We went back to the commune, but our room was still sound asleep. Only Roma Jah was missing. The window was wide open, my somnolent roommates huddling in their blankets as warmly as they could.
I sat on the windowsill and looked down at asphalt still wet from the street-spraying truck, at the playground and the grass where dogs were already out walking their owners. Lenka came and sat beside me and dangled her feet over the edge too. She yawned, her eyes still only half open, her blond hair matted, and oh, how fresh and joyous it was to sit there with Lenka as she was now!
“Well, we don’t need this any more,” she said, tearing off the ‘Emergency Exit’ sign and skimming it like a boomerang. It rotated a few times before falling inelegantly into the courtyard. I smiled, remembering that at 10.00 Sasha and I had a meeting with Grand, and before that I needed to pack my bag. I felt as if I could have spread my wings, launched myself from the windowsill, and left behind forever the open window of Yakimanka, the communal paradise which let us all grow up.
To the Lake
“Life is about moving on,” Grand said, and my summer exploded and raced so fast there was in any case no question of stopping.
There had been Yakimanka, and it had been left behind in the smog of Moscow. There had been Sasha Sorokin, and he was left behind the moment I told him I wanted to go with strange, mysterious Grand, away from here, onward to the East. I had never experienced hitchhiking like that, so easy, spontaneous, impetuous, so passionately impelling us towards a destination known only to Grand, shimmering in infinity.
“Always look them in the eye and say ‘Stop!’ to yourself,” he instructed me, peering towards the horizon. Grand the Wayfarer, who looks like a pirate with his black bandana and shaggy beard. His skin loves the sun, his eyes love distant horizons, and who knows what is in his mind?
“Does that really work?” Grand could teach the birds in the trees, the sunbeams, the waters of a river. Perhaps that’s why he is on the road: the road loves those who know what they are bringing with them. And what do you bring with you, friend, other than your willingly borne eternal solitude? “What do you mean, ‘Does it work?’ You are giving them an order. They hear, ‘Stop!’”
I am going to learn from this man, taking in his every word and gesture. Before a day has passed I am walking the way he walks, and within three I have adopted his way of smiling his silent approval, where back on Yakimanka we would have exclaimed, “Cool!” or “Really gone, man!”, our voices ringing with delight. What he is going to teach me only God and his messengers know, but Grand radiates a power which attracted me the moment we met, and if anyone thinks he might suddenly just stop and decide to put down roots, I would be the first to lose interest in him.
“Can you see their eyes at that speed and distance?” “It makes no difference.”
If we stop near a roadside café, Grand sends me in with a pot in which dry buckwheat is rattling and I come back with porridge, tea and two buns, leaving behind no more than a good mood. I had no idea I could do that.
“No, I do understand, only it doesn’t seem likely to work every time.” “Don’t look at appearances, look at what things mean. Everything that happens to us is a sign. If that car didn’t stop for us, it means something.” “It means there will be another one along which will stop.” “That too. But who will be in the car? Look at those people and learn. These too are signs, lessons. Why has the road sent you these people and not others? What is it inside you that person is responding to? Learn to see it.”
I learned and saw. I was pleased the road had sent me this particular kind of man, and I cooked the food when we stopped. I asked questions and Grand always answered them in detail.
There was only one question Grand did not answer, and that was where we were going and why. For some reason that caused a feeling to grow and ripen in me that there was more to my journey than met the eye, and that Grand had had everything planned long ago.
You raise your thumb, half-close your eyes, and how desperately I wish I knew what you are seeing at that moment, my friend, when you look at the road, trying to spot reflections from a windscreen.
Sometimes we got a lift, sometimes we just stood at the roadside. At first it was mostly standing. Moscow had us in her grip and didn’t want to let go. We yawned, facing the traffic, looking towards the capital we were leaving and with our backs to our journey, which seemed in no hurry to receive us. We were like stones in a tight catapult someone couldn’t pull back far enough to fire us at the East.
We didn’t yet know each other. We looked and tried to work out what we could expect and how much we meant to each other, but also how much of that talent for communing with the road each of us had.
In the evening we passed through Shatsk. The last people to stop for us were Greeks in an old black Audi with a foreign number plate. With great difficulty they explained they needed Russian money and offered to sell us a gold ring. With great difficulty we told them we had no money and didn’t need a ring. Disappointed, the Greeks drove off, leaving us puzzling over whether it wasn’t obvious why we were standing at the roadside.
“Well, not too bad for the first day,” Grand said, already surveying our surroundings and wondering where we should spend the night. “Moscow is a big magnet. It’s not easy to escape a pull like that.”
All day a quiet frustration had been building in me. Grand was not the culprit because I still had faith that my destiny had brought us together, but getting almost no lifts, being ineptly unable to get on our way, was making me tetchy.
“What matters most is our intention,” Grand said. He pronounced the word as if it came from another language. He kept repeating that all day, looking at me, only too obviously sizing me up, while I did everything in my power to look as if I was no stranger to the road and knew all about hitchhiking.
I held up my thumb and leaned towards every car, but only succeeded in looking like a scarecrow planted by the roadside. It got to a point where Grand enquired how I would feel about our splitting up if need be. “Extremely negatively,” I muttered, fondly remembering Sasha with whom I had already split up. He would never have made that suggestion, but then again, it was I who split up with him. Grand just shrugged.
I desperately wanted to do something, and in my irritation the most unexpected thing I could think of was to go over to the black and white striped kerb separating the roadway from a steep-sided ditch and wobble along it, waving my arms about and balancing fairly incompetently. Grand looked on indulgently. I thought he even nodded. I jumped down and turned to face the roadway. It was empty. The fiery sunset was so tranquil and classically crimson you wanted only to think about eternity and forget all about lifts and roads.
“A Gazelle!” We raised our thumbs in unison and a minute later were in the van. “Where do you guys want to go?” The usual question. “As far as possible.” The usual answer. “Fine! I’m going to Togliatti, but I need to push it to get there before they close the dam at 6.00 am, otherwise I’ll be cooling my heels on this side till Tuesday.” The catapult had been fired and we were on our way.
We flew all through the night with a driver who played his one and only cassette on auto-reverse. Music on the road is a topic in its own right. You immediately know what kind of person is giving you the lift. You usually end up listening to a lot of underworld songs and pop, but this driver was young and serious, very focused. His music was electronic hard rock. Wisps of white mist rushed to escape the headlights.
After midnight, the driver passed us a couple of pillows and Grand there and then gratefully fell asleep. I stared in horror. Had he not read Anton Krotov’s Questions and Answers, the hitch-hiker’s bible, which clearly states: