“It wasn’t an official marriage. We didn’t register. But we had...

“It wasn’t an official marriage. We didn’t register. But we had a plan. I was earning good money even though I was young. I was already a specialist at the age of nineteen. She was very beautiful. We’d been together for four years. She was a good person and very easy to talk to. She’d met my family and everyone loved her. At the time I was helping to construct a new subway line in Moscow. I came home from work one day and she was gone. There were no cell phones back then. Nobody knew where she was. She’d last been seen getting into a private taxi with her friend Natalya. A lot of people were disappearing during that time. The police stopped searching after a few months. She wasn’t seen again. There’s a line from a Russian poem. It says: ‘We love just once in a lifetime. And spend the rest of our lives looking for something similar.’ I’ve had other girlfriends after Oksana. But I don’t remember their birthday. Oksana’s birthday was July 9th. She was a Leo.”

(St. Petersburg, Russia)