“You might be better off getting another lift,” said the driver, reading his mind. He slapped the wheel, as though apologising for his lack of speed.
“No, it’s fine. At least I’m guaranteed to make it to Ufa tonight.”
“With a bit of luck!”
Several icons had been strung across the windscreen right in front of their faces. They were there to provide protection, the automobile variety. Nikita looked at the faces of the saints and they seemed to be looking back at him, right into his very soul.
Religion had become one of the main issues that divided the Marchenko household. Their spiritual inclinations were as follows: Nikita… Did he believe in God? Maybe, but like most of his peers he didn’t really give the matter a great deal of thought. Nikita’s father, like any physicist (any Soviet physicist, at least), was a materialist and staunchly atheist. Not only that but he expounded his beliefs with the kind of zeal commonly exhibited by members of fanatical sects. Nikita’s mother, on the other hand, suddenly became conspicuously devout. She took to all the rites and rituals like a duck to water, and she was at home in the suffocating clouds of incense of the little local church.
Oh, the fights that took place in their house! The ‘crusades’ they mounted against one another! There was something almost sadomasochistic about his parents’ fights – they both seemed to thrive on the energy of discord. For his father it was a kind of ‘holy war’ in which he made it his mission to shatter his opponent’s ideals, to destroy her faith. Nikita wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke coming from his nostrils. As for his mother, she revelled in the role of martyr, walking through fire for her faith. At the end of the day, it was essentially a kind of spiritual exercise for both of them – gymnastics for the soul, an exchange of passion that made them feel more alive. They would go to extremes to prove a point, too. During Lent Nikita’s father, who suffered from stomach ulcers, would eat salty and spicy food just to spite his mother. His mother would listlessly chew on her porridge, sick of trying to talk him round.
Nikita had a clear memory of his mother coming home for lunch one dazzling January day, wearing a scarf on her head and carrying a large chemical retort. Incidentally, the apartment was full of these retorts even though his father was a physicist, not a chemist. They used to store pickled vegetables in them.
“Look!” his mother announced triumphantly. “Holy water! It’s Epiphany today, and the priest blessed an ice-hole. I’d been waiting there since seven o’clock this morning!”
She proceeded to explain reverentially what was so special about the water and how it should be sprinkled in all four corners of the apartment, to banish evil spirits.
At first his father put up with it, but the assertion that holy water would keep forever finally pushed him over the edge.
“It’s just river water!” he exploded. “Have you completely lost your mind? You’re an educated woman. With a PhD!”
Basically, Epiphany ended with one of their usual arguments. Nikita didn’t fully understand his father’s fury. Neither did his mother. Displaying admirable self-denial, she refrained from sprinkling the water anywhere in the apartment. Maybe she had decided to keep it for a rainy day. Either way, she felt as though she’d done her duty and the retort was duly stored away in the darkness at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, between the bottles of oil and vinegar, and everyone forgot all about it.
One fine day, a couple of years later, the apartment filled with Marchenko Senior’s joyous cries. God knows why he’d been rummaging in the depths of the kitchen cupboards… Maybe he was after the vodka? It didn’t matter anyway, because while he was groping around in there he’d discovered the retort, which he now dragged out and presented to them. There was something floating in it, a kind of gelatinous clot… basically, the holy water had gone mouldy. His moment of triumph had finally come! The inveterate atheist took great delight in celebrating such a resounding victory. The enemy was defeated, once and for all! Drunk on his discovery, the triumphant victor shouted at his wife for such a long time that she developed high blood pressure. And they all lived happily ever after… Yeah, right.
The truck came to a stop with a heavy groan, and Nikita woke up. He pressed the button to illuminate his watch. Shit, it was already late, especially considering that local time in Ufa was an hour ahead of Samara. “Vadim’s probably been asleep for ages,” he thought. “And I’ve still got to find the squat!” In the distance he could see a police checkpoint, flooded with orange lights. The gates to the city. He would have to walk a little further to get to the city itself.
“Thanks a lot!” Nikita finally came to his senses and started rummaging about in the darkness, getting his sleeping bag and his rucksack together. “I really appreciate it. Have a good trip!”
“You too. Good luck.”
“Hey!”
Nikita turned round. The driver leaned across the cabin to call out of the window, “You’ve dropped your cap!”
“Oh yeah, thanks!”
His cap lay on the ground next to the wheel. As he bent down to pick it up, Nikita suddenly felt the vibrations of the enormous, intimidating vehicle against his cheek, and it freaked him out. When he’d straightened up and moved away, the truck drove off. The noise of its engine grew fainter, and its red lights receded into the distance… And then they were gone. It was dark and quiet. Nikita was alone on the road and alone in the universe, or so it felt. He stood there for a minute, just listening, and he was overwhelmed with a sudden, primal fear. Brushing this feeling aside, Nikita hurried along the empty road towards the distant checkpoint. He looked rather peculiar, a solitary figure half-running through the darkness with his rucksack and his sleeping bag… If there was a God, he was probably watching him right now.
The policemen weren’t interested in Nikita’s sudden appearance, and he positioned himself at the roadside beyond the checkpoint, to be closer to people, to the lights. The floodlights at the checkpoint were so bright that the July night was virtually banished from the feeble roadside forest.
A pair of headlights approached. Nikita raised his arm apprehensively. He didn’t like hitching at night. All kinds of thoughts would enter his head, scenes from horror movies and the like. It really is quite scary when a car pulls up and you open the door… You never know what’s going to happen next.
The inside of the car was dark and smoky.
“City centre? Thirty roubles.”
Nikita sighed and took his rucksack off. It wasn’t worth spending the night on the road just because paying for a lift was technically against the rules of hitchhiking. It felt strange being so low down after the truck, and as he sat in the passenger seat watching the trees fly past he resolved not to speak to the driver. Well, it served him right! Once he’d made this decision he relaxed and started feeling better. At least he’d made it to Ufa. He was already in the Urals!
Actually, credit where credit’s due – the driver gave Nikita detailed instructions to help him find the squat where he was supposed to be spending the night, although it was the middle of the night already. It was 1.00 a.m. local time when he eventually made it to the Khrushchev-era apartment blocks and started searching for the right address. He didn’t like wandering about strange cities at night. In Penza, a few nights ago, he’d been approached by a group of local lads who looked like they were in the mood for a fight.
“Which block are you from?” they’d asked him.
Nikita would have been less surprised if they’d asked him which planet he was from.
“Oh, you’re not from round here, are you?”
Then they’d left him alone. It was a district of newly constructed apartment blocks and apparently these ‘blocks’ were their equivalent of courtyard gangs. So nothing had come of it that time, but the Ufa crowds might turn out to be less tolerant. Nikita noticed a group of three lads under a tree. They all seemed to have stopped talking and were looking at him. He increased his pace. The night wind was agitating the leav
es on the trees and blowing rubbish about. Large moths flew at the street lamps, colliding audibly with the glass.
When Nikita finally found the right address, his happiness and relief knew no bounds. The stairwell stank, there was dirt everywhere and the cats he’d disturbed narrowed their eyes at him, but still – he was so pleased to be there! He found the right door and hesitated for a second before ringing the bell… What was his name again? Squire? Something like that…
6
A hitchhikers’ squat at night is a peculiar place… The people who spend the night here are just passing through, and they never stay for long. Their thoughts are already far away – memories of a hard day on the road, the blazing sun, a succession of stuffy cabins, and tomorrow more of the same, back into battle. You might expect them to take refuge immediately in their sleeping bag cocoons, to make the most of every available hour of sleep. But no, they have to sit and chat! Squats are meeting places for like-minded souls, people who share the same outlook on life, which means they don’t mind talking half the night away. At times like this even bitter out-of-date beer can taste like nectar!
They don’t drink too much beer, though, maybe just a couple of large cans shared between them, to keep the conversation flowing. It’s understandable, really – what with the early start, the long road ahead and the blazing sunshine, a hangover and dehydration are the last things they need. In any case, it’s rude to fill someone else’s car with stale beer fumes. That’s the driver’s privilege.
So here we are… It’s the middle of the night, the whole city’s asleep, and the only sign of life is in Squire’s appalling kitchen. The bare light-bulb burns too brightly. As a rule, apartments like this don’t tend to be overly well-endowed with lampshades. No curtains either – they’ve been burnt, soiled and long since discarded. That’s the level of comfort on offer in this apartment, where the nights are often full of acrid smoke and guitar music.
All four of our main characters are sitting at the kitchen table, passing round a can of beer. Squire knows exactly how to tilt it to avoid pouring out any foam. A skill honed by years of practice! What are they talking about? If we disregard the conversations about music (I don’t want to bore you), essentially what it comes down to is ‘travellers’ tales’.
Every hitchhiker takes a dozen or so stories from each journey. They’re mostly other people’s stories – many drivers love to make confessions and often launch into them as soon as their passenger is on board. Or their own stories, happy or unhappy as the case may be. Each tale circulates until it becomes a kind of folklore, and every retelling is interrupted with impatient comments such as, “Well, I…”, “Once I…” These ‘travellers’ tales’ are a kind of competition, with everyone keen to have their say. “Well, you won’t believe what happened to me”, “I’ve got an even funnier story”, “I’ve done that loads of times”… In other words, “I’m better than you”.
It’s Squire’s turn to talk. Squire is an experienced hitchhiker. Squire flicks his hair over his shoulders, to stop it falling in his beer.
“So there I was, stuck in Chebarkulb, of all places. Only 300 km from home and I had an exam the next day. I couldn’t even remember what subject… So I was thinking, ‘Shit!’ It was taking forever. I kept getting all these battered old trucks, which would take me five kilometres, fifteen at most. I was getting sick of it. So in Chebarkulb I wrote UFA on a bit of card in massive letters and stood by the side of the road. I stood there for half an hour, an hour… The long-distance drivers just shrugged, even the Bashkirs. ‘Shit, come on!’ I was thinking. ‘Somebody, just stop!’ Suddenly this amazing jeep pulled up. I’d never seen anything like it. Get this, the speedometer was kind of… it was, like, projecting onto the windscreen!”
“Cool!”
“So this bloke got out. He looked at me really carefully then told me to get in. Turned out he was driving it from the Far East for some client, and he’d been followed the whole way. They’d already tried to seize it twice. Basically he’d only picked me up so I could help out by watching the mirror and… well, I don’t know. Anyway… So, we set off. It was a right-hand drive so I was sitting on the left, and, get this, there was a loaded Makarov between us! The guy wouldn’t shut up about this super-jeep. He kept going on about how cool it was. Then – this is the funniest bit – just as we were coming to the top of the steepest hill this marvel of modern technology broke down! The indicators and screens on the dashboard started making a load of noise. Some kind of belt was broken, apparently. And – get this – it was impossible to fix it! Some bolts had stuck dead, and the keys wouldn’t fit. Useless piece of Japanese… Ahem, anyway, Slava – that was his name – decided the client could go to hell. He straightened the keys out with a hammer and almost wrecked the engine. We kept trying to flag someone down, but not one bastard stopped to help. You’ll never guess what happened next… A couple of hours later Slava picked up his Makarov and went and stood in the middle of the road with it!”
Everyone laughed, washing it down with beer. It was a very entertaining story. Next up? Nastya. She had a very different tale to tell.
“Mine’s not quite so dramatic, I’m afraid. When I was travelling from Tyumen to E-burg yesterday, I got picked up by a foreign car too. The old guy driving it seemed really nice. So I got in, we set off, and then he started coming out with all the usual bollocks – aren’t you scared to be travelling alone, don’t you get men coming on to you all the time, aren’t you just asking for it, all that stuff. Basically, he was trying to convince me that I wanted to sleep with him, and I was trying to convince him that I didn’t.”
“So who won?”
“I did. So he made me get out. And he was going as far as Sverdlovsk too, the bastard.”
It was the kind of story that makes you think, rather than laugh. There was a lull in the conversation.
“Seriously, though, doesn’t it bother you, travelling on your own?” Squire asked after a pause.
“Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t… I always travel alone.” Nastya shrugged then added, carefully choosing her words, “Let’s just say I haven’t found the right travelling companion yet.” She paused. “And I don’t know if I ever will.”
Why did Vadim decide to step in at this point? Who knows. Maybe it was the beer talking. A few drinks always lifted your spirits, reduced your inhibitions and made the impossible seem possible. Or maybe Vadim had realised that she was talking about finding not just a travelling companion but someone more significant? I don’t know. Probably a bit of both.
“But how can you be so sure that you haven’t met the right person yet? Maybe I’m the man for the job!”
Everyone laughed. This was just a bit of fun, wasn’t it?
“The thing is, you see… I don’t need just any guy. I need someone special. Someone with, how can I put it… with wings! Yes, that’s it.”
While she was speaking Nastya’s face took on a dreamy look… This was no longer a bit of fun as far as Vadim was concerned! So she was interested in the creative type, was she? Did that mean she thought he was some kind of philistine?
“Wings, eh? I write poetry, you know, and loads of people say it’s really good. There’s a rock group back home in St Petersburg, Anichkin Bridge they’re called, and I wrote two of their songs. Shall I sing them for you?”
“No, don’t!” Nikita interrupted his friend. He knew that later, when Vadim began to sober up, he would be excruciatingly embarrassed by anything he might have recited or – even worse – sung. He wasn’t exactly a natural performer.
“Take your T-shirt off,” Nastya suddenly requested.
Vadim was taken aback, naturally, but under the influence of alcohol one tends to act first and think later. So the T-shirt was removed and thrown aside.
At least he used deodorant. You know what it’s like, after a whole day on the road, the tarmac radiating heat like a furnace…
“Flex your biceps, please.”
Vadim had no
thing to be ashamed of. He wasn’t built like a weight-lifter, of course, but wasn’t exactly a seven-stone weakling either. He was reasonably well developed for his age, for his generation.
The only problem was the deodorant. I’m sure you know how unattractive unshaven armpits can look with crusty residue hanging from them…
She ran her finger along his muscles. What the hell was going on?!
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I can’t find a single trace of any wings here. ‘Wings’ is what they call the muscles beneath the biceps on really well-developed men, just here. They stick out a little bit. If you want ‘wings’, sweetheart, you’re going to have to pump some serious iron!”
Nastya grinned. Was that a bit harsh? Well, he shouldn’t have started it!
Stripped to the waist, Vadim sat down, stunned. He’d been dismissed. At ease, soldier! Squire and Nikita were clearly feeling uncomfortable too. Squire muttered something along the lines of, “Well, we can’t all be bodybuilders…”
“What a bitch!” thought Vadim. “What was that all about? I was going to read her my poems, sing to her, even… And I almost did it too! Bloody hell…” It was the first time Vadim had been rejected so blatantly, and he was shocked. Shocked to the point of admiration, which is not uncommon. Grabbing the can of beer, he poured what was left into his and Nastya’s glasses.
“Well, cheers! You’ve certainly got a sense of humour…”
Seeing that the beer had run out, Squire sighed with relief. It was the middle of the night and they should have gone to bed hours ago. He couldn’t wait for the evening to be over, especially after that last little episode. They’d stayed up too late tonight.
“Right then, people, bedtime! What time are you planning on hitting the road tomorrow?”
“It takes about forty minutes to get to the highway from here, doesn’t it?” Nikita mused aloud. “In that case, around seven or eight. But you should probably ask Vadim, really…”
But Vadim had other things on his mind! He and Nastya were building bridges.
Off the Beaten Tracks Page 4