Compartment No. 6

4

THE TRAIN HAD SPED through the Udmurt Republic, and now was dragging limply past the Balezino station. The man rubbed his chin. The girl was listening to the choked puff of the small air vent and drawing. The morning stared sternly at them. The man opened up a draughts board and set out the pieces. The girl chose black.

They played three games, of which she won two. He congratulated her with a fierce squeeze of her hand.

The white sun rose high and hearty above the snowy woodland. Smoky clouds rushed to the centre of the sky looking for a resting place. The man and the girl sat silently. They sat in their own thoughts for a day or two.

It had been a sunny turquoise summer day. When Irina’s girlfriend Julia left, the girl went into Irina’s bedroom and looked down at Bakunin Street. People were walking in their spring coats. The girl even saw a couple of stylishly cut, flowered summer dresses. Just as she was about to look away, she noticed three men under the old maple trees. Something strange was going on among them – quick movements, lurches, swinging motions, sudden slumps. Then she saw a red blood stain on one thin man’s white shirt. One of the other men ran away. She saw him throw a knife down in a driveway. One stabbed man fell to the ground, another rolled on the pavement holding his stomach. There was a truck in front of the bakery. Five workers were lounging on the back of the truck. They ran after the stabber, got hold of him, and knocked him down. All five of them started to hit and kick him. Soon there were dozens of people around him, mostly women, beating him with handbags and gigantic sweet potatoes. The girl’s gaze shifted to the stabbed men. They were both lying motionless. No one was interested in them. A militia car arrived and the crowd around the stabber reluctantly dispersed. Blood poured out of the beaten man’s mouth and ears; his head had swollen to the size of a watermelon; one of his legs was bent in an unnatural position. There were two militiamen. They dragged the horrifying pile of flesh over to their Lada and then straightened their backs as if they were pondering how to cram the dying killer into the little car. When one of them grabbed him to shove him into the back seat, he wrenched himself free and hopped on one foot, vomiting blood, and got into the car.

After a grating screech of the train’s brakes, the Perm station slid across the window. The girl glanced at the man who was bleating in his sleep, moaning, trembling, muttering to himself.

She heard Arisa’s voice in the corridor. ‘There’s nothing in this town but drunken soldiers.’

The girl watched the wind wrestle with the disintegrating carcass of a cardboard box wandering the empty rails. A flat-looking dog the size of a calf lapped brown water from a hole in the ice that covered a puddle of sludge. Soon the engine whistled shrilly and the train picked up speed. Perm, the last city before the Urals, was left behind. Rimsky-Korsakov’s bitterly jaunty song ‘Pesnya Varyazhskogo Gostya’ chirped from the loudspeakers. The view from the window was sometimes obscured by passing trains, sometimes fences, warehouses, large buildings, buildings under construction or demolition, light, darkness, barracks, fences, power lines, an endless crisscross of wires, scrap metal, ravaged landscape, light, darkness, wild nature, an old train engine passing. Perm was left behind. The man slept peacefully in his bed, a soft expression on his face. The girl read Garshin’s The Scarlet Flower:

‘He left the door-step. Glancing round, but not seeing the keeper, who was behind him, he stepped across the bed and stretched out his hand to the blossom, but could not make up his mind to pick it. He felt a burning and pricking sensation, first in the outstretched hand, then through all his body, as though some strong current of a force unknown to him flowed from the red petals and penetrated through his whole frame. He drew nearer and touched the blossom with his hand, but he fancied that it defended itself by throwing out a poisonous, deadly vapour.’

She didn’t feel anxious any more. She thought about Mitka’s description of the mental hospital – a place where even the crazy are in danger of going crazy. She liked the book’s sick main character so much she would have liked to read more about him, his strange, twisted world. Mitka’s world. She thought about the mental hospital in the book and the hospital where Mitka was. Had anything changed in a hundred years? Perhaps there was a little less water on the floor of Mitka’s room than there was in the patient’s room in the book. How long would it take for things to change here? Could time really change anything?

The Ural mountains glimmered far off, low and insignificant. They weren’t impressive. The range remained slightly ahead, then a sign flashed by at a stop with an arrow pointing west that said ‘Europe’ and one pointing east that said ‘Asia’. A few hours later the mountains started very slowly to recede behind them.

The girl slept, and awoke when the man waved something under her nose. His knife? She opened her eyes, alarmed.

‘You’ll grow too much, little one, if you sleep so long. Your arse will get fat. Watch out.’

He looked at her with playful sternness for a moment and put the paper carnation back in the vase.

Burning clouds dashed across the southern sky, headed north. A lukewarm sun fought its way through the tops of the tallest spruce trees. Old birches decorated in a fluff of frost like blooming bird cherries graced a derelict garden. She sat up in bed with her eyes closed. Concentrated. Lifted both hands to the top of her chest near her throat and tried to calm her breathing.

After a moment she opened her eyes and looked for her headphones. She looked at the man. He opened his mouth without looking at her.

‘It often happens that I think I’m going to do one thing and I do another. As a young man, when I was screwing Vimma, I thought I’d never give up that pussy. But then what happened? I played cards with the boys and lost everything, even my coat and my leather belt. When there was nothing else left, I bet Vimma. I lost. And Vimma disappeared like a bunny in a magician’s hat, and I never saw her again.’

He poured water into the samovar and turned it on, measured a small spoonful of tea into the enamel pot. Then they just waited for the water to boil, the tea to steep, to pour it into the glasses.

‘If we were lice, or maybe bedbugs, I’d be the kind of bedbug that hunkers down and doesn’t move and stares at something that nobody else can see. You, on the other hand, would dash around until you died from exhaustion. But if we were cockroaches, we’d hook up with our own crowd straight off. They take good care of each other, help each other out at every turn. We’d take responsibility for everything that happened between us. What is a crowd? It’s a partnership, a gang. It always sticks together. The cockroaches are right. For good or ill.’

The train braked softly as it approached Sverdlovsky. Lights and shadows slid peacefully past. The soft, frozen winter dusk beckoned along the side streets of the town, its parks and squares. A local train squeaked on the next track. A wave of people arriving from the suburbs flooded into the small station from an arriving train, a full moon reflected orange from drifts of snow yellowed with dogs’ piss. The stars in the sky were like a vast array of portals to another reality, the same stars as in Moscow, but different.

The train rocked and accelerated. It was soon speeding forward, and all the villages that had sprung up east of the city long ago were left far behind. The man tossed and turned in his bed with his clothes on. The girl put her headphones over her ears and closed her eyes. The music carried her to autumn in Moscow, the grey-bearded doorman raking dry autumn leaves, the light from the university hallway, the fresh-painted smell of the handrail, the simple beauty of the office coat rack.

As a perfect, velvet-black night opened up outside the window, the man finally undressed bashfully, slid between the covers, and turned his back to her, not even wishing her goodnight. She was tired, but couldn’t sleep. She lay awake, staring at Russia’s deep darkness until finally, when night was nearly morning, she pulled her head into a hood of blanket and fell into restless dreams.

In the morning she stopped in to see the carriage staff. Arisa was cleaning the entrance and Sonechka was sitting alone in the compartment with her back towards the door. The girl ordered two teas and some bubliks. Sonechka nodded, but didn’t turn to look at her. As she was leaving, Arisa backed out of the entrance carrying a bucket made of Latvian tin.

‘Kirov was a great leader in Leningrad who was stabbed in the back by Stalin. First they slaughter their enemies together with their allies, then the allies together with their friends, then their friends. They draw lots for the rest. No one is innocent. A person is always dissatisfied with something, and it’s always discovered. The guilty party is always found, and his offence, too, within a day of his arrest. Remember that.’

The girl returned to her compartment, lay down, and pretended to sleep. She thought of the three years she’d studied in Moscow. Her first year had been spent in a tight-knit crowd of Finnish students that had dispersed when Maria went back to Finland and Anna went to Kiev. Then she made friends with Franz. Franz was a West Berlin philosophy student who idolised Ulrike Meinhoff and had a habit of pursing his lips contemptuously when he disagreed about something. One day Franz quit his studies and returned to West Berlin. So she was left alone and took the opportunity to get to know Mitka.

A few versts later the man awakened with a jolt and sat up without opening his eyes. His greasy hair was pasted to his head.

There was a sharp, crisp knock on the door. ‘Here’s your tea, comrades,’ Arisa said in a dry, cross voice.

The girl quickly grabbed some coins from her small coin purse and paid her. The man looked at her in wonder.

‘I’ll take care of the tea. Is that clear?’

The girl nodded, abashed. Snowy hillocks like clouds grew beyond the drab evergreens on their side of the train. The last hills of the Urals.

‘Don’t fret, my girl. Everyone wants to feel needed. I understand, but there are certain rules in life that every citizen has to follow. You’re here as my guest.’

He groped under his pillow for a cigarette and lit it. He opened the compartment door and stood leaning in the doorway.

‘Life just vanished in a strange red mist. There’s nothing left of it. Or maybe a little piece of it. Maybe a little piece of life at the bottom of your pocket.’

He smoked his cigarette with one eye closed.

‘Whenever I go home to Moscow after being away for a long time, everything looks sad. And when I leave with my suitcase full of darned socks and pressed underwear, I think that I’ll never come back again, that this is the last time. I always go back. When I’m home I’m as bored as a prisoner on death row, but I tell Katinka that everything’s fine. A person can’t live without deceiving himself.’

Arisa dashed out of her compartment with a broomstick in her hand.

‘Smoking here? Three-rouble fine! Right here in my hand, you old goat.’

He handed her a bill indifferently.

‘Think you can buy yourself privileges, you fool? It’s not that easy. I ought to drown you in the latrine. You disgust me.’

He brushed his hair away with his hand and slapped Arisa on the backside. Arisa disappeared without looking back. He sat down on his bunk.

‘Katinka can sure salt a cucumber. I’ve knocked her up sixteen times and she’s had fifteen abortions.’

The girl gave him a dark look and let her tea glass fall over onto the table. The hot tea splashed on his bare toes. He grunted, flashed her a questioning look, and started whistling a lively soldiers’ march with a satisfied sound, curling his red toes to the rhythm.

‘Do you know, my girl, what the difference is between screwing and mating? Screwing is a fun, cheerful activity, while mating is a heavy, joyless task. So how about some screwing?’

He licked his lower lip. The girl’s breathing was full of long pauses.

‘Katinka’s turned mouldy; that’s why our life in Moscow is nothing but a dry fuck.’

He scratched the back of his neck with his left hand, then with his right, then put both hands on his chin and looked at her with mawkish helplessness. The grim mood in the compartment made for a tight squeeze. The girl looked at his hands. They were tough and demanding.

‘If you don’t want anything else, what about in the mouth? I’m just so damned tired of hiding in the corner and jerking off.’

The girl wiped her lips dry with the back of her hand.

‘Or if that’s no good, just one in the cheek would be all right. Strictly no hands. Georgian style.’

He unfastened his belt. ‘You’re not exactly a honey-pot, but you’ll do. Same kind of bitch as all the rest. But that’s all right. Twat comes with, arse is extra!’

Her eyes burned with unshed tears, which she tried to get rid of with a cough. He looked at her now and a worried expression came over his face.

‘Are you catching a cold? I’ll make you some medicine. Get some vodka, add some pepper and a dash of honey. That’ll kill a flu.’

He started looking for his vodka bottle. The girl yanked open the compartment door and left.

A frozen marsh of delicate, snowy grasses bloomed in the train window. The landscape continued hour after hour almost the same, but constantly changing with the light. A blue thicket and a snowbank flashed across the frozen plain. A wavering line of men in grey-blue quilted jackets and trousers walked along the ridge of a snowbank with pickaxes in their hands.

Dark, smoking clouds appeared in the sky, soon covering the shimmer of the sun completely, and an oppressive dimness fell over the icy landscape. The train braked and slowed. A three-legged dog hobbled along the flat gravel roadbed trailing a thin trickle of blood. The train arrived in Tyumen station.

‘The train will stop for an hour or two,’ Arisa shouted. ‘In other words, as long as it likes.’

There was a heap of wooden boxes on the platform. The girl piled three of them together to climb up to the corridor window, took a cloth handkerchief out of her pocket, and wiped one of the panes clean.

When she’d cleaned the window she walked towards a station building veiled in dark red billowing mist. She went around the building and stopped at the south end. The station was ugly and dilapidated, the gutters were broken and pieces of the tin roof hung over the upper windows. The foundation was cracked in several places. The whole building slumped. Behind it she could see the glimmer of a dirty factory complex.

One of the tall oak doors was open and she followed a crippled crow into the station hall. The room was empty and spacious, the air damply cold and heavy, a skiff of fog floating above the quiet. Two white-toothed dogs dozed by the drinks stand; the smell of muffled talk and stale buns drifted from the coffee stall. A wandering photographer stopped her, showed her his Moskova 2 camera, and asked if she wanted a picture of herself. She didn’t.

She stopped for a moment at the entrance to the buffet before going to the counter to order pickles and smetana. Twelve well-fed flies with glistening wings buzzed over the stained menus. Paper napkins blew from one table to the next. A leathery piece of meat, a watery gruel of macaroni casserole, and a cake decorated with pink icing roses stared at her from the glass case.

The station bell rang for the third time and the train rocked into motion. The oil town rose smouldering in the bright, frosty sunshine and hovered, all highrise rooftops gliding ever higher towards the lid of sky. The train sped past the freezing Soviet villages and housing areas. The limbo of unnamed towns was left behind. Pop music drifted from a distant compartment.

The marshy plain was left behind and a birch forest weighed down with snow filled the land. The train moved in jerks now. A long line of freight trains carrying oil and coal appeared in front of the engine.

Hours, minutes, seconds later the train picked up speed and the oil towns and surrounding oil wells and towers with their black flames receded into the distance. In spite of many signs of spring, it was still winter in Siberia. Here and there on sheltered south slopes melted by the sun jutted last year’s grasses. The innocent smell of wood smoke drifted into the carriage. The train slowed its speed and was soon moving at a crawl. As it passed an abandoned warehouse the trail of smoke thickened. Small fires danced in the grass right next to the rail track, beyond them the flames reached greedily towards the turquoise Siberian sky. Next to the train, in the middle of the cloud of smoke, an old woman ran around in a panic, her head bare, without a coat. Not just the grass but also the railway sleepers were burning, and the ruins of an old building as well. The wind whipped a cloud of red sparks against the iron bulk of the train. The flames flared for a moment, handsome and strong, but the Siberian frost dampened them. A young mother crumpled by life lifted her child in her arms and pointed at the smoking building receding behind them.

‘Look, that’s how granny’s house burned down.’

The train skulked along for a considerable time before speeding up again. As darkness fell, the man came out of the compartment and stood next to the girl. Together they looked at the Irtysh River. The snow on the shores had shrunk; bare, snowless patches appeared among the drifts. At a narrow point in the current, in the middle of the channel, stood several immense concrete pillars. There had once been a bridge there, or else a bridge was being built and was abandoned. Far off on the horizon a power-plant town glimmered.

The man looked at the girl with a wary smile. ‘I’m sorry, my girl. The devil got into me again. Lucifer himself. I just have such an urge to fuck. Go back in so you don’t catch cold. Let me know when I can come in. I still have hope. When Ivan the Terrible turned eighty, he took a sixteen-year-old wife.’

The girl smiled in token of a sort of dry understanding and went into the compartment. She took a bottle of nail polish remover out of her bag, emptied it into his vodka glass, and slumped onto her bunk. She liked the man’s Gagarin smile. She fell asleep to that, hungry, with all her clothes on.

The man gazed wistfully at the muddy river, sawmills along its shores, open, empty land around it as far as the eye could see. Under the cover of the ice the river rushed and swirled, a roiling current. In the wee hours the girl awoke and kicked the compartment door so that it hung half open. The man stepped immediately inside, gulped the contents of his vodka glass, and went to sleep without saying a word.