“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 . . . ”
Sybil, being a genuinely kind person, looks at me with comprehension and says,“Oh, I get it. The two lovebirds!”Is it just me feeling self-conscious or is there a bit of a chill in the hug she gives me as she walks away? That day we drive to Riga, the capital of Latvia. When we see Robert and Maddy already at a table at dinner that evening, I go over to exchange our usual evening pleasantries. “So,” Maddy says. “I hear you ditched us for better digs.” Word travels fast in Rally circles.
“We’re not good enough for you, eh?” Robert chimes in, with his big laugh, then clowns to Maddy, “Will you continue slumming it with me, darling?” Their voices are lighthearted, but when they don’t ask us to join them I detect that it’s not all in jest. It seems by making ourselves comfortable we’ve broken an unwritten Rally code, something they know about and we don’t. And when, the next few evenings, we come upon Nick and Sybil with their old friends, though they do urge us to sit and we do take them up on it, we don’t stay long. The sense of belonging that I had through Mongolia and most of Russia is gone. At first I’m saddened by this. I’m also perplexed, because if someone told me they’d found a wonderful hotel for a special night, I’d say, “Oooh, sounds great. Next time, tell me where it is so we can go there, too!”
By the time we’re through Lithuania and into Poland, though, I’ve observed that the growing distance isn’t directed at me; everyone seems to be going through the same metamorphosis. For weeks now it’s seemed to be us against the world. Anyone who was on the Rally belonged; whoever was not on the Rally could not relate to the depth and breadth of our tribulations. That alone was enough to bind us even to Rally crews with whom we had rarely spoken. Now we’re less than a week from Paris and it’s becoming clear that everyone who’s made it this far will make it to the end. People don’t feel so dependent on, so bound to each other anymore. We’re on good roads now, and though distances are correspondingly longer, because of the easy pavement driving, there are few breakdowns to contend with. When people work on their car at all it’s to reapply whatever patches are holding their car together, rather than fixing a new problem. Now I no longer feel like a ship-wrecked soul, tossed by rogue waves, desperate for a hand to reach out and pull me to safety. Or if I do, then my life preserver, the thing that circles me and holds me up when I need saving, is Bernard. And me, him.
As distance grows between us and our earlier mates, the group that receives us with welcoming arms is Matthieu & Co., which is why when James issues his invitation, I’m more than pleased to accept. My response seems to gratify James. “Good. It’s settled. We’ll see you there.” He seems happy to have us. I feel happy that he’s happy.
The crunch of gravel under our tires as we approach the inn the next afternoon speaks volumes. It tells me of gracious living, rich foods served on delicate porcelain, wines in fine crystal, and soft white sheets of infinitely high thread count. Also, a massage. The gravel speaks the truth and the inn doesn’t disappoint. I spend an hour on my stomach, having my rigid back muscles pummeled from a hard, board-like mass into a somewhat softer, board-like mass. Probably a hundred hours of massage is what’ll be needed to return my tense shoulders and stiff neck to some semblance of normalcy. An ultra-long hot shower follows, and turning the faucet off is almost more than I can bear, so mesmerized am I by the continuous press of hot water on my scalp. When Bernard and I arrive on the flowered terrace, James bounds over with a hearty handshake. He’s still formal with us, no hugs yet, but I understand that now and don’t mistake it for brusqueness as I used to.
“Welcome, welcome,” he says, as gracious a host as if we’ve arrived at his private residence. “Have champagne!” indicating with Coke in hand the perspiring ice bucket that chills a bottle of Dom Perignon. We do, and raise our glasses for the first of many toasts. “To us all,” we say. “And to Paris.”
True to his word, James has organized a feast for that evening. Ten of us sit round a damask-clothed table set with several tiers of Polish crystal and Dresden china. The center of the table is resplendent with a flower centerpiece dense with pink roses and sprays of orange and red lilies. I’m on James’s right, Bernard his left. Though I’d always rather be seated next to Bernard, table chat not being my forte, I am honored. Wine flows. Platters heaped with roast vegetables, succulent lamb chops, fresh poached fish, and more are passed around. There’s the clink of cutlery on china, the modest laugh of someone acknowledging a bon mot. It’s all so dreamlike, the familiar faces scrubbed, shaved, and shining, women with pretty earrings and sparkling necklaces, men in wrinkled but clean, open-necked shirts. I have extracted my one white blouse, and Bernard has on one of his relatively unworn shirts. But the others seem to have opened a new suitcase or else raided the hotel’s shop. Everyone looks refreshed. Though we all have permanent dark smudges under our eyes now, the expressions around the table are relaxed. As I sit, quietly savoring the exceptional meal, I look around the table and note Americans, Swiss, French, Dutch, Greek. And the one nationality we now all have in common: Rally.
Replete with a more sumptuous meal than any of us have eaten in a month, we waddle from dining room to terrace after dinner. The air is balmy and as we install ourselves on the deck chairs, frogs chirp in the trees around the garden. Espresso arrives in translucent porcelain cups, accompanied by crystal decanters of cognac, slivovitz, and Grand Marnier. Between the shivering leaves above, I can see Venus bright in the sky. James passes around Cuban cigars. I haven’t seen him without one since we left Beijing, and still he has enough to share. Clearly the man has his priorities straight. Among my special secret pleasures is a love of smoking a cigar under the stars. I happily snip the one offered me, lifting it toward Bernard for a light.
That lull that some say is an angel passing over, when everyone is sated with a good meal and all conversation suddenly ceases, happens now. In the hush, I watch musky cigar smoke swirl about my head, as intoxicating as any liqueur. Without preamble, one of James’ mates walks over and taps Hans on the shoulder. “Come,” he says. He starts to whistle, a lilting, poignant tune of such ineffable longing I can barely keep from crying. Hans smiles and joins him on the patio. The two men, one handsome, swarthy with a shock of black hair, the other with his trademark frizzy blond halo and beatific grin, each sling an arm around the other’s shoulder. Joined this way, they start to sway, then slowly, each raises his free arm to the side and snaps his fingers. They dip down on bent knee, rising on the other side with another rhythmic snap. It’s Zorba-like, but not so. It’s heartbreaking, passionate, joyous, and I know we all feel it. We band of brothers.