An expat Goes Home

At dawn one day in late November, I was awakened by a call. It was my niece, sobbing: “Uncle Vic… Papa died.”

My elder brother Vladimir had died in the subway on the way to work. A Moscow policeman found his cell phone on him and dialed the first number listed in the contacts. An hour later, an email from the Research Institute, where my brother worked his entire professional life, confirmed his death.

VISITING ONE’S HOME COUNTRY AFTER A LONG ABSENCE (I LEFT IN 1993) might seem like a thrill, but be careful what you wish for. Changes can leave you with a sickening nostalgia for lost memories, while making places and events from one’s past, once so dear, seem like nothing but hallucinations.

I found that not only had the street names changed, but once sullen, Soviet display windows now challenge shoppers with the glitter of Channel, Armani, Gucci, and the like. And the places that I cherished: the curved side alleys, the inner yards where I grew up playing with friends who are no longer there – those are the changes that hurt the most.

And while change may be a popular word in Moscow; alas, some things never change.

To go to Moscow, I had to get a visa. The email from my brother’s place of work produced no effect in the Russian Consulate. “Anyone could have sent this message,” said a consulate official who avoided looking me in the face, trying to hide the odor of alcohol on his morning breath: “A formal telegram is required.”

From time immemorial, only the Central Telegraph Office in Moscow had dispatched formal telegrams of this sort. And for that, a sender had to produce an official death certificate.