In her hometown of Borovlyanka, Siberia, Anna Kozlov stopped abruptly, thinking her eyes were playing tricks, when she saw the old man clambering out of a car.
The man she had fallen in love with and married sixty years earlier, Boris, was standing right in front of her. Three days after their wedding, she had said goodbye to him with a kiss and sent him back to his Red Army unit. That was the last time she had seen him.
By the time he returned, Anna had vanished, banished to internal exile in Siberia along with the rest of her family as people’s enemies as a result of Stalin’s purges. No forwarding address was left by them.
In a panic, Boris made every effort to locate his youthful spouse, but to no avail. She had vanished.
They were reunited now, over fifty years later, thanks to an incredible coincidence that brought them back to their hometown on the same day.
Anna remarked, “I felt like my eyes were playing tricks on me.” “I noticed a man who appeared familiar approaching me and staring at me with his eyes. My heart leaped for joy. I was certain it was him. I was shedding happy tears.
Eighty years later, Boris had come back to see his parents’ tomb. He saw Anna standing by her old house, where they had spent the few days following the wedding, as soon as he got out of the car.
“My darling, I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” I hurried up to her. My life, my spouse…
They talked about everything that had happened to them and the terrible events that had broken them apart all night long. They first got together when he was the Young Communists’ secretary and had to give a speech in the community.
She was standing there later with a group of friends, but he was staring at her exclusively. Boris was indifferent to the fact that her father had been exterminated by Stalin prior to the war for refusing to labor on a communal farm. She was too stunning to put into words. He recalled, “I loved her and would always defend her.”
Thus, the love affair took off. She was always there, waiting for him when he returned from the front. They tied the knot in 1946. Their wedding was hurried because they had little time for anything else and couldn’t afford anything extravagant during the difficult post-war years.
He had to go back to his unit three days later. “We said our goodbyes with a kiss, but I never thought we wouldn’t see each other again for over 50 years,” Anna remarked.
The state caught up with her after a short while. She was banished internally to Siberia with her family along with her father after being labeled an enemy of the people.
She claimed, “I couldn’t live without him, so I threatened to kill myself rather than go, but in the end I had to go.” I had never experienced such misery in my life.
When Boris returned, he was inconsolable. He remarked, “There was no sign of her this time; she was always waiting for me when I came home.” Nobody was aware of their location or Anna’s whereabouts. That’s how we got lost from one another.”
Anna’s mother made the decision that the girl should get married again in their new village. She informed her that Boris had found new love. She claimed that the lack of correspondence was due to his forgetting about me.
“I couldn’t believe it, and I was really missing him.” However, my mother had burned all of his previous letters, poems, and photos, including our wedding pictures, when I returned home one day from working at a timber plant.
She informed me that a different man would be meeting me and suggested that I go out with him in the hopes that, with any luck, he would propose to me. I hurried into the yard after breaking down in tears. For me, the world grew dark. I went into the hayloft with the intention of hanging myself because I wanted to die. I also got a clothes line.
“My mother came in, gave me a face slap, and told me to stop being so dumb.” She got me to go out with this guy named Nefed, and over time, both he and my mother convinced me that this was where my future was going to be.
In the end, Boris also caved and got remarried. When he was a young soldier, he had married a woman, but they had only ever spent three nights together. He wrote a book about her.
Their respective spouses passed away over time. After the Soviet Union fell apart, Anna was able to return home. Then the accidental reunion occurred. “I experienced the same thing last year,” stated Boris. “I was unable to look away from her. Indeed, I had loved other women during our time apart. But she was my life’s true love.
He proposed that they get remarried. Though Anna resisted, she claims he persuaded her to change. “I said, ‘What’s the point? We can just spend the rest of our lives together. However, he persisted. Although it was my happiest wedding, I never imagined that at my age I would be a bride.
“I promise that since we reunited, we haven’t had a single argument. We just don’t want to waste time arguing because we’ve been apart for so long and who knows how much time we have left.
