LITMIR.BIZ

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movement would create an abominable rustle. With the feeling that Ollie and I had taken way more than we could give, I resolved to get up early, whether I’d slept or not, and get out. I wanted out. My train to Ulan-Ude was the next night at 1am; I would deal with the day alone. I had to nurse my crumbling emotional landscape in private. Bereft, lonely, empty, I pined for The Emperor. Ollie’s friendship had so persuasively concealed the void within, but now they were both far away, I so craved what I couldn’t have. Wanting what was out of reach—it was so predictable.

      22ND OCTOBER

      A text from Ollie: ‘The air stewardess just had to rip a hidden can of beer out of the hands of the man on the plane seat in front of me because he’s drinking before take-off. He looks like Rumpelstiltskin and she looks like Sharon off Eastenders. Quite a tug of war. Niet. Da. Niet. Da…’

      I sat up in bed, stiff like the floorboards responsible for my aches. Behind me, I could hear that Ravil was awake, scrolling through his mobile—it felt strange that he hadn’t acknowledged the new day and said good morning. I offered my salutations, and packed up in paranoid silence for a hasty exit. I now felt completely naked.

      ‘Are you hungry? I suppose you are,’ Ravil said kindly.

      I supposed I was. Breakfast was Mama’s cold beef stew and boiled potato. Halfway through, Ravil put his in the microwave without inviting me to follow suit, so I went along with the cold version, as if it were just how I liked it. I found a hair in amongst the potatoes, covered it with another potato and announced myself full. Instead of eating, I mined him for travel tips on Kazakhstan.

      ‘Kazakhstan is extreme,’ he said, with finality.

      I tried to look unfazed, like a real traveller.

      ‘It’s extremely hospitable but extremely poor. I only travel with what I need.’

      I felt vulnerable.

      My sister once locked our new puppy in a room with the old cat, so that they could get to know each other. Couchsurfing’s forced friendships reminded me of her experiment. Like cats and dogs, Ravil and I were similarly opposed. As he accompanied me to the station’s left luggage hall, he seemed happy in contemplation (or social retirement). I, however, needed to feign some kind of social order, so I babbled away about London life: politics, the underground, Russian oligarchs—wasn’t this couchsurfing’s cultural exchange? His standard response was an impregnable ‘mm-mm’. Sometimes I’d repeat myself, thinking he was saying ‘pardon’, only to get another ‘mm-mm’. But I blundered on, because wasn’t it worse to be both needy and mute?

      Left luggage passed without incident, and he sent me off in the right direction for a day of organisation in Ravil’s preferred Wi-Fi zone, KFC.

      ‘I feel a bit stressed,’ I confessed, my voice cracking.

      ‘At least you are stressed,’ he replied, wisely.

      I forcibly hugged him, squeezing out all of the human contact I could, and turned away quickly. It was time to leave, yet I wasn’t ready to be alone. While Ollie was returning to London to look after his limb, I felt like I’d lost one. Like an unfledged chick flung out of the nest, I suddenly felt all alone.

      I had the number for Nick, another local couchsurfing host who was, according to his references, ‘the coolest dude in Novosibirsk’ (Ollie and I had requested his couch, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be in town for the ‘third decade of October’). I invited him to KFC for a junk-food hit. Meanwhile, I spent the day online, trying to feel connected. I broadcast the news of Ollie’s departure to all, and begged for reinstatement of communications with The Emperor. I felt too feeble to try and move on—I needed that lifeline. He wrote straight back, offering to come out, as a friend, as ‘whatever’. But couchsurfing wasn’t for everyone, and it wasn’t for him. He was way too uncompromising and dominant; he was, after all, The Emperor. Right in the middle of KFC, I wept great streams of longing. I wanted to go home, but defeat was inadmissible. It wasn’t as if I were the world’s first solo explorer. Perhaps couchsurfing would look after me, as I bounced across Asia on lily pads of hospitality, falling into the arms of kind hosts. At least that was the hypothesis.

      Ollie, meanwhile, was sending live feeds from London. He’d gone directly to his consultant, who said things weren’t as bad as they’d seemed: the abscess would have eventually burst outwards, into the air, rather than inwards, poisoning his blood. Not so bad? That wouldn’t have been our response in the Mongolian wilderness. He’d have to have the titanium removed at a later stage, and, for the time being, have consultations every other day. His doctor had found seaweed stuffed into the holes the Russians had made in his leg, a pub gem best known after the event when all is well. Under strict instructions to rest up, Ollie was going to be surfing his own sofa for a while. We were both miserable.

      Well, what do you know? Donagh, the Irish architect we’d met in Moscow, walked into KFC as the couchsurfing guest of Nick, a Shrinky-Dinked Russian graphic designer with long blond dreads, a goatee and earrings.

      ‘Ach, you’re no more vulnerable here than in real life,’ reassured Donagh, once I’d poured my story all over them in one breathless torrent.

      I secretly leant on Donagh and Nick, vampirically milking their positivity and wisdom. Donagh had been surfing since Moscow: ‘So that people can take me to bars,’ he explained, cradling a pint of KFC beer. ‘I don’t want to stay in alone reading my book—Russia isn’t very friendly to outsiders but couchsurfers are leftist enough to open the door.’

      Nick was one such specimen. ‘I’ve had thirty or forty people at my place since June,’ he said. ‘And I’d host someone for long time if they’re in a special situation, like trying to get a job.’

      There were people who surfed for a whole year, they told me, and there was ‘over-couchsurfing’. Donagh recounted how one Russian girl in Moscow extended a two-week stay to a year because she didn’t want to pay the capital’s high rents. But her host—Russia’s legendary Country Ambassador—turned it to his advantage, essentially using her as his PA. This was the alternative economy.

      For the first time I felt part of something bigger: the couchsurfing community. We were strangers, yet we had an instant bond: we all shared similar experiences and principles. What’s more, Donagh had met Yvonne in Yekaterinburg, and would be in Beijing at the same time as me. I was on a couchsurfing trail! That might devalue the concept for some, but for me, the discovery was a happy one—this was a mobile community. And I saw couchsurfing through other, more experienced, eyes: I realised that Ollie and I had been muddling along in the dark. Nick and Donagh gave me a frame of reference.

      For two hours, my loneliness had been suspended. At 11.30pm, Nick and Donagh saw me off to the station. Blessed by serendipity and topped up with kindness, I felt emotionally nourished. My hypothesis was looking promising.

       CHAPTER 5 ULAN-UDE: TO HEALTH! TO LOVE! TO VODKA!

      A colossal, cabbagey babushka was cradling a potato sack like a baby. The potato sack shook to reveal the wiry, grey head of a small mutt. A defeated and dusty old man—in pitch-perfect Chekhovian tragedy—held his troubled brow in bloodied, swollen hands. A grubby street urchin shamelessly prodded the shoulders of every man, woman and child in his way, holding out his artful hands. I was at Novosibirsk station, waiting for my forty-hour train to Ulan-Ude. Without Ollie, I was en garde. Without Ollie, I realised, I was engaged—Russia had come alive. What I found reminded me to count my blessings.

      In my cramped cabin, two Russian workers had already claimed the emotional space. Wrung out, I meekly clambered on to the top bunk and attempted to hibernate. My tears seemed to have given me a cold: I sneezed. ‘Bud zdorova [bless you],’ said one of the workers, gruffly. I looked down. He was wearing an unconvincing black nylon wig; the other had a heavy Scouser ’tache and kind eyes. ‘Chai?’

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