by Tim Ewins
‘It was a classic different-class romance,’ Valter said proudly. He’d clearly said this line many times before. ‘We spent the night talking,’ he said, ‘and it turns out that what Saga lacked in money, she made up for in dreams. Beautiful dreams of distant lands and new cultures.’
‘And here we are,’ Saga cut in. ‘You see how it was fate?’
Ladyjan wasn’t convinced that this was what fate was – convenience, maybe, but not fate. Valter and Saga both seemed happy though and Ladyjan was distinctly aware that they had found her and Manjan on their boat and taken them along on their adventure. They could have thrown her and Manjan in the sea. She smiled politely.
‘Fate,’ she said.
* * *
Manjan, eyes half-closed, with two Prince Polo bars in hand, walked straight past Ladyjan, Valter and Saga. Three more carriages down, without looking, he slumped into what he believed was his chair. The Polish lady next to him stared at him for a few seconds before he noticed.
‘That’s my brother’s chair,’ she said in Polish. ‘Who are you? Get up.’ Again, this was in Polish.
Manjan didn’t understand her words but he understood her tone and panicked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he shouted in English. ‘Where is Jan? Where is Valter and Saga? I thought you were Jan.’ Again, this was in English. As it happened, the Polish lady did look a little bit like Ladyjan. She was slightly older, mid twenties, and to Manjan at least, infinitely more terrifying, but her hair, eyes and complexion were, descriptively at least, of a similar ilk.
‘Get up, get up,’ the Polish lady shouted, still in her native tongue. Both voices were now raised but neither could understand the other. The lady picked up her bag and rummaged through it for her ticket. Maybe the boy next to her would understand that it was her name, Alaina, written next to her and her brother’s allotted seat number. She took the ticket out, but then continued to rummage. Then she rummaged some more. Her passport had gone.
‘Look, I’m sorry, you can’t sit there,’ she said eventually, ‘there’s bound to be another chair somewhere, but you can’t sit there.’ Of course, Manjan still couldn’t understand what the lady was saying, but he could see that she was flustered.
There didn’t seem to be any way of resolving this. Either the lady needed to use English, or he needed to attempt to use Polish. He thought for a second before saying the only Polish word he knew.
‘Prince Polo,’ he shouted, ‘Prince Polo!’ There was silence across the carriage. Between them they’d caused quite a scene. The lady looked at the two Prince Polo bars in Manjan’s hand and then back up to his face. Manjan looked at the bars too and then back to the lady. ‘Prince Polo,’ he said much quieter than before. The lady nodded once slowly, calming down.
‘Prince Polo,’ she agreed.
It was admittedly limited, but they’d found a level on which they could communicate. Not sure what else to say, Manjan turned his statement into a question.
‘Prince Polo?’ he asked. The lady contemplated this, before nodding again.
‘Prince Polo,’ she confirmed, with her hand out. Manjan gave her both bars, quickly stood up and stumbled back down the carriage.
* * *
‘Where have you been?’ Ladyjan asked as Manjan threw his body down on the chair next to her. ‘Where’s my…’
‘I lost you,’ Manjan interrupted.
Ladyjan wanted to tell Manjan about how Valter and Saga had met. She wanted to laugh about it with him, but Valter and Saga were sitting opposite so she would have to wait.
‘You’ve been gone for ages,’ she said instead.
‘Jan even went to look for you,’ Saga interrupted, nodding at Ladyjan, ‘but she couldn’t find you.’ Ladyjan blushed, and fleetingly looked at her passport-shaped pocket.
Manjan told Ladyjan how, after he’d bought the chocolate bars, he’d met a Polish lady in a different carriage. He told her how he’d sat with the Polish lady and communicated with her on a different level. He said it was on a level which he’d never communicated with anyone before. This was strictly true. An old American traveller with a moustache a couple of rows back tutted and shook his head.
‘Wow,’ Ladyjan said, impressed.
Sensing that he was turning red, Manjan looked out of the window. A group of young wild boar picked up their heads on hearing the train, and ran through a clearing towards a group of trees.
‘I’m glad you found us,’ Ladyjan said eventually.
‘I was bound to find you,’ Manjan blushed, still looking out of the window, ‘we’re on a train.’
‘But it’s a big train,’ Ladyjan replied sarcastically, ‘and you found us. It must be fate.’ She giggled, although no one but she got the joke. Saga’s eyebrows raised in the middle while her lips made an ‘aw’ shape.
Manjan could still see one of the wild boars between the trees but it wasn’t running. The boar obviously thought it was better hidden than it was.
Ladyjan wondered how to tell Manjan, Valter and Saga that, just occasionally, and mainly at country borders, she would like to be called Alaina. She placed her hand on Manjan’s forearm.
‘Jan,’ she said. After a moment Manjan turned to face her. ‘Where’s my Prince Polo?’
17
A friend
Goa, India. 2016.
‘Valter?’ Shakey exclaimed. ‘Saga?’ he exclaimed again.
Manjan looked at him, annoyed. Did he want to hear the story or not?
‘You’re just giving me a list of people you made friends with years ago!’
Manjan agreed that he had made friends with Valter and Saga years ago, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still friends with them. Shakey looked to his right and then he looked to his left. ‘I’m sure they’ll be here any minute,’ he muttered sarcastically.
Here is a list of just some of Shakey’s friends:
1. Shakey’s mum and dad
Shakey wouldn’t admit this to his other friends on this list, but his mum and dad were probably his best friends. His dad was fun, his mum was loving and between them they’d always ‘had his back’. He was very aware that he wouldn’t be in India without them (they paid), and if he had never come to India he would never have known the real him (the sand). And besides, he’d known them the longest – probably longer than he’d known anyone.
Actually, there is one friend in this list who Shakey might mention his closeness with his parents to, but more on that later.
2. Mad Norman
Mad Norman was one of Shakey’s closest friends from back home. His real name was Norman and no one really knew where the ‘Mad’ had come from. When Shakey had first met Mad Norman, Mad Norman had said, ‘Hi, I’m Mad Norman,’ to which Shakey had replied ‘Norman doesn’t sound that mad.’
Mad Norman got this response a lot when he introduced himself to people and it made him more than a little annoyed. In fact, it made him mad. This, according to Mad Norman was where the ‘Mad’ had come from – his displeasure at people not thinking Norman was a mad-enough name. Shakey wasn’t sure whether the name had created Mad Norman or Mad Norman had created the name. Mad Norman wasn’t sure either. It was all a bit chicken-and-egg.
3. The girl vest
Shakey had made friends with a few female vests since coming to India, but there was one in particular worth mentioning. They’d met on a fishing trip. As Shakey remembered it, they’d chatted before he’d thrown his rod overboard in a fit of passion and kissed her. She was beautiful, and she was clearly impressed, both by Shakey’s bicep and his travelling skills. They’d spent the remainder of the fishing trip laughing and kissing. When they left the fishing boat, though, Shakey was told in no uncertain terms that he had to pay for the rod he’d lost. He was told that he was a ‘stupid tourist’ and he could ‘kissy kissy somewhere else’. The girl vest had watched all of this and Shakey had
secretly left the group shortly after when she wasn’t looking. He hasn’t seen her since and he doesn’t know her name.
Remember I said that there is one friend on this list that Shakey might mention his closeness with his parents to? The girl vest is that one friend, but only if he thought it might impress her.
4. Zen
Shakey met Zen during his first day on the beach. Shakey thought Zen was the coolest person he had ever met. Her hair was tied up in short, messy dreadlocks and she knew how to do fire poi. She talked at length about fascists, why capitalism is bad and why Topshop is good. Zen and Shakey had hung out a few times on Palolem and Shakey felt sure that they’d remain friends back in England.
Zen’s actual name was Sarah but Shakey didn’t know that. Her dreadlocks would be shaved off before she started her business technology course next year but Shakey didn’t know that either. Although Zen thought capitalism was bad, Sarah could see the benefits – especially with the job opportunities she hoped her course would provide. Zen would not exist in England and Sarah and Shakey would not be friends there, but Shakey didn’t know that.
5. Manjan
Manjan was not like Shakey’s other friends for many reasons. For starters, he was a moustache. A very moustache-y moustache at that . Not only was he set in his ways, grumpy and judgemental but he did actually have a huge, wine-doused moustache. He was forty-six years older than Shakey, and although Shakey had repeatedly told other people who were his age that he believed that people of all ages, genders and races could be friends, he’d never actually made friends with a sixty-four-year-old before. Manjan didn’t claim to be ‘mad’ or ‘mental’ like Norman did, and he certainly wasn’t cooler than Shakey in the same way that Zen was. He had insulted Shakey’s intelligence repeatedly and he clearly looked down on Shakey, but he’d also bought him a drink, listened to Shakey’s nonsensical ‘found myself’ speech and was now laying bare his whole life. Maybe he’d even come to the Silent Disco. Maybe. Shakey would almost certainly not feature on a list of Manjan’s friends but Manjan fitted quite nicely on the list of just some of Shakey’s.
‘I guess, one day, when you tell other people about Ladyjan, I’ll be in the story too,’ Shakey said happily.
Manjan pushed the now chilled sand forward with his feet. He chuckled, but not in a mean way, and let out a sigh.
‘Oh gosh, no,’ he said.
18
A pawn
Moscow, Russia. 1972.
Manjan placed his rook diagonally from Saga’s king.
‘Checkmate,’ he said confidently.
‘I don’t think it is,’ Saga laughed. Valter gave Manjan a sympathetic smile. They’d agreed that they should learn something Indian before actually getting to India and Saga had suggested chess. Valter already played so he’d been teaching Manjan, Ladyjan and Saga since Rostov-on-Don, their first stop after Poland. They were now in Moscow and Manjan still wasn’t grasping it. Saga moved her knight.
‘You’ve lost your queen,’ she smiled, tapping her fingers together mockingly.
‘No I haven’t,’ Manjan replied, a little too certain of himself as he moved a pawn in the way of her knight, ‘my pawn’s in your way.’
‘But knights can jump.’ Saga looked at Valter to check she was right and Valter nodded. She picked up Manjan’s queen and circled it in the air before placing it next to her gathering of Manjan’s pieces. ‘You’ve lost your queen,’ she said again.
They’d been waiting in Moscow for several weeks. In another seven days they would be boarding a plane to Kathmandu before driving down to the Nepal-India border. Ukraine had seemed pleasant enough, although they’d only seen it through the train window while they’d travelled for two days straight.
The more Manjan had relaxed around Ladyjan during the journey, the more she had found him to be funny, charming and endearingly stupid. She liked his inquisitiveness of people and enjoyed watching him as he’d listen at length to Valter and Saga’s stories. For hours he’d ask questions about them and about Sweden. He’d got into full discussions with other passengers about their lives and the countries they’d lived in too. He had even asked the Polish train conductor about Sweden in a stupid (endearingly stupid, in fact) error. When the Polish train conductor said that he’d never visited Sweden, Manjan had suggested that he should talk to Valter and Saga, who could tell him all about it, which they did, with Manjan listening intently all over again.
What Ladyjan liked most, though, was the way that Manjan listened to her. He seemed infinitely interested in her. What were her parents like? Where had she been in Sweden? What was her favourite food, colour, music? Where would she like to visit? Manjan asked her everything that could be asked with an eager attentiveness that flattered Ladyjan.
But it also scared her.
Ladyjan was used to hiding from attention. She was a thief, after all, and thieves succeed best when they are hidden. Luckily, people don’t usually want to see a thief anyway, which makes hiding and thieving that much easier.
‘Move your pawn,’ Ladyjan said to Saga, before receiving an approving nod from Valter. Saga moved one of her two remaining pawns.
‘Checkmate?’ she asked.
‘Checkmate,’ Valter confirmed.
‘Yes, checkmate!’ Ladyjan cheered, looking directly at Manjan.
* * *
Manjan didn’t realise it when it was happening, but he had become everything he had dreamt of in Fishton. He was moving from country to country with two, new, older and more sophisticated friends plus a beautiful girl by his side (although he could only really refer to her as a friend, too). He’d tasted new food (Prince Polo bars) and learnt new things (how not to play chess). In short, Manjan was a traveller.
The group had made a fair few stops since Rostov-on-Don. Rostov-on-Don itself was simultaneously the dustiest and neatest place Manjan had ever visited. It was in Rostov-on-Don where Manjan finally understood what his mother had meant when she’d ranted about the difference between tidying his room and cleaning it.
They’d taken a bus to Voronezh from Rostov-on-Don, passing green Russian countryside and driving along dangerous track roads. It felt like (and in fact was) thousands of miles away from Manjan’s little Fishton life. The city of Voronezh itself was wide and open. The few buildings looked old and worn, the streets were crooked, and the majority of the cars coughed as they drove. Valter hired one of the coughing cars in Voronezh and together they set off to Moscow, stopping at several villages for repairs on the way.
‘Hello,’ Valter had said, at the last village they visited, ‘our car has a flat tyre.’ He and Ladyjan had left the car to seek help from a group of people eating next to a water well. The group, who were mostly middle-aged men, looked blankly at them.
‘Have you got a pfff pfff?’ Manjan shouted from the back of the car, recognising the familiar blank expressions of a language barrier. He mimicked the action of pumping up a tyre when he said ‘pfff pfff’, by holding an imaginary pump in his left hand and pretending to pump it with his right hand.
‘That didn’t look like a pump,’ Ladyjan joked, looking back to the car.
‘Yes, have you got a pfff pfff?’ Valter repeated, copying Manjan’s actions. Most of the villagers flinched at each ‘pfff’ and one shouted something angrily in Russian.
‘Pfff pfff,’ Valter said again, raising the intonation of the last ‘pfff’ to imply a question mark. Again, the villagers flinched.
The tallest man in the group ran towards a building behind him while the shouter shouted something in Russian again. Seconds later the tall man reappeared, yelling ‘pfff pfff’, striding forward with a powerful and threatening advance.
‘Run!’ Valter shouted to Ladyjan, ‘he’s got a gun,’ but when Valter turned around to run himself he could see that Ladyjan wouldn’t have heard him. She was already at the car swinging open the back door. Saga turned th
e ignition and the car coughed and cut out. Jumping up and down in a panic she turned it again. Again, the car coughed but nothing else. They were trapped. Valter jumped into the passenger seat as Saga repeatedly turned the ignition again and again, screaming words that she wouldn’t normally say.
The car coughed, then it choked, and then it coughed again. The tallest villager hit the bonnet and held up the gun. The car coughed, then it growled, then the engine turned over and then it purred (the sort of purr that a cat with a serious illness might make, but a purr nonetheless).
As they drove away, they heard a small explosion behind them, and then silence. No one said anything. Saga held on tight to the steering wheel, biting her lip, and Valter held on tight to his door and Saga’s leg. In the back seats Manjan and Ladyjan found themselves holding on tight to each other.
After eight whole minutes the silence was broken.
‘What was the explosion?’ Valter asked. Saga looked at him.
‘You didn’t recognise it?’ she said. ‘We’ve popped another tyre.’
By the time they’d reached Moscow the car had two flat tyres, no windscreen wipers and only one working door. At the car drop-off point they all piled out of the one working door and in front of one of the men who worked at the garage. He did not look happy.
‘What do I owe you?’ Valter asked, expecting to be extorted but aware that he was the only one of the four with enough money to pay for the damages. The unhappy man shrugged his shoulders.
‘Cars,’ he said, ‘what are you going to do?’
‘Let me know how much,’ Valter offered again, reaching for his wallet in a way that Ladyjan found very unattractive and Saga found very attractive.
‘You paid when you pick car up?’ the unhappy man asked in a gruff Russian accent.
‘We did, but...’ Valter started.
‘Then you get me coffee and,’ he paused as if he were thinking about something, ‘and then we are even. Come. I know a place.’
Valter ordered five black coffees although there wasn’t much of a choice. The shop consisted of a counter, a Soviet Union flag, a shelf and a single pot of coffee. There was a pay phone next to the toilet and a Russian sign that Valter assumed to mean ‘do not use this toilet’.
