“There is vodka inside.”
The security guard is holding a small Russian doll in his gloved hand.
“100 ml. It’s a gift.”
The doll—with a miniature vodka bottle inside—made it through a worldwide security tour. It went from New York to Los Angeles and now it was in Beijing, looking at the world with the round, wide-open blue eyes, last stop before my final destination—Hong Kong.
“Russian.”
It never sounds like a question. It sounds like a verdict. They take one glance at me and—boom!—“Russian.”
One day, I will jump on a security desk, push the gray trays with sneakers and laptops on the floor and scream from the top of my lungs to the indifferent travelers adjusting their belts after a pat down.
“What is Russian?”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the floating airport communities, I ran away from Russia because it is a totalitarian hell ruled by a bloody dictator.
Is it my old passport that I usually keep in a Chinese lacquer box along with my American passport? It is illegal, by the way, to be a Russian and American citizen, yet everyone I know is doing it, traveling with two passports and no one gives a damn. Which brings me to a completely different question. What is illegal? And what is law? And what is an immigration law?”
The security guard frowns.
“I was,” I say and smile my meekest, most submissive, coquettish smile at the security guard. “American now. This vodka is a gift for actors. I am a writer and my story is being performed in Hong Kong. It is about how the Soviet government did not allow people to travel abroad, and the Iron Curtain. And how I dreamed to see the world and never thought it would be possible.”
He looks at me blankly. It might be stupid to say that. He is in China and it is a Communist country, after all. Is he allowed to travel? He doesn’t seem to care, just takes the vodka bottle and tosses it in a plastic bin with multi-colored lighters—red, blue, green—like jelly beans—and water bottles and hair foam.
I don’t mind. Vodka is nasty, anyway.
I sit down on a bench. The idea of the Russian doll is many more dolls inside, each one smaller than the other, nestling inside each other. Many use the Russian doll as a metaphor for various things: a mysterious Slavic soul, the meaning of life and things like that. This one, however, is hollow and you can put anything inside. I put Ghirardelli cherry-filled candies inside. I got a bag at home, in San Francisco, for gifts. I think that this suits me better. It is whatever you decide to put in the box, right?
I still remember flying with a big bottle of booze being a reality—before 9/11.
I am now on the plane Beijing—Hong Kong but I am thinking back, 9/11. I rarely tell anyone that I was supposed to fly on the plane that crashed.
Yes, I was booked to fly that day. I was in Russia. On September 11, I was booked to fly back Moscow—New York—Philadelphia—San Francisco because, as usual, I had little money, used mileage and this was the cheapest.
My mom’s birthday was September 12. There is a Russian superstition that the way you spend your birthday, the way you spend the whole year. I decided that if I see my mom that day, I will see her around the year. I changed the ticket. I am glad I did.
I didn’t fly anywhere for a week, of course. Like everyone else, my mom and I watched red-and-yellow flames, an arrow-like plane going through the glass-and-concrete like a knife through butter, again and again, and again. It didn’t feel like I just escaped death or anything that grandeur; there were suitcases and tickets to take care of. I didn’t think about it for years afterward.
My plane lands in Hong Kong.
The double-decker bus glides over the highway and into the dark bowl that is Hong Kong. I see it through the water drops on the windshield—is it raining or is it just humidity? Monoliths of the skyscrapers do not look real yet painfully familiar. My dreams look like this. Dense darkness, unfolding landscape, the murkiness of a computer game. Everything is so big yet people are so small. Like ants.
I exit at a bus stop number 5, “Water Street” and into the warm humidity. It smells like fried meat and pork. I scored a deal at Hotel Ramada on Expedia, after hunting for hostels with strangely nostalgic names—I’ve never been to this part of the world—Dragon Hostel, Chrysanthemum Hostel.
I don’t have much money. Like most writers, I work gigs to pay bills but I just can’t help but going even if I don’t have money. And, currently, I don’t have much. All I have left is three hundred dollars.
I enter a gloomy lobby and a Sphinx-like receptionist tells me the reservation is not until tomorrow.
“There must be some glitch in the system,” I say. “Please, double check.”
He double checks.
“The only room we have, ma’am, is our biggest room. It is three hundred dollars a night.”
“This is not possible,” I say.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
His face is like a mask. I look at my cell phone—dead.
“Do you have a computer I can use?”
“Tomorrow, at 7 am, ma’am.”
I walk out of there. I only have my backpack. My passport and one hundred fifty dollars are in the envelope around my neck, another one hundred fifty is stashed in my backpack.
I started to hide and divide cash after my passport, money and credit card got stolen in Barcelona one fine summer and I managed to persuade the airline to fly me to Paris. I spent three memorable nights homeless in Paris, stealing croissants off the café tables. I learned my lesson.
That’s what I am thinking as I am walking down the dark street towards a Marriot hotel. It is not clever. I am alone, female, blonde, first time in Hong Kong and it is one AM in the morning. The area looks seedy. I hear drunk singing from a bar. A man in a torn tank top and slippers is standing in front of a food stand that sells what looks and smells like fried bananas. I am hungry. He looks at me, whistles, and spits. I keep walking.
Marriott is four hundred dollars a night.
They send me to a hotel named something like Olympus. I imagine myself on Olympus with Greek and Chinese gods, eating fried bananas and something that smells like savory soup, and turn into a narrow alley as I was told. I see a folding bed, with a beach umbrella attached to it and a body in a sleeping bag. Looks like home—San Francisco.
I did it so many times—walked with my backpack through dark foreign cities, carefree, free. I wrote about it in my story. How we were not supposed to travel and see the world and how I managed to escape. Why it means so much—to wander the world. I called it Wanderlust and they are now performing it in Hong Kong—and how could I not come here?
Two cops are eating something meaty and leafy out of Styrofoam boxes in a police van and look at me puzzled. They even stop chewing.
“I am looking for the Hotel Olympus,” I say, more for their sake than for my own.
They get out of the van. I think that maybe they want to arrest me. A woman walking alone at night is rarely a welcome sight—in any city. I know that. I am supposed to be inside. But then, I was supposed to stay behind the Iron Curtain, in the first place. I break the rules.
“Keep walking,” they say and wave at me.
I keep walking. I pass three identical entrances to the building with identical security guards on identical empty, brightly lit lobbies, a couple of more beach chairs and sleeping bags, mounds of black trash cans and find a Pacific Island Hotel. It is five hundred dollars a night.
“Go to Westin,” says the man at the reception. “It’s cheaper.”
He smiles. “Two blocks up and to the right.”
I look at the clock—it is one thirty AM—and I keep walking.
The street goes up a steep hill. There are more open fast-food joints, with people eating inside and a karaoke bar.
A double-decker tram glides by. I go up the stairs. The darkness is condensed and the street is getting narrow. A rat darts by. A pretty girl in a school uniform walks up the stairs eating an ice cream.
“Westin Hotel?” I ask.
She shakes her head, smiling. The ice cream is pink and looks really good. I am so hungry. There shouldn’t be any little girls here. A shadow is lurking in the dark and a bag in the corner moves.
I turn around and walk down and find myself back at the Ramada Hotel. It is past two AM.
“I’ll take the last room,” I say. “Cash.”
I get my last and only three hundred dollars out and pay.
The room is on the thirtieth floor. I slide the key into the slot—it says, “Just open the door, we’ll do the rest”—and freeze. The room is the size of a ballroom. I can probably roller skate here. The panoramic wall-wide window is covered with a black curtain. I drop my backpack and open the curtains.
Down below is an enormous world—water, flickering lights, the toy roof gardens, with double-decker trams crawling up and down the street, a few people—ants—here and there. I feel like I am flying. I feel like I am on the top of the world, on Olympus.
I jump on the bed—it is all cool and clean and royal white. I will fall asleep in this giant bed and I will dream about drunk gods dressed in lime green and parrot-yellow silk, eating fried bananas, and the next day a beautiful Italian girl will read my story in a dive bar in Hong Kong, and I will be there, hungry, thirsty, and broke. I’ll have to figure out how to make it back to the airport and stuff like this.
But for now, I open the Russian doll—its round eyes wide open and blue—and grab a cherry-filled candy, turn on an alarm clock radio and dance around the room floating over the giant dark city, chocolate hitting me warm and sweet, slow music flowing, feeling free.
Zarina Zabrisky
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