Voroshilovgrad Read online

  It was hard to say just how many people were in this camp; the fires seemed to reach all the way out to the horizon, and all the voices were blending into a tense hum, as at a railway station. Nobody paid any attention to me: apparently, they didn’t find outsiders suspicious. The three kids who had led me there took me to one of larger fires and ran off. The men sitting there were speaking some Asian language, no doubt discussing the pressing Mongolian issues of the day, and giving no outward sign of either hostility or welcome. I stepped away from this group and headed farther into the camp. It was obvious that they intended to leave at any moment—their things were packed: pots and pans, wooden furniture, toys, and drums all tucked away under the tents. I saw bicycles parked on the outskirts of the camp. The flags of some unknown republics were flying over the camp, blending in with the dark landscape. And yet the ground by the tents was well-trodden—however temporary this stopover, they had been hanging out here for quite a while, though the real mystery was how they’d gotten here and how they intended to continue their journey, since there weren’t any cars, buses, or trucks in sight. Maybe they were traveling by bike? Who knows?

  The women cast cheerful glances at me as they rushed by, though immediately dropped their heads again and continued on their way as soon as I took notice. Now and then I also began seeing what looked like servicemen, enlisted in some inexplicable army, wearing gray uniforms with uncanny insignia that meant nothing to me, ducking into and out of the tents. They too paid me no mind. Unsettled by something, they only ever looked up at the sky or at their watches. The tension was palpable in the camp; and I knew why this place had reminded me of a railway station: it was as if everyone was all ready to go, all packed up, hanging anxiously around the platform, but the train was running late, and no one knew why.

  One of the tents had a particularly large band of these nomads hanging around it: men, women, and children alike. The men were talking, the women yelling, the children bobbing around between them. Some dark-skinned teenagers stood off to the side, not daring to come any closer, while dogs sniffed at the men’s sneakers apprehensively. Even farther off I saw a couple of the men in military uniforms, a few bald-headed guys in long robes, and some old women holding bundled herbs and decked out in funky dresses. Everyone in this crowd was peering at the curtain covering the entrance to this particular tent. A light was glimmering in the window and aromatic smoke was coming out of an opening in the middle of its canvas roof. Something important was going on in there; perhaps the fate of this whole tribe hung in the balance? I was trying to squeeze my way closer to the entrance when somebody called out to me.

  “Hey, I know you.”

  I turned around and saw Karolina, wearing a gray camouflage top and high army boots. She had a black beret on her head, and dyed red dreads, robust and durable like nautical rope, poked out from its sides. She was holding a heavy flashlight and shining it straight in my eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “I work here,” she said.

  “I’m going home.”

  “Have you been on the road for a while?”

  “Yep, sure have. My train took off without me. I’ve been walking all day.”

  “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.

  “You, who arose from nothing,” she began, “and who came from nowhere, sweet like light and invisible like the night . . . Everything that has transpired around you—all the air you breathed through your mother’s pores, all the clouds that coasted by above you, and all the rocks resting beneath the ground—it all fits inside your dreamland. Everything that you’re now seeing in your sleep, everything you will engender when you wake, will serve you on this night; everything is circling overhead like stars spinning in emptiness. Incredible warmth rose off the rivers so that you wouldn’t freeze during your voyage. Grass sprouted out of the earth so you could tread across it, heading west. Animals followed your breath, warming the black womb of the night with the heat of their flanks, and spirits flew up above like swallows, seeking out a place of respite.

  Your head was created from the starry sky. Your right eye was created from rays of moonlight and your left eye was created from the yellow sun. Your teeth were created from comets and fallen stars. Your skin was molded from the October fog. Rain formed your lungs and your joyful heart beats on through the drought. Your arms grow out of the stems of bitter plants and juicy cornstalks shape your calves. When you open your eyes the moon waxes, when you close them fishermen’s boats sink. When you sigh, women touch the hair of solemnity and regret, and when you see the skies in your sleep, cows’ udders fill up with milk.

  Everyone who came to welcome you into this world, everyone who will follow you up and down mountain trails, now sings for you alone. They all have swallows hibernating below the roofs o
f their mouths, for we all have to persevere together, forging through the snow together, leading our animals across frozen rivers, shepherding endless throngs of animals, guiding them through the mountains, through deep winter nights, through cities buried under feet of snow, and across railroad tracks. Keep sleeping until the birds resting on weary men’s shoulders wake you. Keep sleeping until the hearts of those who love you stop beating. When you awake, the morning air will quicken and flow westward, taking with it all our desires and all the secret words we have spoken to you. When you awake, you’ll show us the way out of this barren land, you’ll draw us a long, narrow line that will lead us to all those from whom we once were parted.”

  When she finished, everyone got the message and started leaving the tent. Their excited friends and families awaited them outside. The woman who had spoken over the newborn was the last one out, and the group made room for her; she stood before all the other nomads, her attentive gaze enveloping each of them in turn. They were all anxious for her to say something.

  “She has golden eyes and swarthy skin,” the woman pronounced. “Since we’ve already reached this distant land, since we’ve already stopped over in this field, let her name be Moka.”

  A gust of hot wind rushed by after her announcement, rustling the women’s hair and knocking the men’s hats off. Then the women lifted their hands to the heavens and started shouting ecstatically, and the men threw their clenched fists into the black, October air, thanking the local spirits for their benevolence and forbearance and praising their newborn princess, Moka, their guardian, their ticket to Europe, the queen of the Mongols, the bearer of the FC Shakhtar Donetsk silver rings, the gold-eyed sleeping beauty who gave them all hope and faith.

  And amid all of these joyful cries, all this commotion, Karolina took my hand and tied a thin, red band around it.