The smog in Beijing is a permanent thick blanket. It seems we are living in a dense cocoon of pollution, which coats my lungs, clings to my skin, and makes my eyes sting. Mornings we clamber up sections of the Great Wall, the steepness flexing my ankles to such a degree that the tendons start to shred. The next morning, my ankles are swollen and my first steps out of bed a painful hobble. I can’t know it at the time, but this injury will be the gift that keeps on giving. Throughout the rally, my daily walk from parking area to hotel is a slow, mincing shuffle; a year later, the tendons are still so inflamed that I cannot even run.
Afternoons we wander past Mao’s mausoleum in Tiananmen Square, craning our necks at the brownish-blue sky where a riot of boxy and serpentine kites battle it out, blue against yellow, red against orange. Kite handlers race about below somehow, magically, never colliding. Crossing the square, which is the length of nearly ten football fields, is a balancing act between two bad options. At first we circle around the oncoming throngs. Soon we tire of serpentining far out of our way and decide to wade through them instead. This is a total gamble, as there’s equal likelihood we’ll emerge on the other side as there is of being swept by the human current in their opposing direction. When we squeeze shoulder to shoulder with thousands of vacationing Chinese in the Forbidden City at the Square’s north end, we realize the crowds near the mausoleum were meager.
One warm evening, we take a stroll along a canal behind our hotel. Above the constant hum of traffic I hear the strains of an orchestra, playing a Strauss waltz. It’s tinny and faint, but so lovely and out-of-place in this rapidly modernizing city that our feet are drawn toward it. As we amble along under gracious old trees, we come upon a tiny park, with rusting, rickety workout equipment dispersed around a concrete slab. It’s from decades ago, a Communist-era perk to spur public well-being. “Look Bernard, there’s no one on any of these things,” I say, so used to the masses at Beijing’s tourist spots that I can’t believe there’s no queue for this stuff. Bernard does a few chin-ups and sit-ups, while I wobble along the balance beam. It’s a balmy late-May night, and we’re not the only ones out taking advantage of it. Some young couples, pudgy and round-shouldered, stand nearby. Their kids pedal tricycles in between the rings and the parallel bars. Everyone eyes us with unabashed curiosity, perhaps amazed to discover these sculptural relics have a use. Bernard hoists himself higher and I’m more acrobatic to please our audience.
Finished with our gymnastics, we allow the music to draw us onward, heading for a street lamp in the near distance whose weak glow pulls us through the gathering dark. Reaching it, we find a faintly illuminated plaza, where twenty or so couples twirl slowly to Strauss’s “Blue Danube.” Nobody’s dressed up. They all seem to have hurriedly dried their hands on a dishtowel, perhaps leaving pots in the sink to come out to this open-air ballroom. A DJ manages a small boom box, its long power cord attached umbilically to the nearby street lamp. As he flips a CD and punches buttons for the right track, the dancers stand silent and respectful, as if frozen. He offers a polka, then a waltz, a foxtrot, and another polka. Since everyone’s partnered up and knows the flow, it seems they must meet here for outdoor dancing on a regular basis. No one wastes time talking. It’s all about the music, and if a woman doesn’t have a male partner, she dances with another woman.
Bernard and I took ballroom dance lessons before our wedding, so we could waltz and foxtrot in style on our wedding day. Over the years, we’d wowed not a few old-timers with our jitterbug moves, had them clapping from their tables as we stomped the floor. This plaza, though, is small, and we don’t want to offend anyone by knocking into them, or god forbid, stepping on their toes. So we stand arm in arm, hip to hip, on a patch of thin grass and watch.
With each new dance the couples adjust to the new rhythm, though their steps remain the same, a boxy, rigid movement without grace. It doesn’t matter. I’m enchanted by what I see, because it’s clear these plain, working class people in ill-fitting tops and shapeless dresses are here to do one thing only: dance. They’re loving it, just as I do. We’re about to leave when suddenly the lilting strains of “Vienna Woods” fill the Beijing night. Everyone on the dance floor nods and smiles in recognition of this beloved waltz, and they take off, whirling and dipping in three-four time.
Walking back to our hotel, arms wrapped around each other’s waist, I think back to our euphoria on receiving confirmation that our entry application for the Peking to Paris had been accepted. It was July 2005, and everything those first few months was exhilarating. I ordered maps of each country the Rally would cross. Spreading them on the dining room table, Bernard and I pored over them, piecing together the tentative route the organizers sent with our acceptance packet.
We placed flags to mark the towns that would take us north from Beijing the 625 miles to Mongolia. From there we’d drive over 1,700 miles northwest across Mongolia and the Gobi Desert to a recently opened border post with Russia called Tsagaannuur, where we would enter Siberia. Through Siberia we would tackle the immensity of Russia, making our way nearly 3,400 miles along that country’s southern edge to Moscow and then straight north to St. Petersburg. Once through Russia, we’d cross into Estonia, where we’d zip a seemingly minor 780 miles south through the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania. Clearing the Baltic states would mean we had merely 1,325 miles left, driving west through Poland’s Lake District, then southwest into the former East Germany. Within sniffing distance of Paris, we’d traverse the wine country of Germany’s Moselle Valley and enter France from the east, near where fabled battles were fought in World Wars I and II. Then it would be a straight shot west, stopping for a sip of bubbly in Reims, the heart of champagne country, before crossing the finish line in Paris.
This epic adventure captured every corner of my imagination. In Mongolia we would be camping at night, in a set location where we would be met by fuel trucks. Such gas stations as Mongolia could offer would never have enough petrol to serve 125 cars at one time. There’d be a camp support team, hot showers, port-a-potties, chilled beer, and a hot dinner and breakfast for us each day. It sounded like a wonderful safari, absent the elephants and lions. In China and everywhere else, we’d be in hotels. In Siberia, though, some of the cities where we’d be sleeping were so off the tourist track that there weren’t hotels large enough to accommodate the entire Rally; in those places as many as four hotels had been booked each night, with crews divided among them.
There were days I could see myself in an elegant, open-topped old car, chugging through quaint hamlets that time had passed by, my long white scarf fluttering behind me in the wind, à la Isadora Duncan. Only I never would be so careless as to let my scarf get caught in the wheel spokes and snap my neck as hers did. In my daydreams, we’d pull into a humble cafe, where we’d be able to sample whatever the regional cuisine had to offer. Villagers and kids would stop by and, drawn by our exotic car, sit down and chat with us. We’d learn about their lives, share details with them about ours. “I don’t think we’ll be able to stop for lunch,” Bernard told me. “Normally on rallies you keep going till you reach your final control point for that day.”
“Oh, that can’t be possible, Bernard,” I scoffed. “Why would anyone bother driving through these places if they couldn’t ever stop?” I was busy creating the trip of a lifetime and didn’t want to dwell on what he was saying.
On other days, I envisioned myself dressed in immaculate khaki pants, unpacking a brown embossed leather trunk with brass hinges, jaunty in my crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbow, a sporty, soft deerskin vest holding my navigator tools, whatever those might be. I’d be a Ralph Lauren model come to life, and I even toyed with the idea of asking Ralph Lauren if they’d care to sponsor us. Then it occurred to me that if they accepted, I’d be beholden to someone or something. For me, the appeal of the Peking to Paris was that it would be Bernard and me against the elements, with no one looking over our shoulder, not even the 250 other competitors and 50-odd members of the support crew.
Through a contact at The Nature Conservancy, we asked to host three visiting Mongolian naturalists. They brought a book of photographs with them to show us their country. I was stunned how similar our landscape was to theirs, the deep forests, rushing rivers, and alpine flowers, and the eagles, marmots, and other wildlife that filled it. I loved the notion that two places a world apart could resemble each other so closely and thought myself the luckiest person in the world to be able soon to see it for myself.
At more practical times, I made secret plans to enroll in various auto mechanic and rally driving classes. “Don’t worry about that,” Bernard said. “I’ll do the driving. And I can take care of the car.” This was Bernard’s gracious way of telling me I had never shown aptitude for auto mechanics, so why start now. A new dream began to recur, with me kneeling beside Bernard working on a repair, the two of us bent over an antique car, heads together, discussing what the problem could be with the engine. Bernard would look at me adoringly, flabbergasted by my new skills. Again we’d be equals. One day when I was showing him an off-road driving course I’d discovered, which I thought would give me the driving chops I lacked, he said, “But Dina, in a rally the driver stays as the driver throughout the race. You won’t need to drive.”Then he added, “Besides, as navigator, you’ll have your own responsibilities.” I would?