He scratched at his thinning hair, revealing more bare scalp. ‘Sure,’ he said.
We followed him into the house and sat down for a cup of tea. The table was smeared with brown muck that was obviously the leftovers from years of tea-drinking and greasy food. In the light that drifted through a window I caught glimpses of the man’s clothing, which consisted of layer upon layer of jackets and jumpers without elbows, and broken zips that had been replaced with safety pins and make-do buttons.
As we drank our tea, I noticed that whenever we weren’t looking at him his eyes darted up and down, studying us.
Eventually the banya was ready. Banya is a concept very similar to a sauna. Stones are heated over a wood stove in a small room. Hot water is then thrown onto the stones to create a steam bath. The temperature can rise to around 120 degrees Celsius but usually hovers at about seventy. By beating the skin with birch branches, and leaving and entering the banya several times, circulation is stimulated, skin pores are cleansed and blood pressure drops. For this reason banya is used as a form of relaxation. However, the primary purpose is for washing. In most Russian villages there is no running water so banya is the logical place to wash, especially in winter when the temperature can drop well below minus thirty.
This banya was probably the most rundown I had ever seen. The overcast sky was visible through gaps in the roof and walls, providing the only form of light. Steam rose with a hiss and beads of hot water began to form over my body. I felt around in the dark until I found a rusty steel tub of warm water and used it to douse my skin.
Then, while Chris washed, I stood naked in the yard, steam pouring from my body. My moment of reflection was broken by a petrol tanker that came to a screeching halt in front of the house. The driver’s face appeared at the window. ‘Hey mate, have you got a lighter or matches?’ he cried, cigarette dangling from his mouth.
‘Um, no … sorry,’ I replied.
As he drove off, I scampered back into the warmth. My knee had begun to throb again.
By the time we rolled out, it was dark and raining again. We waved goodbye to the man whose name we never learned. With wet hair cooling, we pulled into camp 200 metres from the village and struggled to get a fire going.
I rushed to write in my diary as if it was the only security left in the world. Chris lay sullen in his sleeping bag. The lack of distance covered had evidently left him frustrated. His eyes, as they so often did, peered into the night straight past me. I began to feel that his indifference masked anger, which left me feeling guilty. More than anything, he was probably thinking of Nat.
As the fire fizzled out in the rain, so too did our morale.
I managed to cover three kilometres the next day, with a clumsily wrapped bandage on my knee. Then I came to a halt. Chris screwed up his face. I had the feeling that he suspected a conspiracy or hoax. We were not achieving the daily average, but there was no choice. We had to stop at the next village.
At first sight, the village of Novi Vashki didn’t appear any better than Skokovo. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find a shop among the three or four wooden homes.
We sat out the back of the shop on a slab of concrete eating lunch. The temperature had risen slightly and the puddles and frozen dirt had turned to sticky mud. Dollops of cow dung were flying periodically out the window of a nearby house.
While I cut the loaf of bread, Chris wandered off to find water.
‘Jeez, we can’t drink that!’ I shrieked. He was dipping the billy into a muddy puddle.
‘It’s all right. During my bicycle journey around Australia, it was just a matter of choosing the puddle with the least cow shit … Oh that looks like some nice ones over there,’ he said, his eyes lighting up.
It was obvious that we could not continue with my injured knee. Over jam sandwiches we decided that we would hitchhike to the small city of Vologda, 200 kilometres to the south-east. There I would find a hospital and get some advice. But first we needed to solve the problem of where to leave the bikes. Within seconds of entering the shop we were surrounded by three or four babushkas, all vying for the honour of being our hosts.
‘Oh, good boys, good on you, well done!’ they uttered, shaking their heads and tut-tutting. I looked down to see faces squeezed into neatly tied scarves.
‘I’ll cook you pancakes!’
‘I’ll make you fish pies!’
‘Do you like cottage cheese?’
Finally, we chose a woman who muscled her way to the front midway into the scuffle. The others winked in approval. She had been the woman shovelling the cow dung out the window, and she wasted no time in ushering us back home. Under orders we hauled the bikes through the front door and plonked them in her tiny kitchen. The table had to be removed so that they would fit.
‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked, uncertainly.
She wielded a fist as her face screwed up like an old walnut. ‘Don’t worry about it! They are staying here!’ she thundered, breaking into a cackle. She didn’t tell us her name, suggesting that we should address her as Babushka or Baba, the Russian term for an elderly woman or grandmother.
We said goodbye and wandered back to the main road to begin the trek to Vologda. In vain we plodded on with our thumbs out, hoping to encourage some traffic to appear. Every half hour or so the faint whine of a vehicle could be heard in the distance. Eventually a car appeared, rising and dipping in the potholes, only to whoosh past and shrink into the horizon.
By the time the mist began to fall we sat dejectedly by the roadside. Chris inspected an abandoned shack nearby and proclaimed that if we broke through the window we could sleep on the wooden floor. Several hours later we had given up all hope when a bus came to a halt and the driver ushered us inside.
For the next three hours we held onto the seats as the bus hurtled through the darkness, swerving around unseen potholes and hitting bumps with frightening abruptness. Meanwhile, our fellow passengers nursed bottles of vodka. We were eventually dropped off in the centre of the city and found our way to an impoverished dorm beneath an Orthodox church. After haggling with the manager, she agreed to let us stay for two dollars.
In the morning I awoke to the daunting task of finding a doctor. It was a shock to be back in civilization. Grand, onion-shaped domes rose in a sparkle of gold above the inner city paved with cobblestones. Rows of small box-shaped kiosks lined the streets and babushkas sat on every corner selling sunflower seeds out of glass jars. At first light, Chris had gone off to find access to the Internet.
I boarded a bus that took me into suburbs of faceless apartment blocks and stumbled into what I hoped was the hospital. After failing to understand a single word spoken by the receptionist, I was dragged before a glaring nurse. As I told my story, she softened and her pursed lips broke into a smile of pity.
After a series of phone calls, I was led upstairs to a waiting area where a long queue of angry-looking patients stood outside a door. It was the X-ray room. The door opened and a short, plump woman poked her head out. ‘Come here now!’ she waved. The queue turned with a collective groan. Some began to shout but the nurse was adamant. ‘He is a special boy from Australia and needs attention for his knee. He is on a cycling expedition!’
Several hours later, after a confusing X-ray process and a visit to a specialist, I was given a tube of cream and advised to apply it three times a day.
We left Vologda feeling positive. Chris had received some e-mails from Natalie, which seemed to release some of his tension. I only hoped that the cream would work on my knee.
At eleven that evening we found ourselves outside Babushka’s house in Novi Vashki.
‘What do you reckon, should we knock?’ Chris said over the thud of a million raindrops.
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
After knocking failed to rouse Babushka, we lobbed a few rocks onto the roof. Soon we were greeted with a toothless smile and an enormous platter of pancakes, potatoes and cottage cheese.
At six the next m
orning, I woke up as Babushka screamed obscenities at her cow. It lived in a room attached to the house, and from my bed I could just see it being wrestled for the morning’s milk. Babushka laughed as she kicked the cow in the behind. ‘Good girl, good girl,’ she said, in a caressing voice. Then, suddenly, the animal flinched and the bucket tipped over. ‘Stop it! Be still you brat! Just wait, I will get you for this!’
My knee was the next task of the day. After flicking through a couple of thick herbal-remedy books, she took Chris out into the front yard where they dug some mud and clay. Soon I was presented with a plate of steaming mudpie. Babushka swung a nut on a string over the mud, watching it with a keen eye. She called it a gaika. If the nut swung towards me, it meant that the clay held positive healing powers. If it swung in the other direction, it meant that it was bad.
In her shaky grasp, the nut began to swing towards me.
‘See, you see, this clay is for you!’ she cried.
She lowered the plate to my knee. As she prepared to mould the mud onto my leg, I noticed something strange: the clay appeared to be moving.
‘Chris, this stuff is full of ants!’ I shouted.
Babushka looked closer and quickly reversed the swing of the gaika. There were no excuses next time round, however, as a lump of clay was padded to my knee and wrapped in tea towels.
Breakfast put a halt to further activity for the day. Three enormous bowls of porridge with four jugs of fresh milk were followed by copious amounts of pancakes, tea, bread and potatoes. As the patient, my role was to lie still and cope with a bloated belly. Meanwhile, Chris helped chop the wood and drag extra water from the well. The yard was a ghastly sight. The temperature had risen above freezing and turned everything into deep sticky mud. A few narrow planks laid down on blocks of wood formed a raised path above the slush.
Around midday a middle-aged man with a ruddy complexion came, pleading for a bottle of vodka. ‘I need a bottle … please, just one!’ he begged.
‘Oh, goodness me, you should be out cutting your wood and working your potatoes! Go home and do something!’ Babushka replied, refusing to be persuaded.
In the evening another man and his wife came to visit. The man was tall and gaunt. Soon after arriving, he began asking for vodka, and after some argument Babushka handed over two bottles. Within an hour sweat was dripping from his brow and two empty bottles sat by his feet. His wife explained that their family earnings totalled AU$17 a month. They had two young boys of ten and twelve years of age. When it was time for them to leave, he collapsed in the arms of his wife.
Night came and after another enormous meal, Babushka struggled up the ladder to rest with a sigh of relief on top of the brick furnace where she slept each night. I was woken hours later by a constant knocking at the front door. Babushka eventually stormed out, swearing at yet another man begging for alcohol.
Unfortunately, being awake made me acutely aware of a terrible rumbling in my bowels. It felt like any sudden movement would bring the contents gushing out. Earlier in the day, Chris and I thought it peculiar that Babushka had stated quite clearly that there was no toilet; we were instructed to find a place in the front yard. Taking my jacket I tiptoed through the kitchen, fumbling for the door handle in the dark. Eventually, I made it outside, leaving the door ajar to make things easier for my return.
I poked my toes into my shoes and shuffled out along a plank. It was raining and the muddy slush in the backyard was as black as the sky. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to find any toilet paper, but that was the least of my problems. As I stepped off the plank and shuffled on, one of my shoes remained stuck in the mud. It didn’t matter anymore. Resting against a heap of firewood, I squatted … and slipped.
I managed to steady my footing but it was too late. A pungent smell wafted from below. Some quick thinking was called for. I had to get out of my pants and get rid of my underwear – carefully. All was going smoothly until I hit my right knee. The huge clump of clay made it almost impossible to roll down my pants. Desperately, I fiddled with the knot in the tea towels.
Finally, I removed the tea towel and my pants, and found myself with the soiled culprit in my hand. Then came movement from inside the house.
Frantic, I lifted a few logs and stuffed the underwear into the mud. With quivering hands, I wrapped the clay back onto my leg and pulled on the trousers. Just as I found the lost shoe, the door opened and I was blinded by the light of Babushka’s torch.
‘Oh, Tim, it’s only you. What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I was just going to the toilet,’ I replied.
I never told Chris about the experience, and never let on that what I’d left in the woodpile was my last pair of underwear.
The following day it was time to test my knee. Out on the muddy street, it was clear that neither the clay nor the cream had helped. The same nagging pain flared, making a 300-metre ride an excruciatingly long distance. It was bitterly frustrating and disappointing that such a small injury could cause such havoc. If it were major, at least I would have known with certainty that I couldn’t go on! We had ridden just 400 kilometres in a 10 000 kilometre journey.
As a last resort we walked to the nearby town of Lippin Bor to look for another doctor, to no avail.
By the time we stumbled back to Novi Vashki another huge meal was waiting for us, and Babushka wasn’t taking no for an answer. After squeezing in half a dozen eggs, piles of drop scones and cottage cheese we lay on the couch.
‘Christ, at this rate we won’t be able to ride by the time we get out of here!’ I said, with a groan.
‘I know,’ Chris replied, with a giggle.
Moments later, Babushka wandered in to inspect my knee. ‘So, how is it feeling?’ she asked.
‘Um, well, it’s not any better,’ I said, in a near whisper.
‘Well then, you know what we have to do? If the clay hasn’t helped, then you will have to urinate on your knee!’ She said it with all the seriousness and iron-fisted determination that she brought to all her tasks. I had to do some fast talking.
After convincing her that the clay had worked a treat, we wheeled the bikes out onto the street. We hugged and thanked her profusely. I promised myself that I would never forget her zest for life and the way she battled her cow with such humour.
Back on the road there was a sudden rush of tension. Chris’s legs moved faster and faster as if he were in a race. Several kilometres down the road I decided to re-apply the cream. No sooner had I done so than the pain went – it literally vanished.
‘Chris, mate, I don’t want to jump the gun, but I think that cream works!’
‘What, really?’
‘Yeah, I think I have just been going about it the wrong way. This must be some kind of anti-inflammatory.’
———
Two days later we made camp on the sandy foreshore of a lake. For the first time we used the tent, and in the morning I awoke with the ugly task of preparing breakfast. As I rose my shoulder brushed against the tent wall, setting off a shower of ice particles. The rush of cold was instantaneous, as the warmth was wrenched from my thermal underwear.
At first I tried to get the stove going with bare hands, but my fingers quickly numbed and became stiff as wood. After putting on gloves, it was a relief to see the petrol stove burst into life. The only problem was that our water bottles were frozen solid.
Taking the axe and a shopping bag, I made for the edge of the lake. A golden pin-strip on the far side forewarned of the approach of the sun. It would be a slow process, though, and wouldn’t come into view until after 9.30 a.m. Even so, the glow was just enough to give a gleam to the polished veneer of ice. After a flurry of chopping, I made my way back to the tent with the bag full of jagged ice shards.
By the time we were getting stuck into the porridge, the sun was just nudging over the horizon into a clear sky. The foreshore looked like a desert plain, dotted with tufts of long spinifex grass. Sand dunes encrusted with sparkling ice crystals rose
along the shore. In his puffy down-jacket Chris looked set for the North Pole.
In the excitement, I took out the digital video camera Chris had picked up in Sydney before flying to London. We had a whimsical idea that if we filmed enough footage we might be able to make a documentary about the journey.
‘C’mon, Tim, we haven’t got time!’ Chris snapped.
‘Why? This is probably the most stunning morning we’ve had. It will only take five minutes!’ I replied, opening the lens cap.
I filmed Chris riding along the frozen sand, his tyres leaving not the slightest trace. After reclaiming the camera, he pushed off towards the road.
After the first few turns of the crank the cold penetrated to the bone. The razor-sharp air cut through the gloves until my fingers were numb. I dreaded the re-warming routine that made my hands feel like they had been hit with a hammer over a red-hot anvil.
Although the sky was cloudless, particles of ice floated down like tiny pieces of shredded cellophane. Now and then a truck whooshed by, sending a plume of white that collected in my mouth and eyes, forcing me to blink continuously.
Chris was a speck in the distance, no doubt pedalling at full speed to get to the Internet in Vologda. In an effort to catch up, I pushed my legs as hard as I could.
It was after Chris cycled straight through the first village that I began to worry. I was hungry and we were out of biscuits. By the time I caught up, I was in a state of hypoglycemia, near collapse.
‘Chris, I really need to get some biscuits,’ I said, eyeing a village 200 metres further on.
‘No way, mate, we’ve got to get to Vologda. I am not stopping before lunch,’ he said.
I looked at him, trying to hold in my frustration.
‘Well,’ he said, looking at the map, ‘what about this village here? It’s only another six kilometres.’
‘All right, fair enough,’ I said, satisfied that we had reached a compromise. We pressed on.
I was riding alongside Chris as we approached the turn-off for the village. I veered towards the houses, but Chris didn’t budge. I stopped on the far side of the road. ‘Chris! What are you doing? We agreed to stop for biscuits!’ I yelled.
Off The Rails Page 4