Voroshilovgrad (39 page)

“What train?” Karolina scoffed. “There aren't any railroad tracks around here.”

“Are you for real?”

“Uh-huh. Why'd you come here?”

“I didn't mean to, it was an accident.”

She stood there for a bit and then turned off her flashlight.

“All right, come with me.”

She headed back into the center of the dark camp. She skirted around the fires and waved in greeting to her friends. She stopped by another big tent that had crosses and letters stenciled on its walls.

“Cross the threshold,” she said, before disappearing inside.

She hung her flashlight in the middle of the tent, where it sent heavy, sweet shadows creeping along the walls. It was spacious and warm inside. The tent itself had been divided in two—off to the left were a few sleeping bags with sweaters, dress shirts, and thick army socks heaped on top of them, while the right half of the space was crowded with seemingly random things—athletic bags with hand planes poking out of the top, as well as tennis rackets, sickles, and neatly organized books. The multilingual remnants of someone's library had been stowed away in the corner: American and French classics accounted for the bulk of the collection, but there were many well-worn occult, theological, and liturgical texts scattered among the cookbooks and tourist guides.

On both sides, I could see electronics, appliances, and the local equivalent of everyday household junk: irons, transistors, table lamps with their cords hopelessly tangled, a few saddles and bridles, razors, combs, and a chandelier. A large map, poorly sewn onto the canvas wall, hung over everything: “Eurasia,” I read to myself. Routes outlined with a red ballpoint pen stretched from the east, from Tibet and the regions bordering China, from the Great Wall and Mesopotamia, all the way to Rostov, in Russia, and continued on through our area. “The great migration,” I thought, and turned toward Karolina. She was watching me, standing in the middle
of the tent, next to a big, ancient black and white television. The fascinating thing was that it worked, though it was only displaying static, filling the room with a domestic, shiny gray light.

“How does that thing work?” I asked.

“It runs on gasoline,” Karolina said. “There's a small generator over there, on the other side of the wall. The only thing is that our antenna is so weak that we can't get any picture.”

She slipped out of her army jacket, tossed it on the floor, picked up a heavy, knitted sweater, put it on, and sat down on the jumbled sleeping bags.

“Well,” she said, settling in. “Let's hear it.”

“First off, who are these people?” I asked.

“Refugees. Mongols, Tibetans, even some Afghans.”

“Where are they heading?” I asked.

“West,” Karolina answered.

“Isn't that against the law?”

“Of course it is,” she said, packing a pipe with tobacco. After taking a few solid puffs, she sprawled out on her makeshift bed. “If it weren't for us they would have been sent back a while ago.”

“What do you mean by
us
?” I asked.

“We're a special EU delegation,” Karolina said, exhaling acerbic smoke. “We oversee human rights cases. Actually, we're convoying these people: they'd never make it, otherwise. They don't have any documents or normal names. Those Mongols really are strange, but they're kind.”

“How come the Mongols are heading back to Europe again?”

“What's your name again? Herman, right?”

“Yeah, Herman.”

“Herman, they're nomads. They gotta keep moving, never stopping—it's in their blood. They're stuck here, though, for the time being. We've been loafing around here for the last week or so.”

“What happened?”

“Sivila's expecting. She should be going into labor any day now,” Karolina said, now drowning in a thick cloud of tobacco smoke. I walked over and took a seat next to her. She offered me a hit. Remembering her beverage in the thermos, I declined.

“Who's Sivila?”

“She's their representative.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like their member of parliament,” Karolina explained. “Technically, they have a representative government. Everyone here respects her, and they're all very concerned about her well-being. They don't want to leave before she gives birth. They're afraid the Hungarians won't let them in if she's pregnant. So, they're all sitting around and waiting. And we're stuck here with them until they're willing to get back on the road.”

“Who's the father?”

“There is no father. I mean, nobody knows who the father is, but that doesn't matter—they have different customs. The whole tribe cares about every child. That's matriarchy for you, Herman,” Karolina said, her laughter filling the tent. “So, you need to get to the city?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Spend the night with us,” she said. “We'll head out as soon as Sivila's baby comes. They need to cross the Carpathian Mountains before winter sets in.”

“Okay, sounds good.”

She took a black, winter sleeping bag and tossed it to me. “Here. You'll sleep in this one. Let's go brush our teeth.”

After grabbing her toothpaste and sticking her toothbrush in her mouth, she sprang to her feet and headed out of the tent, sticking her still warm pipe in her pants pocket. I didn't have a toothbrush with me, so I followed her, empty-handed.

Karolina passed the big fire, which was now petering out, and headed down along the dark, prickly stubble fields. She skirted past the last tent, outside of which were sitting a few women wearing orange overalls and puffy shawls, thumbing rosary beads and smoking filtered cigarettes. Then she dropped down into the valley. Her gray sweater, made of thick wool, shone warmly up ahead; she glided down the nighttime dirt path, crushing the occasional fallen kernel with her hard heels. As I followed behind her it seemed as though everyone's eyes were drawn to her dreads, as though their glances were themselves television signals being yanked out of the air by antennae tinting her hair silver and illuminating the lines of her body. A few black metal barrels filled with water had been placed down below the camp next to two portable toilets—the nomads must have been hauling them along their entire Trans-Siberian voyage. Karolina approached a barrel and scooped up some water. It was slow and obedient in her hands, dripping between her long, dark fingers, moving in slow pulses along her thin, delicate wrists, flowing down the sleeves of her heavy, furry sweater, and
running down her body, appearing again at her waist, emerging into the night like fragile electric light. Karoline uncupped her hands and water crashed down into the metal pit of the barrel, the droplets shattering the reflected night inside.

“Hold this for a sec,” she said around her toothbrush, taking off her sweater and shirt and tossing them to me.

She leaned over the nighttime water, bathing like a soldier in the field, legs spread wide, breathing heavily with pleasure. Her skin was glowing, the water lit by the brittle, white flame that illuminated her, grazing across her flat, tense stomach and her heavy breasts marked with tiny droplets, touching the veins on her arms, and glistening on her hands, white as chalk.

“They never bathe in the river,” Karolina said, drying herself off with her own shirt, still not taking her toothbrush out of her mouth. “All this, bathing with water out of barrels, is incredibly unhygienic. Don't you think?”

“Yeah. Do their women bathe like that, too?”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Karolina said, apparently offended. She pulled her sweater back over her naked torso and continued brushing her teeth.

Up on the high ground, the air quivered and suddenly broke as the camp roared in jubilation.

“It's a girl!” somebody yelled, and dozens of other voices passed along the news. “It's a girl!”

Flames rocketed into the sky. Quick, ghostlike silhouettes scurried around the camp, livestock started bellowing, and happy pop music came blasting out of various speakers.

“Let's go,” Karolina said. “We really ought to be there for this.”

The children were carrying snacks and bottles over to the main tent, the women were heating up some kind of stew in huge cauldrons, and the men were embracing and telling each other the news. People were crowding excitedly around Sivila's tent, everyone buzzing and trying to squeeze ahead, everyone concerned and wanting to get a closer look—and if a few of them got trampled along the way, well, nobody really seemed to care.

Some of the men were holding torches, others were holding up their cell phones; everyone's anxious eyes were fixed on the tent curtain—knowing that the long-awaited child was on the other side. Karolina strode between the men, pushing them aside gently, yet with authority. I hurried along behind her, and the nomads parted without objection, clearing the way for the servicemen and us. Karolina stopped at the entrance.

“It was forbidden to go into her tent while she was in labor—even for EU liaisons. Got it?”

“For sure.”

“Cross the threshold,” she said once more, disappearing behind the curtain.

Inside the tent were more people whispering. Karolina told me that these were the ones closest to Sivila—her girlfriends, sisters, female lovers, as well as her bodyguard and accountant. They were
beaming; a common feeling of joy united them at this late hour.

A potbelly stove stood in the middle of the room, its metal chimney disappearing somewhere at the top of the tent. A young woman wearing an Adidas jacket was sitting on top of the stove and tossing dry grass into the fire, which filled the air with a marvelous scent. As for Sivila, she was lying on the synthetic carpets, sheepskins, and Chinese-made blankets that had been heaped on the left half of her abode. She was an older woman with a swarthy, Mongolian face and deep, black eyes. She was wearing a Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt. The birth had clearly been difficult, but her tender feelings, which were only accentuated by the thick layer of makeup caked on her face, prevailed over her exhaustion. Her daughter was lying next to her, swaddled in a German down blanket with her tiny face poking out, snoring through her miniature nose. The first gifts brought by her many visitors were in a pile next to Sivila's daughter on the blanket—there were silver Chinese coins, a silver (though not new) Parker pen, a silver glove with an embroidered FC Shakhtar Donetsk emblem on it, and a little silver spoon with some meticulously engraved runes on both sides. Karolina slipped by the crowd of well-wishers, leaned over Sivila, touched the new mother's cheek lightly, and took a silver army token (which could supposedly ward off snipers' bullets) out of her pocket, adding it to the other gifts. Sivila nodded appreciatively, and Karolina returned to her spot. Then the woman who was sitting on top of the stove, tossing grass into the flames, hopped down, bent over the fire, and inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with smoke. She headed over to the newborn and exhaled white, smoky air over the girl's head, so that she even smiled in
her sleep. The rest of the nomads smiled with her, and so did I. Karolina, touching my elbow, couldn't help but laugh. Meanwhile, the woman who'd breathed the smoke over the baby's head sat down and began speaking to her.