Lily is offering to have my baby or your baby. She is asking for 600,000 rubles ($21,000), which may seem like a lot, but it is actually less than 70,000 rubles a month.
She has a 9-year-old child in Kazan and was advertising herself as a surrogate mother.
Mr. X led to me Lily if not directly. His classified advert was simple in the extreme. Just two words. Anonymous middleman. No explanation of what middle he was in.
When reached, he was so anonymous that he wouldn’t say what he was a middleman for. Despite initial thoughts that he was a middleman of grandeur and that acquiring a small, non-nuclear submarine could be got through him, the little grey cells did not react quickly enough to his obvious question.
“What do you want?”
“Err, a passport?”
He didn’t seem to think that this was stooping too low for him, and he said the magic words: “This is not a conversation for the telephone.”
“Result,” I said.
“Chyevo,” he said.
“What’s your name?” then came out, but by the second syllable, he had disappeared into the shadows as any good, anonymous middleman should.
A few minutes later, a text message arrived with an e-mail address — an1967@mail.ru. The deep throat, the anonymous middleman, was not so anonymous after all, being 42-year-old Andrei or possibly Anatoly. At least, he hadn’t written smirnovandrei42@glupymail.ru, but the disappointment was too much.
Looking for a slightly cleverer, anonymous middleman did not turn up anyone else — Andrei/Anatoly at least gets marks for originality for his ad — but the two words showed up in lots of adverts with the word surrogacy.
Surrogacy as a commercial venture is legal in Russia, and there are plenty of women out there offering their wombs for sale. There are a few rules: The woman has to be between 20 and 35, and she has to have had one child already.
There are plenty of scare stories — often, oddly enough, from people who are selling the contracts that bind wombs’ contents to buyers — pointing out that a waterproof contract is the best defense against the many charlatan, would-be mothers out there. Apparently, once you have checked for a criminal record and various diseases, nine out of ten possible surrogate mothers won’t be buying Whiskas as they are dumped by would-be parents.
Lily initially didn’t want to say how much, but then she said she had an offer already and was just getting all the necessary documents ready.
Her price is around the standard in Russia. No middlemen allowed.
A Message from The Moscow Times:
Dear readers,
We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an "undesirable" organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a "foreign agent."
These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work "discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership." We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate, unbiased reporting on Russia.
We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help.
Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It's quick to set up, and every contribution makes a significant impact.
By supporting The Moscow Times, you're defending open, independent journalism in the face of repression. Thank you for standing with us.
Remind me later.