Issue. 01
Creative
Liana Charles
ME, MISHA, MY MOTHER, AND RUSSIA By Liana Charles
When I came down the stairs of our mid-range Beijing hotel and saw Misha (slender, very Slavic, with eyes like an Arctic fox and a horrible mop of feathered blond hair), I instantly fell in love. Six months after high school and one month after my 18th birthday, I was wrestling with the new concept that I had a personality, and was desperate to see if others thought so too. After a dreary few years, now life seemed to be starting. I was ready to see grand narratives in everything, and especially here, at the beginning of a month on a train f rom Beijing all the way north to St. Petersburg, this gangly Russian man seemed custom-made for my dream romance. There were two main barriers: the tour group we were on also included my mother, and Misha, despite being only twentytwo, was the tour guide. He introduced himself as Mikhail (‘but you can call me Mike'), the Russian accent very subtle. I could feel my mother looking at me as I looked at him, me pretending she didn’t know what I was thinking. In Beijing, he took a backseat to the local guides. It was hot, humid, and in the name of modesty I was wearing knee-length jean shorts. With my sex appeal at an all-time low, my debut as a romance heroine was not going well. On our f irst leg of the Trans-Mongolian Express, the patient rhythm of the train wound us through valleys between deep green mountains, Beijing's smog forgotten as we drank soup f rom one mug and tea f rom another. Mum, of course, was helping people get to know each other, setting up card games and talking to anyone who was left out. I stared out the window and tried to think of metaphors. At midnight on the border with Mongolia the gauge of the train tracks changed, so in a huge shed the whole train was lifted, wheels separated f rom carriages, new width of wheels re-attached. As we hovered in the bright empty hall I poked my head out one window for Misha to take a photo of me f rom
