by Dina Bennett
“Or we could claim faulty brakes,”Bernard offers, in a tone that conveys he’s checked them and knows they’re perfect.
Generally I leave it to Bernard to do the innocent and friendly bit. Today, the guard is on my side of the car. I can see him peeking at us through the smudged window of his flimsy wood shack. He doesn’t do any of the things that a guard bent on turning us back would do, like jump to his feet, shout at us, or point threateningly up the hill. If this is a sign, I’m going to take it as a good one.
I thrust my arm out the window, passports in hand, offering him access to our most precious documents. Tentatively, he steps out and peers at what I hold, as if it were a Faberge egg. Then he stares like he’s seeing men from the moon. Perhaps he’s thinking, “Nyet, nyet, nyet. Boris not raise bar. Supervisor very angry for use personal judgment.” I wonder fleetingly whether what we’re doing could be a shooting offense, then dismiss that as the product of one too many spy movies, not present-day reality. Besides, this guard is dressed in his warm weather uniform, just a buttoned-up shirt tucked into his stiff, pressed army trousers. I can see he has no gun on him. I shout “Dobroye utra,” which is “Good morning” in Russian, followed by “Passports,” which I waggle at him for illustration, and “Border?” which I embellish by pointing at the gate. My very pores ooze compliance.
With a sharp jerk he pulls his beaked cap tighter onto his close-cropped head, does an about face and strides officiously away from me, back to the sanctuary of his ticky-tacky bunker. “We’re sunk,” I think. Just before he gets there, he jabs an electric button and the barrier floats up. Then he slumps into the old chair that’s against the shack wall, relic of someone’s once-fancy dining room, his face impassive, gloved hand raised in a curt wave.
Turning a blind corner we find ourselves at the actual border checkpoint, facing four glass booths in which passport control officials should be perched. They’re empty. Our decision to arrive at the border early has been fortunate. There are no other cars around. Leaving Bernard to keep Roxanne company, I trudge the twenty yards to a building signed Immigration Control. One of the things I dread about border crossings is the endless queueing. The shuffling forward foot by foot drives me crazy, as does the stern official who won’t make eye contact with anything that can talk back. Like me.
Inside, it looks like I’m first in line. In fact, empty desks show no sign of having been used recently for anything, official or otherwise. Conversation will be at a minimum here. It’s so deeply deserted that my Vibramsoled shoes make loud squeaking echoey sounds on the highly polished floor. On the one hand, I’d like someone to know I’m here. On the other, I’d prefer it weren’t my shoes that gave me away. I flinch when a door slams; a harsh voice shouts at me. A man has come in, clearly an official by virtue of his agitated voice and his uniform, and he’s flinging Russian words at me in a tone sharper than I’m used to. I’m in trouble, I think. I hope Bernard got a good look at my back, because that may be the last he sees of me.
I scurry toward the official in a slight crouch that’s meant to convey an agreeable disposition. He doesn’t haul me away; instead of handcuffing me, he holds open the door and shoos me back to the car. Following me a few steps, he gives a tightlipped smile, points to a side door, and says, “Chai.”To which I am about to give the polite response, “Yes, I’d love a cup of tea,” when Bernard interjects—discreetly of course—“Dina, they’re on tea break.”
Within ten minutes, we’re in business, with four uniformed officers, energized by chai and biscuits, ready to give us their full attention. Which we hope will be a good thing. First, we must get through the dance of where exactly to park Roxanne while we do paperwork. Bernard drives forward, a guard prances around on a white line, others stomp about behind us flailing arms in some ancient Cossack signaling ritual. Bernard reverses till Roxanne is behind the line and then gets out of the car. More prancing and flailing. Finally, everyone’s satisfied with Roxanne’s and Bernard’s position relative to the magic stripe, and I am permitted to approach the booth.
A good-looking woman in her forties glances up at me. Her blonde hair is swept into a fashionable French twist, and she wears her military uniform with flair, collar turned up, white shirt open at the neck, small gold cross visible at her throat. If I have the option, I always choose a woman official over a man. My rationale is there’ll be some element of empathy from which to negotiate. The opposite usually is true. In most countries, women still have to outdo men when upholding the letter of the law and their position. They’re tougher and stricter, less inclined to cut you slack. Still, I can’t suppress my inner “You go, girl!” when this woman stretches her manicured hand through the window for passports, car registration, car insurance, and Russian permits. She’s got my business.
On the cubicle desk in front of her are an old computer and a pad of forms. The forms themselves are in Cyrillic, which I can’t read, but in the long months before the Rally, I have at least taught myself how to count to one hundred in Russian, how to say the niceties of civil society such as hello, yes, no, good morning, thank you. I also know a few helpful words like eggs, soup, and goulash, but I don’t expect I’ll find a use for those here.
“Dobroye utra,” I say encouragingly. This startles her to such an extent that she appears to wonder whether her pre-work pick-me-up really was just chai. She considers my smile, flushing from below the collar of her official white blouse, then drops her head to return to the endeavor confronting her. I’m heartened whenever I see her write on the form, which happens twice. After an hour, most of the form is still worrisomely blank. I practice my breathing lessons and tell the angry, impatient side of me to go back to bed.
By now, about a quarter of the Rally has entered the border parking area behind us. It’s jammed to capacity, with more cars in a growing line that stretches up the hill. The officials are not delighted about this, especially the one in charge of all things sidewalk. He’s bounding off in different directions, sweat stains visible as he flings his arms like a traffic cop getting electric shocks, trying to persuade people to park properly and respect his white line. His agitation doesn’t bode well for those to come. Since I’ve already said good morning and smiled at him, the job of soothing seems to be mine.
“Is there a problem?”
“Da!” he says. “People. Too many. Must wait in cars. You tell them, please.” I convey this to the first crews to relay to the cars behind. They ignore me. It doesn’t take a religious revelation to know this border crossing is not going to go smoothly. Irritation is spreading through the ranks like a sniffle in a kindergarten.
Something must be done to break the impasse between documentation and officialdom. At the risk of revealing the obvious, I stick my hand through the window to point at my passport number and do the one thing I can: repeat my passport number to her in Russian. “Dva, chitire, dva, shest, vosem . . .” Jackpot! Finding what’s what on my US passport has been her sole hang-up. She graces me with a warm “Spaseba,” followed by asking if I speak Russian.
“Nyet,” I have to reply, and I mime that I know only a few words, such as numbers. She steps her finger down the lines of the form, and at first hesitating, then with encouragement, I guess at what needs to be filled in, pointing it out to her on my passport. In short order, she’s finished. A few slams of her inked stamp and we’re cleared to go. A further cursory survey of the tightly packed goods in our trunk follows. Fifty yards separate us from Estonia. I am so eager to be there, that as I return to the car I unconsciously tilt forward, like a runner chesting toward the finish line. Bernard puts Roxanne in first gear, and we creep away from Russia to where Estonian guards lean against their barriers smoking. They are nonchalance personified. As we approach, they flick ash on the ground, give the barrier a lethargic swing upward, and wave us through without interrupting their conversation.
Behind us we’ve left 250 people on the wrong side of the border, hot, cramped, impatient, and most of them not kno
wing Russian numbers. The Russian facilitators, who should be helping sort out the difficulties, seem to have taken their money and run. The organizers have been released right after us, and they, too, head into Estonia without a backward glance.
The 125 other Rally cars are log-jammed for eleven hours inside the Russian border. Most get to Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, so late in the evening that I don’t hear the stories about the border delay till the following night. I can just imagine the scene. When you’ve been doing the lotus position in a parking lot for that long, the niceties of benign acceptance can understandably give way not just to sore knees, but to fury of epic proportions. However, as the peaceful sun of post-Iron Curtain Europe shines on us in flowery Estonia, I know none of this. What I do know is that the day’s control points are strangely empty. That for once we make them on time. That there are more time trials on the day’s route. It’s time to have some fun.
Race Bunny
TALLINN-RIGA-VILNIUS
Bernard slams on the brakes, and Roxanne, who loves momentum, slows to a halt in a cloud of silver powdery dust. She doesn’t stop on the proverbial dime, but it’ll do. My window is already open, so I can fling my arm out, timecard in hand, without losing a precious second. Holding it to his computer timer, the marshal reports, “Two minutes, thirty-nine seconds. Well done, you two. Ready to have another go?” A lithe Estonian girl, her blond hair wreathed in blue and pink wildflowers, hands me a bouquet. “Welcome to Estonia. Did you enjoy our rally course?”
“Loved it!” I tell her, cackling so hard I can barely speak. “Absolutely loved it. So, yes, YES,” I turn to the marshal. “We’re definitely doing another tour.” I don’t hesitate when I say this, because on an endurance rally noted for its particularly long, often monotonous days, time trials are the burst of fireworks at a picnic, the spicy bite of jalapeño in a bland bean burrito. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks, and I’m not going to miss a one. I feel alive and in the moment, car damage be damned.
I’ve come to love time trials. In part, this is because they are so welldefined, with their designated start, short, specific route, and defined end. Just the notion that we can let loose for a few minutes fills me with the same feeling of reckless abandon I felt when I first tried magic mushrooms in college. I did a lot of laughing on that occasion, too. After weeks of ultra-cautious driving over terrain so vast it seems without end, taking blind curves or hairpin turns at top speed is a thrill, and the straightaways on which Bernard presses Roxanne’s gas pedal to the floor make me want to shriek with joy. Time trials are furiously fast, and, as far as I’m concerned, always over too soon.
Bernard is passionate about time trials, cramming as they do a banquet of skill tests into a tiny package. They also remind him of his younger days as an automotive hell-raiser. All this is to be expected. The shocker is me. The fact that I’m his equal in getting addicted to the thrill is a morale boost of the best kind. It includes both of us. If there’s an option to run a course a second time, I am all for it.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are time-trial heaven, their curvy country byways and quaint scenery a driving nirvana. Each national auto club closes a network of lanes for our private enjoyment. Locals staff the entry points to explain to their neighbors that, sorry, it’s not possible to get eggs at Farmer Sikorski’s until after 3 o’clock. At the speeds we’re moving, it’d be suicide for anyone or anything to be caught on the same roads as us.
By now, even my modest acumen in math has understood the time trial’s simple formula: difficult terrain multiplied by maximum speed equals winner. I’m Terminator Ten, a fearsome navigating machine, my gaze swiveling from the Tripmeter, which displays incremental distance, to the route book, which gives details of each turn on the course. The changes are so close together, and maintaining speed is of such importance, that I am working as hard as Bernard to keep up with what’s coming, and I’m as wrung out as he when we reach the finish line.
One day in Poland’s Lake District, we wend our way down a shaded lane. The leafy branches of magnificent trees, whose stout trunks would take three sets of my arms to circle, form a cathedral ceiling above us. Crossing quaint villages, we traverse undulating farmland, past neat limestone houses where horses peer at us from behind trimly fenced hedgerows. Gardens are immaculate, happy vegetables and flourishing flowers bursting from chocolate brown soil. It’s hard to believe this, too, was so recently under Communist domination.
Near the starting line for that day’s time trial, I see a roadside shrine, one of those memorials that marks a spot where someone’s died in a car accident. This one’s small and has been there a long time. The pale blue paint on its stucco sides is peeling. Faded plastic flowers offered by the bereaved adorn the ground in front. Bernard slows enough that I can see a votive candle flickering inside as we drive by. I’ve noticed many such shrines along the way, a sign that either Poland’s a staunchly Catholic country, or they’re really bad drivers, or both.
On our first circuit, we make a respectable showing. It’s a beautiful course, with the Gulf of Finland playing hide and seek between flaming yellow sunflowers. At one dramatic zigzag, we see another Rally car, rear wheels off the course, nose nuzzling the shrubbery like a hungry cow. For a nanosecond I’m dismayed, then I see the teammates sitting in the shade well away from the road. One lofts the OK sign above her head as we lunge by. A tow truck will have to extricate them. Till then they’ll enjoy the best seats in the house. From there, we enter a pine forest, the dirt lane dappled in shadow, the air pungent with resin. As we fly by another competitor whose distraction ended their time trial before the finish line, I briefly loosen my grip on the handle to offer an apologetic wave. Then it’s over.
Now that he knows the ins and outs of this track, Bernard is eager to do better the second time. We pull to the starting line, where I smile at the photographer from the village newspaper before handing over my time card. “Three, two, one, you’re off !” Bernard mashes the accelerator pedal, I grab the door handle, my head flies backward, for all the world as if it wanted to wait for me at the starting line. Roxanne nearly snarls as she charges forward down the straight sandy track. On either side of us tall measured rows of green grass straitjacket the lane. We have 900 yards at top speed before our first turn.
We’re at 70 mph when a hare darts out from the field and takes off down the road in front of us. “Rabbit on the course!” I shout. “Bernard, the route book says nothing about this!” Despite my navigator job, which I do take utterly seriously, I start chuckling. Soon we’re both engulfed in full blown laughter, the deep bellyaching kind that brings tears to our eyes.
The richly planted fields leave no room to get around the bounding bunny. This is one panicked hare, and a panicked hare knows only one thing: keep going. His furry paws slap the ground, kicking up spurts of dust as he bounds down the track, trying to dodge the gargantuan blue bullet bearing down on him. For him it’s hundred yard dash after hundred yard dash. Bernard downshifts to second gear; at maximum bunny pace we’re constrained to 45 miles per hour, well below our top speed the first time around.
Not soon enough, the hare makes a desperate bid for safety, plunging off the lane into the tall grass. I imagine him lying on his back, panting and wiping his furry brow as Roxanne roars past. Within minutes we pull up to the finish, which is when the oh-shit handle above my door falls into my lap, victim of too many crazy turns. The marshal eyes us a bit suspiciously when our time comes in at double our first run.
“Have a spot of trouble on that one?” he inquires. My cheeks are streaked with tears, which the marshal thinks illustrate the agony of defeat. Bernard’s face turns red as he wheezes with laughter. The marshal doesn’t know what to make of this, but being a good sport, starts scrounging for reassurances for what he takes to be our devastation. “Good for you,” he says, patting me on the shoulder. “It’s all fun, isn’t it? Time doesn’t matter so much, does it?”
“Hare-raising, no?”
I say to Bernard. I don’t dare turn around as we drive off, howls of laughter wafting from our open windows.
Bonds
RIGA-VILNIUS-
MIKOLAJKI-GDANSK
“Bernard,” says James, when we arrive at our hotel in Mikolajki, Poland’s Lake District. “I’ve found a delightful small hotel outside Gdansk for tomorrow. It’s not the official Rally hotel. Much nicer. Charming. Lovely gardens. Good parking for the cars. We’re all staying there. Join us. We’ll relax. Do a celebration dinner. Perhaps you’d like to? Of course, no pressure. You and Dina talk about it. Think it over. But we’d love to have you.” Is the man I now hear offering this flustered invitation the same one who so officiously chastised the Novosibirsk service manager three weeks ago?
“I’d love to go there, Bernard,” I say. “Let’s do it. James is right. We do deserve this.” Ever since we abandoned the Rally hotel for our private delight in St. Petersburg, we’ve seemed to be on a different path from Nick, Sybil, Robert, and the others. While I’d been thinking our presence didn’t much matter to anyone, in fact our absence was noticed. “Where were you guys in St. Petersburg?” Sybil asks me when we finally meet up in Tallinn after her harrowing hours at the Russian border. I detect a faint ring of accusation in her tone, which makes me feel a tad embarrassed to reveal what until that moment I’d considered our brilliant move.
“We treated ourselves to a little hotel, near those beautiful churches downtown,” I tell her. I don’t go into details, don’t want to make too much of it.
She looks at me oddly. “With the James contingent?” she asks, trying hard to mask the incredulity in her voice.
“No, no. We didn’t go there,” I say, though I have no idea where “there” is. “We just wanted to have some time to ourselves. To reward ourselves a little . . . ”