Peking to Paris Read online

  A course monitor initials my time card, the white flag drops, and we push Roxanne across the starting line, keeping our crawling momentum going till she is under the concrete awning of an abandoned gas station next door. That’s how we start our drive through Mongolia: on foot.

  Minute after minute other cars are flagged off and lumber by us. I wave, projecting good cheer while inside I feel like I’m being twisted in two. I’m wondering how good Bernard really will be at fixing Roxanne on the fly. Maybe, without telling me, he’s testing himself to see just how much he can do. What if he can’t do it all? Each car that passes is one more car that will get to camp before us. Here I was just starting to feel like I had a comfortable space within this group, and now they’re all bypassing us. All I want at this moment is to keep up with the Joneses, all three hundred of them. After ten cars have gone, Bernard calls out from under the hood, “Got it. It’s minor, really. A linkage from the gearbox is out of adjustment. I can fix this in no time.” I don’t even realize I’ve been holding my breath till I exhale. “You are one swell guy!” I holler back. The problem he’s described means nothing to me. That he can fix it means everything. Another five cars and we, too, are back in business.

  Sagging into my seat, I’m lavishly happy that we won’t have to spend the rest of the day trying to repair Roxanne at a bleak border station with no services. We’re in Mongolia for sure now, a place with a population the size of Brooklyn, in an area the size of Texas, California, and Montana combined, with West Virginia thrown in as a bonus. There’s literally no turning back, regardless of whether we want or need to. The organizers have told us that China will not let any of our cars reenter once we’ve exited. Seems like three days of foreigners driving helter skelter over their roads is as much as the Chinese could bear.

  The first mile of Mongolian road is a concrete slab, built to imbue the border with a sense of modernity and permanence. Like many third world projects, this one never was finished. Either money ran out or drained straight into the contractor’s pocket, leaving the fine concrete with an eightinch drop to the sand. Given that cars are vastly outnumbered by people in these parts, the road has become a sidewalk. It looks like half the population of Mongolia is streaming toward the border, most likely having arrived here by cadged rides from Ulaanbaatar. In simple T-shirts, slacks, and loose flipflops, carrying cloth bundles or plastic shopping sacks, people weave and wander around us like a school of tropical fish through a coral reef.

  We’re off into Mongolia, and this strikes me as a major event worth acknowledging. I’m already accustomed to the eager, excited crowds that mobbed our car at each fuel stop in China. I wave my arm out the window and some return the gesture, but most just walk by. Suddenly there’s a loud crash, followed instantly by a sharp bang. I hunch reflexively. As a child of the sixties, I’m a veteran of school air raid drills. I now execute a perfect duck, knees cradling my head, arms covering all. “What the hell was that?!” I shout from between my elbows, as Bernard shouts, “A rock. Someone threw a rock at us!” I peer up and see the windshield on Bernard’s side is a crazy blossom of cracks. Bernard keeps driving, giving me only a second to spot the culprits: a small group of cute tousle-haired young boys, who mockingly wave rock-filled hands. They’re laughing.

  “Slow down, Bernard. I have to get out.” Bernard knows that I’m irrational and that rock-wielding kids are nothing to trifle with, so he does the smart thing. He speeds up. I yell at him to stop. He ignores me. Before I can even start fumbling at my seatbelt latch, the boys have faded into the flowing crowd of pedestrians.

  As Roxanne thunks off the concrete pavement onto the sandy track that heads to the desert, I realize I must be ridiculously fragile. Something as modest as a rock thrown as a prank, as unimportant in the grand scheme of possible car problems as a damaged windshield, has thrown me completely out of kilter. Bernard, as I expected, stays calm. “Just drop it,” he says. “It’s done. Maybe we can get a replacement in Ulaanbaatar.” I could use some commiseration, but all he gives me is practical advice. I lower my head, nursing my wounded pride, and pick at the sparkling splinters of glass that glitter in my lap, souvenirs from where the sharp tip of the rock poked a hole in the windshield.

  Three days in and I want to scream with vexation. Because it’s not about the windshield. It’s about that year and a half, and all our efforts to make Roxanne beautiful and worthy. If I cared to admit it, it’s also about my own efforts to see myself as worthy, to be the half that makes the two of us a whole.

  Time Trial

  ZAMYN UUD-SAYNSHAND

  I count telegraph poles and keep track of GPS waypoints for several hours before we reach a flag stuck in the ground, beside which are standing two course marshals. It’s the start of our first time trial, which sends an entire migration of butterflies coursing through my stomach. Here’s what’s coming over the next three minutes: The route book distances will be in yards, not miles, which I am to holler in a high volume litany to Bernard. Our car hurtling over rough ground at 50 mph will cover two hundred yards in eight seconds. Bernard either gets it and does it, or we crash.

  My monologue should go like this: “Two hundred yards left turn, 150 yards left turn, 75 yards left turn, LEFT TURN NOW!” Getting the distances right will require a level of concentration I’ve displayed once in my life . . . when I fought to stifle nervous laughter welling up from the pit of my stomach as I waited to say “I do” at our wedding. There’ll be no time for fact-checking. That’s bad. But what’s good is that there’ll also be no time for back talk, none of the “Are you sure” and “What did you say” of earlier days. The time trial gives me permission to shout at Bernard all I want.

  I can tell Bernard’s thrilled to put Roxanne to the test; a smile has been playing across his lips for the past half hour. “Don’t worry, cherie,” he said a while back. “Just read me the directions, one by one. But fast. And clear. And loud. We’ll do fine.”

  “What if I lose my place in the book?”

  “You won’t. Mark it with your finger, and just slide that finger down the page.” His confidence does not reassure me.

  “I have to look at the Tripmeter at the same time. And some of the directions are just symbols. I need time to remember what they mean,” I tell him, looking ahead in the book at what’s to come. I swallow hard. This may be the last time I have a chance.

  “You’ve been perfect these past few days. This isn’t any different. It’s just faster. I’ll still repeat everything you tell me.”

  “Hello, luv,” says one of the marshals, sticking his head in my window. “Ready to have a go?”

  “Oh god. Yes. No! I don’t know. What do we do?” I’m breathing in short gulps.

  “I’ll scan your time card, and Bernard, when this car ahead of you leaves, you pull up level with the flag.” My heart feels about to leap out of my chest and stay behind as I listen to my first ever “Three, two, one, GO!” Bernard mashes the gas pedal. Like a cannonball we shoot across the starting line and into the desert. Charging along, Roxanne stirs up a dense powdery cloud. She careens off boulders, brutalizes small shrubs, dodges telegraph poles and any other inanimate object too stubborn to get out of her way. We swoop up small hills and are momentarily airborne. I let out a whoop before Roxanne slams back to the ground and the breath leaves my belly with a strangled “Aaaargh.” We are going so fast we overtake other cars. “Gee,” we mutter. “Don’t want to cover them in dust.” Then we blaze past them cheering mightily. Bernard eyes me carefully after the finish line, to see if I am frowning. “Bernard! I loved that!” I exclaim and bestow on him the broadest smile he’s seen in days. He smiles back, proud of how he’s driven and delighted at my delight.

  We head back onto the normal route, feeling all shiny and bright with the thrill. It takes us some moments to notice that Roxanne, instead of gliding along serenely as she normally does, is now unnaturally bouncy, moving like a drunken sailor rising on tiptoes and then collapsing at the knees. Ea
ch washboard sends her trunk soaring and then jouncing back to within inches of the ground. This seems a bad sign. Pulling to a stop in the scrub, Bernard slides under Roxanne on his back. Emerging a minute later, he slaps the dust off his hands, then turns his back to me so I can brush away any Gobi detritus clinging there. He shakes his head, then lifts furious eyes and confirms my fears. Roxanne is injured. The thick steel mounts that attach the rear shock absorbers to her frame have sheared off. Both are broken. Without them, every ripple in the road is magnified, transferring stress to her leaf springs that they were not designed to handle. One of them appears to have sustained a hairline fracture. It isn’t a mortal wound, but it will take doctoring, the sort that can only be done from under the car, standing in a service pit. We drive on.

  “This should never have happened,” Bernard says, thankfully keeping both feet on the clutch and the gas pedal instead of kicking himself in disgust. “I made those shock mount measurements myself. They should be perfect.” The butterflies in my stomach have metamorphosed to gargoyles whose sharp claws now dig into my gut. Neither of us wants to state the obvious, but we’re both thinking it: if we’d been able to test drive Roxanne, we’d have found this design flaw while there was still time to fix it. As it is, we creep the rest of the way toward that night’s camp at Saynshand, our speed reduced from modestly ground-covering to slow enough for me to count the blades of dead brown grass as we drive by.

  Sandstorm

  SAYNSHAND

  Eight hours after leaving the China-Mongolia border, we arrive at dusk at our new digs, a broad shallow bowl in the desert, surrounded by dunes. It must have seemed like a lovely protected spot in which to pitch camp when the organizers were there a year ago, in calm weather. Now though, the bland, featureless bowl hosts only a few scattered Rally cars; it’s more discouraging than rewarding to arrive there, especially with a hot wind blowing grit over everything. Over the course of the day, Bernard’s right eye has been swelling shut. I think the hacking cough he was plagued with in Beijing, the one we attributed to the dense pollution, is an infection that’s left his lungs and taken up residence in his eye. By the time we pull in to camp, it’s gummed nearly shut with goo.

  “I’ve got antibiotic drops for that, Bernard,” I say, thinking I’ll reassure him. Before I can even dig out the medicine kit, he dismisses my help. I’m his wife, and one of his unwritten rules is that he cannot accept medical advice from me. “No, no, leave it,” he says. “It’ll get better.”The euphoria of our first time trial is long past, and we’re both trying to stifle bad moods, so I let it go. Besides, already the breeze has stiffened. Wisps of sand skiff along the ground. Like prying fingers they find poorly sealed car doors and sneak into carelessly closed car windows. It seems barely moments before a wild wind arrives and the depression in which we are camped turns into a sink in which all the sands of the Gobi appear to be collecting. Radios crackle between organizers, camp staff, and course marshals. The advice for those still in the desert is to stop where they are and retreat into their cars to escape the swirling airborne sand.

  We’re both distracted with concern about Roxanne’s broken suspension, whether we’ll find a workshop to get her repaired, or if she even can be repaired around here. The abrasive sand blowing about insists on our attention, though, making clear there’ll be no working on the car. More pressing is our need for shelter for the night. “Let’s get the tent put up,” Bernard urges. “This storm doesn’t seem like it’s going to die down any time soon.” I visualize our pop-up tent airborne on the rampaging wind, me hanging on to one corner as it whisks me into the next country.

  “OK, here’s the plan. When the tent springs open I’ll unzip the flap and launch myself inside to hold it down. You do the attaching.” I feel sneaky but pleased about this division of labor. I’ll be protected while Bernard’s braving the elements. We open the tent and I immediately spread-eagle myself inside, arms and legs stretching to the four corners while Bernard lashes the tent to Roxanne’s side mirror. I only hope that mirror is bolted on more securely than the radiator fan. He grabs our water bottles from the car and joins me inside, where we hunker down to consider our options.

  “Are you hungry?” Bernard asks, looking at his watch and noting it’s definitely dinner time.

  “Starving,” I say. “By the way, when I was walking around waiting for the start this morning, I overheard the organizers say something about cold beers at the end of the day.”

  “Beer? Let’s go see if it really is cold, and give the camp staff some moral support.”That’s my Bernard, always ready to think about others. The tent flap is nearly ripped from my hand when I unzip it, even though I open it just enough so we can wiggle out on our bellies into the furious hot blast of the storm. From there we scuttle the few hundred yards between Roxanne and the listing dining tent like a couple of sand crabs. The exfoliation special my face gets along the way is not only necessary, but free.

  By clenching my eyes into slits, I can see on my left that every green canvas Port-a-Potty has been blown over. The green heaps next to them used to be the shower stalls. Glancing to my right, I make out forty-odd cars; the rest of the Rally must be stuck in the desert. The cars that have arrived are arrayed chaotically in the modest depression, as if they pulled into the camping area and abandoned any semblance of orderly parking. This is our first night under the stars, though now it’s debatable whether we’ll even see them. Everyone’s been looking forward to the adventure of sleeping out in the desert, but the cars I see around me look pathetically small and helpless in the wasteland of blowing sand. Those crews who have succeeded in erecting a tent have tied it to their car, just as we have. A few crews seem to have abandoned the idea of pitching a tent altogether, opting to sleep in their front seats instead.

  At the dining pavilion, several staffers struggle with the support poles as the tent gyrates in the shrieking sandstorm like a hip-hop dancer. Peering into the murky interior, we spy a table set with chunks of cheese, biscuits, a stew, and trays of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and carrots. There appears to be a dusting of glittering bread crumbs over everything. “Oh my god, this looks delicious!” I say. “Bernard, look. Fresh tomatoes. Salad! Deviled eggs!” I lift a pot lid and feel my legs go weak. “Bernard, beef goulash.” I inhale the savory steam rising from the pot, redolent of stewed tomatoes, paprika, and onions. All my worries vanish. No matter that our dinner will be gritty. We are out of the car and food is at hand.

  Filling plates, we sit with our backs to the wind, alone in what appears to be a swiftly collapsing dining tent, and stuff the gritty food in our mouths as fast as we can, spitting out grains of sand as we find them. It’s better than a three-star Michelin banquet, a meal Bernard and I can share quietly to help dispel the hours of grimness after the time trial. We can’t let animosity build up between us already. If the rest of Mongolia is like today, there’ll be too many tough aspects without adding a heaping helping of general gripes to the mix. Besides, we’re not angry at each other, we’re distressed at circumstances that prevented us from ferreting out Roxanne’s shock absorber problems before she shipped.

  The storm howls and thrashes, its violence testing the strength and stamina of the human pole supporters. They’re locked in combat with the tent, which writhes and twists in their grasp. It is obvious that we have only minutes before this structure, too, will collapse. We diligently gulp our beer, made thirstier by the knowledge that it may be awhile before we get another. More staff scramble about to save the dinner offerings from further ruin.

  Back outside the now swooning dining tent, it is pitch dark, a blizzard of swirling sand. The trip we made with ease half an hour earlier is now an impossibly obscured distance through which we must retrace our steps. My headlamp, normally bright enough to read by, can barely illuminate the hand in front of my face. The wind seems to shriek with pain. My instinct is to cover my ears, to protect them from the high-pitched keening, but I need my hands to shield my nose an
d eyes from the grains that are frantically, insistently trying to invade them. In the midst of this swirling chaos I feel as if I, too, am spinning out of control. I don’t even know for sure which way is up, let alone which way is Roxanne. To hell with sand in my nose, I say to myself, and grab for Bernard’s hand. Slowly we pick our way in what we hope is the direction of our car and tent; when we dare raise our heads for a second, we peer into a shapeless darkness. In the distorted frame of reference that is a Mongolian sandstorm, I have no idea how long or how far we’ve crept, when Bernard finally points out a humped shape in the otherwise featureless foreground. Roxanne, right where we left her.

  Safely at the car, I still have to figure out how to relieve myself in a vicious wind with no Port-a-Potty available. This is minor compared to what I later learn is the unpleasantness suffered by the 140 people caught in the desert when the sandstorm arrived, Sybil and Nick among them. I squeeze myself next to the running boards, hope I’m squatting in the right direction, and spare a grateful thought that, given the weather, no one’s likely to walk by. Done with that duty, I belly-crawl into the tent, Bernard grabbing my arm to guide me. We sit there for a bit, still holding hands, the escalating moan of the wind making us feel that much safer inside. A warm cloak of relief envelopes me as I crawl into my sleeping bag and shove earplugs into my ears. Drowsily I run my fingers through my hair, taking note of the thousands of grains of sand that now reside on my scalp, tiny fellow travelers on the road to Siberia. Then I search out Bernard’s hand again, reassured by the warmth of his skin that he’s still there with me.

  At dawn the next morning, Bernard awakes with his right eye sealed shut with yellow, crusty muck. Some time during the night the sandstorm blew itself out, so when we crawl out of our tent, it’s eerily quiet. “I’ll take another look under the car. I have to know what’s happened so we can figure out how to fix it.” I wander over to the re-erected dining tent, where I find Sybil nursing a steaming mug of tea. “My God, you’re here! When did you get in?” I ask her.