Siberian Sunburn

We leave the train tracks by meters. We leave my last pair of walked-down sandals in a platform trash can. We leave a three-legged dog running after the train, clone armies of high rises, Vladivostok. We leave villages preserved in Soviet formaldehyde, where people pin rinsed plastic bags on clotheslines to dry. We leave pines, birches, and larches in the reverse order we saw them on our way in; a village called Coal we passed two days ago. There are still 9,260 kilometers to rewind before Moscow. In our sleeper car: six square meters; two upper cots, empty; two lower cots, filled by Olga and me. We leave a village called Labor as I write “yes” on a paper napkin. We leave Salt-dirt when I cross out the “yes” and write “no,” just to see how it looks. Thick black electrical wires pass our windows. We leave skinny sheep. Seals that I now know taste like tuna-fed cows. Teenagers carrying inflated inner tubes into the sea. Housewives using the last of the August sun to dry apple slices on the tin roofs of their garages. Men drinking moonshine in front of lopsided “Palaces of Culture” that were built for their political and social enlightenment. We leave the Sea of Japan and the Glass Beach, where four days ago I got sunburned behind my ear.

When Olga runs off to photograph a seagull gutting an old corncob, her five cameras dangling across her chest, I sit on an empty petrol tin, try to keep my breakfast inside me, and reread Andrei’s telegram:

WILL PICK YOU UP AT TRAIN STATION IN MOSKOW STOP WE WILL GET OUR SHIT TOGETHER COMMA KEEP IT TOGETHER AND MAINTAIN IT NEATLY IN GOOD WORKING ORDER STOP SAY YES STOP

I haven’t. I haven’t said no, either. I haven’t told him anything about it. “Vera!” Olga shouts, and when I look up, I am blinded by her flash. “I told you a million times!” I say for the millionth time since we began working together. To me, being photographed is the same as getting shot. With a gun, straight in your face. That’s why I always look so startled in photos.