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The windows from surrounding apartments cast dim yellow columns into the smoky air. I waited. Ten, 15 minutes passed. Finally, headlights appeared. A gray Volga stopped and it had three young Uzbeks inside. Normally I would never have boarded an occupied taxi, but there was no choice. I told the driver Hotel Uzbekistan. As I was getting in, another set of headlights rifled out of the dark to our rear, and a white Volga roared up and screeched to a halt beside us. Its driver shouted through the open passenger window, "U menya k vam delo!" I have a matter to settle with you! Who was he talking to? We all exchanged puzzled glances. I told the driver to go to the hotel and we took off. Soon, however, the headlights of the accoster were flashing on and off behind us; in the rearview mirror I saw the white Volga bouncing over the potholes, honking, swerving left, then right, in hot pursuit. My cabby slowed for an instant, checking his rearview mirror. His brake lights illuminated a driver with a black mustache. The youths in my cab began shouting "Davay! Bystreye! Davi na gaz!" Faster, faster, step on it! We were now flying down the empty eight-lane thoroughfares in a speed duel with the Volga, which lurched from lane to lane like a steel-carcassed predator. It swung around to our left and caught up with us. "Pull over! Pull over!" the mustachioed man shouted. He finally broke into Uzbek and said something that turned all the heads in my cab toward me. He cut us off and we careened up onto the curb. One of the youths nudged me: "So, you're screwing that guy's wife!" "It's him I want. Him!" They jeered and sneered at me, they told me I was done for. I collected myself and slowly stepped out of the car, trying not to look afraid. I had to get out of the car. My fellow passengers were not going to help me; as far as they were concerned I was a hated Russian in an illicit affair with an Uzbek's wife, and matters of this sort -- matters of manly honor -- were often settled by blood. In the Volga I discerned an Uzbek wearing a suit and tie. "You!" said the Uzbek in the Volga, "I must talk with you! I'll take you to your hotel." He swallowed hard. "Just talk with me, please ... Sir!" My cab drove off. We were left alone, he in his Volga, I on the street, with burning leaf smoke drifting between us, with the shells of abandoned buildings for an amphitheater. His Russian was clear, with no trace of an Uzbek accent; he was educated. "Just let me talk to you, please!" he opened the passenger-side door. We were on the edge of town. He could do away with me here and no one would know, yet I didn't want to run from him because that would be cowardly -- and where would I run? I decided, partly out of a lack of a clear alternative, partly out of an impulse to test fate, and also because I perceived him to be reasonable enough not to cut my throat right away, to get in his car. He floored the accelerator and we shot forward, flying through the smoke, swinging right and left down the wide streets. "I love Anastasia," he declared, hitting the steering wheel with the edge of his hand. "We were trying to work things out but then you appeared. You! A rich American! Anastasia told me everything. Me, I'm just an Uzbek trying to love my wife. That's all I want to do, to love my wife!" We crashed through a pothole and a hubcap sprang free. He took a sharp left. "Your wife? She didn't say she was married. She said you broke up." "We just haven't signed the papers, but she's been my wife for eight years. Ever heard of common-law marriage? Now you come along and want to steal her from me. She only wants to use you to get a visa to America, see? She just wants to use you for your passport!" "She broke up with you." "Nonsense! We live together in that building you took her to. She's lying to you. Are you so naive?" We shot down the boulevards, past darkened storefronts and walled-off Uzbek homes. We were doing 50 miles an hour, 60. We roared through police checkpoints but they didn't stop us. No one passed a checkpoint in Tashkent without being stopped -- except the KGB. "Well, your relationship with Anastasia, if you have one, is your business," I said, trying to figure out who was deceiving whom, and doing my best to determine what direction we were heading. He looked over at me. His eyes were bloodshot. He had a mad-dog snarl one minute, a pathetic puppy look the next. I could see he was speaking from passion, from a desperation rooted in something deeper than macho jealousy; I could sense the history of their messy lives in his hoarse voice. We skidded onto a plaza, into a long U-turn, and rifled back out onto the main avenue. All Anastasia's nervousness and evasions began adding up to something -- maybe she was cheating on him, maybe she was using me. Or maybe he was lying to keep me away from her. He steadied his voice. "I will do everything in my power to prevent your marriage. I'll stop at nothing." "Our marriage? We just met!" "She told me your plans!" He turned mad-dog and smashed the dashboard with his fist. "You're marrying her and taking her to the States! She told me! I'll do everything -- anything -- to stop you! You won't get away with this!" "If you are threatening me, why --" I cut short my proclamation, deciding that calling down upon him the wrath of the Peace Corps might sound less than sufficiently intimidating. But he said he wasn't threatening me -- not yet. He went on and on about his love for her, about my scheming with her to elope, about the lives I would be destroying if I chose to do so. We drove past a row of kiosks, around a traffic circle, through a police checkpoint, and halted in front of the Hotel Uzbekistan. I looked at him in the dashboard light. He was wearing a clip-on tie and a mouse-gray polyester suit that cramped his underarms; his ankles were spindly in boat-sized leatherette loafers; he reeked of Sasha, a Soviet cologne only fit for use as bug spray. He was, in short, doing his best to keep up appearances on what must have been meager resources. Something else struck me: Throughout his ravings he addressed me as vy -- the Russian equivalent of the courteous French vous. As angry as he was, he was not disrespectful. "Promise me you will not marry her! Promise me!" "Your relationship with Anastasia is your business. I'm tired and I'm going to bed." "Promise me you won't marry her! You'll not get away with it if you try!" "I won't promise you anything, but ... Proshchayte." Good-bye. I got out and walked into the hotel. Up in my room I thought about Anastasia. What did I want from her? I was attracted to her, I felt sympathy for her, but how did she see me? In a society as raped and ravaged as this one, the imperative of survival directed love, friendships, careers. As an ethnic Russian in a former Soviet republic, she had every reason to want out, and her desperate husband or lover could offer her nothing as expeditious as an American passport. After this confrontation, I envisioned myself as an interloper striding into her tattered relationship with him and wrecking it, with my very presence in her life representing the possibility of escape from Tashkent, my passport gleaming like a golden key to a world of opulence and hope. Whatever the reality, in the eyes of some I could be viewed as a rich Westerner who could be used and discarded once the border was crossed. This was conjecture, but plausible conjecture. I felt sorry for them both. In my heart I found I believed him and doubted her, and suddenly I wanted nothing to do with either of them. The next morning I flew to Kiev for a week. After I returned to Tashkent I never saw her or her lover again. Nor did I try to. SALON | Feb. 25, 1999 Jeffrey Tayler is a frequent contributor to Salon.   _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________