A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (36 page)

Tayeb opened the door to the restaurant and slipped out of the kitchen.

‘How could you do this to me?’ The girl’s face was a mess of tears and mascara. Tayeb stood near the counter and watched. He could see that Nikolai was looking stressed, unusual for him. He tried to pull the girl’s arms down but she was furious, flailing. She swiped at a sprig of fake plastic flowers arranged on a table, knocked them on to the floor.

‘You told me you’d leave her, you told me you loved me, but you just left me like a bit of rubbish,’ she got hold of a chair as if to throw it.

Tayeb looked up and outside of the window saw a car pulling up. It was Nikolai’s wife. He shouted to Nikolai:

‘The Mondeo’s outside.’

Nikolai stood upright. He turned and looked at Tayeb who saw absolute fear in his eyes. The girl had sunk to the ground and was sobbing, stroking the carpet with her right hand. Tayeb walked over, got hold of her by the elbow and gently stood her up.

‘Come with me,’ he said, pulling her towards himself and she collapsed into him.

‘I’m going to be sick.’

He took her to the disabled toilets at the back of the restaurant and locked the door behind them. As soon as she saw the toilet she leaned over to release the remnants of a night’s drinking (these English girls drink so much) and above the sounds of the girl retching, he could hear Nikolai arguing with his wife about going home.

‘It’s the match, Sarah,’ he was saying. ‘I’ll be home as soon as it’s over. It’s the biggest one of the decade!’

Tayeb heard her voice, shrieking and upset.

‘The kids have not seen you for seven days, Nikolai.’

He must have moved her then, outside towards her car, because there was a muffled sound and then finally the reverberations of the engine pulling off. The girl slid to the floor and rested her head on the not-so-clean tiles behind her head.

She looked at Tayeb. ‘He’s a Greek–Cypriot wanker.’ Tayeb offered her a cigarette and she took it.

‘True,’ he said, lighting one for her and then one for himself. ‘I used to smoke in a toilet like this at home,’ he said. She looked at him. Like most English people, she did not bother to ask him where home was. She stared at the cigarette in her hand as if it were dynamite, but still continued to smoke it.

‘I shouldn’t be having this,’ she said.

Tayeb looked at her. Her hair, which was dank and sweaty from the exertion of being sick, stuck around her face and half covered her eyes. She had a face that was pretty by virtue of its youth rather than its inherent features. The skin was soft-looking, undisturbed as yet by weather or life; it was a milky face, and her clear eyes were shiny and healthy looking despite the alcohol in her system.

‘I’m pregnant, aren’t I?’ she said.

‘It’s Nikolai’s?’

‘Yep.’ She began to cry again, less hysterical this time, just like a child.

Tayeb put the toilet seat down, flushed it and pulled her up and sat her on it so that her hair was away from the unsanitary tiles. She really looked very young.

‘I shouldn’t be drinking either,’ she said, ‘but I am, I want to stop it, before it grows. You know?’ She looked up at him. ‘I need some money . . . to get . . . rid of it. Will you ask him for me? He won’t talk to me.’

Tayeb nodded, thinking that he should feel more, be gentler towards her, this girl in distress, but there was something about her that he disliked. Even so, he tried to be polite.

‘Why don’t you come out here, into the restaurant, and I’ll make you a coffee and go and see if I can get Nikolai to talk to you.’

She stood up, staggered a little and almost slipped down again. He caught her by the elbow and opened the door. Sitting her down at a table in the corner of the restaurant he went to find Nikolai who was standing with a glass of whisky in his hand, staring moodily up at the TV on the wall. The kitchen boys were subdued.

‘Nik,’ Tayeb said. Nikolai turned and walked towards him with a grim face. Tayeb gestured to the restaurant and left Nikolai to walk around and confront the girl.

The next day Nikolai had handed Tayeb a hundred pounds.

‘What’s that for?’ he said.

‘For, you know, helping me out, with Sarah and the . . . you know.’

‘Yalla, I don’t need this,’ he handed it back. ‘It’s that little girl you need to give money to, not me.’

Tayeb looked him in the eye. ‘She told me.’

Nikolai made a noise, like a snap with his fingers. A frustrated gesture.

‘It’s nothing to do with me. Look, it’s forgotten.’

Tayeb leaned down and gave Burdock a stroke. ‘Good dog.’

‘Listen,’ Nikolai said, ‘you saved me, keeping her out the way of Sarah. I appreciate it. If you ever need help, ever need anything, you come to me? OK?’

‘OK.’

‘I really mean it.’

‘OK.’

Now, here he was, all these years later, needing help, needing Nikolai, having walked in circles for years, getting nowhere like the traces and lines of one of his drawings that were supposed to become a whole but somehow never did. He hoped Nikolai meant what he said.

Breathlessness; Limit Mechanical:
Seated awheel, the bicyclist feels master of the situation. The bicycle obeys the slightest impulse, moving at will, almost without conscious effort, virtually as much a part of the rider, and as easily under control, as hand or foot.

35.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

October 8th

I have informed Mr Steyning that it is time for me to leave and that I must return to England as soon as possible. I insisted that I was suddenly consumed with a terrible guilt regarding my mother – which is not, actually, untrue – and, of course, he did not press me to stay. He simply looked helpful and responsive. What did I expect? I am appalled at my own stupidity.

We have examined the maps together and he has consulted various friends in town. Kindly, he took my hand in his and said, ‘The Inland Mission will look after you.’

‘You are very kind,’ I said, ‘but I can support myself. You’ve already done so much.’

‘Nonsense. I will arrange for a colleague to meet you in Moscow and you will be accompanied and assisted with the purchasing of tickets to Warsaw and Berlin, on to Paris. The final part will be the ferry from Calais to Dover.’

Perhaps it was my imagination but I fancy he looked wistful, for a moment, at the memory of Dover.

‘It will be an extraordinarily long journey for you, but we shall do our best to make it a pleasant one.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘I myself will accompany you to Chuguchak on the border, or, as the Chinese call it, “City of Seagulls”.’

I might have cried and as he gave me tea and saw to Ai-Lien, I almost spoke of my great foolishness. I could see clearly, then, that he was simply a good man and that I had misinterpreted all that had transpired between us, but he would never know, I hoped, and for that I am happy.

October 10th

There is much to prepare. The paperwork is endless and protracted. There are vast, difficult visa issues for the complex crossing from this region to Russia. I am waiting for my money from Mr Hatchett to be transferred as it is likely that bribery will be required. It is seven hundred li frum Urumtsi to Chuguchak and it is imperative that we depart soon because a little later and it will be too cold at night-time for this journey, but then, on the other hand, if I leave it too long and spring starts then the great thaw will occur, making the rivers treacherous and impassable for weeks. Now is just the right time.

There has been much discussion on the issue of Ai-Lien, my own foundling.

‘I intend to take her,’ I said to Mr Greeves and Mr Steyning. ‘Do you think this is possible?’

‘Indeed,’ Mr Greeves said, ‘I doubt any official here will care for the cost of her life on their hands, but are you sure?’

Mr Steyning put his hand on mine, ‘She was given to you, Miss English dear, for whatever reason. You belong together now.’

October 14th

Mr Greeves and Mr Steyning, as a farewell present, have given me a delightful Chinese toy, complete with opium den, a well and a market and a curious silver torture scene, all encased in a glass dome.

‘It doesn’t appear to be the most practical of presents, I fear,’ Mr Steyning had said, unwrapping it from several sheets of hessian, ‘but when you are back in England, you will look upon the scene in wonder that you have been here, and lived this life.’

He wound up the toy, and inside the glass, the figures moved in time to a clinky-clunky oriental melody. Then he lifted it up and showed me that underneath, the bottom of the wooden base slid open to reveal a secret compartment.

‘When you get to the border in Siberia, you will not be able to take over any books, letters, papers or photographs. If you hide them in here and claim it is a souvenir, that you are a tourist, then there is a hope that you will be able to make it across the border with a few of your artefacts intact, and indeed, your manuscript.’

The compartment has room for Lizzie’s camera, this diary and what I have begun as a manuscript for my Guide. Also, several other travelling companion books, dear Mrs Ward, and Burton. I have also put in Millicent’s Bible, some of Lizzie’s photographs and, although I cannot say exactly why I want to carry them all this way, some of Father Don Carlo’s translations. I have decided, also, to take the mimeograph machine with me. Whether it will make it across the border, I cannot say.

Mr Steyning has also helped me arrange the necessary paperwork for Ai-Lien. She needed to be registered and to have a passport, and so we undertook this.

‘You need to anglicise her name,’ he said and I tried out a few names. It seems odd to give her an English name, Ai-Lien, Alien. Love Bond. Ai-Lien sounds a little like Irene. Her mother’s name we were told that distant day, when we were sitting like buddhas at the Magistrates’ Court, had been Giyun. I took the fountain pen and on the passport papers I wrote her name as Irene Guy. Mr Steyning kindly paid the courts here the requisite sum and now she is officially my adopted daughter.

I kiss her all over, pretty little Irene, her face bright and open and sweet and now, such a miracle, she smiles at me.

October 16th

I am tormented by thoughts of Millicent in a jail underneath the Magistrates’ Court, her ribs poking through her skin; I think of Father Don Carlo, walking towards the Mohammedan riots in his long black robe, his Bible in his hand; and Lizzie, pecked by birds. Mr Steyning found me at the window of his study, looking down at the sleeping black city, mulling these things over. I told him a little of my troubles.

‘Is there a way, Mr Steyning, that we might try to discover Millicent’s fate in Kashgar? As the date of departure grows imminent I worry that I should not have left her.’

‘You need to look forward, now, Miss English. Move gently forward and it will become easier.’

‘I should have buried my sister somehow, Mr Steyning.’

‘It was not possible, from what you say.’

‘To leave this desert seems a profound betrayal, but if I stayed here, well . . . I do not think I can.’

‘I understand,’ he said.

October 30th

The first opportunity to write – so, we are travelling by Russian tarantass. It is a Siberian cart, much faster than the smaller spring carts, pulled by Chinese mules. The long trap is fastened to three ponies, each connected by a large hoop that is covered in bells, the jangling of which rings in my head until I might spin into madness.

We did not stay long in the colourful city of Manas where Mr Steyning bought me supplies and provisions to last me the next stage of the journey; we are now fifty li from Chuguchak.  These horses are solid beasts. Mr Steyning is firm with our Qazak driver and the journey, so far, passes well.

Ai-Lien is packed sweetly into a pillowcase which fixes either on to my front or back, and from which she can look around or sleep. The roads are fairly well trammelled and there is certainly a lot of traffic, carters and traders, sellers and travellers all on their own journeys, tramping back and forth. We met travellers from Novo Sibersk on their way to Kashgar carrying large quantities of opium (and even attempting to sell some to Mr Steyning!), also cotton traders and Qazak families and travelling vendors selling clusters of ginger, fennel, cardamom and cloves. At one point we encountered a group of Siberian monks who offered us
ikons
.

There are plenty of inns; finding accommodation each night is no trouble. In the interests of speed we survive on tea and bread in the day, then stew or rice or noodles in the evening. We occasionally stop to buy sheep’s milk or melon but otherwise we roll on and the edges of the earth have become unsteady and it is as if the desert floor might fall; I cannot understand the difference between the sky and the ground sometimes. Each li takes me further from my lost sister. The only thing that is clear is that, because of this baby, I must continue, onwards to an elsewhere place, though I can’t exactly remember why.

November 5th

It lives up to its name: the seagulls are here, flocked and collected. I understand that they have travelled a vast distance along the Irtish river, from the Arctic lands and certainly there is a breath from the Arctic in the air tonight: it is extremely cold, though not quite snow. Seagulls must be great travellers; they do not get bored, they do not sing low, or sad.