the channel and listened to a story which Marina told him with her charming accent that it was necessary to kiss each other on this bridge never to part. And having kissed Marina on that same bridge he said that not to part with her forever was his most cherished desire and, returning to America with his head going round from the abundance of events and impressions, Jerry told his adult children that he was going to marry.

Marina celebrated the victory. Once more she proved to all the world and herself that persistence multiplied by intelligence gave the positive result and not giving up her positions, she continued writing long interesting letters to Jerry not wishing to lose even a day in a long process of learning about each other. Her habit for perfect organization of life did not give her to relax: Jerry had to come to Russia again soon, and Marina wrote to him that it would be optimal if their second meeting would happen not in stuffy St.Pete, but in sunny Sochi, near warm Southern sea which she loved so much and where she annually took her child to relax and gain strength. She wrote how wonderful it would be for them to gambol in salty sea waves, to drink wine in a cafe on the beach and to return to a hotel at night under stars. In endless phone conversations she explained Jerry also practical things – which tickets it was necessary to order and through which cities to fly. Jerry was a little confused that Sochi was actually situated in the Caucasus and he was also struck dumb by the abundance of measures he had to complete according to Marina’s strategy. But Marina’s voice sounded convincing and hardly packing in his head both forthcoming meeting with Marina in a Moscow airport, then the trip to take Marina’s son to his granny’s in the city on the Volga river, and the schedule of all the following migrations through all Russia Jerry intensively considered how to adjust his own business schedule to these new plans.

Previously Jerry had been married during more than twenty years, he was attached to his children, he had an amicable family the head of which, however, was always his wife, and when children grew up and left home, her all-embracing control fell down upon just Jerry, and it was already hard to stand. After the divorce Jerry as previously worshipped his children, he waited for his coming granddaughter’s birth with a sinking heart, he hoped that in his next marriage he would finally manage to become the center and the support of the family existence, he hoped that a charming woman with whom he got acquainted in Russia would accommodate to his measured life, maybe would give him a child too and then he would find what he seemed to have lost – youth, life, love.

However, Jerry’s children reacted to what was happening with him more carefully. Jerry had family business in which children also took part and though they did not mind their father’s new marriage, they infallibly guessed according to what was happening with him lately, according to his readiness to go even to Chechnya where foreigners’ heads might be easily cut off, that their father, like a small planet, was steadily falling under a new powerful heavenly body, carrying him away along its own orbit, and that it might have unpredictable consequences. Jerry’s son and daughter did not know what steps to take, they just came to their mother and told her that if she was more nice to their father nothing of the kind would happen.

As for Marina, though she was preparing to the departure to America, she still lived in Russia which included exhausting fight with tax inspection during the process of tax checking, summer scorching city where it was impossible to breathe, the illness of her son who had eaten unwashed fruit at his granny’s dacha. Wishing to open her inner world for Jerry as completely as possible and to clarify all the details of her complicated life, the part of which she already considered him, Marina wrote to him that tax checking in this heat from which even thoughts, occupied more with her sick son melt was like a ritual dance around the bonfire or poker in which that one won who could bluff better. She spoke about that also on phone, and after such conversations about events which were too complicated for his understanding Jerry often had headaches, he could not grasp why people in this country did not respect laws, he wished only to extract Marina with the son from there, but some new problems appeared in her life again and again, and she patiently clarified everything for Jerry in her letters and again he had to adjust to it with his business plans. Jerry became irritable, he worried also about his daughter-in law who should give birth to a baby long ago and still did not, he grew thin, got pinched-looking and once at a business meeting he even had a heart attack, and his son took him to the doctor where his worried daughter and even his ex-wife immediately arrived.

And a new turning point in Jerry’s and Marina’s lives happened so all of a sudden that Jerry himself expected it maybe even less than anyone else. It is hard to say how it all could happen: either when Jerry’s long–waited granddaughter was finally born and all his family gathered in their former family house to celebrate that wonderful event he suddenly understood how he had become exhausted during last months and how close indeed his people surrounding him were to him, or maybe he saw the same joy he experienced himself in his ex-wife’s eyes and became deeply moved, and in gratitude for all the years good or badly spent together and recalling that she recently dashed to the hospital having known of his heart attack, he hugged her and saw tears in her eyes… Whatever it was, soon Marina received a Jerry’s letter, full of regret and repentance, with the confession that he actually renewed his ex-marriage and that he might just hope that Marina would sometime understand and forgive him.

Marina fought for her happiness till the end. She wrote several letters to Jerry in which she tried to call out all the details of their beautiful love in his memory. She bought and sent gifts for all his family and even to his new-born granddaughter, and she ordered a painting of the bridge on which they kissed one another for Jerry. In her letters she told Jerry that they had a new wonderful life ahead, but the past had had its day, but all was in vain. Jerry paid for her holiday in Sochi and Marina did not hear from him any more.

Maybe he intuitively felt that if a man had no other choice than to be a corner-stone in the universe of a stronger woman it was already difficult in his age to accommodate himself in a new co-ordinate system, parameters of which were also unpredictable. Maybe he felt sadness and regret recalling Tamara with her lonely rose whom he abandoned in the airport, maybe he thought that weak women wishing to lean to a stronger man also wandered somewhere in the world, but aggressive bearers of their own universes always pushed them aside.

Marina still hoped that Jerry would fly to her to Sochi, and, having returned from Sochi, she still waited for a while for his call. Jerry satisfied all her demands to an optimal marriage and she was already attached to him, but most of all she felt pity for all wonderful letters written by herself, because are not our own emotions what we most of all appreciate in love?

And being a person who does not give up even to the most severe circumstances she continued her search. She wrote many more letters, she met many men some of whom did not satisfy her idea of a worthy candidate, some themselves considered her a very pressuring individual. One of them complained later that Marina led him by the hand in the museum from one painting to another, not even allowing to stay too long near those ones which she herself did not consider worthy.

“But I cannot change!” reasonably objected Marina learning about such complaints from me. “It means only that I should find a person who will accept me as I am.

And she finally found such a person. He exceeded all the parameters set by her, he was serious, thoughtful, rich – Marina told me in a whisper that he was almost millionaire, but he was forty years older than she. Having become acquainted with everything in life, being bored, needing someone to provide splashes of adrenaline in his blood, he indulgently watched how Marina placed him in the co-ordinate system of her life and, amusing himself, he fulfilled all those functions she laid on him. He listened to Marina’s stories about incomprehensible Russian life, he gave her not very necessary and very expensive things, he took her to far away countries. And weighing all “for” and “against” Marina told me that, of course, there is no question about any love here, but she has already written so many letters that she could not spend any more treasures of her soul for new and alien people, and that in real life the limit at which one must stop always existed.

“And I have already learned the language too well to let it go to waste!” gave Marina the last argument which was deciding for a person accustomed to complete everything till the end.