Peking to Paris Read online

  In Which I Make Friends

  Hoping to distract myself, I look around for some social interaction. After the big briefing in our hotel’s mammoth conference hall, everyone seeks out others whom they know. They hail each other with high waves, two-arm hugs, loud hellos, and hearty backslapping. Like groundlevel bird feeders, every coffee table has attracted its own drip-dry crowd, everyone dipping forward, pecking cheeks, their yellow plastic P2P tags on red lanyards dangling and clacking as they do. We don’t know anyone in the Rally except Matthieu, though apart from a few emails since meeting in Colorado two years ago, we haven’t had much contact. Still, I’ve used this slim thread of correspondence to weave a handy fiction that once we’re in Beijing he’d take us under his wing, offering access to a ready-made circle of our own. Matthieu gives us a cordial greeting, then drifts over to his own huggy group. He’s joined by five others; together, the six of them form a team of three cars. From the ease with which they move off, I surmise they’re good friends. It doesn’t escape me that no invitation to backslap with them has been issued.

  Months back, feeling the P2P was all about Bernard’s dreams and not about mine, I created a secret mission for myself. While Bernard would be doing the P2P to test his stamina and driving skills, I would use it as immersion therapy, surrounding myself with hundreds of people for over a month. Normally I’m a loner, though the sort who secretly longs to be the center of attention. If things went my way, I’d emerge from the P2P cured of my hermit-like tendencies, returning home a person who not only had covered 7,800 miles, but who would seek out crowds like a salmon seeks its home drainage. This to me seemed like a character rebuild worth achieving.

  At the moment, though, I amble about, lonesomely superior, dodging the shrapnel of laughter from groups of which I’m not part. It’s exactly how I used to feel at high school dances thirty-five years ago. Once I’m in its grip, the memory of that experience leaves me feeling just as vulnerable as if the dance had been yesterday. I can see myself leaning against the gym’s stained white cinder block wall, staring at a nearby empty chair, hoping to convey telepathically to anyone who might notice me that I find the details of its construction truly fascinating. Then I occupy that chair and transfer my attention to the pleats of my skirt, as I whisper to myself, “Who’d want to dance with any of those losers anyway!”

  “Baby steps,” I say to encourage myself now. “You do have Bernard.” He’s walking beside me, fit and trim, his brown hair buzz cut to a military quarter-inch, the thick brush of a mustache he’s sported ever since I’ve known him offsetting the lack of hair above. Both of us are the same height, five foot six, and our stride as we wander the mausoleum-like lobby easily matches step for step. We are alike in so many ways, but when it comes to looking for the support of others, Bernard and I are opposites, and I don’t expect to get much succor from him on this matter. We head for the elevator and retire to our room.

  One invigorating bubble-bath later, we wander into the starkly modern lounge on our hotel floor, in search of a reviving snack and some refreshment. Signing in, I notice the telltale P2P badges sported by several people sprawled on angular, pale yellow leather couches. They’re engrossed in trading stories in that peculiarly British way in which one hair-raising tale is told in understated fashion, only to be topped by another, more mind-blowing adventure recounted in even more modest terms. These are my fellow competitors, in manageable numbers. I should say something. But what? “Hi, my name is Dina and I’m navigator for a LaSalle?” How inane is that? Instead, I sidle by them, eyes averted, as Bernard and I walk to the open bar.

  “You lovely woman you!” booms a male voice in a clipped British accent. “Let me buy you a glass of champagne! Better yet, you buy me one!” Spying an open bottle of champagne, I clutch it along with a few glasses and turn toward the sound of the voice. It appears to belong to a man about my age, whose pale wavy hair and somewhat fleshy features would be called pleasant, but not handsome. His arm is draped around a petite woman and he eyes me flirtatiously, then turns happily to the woman and gives her shoulder a squeeze. “Look Maddy, that wonderful woman is bringing me champagne,” he says, gracing us both with an impish grin. We all start laughing. Drinks in this lounge are free.

  I sit opposite them and fill the glasses. “Cheers,” I say. “I’m Dina.” I present my P2P badge to prove I know my name. “This is Bernard, my driver. And also my husband.”

  “Don’t sit over there!” the man booms. I wonder whether this man ever speaks in anything other than exclamation points, but I say nothing, afraid my relief that anyone at all is talking to me, let alone someone who appears genuinely friendly, is so palpable that it may be off-putting. “Come sit by me . . . you don’t mind, do you Bernard?” Before I have a chance to change seats, he grabs Bernard’s hand instead, yanks him onto the couch by his side, and enfolds him in a one-armed bear hug. “You’re Americans? I love Americans. What’re ye drivin’?” doing his best John Wayne imitation.

  “We have a 1940 LaSalle,” Bernard begins, in his deep, warm, Frenchaccented voice. The man interjects, now morphed into Maurice Chevalier. “Aaah, an American car, but ‘LaSalle’ is a French name. You say you are American, but from the way you speak I think you must be French. How clever. How confusing. I, too, have an American car in this Rally.” Here he pauses for effect, then says, “A 1927 Chevrolet 75 roadster.” He taps his P2P badge as proof.

  Just like that, we have friends: Robert, like a bounding puppy, covering all comers with his loving slobbers. Maddy, his wife, though sometimes more like a proud owner, fondly tugging on the leash, but never too hard. Robert makes further introductions, pairing each person with their car. There’s Ralph, a wiry coat-hanger of a man, seemingly composed solely of ligaments and tendons, whose brown eyes appraise me from behind Ben Franklin spectacles. Running his hand over his nearly bald head, he flashes me a smile revealing more bad teeth than I thought could fit in one jaw. “The organizer didn’t want to let me in. Said my car rode too low to the ground. That the rough road would chew it up and I’d never make it. You’ll see. I’m going to prove him wrong.”

  Then there’s Nick and Sybil, both tall, he with a thatch of preternaturally white hair, she with an equally striking mop of black hair. And their friends, Carol and Robin, and Michael and Sophie. All of them have cars from the early 1930s, works of art with running boards, spoke wheels, and big tear-drop fenders. Everyone stands up and hugs me. It’s as if someone’s waved a magic wand and just like that I’m transformed from Cinderella sweeping ashes into a princess at the ball.

  Robert is happy to share his claim to fame. In 1997 he was the British Airlines pilot for the flight that brought many of the first P2P competitors to Beijing. At that point, he swore he’d return to do the race himself. Now he has. “Bernard man,” he says now, assessing that Bernard is shorter than doctor charts say is average for a man. “Do you ever plan to grow?” He laughs so heartily at this that no offense can be taken, especially since he himself would barely reach the nipples of an NBA player.

  Conversation swirls away from me, as the others compare notes on where they’d each recently driven their spectacular cars. Talk quickly fills with “Remember when’s,” “Did you do’s,” and “Have you seen’s.” When it touches on vehicles, Bernard can jump right in, the language of cars and engines being universal. I listen, smile, nod, and practice feeling part of the group. This is ever so promising. From zero I suddenly know eight people to whom I can say, “So how has YOUR day been?” without having to introduce myself. I’m certain they’d return the favor and ask me the same. After all they’re British, which means they’re polite.

  Maddy turns to me. “Have you looked through the route book?”

  “No. Should I? We’re not due to drive till day after tomorrow.”

  “Well, it helps to familiarize yourself with this Rally’s style of instruction, make your notes . . . ”

  “Notes? What would I note? Isn’t the book complete as is
?”

  “I’m sure at one point, early on, it was. By now there will be things on the route that have changed. The organizers send an advance car over the route 24 hours ahead of us. At the end of each day they send the Clerk of the Course, who’s back with us, their route revisions. We get them the following morning. It’s good to have a feeling of how the original route was intended, so you can easily assess how it’s changed.” Nothing was said about this at the briefing, which my stomach now assures me is cause for distress. It starts to squeeze itself into a tight ball, threatening to eject the array of delectable miniature hors d’oeuvres I’ve just wolfed down.

  “Advance crew? I thought they were going ahead to check our hotel reservations.”

  Maddy starts to laugh, then catches herself. “Have you used a route book before? Or ever been on a rally?” she asks in the nicest possible way. There. At last my dirty little secret is out.

  “Well, this is my first time, and I don’t know what I’m doing,” I tell her, feeling all blushing virgin. For a moment I’m silent. Then I decide this makes me out to be even more incompetent than I am. I blunder on. “I know. It sounds bad. We’d planned to do an easy rally before this. You know, for practice. I was also supposed to have time to work with the GPS. But . . . ” and my voice trails off.

  “Let’s get together after dinner,” Maddy says. “I’ll take you through it. Don’t worry!” she adds, giving me a pat on the arm that would have been motherly if we weren’t the same age. “You’ll get it. We all do.”

  “Dinner!” Maddy’s Robert booms. “Peking duck anyone?”

  We adjourn to a nearby restaurant favored by locals, where we sit around a ten-foot diameter table with an equally enormous lazy Susan in the middle. The others order Peking duck, with its accompaniment of duck soup and bronzed duck skin served on tiny crepe-like cushions smeared with salty, sweet Hoisin sauce. I order an item described as crispy duck parts. It sounds bizarre in an appealingly crunchy way. Platters mounded with glistening, succulent duck meat and slivers of jade green scallions are brought for the others. When my order arrives, it’s a heap of deep-fried beaks and bones, golden and glistening with oil. Bernard wrinkles his nose. “You’re not going to eat that, are you?” he asks.

  “Why not? It’s on the menu. Someone here must find it appetizing. Besides, if a bird’s being slaughtered for your Peking duck, you wouldn’t want the rest of it to go to waste, would you?” I survey the mound in front of me, happy in the knowledge that no one will ask to share. Anyway, I’ve had Peking duck before. Why not try something new?

  Finding Roxanne

  Lucky Roxanne. She’s had three weeks of R&R snugged in a container crossing the Pacific, the car equivalent of a luxury cruise, followed by two weeks in a climate-controlled Beijing warehouse. Not so me. I’ve spent the intervening weeks since her shipment in a dither of anxiety. About what? For starters, everything. Because with Roxanne out of the picture, there’s now nothing to prevent every other possible calamity from getting its fair share of my attention.

  Yet even the most inveterate worrier knows she’ll eventually have to get down to business. The day has come to collect Roxanne and, if the gods are willing, get her back to our hotel unscathed. That the organizers provide buses for the 45-minute shuttle to the warehouse is an act of kindness for which I’m abjectly grateful. I’d give anything to postpone having to direct Bernard back to the hotel, an endeavor sure to prove what I’ve been saying: that I have no navigational ability whatsoever. We’re on the fourth bus to leave the hotel, which delays the inevitable for an extra hour. I’m test driving what will be my outfit for the next month: sand-colored eightpocket cargo pants, fetchingly rolled up to capri length to expose my white cotton socks. I’ve put on my favorite lavender short-sleeve shirt, which has two more pockets. Sturdy shoes are on my feet, in case walking to Ulaanbaatar becomes a reality. The overall effect is one of baggy competence. It does not boost my vanity, but does make me feel efficient.

  The moment has arrived to make something good out of our year and a half nightmare. Still, I feel shaky with uncertainty as we enter the vast, nearly vacant, Quonset warehouse. What if Roxanne’s been damaged in shipment? What if she doesn’t even start? Though I am a worrier, that doesn’t mean I’ve forsaken rudimentary shrewdness. I know this is a perfect opportunity to evaluate the competition, or at least what’s left of it. By the time we reach the warehouse, 75 percent of the cars have been collected. Still, I take my time, striding across the polished concrete floor, shoe soles squeaking, marveling at the beauty of the cars around me. It’s like a museum, and the thought crosses my mind that, if only it were, I wouldn’t have to get in one of those cars and guide it half way around the world. “Oh for god sake,” I mutter to myself. “Get a grip.” Then I see her, parked between two cars of similar vintage. I’m overjoyed and overcome. My heart races so hard I suddenly wish the medical kit sitting in the trunk included an atrial defibrillator. What if, after all this drama, we can’t even drive her out of the warehouse and have to just ship her home? I’d be humiliated without even having done anything, or more precisely, humiliated because I hadn’t been able to do anything.

  Bernard reconnects the battery and in the immense echoing silence of the warehouse I can hear the click as he turns the ignition. A quick pump of the accelerator and Roxanne rumbles to life. He flashes me a brief smile, then cocks his head to listen to her engine. I want to run around shrieking and dancing with delight. Instead, I stifle my relief and walk to the passenger side. I wish I could have come up with something pithy, some words befitting the magnitude of the whole scene. A couple of months ago I wouldn’t have bet my last bag of nuts and bolts that we’d be here, let alone about to drive through Beijing. Instead, I force myself to open my mouth, and out come words of utter banality. “So, I guess this is it,” I say with feigned composure. “Time to hit the road, honey.” That’s the thing about extraordinary times. Sometimes all you want to do is diminish them to the ordinary, make them mundane so you don’t have to come to grips with all the strange things that could happen next.

  Roxanne rolls smoothly out the warehouse double-doors. “Make a left to the exit,” I say with aplomb. This is my first direction of the Rally, so I throw in a broad smile for good luck. It comes out with calm certainty, as if directing a nearly seventy-year-old car onto Chinese pavement is something I do every day. Nothing in my voice betrays the ecstasy I feel. I have to gulp hard to stifle a shout of, “My first direction as a navigator and I got it right!”That would have been unseemly. I knew I couldn’t be wrong because there’s a warehouse worker standing outside the door pointing left. Beside him are the rest of the Chinese warehouse crew, in ill-fitting trousers and knockoff Nikes, grinning, waving, holding cell phones in front of their faces as they snap shots of one exotic car after another. They are so pleased for us that for the first time in many months I, too, relax and enjoy the moment.

  Leaving the warehouse complex, we turn down a street of crumbling pavement lined with block after block of anonymous gray warehouses and shipping facilities. The neglected saplings planted on the divider look like they’ve run a marathon, too exhausted in their struggle against polluted air to do anything but slump. Within three blocks we pass one of the truly ancient Rally cars parked by the curb. A sense of foreboding blankets me. We don’t yet know who’s associated with which car, so all I can do is feel generally sorry for driver and navigator. They’re standing next to their black four-square 1909 Model T Ford with its jaunty red-spoke wheels, faces engulfed in a cloud of steam rising from the raised hood, getting the first of what may be many a roadside spa treatment.

  There’s no chitchat going on in our car. Bernard is intensely focused. Everything from the trace of a squint in his eyes to the impassive expression on his face and the way he rolls his shoulders every few minutes tells me he’s analyzing each burble and bang that Roxanne emits. At times like this, it’s as if his hands are wire sensors, sensitive enough to detect everything
about Roxanne’s handling and transmit it from the steering wheel to his brain. His ears are data collection devices, able to discern an errant engine sound the way I, a classically trained pianist, can detect when a performer strikes one wrong note in a Beethoven sonata. I interrupt only to announce an upcoming turn.

  The directions provided by the organizers note a gas station nearby, where we pull in behind three other Rally cars. Like all the other cars, Roxanne’s gas tanks are pretty much dry, emptied before she was strapped into her private Sealand container for shipment across the Pacific. While attendants fill the fuel tank, drivers and navigators bustle, exuding purposefulness, checking engines, tugging straps that secure petrol cans to running boards. “Learn as you go,” I tell myself, and begin extracting all manner of things from my shoulder bag, snapping giant red and yellow plastic clips onto the sunscreen to hold future toll slips and small currency, stashing extra pens in the door pocket, arranging maps in the glove compartment. Meanwhile, the gas station attendants are having a field day. They haven’t sold this much fuel in ages, and none of them are lounging. Given the cars they’re pouring that fuel into, they vie with each other for the honor of operating the pump. Service has never been so good.

  One crew pulls out a thick stack of postcards and starts passing them out to the crowd of Chinese workers who seem to have materialized out of nowhere, as there are no shops or businesses apparent on this road. Arms stretch, eager hands grasp a card, turn it over and over. People point, and laugh. Some hand the card back for an autograph. Peering over someone’s shoulder I see the crew has created a black and white image of their vintage car.