I waited at the Mayakovskaya metro station for a long time.
 
Galina never turned up.
 
​I had landed in Saint Petersburg on a whim. I had work in Moscow, but it ended earlier than I imagined. Nothing important waited for me in Washington. I bought a ticket online and boarded the train for Saint Petersburg.
 
I had successfully located a copy of New York Times, the only daily I considered worth reading, in a Moscow newsstand, and now was a good time to read it. I had hardly reached the fifth page when there was an interruption. In a curious accent.
 
“Excuse me,” said the person sitting next to me, pointing to the other sections of the voluminous newspaper on my lap.
 
“You read English!” I said in surprise, redundantly, before adding, “By all means.” I passed her the bulk of the paper.
 
Now I noticed, for the first time, the person seated beside me. A young woman, in a yellow summer dress, her chestnut hair in a casual bun, a large black bag perched on her lap.
 
“You will ask these sections when you finish your section, right?” she asked. I nodded.

I hadn’t read much of the troubles in South Sudan and Nicaragua before there was another gentle interruption, “Excuse me?”
 
She wanted me to explain something in the science section about gene therapy. My science is worse than basic, and on medical innovations my ignorance is abysmal. I read the part that eluded her and tried to throw some light.
 
I must have said something stupid, for she laughed. It was a gentle, quickly-smothered laugh, but the meaning wasn’t lost on me. I confessed to being lost amid such therapeutic wizardry, when she divulged that she was a doctor. A pediatrician, with a special interest in medical oncology.
 
That is how our conversation started. By the time we arrived in Saint Petersburg, four hours later, we were friends. Galina was her name.
​
We had a wonderful stretch of two days in a city that I loved. Saint Petersburg is a charming city, redolent of history and studded with beautiful edifices. The companionship was even more charming. In spite of the fact that her English was limited and my Russian non-existent.
 
She had taken leave from her hospital, but told me that if an emergency came up, she could be called and she would leave. She had added firmly that her patients had to come first – always. Fortunately, no emergency occurred.

For two days she was the ideal guide for a charming city. She was knowledgeable, she knew the town inside out. And she loved it, its little streets and gorgeous palaces, its winding canals and soaring towers, its busy boats and charming, ubiquitous cafés. She was tireless, trying to show me all that I should see and admire, and fall in love with whatever she already loved. My legs would give way, but not her enthusiasm. With a stop for a quick aperitif, she would guide me to the next museum, the next fountain, the next historic site.

​I am a museum buff and have seen plenty of them, but thanks to her I saw the Hermitage in a new light, as almost a cavalcade of world art, and the Peter and Paul fortress as a living, vibrant site of survival. We talked as we walked, and she herself came alive in a way I had least expected. Her father, a police officer, had died during a temporary stint in Chechnya. Her mother, now purblind, lived in the countryside, with an older sister. Her two brothers both served in the army. She shared an apartment with an elderly couple, but spent most of her time in the hospital, where too she had a place in a dormitory. Though she loved St Petersburg, her dream was to relocate to the other end of Russian and work in a reputed children’s clinical hospital in Khabarovsk.
 
Then, unexpectedly, she narrated the story of a fire that had broken out in a children’s school in her village to the north of St Petersburg and how, as an untrained student volunteer, she had assisted the young local doctor trying to save the burnt children. Some died of smoke inhalation, but the others died painfully of their burns. She never forgot the young doctor’s futile effort to save the children and his agonized remark that he had neither the resources nor the training to save the ones that could have been saved. That was when she resolved to be a pediatrician. She struggled relentlessly to gather the money for her tuition, until the lucky day she won a government scholarship.
 
On my last night we took a boat ride along the Neva river and the many canals of the city. It was spectacular, for the many remarkable homes, palaces and historic buildings are on the embankments, often lit up gloriously in the summer nights. The day had been warm, but the evening was cool, made cooler by the river breeze. I saw her copper hair flying in the breeze, and, at one time, put out a hand to catch her scarf that was about to fly away. It was a wonderful leisurely voyage.
 
Our time together had run out. I thanked her, and she hugged me. I was about to say goodbye, but she said she would come the next morning to meet me in front of the Mayakovskaya metro station, near my hotel, whence I intended to leave for the airport.
 
I waited at the station expectantly. I wanted to see Galina again.
 
I waited and waited. Galina did not come.
 
Maybe she had an emergency or a patient that had to come first.

​In the tiny Buryati town of Okinski in eastern Siberia, 2500 miles from Moscow, nobody had heard of ballet or Bolshoi. For sure Misha hadn’t. Nor had his mother, Alina. But, working three jobs, mostly cleaning, to make ends meet, she knew this: she simply hadn’t the means to educate her bright son. Misha seemed bright to her. And nimble too. He did well in the games he played with other kids. He kept playing and appeared tireless. That gave her an idea.
 
She had heard that a team from Moscow came periodically to Ulan Ude, the area capital, to choose small children, eight to ten, who were then trained at government expense. She borrowed money and bought train tickets for both. Misha wasn’t keen on education, so she told him about a selection for gymnastics. In Ulan Ude, in the two large halls of a public school, there were about sixty kids with their expectant parents and three somber-looking male judges.
 
When Misha met the judges in a separate room, his mother waiting outside, they wasted little time. Strip and show your body. Sing a song and show you can hold a tune. Bend forward as far as you, then bend backward. Sit on the ground and spread your legs as far as you can. When a judge spread his legs further and it ached, Misha didn’t complain, for he wanted to be a good gymnast. When the judge tried his arms next, roughly pushing them backward, he still kept his cool. The judges gave his mother the good news. He was one of the seven selected for training in Moscow.

​Misha arrived in Moscow a chilly September morning with a small suitcase, that contained his entire wardrobe of three shirts and pants and a small package of pancakes Alina had prepared for the trip that Misha was too excited to eat. A grave, elderly man took him to a large building and placed him in a room with seven other newcomers. That was the first time he heard that it was a school for ballet.

Early the next day the lessons began. They were harsh and unremitting. About eighty students from all parts of the country, assembled in a large hall, were trained rigorously by five instructors. They gave no respite and made the kids work steadily for five hours. The first priority was to develop the dancer’s technique. That entailed having the correct posture, increase flexibility and gain strength, all the while learning the arcane vocabulary of ballet. Misha, like every other student, struggled and sweated; he was ordered to change clothes every couple of hours. After a midday half-hour break, to rest and eat a light meal, he had to return for another grueling afternoon session.

​This continued day after day, week after week. Within two months, half the students dropped off, and in six months, the number halved again. Misha thought of leaving sometimes, but he knew of no better alternative. Truth to speak, he found a new instinct sprouting in him. He felt he could take the pain, perhaps a lot better than many others. He almost felt a little proud of the amount of physical pain and mental humiliation he could take and survive. I can do it, he said to himself, whatever you say to me and however hard you make my life. I will do it, became his mantra, I will do it to the end.

Misha did it indeed. He stuck through it all for ten years. From simple pirouettes, linking steps, large poses and endless barre exercises, he graduated to higher and higher levels of skill and mastery. He stunned his instructors with his doggedness, his stamina and eventually the subtlety of his performance. On the chief instructor’s recommendation, on graduation he went for further training and experience to Kirov, one of the greatest institutions.
 
“Twelve years had passed since I left Buriyatia and my mother’s home, for perhaps the cruelest internship one can imagine for a kid. Finally I was now sensing the first inkling of approval and success,” said Misha, as he poured me a glass of beer.
 
I had met him through common friends and Misha had graciously invited me for dinner. I loved his warm hospitality, but I loved his story even more.

“All this had happened without a clear plan on my part,” Misha continued, “I just went along with what my mother wanted at first. I hated her for my initial days of agony. It took me a long time to realize she wanted something good for me, though she did not know what it could be. Now it was time that I should form my own plan. I started thinking.”
 
Luckily, he found that Buriyatia’s ballet troupe had the opening for the principal dancer. He called and expressed his interest. There was some hesitation, for among the local dancers some had waited five to seven years for such an opening. But Misha was a star, and the troupe could not let him go. 

​So, fourteen years after he had left the area, Misha returned to Buriyatia, spurning the opportunities he might had in Moscow. His goal was to make the local troupe as good as it could be, whatever it took in terms of time and effort.
 
“I came back to my mother’s modest home. I returned to the same tiny room I had lived in years earlier. I had left the klieg lights of the big city, in order to build something worthwhile in my home town. I was still a star, but a star of a very different kind.
 
“I was once again a son, the son of an aging mother. She could not work as hard as she had worked earlier. Now it was my turn to work harder and be the dutiful son.
 
“I felt happy. I also felt at peace with myself.”
 
The beer in his glass sparkled. His face seemed lit up.

For a fairly law-abiding citizen, I have been behind bars more than most people. The experience has been scintillating.

I met Gabriel who came for hiking in the Himalayas, loved the superb hashish he could buy for a trifling sum and bought the large stash that made him fit the definition of a trader in local law; he became an indefinite guest of the prison authorities. Or Jeannie, who also tried some marijuana that was unfortunately laced by the vendor with some PCP, had a violently negative reaction, and acted dangerously unstable on the street; she was sent to prison instead of to a hospital. I spent time with them both, and many more like them. Usually I counseled them, got them a good lawyer and tried to help in other ways.

As a United States consul, I was responsible for American citizens who were in jail in a foreign land. I knew, by talking with colleagues, that many consuls could not care less for jailed Americans. Like most people, they assumed that people who were put behind bars belonged there. They deserved their sentence.
 
My inclination was different. I felt I had a clearer idea of the justice system in most lands. I had read Camus and Koestler and had the interest to find out the way capital punishment operates in many countries. Rich, resourceful criminals are almost never executed. It is the poor, who belong to a backward or minority group, who are hanged, injected with poison or killed more slowly in soul-killing confinement. 

For lesser crimes, as in civil cases, the balance tilts even more egregiously in favor of the well-heeled. Get good lawyers, get well-paid specialists and investigators, and you can go scot-free even if you drive over sleeping people in a drunken spree. In advanced countries as much as in the less advanced, as Harold Lasky said long ago, there is a law for the rich and a law for the poor. Justice is blind, not because it is impartial but because it does not want to see.

One has to be unusually naïve or foolish to imagine that the people in jail are all bad and the people outside are all good. In the country where I was assigned, I knew also that the quality of marijuana was very good and the cost very low. It was tempting for American tourists to not only buy and smoke, but also buy and take home. That was when they got caught. Few seemed to care that they were behind bars for months when they should have been living a productive life outside.

As long as bad laws remained on statute books and punishment was used to exact a pound of flesh and not to rehabilitate wrong-doers, sham justice will be the rule rather than the exception in most countries.
 
I took the part of my work that related to prisoners very seriously. I set up a routine of monthly or bi-weekly visit to the prison, read up in advance about the prisoners’ background and case history, and even took vitamin tablets or preferred cereals for the American prisoners. 

​My intentions were twofold. I wanted to demonstrably underline the human dignity of those prisoners. They were not human refuse, but valuable beings who had made mistakes and were paying a price, sometimes an unreasonably high price for their mistakes. They deserved to be regarded as human beings, their human pains and needs should be addressed.
 
My other object was to underline the uncompromising nature of human rights that every person, in all circumstances, was entitled to. It was far beyond my power to guarantee it to every person, but by insisting on overtly displaying it to American prisoners I hoped to generate a broader awareness of among the entire prison population. I knew I had created some talk, when the prison wardens spoke of their surprise and sometimes even changed the way they treated their wards. The corporal punishment that prison authorities inflict on their hapless wards is an abomination, and I was glad that I could persuade some of them to acknowledge their error and try to work in a more humane way.
 
I reflect on the hours I spent behind prison walls as a great learning experience. Learning of others’ pain is one of the better ways, I believe, to remain determinedly human.

On a pleasant summer day, in a charming little hotel on Ulitsa Stremyannaya in Saint Petersburg, I met Philippe and Elvira Bonnenfant. I was sipping a second espresso after breakfast in the hotel café when Elvira asked if she could join my table. Elvira is from Kyrgyzstan, at one time a part of USSR. Philippe is a Frenchman, who represented an international seeds company in Eastern Europe. Now they both live in Russia. They are a charming couple and I believe we will stay in touch.
 
I said to Philippe that he must have had an interesting life, moving from western Europe to the USSR and then living through the turbulent transition from the communist behemoth to the quick-changing Russian Federation. He modestly replied that his life indeed hadn’t been dull, but it was nothing compared to that of his father, Roger Bonnenfant. Intrigued, I wanted to hear the story of his father. It was a truly a strange story and a heart-warming one.

Roger was only 22 when patriotic fervor made him join the French army. With a resurgent Germany next door, there was fearful anticipation hardly two years later. Hitler launched his invasion of western Europe in May 1940. Just six weeks later France fell. On June 22 the French surrendered and signed an armistice. Roger was taken a prisoner of war.

With hundreds of other POW’s he was shipped to Germany, to serve the German industrial war machine. Roger was sent to Heidenheim an der Brenz, a town in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, a prison camp high up in the Swabian mountains near Stuttgart. Six days in the week he would be taken in a van with other prisoners twenty miles south, to work in a machine tools factory in Ulm.
 
It was in Ulm that he met Gerhard Schneider, a supervisor in the factory. Gerhard was an unusual man himself. He was a world-class athlete, who had survived despite his open contempt for the Nazis only because of his legendary reputation as a ski champion. His youthful idealism had prompted him once to visit the emerging socialist paradise of USSR, where he had been interrogated and detained on suspicion, but he had escaped. Incredibly, he would hide himself during the day and ski at night to elude the Russian authorities and reach freedom.
 
Gerhard treated Roger kindly and got to know him better. On the excuse that he needed a worker to do some chores in his home, he even succeeded in getting Roger to come to his house periodically and meet his wife, Emilia. The couple took pity on Roger and hatched an incredible plan. A plan for Roger to escape.

They took Roger’s measurements and had some rustic German-style clothes made for him. Roger would not survive on the roads for a day in the prisoner’s uniform that he was required to don day and night. Roger did not know a word of German earlier. They tutored him in common German words, so that he could answer strangers’ questions without arousing suspicion. In contravention of wartime rules, they fed Roger wholesome food, so he could regain his health for the tough adventure. He had already lost considerable weight on a prisoner’s meager diet. It also meant he had to make his escape attempt soon, before he became ill or more feeble for lack of nutrition.
 
Roger did not have many choices. The Reich had gobbled up large parts of Europe, including his country. He could not go home. His only chance was to reach neutral Switzerland. His plan, hatched with advice from Gerhard and Emilia, was to reach the southernmost town of Konstanz, on the border of Lake Constance, and then try to reach Basel across the border.

​He started off from Heidenheim on a moonless night. He shed his prison garbs, wore the outfit the Schneiders had suggested and carried the other set of clothes and some rations they had given in a modest bag. It was a long, arduous trek on unfamiliar roads, with the danger of being reported or caught at every turn. He had to look nondescript, avoid attention and buy food with the money Gerhard had given him only when he was insufferably hungry. Once, almost within sight of Konstanz, somebody reported him as suspicious and the local police detained him for a night, but he was able to escape before morning and further interrogation.
 
Once in Basel, he had no way to inform the Schneiders of the success of their common plan. Three years later, when the war ended, Roger was finally able to do the two things he had long yearned to do: tell Gerhard and Emilia that he had survived and return home to Paris. In five months, he was able to do more. He arrived in Ulm and hugged Gerhard and Emilia.
 
For years after that the Bonnenfants – for Roger had married and had his first child, Philippe – always visited Germany for their vacation and the Schneiders in turn visited France for holidays. Philippe was very young when he first saw Ulm, but he remembers being told that his first word as a baby was a German word rather than French. The two families remained closer than blood relations, and the children grew up as virtual cousins.
 
I had to agree with Philippe that his father had had a more exciting life, fulfilling as well as exciting.

There I was, in blue-gray hospital garbs, standing next to a bed and watching my daughter being born. Lina landed with a piercing scream. I kissed Jane, now exhausted after hours of labor, and waited and watched as they cleaned the baby. Then she, a messy little bundle, was ours. Ours to hold and cherish.

Being a boy, I have not had a doll in my younger days. Now was my turn to play with a doll. For Lina was a doll. A plump, smiling doll, forever fidgeting, then forever crawling, then forever running around the house. Those little legs, I couldn’t believe how much running they could do. We had to set up wooden barriers, otherwise she would crawl up the stairs or crawl down to the basement in a second.
 
The living room, dining room, kitchen, sun room, bathroom, were all her preserve. She explored, probed, touched, pushed, even tasted everything. Given half a chance, she would have dust on her feet, flour on her hands and the hand towels from the privy on her neck. None could stop her. If I said, “Lina, you shouldn’t do this,” she just smiled and did it all the same.
 
One time I was changing her clothes, and went to look in a drawer for something, and Lina ran pell-mell through the living room, through a front door left carelessly ajar, out on the front yard. A lawyer friend, passing by on the street, frowned disapprovingly, seeing a naked child on the yard, and then laughed, seeing me pursuing the child frantically, realizing what might have happened.
 
Four years later, a shorter replay in Manila, when we rushed to the hospital just in time, for Monica to emerge, quickly, impatiently, into our arms. A different city and a different house, but I felt again I was playing with a doll. A smaller but naughtier girl, just as spirited, just as fun, running around, laughing, singing, dancing. Jane and I had started as a quiet couple, working long hours, coming home to a plain but placid dinner table. Now, suddenly, there were two pretty girls, creating drama and excitement out of nothing, making sure that the pedestrian concerns of their dad were blown away, replaced by the thrill of planning the next weekend with them.

I remember taking Lina to see a charming play, Peter Pan, and for the next three days hearing her hum the signature tune, “I won’t grow up, I won’t grow up.” I thought it was a marvelous idea. She could continue to add joy and uproar to my home. Alas, daughters do grow up and their fathers have to give up the dream of playing ever with dolls.
 
They grow up, go to college, take a job and even get married.
 
I am happy for them, but the void in my home is never going to be filled. I love the quiet of my home, the still night and gentle daybreak, the chance to read in peace, think in silence and write without interruption. But I still miss the tinkling of unprovoked girlish laughter and the unexpected momentary touch of a casual kiss. I just miss my daughters.
 
I make a cup of coffee in the morning just the way I like it, robust and fragrant. But as I sip it and watch the glistening east, I say to myself, “Why the devil don’t they phone me?” Then I reassure myself, “They can’t, because they are rushing to their office now.” If the call doesn’t come in the evening either, I tell myself, “They must be braving the evening traffic now, trying to get back home.” I know I expect too much. If they call me once a week, I will want them to call twice; if they call twice, I will want them to call every day. If they did that too, perhaps I will long to hear from them both morning and evening. No, there is no limit to my longing, my unceasing, unreasonable yearning for a lost connection.
 
I look at their pictures and wonder when did they grow so big, so important, so responsible for so many things. How did they ever learn to do all those things they do in their office and in their home? What, in Heaven’s name, do they cook for their husbands and their friends, and how did they learn to cook all that? Just the other day they were the little girls who ran from one room to another, talked about things in whispers and, when I asked, said, “Dad, these are girl things. You won’t understand.”

​Indeed, there are lots of things I don’t understand. There are huge, hunkering things in life that demand my attention, politics, trade, literature, music, technology and climate change. I love to read my favorite columnists, skim foreign newspapers in French and Spanish, call business colleagues and professional friends. Why, then, should my unyielding heart long to hear those girls’ voices every day and why do I pester them with pointless calls at odd hours?
 
I miss them. Unreasonably and unremittingly, I miss them. They did not let me play with dolls because I was a boy. When I grew up I loved playing with living dolls. I still long to play with dolls.

She was a striking person. The oversize, old-fashioned glasses gave her an academic look, but her brisk, almost brusque, manner might suggest a commercial representative, out for a deal. That impression was belied in turn by the unusual clothes she affected: the long loose outfit she claimed to have been inspired by a Lebanese designer.
 
Of middle height, she walked with an amazingly long stride. She spoke with her hands; those were perpetually whirling in mid-air. Yet, for all her ebullience, her voice was soft and soothing. Yes, that voice is my strongest recollection of her. That and her occasional whimsical, staccato messages from all corners of the globe.
 
An enterprising journalist, she had reported extensively from Mexico, and later from Honduras and Costa Rica. Lately she had been on the trail of drug routes and had filed disturbing reports that had drawn interest and admiration. She wanted to follow up and found a way to be assigned to Colombia. After the first few weeks in and around Bogotá, she ended up, like others before her, in Medellin. She used her excellent Castilian to gain
the credence of villagers in the countryside and the residents of the poorest barrios.
 
Then she disappeared.

​The disappearance of a young western reporter, even in what Time had once called the crime capital of the world, drew some attention. I was sure she would reappear in a week or two and send me a cryptic message as usual. No such message came. In fact, nothing happened for weeks beyond idle speculation. Then two youngsters who had strayed in the woods reported a stench from an abandoned hut. The police took some time to check, doubtless because the report was from slum kids. The body was far too decomposed for detailed analysis, but the investigators decided that she had been stabbed and left to die. It was declared a case of robbery and murder, despite the fact that her small apartment in the city had also been rifled and cleaned of all papers and notebooks. There the matter rested, though some of her colleagues tried for a more thorough probe. In vain. The file was closed after a year or two.
 
When I returned to the US six months later, I had an acute sense of unfinished business. I knew her parents were divorced, but I hoped one of them might have some information. I made a special trip to New York to see her father, who worked in the school system as a bus driver. I met him on a Saturday morning, reeking of beer, and he kept asking why I was so interested in his daughter’s fate. The explanation that I was a friend seemed insufficient to him. I had to leave after an hour without gathering much. Her mother lived in a Maryland suburb and it was a long but easy drive to her place. Though a Canadian citizen, her Latvian accent shone through, and she appreciated my admiration for her only child. She said that the local consulate, at her urging, had pressed the government for a thorough inquiry, but it hadn’t yielded more than some peripheral information. A few local miscreants had been rounded up and interrogated, but none had been indicted. The inquiry had simply stalled.
 
When I returned to Washington, I checked with friends and erstwhile colleagues, but soon realized that I was walking up a blind alley. Her life had ended, brutally and tragically, and nothing more was to be expected on the how or why of that end. One could only speculate that she had, perhaps boldly and rashly, as was her wont, entered on a search that some unknown others thought perilous. They had then decided that the search should end.
 
I came back home, disappointed, with a sense of defeat.

​I felt I was the only one who cared that a lively and fascinating young woman had disappeared from the world, without a word and or a trace. Not even a shred of a report, that could tell us anything about the byways of the drug trade or strategies of a cartel. She was simply gone. This was the end.
 
It wasn’t.
 
The following weekend I was looking through her messages and letters, when I suddenly remembered a small package she had sent me when she first arrived in Bogotá. She knew of my interest in Chilean poetry. The package contained a well-known book of poems. Leisurely I turned the pages. Maybe I hoped, desperately, that I would find a little note inside that I had overlooked. No, there was no note.
 
But, as I was about to close the book, I suddenly noticed, practically at the end, a few lines she had underlined that I hadn’t noticed earlier (I am using Donald Walsh’s translation):
 
All that we were bringing like dead medals
We threw to the bottom of the sea
All that we learned was of no use to us
We begin again, we end again
Death and life.
 
Neruda had two lines she hadn’t underlined that came as an uncanny message of solace:
 
We have met
We have lost nothing.