Off The Rails

by Chris Hatherly

  ‘Yeah, well I’m not stopping. I’m going to Vologda and I don’t even want pryaniki!’

  Didn’t he realise how hungry I was? Or maybe he didn’t care.

  ‘Well, give me the group wallet and I will buy the pryaniki!’ I yelled. Chris did a semi-circle, lobbed me the wallet and rode off.

  There was no time to waste so I released the brakes and rolled into the village. My eyes darted in search of a shop. ‘Where can I buy biscuits? Where can I buy biscuits?’ I yelled at pedestrians, until a frightened looking woman pointed me in the right direction. To my horror there was a queue outside the kiosk window. Five minutes later I stood drooling over the pryaniki display.

  I purchased a bag, stumbled two metres onto the curb and devoured half a kilogram. Only then did my heartbeat slow and the world come into focus.

  With renewed energy, I returned to cycling. My anger and frustration balled up in my chest. I wanted to tell Chris exactly what I thought of his behaviour. As I became lost in my thoughts, I heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Tim, hey, Tim!’ Chris was sitting in a bus shelter. My fury faded as I was greeted by the warm soup he had prepared. As I slurped it down, I noticed that he was even more pissed off than me. ‘You know I’ve had to wait for half an hour. My toes are getting cold,’ he said, finally.

  ‘If you had come to the village that wouldn’t have happened,’ I replied.

  ‘Tim, it’s pretty obvious that you are eating more pryaniki than me. I think it’s time that you bought your own.’ He was referring to the fact that we were buying all food with our pooled funds.

  ‘Okay, fair enough. But do you understand how bloody hungry I was back there? I was desperate.’

  ‘Yeah, well, at this rate we are never going to get to Vologda, let alone China.’

  ‘Chris, mate, I am cycling as hard as I can. If we don’t make it, we don’t make it. But I am trying.’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get to Kirov before we stop for winter. We just have to!’

  ‘But Kirov is another nine hundred kilometres or so! What about the cold? And what if something happens? We’ve got to expect the unexpected.’

  ‘Yeah, but the unexpected almost never happens! If we set our goal at that, then that is what we will achieve.’

  ‘Sure, mate. All I’m saying is that we do what we can without bloody killing ourselves.’

  Later that evening we arrived at Vologda just after sunset. People were rushing about in their winter furs, treading carefully on the ice-encrusted streets. I hoped that a night in the warmth would do us the world of good.

  Upon arrival, I stepped off the bike and stumbled about unsteadily. My feet had frozen up to the ankles and felt like iceblocks hanging off the end of my shins. The pain was excruciating as I stamped life back into them. Eventually, we made our way back to the dorm in the basement of the old Orthodox church.

  At first light Chris was gone like a rocket. I knew I would find him at the telegraph station, on the Internet. We spent the afternoon doing the food-shopping for another two weeks of riding. The markets were cluttered with an influx of new fur hats and coats for winter. As we wandered along the boot aisle, I eyed a pair of valenkee.

  Valenkee are knee-length boots made from felt. They are traditional and still used all over Russia in winter. I thought, fleetingly, about buying a pair but decided not to when Chris objected to the idea.

  By the time we reached the outskirts of the city the following morning my toes were already numb. The ditches were no longer covered in a thin layer of ice, but were solid to the bottom. Even at midday the sun failed to rise above the tree line and lift the shadows. There were only five hours of daylight and we ‘had’ to keep up an average of seventy kilometres a day.

  It wasn’t long before we invented the ‘cold feet dance’. This involved getting off the bike at regular intervals and jogging on the spot until life and warmth flowed back down into our feet. The road cut straight into the forest; we were back to passing tiny wooden villages.

  In the evening we pulled into camp only to discover that the tent pegs couldn’t be hammered into the frozen earth; a few ended up bent at right-angles. At dinner we raced to finish our stodgy macaroni and sardines before the bottom layer froze to the base of the pot. It took hours for my toes to warm up in the sleeping bag and I felt as if I wore slippers of cold around my feet. At minus 20 degrees Celsius it was by far the coldest night of the journey.

  The following morning, riding became almost unbearable after the first two minutes. I wanted to cry from the pain as my feet froze and frost collected on my eyelashes. Eventually the lashes fused together and I struggled to pry them apart. My nose wasn’t coping much better. With every breath the nostril hairs turned stiff with ice. Before too long there were mini icicles growing around my mouth and under my nose. I wore full Gore-tex gloves, a balaclava and a down jacket. My footwear, however, was just a standard pair of leather hiking boots. Amazingly, Chris wore a cheap pair of Romanian-made runners and seemed to hardly feel the cold.

  For several days we powered on in freezing conditions. We started the day in darkness and ended similarly. Chris rode ahead for most of the time, increasingly dissatisfied with the distance we were covering, which amounted to between fifty and sixty kilometres a day. I felt miserable and exhausted, unable to really connect with the land or with Chris.

  At about three o’clock in the afternoon of our fifth day out of Vologda, I caught up with Chris and stopped for another dance on frozen toes. A dark wall of clouds was marching in from the east. The sunlight was fading quickly as Chris mounted his bike and rode out of sight. I too climbed back onto the bike, taking solace in the fact that it had been the last dance for the day.

  When I looked at the sky, the clouds had already hit and a white curtain was sweeping over the forest. Soon I found myself beneath snowflakes that fell as large as butterflies. In minutes the road was layered in a murky white, the forest barely distinguishable from the sky.

  I cycled on for what seemed an eternity, looking for signs of Chris’s camp or tyre tracks. The light disintegrated into a dark blurry grey, making it difficult to stay on the road. Beyond a five-metre radius there was just a sea of white. Had Chris gone further on?

  I cycled until even the grey faded and I knew it was well beyond sunset. ‘Chris, where the hell are you?’

  Finally, I gave up and rolled the bike off the road to set up the shelter.

  We had not anticipated splitting up; and as I went through my bags I grinned. I had all the cookable food, but Chris had the pots. I had a torch but he had the batteries. It was pure luck that I had an unopened bag of pryaniki.

  Comfortably, I wriggled into bed with the sweet taste in my mouth. When I stopped eating or moving, there was just the sound of snow peppering the shelter. No munching, brushing and breathing. And yet there was no one to talk to, either.

  Next morning, I was on the roadside at first light. The snow had transformed the landscape. Gone was the mud, the stark skeletons of trees and the mushy greys. Everything shone a glaring white. The trees looked as if they were in full bloom with puffy white flowers. The road looked like a frozen river winding through the trees.

  For three hours I waved down traffic. ‘Have you seen a foreigner on a strange bicycle like this?’ I asked, only to be met with negatives.

  Eventually, a black speck appeared in the distance. At first I grimaced, but as Chris came closer, I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Good morning mate!’

  ‘Morning,’ Chris replied. ‘I guess you’ll be wanting breakfast then! I don’t suppose there are many pryaniki left?’ He wiped the snow from his brow and giggled.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, I went to make camp and left the flag out on the roadside. I thought it strange that you didn’t arrive and when I went back to check, the flag was covered by snow. Sorry, I slept in a bit this morning.’

  We told our stories over a double serving of glorious porridge and even d
id some re-enactments for the video camera. Something about the break had cleared the air. What’s more, my toes were feeling better and the novelty of riding in the snow beckoned us back to the road.

  Less than three kilometres further on the forest widened and we entered the large village of Babushkina. I chuckled at the name – it was so similar to babushka. Was it a village of bubbly, rotund old women?

  The greying homes didn’t look quite so drab in the snow. Smoke puffed away in every chimney and vanished into the clear air above. A lack of pryaniki and fresh bread was a good enough excuse for stopping.

  While Chris wandered into the shop, I minded the bikes. A trickle of pedestrians shuffled through the snow in long fur coats. Two women took a long sideward glance before moving on. I watched curiously as they went ten metres and doubled back. Again they passed me without saying a word. By the time Chris came back they had walked by three or four times. As I bit into a fresh pryaniki they plucked up enough courage to approach.

  ‘Excuse me, boys, do you mind if I ask where you are from?’ the older of the two asked, nervously.

  ‘Of course we don’t mind! We’re from Australia and we’re going to China,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, you poor boys, aren’t you cold? How about some hot mushroom soup, how does that sound?’ she enquired.

  I looked at Chris, whose eyes suddenly lit up. A smile cut across his red chaffed skin.

  ———

  We followed our hosts into a sleepy little cottage. The warm air hit me like a wall making my face and eyes tingle. We were ushered to a table and, for the first time in a week, I removed my beanie and tried to bring some dexterity to my fingers. I felt like a lump of butter melting in the sun.

  It made me realise that for what seemed like an eternity, the cold had dominated our lives. There wasn’t a moment when it hadn’t been a source of anxiety or pain. The only time we had been warm was in the sleeping bags at night.

  The older woman introduced herself as Tatyana. ‘Here you are boys, eat up!’ she demanded, placing a bowl of mushroom soup before me.

  Without hesitation, I plunged in my spoon. The hot liquid ran down my throat to fill my stomach as if it were an internal hot-water bottle. As the heat radiated and thawed me, the feeling was nothing short of divine. But this rare opportunity to relax didn’t last long.

  Almost immediately, my toes began to throb and sting with the rush of blood pumping through my limbs. I stopped short of finishing the soup and ever so subtly slid my socks off under the table.

  A large purple blister, the size of a big bulbous marble, was hanging off the end of the big toe on my left foot. There was a similar blister on my right foot, only pale white in colour. They looked lifeless and artificial, like light bulbs screwed onto my feet; I could only feel my big toes from the first joint. Somehow, it didn’t register that they were part of me. Then I wanted to throw up.

  The world came zooming into focus with a dizzying punch. I tried to process the situation but my brain just seemed to short-circuit. For a while I stared into the swirls of chopped mushroom and drips of oil in the soup.

  Eventually, I nudged Chris and gestured towards my toes. ‘Chris, mate, I don’t know what to do. I think I might have …’ I whispered, too scared to say the word.

  He looked down, a little puzzled. There was a sense of blankness about him, like he had no way of grasping the gravity of the situation. Suddenly, I felt disconnected from him – I had frostbite and he didn’t. I was cut off in a world of trauma that he couldn’t possibly understand or do anything about. Would he ride on without me?

  Then my feelings turned to anger. How stupid and weak had I been? I had been blindly riding while my toes froze. I had trained in these conditions for a year and knew the risks involved. But, I had felt guilty for having cold feet and for complaining.

  Long after this incident had passed, Chris and I discovered that there was one reason for the frostbite that neither of us had foreseen. The laid-back position of riding a recumbent bike meant that gravity didn’t aid the process of blood circulation to the feet. Furthermore, the pressure of our feet on the pedals squeezed the blood out of the toes. This meant that our toes were much more susceptible to frostbite than if we had been walking in the same conditions. In my opinion, I still had the ability to judge how cold my feet were; my error was inexcusable.

  Tatyana eventually caught onto what was going on and lifted the tablecloth for a look. Her scream confirmed my worst fears. ‘Frostbite!’

  Within seconds Chris and I were bundled up in two heavy winter coats. Tatyana took one look at my hiking boots and tossed them aside contemptuously.

  ‘Well, of course you’ve got frostbite! These are terrible-quality shoes, not made for the cold! I take pity on you. Here, take these valenkee.’

  I slipped my feet into a pair of the knee-high felt boots, completely defenceless against her finger-pointing.

  She grabbed me by the arm and marched down the street with Chris in tow. It was snowing heavily. Through clouded vision I caught glimpses of wooden homes draped in snow, that gradually crept over the roof edges, obscuring all but the walls. It looked like the closing eyelids of a creature going into hibernation.

  Tatyana had given Chris a woman’s coat decorated with colourful floral embroidery. With large snow flakes catching in his eyelashes he looked like a Russian drag queen. Somehow it fitted into a world that was fast becoming surreal.

  Just before we stormed into a derelict looking building – the medical clinic – I turned to Chris.

  ‘Mate, no matter what happens, if I have to be operated on, I want it to happen in Finland – just not here.’

  Inside, Tatyana dragged us past a rather subdued queue, wielding me as if I was a formidable weapon. ‘Australians! I have an Australian! I am coming through! Make way!’ she screeched. We stumbled into an office to be met by an astonished doctor and patient. The uncomfortable silence was shortlived. Tatyana bleated out the gory details. ‘This young man is from Australia and he is riding to China, but he has frostbite! I had to bring him here!’

  The doctor, who was middle-aged and of Dagestani descent, looked contemplatively at me. I took note of his olive skin and deep-set eyes that were fringed by dark bushy eyebrows. ‘Just take your socks off. Just take them off and show me!’ he said.

  Pinching the end of the first sock, I pulled it off slowly and then removed the other one, oblivious to the fact that I had daintily dropped them onto the doctor’s telephone. After two weeks’ wear, the smell was overpowering.

  After screwing up his nose in distaste, the doctor seemed to collect himself and focused on my toes. ‘Well, Tim, what are your plans? Because I am going to have to operate immediately, and you will have to stay here for ten days. You could get gangrene if you leave it much longer.’

  Next, I was pushed through another door and onto a cracking vinyl bench. A nurse washed my toes with disinfectant, and from the corner of my eye I noticed a glint of metal – the doctor was sharpening a pair of deadly looking scissors.

  ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ the doctor replied, chuckling. Frantic, I pulled out my pocket dictionary and began looking for words like ‘painkillers’, ‘antibiotics’, and ‘numb’.

  ‘What, are you going to read while I do this operation?’ the doctor asked, with another chuckle.

  Finally, I found the word for numb. But even as I said it, it was too late. With a snip two pieces of flesh were carved away, wrapped up in tissue paper and thrown into the bin. There was no pain.

  ‘Look, look!’ said the doctor, with a grin.

  I peered at what I thought were the bloody stumps of my toes. ‘Bloody hell, this crazy bastard has just cut my toes off!’

  To add to the confusion, he told me he didn’t expect payment, but asked if I could bring a baby kangaroo as a gift next time I visit Russia!

  Chris was next in line, but fortunately he wasn’t diagnosed with fro
stbite. A couple of days later, however, late symptoms of frostbite emerged and he too had some flesh removed.

  Back at Tatyana’s, I was put to bed and flattened with heavy blankets. Then she put on an old LP record. The tunes were slightly warped and crackly, but it didn’t stop her from swinging a bemused Chris around the room in a dance.

  All I could do was take pain-killers and wonder whether it was all a bizarre dream. Unbeknown to me, Tatyana and her daughter Lena had agreed to accommodate us for the ten days. And so our residence in Babushkina began.

  Despite the distressing events of the day I was feeling grateful, and at ease by evening. As it turned out, the house didn’t belong to Tatyana, but a seventy-five-year old babushka named Galya. Tatyana and Lena were visiting from their home in far-north Russia.

  When Galya walked in the front door, she looked like a big round bundle of fur. I had expected a look of confusion when she saw a stranger in her bed, but nothing could be further from the truth. There was no hesitation, or even a look of suspicion; her entire being positively oozed with kindness.

  It was made clear to us that we had been embraced with the care and support of a family. For the time being, Tatyana would be our mother, Baba Galya our grandma, and Lena our sister.

  Tatyana was already busy organising our schedule for the next two days, ringing up countless friends and booking dinners and lunches. She was a short plump middle-aged woman with perky cheeks, wide eyes and a U shaped smile. Her voice was rough and raspy and always on the verge of laughter. In no time at all we had gone from being independent boys on bikes to having our lives run for us.

  Our first Baba Galya meal was a sign of things to come. The table was piled high with pancakes, fish pies, fried potato and preserved cucumber. This was followed by cottage cheese mixed with homemade blueberry jam. Almost everything was drowned in oil or salt, or both.

  ‘Eat, eat, boys! You are eating terribly, you have to eat!’ she shrieked, giggling contagiously. Her large fleshy face was framed by a red scarf, and her mouth was unusually small, like a card slot. Her forearms, in line with the rest of her body, were like large sticks of salami, not tapering from elbow to wrist. Her fingers were small and babyish, but obviously quite strong. Like Tatyana she was a little bit cheeky.