Читать книгу Ricochet - Robyn Neilson - Страница 7

The loss of our baby lime did not deter Loup from his most audacious adventure, of which there had been many and from which, despite myself, I did not detain him.

Loup had resolved to roller-blade from Melbourne to Adelaide and then to Darwin. ‘Straight up the guts.’ With no support, apart from what he could carry in a 35-litre backpack. It would take him two and a half months. As a way of sharing something good together and overcoming my grief, we planned for me to join him for a week on my bike. ‘Freya the Camel’, we joked as I pedalled from Adelaide to Port Augusta where Loup awaited me with a quiet reprimand, because it was midnight when I rode in. And then I cheerfully ferried small luxuries, stuffing my panniers with more food and water than he was accustomed. My eyes ears nostrils womb: all wide open to what this new space outside of me could replace inside of me.

All the way to Coober Pedy.

By our third afternoon, what this new space wrought inside me was quaking fear. We are caught in an electrical storm of such expanse, as I have never seen before. The gunmetal sky scours the earth, and nothing, nothing at all, stands in between the lightning and us. It is as if we are doomed to stand dumbfounded, watching the instrument of our own death approaching. Loup yells against the yowl of the wind,

‘Freya, just lie face down on the ground, that is all you can do. Nothing bad will happen, but remember, I love you!’

‘You only say that when something bad is about to happen!

Jesus, Loup?’

He was already flat to the dirt. I leapt from my bike, kicking its metal frame away, dropped down wet ochre jammed under my nails, crotch chest cheek into the clay. Then something invisible yanked the steel curtain away and I raised my eyes to see the lightning lurching on to find other victims.

‘Come here you’, Loup propped me up and hugged me tightly, ‘you look like you’ve been face painting!’

‘There must be someone looking out for us Loup…’

Although this was to be a challenge we enjoyed together, I did not ride with Loup as our pace was vastly different. The day after the storm, we experienced a fierce tail wind. Loup took off. He, like an Olympic ice skater, sweeps the highway with stupendous elegant strokes, whilst I first ride the 26-kilometre detour to Woomera. To do the shopping. Before leaving, Loup had insisted on inflating my tyres with the Roadhouse air pump, whereas I was unsure my tyres could handle the pressure.

Three hours later, I am loaded up with all our supplies and as the heat swells everything, an almighty explosion rips through my tube and tyre.

Merci beaucoup, Loup.

Sitting in the gravel in the sun’s un-dignifying glare, I discover my puncture kit is old, the glue is dried up, and the rubber patches have lost their elasticity. I resort to stuffing my tube with socks, and wrapping both tube and tyre with the only panacea I have: plaster medical tape.

Rollbbliprollbbliprollbrrrumpbrrrummp stop

Goes my tyre, as I try to pedal as if it were normal and round. But it is like trying to force a straight splint through a curve; the brake pads rubbing through the plaster every hour.

Fucking tedious does not even begin to describe my ride that day.

Loup meanwhile has been effortlessly swept 112 kilometres by the wind, and now lounges at the next Roadhouse with his sore feet propped up, beer in hand. He is listening with amusement as the truckies discuss the poor blonde on the side of the road on their CB radios. Apparently the driver beside him on the veranda is keeping Loup well informed of my progress. It is dark when I clumsily roll-blimp into the gravel car park. Even in the dark my hostility precedes me. Loup’s response is to cajole me into rocking our van for the night off its bearings, and try his best to repair my tube and tyre.

The next day the wind had swung around. This time a vicious hot northerly, hitting us head-on and slowing Loup to a snails pace. I waited for him at each desolate rest stop, hoping to find water in the water tanks. To begin with we did. But then as the day wore on, it was clear we were going to run out, and that Loup was in strife.

‘Don’t wait for me Frey, just get going and find water!’

I picture returning to find him covered in ants.

I myself almost pass out, deciding to rest and wait for the midday sun and infernal wind to move on. Retreating like a dog under a tree. Not a tree with generous leaves, rather a spindly needle arrangement, favoured by city florists bored with flowers… its qualities striking and architectural. Not shady. But if I pushed my head back up against its charred trunk, so that the bark burrowed into my scalp: a calloused hand cupping my crown, that part of me at least was in its shadow. As my brain cooled I semi-dozed, until I was invaded by lines of ants in pursuit of the sweat in the creases of my mouth, eyes, armpits, pubic reservoir.

Bloody itchy ants saved me from drying up, there and then.

Pushing on, I turned at the top of a rise and could see Loup diminished in the distance, his gait no longer that of an ice-skater. I kept going, knowing that Coober Pedy must be close. But I was afraid. As the sun began to sink, Loup still hadn’t caught up. A Britz van pulled up opposite me, and a young bleached-hair couple crossed the highway with a coke, snickers and fruit in hand. Right on cue.

‘Thanks so much guys, but my boyfriend is back there on roller-blades…he’s really struggling. Maybe you could give him the goodies…but I’d gladly take some water!’

They gave me water and an orange, and told me I only had 12 kilometres to go. Then they drove on to find Loup, lavishing sustenance upon him.

We had never felt so blessed.

Later that night as we lay cramped in my two-man tent on the iron-red dirt of the campground, unable to sleep because of a raucous group of too-merry Germans, Loup bellows in his father’s native tongue “halt mall die schnauzer!”

Across the unyielding air, there is a sudden low snickering.

The next day, I rode out with Loup a few hours further along the highway. The red land is carbuncled, punctured by clawing cranes and deep gashes.

‘À bientôt’ we bravely said, and I bluffed confidence that we would indeed see each other again. I then rode back and caught the overnight bus home.

Loup has still not recounted all of his big adventure to me. Apart from when he was forced to recuperate in Alice Springs with a room full of female Swedish backpackers. He stayed there a week as he could hardly walk.

‘What else could I do, except wait for my new wheels, rest my aching ankles, and check out my roommates bare arses?’ teased Loup, leaving me wondering on the other end of the phone.