The Wanderings of an Englishman

The man fidgeted and fumbled as the bus pulled away into the dark, a nod proffered in acknowledgement met with an icy cold stare.

“No”, he grunted as he waved away my hand, irritated by a paltry offering of amiable companionship and cheap sweets. No a second time, firmer than the last.

I sank back in my seat alone and dejected, unsure what to make of my unwilling companion. I squeezed a sickly-yellow candy from the packet and popped it in my mouth in consolation, the name on the side written bright in undecipherable Cyrillic. Some letters were familiar only in mirror image.

The bus was dirty and cramped; stale sweat hang heavy in the air as a slow drip-drip of condensation trickled down the windows. I picked aimlessly at a piece of fabric hanging from the seat in front, watching as the thread slowly unravelled in my fingers. I could smell something strange, like a mixture of oil and rotting vegetables yet somehow made of neither. I wanted to be sick.

At the Romanian border we disembarked, small groups huddled up tight against the midnight cold puffing furiously on cheap smokes. I wandered behind a small ruin, keen to relieve the bladder that had filled almost as soon as we’d left Chi?inau. A small dog begged for food, its shivering body no match for the freezing night.

On board I eyed my snoring neighbour closely, his baseball cap lazily perched on a fat round head. Unshaven cheeks were flecked with spittle, drool oozing from lips that shone in waves as the street lights bathed us over and over in a blinding staccato light. A bulge of belly stuck out of the slit between jacket and trousers. I disliked him intensely.

I longed for home, for the green fields of Ulster. I yearned to be far away from this hell hole, this bus trapped forever in this godforsaken place where it seemed not even the sun dared shine. I couldn’t work out how I’d ended up here; perhaps this was some sort of dream, some ghastly nightmare that would be broken the moment I woke in the familiar warmth of bed. In the painful half-sleep of the early hours it was impossible to tell.

I suddenly woke with a jolt, an elbow expertly planted between ribs. The man was acknowledging me now, proffering an object that lay at the end of an outstretched arm. Sweets. I took one, unsure what to make of this gesture.

“Moldovan”, he said, frown in place. “Not Russian”.

And with that he turned his back to me once more.