Last updated on 2024-10-22
Chapter 7: Take-Off
Rudy hit the sack just after one a.m. The rest of his friends came back from the hilltop party around a quarter after four, an hour and change before sunrise. They all tried to be quiet, with more success than one might expect of Americans high on campfire smoke and Russian beer and vodka, but even a fully sober couple dozen pairs of feet couldn’t move in complete silence.
They didn’t wake Rudy. His eyes had snapped open minutes before they approached. He heard them approach with yawns and hush-giggles in the courtyard. He heard patting shoulders and a last outburst of whispered happy birthdays in the hall. He lay still, eyes closed, when Ken, Brad, and Carter came in. They politely left the lights off, and Rudy politely preserved for them the illusion that the clumsy care they’d taken not to wake him had worked. He smelled campfire on them, as he still smelled campfire on his own skin. The other guys fell silent in their bunks, Carter exhaling deeply and steadily like a steam engine. But Rudy wasn’t going back to sleep. He was awake, crystal clear, ready to go.
After a few minutes of stillness, Rudy shielded his watch, on his wrist through the night, and blinked its tiny light: 04:24. More than four hours before the time he’d agreed to meet Ksenia.
Sure, run down the hall, down the block, to the Russian hostel, rap on Ksenia’s window—”Let’s go now!”—ride up the highway before sunrise.…
Foolishness, all that. No way would they ride to Galich in the dark. But the early dawn and deep blue silence drew him out from under his thin blanket. He rolled over and thrust himself out of his top bunk and landed softly on his feet. In the bunk below, Ken did not stir. Rudy put on the sweat pants and t-shirt he’d hung by their bunks. He reached for his towel, then thought there was no way he could manage to shower quietly—the water was too cold not to shout. Still, he took that towel, a washrag, and his half-used-up bar of Ivory soap in one hand, shouldered his backpack, picked up his boots and jacket with his other hand, and slipped like a ghost out of the room. He set his boots and jacket on the floor outside his room and carried the rest of his things down to the men’s room—his turn now to glide softly down the hall, barefoot, less and thus better equipped to pass unheard than his now sleeping companions. He heard no one up talking, saw no lights under doors. They’d put their backs into their last day of work, had indeed finished the demolition and celebrated hard, and now all that had caught up with them. They’d sleep soundly here, and probably on the bus to Vladimir. It would likely be the quietest ride of their trip so far.
But no sleep for Rudy on the road, or now. He was operating on a different flavor of adrenaline, and a higher dose. He needed to be sharp for the road… and he wanted to be presentable for Ksenia, and for her parents. Ksenia assured him they’d welcome him and let him spend the night on their couch, as they would recognize as she did that he’d be safer riding back to Suzdal on a good night’s sleep. She also insisted that, as he would miss the sights in Vladimir and the rest of the group’s weekend excursions, the least she could do was repay him with a relaxing stop or two along the way and a full Saturday evening tour of Galich. He insisted she owed him nothing, that he was in her debt for this opportunity, but he didn’t argue against the itinerary she proposed.
Still, he had to consider the impression he would make on Ksenia’s parents. They would get enough of a shock from Ksenia’s arrival with a strange American man. However dusty or buggy they’d get from the road, he had to present those surprised strangers with as clean and respectable a guest as he could. So, in the men’s room, after easing the door shut without a bang and switching on the two dim, caged ceiling bulbs (there were four total; only two lit up), Rudy stripped, opened the spigot on the sink, soaked his washrag, and started scrubbing himself down near the shower drain. Not over that drain—the bathroom floors were scummiest on the ancient tiles right under the showers, and that scum deterred them from the showers as much as the icy water did. Rudy and everyone else thought the water from the tap was a little warmer than the showers, though maybe that was just the illusion of feeling that water with tougher hands and not the more easily shocked parts of the body. The main thing for Rudy now was that the sink ran more quietly than the showers, which somehow made the pipes creak and groan in a way the sinks did not.
Friday evening they’d rushed from work to the cafeteria to the hilltop campfire party—no time to jump in the creek, barely time to wash their hands and faces. Rudy was embarrassed now at how much dirt he’d worn to the campfire, how much gray grit streamed down his chest and arms and legs. He scrubbed for 20 minutes, until his fingers turned pruny and he shivered. He went to the dry part of the floor, near his pack, and pulled out his clothes for the day. He had all of his remaining mostly clean clothes—two pairs of shorts and socks, two plain t-shirts, his good jeans, and a blue sweater. He soaked and scrubbed and wrung the dirt and sweat from his red bandana, then hung it loosely over a side strap on his backpack. The thin fabric would dry quickly; he could tie it around his neck to wear on the road. He wouldn’t be with his team, but he would proudly wear their uniform.
Dressed but barefoot, Rudy padded back up the hall, grabbed his boots and jacket, and went outside. He sat on the bench by the doors to put on his boots, then stayed there, past five, almost until six, watching the sky turn from dark to light hazy blue. The first light over the building, in the treetops, on the bit of river bluff he could see beyond to the west, was strawberry and orange, deepened by the angle and the wildfire haze drifting up on the southerly breeze from east of Moscow. Rudy hadn’t seen a weather forecast, but they’d had rain only once, overnight, in Moscow. July and August here seemed still, unvarying. The stillness continued this morning; he guessed and hoped that meant no storm could be brewing.
The dorm, the courtyard, all of Suzdal was profoundly quiet during this time. No one was out driving. No trucks rumbled through town. No dogs barked. If babushka was out milking her goat, the goat wasn’t making an audible fuss about it.
Rudy’s tightly rolled change of clothes didn’t take up much space at the bottom of the pack. He didn’t need much, and he left room for whatever things Ksenia would bring. But he had two books in his backpack: a small hardbound copy of Pushkin’s poems that he’d found at a bookstore on the Arbat in Moscow (last week, just last Saturday, but it felt like a month), and a smaller paperback dictionary that he’d brought from home (which seemed unfathomably long ago and far away). He left the dictionary in the side pocket and took out the poems. Never mind translating for now—he read slowly, out soft, for sound and rhythm… and Pushkin always had rhythm, steady, traditional, no tricks, just birthing modern Russian literature. The poems were short, some just four lines, but he spent minutes on each page, reading each poem four, five, six times.
As he worked for the fourth time through something about peace and distance, Rudy heard footsteps on the gravel. Ksenia was walking toward him, carrying her duffel bag on her back, straps on one shoulder. In her other hand she carried a small cloth pouch. Rudy stood, and they both raised their fingers to their lips at the same time—tishe, tishe, quiet, quiet. Most of the first-floor dorm windows were open, and Rudy and Ksenia didn’t want to wake anyone. Ksenia came up close and set her duffel bag on the ground. She wore plain canvas sneakers, pink socks, dark jeans, and a zipped-up red jacket. She’d braided her chestnut hair into something like a crown.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
“Good morning,” Rudy answered. It wasn’t even 7 a.m. yet. “You’re early.”
“Just like you.”
She looked at the open windows, then gestured behind her, to the path, the gate. Rudy followed her silently until they reached a wooden crate by the gate. An old woman sat on the crate each morning when the Americans marched to work; every evening they found the same old woman sitting with an old man, both watching the street. This Saturday, at this hour, the crate was empty
“I brought breakfast,” Ksenia said, as softly as their greeting near the door. She held out the pouch, actually a blue scarf, corners tied together. They sat down together on the crate—it creaked but held—and she unknotted the cloth to reveal two brown hard-boiled eggs, slices of apple and white cheese, and the end of a loaf of bread. Ksenia handed Rudy the eggs and took the book he still held. She looked at the spine and the page he’d marked with his finger. “And you have brought breakfast too.”
Rudy cracked and peeled the eggs while Ksenia read the peace-and-distance poem in a sing-song whisper. After the first two lines, she put her hand over the page, looked across the courtyard, over the dorm to the northern sky, and recited the remaining half and a verse by memory. When she finished, Rudy handed her an egg. “You know this poem?” he asked softly.
Ksenia bit off the small end of the egg. “Russian education. You Americans should try it sometime.”
Rudy laughed, and Ksenia joined him, both covering their mouths to keep from making echoes in the courtyard that might reach the open windows. They ate, and between bites, Ksenia would flip a few pages and recite another poem. When Rudy had finished his share of the bread and cheese and apple, Ksenia flipped a few more pages and put the book on his lap. “Here,” she pointed to the first line, “read to me.”
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. A bread crumb bounced off the page. He looked at the eight short lines, then tried to imitate Ksenia’s reciting rhythm. The words seemed to fit smoothly into that same pattern, though he stumbled on a couple long, unfamiliar words.
“Good,” she said when he finished. “Do you understand?”
He shrugged and turned a little red. “About half. Love, disappointment… he hopes his old girlfriend finds someone else?”
“Pushkin is, how do you say, smart aleck? He says here—” she pointed to the lines “—’oh, don’t be sad, I won’t trouble you,’ but here, ‘I hope God gives you someone who loves you as well as I did.'”
Rudy looked through the lines again. “So he’s like, ‘Fat chance’?”
“Yes,” Ksenia said. “‘I’m the best you ever had, and don’t you forget it.’ Others read the poem more generously, but I see through him.”
“You don’t like Pushkin?”
“Every Russian loves Pushkin. He makes a wonderful poem here. But wonderful poets can create sneaky characters, and say ‘Watch out for these guys!'”
Rudy could picture Ksenia at university, not just studying, but teaching, telling students to watch out for sneaky poets. He asked her about Moscow State University, MGU, and Ksenia explained that she would study not just poems but all of language—literary, journalistic, everyday—looking for patterns. Philology, she called it. She asked about his time in school—a degree in history, chosen mostly because two of the profs had a thing for assigning actual books; a couple years of Russian that he took to fulfill the language requirement and to be different from the majority of his friends who took the easy route of Spanish; and “summer school”, he joked, not really a rebuke of formal education, just a statement in his case of simple fact: his “degree” in construction, earned in concrete, framing, and roofing, with “minors” in welding, plumbing, and wiring, earned building houses and strip malls and one eight-story office tower that fully cured his anxiousness about heights, had provided him most of his paychecks since graduation. He liked reading and talking about ideas, but he found satisfaction and steady pay in building things. Most of the reading-and-thinking jobs required more time sitting than doing. The months he tried working in his dad’s bank would have driven him nuts if he hadn’t gotten away from the teller window and the computer and fallen in with the crew installing the new data network. He wanted to be moving, sweating, and making things, foundations, walls, front porches, sidewalks that marked to eye and hand his daily labor.
Ksenia planned a more formal double major: alongside philology, she would take as many business classes as MGU could evolve to offer. She wasn’t sure which path she would follow, academic or entrepreneurial, but she couldn’t ignore the new possibilities, perhaps necessities, brought by the fall of communism. The Soviet regime provided scholars with a secure livelihood that seemed unlikely under whatever form of capitalism the new Russia settled into. The collapse of the Union took pensions with it; Ksenia wanted work that she could use to restore her parents’ retirement hopes, spare them the sidewalk hawking of books and clothes and kitchen drawers and let them travel overseas as they’d always wanted, as they ought to be able in a nation now supposedly “free”, as the triumphant Americans liked to say.
“I won’t be putting your parents out,” Rudy asked, still keeping his voice low in the morning quiet, “showing up unannounced like this?”
“Don’t worry,” Ksenia said. “We always have room for guests.… Are you anxious about going?”
Rudy looked down the path, up at the clear sky. “No, not really… I’m anxious to go.”
Ksenia reached for his hand and turned it to look at his watch. 7:24. “Then let’s go.”
Rudy looked over his shoulder. No dorm lights were on; there was no sign anyone else was up yet. The tour bus wasn’t picking the group up until ten. Most would be up in time to see them off at nine… but they’d all gotten to carouse with Ksenia and all of the other Russian students and wish them all well at the campfire last night. They wouldn’t miss out on much if Rudy and Ksenia slipped away now. Besides, the earlier they went, the less traffic they’d encounter leaving town, and the more time they could take along the way.
“O.K.,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Rudy put Pushkin and his bath kit away, tied on his red bandana (all dry now), and shouldered both his pack and Ksenia’s bag. She snapped the crumbs off the blue scarf and knotted it around her neck. They slipped out the gate without a word and crossed empty Lenin Street to the mechanics’ yard. The big iron gate was locked, but the Captain had given Rudy a key. Inside, the motorcycle, freshly wiped down, stood by the shop door. Two helmets hung from the handlebars. Neither had visors; their faces would be in the wind all day. One helmet was black, the other bird’s egg blue, with a band of little white flowers painted around it, a crown like Ksenia’s braids. Rudy smiled and handed Ksenia the blue helmet to try on while he checked the bike. Gas and oil were topped off. Tires felt tight and full.
Ksenia stuffed her duffel bag into Rudy’s backpack. She’d be carrying the weight while he drove. She put the pack on. She was nearly as tall as Rudy, but her torso was shorter and thinner, so Rudy adjusted the straps to snug it up. Ksenia walked and hopped around the mechanics yard to make sure the pack stayed snug. Then Rudy helped her with the helmet chin strap, put his hand on top of her head, and tried jiggling the helmet. There was no give. Ksenia’s braids gave enough cushion to keep the helmet snug.
Rudy had two pairs of sunglasses in his jacket pocket. One pair was his own; the other he handed to Ksenia. “A gift from Lily,” he said. “They’ll keep the wind out of your eyes.” Then he remembered—”Oh! Turn around!” Rudy helped her spin so he could reach into the top pocket of the backpack. He had both of his pairs of work gloves, both yellow leather. This week’s concrete work had worn a couple holes in his main pair of gloves. The spares were in better shape—he’d loaned them to Lily this week so she wouldn’t blister her palms on the wooden handles of the rubble pallets. Lily had given them back when she handed Rudy the sunglasses. The fingers on the spares were oddly squished at the ends: Lily had small hands, and her fingers stopped an inch before the end of the gloves. Rudy handed those spares to Ksenia. Her long fingers poked the gloves straight.
Ksenia flexed her fingers and pushed Lily’s sunglasses up on her nose. She cinched the backpack belt around her jacket. “Now I look like a parachutist,” Ksenia laughed.
“World traveler,” Rudy said. “Queen of the road.” He looked her over one more time, and the motorcycle, and the mechanics’ yard. Then he clapped his gloves together, making a little cloud of concrete dust. “Let’s go.”
Rudy rolled the motorcycle out onto the street. One blue Lada putted down the street to the west, but all the rest of Suzdal was sleeping in. Ksenia swung the gate shut and locked it. Rudy fiddled with the choke, started the bike—first try, smooth as Thursday night—and listened to the engine warm up. The cool rumble echoed from the unoccupied street-facing wing of the yellow dormitory and the quiet piazza and plain white church on the far sides of the empty market square.
“O.K.,” he said, bracing himself and the bike. “Right leg over, feet here and here.” Ksenia held his arm and climbed aboard. She centered herself on the seat behind him, found the foot pegs, and shifted her shoulders to settle the pack.
“Like this?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his stomach.
“Like that,” Rudy said. “Hang on.”
Rudy cranked the throttle open and lifted his feet from the pavement. Ksenia squealed and held on tighter and tighter as they picked up speed, past the memorial park, past the bell tower, past the city limits, out and away from Suzdal to the open road.