After a time they pushed back their chairs and made for the door. The boy was now with a different driver. I stared at his back, and even in the way he walked I saw something smug. At the door the boy turned and it seemed to me stuck out his tongue. I could have thrown something at him.
“Smile,” I heard Grand’s voice at just that moment. “Smile!” His face began to emerge for me out of a fog of hatred. “Tell me, do you love all that is around you at this moment?”
Explain to me, road, why I am here right now with this person who looks like a scarecrow, and what I should do? How can you love someone it is impossible to love, be tolerant towards someone you just want to punch?
“Sergey, it’s three hundred kilometres to Moscow, we have nowhere to sleep and we don’t have a tent. Do you want to get home tonight?” “Yes.” “Well it’s not very evident! You’re scared of cars! Look how you’re standing. Where is your wish to get a lift and provide someone with agreeable companionship? What sort of expression have you got? Who’s going to want to give you a lift looking like that?”
Soon we’ll have been stuck here for three hours and no one has even slowed down. Maybe it’s just the place we’re standing. You do get hopeless places on the road, I’ve been told. Sergey makes me feel like I have a huge rucksack on my shoulders, much heavier than anything I’ve ever had to carry before and which makes it impossible for me to get a lift. I have pins and needles in the arm outstretched towards the road, my feet are tired and I don’t know what to do.
“You’re an actor, Sergey. Do something to make your audience respond to you!” “I’m a musician.” “Don’t musicians have to know how to hold their audience’s attention?”
He is silent. He is snivelling. Waves of fury break over me and it takes an effort to restrain myself. I sense his weakness. I want to hit him or scream something at him. I move towards him. He raises his face and looks hounded and pathetic. I close my eyes.
When I was in kindergarten there was this boy. I don’t remember any of the other children, but him I remember perfectly. I rarely played with anyone there. I was a quiet and totally unremarkable little girl. My only naughtiness was that I really enjoyed pinching this boy. When we were on a walk I would go up to him, take the striped straw hat off my head, shove it in front of him and say, “How many stripes?” He would say nothing. I knew he couldn’t count. “How many stripes, how many?” I would ask again, jabbing my finger at the hat. The boy would say nothing, look down at the ground and begin to sob. That was when I pinched him. I did it every day. It became an addiction for me, and for him a nightmare.
I remember the wave of pleasure that rose in me every time. I could feel my power and hold over him, and his weakness and incompetence. No exhortations or shouting from the carers, no summoning of my parents, no punishments could deter me. Made to stand in the corner, I picked plaster off the walls, looking round to catch his eye among the other children, and noticing that he was looking warily in my direction. I knew I left dark bruises on his skin, but I also knew he was scared of me, and my exultation over that was stronger than all other feelings.
He was rescued by our teacher. The wisdom of her decision would have done credit to King Solomon. She made sure I was always and everywhere paired with this boy. Henceforth our cots in the rest hour were placed together, we had our meals together, and held hands when taken for walks. What really mattered for her was to ensure that we sat at the same table in class when we were being taught to count. The boy found this very difficult, while for me it was easy-peasy. I saw him struggling, sighing with the effort of trying to identify the changing number of sticks in the piles. It annoyed and disgusted me, and to my own surprise I started teaching him.
I had lost my trump card. Without thinking, I had given it away and by the time I realised what had happened it was too late. I was ashamed of helping him, ashamed of sitting next to him, and started avoiding him. No friendship blossomed between us, but a sense of responsibility took root in me. I had been burdened with this boy, and whatever I might think about it, I had no option but to carry him.
I could swear it is that selfsame boy looking at me now through Sergey’s eyes. I have the exact same feeling: here is my burden and I have no choice but to bear it. I would like to turn away and leave him to it, let him trudge all the way back and get himself a taxi home, but, dammit, we are sitting at the same table now, friend, and together we are going to sort out those sticks!
“Sergey, look! There are people in those cars,” I say quietly. “They are all kind people. They need you to like them. It’s up to them now whether we get home this evening or not.” “But I don’t know them, Titch.” “What of it! Just love all of them anyway!”
Oh, road, help me to do that too: to love someone I find it impossible to love, to forgive someone I just want to punch.
I thought our journey would never end. It was a cliff, a sheer rockface we had to scale, pulling ourselves up a metre at a time by our hair. No long-distance vehicles came along. We got lifts from people going in our direction ten kilometres at a time. We crept forward from one spot to the next, intersection by intersection, milestone by milestone. The weather was nothing to write home about either. In the vicinity of Kazan, having already crossed the Volga, we found ourselves in such a hurricane we couldn’t stand upright. We had to get out of the wind. It was blowing in our backs and we almost ran down the hill to a place where there was less wind but no cars.
I was silent and sullen. When Grand said, “Smile!” I couldn’t manage even a grimace. Rage was building up in me at our haplessness and helplessness. Despondency smouldered.
“Why are you so uptight?” Grand asked. “Weather not suiting you?” “I grew up near here,” I told him for some reason. “We passed the turning to my town not long ago, and my brother often drives along this road to Moscow, to pick up goods. He has a Gazelle van.”
“Do you want to avoid meeting him?” “N-no.” I reflected for a moment. “It’s not that I want to avoid him, I just know he wouldn’t stop. My brother isn’t the kind of person to give lifts.” “You know, our road will come to an end soon,” Grand said after a pause. “If the road is not smiling on two people, it’s probably best for each to carry their own destiny. How do you feel now about us splitting up?”
I said nothing and looked away.
In the rain no one wanted to pick up two wet hitch-hikers. A sturdy truck finally stopped for us. Only two were allowed to be in the cab, so I was stowed away on the shelf and told to lie low if any cops appeared.
The truck was being driven by a Lithuanian who spoke Russian with an accent but very much liked doing so. He told us how great it was to go on assignments in Russia. It paid much better than Europe so, like him, a lot of truckers were keen to drive here. He set Grand off on his childhood memories, and he talked about how he used to travel to Lithuania when he was little and how much he had enjoyed being there. Their conversation became very man-to-man and I wanted to contribute something from my shelf. I remembered my parents too had lived there for a while, but then also remembered that was because my father was a serving officer who instructed soldiers in the art of firing missiles. I decided to keep quiet.
It was warm in the cab and I could see the road from above. It moved towards me like a ribbon and seemed to pass right through me, every kilometre carrying away a bit more of me. I started to feel dog tired. Moving on, moving on and never stopping, the succession of faces and places, and there were so many of them, both places and faces, and what’s the point, what’s the goal? Today I’m going somewhere, tomorrow I’m leaving, but where is the place I am eventually going to arrive at?