The Color of Rabbits

I think I’m in Asia, but there’s no way to tell for sure. There was no grand ceremony marking the epic milestone that this beast of steel and iron officially crossed the boundary dividing Europe with its gigantic distant relative to the East. No voice calling out over the intercom (not that I would have entirely understood it anyhow) that the known, more or less civilized world had been abandoned in our wake and we were now, like it or not, subjects to the exotically barren expanse of the Siberian tundra, in all its romantic, intimidating mystery.

Asia could use a welcoming sign. Nebraska has a welcoming sign. They even include a fun fact about the state’s character on the sign greeting drivers eastbound from Colorado: “Welcome to Nebraska: the Arbor Day State.” Its a genius of a sign, actually, because there are, everyone knows, no trees in Nebraska and thus, one would presume, no apparent reason for the entire state being named after a day that exonerates the deciduous. It may screw with your mind but it’ll at least give you something perplexing to think about; the alternative being suicide by sudoko, which some road-weary passengers have been driven to in maddening attempts to ease the boredom of the tortuous drive across Interstate 80.

No ceremony, no announcement, no sign. But I’m over it.

Asia. I’ve gotta be in Asia by now.

If I hold onto the luggage rack and twist my neck down and to the side, I can make out vague shadows blurring and bouncing and—damnit that was my f*#@ing[1] head hitting the window—darting in and out of view, depending on the angle of light sprayed out ahead and behind and above us from a platform lamppost or half moon reflecting. Snoring, footsteps and soft chatter are drowned out by the constant opening and closing of the door to the bathroom, which is conveniently positioned directly at the foot of my bed/rock-hard sleeping platform. The background noise behind it all is the ceaselessly erratic grinding of steel on steel occurring somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet below me, mixed with an occasional but far too regular jolting smash of a misaligned rail, alarmingly yet vainly calling into question the workmanship of the tracks themselves (were we actually airborne just there?), of which the worrying about is merely another mildly curious attempt to pass the time.

The foothills of the Urals and a brief pitstop at the train station in Yekaterinburg have been the highlights of the past hour. At a kiosk on the station’s main platform, I bought a beer (Baltica 3) and a carton of the Russian equivalent of Ramen noodles[2]. I ate the noodles and drank the beer on the bench in the semi-enclosed compartment I was sharing with five Russians. The bench has now been converted into a bed for Yana, a 26-year old lawyer by degree who is now scribbling notes in a Czech dictionary so she can better understand her Slovakian fiancé who she met at a New Year’s party nearly six months earlier while on vacation in Prague. Across from her sits Aleona, a 20-year old tourism student at a university in Petersburg (I couldn’t catch which one), just finishing up her 3rd year away from her family and just now heading home to the Siberian city of Irkutsk for the first time. My previous companion on the upper bunk across from me, Jhoura, who had just graduated in politics from Moscow State University, left us a few hours ago in Perm, replaced now with a short, mustached man in a light blue, oily button-up shirt who looks like a car mechanic and hasn’t said a word since hoisting himself up into the bunk upon arrival. Across the walkway, a middle-aged woman is tucking her four-year-old daughter into her sheets on the top bunk. I have not spoken to either mother or daughter yet, and I’m slightly terrified in engaging the four-year-old in conversation, lest my guise as a semi-fluent Russian speaker be uncovered by a toddler’s question about the color of rabbits.

“Hi.”

“Hello, little girl. How are you?”

“Good. What color are rabbits?”

“Ahh, yes.”

“---“

“Hmm?”

“Rabbits? I’m coloring rabbits.”

“Ohhh-kay...”

“What color are they?”

“Umm, flowers? You like flowers?”

(Giggling) “No, color. Of rabbits!” (Laughing hysterically)

“Ohh, color! Ha. Yes, yes. Color… my favorite color is green! What’s yours?”

(Rolling on the ground, uncontrollably laughing) “Rabbits, silly! HAHAHAHA!”

“Hmm. Haha. Yes. I have no idea what you are saying.”

At this point the whole car will join in rip-roaring laughter and frolicking through the hallways at the silly American who doesn’t know what rabbits are. It will be terrifying. I will have to jump from the train in the middle of Siberia. How far does one need to walk to find a town out in the middle of Siberia? If I was still in Eastern Europe, there’d be a chance. There’s trains and towns and taxis and haggard old grandmothers with hearts of gold that would take me in and cook warm pel’meni and greshka and adopt me as a second son to their only child who has been away as a sailor in the Russian Navy, stationed in St. Petersburg. At least I know a bit about Eastern Europe. But I’ve crossed. I’m in Asia. Surely, this is what Asia is like. I will be stranded in the wilderness and will need to fend off wolves and bears with a crossbow I will construct out of pine cones and tree sap. My beard will grow long and no one will know what has happened because no one is expecting to hear word from me until the end of this train ride, seven days from now. I will wander the endless expanses of secluded forests, hunting squirrels and gophers and—and rabbits! And then I will remember this twisted, demonic little four-year-old girl and I will be rejuvenated in spirit and will vow to track her down. I’ll find a caravan of gypsies and I’ll get them to bring me down through Kazahkstan, after several years in the process of becoming a gypsy myself, then they will smuggle me into a freight container full of wheat grains bound for Pakistan through the Indus River. There I’ll disguise myself as a fisherman and win a fishing vessel from a rug dealer in a high stakes poker game in the dark underground poker rings of Islamabad. I’ll bet my life as an indentured servant and he’ll bet the fishing vessel and I’ll win with just three queens. I’ll take the boat and hire a sidekick who calls himself Johnny after rescuing him from a footrace pursuit with the Pakistani police. Indebted to me for saving his life, together Johnny and I will sail undetected past Iranian pirates and U.S. submarines in the Red Sea up into the Mediterranean. We’ll sell the vessel to a merchant in Istanbul and hitchhike in the back of a Turkish immigrant-smuggling semi-truck all the way back to Moscow, where I will find this girl after hacking into the former KGB intelligence mainframe from the rooftop of the huge toy store across the street. I’ll find her at the cyber café at Moscow State University, chatting to friends and sipping a cappuccino with her black leather Gucci purse, four-inch leather print heals and hair pulled up tight in a twisted, stylized bun.

I’ll find her and I’ll say, “Tsaiytsii.”

Rabbits.

Ah, yes. That’s the word.

“And they are brown.”


[1] For my inaugural footnote, I’d like to direct attention to the restraint shown in the self-imposed censorship on profanity I have decreed for this work out of respect for the millions of children this book will inspire while it is read aloud to Kindergarten classes the world over. You can thank me later.

[2] Of particular note on the circuits of worldly travel is the universality of plain, just-add-hot-water blocks of noodles which are available for purchase in just about every grocery store, train station kiosk or street vendor from London to Singapore; the taste of which varies little yet each has a corresponding quality befitting its extreme thriftiness, making this style of noodle extremely popular among broke college students and backpackers alike. The sight of a broke college student on a backpacking trip must be a goldmine to noodle vendors.