Chapter 8: Road, Ksenia, Chai-Babushka
Ksenia tapped his sternum. Over the wind, he thought he heard her shout, “Chai! Chai!” Just ahead, at the side of the road, a stout babushka sat on a wooden chair. Next to her, a silver samovar gleamed atop an upside down crate. In the fresh sunlight, Rudy could see a little steam rising from the pot. They had been riding smoothly for half an hour; roadside tea struck him as a perfect excuse to stop, check the machine, check the gear, and check Ksenia, to make sure she could take a few more hours in the saddle.
Babushka was too close for him to stop, certainly not safely with Ksenia on the back. He eased off the throttle, geared down, and coasted past the old woman at about 50 (50 on the gauge, 30 in his head, in the metric–English conversion that might become irrelevant before it became automatic, as he didn’t need a number in either system to tell him how the motor sounded, how the wind and wheels and balance felt, and whether he could make that turn or stop). The cycle crunched to a stop on the gravelly shoulder maybe fifty meters past the old woman.
He dropped his boots to the ground. The earth seemed to tingle through the soles, into his feet and bones, the earth saying, Don’t linger! Keep moving! That urge was balanced fully by the motionless, timeless embrace Ksenia still held him in, her arms snug around his torso.
Rudy turned his head carefully, not wanting to bump Ksenia, whose head was still close to his shoulder.
“Did you say tea?” he asked, his voice still road-loud.
“I’m glad you heard me,” she half-shouted back. “I’m a little chilly. Are you?”
“Yeah, a little. You hop off first.”
It felt to him like a few seconds before she let go. He held the bike steady, and she swung herself off, left side, arm still on Rudy’s, recovering her individual balance. She bounced a little on her feet. “The road feels strange,” she said. “It’s different from stepping out of a car.”
She removed her blue helmet and sunglasses as Rudy dismounted. He took her helmet, removed his, hung both on the handlebars. She walked around the motorcycle and set the backpack on the ground, leaning it against the front wheel.
They hung their sunglasses on their jackets and walked, shaking out their slightly bowed legs, to the old woman. “Molodets!” the babushka called, the universal term the old used to greet or summon the young. “Chai khotite.” You want tea—not a question, but a statement of obvious fact. What else would anyone want on the road? She brought out two ceramic cups, white with blue vines, from beside the crate, poured and handed them steaming tea. Rudy and Ksenia tucked their gloves in their jackets and accepted the cups. The old woman brewed strong tea. Ksenia kept the cup close to her face, warming her cheeks.
Rudy saw no card stating a price. He saw no other goods near the old woman. She simply sat here at the edge of the road in her coat and scarf. A path at the edge of the shoulder led through tall grass toward a grove of trees. An old house stood shaded within that grove.
“You live here?” Rudy asked in Russian, gesturing between sips with his free hand toward the house.
“My sister—there. But I—in town.” The babushka gestured up the road.
The old woman said little else. Rudy and Ksenia drank their tea in silence.
Rudy drained his cup and asked the old woman if he might have another. She rocked, didn’t just nod but rocked in her seat, took his cup, and filled it again, and topped off Ksenia’s. She still said nothing about the price.
“Do you make your living selling tea here?” Rudy asked.
The old woman looked at him and laughed. “Bus fare for my sister and me. And chickens. Old women need little else.”
Rudy laughed with the old woman over his cup. Ksenia walked a bit farther, back in the direction they had come. Rudy followed, caught up.
“Are you too cold?” Rudy asked Ksenia quietly.
“No, no,” she said, looking up the road. “But I’m glad of your gloves. This tea helps. Thank you for stopping.”
Three fuel trucks roared by, kicking up clouds of road grit behind them. Rudy and Ksenia stepped back from the shoulder, shielding their faces and their tea. Rudy noticed the old woman kept her seat facing the road and hardly blinked. Ksenia continued walking slowly, and Rudy shadowed her.
Rudy was enjoying the ride, but he still felt a keen nervousness, for Ksenia, he told himself. Was the ride too rough, were the motor and the wind too loud? He hadn’t felt any fidgeting; Ksenia was really quite steady. Her grip had loosened a little just a few minutes out from Suzdal, and he could feel her leaning back, turning a bit, looking around. But could she be having doubts about riding the entire way? He wondered if there was any way to make the ride more comfortable. The bike was running smoothly, humming along, not one untoward sound or wobble. The highway left something to be desired; he’d wanted to average 80 kph, but potholes and breakups made that unwise. The Russians didn’t mark bumps or other road hazards. There were a couple long stretches of new pavement, but even on those good stretches, Rudy didn’t want to risk getting caught by surprise by anything, pothole or bad driver, at high speed, not with Ksenia on board. They couldn’t get to Galich any faster, and fast would be rougher, louder, less safe.
But what if… Rudy was afraid to think it, but what if she was thinking she wanted to go back? What if 30 minutes of wind stinging her face, bike rattling her ears, road shaking her bones, had convinced her that four, five, six more hours, however long on the open road, would be worse than a couple weeks stranded in Suzdal? What if this was a terrible idea, and it was all Rudy’s fault?
“Rudy?” Ksenia surprised him. He’d been walking on auto-pilot. She had stopped; he was now two steps ahead. Ksenia tugged at his elbow and drew herself up close to him, close enough that her soft voice could cast a bubble around them that shut out the breeze. “Rudik, are you o.k.?”
“Me?” Rudy glanced around, to the old woman, her sister’s house, the bike and the pack alone on the shoulder. “I’m fine…. You?”
Ksenia looked deeply into his eyes, then gazed back up the road, north, toward Galich. She sipped her tea. “I have been on this road dozens of time, with my family, on the bus. I’ve never seen it like this. Out in the open, every meter. I’ve never seen the pavement move like this, right under my feet. From this bike, I can see it as an entirely different place, a place I don’t know. And it’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful?”
“Yes.” Ksenia turned back to him and favored him with a gaze that made his doubts about her comfort disappear completely. “Wonderful. But it makes me think how it must seem to you, a place you’ve never been. Even from the bike, in my mind, it is still bounded by the knowledge of the towns ahead, and Galich at the end. All your bounds are behind you. Nothing to protect you from the huge land ahead. No walls, no friends, just me telling you that Galich, this point on the map, is a real place, somewhere between here and the North Pole.”
She had spoken in Russian. What she said seemed so unusual that under other circumstances, he would have asked her to repeat herself. But her words seemed perfectly clear. Maybe she was speaking more slowly. Maybe being alone with her made it easier to concentrate on her voice, her accent, her intonation. Or maybe it just made sense because she was saying exactly what had really been going through his mind he’d started the bike, since she’d agreed to come with, since he’d looked out from the bell tower and felt the earth spin beneath him. And there Ksenia stood, the one familiar point of reference on this road, a stabilizing axis.
“How do you get in my head like that?”
“We’ve been together all week. I’ve seen your eyes by campfire. I’ve had my arms around you since Suzdal.”
Rudy wobbled his head and shoulders and aw-shucksed a bit, looking around the open country where he stood utterly exposed to Mother Russia. “I’ll, uh, pay the lady and check the bike.”
Rudy gulped the rest of his tea and marched along the shoulder back to the old woman. Rudy returned his cup to the babushka’s dark, spotted hand, then reached in his front pocket for his cash. The bills were mostly fifty- and hundred-ruble notes. A hundred was just over five bucks when he exchanged last week in Moscow. Guide Marina had said folks expected the dollar to buy twice that next week.
Rudy knew no hyperinflation etiquette. Buying with dollars on the open market was still technically illegal. Dollars were a more stable payment, sure to gain value for the woman. Still, waving his American cash seemed as rude as expecting waiters and cashiers to speak English.
Rudy peeled off two fifty-ruble notes and handed them to chai-babushka.
Chai-babushka surprised him. She set his cup on the crate, took the two bills with one hand and quickly seized his hand with the other. She closed her eyes and chanted a prayer. He could not make out much through liturgical language and the slurring of habit beyond Bozhe and spasi, God and save. She made the sign of the cross three times, said Amin… then pressed one of the fifties back into his hand.
“Keep the girl safe, young man,” she said in quiet Russian, her grey eyes, faded to mist, locked on his. “And yourself. God protect you both. God protect you.” Then she let him go and looked down as she tucked the bill she kept into a coat pocket and took up a rag to wipe out the cup he’d used.
He thought of the young hooligans back in Moscow who had harassed Brenda, their tour leader. She kept saying she’d never had such trouble during all of her Soviet trips. She’d felt perfectly safe walking the streets of Moscow by herself at night. Rudy and Ken had driven the hooligans away just by their unexpected appearance in the dorm lobby, but Brenda had been skittish and short-tempered ever since.
This old woman could be those hooligans’ grandmother. Here she was in open country, sitting by herself by the highway, calling the Lord’s protection down on him… and on a girl who could read his mind.
Rudy didn’t do church, but he felt the meaningfulness of the old woman’s gesture.
“Spasibo, babushka,” he thanked the old woman. “Bog s vami.” God be with you.
The bike was fine. No leaks, nothing coming loose, no surprises. The gas tank was down a quarter, about what he’d expected. They could make Kostroma, find benzin for the bike there, and then reach Galich with plenty to spare.
A Lada whined past him. He followed the car with his eyes, a good kilometer ahead, to where the birches converged and the highway dipped out of sight. Except for one cloud far to their east, every cloud was gone. The sky was enormous. He could feel it arcing over him, over Kostroma and Galich, over Arkhangelsk and the Arctic. To the west was St. Pete, but to the east… endless steppe, endless Siberia, endless. He closed his eyes, imagined swaying, the endless tugging him with its quiet, infinite gravity.
Another car snarled by. His eyes opened on the field stretching far from the road. He patted his leather palms against the gas tank. “Ksen-ya!” he shouted as he’d heard the Russians do, each syllable distinct, equal stress. She was standing by chai-babushka. Rudy saw the old woman nod vigorously in farewell. Ksenia jogged up the road to him.
So far, so good. Rudy smiled at the thought. Ksenia smiled back.
Helmets, gloves, glasses, cinch up the backpack—ryukzak, borrowed from German, made burlier, more outdoorsy in Russian. Ksenia made sense of the straps herself this time, snugging in for the next leg. She stood back while Rudy kicked the bike back to life—once again, one shot, smooth ignition—then swung her leg over the back seat, and settled into that confident embrace squarely behind him. Rudy checked the road—clear behind and ahead—and they roared north again.