Peking to Paris Read online

  “Damn it, that’s brilliant,” I think, wishing I’d come up with the idea. They’ve printed easily a thousand cards, enough to hand out to everyone forever, delighting all ages. I, too, have gifts to give, little stuffed animals, bright plastic solar-charged calculators, and bulk pens, which I thought kids would enjoy. I felt clever when I bought them. Now I feel embarrassed. I had no notion we’d be mobbed. If the sheer number of people pressing around the cars at this first stop is any indication, my gift satchel will be empty within a few days. Worst of all, I didn’t think about the adults and their pleasure in receiving something from my faraway home. All my giveaways were made in China.

  Back on Beijing’s ring road, each move I make smacks of huge accomplishment to me, whether it’s getting into my seat again, rolling down the window, arranging my navigator nest, making sense of the directions back to the hotel. Even I can tell it borders on absurdity to be so hugely selfconscious, so I turn my attention to the several stuck Rally cars we pass. After passing the Model T, I’ve had time to realize that, not only are we rolling along without mishap, but we have a trunkful of tools that these crews might need. I roll down the window and shout “Need help?” Then I’m instantly grateful for two things. One, that the window crank doesn’t fall off in my hand, and two, that they all say no. Because while we could have maneuvered Roxanne through the zippy Beijing traffic to pull over, we’d have wound up a mile down the road before being able to do so. As it is, cars whiz by within inches of my door, and sticking my arm out to make a space for us to pass would result in it being smashed in seconds. I’m rattled by how fast everything moves, but I have sworn not to yelp, and I don’t.

  This is a major triumph. My small screeches while Bernard drives are emblematic of the biggest difference between Bernard and me, and why we are hopelessly inappropriate teammates. The Rally already is chipping away at my character, creating raw patches that wouldn’t hurt so bad if I didn’t feel they exposed the very essence of who I am. Of course we both can compromise. We are grown-ups, after all. But it’s usually about little things, things like how to set the table, or when to get rid of the breadcrumbs on the cutting board, things where I can shrug and say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll give you that one,” because it doesn’t really mean much. The bruising comes with the big stuff, like Bernard’s near-obsessive desire to get things right, which clashes with my belief that good enough is, well, good enough. I arrive at decisions in a somewhat fanciful and circuitous way, whereas his conclusions rest on a solid foundation of rational building blocks. I like to leap to conclusions. If there’s a problem, he wants to think it through. Thoroughly. My approach, of wondering about the best and worrying about the worst, gives him conniptions. His thoughtful, considered manner makes me twitchy with impatience. Probably the most dire aspect of our incompatibility is that Bernard is supremely self-confident, which is why he can thrive on uncertainty. I’m as opposite to this as lobster to lamb, which is why uncertainty makes my shoulders go stiff with tension and leads to unsightly skin breakouts. Though I always jump at the chance to try something new, I can only do so if I have a fairly good sense of what the future holds. I don’t need to know all the details of what lies ahead, just enough to soothe me.

  If anything’s uncertain it’s what is going to happen in the days to come. To even sign up for the P2P, I made up stories, because agreeing to do something that was one big unknown was less than thrilling to me. There was no way I could go forward with thirty-five days of ‘what-ifs’, unless I created my own scenarios of beauty and light, camaraderie and success. All our friends know that, when it comes to control versus lack thereof, Bernard and I do not get along. They have placed bets on the number of days we can remain civil in Roxanne’s close quarters. They’re only half joking, and I can’t disagree with them. There have been times in my life when my desire to be Dina-in-charge, to change the predictable course of events, has almost overwhelmed me, especially on those repeated drives down the mountain to work. As we’d reach what I privately called “The Gauntlet of Nausea,” I wanted to demand that Bernard stop the car now. I wanted to be done with dramatic swerving and braking. I wanted to get out and locomote to our office on my own. But I never did, because a greater rationality prevailed: it would ruin my shoes. With the Rally, shoes weren’t the issue. Sheer unremitting isolation was, which gave me unhappy dreams that popped up even during the day. In them, I’d be standing outside the car, crying in frustration, fists clenched at my side. Around me was a hardpacked, gravel plain. Bernard sat in the car, grim-faced with frustration, too. He was not crying. Then he’d drive off. Our car would disappear over the horizon in a trail of dust, leaving me stumbling across the Gobi on foot. Alone.

  So one day months ago, when we weren’t battling a car fiasco, I raised the matter.

  “You know, Bernard,” I started out calmly, using my mild, nothing serious tone of voice. “I can’t do this Rally if I’m worried that every time I make an error you’ll snap at me, or worse, that you’ll get all huffy, grab the GPS, and tell me you’ll just do it yourself.” Bernard wiggled his eyebrows, as he does when he’s trying to project patience but can barely contain himself. “And then do that crazy eyebrow wiggling thing you do when you’re annoyed.” I heard myself getting strident, as I do when I think I’m being helpful and Bernard can’t see it.

  Then I offered my bargain: “And I don’t expect you to drive 7,800 miles with me flinching and gasping every time you get closer to the car next to us than I’m comfortable with. So let’s make a deal.” The eyebrows were still.

  We made a pact. Bernard vowed not to sigh with exasperation, nor to wrench the route book, map, and GPS from my hands to figure out for himself where we should go. I swore to assume that the way he was driving was, in his best judgment, the absolute right way to handle the car at that moment. And I pledged to stifle any vocal accompaniment I might ordinarily have contributed. Which is why it simply would not do to let out a startled shriek only one hour into the race.

  We’re both on our best behavior on the way to the hotel. I focus on the mileage displayed on our Tripmeter and the route book directions, trying to find the buildings, overpasses, parks, railroad crossings, and exits it mentions before we’ve zoomed past them. Bernard repeats each direction I say, to confirm he’s heard it correctly. It’s a dialogue of lefts, rights, and straight aheads that we’ll repeat daily for the next five weeks, sufficient distraction that soon the cars around us fade into a blur. The route book turns out to be a practical affair, and despite my misgivings I rattle off one instruction after another without error. That we’re right behind another Rally car has no effect on my pride. Bernard can follow the car if he wants, but I know I’m giving the correct directions.

  When we reach the hotel I flash my P2P badge at the guard, though it’s obvious by our car alone that we’re to park in the heavily guarded Rally lot. As he lifts the security bar I think, “We’ve won. Right here and now we’ve won. Because arriving in Paris isn’t going to feel any better than this.” Roxanne runs, we’re back at the hotel, we’re still married.

  What more could I want?

  Three, Two, One

  BEIJING-GREAT WALL-DATONG

  It is a humid, pearl gray early morning late in May, when 127 magnificent old cars roll silently out of the hotel lot and begin their 7,800-mile journey, Roxanne among them. It turns out I needn’t have worried about the scrutineering. The organizers want everyone to pass. They’ve accepted several Chevy Fangio Coupes with bodies that look like they belong to a dune buggy and have allowed in a car with sections of cardboard fastened to the wheel wells, a crude approximation of the obligatory mud flaps the regulations specify.

  All is peaceful in predawn Beijing, the incessant traffic absent, the roads empty and beckoning. An hour later we’re at Badaling, one of the most visited sections of the Great Wall. From miles away we can see it snaking along a convoluted ridge line above intricately folded slopes clad in low green shrubbery. Sections of the Great
Wall, which at one time spanned 9,000 miles, were first built as early as 200 BC. Though now much of it has crumbled away, Badaling has benefited from its proximity to Beijing, securing funds for major reconstruction. Built of huge beige stones, this is no mere antisocial fence. At twenty feet wide, it’s broad enough to allow horses to gallop five abreast. There are no horses here now, only thousands of tourists clambering from archery perches to signal towers, taking snapshots and buying cheap souvenirs.

  As instructed by the route book, we park in a cobblestoned square in front of an ornately carved and painted gateway. It’s so high I could stack my house under it twice and still not reach the top. At one time, the massive wood doors, carbuncled with huge iron studs, would swing open to allow passage of imperial coaches. Now, access to those doors is cordoned off, since they’re the backdrop to the P2P starting line. The sheer size of the gate dwarfs the hundred or so classic cars below, a fitting tribute to the immensity of our undertaking. When we arrive, there’s already a ragged, green satin dragon, with bulging plastic eyes the size of beach balls, writhing around the square. He snakes his way through the crowd, ogling small children and rubbing lasciviously against women’s thighs. Stilt walkers in yolk yellow silk pajamas and red masks dip and prance, hopping stiffly as cymbals crash, drums boom, violins wail. My heart picks up the drummers’ rhythm and feels ready to exit my chest as I realize it’s my imagined movie trailer come to life. Normally I’d be congratulating myself for successfully foreseeing the future. Not now. If this part of the fantasy is true, then the rest of it, the part with the Gobi and me alone in it, also may be true. And that would be bad.

  With force of will alone I put my hand on the door handle and open it. A few tepid rays of sun have conquered the dense layers of air pollution, enough to warm the day. I wander near the dragon, daring him to do his worst. I take photos, standing next to some smiling and laughing competitors in hopes their insouciance will rub off on me. I’m stiff with anxiety, which dissipates only a little when the dragon dancers and stilt walkers take a break, remove their masks, and I see that they’re just school children. Either that or the Chinese are a remarkably well-preserved people.

  The organizer calls through a bullhorn for cars to enter the starting area in groups of ten. When Car 83 is at the starting line I start to hyperventilate. Even if movement were possible at this moment, there’s no turning back. Car 85 is tight on our rear bumper and Roxanne never was very good at U-turns. Then I hear “Car 84, take your place at the starting line, please.” Television cameras are rolling, the checkered flag is lifted. In slow motion, so slow I can see every ripple and wave, the flag descends, Bernard gently presses the accelerator, and Roxanne rolls under the starting gate. It’s too much for me. I tear up, from sheer disbelief that we are on our way. I have my doubts that we’ll make it to Paris, but at least we’ll have gone part of the way, even if that part is short. I give Bernard a weak smile and wipe my eyes. Then I tell him to turn right.

  By the time we reach the first time control of the Rally 185 miles later, Roxanne is in serious trouble. Chugging up a hill behind a slow-moving truck her temperature gauge hovers on the red line. This is a bad sign. We’re moving so slowly no air is going through the radiator to cool her engine, which is now apparently minutes away from blowing up. We barely make it to the parking area, but barely is still enough for the course marshals to stamp an acceptable arrival time on my time card. Popping the hood, Bernard reports that the fan, which is supposed to force extra air into the radiator, has fallen off its perch and has been blocking air from the radiator instead. Why did it fall off so soon? Because it was installed backwards.

  Out come the tool bags, the towels, the bolts and screws I so carefully labeled and packed months ago. I’m happy to have them along, but honestly, did we have to need them so soon? Other teams saunter by, casting pitying glances. Most make an unnecessarily wide circuit, as if afraid by coming too close they’ll catch whatever we have. Those whose cars are going fine can use this rest stop to visit the nearby Hanging Monastery of Hunyuan, an exquisite complex of buildings poised precariously on sheer cliff walls, complete with current monks and 1400-year-old Buddhas. Robert and Maddy are already up there, or so I imagine seeing their empty car near ours. Only Sybil and Nick stop by to commiserate. Nick spends a few minutes with Bernard, who’s opened the hood to investigate what’s gone wrong. The two men peer inside intently, pointing, pinching parts to see if they might be loose, talking quietly. Sybil gives me a hug. “We’re off, dear,” she says. “Such excitement!” Just having Sybil standing next to me makes me feel better.

  “This isn’t a very good start, though,” I say. “We already have car trouble . . . ”

  “Ah, don’t worry about that. We’ll all be in that position soon. Anyway, the boys will get it sorted,” nodding her head toward Nick and Bernard, who by now are carefully lifting the loose fan from in front of Roxanne’s radiator.

  An hour’s been designated for the monastery visit, and that’s all the time we have to make our repair before we’re expected to clock out again and return to the road. To get a Gold medal, we will have to match our prescribed time slot for every time control during the day. Bernard’s bid for Gold at present trumps my desire for Bronze, so it’s important we depart and arrive on the minute. It’d be too depressing to already get a penalty on Day One.

  Bernard sets to with determination. He grimaces, he extracts, he refits. There’s not much I can do except search for a particular size of bolt or wipe off a socket wrench for him. I’m purely a set of hands with no brain. Now and then I glance at the monastery above us. The dark gray cliff face looks like it’s been polished by hand over the centuries, and I wonder why religious buildings are so often placed in spots that are so difficult to reach. From my vantage point it looks like a toy, peopled with tiny Rally crews making their way along narrow wood walkways that connect the buildings. A request for a screwdriver brings me back to the hot tarmac. Bernard sweats while I loll about trying to look engaged in the serious work going on next to me.

  Having time on my hands allows a new concern to surface: that Bernard may be doing much more work on this trip than I. The experience of Roxanne’s rebuild has me hypersensitized to things getting out of balance. Keeping the car running is so obvious and essential that I can’t think of anything I can do to compare. How important can it be to dispense bolts and wrenches? I swat away that niggling sense of inadequacy that recently colors so much of what I do, but it’s too late. A score card’s been posted in my brain, comparing me to Bernard, how much he’s doing, how little I’m doing. Right now, I give him a one to my zero. Already I owe him.

  After forty-five minutes, it’s clear the fan won’t go back on. Bernard stomps once around the car, to settle his aggravation. “It’s missing a pin,” he tells me. “It must have been put in loose and fell off somewhere between the hotel and here.”

  “No biggie,” I say, reassuring myself. “We have over a hundred pounds of spares. Surely we have a pin.”

  In the hundred pounds of spares and extras I sorted, labeled, placed in Ziploc bags, and packed, there are no spare little pins. Without the fan, there’s only one way to keep the engine cool enough. Tossing the fan in the trunk, Bernard disengages the side panels from Roxanne’s hood, stowing them behind the front seats. Now most of the engine is exposed to the breeze. Bernard’s panel-removal solution is effective, but without them, Roxanne’s sleek lines turn lumpen and un-sexy.

  Surveying the hundred-plus cars of the Rally in the past few days, I’ve become conscious that Roxanne, a car that had seemed quite special to me, does not have the coolness factor that many of the older, more glamorous cars have. The organizer also seems drawn to those old convertibles, the cars with spoke wheels and spare tires strapped to running boards. He’s all over those owners, chatting them up, with barely a stray hello for us.

  None of this bothers Bernard, because he has important work to do. He doesn’t have time to spend wondering w
ho isn’t speaking to whom and why. Which is good, because there are only minutes to spare when he presses the hood closed and we take our seats. “Right on time,” the Clerk of the Course says as we clock out of the time control. I give Bernard the instruction to turn right onto the highway. Since we’re on a one-way access ramp entering three busy lanes going in that direction, this is so obvious as to beggar the need for a navigator to transmit the information. Bernard’s game and repeats after me: “Take the entry ramp right and merge onto the highway.”

  Finally, we’re into the countryside, making our way through a patchwork of small towns strewn across stony hill country. Trees are few, coal mines plentiful. While I can’t see the mines, I can tell they are there by two things: the crushed coal roadways that intersect the paved road we’re on at frequent intervals, and the trucks piled high with coal, their sides dusted black with coal residue, that turn onto the pavement from the hidden mines. The sky is murky, a lethal mix of coal dust and Gobi sand, which I inhale in gasps, trying to get by with as little air in my lungs as possible. Coming down a hill in one town I see what look to be three nuclear towers, their concrete not quite as pristine as I suspect it should be. Each tower is blackened with a sooty substance, and as we descend I can see chunks of concrete scattered around the base. It’s easy to pick out the ragged spaces left in the towers. Then I read in the route book that the towers are a landmark, where we take a right fork. We’ll be going right past them. In a moment of brilliance I intuit that to save myself I must hold my breath as we drive by. How that would stop radiation from entering my body I couldn’t tell you.