the metal frame boxed me in like a caged animal. Growl.
21ST OCTOBER
Breakfast was sweet bread and soup supplied by Ravil, and black Earl Grey supplied by us, slurped unselfconsciously noisily by him. We booked in to go to the hospital that evening for Ollie’s leg. Ollie rolled up his jeans and we all inspected the lump. Ravil took his history, assumed a grave face and said something about infection. I wasn’t worried—I just assumed they’d give him some drugs and he would get better.
By day, Ravil’s block was the colour of a Chernobyl sunset. It was built in the 1940s, apparently, quite possibly the last decade it had looked clean. The foot-wide drainpipes that ran straight on to the pavements now spilled shards of ice. We wanted the cold; seeking extremes, this pleased us. We took a tram to check out the city, through those motorway-wide streets, past the city’s oppressive Stalinist architecture and numerous industrial cranes. Novosibirsk was a functional, industrial Soviet city, with a population of 1.4 million, a plutonium plant, a civil aviation factory and lots of mining. Novosibirsk—or Rio De Novo, as Ravil so ironically called it—was twinned with Doncaster, no less. But couchsurfing opened up a new prism on unattractive towns: it gave them soul.
On board the tram were passengers of Mongol extraction. We were edging nearer to Russia’s autonomous Buryat Republic and, of course, Mongolia. And, yes, both places had couches for us. The Buryatian capital, Ulan-Ude, was our next stop—some 2,300 kilometres east of Novosibirsk. We’d eventually managed to persuade a young Buryatian girl that it didn’t matter that her English was bad and that she lived in the suburbs—we had a couch at least.
Back in Novosibirsk, a pattern was establishing itself in our communications:
Me: ‘So is…Russia/Siberia/Novosibirsk/couchsurfing…?’
Ravil: [an appropriate answer].
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Me: ‘So is…Russia/Siberia/Novosibirsk/couchsurfing…?’
Otherwise it was: ‘Let’s stop and wait for Ollie.’
I spent half my time looking backwards at Ollie, as he lagged behind, beaten by Ravil’s turbo pace. Sleep-deprived, I would have preferred not to make conversation, but that was a privilege reserved for better friends. Plus, efforts seemed so unequal—like Polly, Ravil showed little curiosity for us.
‘So is there a Siberian flavour to Novosibirsk?’
‘All of Russia is the same—no one cares about architecture or art. They just want somewhere to live.’
‘So does Siberia want independence?’
‘Moscow won’t let it. There is a place in Siberia, Yakutia—it’s bigger than Kazakhstan—and it pays fifteen per cent ofMoscow’s taxes from gold, diamonds and brilliants.’
‘But does Siberia want independence?’
‘The people are too busy to think about it. If you have time, you think, ‘I want a car, I want a girl, I want financial independence.’’
‘So, umm, does everyone get the “clause” treatment?’ I said, referring to certain stipulations in his emails.
‘Of course,’ Ravil said, flatly.
He’d once had five Polish people staying, who’d come back with seven bottles of wine.
‘I said to them, did you not read that wine was forbidden?’ They had a pretty big dose. I don’t want unexpected troubles—it’s important to be safe in your house.’
I very quickly determined not to get on the wrong side of Ravil. The pressure to please this hard-to-please man who had such particular ideas was suffocating.
Ravil was no eager tour guide. We passed by an immense, icily sterile Lenin Square, home to Russia’s largest opera house (‘I hate opera’) and some dwarfingly large constructivist statues of Soviet workers, soldiers and, of course, Lenin. But it wasn’t until we returned home that I read in my book we’d crossed the very geographical centre of Russia, honoured by the golden domed Chapel of St Nicholas. Nor that the Arctic-bound Ob River, on the north bank of which we found a deserted skate park, was the world’s fourth longest. But I sensed that Ravil wasn’t a couchsurfer out of city pride, but for political reasons—he abhorred money. Perhaps he’d always choose to sleep on doors.
At the prescribed hour, 9pm, we went to A&E—not because Ravil assessed it as an emergency, but because this was the most efficient route. Ravil took Ollie behind closed doors, leaving me in a Soviet-era mint-green waiting room and a tableau vivant of rather un-vivant Russians. A jaundiced miner in leather boots and dungarees covered in a thin film of coal dust was holding a urine sample; another rocked drunkenly, hassling any medic that passed. An hour passed and the jaundiced miner was wheeled past in the recovery position. Ollie wasn’t waiting, he was being seen to, so what was taking so long? From beyond, I heard the sound of grown men screaming. What if one of the screams was Ollie?
Standing only in his pants, his hiking boots (covered with blue plastic bootees) and a seeping bandage where the lump had been, Ollie was back, his face waxy and drawn. Ravil was standing at his side, looking solemn. My heart started thudding.
‘We have to go home, Fleur. They found puss on my leg and it could spread to the bone. They collected thirteen millilitres of puss. That’s a lot.’
Suddenly it was an emergency. I bit back the tears. Ollie’s leg was in serious trouble, so was it wrong to feel sorry for myself? Instantly I was furious with Ollie’s London consultant; he should never have been declared fit. And ‘go home’? Did I really have to go home after eleven days? There was nothing wrong with me. Or was it because Ollie didn’t think it wise for me to travel solo through Russia and China? The marbles had been released on to my path, yet this was Ollie’s emergency—we had to sort him out. I was electrified with panic.
In fits and starts, we picked our way back to Ravil’s, whose pace, incredibly—or revealingly—still didn’t slow for Ollie. We stopped at an all-night pharmacy (it was now midnight) for antibiotics and water.
‘Why are you buying water?’ Ravil roared.
Ollie and I both cowered.
‘You can drink tap water. It’s just marketing myth that you can’t drink it.’
We found excuses to defend our purchases and hit a wall of silence for the rest of the walk home—no, Ollie couldn’t get a taxi. Ravil really had become Siberian, with his intolerance for spoilt, Western softness.
What to do? We were about to book flights home, so I had make a decision, fast. I hated travelling alone. I subscribed to the Noah’s Ark school of travel—it should be done in pairs. But I, supposedly, was the lucky one—quitting wasn’t permitted. I’d waited too long for this adventure. I rearranged my face into one of survival: ‘Ollie, I can’t come home with you.’
He understood: ‘I just thought you’d want to.’
In a way, I did.
At home, Ravil sat down at his computer, slipped on some enormous headphones, and said, ‘I’m off to crash cars.’
Ollie’s flight home was urgently arranged—there was one to Moscow at 7am. At 4.30am, Ollie and I left for Novosibirsk Airport: I was going to cling on to him for as long as I could. The boys exchanged a brotherly hug and I stuffed a packet of biscuits into my bag—Ollie and I were ravenous, and biscuits were easier than asking Ravil for food. But I still hadn’t adjusted to the news. I bolted from our farewell at the airport—an emotional downpour felt imminent.
In total silence, blinking like a pit pony, Ravil let me back in at 6.30am. Well now we were in a Pinter-esque tension, an unbearable ache of awkwardness in his too-close-for-comfort bedsit. The camp bed had been put away