by Dina Bennett
“Pinocchio!” she replied and clapped her hands together with pleasure.
Even as a child I couldn’t understand what Geppetto was saying, so it was no loss to me that he now was speaking Russian. My hostess grabbed her own plastic mug and plopped down next to me, the couch sagging noticeably as she settled her plump self on the cushions. Immediately she was up again, bustling around her desk, tugging open drawers. I thought maybe she’d make popcorn, but no. It was even better. Extracting a large, flat box from the bottom drawer, she lifted off the lid, rustled aside gold tissue paper, peered inside with obvious relish, then offered me first pick from the precious box of chocolates. She took one herself and we both bit in at the same time. Then we both laughed with delight when, like old friends, we simultaneously held up our half-eaten chocolate to show each other what was inside. We passed the time eating candy, sipping tea, and laughing as Donald and Daffy, then Bugs, followed Pinocchio on the screen. For once, I hoped the repair to Roxanne’s suspension problems would take longer. This was one half-hour that had gone by too fast.
Brought back to the present when Bernard hands me our room key, I look around for something to do while he heads back out to check something on Roxanne. Instead of going to our room, I walk to the bar, where a sharply dressed young bartender is busy pouring draught beers and mixing cocktails. When we entered Russia, each hotel’s bar became the Rally’s home, the place where everyone would go at some point, to find a willing ear to bend or a friend to regale with the events of their day. I recognize Nick’s tall body draped at the counter. “Hey good lookin’,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. Bartender, a gin and tonic for this lovely lady.”
I don’t really want a gin and tonic, but I want to be a person who has a gin and tonic ordered for her.
“Where’s your handsome French husband?” he asks me.
“With the car, of course.”
“C’est bien. Then you can keep me company.”
At this point, Hans, who’s been driving the most unsightly, bedraggled Bentley on the Rally, lopes our way. His wispy blond hair glows like a halo, backlit by a ray of late afternoon light streaming through the bar window. The two of them put their heads together for a moment, and then Nick turns to me.
“We’ve decided to tell you something,” Nick says. I know what’s coming. It’s about our car, and it’s not going to be good.
“We’ve been watching you,” says Bert. Oh god, it’s not about the car. It’s about me, and they’ve seen I’ve been faking it, that I don’t know how to be a proper navigator.
“We have been discussing this for some time, and now, we must tell you, we agree you have the best ass on the Rally.” They both blush slightly, broadly pleased with themselves.
This is the sort of sexist compliment that normally I’d never tolerate. I’m a woman who says no to the supermarket clerk when he offers to carry my grocery bags out, because it implies I’m too weak to do it myself. Forget about letting any guy call me “babe” or “sweetheart” or “hon” unless he’s my husband. Here, in the insular world of the Rally, this statement has a different meaning entirely. It’s a badge of merit, a declaration that we’ve been through so much together, barriers are down. The feminist in me does a discreet withdrawal. I gulp down my drink and order another. I explain to them the merits of Disney cartoons in Russian, they tell me about strange people they’ve met on other rallies, we do a communal gripe about how difficult this Rally is. By the time Bernard returns, I’m feeling that my mission to improve my social abilities is definitely showing promise. So much so that when James, who’s ensconced with his mates at the back of the lounge, sees Bernard and hails him over, I toss away resentments and join them. I even manage to say a few words before my uncertainty about where I stand with this group turns me into someone with a need to inspect in detail the shape of the ice cube in my drink.
A gin and tonic and a half later, we cluster at the door to an immense private dining hall, where the guard glares at my chest under the guise of scrutinizing my P2P badge. It’s been this way ever since we entered Russia. Each hall is the same, floors padded in gray carpet, tables covered with stained white tablecloths, walls and windows obscured by heavy wool drapes that puddle on the floor. My hopes of eating local meals each day are now but a dim fantastical memory. The last, in fact the only, truly Russian meal we’ve had was lunch that first day in Siberia, at the tumbledown roadside cafe. Since then we haven’t even stopped for lunch, making do with chips and soda in the car, our gorp having run out and bottled water no longer quenching our thirst quite as much as a Russian Coke.
Our dinner that night is a vast buffet. On order of the organizers, every hotel has one. This is great for those crews who arrive well after dark. If you’re exhausted and famished, there’s nothing like being able to dig right into your food. There are always at least eight hot dishes, offering Continental preparations of pork, chicken, beef, and fish. One night the fish is sautéed with onions and the pork is sliced. The next night green peppers adorn the nameless white filets and the pork is cubed. The fish always sports a white sauce, the pork a thick brown one. Then there’s a table with platters of roasted, boiled, mashed, or sautéed vegetables. The potatoes, carrots, and beets that have nourished centuries of hungry Russians have pride of place. I’m happiest at the table that holds bowls of pickled, briny, or sour-cream slathered salads, which at least seem of Slavic origin. There’s always a dessert table heaped with tiered glass trays of chocolate cakes, marzipan-iced petit fours, whipped cream confections, jelly rolls with mysterious neon whorls, packaged cookies, and more. So we are not going hungry. Yet each hotel buffet is so similar to the next that the food alone, normally a beacon of my locale, gives no clue as to where we are. We could as easily be eating a mayonnaise-y pea and carrot macédoine in Paris as in Nizhny Novgorod or Des Moines. Every once in a while, I wish we were.
Police Procedural
TYUMEN
It’s our anniversary. Our twenty-fourth, to be exact. As a special early morning treat, the roadblock police are waiting for us. These are aimless officials in smart olive uniforms with plenty of gold braid, whose typical day is spent stopping transport trucks so they can finagle bribes from hapless drivers. They’ve been on the road ever since we entered Russia. Indeed, the route book has advised us of every police barrier we will pass, so we can be sure to slow to the legal speed limit well before reaching one. At each checkpoint we see a raised barrier, next to which are policemen in clusters of twos and threes, generally just smoking and chatting. When they see a vehicle they want to inspect, one of them parts from the group and raises his baton, then swipes it down and to the side indicating “Pull over!” Police cars and motorbikes are parked at the ready next to each official police barrier, evidence that if you dared to ignore their dictate, they’d catch up to you in a flash.
In China, the police were placed along our path by the state. They never stopped us, never tried to speak to us. Their sole aim was to keep us moving. Here, it’s the opposite. From the moment I see my first Russian police checkpoint, they make me nervous. They’re an unknown quantity, being the law, but somehow also outside the law. We are too obviously foreign, too clearly a source of merriment in an otherwise long, dull, monetarily unfulfilling day. Giving ourselves up to the pecuniary tortures of a bored cop makes me uneasy. They have all day to play with us and no place else to go, whereas we have no time to waste and miles to cover before we sleep.
I know it is only a matter of time before they stop us. Whenever we approach a police barrier, which is several times a day, Bernard slows Roxanne to a crawl, challenging them to take him up on his offer to stop. I study the route book to avoid making eye contact. By this I hope to indicate “we’re so innocent I don’t even notice you, so please just ignore us.” Over the past many days, we’ve passed more than twenty police barriers; each time they’ve waved us through. Not this one. Today, with the Rally
coming through, the officer in charge has rewarding game to go after. He stops us by placing himself squarely in Roxanne’s path, arm raised. With a swift downward swing of his baton, he motions us to get out. He and his taller underling, who’s dressed in a similar long wool coat, but without even a stripe on his shoulder, escort us into their shack. There they commence to shout at us in Russian. I can see through the shack’s one window that the sun is still shining brightly outside, but inside, standing in front of the policeman’s desk, it feels like I’ve fallen into the clutches of the dark side.
“I think they expect money,” I stage whisper to Bernard. “I have a few hundred dollars with me.” I show him my fist, curled tight to hide the dollar bills inside.
‘No!” he says, slapping at my hand. “Put that away.”
“Yes. They seem to like you better. You hand it to them.”
“No! Absolutely not. They’ll be insulted and then we’ll never get out of here.” Who knows what a bored, offended Russian policeman might do.
“Documentzhi!” snaps the shorter of the two officers, his voice making up for what he lacks in height. He’s a bulldog, but right now he’s slouched back in his swivel chair, legs splayed open in the classic pose that says, “I have all day and I know you don’t.” Bernard hands him his driver’s license. The officer tosses it on the table dismissively. “Nyet!! Passaport!”
One thing I’ve sworn never to do is hand over my passport, but I cave in the face of the officer’s fierce gaze. His eyes are so pale as to be almost colorless, which makes them even more creepy. Plus, I can’t run. His colleague blocks the door. We hand over the passports, and I feel strange shivers run down my legs. It’s not that I fear for my life, it’s more that I know this is not a situation in which any of my usual devices, like shouting or crying, are going to help.
Riffling through all the pages, the officer then slams the passports onto his desk alongside the driver’s license. Perhaps he’s toying with us. If so, it’s effective, because I’m feeling exactly the loss of control that he wants. He harangues us in Russian. Bernard has no idea what he’s saying, but speaks to him in English, using his happy tones, to show he’s compliant and willing. This goes on for an hour, during which the door guard is ordered to abandon his post to prepare us chai. This is not a cordial gesture. It’s meant to show us what a personage the officer really is, that he can order another to do the work of a minion.
Finally, the policeman motions us to follow him back outside. I walk several steps behind, head down, intent on displaying that I’m truly an abject and subservient female. I’m so relieved he’s escorting us back to Roxanne I’d walk anywhere. Unfortunately, he stops right outside the shack, plants his bulbous-toed black boots on the sidewalk and points down the road from where we came. He’s sending us back on a trumped up mission, to fill paperwork that his sign language explains is required in this particular city. He’ll be pleased to hold onto our documentzhi till we return. “No, Bernard,” I hiss. “We’re not going. If we do, we’re sunk. We’ll never get our passports back.”
Maybe it’s the caffeine in the chai, but finally my brain reminds me of something useful: the organizers have hired Russian fixers to help with just this sort of situation. One of them, Natalya, has given everyone her cell phone number. Until now, we’ve been proudly taking care of ourselves, so I’ve never tried to use it. I’m not even sure my phone will work. Still, if ever there were a time to get outside assistance, this is it. I dial, and when Natalya answers, I stifle a whoop, executing a modest fist pump of joy instead. When I hand my cell phone to the officer, he’s so reluctant to take it, it’s as if I’m handing a slab of raw, rotten meat. Natalya’s voice blasts Russian recriminations in his ear. He crumples slowly, deflating like a gray serge party balloon. Call over, he flicks the phone closed. I can see the light has gone out of his rheumy eyes, but he puts a good front on, straightens his back, and claps Bernard on the shoulders. It’s a new day, one in which he hands back our passports and driver’s license as if it were his idea. And when Bernard says “Thank you,” he replies with “You are welcome. Where do you go from here?” He’s understood English all along.
Bernard now relaxes into boisterous commiseration of a manly sort. With a shrug of his shoulders and a well-timed “Heh, heh, heh,” he manages to express sympathy with the soldier’s tough job and characteristic interest in his rifle. I want a souvenir, and what I long for is the soldier’s high-peaked cap with the gold braid and black patent-leather brim. Perhaps it’s fortunate that I can’t figure out how to convey that with my shoulders and that I suppress my own impulse to chuckle.
Our morning police break isn’t the only thing that slows us. Roxanne’s failing shock absorbers merit care and vigilance of the sort usually reserved for savoring a fine meal. It’s late afternoon before we reach the city of Tyumen. Like Omsk before and as I’ll soon see, Yekaterinburg and Perm after, it exudes a grimness that even its broad, straight avenues can’t hide. The heavy Stalinist architecture is ominous, big concrete, blocky apartment buildings pressing down on the saplings lining the road. It’s sunny, but there’s no lightness in the air. Electric wires span the streets like so much spaghetti, tangled evidence that the city’s infrastructure hasn’t kept up with recent growth. Store windows are drab, no thought given to displaying merchandise in a colorful or attractive way. There’s something disturbing about how people walk through the streets. Sidewalks are packed, but there’s no air of relaxation. Instead, pedestrians seem bunched tight into themselves, scuttling toward their destination, tight posture implying “better move along before someone sees me.” Even I have a hard time mustering enthusiasm for a stroll down these streets.
Early in the Rally I had visions of celebrating our anniversary with friends. I imagined popping champagne corks, hosting a wonderful dinner surrounded by people who knew exactly what we’d been going through and had shared it all with us. As with most things on the P2P, my fantasy does not match reality. On arriving in Tyumen, we register our presence as required at the finish time control. It’s set up in the lobby of one of the two hotels reserved for the Rally. Standing in an atrium of red velvet, black marble, and gold chandeliers, I chat with the Control staff and express the hope that we can just stay put in this hotel, that we won’t have to get back in our car and drive to the other one. “Sorry, dear,” one says. “You are booked over there. Don’t worry though, love. It’s not more than half an hour to get there. Really, it’s not far.” This is easy for her to say, since her room is right upstairs. The notion of getting back in Roxanne for more creeping along in rush hour traffic is more than I wish to bear on this particular day. “Let’s just stay here,” I entreat Bernard. “It’s lovely, velvety, shiny. Maybe they have an extra room.”
Bernard goes to the reception desk. My hopes are not high. With 300 people on the Rally, any hotel that takes even a portion of the participants tends to be full just with their allocation. At first it seems we’ll have to get back in Roxanne after all. No rooms are available. Perhaps sensing my disappointment, or maybe discerning an opportunity to make more money, the reception clerk asks whether we might like to use their presidential suite. Bernard turns to me. “We need a presidential suite, don’t we?” Not even waiting for my response, Bernard then books us a table for two in the hotel’s private dining room. Growing up in France, Bernard never has become accustomed to the celebrations surrounding American holidays like Thanksgiving. But the man does know how to treat me right on our anniversary. Visions of ordering from a menu and having a plate with food brought to me fills me with pleasure. First I get to spend a lazy couple of hours enjoying our deluxe accommodations. We lounge together in the tub under white pillows of bubbles, use fluffy towels, then swan about in our plush terry cloth bathrobes. The clothes in my duffel are still filthy, but for this one night at least, I feel clean, special, and certainly loved. That evening, we raise our champagne glasses to each other. We’re just about half way to Paris.
Truck
in’
PERM-KAZAN-
NIZHNY NOVGOROD-MOSCOW
Svetlana and Alex, Irina and Mikael’s counterparts, are waiting for us at the Volvo dealership in Yekaterinburg, capital city of the Urals, founded in 1723 by Tzar Peter the Great and named for his wife Catherine. Since I have to forego Yekaterinburg’s sights, her monuments and museums, beautiful churches, elegant estates, I’m glad I have these two for compensation. Svetlana is petite, pert, and white blonde. In her tight, flattering beige suit, she’s dressed more like a model than a sales clerk. Alex, an amiable schlumpf, does not match her for looks, but outshines her in his eagerness to practice English. The two are equals when it comes to physical contact though, enclosing us in embraces, smacking our cheeks with more kisses, holding each door open and then, with a hand on the small of our backs, escorting us into their facility as if we’re royalty. Considering what happened to Tsar Nicholas II and his family, the last royals to pass through this city, I’m not convinced this is a good thing. Regardless, the Romanov murders happened in 1918 and this is 2007, so surely enough time has passed that Russian antipathy toward non-proletariats has dissipated. Besides, wandering around yet another car repair shop, I feel anything but noble.