This is the Rally, after all, and one can’t be optimistic for long. Somewhere along those miles of pavement, Roxanne’s latest shock absorber mounts prove too fragile even for asphalt. The shock absorbers break again, and Roxanne is reduced to dragging her sagging trunk the rest of the way to our first night’s stop in Siberia. By the time we arrive it’s mid-evening, which is weirdly appropriate since the organizer staff are being housed in a brothel. I can see the place is hopping with business, and it’s not just Rally business. We’re eager to finally get to a room, but the buses hired to take us from the fenced, guarded car park to the several hotels in which we’ll be housed haven’t arrived, and those hotels are a further hour away.
I’m for trying to scrounge a room in the brothel, where at least we’ll be next to Roxanne and have the best chance of organizing repair assistance for her the next morning. It is, after all, a bustling center of commerce. Bernard’s having none of it. “Come on Dina, let’s just go to our hotel and figure it out there.”
It takes some effort to curtail my urge to snap at him severely. I would have preferred Bernard’s support on this, mainly because I am fatigued enough I want to be coddled and told “Don’t worry; I’ll take care of everything.” That I know he’s right makes it worse. Of course the hotel is the place to be, especially since it’ll have things we’re unlikely to find in the brothel. There’ll be showers, food, and all manner of modern conveniences, which, after eight days camping in Mongolia, are things to which I’m looking forward with more than ordinary longing. Still, I can’t stop myself from grousing a little. “Sure,” I say. “Let’s go to the hotel. What’s one more hour when we’ve already been on the road for twelve?”
Our first hotel in Russia is a welcome sight only because it’s not a tent. The hotel, both outside and in, is illuminated by what must be 25-watt light bulbs, all two of them. So dim is the lighting and so dark are the recesses that I feel I’m in a John Le Carré spy story. The shower stall I’ve been dreaming of turns out to be a doorless, curtainless tiled pad tilted in the wrong direction so it discharges all its water toward the bedroom. The shower head is screwed to a rubber hose attached to a spigot on the wall. The hose is only two feet long. To get water on me, I have to squat. If I pull on the hose, hoping to get it to stretch, it separates from the spigot altogether. None of this diminishes the profound rapture I feel as a trickle of hot water splashes onto my head.
An hour later when we enter the dining room, Gustav sees us. Too late we notice that he’s waved us over to join him and Laure for dinner. Not only that. We see that he’s seen us see him. After such a long day I can barely manage civil words in English, let alone in French. What I want is to sit quietly with Bernard, with whom I don’t have to converse if I don’t want to. Laure adds a weak wiggle of her fingers to echo Gustav’s invitation. She looks so frumpy and unhappy I don’t have the heart to say no.
“Let me buy the wine, to thank you for your help,” Gustav says, almost with reluctance, as if he wished he really didn’t have to. Our dinner together is bleak, Bernard chatting valiantly, while I struggle to find bon mots to contribute. Laure sits silently. I can’t stop myself from thinking longingly, “Oh, where is Robert in my time of need.” As we walk back to the elevator after dessert, Gustav takes me by the elbow and whispers conspiratorially, “I hope on our day off in Novosibirsk that you will go around with Laure. You will be able to explain things to her in French! Otherwise, you know . . .” and here he waves an arm around vaguely, “ . . . she will just sit in the room all day.”
I’m as flabbergasted that he’s roping me into being his wife’s travel companion, and undoubtedly her psychotherapist, as I am desperate to avoid it. “Thank you, Gustav. But I normally help Bernard on rest days.”
“Oh, Bernard doesn’t need you there,” he guffaws. “Go out and have some fun!”
“Well, I have to tell you, we’re a team. So we like to be together.”Thankfully the elevator arrives, absolving me from having to say a pointed “No.”
Breakfast next morning is in a room that must double as a ballroom dancing arena, our tables huddled like wallflowers in one drafty corner. Charming young girls in green micro-minis and yellow shirts waltz in, balancing four plates apiece. They set breakfast in front of us: two green peas adorning half a sliced hardboiled egg. How thoughtful to have waitstaff that match the food.
Back at the car park, we confront a horde of desperate Rally crews trying to secure transport to Novosibirsk for their crippled vehicles. It makes me think of pictures I’ve seen of the fall of Saigon in 1973. Of course, we’re all here by choice, and nobody’s shooting at us, but the air fairly crackles with urgency and desperation. Not only are there twelve crippled Rally cars coming in on trucks, but none of those trucks will be available to help others, like us, whose cars didn’t fare well on the drive from the border. They’re Mongolian trucks, and they don’t do Siberia any more than they can help it. So leery are some of the Mongolian drivers of even being in Russia that one of them, in his impatience to turn around and get back to Mongolia, does the unthinkable. He pushes the Rally car he’s been hauling off his truck bed without ramps, while the owner dashes frantically around, waving his arms and shouting “Noooo. Stopppppp.” I could read the driver’s mind: “Why the worry? What’s an eight-foot drop to the ground to a car that’s already broken?”
People crowd around a grizzled man. His floppy jowls are stubbled with a charcoal smudge, his black button eyes deeply embedded in bruised flesh. This is the agent for the one local empty truck, whose driver right now is slumped behind the steering wheel getting some much-needed sleep, or nursing a terrible hangover. I can see the truck bed is big enough to hold Roxanne, and I’m determined to get it for us. The agent stands, legs apart, in an ill-fitting gray serge suit, jacket straining its buttons, belly spilling over his belt, the frayed cuffs of his ill-fitting pants mopping the pavement. From his pocket he withdraws a packet of tobacco, and I stare in fascination as his sausage-like fingers, stained yellow with nicotine, roll a cigarette with the delicacy and precision of a surgeon doing a quadruple bypass. The cigarette is pinched in his surprisingly sensuous lips as he drags and exhales, drags once more. Spellbound, I focus on the coarse pores of his broad nose and start counting. At ten, two streams of smoke billow from his nostrils. His eyes disappear as he squints into the smoke and rubs his ham-like palms together in anticipation. He knows he’s standing in front of a gold mine.
The agent can’t conceal his delight at being surrounded by men owning valuable cars, willing and able to pay anything. I, however, have something they don’t: I’m a woman, and we are, after all, standing next to a brothel. Two hours pass during which I come and go, flirting, haggling, and finally flashing a wad of U.S. dollars. I win. The truck is ours for the day.
As I heave myself up into the cab I feel a flash of guilt at leaving so many needy drivers behind. If this is treason, then I’m a pleasantly relieved traitor. Plenty of others will manhandle their vehicles the next 270 miles. We won’t be one of them. We’ll be chauffeured and I won’t have to deal with a GPS or Tripmeter or route book to get us there. We can take this truck and ignore all the Rally controls, because we’re no longer competing for any medals. It feels fabulous.
Six hours later, when our driver is the one who gets us lost on the outskirts of Novosibirsk, I heave such a deep sigh of pleasure that this isn’t my fault, that Bernard thinks I’ve fainted. We’re searching for the Ford dealership, to which we have access thanks, again, to Matthieu. He’s offered us his place there, which I take as a sign of repentance for his shameful behavior back at the Kharkorin ger camp, when he could have invited me to join his party, but didn’t. It’s a mob scene to get into these dealerships, and only a few manage. We, however, have an actual invitation, since Matthieu & Co. have decided instead to use Novosibirsk’s Mercedes dealership for their repairs.
It’s getting on toward dusk. Our driver is muscling his truck through the confined alleys of a dilapidated Novosibirsk housing development in search of the dealership, when a shiny black SUV with deeply tinted windows cuts us off and motions us to the side. At first, I think it’s the secret police, and I spend a fretful sixty seconds before I see a trim man wearing tight black jeans and a fitted leather jacket hop up onto the truck steps and shove his head in the window. I look for a gun. If he has one, it’s not visible. “Beautiful car,” he says, grinning. “Very beautiful car.” It appears we’ve been pulled over by a minor oligarch.
“Thank you.” We’re studiedly gracious, not to risk offending anyone with possible connections. Especially if he might be able to cut short our search and direct us to Ford. He sticks his hand through the window, and we each shake it.
“Why are you here? In Novosibirsk?
“We’re on a rally. From Beijing to Paris. That’s why there’s a number on the car. And those special license plates,” Bernard says, motioning back toward Roxanne.
“I see. Very interesting. So. How much?”
Now it’s dawning on me he wants to buy Roxanne. No, that can’t be. He must be asking what we paid for her.
“Very expensive,” Bernard says, answering any number of possible questions.
“Yes, I’m sure. How much?”
I nudge Bernard and whisper, “Here’s our chance. Let’s sell Roxanne. She’ll have a good home here, be this man’s cosseted plaything. Plus . . . we’ll be able to leave without disgrace. It’ll make a great story. Come on!”
“We can’t,” Bernard hisses back. “There’s a carnet on her. Whatever car we entered the country with leaves with us, remember? It’s stamped on our passports! If she doesn’t leave Russia, neither do we.”Of course I remember. The Rally has posted a monetary bond for every car, insuring that every one of us will take the same car out of each country that we bring into it. That does not change my desire. It’s testimony to how frayed I am that even an illegal, black market deal appeals to me. That is, as long as it results in a good home for Roxanne. And no prison time for me.
“Not for sale,” Bernard says.
I wonder if, thwarted, the man will now pull the gun he’s surely hiding and say, “Not for sale? Well then, I’ll just take her!” He doesn’t. He smiles ruefully and says, “Ah, I understand. She’s very beautiful. Of course you want to keep her.” He gives the truck door a good wallop. “Well, good luck with her.” Just like that, the man in black goes back to his black car with the blackened windows and drives off. As if a curtain has lifted, we turn a corner and there is the dealership. In short order, we have off-loaded Roxanne and driven her into a sparkling clean repair shop where she will wait for us to return the following day.
In the hotel lobby next morning, I’m astonished to see Ralph and his son, who’ve been AWOL since midway through Mongolia. I figured they had retired, but now here they are, fatigued, deeply bronzed, and broadly pleased with themselves. I grab Ralph and gush about how happy I am to see him. “Well done, Ralph. And my god, you made it. What exactly happened? And how did you get here?” I could have chattered on in this vein, but it dawned on me I was holding him hostage with my questions. Probably it would be more supportive of me if I let him go take a shower. He hugs me back and gives me his big snaggletooth grin. “Quite an adventure,” he says. “Which I will tell you all about. But first I must get this leaf spring fixed.” He shows me the tiny suspension part that keeps his tiny car from scraping the ground, a piece of metal about the heft of a fork tine. A bubble of envy rises, that he can get his car part replaced in minutes in the hotel kitchen while ours requires deconstructing a tank. On the other hand, we’ve already slept two nights in a hotel, while his bed has been either his cramped car seat or the sand.
For our rest day in Novosibirsk, the route book gushes “With our twonight stay here, you will have the opportunity to explore the city.” I see nothing of Siberia’s capital, but I do get on intimate terms with the dealership staff. These particular Russians are kissy folks. Irina and Mikael, dealership employees who are put in charge of our satisfaction, greet us with six kisses, three per cheek. That’s just for me. Each time they wander into the service area, whether to bring us tea or inspect our progress, we get six more. When their friends arrive to see all the Rally cars, the time spent exchanging kisses grows extreme. I like being on a par, kiss-wise, with everyone else. It makes me feel like family.
Novosibirsk also is memorable for Siberian pizza, which we agree is far superior to that in Mongolia. As for the beauty of the dealership, Ford has spared no expense. The complex is stunningly modern, like a gleaming high-tech park in Silicon Valley, only brighter and cleaner. More important as far as we’re concerned, it runs a 24/7 repair operation. They are bursting with pride to host us in their facility and spare no effort to help us out. Even the cleaning women, who circulate hourly through the repair area to mop up crumbs and errant splats of oil, take a break to be photographed with the vintage cars and shabby-looking crews.
We spend several peaceful hours alongside other teams. Roxanne is lifted on a hydraulic hoist so Bernard can easily stand underneath her. A skilled mechanic is assigned to us for the day. He doesn’t speak English, but by now Bernard is fluent in drawing. The two of them pore over sketches on scraps of paper while other mechanics bring parts and spares. Together, Bernard and the mechanic change Roxanne’s oil, lube parts, begin welding new shock absorber mounts. Whenever Roxanne is lowered for work on the engine I have a chance to continue cleaning the interior, an endless task that never fails to reveal more areas in which Gobi dust still hides.
Suddenly, there’s a commotion at the garage entrance. Looking up, we see Matthieu, James, and their teams silhouetted in the open door. I can see them looking around at the service bays, each occupied by a Rally car in the middle of time-consuming repairs. What they see displeases them. James’s rage erupts like a volcano, and soon he’s spewing his dissatisfaction in a loud voice, publicly chastising the dealership manager. I don’t understand why they’re here. They were supposed to be working at their own private dealership. I overhear snatches of the monologue like, “ . . . paid for this months ago,” and “ . . . haven’t heard the last of this,” phrases I thought were only spoken in bad movies. James strides about the service area in a fury, and I’m scared to death. Any moment I expect him to come over to us and bellow, “Get your car out of there! This is MY spot.”
Bernard, though, walks over to James and quite calmly says the obvious, “Please, take our space. We can finish our car elsewhere.” My heart leaps into my mouth. “What are you doing?!” I want to scream. “Haven’t we had enough trouble as it is? We need this space as much as he does. No, we need it more. For god’s sake, the man’s driving with his own mechanic!” There’s no camaraderie in me whatsoever, and I am so different from Bernard at this moment I can hardly believe we’re married. I glance toward Matthieu, who shoots me a tight, placating smile and shakes his head.
James, who’s a strapping six feet, stops his tirade and looks down at Bernard. It’s like one of Tolkien’s orcs noticing a hobbit. I expect him to grab Bernard and fling him across the shining service area floor. Perhaps it’s Bernard’s politeness, perhaps his shorter stature, which combine to create the opposite effect. “Thank you, Bernard,” James says. “So kind of you.”That’s it. Bernard’s made a friend. I don’t think that friendship extends to me.