Backpacks and Bra Straps (3 page)

Revelation in the Flame
4

A
fter returning to Irkutsk from Olkhon Island, we promptly hopped onto a north-west-bound train taking us a remarkable one thousand, six-hundred kilometres (995 mi) to Tomsk. Thirty-two hours later, we arrived at our destination, and our quartet of dirty grumpkins left the charming aquamarine train station to find a home base. The first hotel we stumbled upon had no vacancies. Another nearby place was too expensive, so we headed off to find a cheaper one with Ammon in the lead, as usual.

Tomsk, located near the main Trans-Siberian rail circuit, seemed to have fewer tourists than the scenic city deserved. Along wide, tree-lined streets was a mix of colourful, European-style brick and wooden buildings, churches, and homes. The array of pastel-coloured mansions rivalled any fantasy I’d seen at Disneyland. Despite the collection of gorgeously adorned buildings, Tomsk couldn’t quite disguise the fact that it was one of the oldest towns in Siberia. In certain neighbourhoods, decrepit manors were buckling and slowly sinking into the welcoming earth.

The sun was relentless as we trudged on in the over thirty degree Celsius heat (86°+F). Though I was too tired to check, I was certain we were leaving a Canadian stream of sweat in our wake. My long braid was unravelling, and hair matted between my shoulder blades and backpack. I half expected birds to dive out of the trees to claim the wild nest forming at the nape of my neck.

After another couple of gruelling kilometres, we were completely chagrined to discover that Ammon’s guidebook information was wrong. This hotel turned out to be even more expensive than the last, and we were compelled to continue our self-inflicted, torturous trek. Each place thereafter was still unsuitable for both our group size and budget. Russia was not proving to be an easy place to find lodging as a backpacker. Our little group’s morale was definitely waning as we continued our endless search.

The daggers our eyes were throwing at our stressed leader’s back sharpened substantially when he turned to say, “I don’t know why you guys are complaining, I could walk forever.” Mom’s face looked like she’d been rubbing it in a patch of poison ivy, and Bree was scowling and limping as she struggled with a damaged sandal. The strap buckle at my waist that helped distribute the weight equally on my hips and shoulders was broken. With a hundred percent of the sixteen kilogram backpack (35 lb) now hanging on my shoulders, a substantial weight for my 48 kilogram frame (105 lb), the straps dug painfully into my bare skin. Dripping perspiration and woven fabric combined to rub me raw.

The smell of Ammon’s body odour drifting to the back of the line, mixed with what might have been the stench of my own burning flesh, made for a less than flattering organic perfume with which to assault the local people.

Hosting six universities, the city was teeming with well-dressed, young-adult students. I didn’t even know them, but I felt humiliated walking around with my mom like that, lugging a filthy backpack. I was completely ashamed of my stained clothes and the ugly khaki “travel-day” pants I was wearing. I grew ever more self-conscious as my face became increasingly red and swollen.

I’d never have a chance with these gorgeous guys. Look at me. So disgraceful. I look like a ten-year-old street kid. Oh. My. Gosh. I look like Oliver Twist – Oliver-Freakin’-Jungle Twist!

There was no denying that they were looking in our direction, and certainly not in any way a fifteen-year-old girl would want a tall, handsome man to watch her. When we had first arrived in Russia, we definitely stood out, and I had blamed it on our parade of big backpacks. I had been relying on our common heritage to help us blend in, yet even after we’d set our packs aside, they were still able to sniff us out. I realized if we were this noticeable in Russia, which was the most likely place we could hope to go unnoticed, then this trip would never allow us to be discreet. And from earlier discussions, it was quickly becoming apparent that this trip of Mom’s was not just going to be a one-year deal. Wanting nothing more than to just disappear, I kept my eyes directed downward and absentmindedly followed the heels of Ammon’s boots.

Despite my predicament, I couldn’t help noticing the simple beauty of a clean sidewalk that lacked the dust, mud, and animal droppings I’d become accustomed to. I thought about the dusty cloud that had formed around my flip-flops when they’d slapped the platform on that first arrival in Irkutsk two weeks earlier. I had been absolutely filthy, and it made me feel dreadfully embarrassed. In Mongolia, I’d hardly been conscious of the dirt when it came to what other people thought of me.

I hadn’t really considered this kind of peer pressure, or the influence my personal appearance had on my well-being – especially not about what I was wearing. I enjoyed people-watching in Russia, but I really didn’t like feeling so self-conscious. Perhaps it was just my own insecurity, but I knew for sure that in Mongolia and China, the people never made me feel they were judging my importance by my appearance. The comfortable, nonjudgmental attitude the Mongolians displayed made me think of Bree’s good friend, Grady, on whom I’d had a three-year-long crush back home. Grady was the only guy who got to know me despite the oversized jacket, the lack of make-up, or the boring braid, braces, and dental headgear I always wore. I sometimes wondered what he would have thought if he’d known that my notebooks were filled with big hearts inscribed G+S, and that I was secretly plotting our marriage all those years.

By the time we finally found a suitable place, we’d walked an unanticipated eleven-and-a-half kilometres (7.24 mi). My heels were on the verge of severe blood-letting. Though it cost only four hundred rubles per day, including meals (which was on the cheap side of our Russian lodging expenses), Ammon kept insisting, “We’ve got to get the heck out of here. It’s way too expensive. It costs fifteen bucks a night here – each!”

“It’s more expensive compared to other places, but we can’t really complain, can we?” Mom asked.

“Of course we can,” Ammon stubbornly insisted.

“It was only thirty-three dollars each for the thirty-hour ride on the train. That’s not bad,” she pointed out. “Generally speaking, that’s actually quite amazing.”

“Not when you consider that other Asian countries would only charge a few dollars,” Ammon said. Because he was paying his own way on the trip, he wanted the budget to fit his penny-pinching ways. He was a hard worker who’d had his first job doing paper routes with Sky when he was only nine. By the ripe old age of fifteen, he was working full-time as a chef and had learned enough to run his uncle’s restaurant. At eighteen, he graduated from correspondence high school and went on to study biochemistry for seven solid years with a full scholarship (earning his Bachelor of Science degree in molecular biology and biochemistry – with first class honours, no less), while working as a teaching assistant at Simon Fraser University
and
driving tour buses for our family-owned tour guiding business. He’d started this trip with almost twenty thousand dollars, and he knew the value of money. He sure as heck wasn’t going to spend it all in one place!

“Do you expect Kazakhstan will be better?” Mom asked.

“From what I’ve read online, Russia is the most expensive country on our itinerary, unless we end up going to Australia.”

“So if we can make it through here on an average budget of, say, twenty-eight dollars a day, I’d say we’re not doing too badly.”

“It’s still too much.”

We wanted nothing more than to indulge in a refreshing shower, but Ammon insisted there was no time for that. We’d wasted so much daylight looking for accommodation that we needed to leave right away if we wanted to do any sightseeing.

As we ambled out to walk even more, I couldn’t help but notice a significant absence that I’d wondered about since we arrived in Russia. There were lots of attractive young ladies, young men, and old babushkas, but I was starting to wonder where on earth all the old men were.

“You’re not going to find a Rhett Butler here,” Ammon said, referring to the dreamy character from my favourite novel,
Gone with the Wind.
I was constantly talking about Rhett, with whom I’d been having a serious imaginary romance. Perhaps I had developed an attraction to older men.

“Pft! Shut up! I would never try to replace him. Plus, he’s not
that
old. But seriously, where are all the old, old men – the grandpas?” I said, unsatisfied.

“You know what? ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ “ Ammon replied, quoting one of his favourite movies,
A Few Good Men.

“Oh, c’mon Ammon, sure we can,” Bree said.

“Well, okay then,” he muttered, suddenly stopping to think. “How about if I show you instead?”

A wide walkway shaded by a beautiful birch grove led to the Great Patriotic War Memorial in Tomsk. Located on a raised platform that overlooked the Tom River, the monumental statues proudly held a bayoneted rifle vertically between them. I stood silently beneath the two stone soldiers towering over me as a solemn flame slithered at their feet like a serpent’s tongue, flickering and waving in memory of the dead.

“It’s called an eternal flame. It burns indefinitely to commemorate those who died from 1939 to 1945 in World War II. So many millions died in that war. It’s ridiculous,” Ammon stopped to let us consider. “So to answer your question, Where are all the old men? – they were all slaughtered, that’s where.” There was a definite edge to his voice that told us he was angry at the historical record. “Every able-bodied Russian male was drafted for the war. Not only did those generations of men get killed, but millions were unable to come home to father sons of their own. Russia alone suffered over twenty million deaths. That’s about fourteen percent of her entire population at that time, and Russians accounted for roughly a third of all the casualties suffered in the Second World War.”

“And I’m sure that’s not all military,” Mom added.

“No. Definitely not. There are no precise figures, but I think something crazy like ten million civilians died from bombings, starvation, freezing to death through harsh winters – the most horrible things you can imagine. They were cornered by both nature and governments, including their own. So when you whiners complain that you didn’t have a shower for a few days and have to walk a few miles, think about them,” he said, signalling toward a line of large plaques placed side by side. They were engraved with thousands of names of those who had fought and died. Standing before the rows and rows of these local names, I was dizzy, unable to comprehend those kinds of numbers.

“They have war memorials like this all over Russia, so be prepared. It’s unbelievable.” Ammon had been giving us background information and some basic history lessons the whole time we were in the country, but this brought everything he’d said into sharp focus. I don’t think I would really have believed it had I seen it any other way, and I definitely would not have felt the unsettling reality of my time at the monument.

“I’d been wondering why we were seeing so many hard babushkas. But you can’t really blame them for being that way, can you?” Mom looked thoughtful.

“What do you mean?” Bree asked.

“Well, imagine all the men go marching off to war – fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, lovers – while the women were left home alone,” Mom explained. “They wouldn’t have had their men around to do the tough labour on the farms and in the factories.”

“Yeah, I guess so…” I immersed myself in my imagination and tried to put myself in those other women’s shoes.

“They really lost everything. They were forced to play all the roles and become the backbones of the family and the society,” Mom continued.

“Exactly. It’s pretty insane, isn’t it?” Ammon said.

Russia had been pretty nice so far, nothing like Ammon had feared. Yet, there was a pervasive, somewhat sombre atmosphere in the air. I was beginning to feel like I had stumbled upon the reason behind it.
Could it be the long-lasting impact of so much loss?

Our brother Skylar had enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when he was just twenty years old. Now twenty-three, he was serving his first tour of duty in Iraq. The news of his deployment came the very same weekend Dad had left the family, so a tough time was made even tougher. Knowing Sky was out there fighting made me feel like I was helplessly watching a game of Russian roulette. It was too easy to imagine him as an open target, roasting beneath his heavy body armour in the Iraqi desert. We had absolutely no control over any of it.