The Trans-Siberian has inspired handfuls of stories, but only one bears the stamp of a singular couple: Eva Orúe, journalist and director of the Madrid Book Fair, and Sara Gutiérrez, ophthalmologist and author of
The Last Summer of the USSR,
met when they both worked in Moscow in the nineties. Difficult times for two women who fell in love. From that relationship, which has already passed through the Civil Registry, a common story emerges of the trip that united them forever:
On the Trans-Siberian Railway
(Kingdom of Cordelia). Orúe, born in Zaragoza, and Gutiérrez, in Oviedo, are from 1962.
Ask.
A love or travel book?
Sara Gutierrez.
Travel.
Eva Orúe.
Of love... Of love of travel? (laughs).
SG
It is a vital journey. We were moved by love as a couple, but writing it is for the love of the truth, to let people know how raw life can be due to social circumstances that are always ephemeral. I needed to write it to tell our story, which has a happy ending, I already mentioned it. Along the way there were many lives cut short by prejudices that even those of us who suffered from them assimilated.
EO
And also love of work, journalism, knowledge, adventure and travel. It is a book about a train in two different convoys: the historical one and the one in our history. There is a love story between us and love for a country, which is Russia.
Q.
Let's first clarify something that is told in the book: Did Sara really give her a crystal when she met her?
EO
He gave me a complete eye and the lens jumped on the office table. It came in a small jam jar.
Q.
Was it from a corpse, from an excision, from a gulag?
SR
It was an eye that was going to be thrown away, matter after all. Probably one of those used for corneal transplants or in practices.
Q.
What did you mean by that?
SG
An eye is beautiful to see. Deep down we have very beautiful things in our bodies.
Gutiérrez and Orúe.Andrea Comas
Q.
You also say that, while you were studying medicine, you lived with a skeleton in the bathtub during your studies.
SG
Yes, my father was very smart and well connected. And a gravedigger friend told him that they were removing bodies from graves that were not paid for. If he wanted to go get some bones, now was the time. I asked for permits and that's where I went. I was lucky enough to find a whole skeleton with its feet in its socks. It was wonderful. My mother said they were very good because with all the chlorine she put in that bathtub, those socks didn't fall apart after 25 years buried. I never knew if they went in the trash or in a drawer.
Q.
Good. We already have a skeleton, crystalline, relationship. And they go on the Trans-Siberian. Is Siberia a myth?
EO
If you whisper Siberia in someone's ear they get a chill. Siberia does not exist administratively and at the same time there is a frozen, inhospitable Siberia, where many people died, a cruel territory like many Russian leaders, but there is also a Siberia where life is normal and you can live well.
Q.
Is it like the American West?
EO
The difference is that in Russia colonization was organized, it was the will of the State, while in the United States the people went to conquer.
Q.
Does Russia look more to the West or the East today?
SG
Today we look at our navel. It is a country that is always building an empire. The beginning of the Trans-Siberian at the end of the 19th century was an attempt to Russify Siberia. And the war with Ukraine is also another attempt to forge an empire.
Q.
Siberia sounds like Solzhenitsin, Navalny, the gulag... What is Siberia?
EO
It is a frozen hell, a treasure chest whose breadth we cannot yet gauge and which can give Russia great joy.
SG
For me it is a strip of life.
Q.
Do we know how to understand Russia?
SG
No. If the objective is peace and freedom you cannot understand a country that is causing violence.
EO
In the years of our trip the opportunity to win Russia to the cause was lost. Since we do not understand them, the approach from the West was not good. In those years everything was possible, a different Russia, but it has returned to the same as always.
Q.
To what extent is Russia Putin and Putin is Russia?
EO
Putin represents the spirit of a good part of Russia and, with his ability to impose terror, silences the other. Fortunately, Putin is not Russia, but he embodies the worst of a Russia that continues to exist.
Q.
Is it better to have been in Russia?
EO
Russia marks you, it's something else. You don't go to a country, you enter an unknown zone, a new dimension.
SG
Furthermore, we had a Spanish passport that helped us get out of the horror. Being locked with the key inside is not the same as being locked outside, and we were locked with the key inside.
Q.
You left ophthalmology to live with Eva. Was it so impossible at that time to have a female partner? In Russia or in Spain?
SG
In Russia it went unnoticed. But in Spain no one would have respected me because a doctor needs people to trust him, they don't trust someone they consider depraved. To develop a professional career as I would have liked, I would also have had to lie, something I no longer wanted to do. The worst thing about prejudices is that you end up assimilating them.
Q.
Did the Trans-Siberian then settle their relationship?
EO
The train gives you time to talk about many things. It's a very boring train actually.
Q.
Thanks to boredom, do we have a partner today?
SG
And thanks to the hours of conversation on the train, there wasn't much else to do. The trip was for that and the two objectives were met: getting to know each other and getting to know the country.
Q.
Your plan was to repeat the trip, but the war cut it short. If the war ends, will they return?
EO
I would like to, but it is not enough for the war to end. Ukraine is a very beloved country and it is not enough for them to stop killing. More conditions must be placed before returning Russia to its status as a normal country.
Q.
Put an end to Putin?
SG
Let it be over.
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