In which I say goodbye to Russia

I find myself back in Moscow after a four day straight train journey (the funniest part of which was being summoned for a photo with the train crew because on hearing I was writing a book they assumed…well, I don't know what really but God knows what newsletter that's ending up in). Tomorrow I'll take the plane (via Zurich) back to London and so, I find myself at the end of my Russian journey having met hundreds of people, eaten around 87 beetroot salads and taken about 10 trains but for very long distances indeed.

I don't think I've mentioned before how magnificent the trains are here but they are - old and dignified with pleasingly kitsch buffet cars (think dollies, plastic flowers) and stern attendants who roam the aisles with miniature vacuum cleaners hunting errant crumbs. The train rocks you as you write or read or watch the endless ribbon of Siberia unfurl outside the window, Russian passengers offer their bread or teabags for a cup of tea and you sit opposite, chew and smile at one another in a companionable silence. The trains can be fearsomely hot though, and I am always on the upper berth, hunched over a notepad, sweating through my clothes and planning when I will next do the gymnastics it will require to get down to the samovar or toilet.

On my two day journey from Omsk to Irkutsk for various reasons we were only able to get off the train once for a few minutes. I stepped down onto the platform, feeling my bones and muscles stretch out, the breeze finally cooling me down. I bought a chocolate-chip ice-cream from the kiosk, listened to the hisses and cranks of our resting train, the chatter or the other passengers and watched the sun setting behind the mint green station. It was a perfect moment, and just at that perfect moment I looked down and there was a big shiny black horsefly on my calf, a purple bruise already spreading on the skin around it. I flicked the fly off and a large drop of blood ballooned from the centre of the discoloured skin. I finished my ice-cream (obviously) but the moment was gone – I was too busy worrying about whether it might have carried some sort of indigenous horsefly disease.

 

I tell this story because it is the best way I can describe the mixture of emotions I have experienced here on my journey from Moscow to Siberia, West to East and then the long, long journey West again. It has been a constant shift between hard then easy, enjoyable then shitty, life affirming then incredibly frustrating – it has been all of these things, often within hours of each other. But as my wise (and beautiful) partner said to me, enjoying it was hardly the point and of course, she was right.

I'll return home with a 2nd draft Thirst and knowledge of Russia without which it would have been impossible to complete the novel. I leave feeling confident I have everything I need either already on the page or bubbling away for future use. Thankfully Thirst is not a novel about Russia because if it were my journey would barely have scratched the surface of what I needed to know, but for Dave and Alena's journeys I have more than enough. I can return home and finish this novel and weave all I have seen and heard and experienced through its pages. I am so, so grateful for this journey, the good times, the difficult times and all the ice-cream cones in between. Now, I'm taking these travelling feet home to Hackney.  

 

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