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Part three
"I suppose you are the Andersons?" one man asked, in heavily accented English, "You will be here for the 'tour' then?"
"Yes," Harm nodded, "That's right. I'm Garry and this is my wife, Christine."
"Yes, well I'll give you both some time to get to know the other couple who will be coming with us on our 'tour', then we'll be getting on our way."
The man then crossed the street, heading towards a gas station.
Bud jumped forward and introduced him and his wife to Harm and Mac.
"HI, I'm Mike and this is my wife, Gemma. We've noticed you guys around…I think we may be in the same hotel as you."
"The Sheraton?" Harm asked, then shook his head in astonishment as Bud replied in the affirmative, "Wow, what a small world."
Once their guide had got back from the gas station with his pack of cigarettes, they were instructed to get into the SUV. The driver started up the engine, but the guide spoke up before they went to pull out of the lot.
"Now, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to put these on you," he told them, holding up a set of blindfolds, "I'm sure you can appreciate the sensitive nature of this whole situation. In order to protect my boss and myself, it is necessary that you have no idea where we are going."
After hesitantly donning the blindfolds, the group felt the SUV pull out of the parking lot and take a left. Mac tried to follow their route in her mind. They were now heading west, into downtown Moscow. They seemed to take another left, drive straight for another five minutes, and then take two more lefts.
"They must be going back the way we came," Mac thought to herself.
Her thoughts were confirmed over the next twenty minutes when the SUV took more unusual twists and turns. Mac had well and truly lost her bearings when they seemed to speed up and settle at one speed. They must now be on an interstate route. Mac counted over the minutes in her head. Where were they going? Would they really be taken to the orphanage, or just out into the wilds somewhere and robbed…or worse?
She must have been giving out vibes, because she felt Harm reach out to her and take her hand. Unconsciously, she leaned closer to him, seeking some of his assurance.
These plans of Webb's! Were they totally mad to trust anything that they had been told?
Their fears were allayed, about and hour later, when the car came to a stop.
"Alright everybody," the guide instructed them, "I thank you very much for observing my requests. You may remove your blindfolds now."
Harm, Mac, Bud and Harriet thankfully pulled the dark material from over their eyes and allowed their sensitised eyes to adjust back to light again. They seemed to be in the courtyard of a set of buildings, all in the traditional style of Russian buildings, cold grey concrete, designed to keep out the harsh Russian winter, but also all flickers of sunlight. Mac couldn't decide exactly what this compound reminded her of. It seemed to resemble an old Soviet military compound, but there was another hint to it as well, an air of something that she couldn't decipher. It all seemed so military and precise, but yet had a type of softness to it as well, something personalised.
They were snapped out of their thoughts as a man approached them from an exit from the nearest building.
"You are the Anderson and Whitman families?" questioned, as he held his hand out and shook with each of them in turn.
At the couples affirmation, he continued, introducing himself, "I am Sergei, I am aother general practitioner here at our orphanage. Dr. Zebrovnik has been in touch with me over the past couple of days. He's been telling me a bit about you all."
"Please," Bud spoke up, "call us Gemma and Mike."
"And call us Garry and Chris," Harm added.
"Yes, I like very much the warm, personal ways of America," Sergei approved, "That is just what our children here need. Because of the large numbers of children who come here, we are never able to give them quite as much love as children require. It will be nice to see some of our children go away home with you, once all of the preliminary affairs are sorted out."
"Dr. Zebrovnik seemed to think that we would be able to get that done much sooner than if we had gone through official channels," Bud spoke up.
"Yes, that is right," Sergei told him, "Like everything in Russia, the out-dated relics of our history are extremely slow to get moving. However, we hope that this will be a new pathway for the children of Russia, one that will offer them a better future."
With that, Harm, Mac, Bud and Harriet were escorted into a nearby building.
Inside, they were introduced to Zania, one of the assistants in the kindergarten classes.
"We are so glad you have chosen to come to our orphanage. It is more like a small village here and I'm sure that you will find the perfect child to bring home with you and make a part of your family."
Mac and Harriet greeted her warmly, with the traditional double cheek kiss.
"Zania knows much more about the daily life of the children at our orphanage," Sergei told them, "She will be able to give you more of an idea about that than I. I, however, know the personal history of each of the children here. Our children range in age from birth to about fourteen years old. They have come from all areas across our large country, from all manner of backgrounds. Perhaps we could start by narrowing down the age range of the children who you are focussed on?"
Harm and Mac, Bud and Harriet looked at each other for a minute.
Zania spoke up, reassuring, "It is perfectly okay if you have not thought about that, yet. We simply just wanted to speed up the process for you. We have got plenty of time today to cover the whole age range of the children here."
"The majority of the couples who come here look mainly at the children within the first year of life," Sergei explained to them, "If that is what you were looking for, we could take you over to the east wing of the village, where our baby's unit is. The children there are from birth to infancy."
"Well," mused Harriet out-loud, "Michael and I were thinking that we would be as happy with an older child as with a younger child. I know people say that you bond more quickly with a child within the first months of life, but we feel that we could give any child a happy, loving home, whether they're under a year old or over."
Harm also spoke up, here, "Christine and I have been thinking, as well, that we would like a slightly older child. Our families have children who are already of school age and we feel our child may settle better when they have cousins who are of a similar age."
"Very good," Sergei approved, "those are very sensible considerations that you have made. Then, we shall start in the main training hall first. For the next hour or so, we shall have children who are between three and fourteen in there."
They walked down one hallway, down a flight of stairs and through another hallway, to an adjoining building.
"Here at our village, we have several government-supported programs, so we can try to give each of our children the best future possible. Our programs consist of early-age accelerated training in several different occupations. When our children first enter kindergarten at three years old, they go through a battery of tests and examinations to determine which areas they show an aptitude for and will progress in most. This includes a music program, various academic programs, a dance and gymnastics program, an arts program and an athletics program. Some of our orphans, those who do not manage to secure homes, enter high levels in their chosen field. Some of them chose to remain with us after they reach the age of independence, to share their knowledge and to help secure a future for the younger children here."
They were led up a flight of stairs and across a hall.
"The training hall is not much further," Zania told them, "You shall probably hear the children before you see them. They tend to get very worked up when they come for their training."
Harm, Mac, Bud and Harriet all smiled at that, thinking about the days when they had seen little AJ rip around the garden, at the family's home in Richmond. There was something innately beneficial about the outdoors when it came to the well being of children. All four thought about how sad it was that the children here were kept indoors, the majority of the time.
Sure enough, as they were ascending another flight of stairs, they heard distant chatter and the sound of activity. Sergei led them to an upstairs viewing gallery, were they stood and looked down on the busy training hall.
"All of our children here are between three and fourteen years old. Some of the children here have only just started in the program," he told them, pointing out a group of small children, who were being instructed by a set of teenagers, obviously older residents of the orphanage. They were being taught basic gymnastics skills, in a strict but patient manner.
"The groups on the far side of the hall consist of older children, more advanced in their training."
The couples looked over to see a larger range of children taking part in more advanced gymnastics, the equipment seemingly larger than that of the younger children.
"All of the equipment we use in our program is second-hand, donated by the country's national team. This ensures that we get equipment that is safe and suitable for the children. Some of the older children will go on to compete for a scholarship at national-level training. Maybe in the future, they will go on to great things and we may be able to get more support from the government. As hard as we work to ensure funding for the next year, we go through periods when it is a struggle even to feed our children. You may be reassured to hear that is where your money is going to."
Harm very much doubted that. In all probability, the children at this orphanage would never see a dollar of the money paid through illegal adoptions. That would all be squandered by the greedy conmen.
Mac watched the children who were practicing their routines on the sets of uneven and parallel bars, on the far side of the wall. All of them looked especially skilled for a child of their age. She realised that some of them were probably older than they looked, their growth stunted by a combination of lacking nutrition and long, gruelling days in the gymnasium. Bud and Harriet were looking at a large area of arena at the left of the hall, where children of differing ages formed orderly lines, waiting for their turn to practice their tumbling in a line across the floor arena. There were rhythmic thuds, as they landed each successive somersault, with varying twists put into the sequence.
"Over there is our youngest accelerated group," Sergei pointed out a small area of carpeting, where the children were seated on the floor, stretching out and warming up,
"Those children are all under four years old and have shown great promise in their gymnastic abilities. They take our accelerated classes and have improved greatly over the short course of their classes so far."
Just then, a young man standing by a set of parallel benches, topped by a thin layer of carpeting, spoke up, gaining the attention of the children sitting on the floor.
"That is Ivan," Zania spoke up, "he is our head coach. He oversees the accelerated classes personally."
Mac heard him say something to the children, although she could not make out what over the noise from the rest of the training hall. A little girl, looking no more than three or so, in response to Ivan, stood up from where she was sitting and hurried over to him. Her short, light blond hair was braided into two pigtails and she was dressed in a pink leotard underneath her dark pink warm-up tracksuit jacket. Taking off her jacket, she stretched her legs in preparation for her warm-up.
Her coach spoke to her for a minute then took her by the arm, leading her up and onto one of the benches. Holding her underneath the arms, he instructed her straddle over the benches and sink low, into side-splits between the two benches. The little girl sat like this for a minute, adjusting, then her coach guided her a bit further. This was repeated, the little girl going a little further down each time. She grimaced as she sank low, into perfect splits, but said nothing, squeezing her lips together to keep in any sound of pain. Mac managed to catch what was said next, because the group of tumblers had stopped to move over to other apparatus. The little girl was struggling to keep silent as Ivan forced her down.
"Further…you were going much lower than this yesterday," Ivan instructed her, obviously displeased.
The little girl took another breath and squeezed her eyes closed as she was pushed down further, going from perfect splits into over-splits.
"Relax," Ivan told her, "You will have less pain if your muscles are relaxed."
"Hurts," the tiny girl complained, as she her eyes started to tear.
"You will never get anywhere if you cannot take a little pain," Ivan told her, severely, cutting off her cries of pain.
Tears ran out of the little girl's eyes and down her cheeks as she continued to suffer from burning pains through her leg muscles, the hard benches biting into her ankles painfully, even through the thin carpeting over them. She scrambled and grasped at Ivan's arms and jacket, looking for better purchase and support.
After a few more minutes, Ivan lifted her up slowly, letting her muscles come out of the position they had been previously locked in. As he put her down, he noticed her wet face.
"What is this!" he cried out angrily, "Tears? I do not allow crying little babies in my gymnasium! Get out of my sight child, before I really start to lose my temper!"
The little girl ran off across the hall, going to hide between a set of blue crash mats, stacked in the storage area at the far side of the hall.
Bud and Harriet were watching this, feeling their hearts go out in sympathy to the little girl, even though they understood nothing about what was actually going on below them. They did not need to know the language to know that this little girl needed comfort and reassurance, something that they as parents felt the compulsion to give.
"I know that Ivan's training methods seem very harsh to you," Zania explained to them, a few minutes later, "but you have to understand what kind of a world most of these children will grow up to live in. Competition is something that is so common to life in Russia, in general and we want to prepare our children as much as possible. To sit down and cry, to admit defeat would get them nowhere, while fighting and striving to succeed and working harder for it would benefit them more. That is an approach that we must therefore engrain into all of them, even from just three years old."
Both couples just nodded, pretending that they understood. Inside, their mind was telling them that, as mean as the world was outside, children were children and were not able to cope with such regimentation and severity.
Back down on the training floor, where the accelerated group were still undergoing stretching, Ivan was still reprimanding the children. One little girl with long, light brown hair in braids had stood up from her place on the floor, making to follow the other little girl to her place between the crash mats.
"Sit down!" Ivan ordered her, making the little girl freeze, "You will pay no notice to Sashenka. She knows the rules of this gym. No crying, no whining, no complaining. You should all be thankful for the pain that you go through. This pain will get you everywhere in life outside the village. It will be what will set you above the rest of your competition! Always remember where you came from and be thankful that you've being given this chance, to be the best that you can be, not stuck back on the streets, living in misery."
The little girl quickly sat back down again, putting her thumb into her mouth and rocking back and forth, in an attempt at self-comfort. Thankfully, Ivan did not see this, or he would have had more to complain about. After a few minutes, while Ivan was distracted, working at stretching with the next child in line, the little girl quietly slipped away, carefully making her way around all of the groups of people and apparatus to where the pile of blue crash mats lay. She quickly disappeared between them, to check on and comfort her friend inside.
After this, Sergei gained the couple's attention again, as he began speaking again about the different programs that the orphanage offered to the children and about what each one entailed. He then went on to outlining some of the advantages of these programs, detailing the things that children from the orphanage had gone on to achieve. As he was telling them about one of their former orphans going on to compete in the previous Commonwealth Games, Harriet's attention drifted back to the children hiding between the crash mats in the gym below. Both little girls had emerged from the mats, holding hands in a mutual display of support. The little girl with short blond hair was wiping her face with her hand, while the other little girl with long brown hair was still sucking her thumb. They both made their way back to where the children in their training group were sitting. They sat down on the floor together, but dropped hands and ceased thumb-sucking, as Ivan turning back around, to survey the children
"Ah, Sashenka…" he exclaimed, focussing on his previous object of ridicule, "I see you have given up that foolish crying. Are you ready for some serious training now?"
The little girl nodded, earnestly and stood up, quickly and robotically making her way over to Ivan.
"Saskia," he summoned a teenage girl, standing nearby at a set of uneven bars apparatus, "You will come and continue training the kinder-elites. I need to do some one-to-one training."
At this point, Sergei had finished what he had been saying, so Bud also looked over to see what the harsh coach Ivan was subjecting the small child to, this time.
Ivan led his charge over to a beam, low by adult standards, but still very high in the mind of a three-year-old child.
"Up you go," he instructed the little girl, grabbing her under the arms and lifting her up onto the beam. The little girl complied with his request and lifted and tucked her legs as she was lifted, landing on top of the beam and bending at the knees to absorb any impact that might make her lose her balance.
"Today, Sashenka, we will work on your upper body strength. You shall be doing what you watched Jordan display, yesterday. You will start off sitting down on the beam, one leg on either side."
The little girl quickly complied with his orders.
"Good, now place your hands on the beam, straighten your arms and lean forward."
Again the little girl did as she was told.
"Now, push into your arms, lift yourself off the beam...Good, now try again, see if you can push yourself higher. Yes, that's good, can you lift your legs? Point them out in front of you, like you saw Jordan do, yesterday. "
Little Sashenka, with the assistance and physical support of her coach was practicing lifting the whole of her body into a balance above the beam, her legs parallel to it and her hands the only part of her body actually in contact with the apparatus. Because of her young age and limited physical strength, Ivan was supporting most of her weight at the waist, but increased physical strength would come with time and practice.
"Good, hold your body just like that, legs straight…toes pointed…good, now, lift from your hips, bring them up above your shoulders…"
With Ivan's assistance, the little child managed to slowly, shakily bring her hips above her shoulders, her legs still apart and straight out, at a right angle to the rest of her body.
"Alright, now, slowly bring your legs up and together," Ivan instructed, one arm around Sashenka's hips, holding the majority of her weight, the other guiding her legs up. Her balance swayed as weight transferred to different points on her body, but with Ivan's support, she managed to get into a straight and surprisingly elegant handstand for a child as young as she.
"Very good, Sashenka," Ivan praised her, "We shall make an elite gymnast of you yet. Now, I will hold you and when I say, slowly bend your arms, tuck in your head and you shall roll forward, back down to sitting again."
The little girl complied perfectly with his command and nodded eagerly when Ivan asked her if she thought she could do the skill again.
"Good, show me," Ivan encouraged her, "Let me see you do it nicer this time. No bent knees, keep those toes pointed. I want to see a nice little gymnast, not a clumsy little monkey."
From where they were standing, Bud and Harriet's eyes were riveted on the little girl below them. Zania noticed and commented, "Ah, our little Sasha has caught your eye?
She's a very promising gymnast, she and those of her age have been enrolled in the gymnastics program for less than six months, only. She was moved up to accelerated classes after showing a very obvious aptitude during preliminary testing."
"She's very talented," Bud commented, "Children her age are far beyond doing that on the ground, let alone on a beam."
"The thing about starting children off young in this sort of training is that they show no apprehension or fear at all. They are willing to do almost anything and also pick the skills up a lot easier. Sasha may show a little apprehension on occasion, but is not her true nature."
"Perhaps," Sergei spoke up, "if the two of you would like, we could return to my office, where I could dig out some of our background files on Sasha and you could learn more about her? I believe that Sasha was handed over to us shortly after her birth, she was the child of a single, teenage mother. Maybe while we're there, we could clear up some of the preliminary details about funding…"
Bud had wondered how long it would take the man to bring up the subject of money. He and Harriet went off with Sergei, while Harm and Mac stayed with Zania to continue their tour of the orphanage.
Zania led them down the stairs from the viewing gallery and across a courtyard to a set of classrooms. All the classrooms were empty, since the children were in the gymnasium, but Zania still explained to them about the teaching methods that were applied in the orphanage.
"These days," she told them, "Much is being documented about sensory and active play. Here, we find that we have little resources to accommodate such activities, although we do try to include painting into our curriculum. Books and story telling are similarly limited, since the donation of books to us is so restricted and the number of children in the orphanage so large. However, we find that we are able to make very good use of what we do have, by cycling the use of materials daily between classes. This tends to keep the children in each class sufficiently interested."
"So many people would take for granted the amount of resources that the average school receives, back in the States," Harm commented, in sympathy.
Zania nodded her head in agreement, noting, "That is why the payments made by the couples wanting to adopt children from our orphanage are so vital. They will form the future of the children who remain here."
Mac was starting to wonder just how she was meant to make a decision on any one child here at the orphanage. There were so many children, each individual and unique in their own way.
At that moment, a kindergarten class returned from the gymnasium, all walking in a long line behind their teacher. Children were walking in pairs, each holding hands tightly with their 'buddy', seemingly so nobody would get lost or left behind on the journey from the training hall to the classroom.
Harm and Mac noticed the little girls from their survey of the gymnasium. The little girl whom Bud and Harriet had noticed, with the short, blond pigtails, was walking at the back of the line, struggling to pull on her left tracksuit jacket-sleeve and keep up with the procession. She suddenly lost her slipper in her rushed state and stopped to run back and get it. In doing so, she had let go of her buddy's hand and fallen well behind the group. Luckily, her buddy, the little girl with long, light-brown braids had quickly noticed this and ran back to her, helping her put her slipper back on securely then taking her hand again as they both ran to catch up with their class, further up the hallway.
To Harm and Mac, it seemed perfect. Being as close to Bud and Harriet as they were, who better a child to choose than the best-friend of the little girl whom their friends had set their hearts on?
"What do you think, Chris?" Harm turned to Mac, "Is that her? Is that our little girl?"
Mac nodded back, exclaiming, "Yes, I definitely think so! Oh Garry! She's perfect!"
Zania noted their enthusiasm and commented, "Yes, Katya and Sasha are best friends. They have known each other from within a year of joining us at our little village.
Ekaterina, who we call Katya, was the child of a drug-addicted mother. She was put into our care because she was being neglected. Her mother spent her state child allowance on drugs for herself, instead of on food for the child. Katya joins Sasha in the accelerated gymnastics classes, although her forté is ballet. She and Sasha both attend three accelerated dance classes every week."
At this, Zania led Harm and Mac back to Sergei's office in the first building they had passed through. All of the hallways and stairwells were beginning to resemble a maze and neither Harm nor Mac thought that they would be able to find their way back through them without a guide. Once they arrived outside Sergei's office, Zania showed them to a couch in a waiting area, to wait for Sergei to conclude his meeting with Bud and Harriet.
Once they emerged from the office, Sergei ushered Harm and Mac inside, where he went over Ekaterina's personal history with them. It was as Zania had explained to them, Katya had been taken into custody following neglect by her Mother. The little girl was now only three and a half years old, still and was enrolled in kindergarten. Other than that, no family history was known about her, apart from her mother's surname, 'Ivanovich'
Despite her tough start in life, Katya was now a thriving three year old, progressing well in most aspects of her development, apart from the fact that she was on the lower side of the height-range for a child her age. Sergei explained that this was the case for many children living at the orphanage. The limited funds meant that they were constantly rationing and conserving the small amounts of meagre quality food that they did have, looking forward to the lean periods that would come, as inevitable as the next snowstorm.
It was arranged that Harm and Mac would return to the orphanage in three days time, with the preliminary payment of five hundred thousand dollars. Once all of the 'minor' details had been sorted out, a collection time would be arranged, where the final ten thousand dollars would be handed over, in exchange for the child.
"We look forward greatly to seeing you again in three days time," Sergei bid them farewell as he ushered them back outside to where they had left the SUV. All four had spinning minds as they were driven back to their hotel in Moscow.
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