The Boy from Reactor 4

CHAPTER 55

THE CABIN ATTENDANT, a surly chain-smoker with hips the width of the corridor, instructed Nadia and Adam on how to use the blokirator, a Club-like plastic device that secured the door handle in the locked position from the inside. This prevented even the attendant from opening the door with her key.

“When you leave your room,” she said, “let me know. I will lock it behind you. There are thieves on these trains, you know.”

Nadia slept fitfully, gradually drifting to the border of consciousness before bolting upright at each of the three stops they made through the night. Each time, she glanced at Adam’s cot to make sure he was still there; he was lost in the depths of sleep that only teenagers can find.

In the morning, she paid the attendant the US equivalent of three dollars to prepare hot water. Half an hour later, with Adam awake to secure the blokirator, she took her first shower in three days in a special carriage located beside the restaurant car. Unlike the dreaded bathroom she shared with other passengers, the shower room was surprisingly clean.

Returning to the cabin with a bounce in her step, she offered to pay for a shower for Adam, but he refused. When she asked him to do it for her as a favor, however, he got the message.

“Wait,” Nadia said. “I’ll get the attendant to lock the door behind us,” she said.

“Why?”

“I have to go with you. It’s too dangerous.”

“What? For who? For me? And what, it wasn’t dangerous for you?”

Nadia sighed.

“Oh. I get it. You mean it’s too dangerous for the locket.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know what you mean.”

The attendant locked the door behind them.

Adam emerged from the shower with his wet hair carefully combed to hide his ears. On the way back, they stopped at the restaurant car. Light poured in past teal curtains pulled to the side. A dozen booths with steel-blue upholstery lined both sides of the car, half of them occupied. Four men jammed in front of a semicircular bar made of cheap marble, smoke curling upward from the cigarettes in their hands. A television above the bar was tuned to a hockey game. The announcers chattered and buzzed.

Upon their entrance, everyone in the car turned to appraise them. Nadia ignored them and pointed to an empty booth. Adam rushed ahead and took the side that let him watch television. A sullen waiter dumped two menus in front of them. They were fifty pages long and weighed five pounds. Most of the items had a line drawn through them and were unavailable. The latest offerings were handwritten on the front page, as though the kitchen was picking up whatever it could along the way.

Nadia saw that other people at the booths had brought their own food in baskets and shopping bags.

“We can get good food on the platform,” Adam said. “When the train stops. Next stop, Balyezino.”

“When is that?”

He checked his watch. “Around one thirty. In about three hours. It’s a good stop. Twenty-three minutes long.”

“How do you know all this? You been here before?”

“I’ve never been anywhere except Korosten and the Zone,” he said. When she sat there waiting for the explanation, he relented. “My father used to work the railway. He gave me a train schedule. Told me some things.”

Nadia looked around and saw that everyone was watching them. “Then we should go back to the cabin. There’s no advantage in being here.”

“I’m sick of being all cooped up. You go back,” he said. He nodded at the television. “I’m going to watch the game.”

That was not an option. The samovar provided boiled water, so Nadia ordered two cups of tea and two bottled waters. Adam didn’t touch his. Instead, he stared like a zombie over Nadia’s shoulder at the screen.

As soon as Nadia began to sip her tea, an elderly woman with an overbite leaned over from a booth diagonally across the way and smiled.

“Your skin is incredible. Where are you from, dear? Italy? Greece?”

“No, America,” Nadia said, her hand touching her face.

The woman’s eyes widened with curiosity. “America. When I was a child, we used to fear this place, America.” She opened a plastic container filled with raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream. “Please,” she said. “To share. I wish I had meat to offer you, but my pension hasn’t arrived in four months. This is all I have. Please.”

Nadia thanked her profusely, but when the woman persisted, she slid over to her booth. Adam was ten feet away. He wasn’t going anywhere. Nadia passed on the berries and cream, and stuck to her tea and water.

“I was a stenographer for Brezhnev in the Kremlin,” she said, “until they accused me of helping circulate rumors that he was in bad mental health to help Andropov unseat him. For this I spent two years in a gulag.”

As the woman spoke of her struggle to survive a labor camp, people leaned in from adjacent booths. A small crowd gathered and began to participate.

“Tell me,” she said, “what do Americans think of Russians?”

Nadia foraged for an honest and congenial answer. “That you are soulful. That you’re rich in family and tradition and, above all else, soulful.”

A murmur of approval surrounded Nadia. The woman glowed.

“A soul must work to survive,” a voice said.

The crowd murmured more approval. Those who were standing parted. A man sprawled at a booth in front of Adam with a bottle of vodka and a shot glass in front of him.

“Since they closed the collective farms in 1991, it’s all gone to shit,” he says.

“Papers,” a woman shouted.

Conversations ceased. Lips formed straight lines. A pair of heels clicked together at the back of the car.

People scurried about. Some escaped into the car ahead. Others returned to their booths or the bar.

A petite woman in a gray military uniform bustled up to Adam with a fierce look on her face, as though he’d trampled her garden. From the neck up, she resembled an aging porcupine, with spiked black hair that sprang from gray roots. A younger man accompanied her. He was tall, with a square face, gaunt cheeks, and a sidearm attached to his belt.

“Papers,” she screamed at Adam. “Where is your guardian?”

Adam lowered his head. He stuttered, “I… I…”

For the first time since Nadia had met Adam, he looked like a child and not a man, one reared to respect and fear authority, like Soviet citizens of the past. An unfamiliar sense of maternal protectiveness sent Nadia springing to her feet.

“Hey,” she said to the cop. “I’m the boy’s guardian. Who are you?”

The woman flashed a legitimate-looking police ID. “You are in Kirov Oblast. We are the police. Passport Control. Papers. Both of you. Do not make me ask you again.”

Nadia turned over her passport and told Adam to do the same.

“Your papers are out of order,” she said after studying Nadia’s passport.

“Why?”

“Because you must register with the local prefecture upon entering Russia. You are in Kirov Oblast. There is no stamp of registration.”

“I’m on a train, just passing through. How am I supposed to register?”

Instead of returning the passports, she clutched them by her side. “You will get off with us at the next stop. You will register at the local prefecture. And you will have to pay a fine.”

Adam shrank in his booth.

“A fine?” Nadia said. The lies of a thief sprang to her mind. “I see. Well, we cannot and will not get off this train. I’m on important business.”

The policewoman smirked. “Oh, really? What kind of business?”

Nadia whipped out her New York City library card. “You see this? It says New York Chronicle. That is the biggest newspaper in America. I went to Moscow to interview Aline Kabaeva. You know Aline Kabaeva? She’s the Olympic gold medalist who’s now a member of parliament and a very close friend of Prime Minister Putin. After writing a story on women in politics in Russia, I’m enjoying your beautiful countryside with my nephew. But you… You don’t want me to enjoy it, do you? You want me to write another story instead?”

The policewoman’s lips quivered as though she didn’t know if she should be angry or afraid. The soldier put his hand on his sidearm uncertainly. He looked from his partner to Nadia and back to her again.

After a momentary pause, she returned the passports. “But you must register,” she grumbled. Her partner followed her to the next car, the badge sewn on his right shoulder barely hanging on by a few threads.

When Nadia turned back, she found Adam staring at her with wonder. She led the way back to their compartment. Worn and weathered passengers loitered in front of their cabins. Smoking was prohibited, but a white cloud hung in the air and the corridor reeked of nicotine. Nadia savored the thrill of outwitting the cop. She was a thief’s daughter. She could wrangle her way out of any situation, couldn’t she? Equally thrilling was the thought that she’d impressed Adam and earned a modicum of respect.

“Was that… Was that all true?” Adam said, close on her heels.

“Was what true?”

“What you said back there. To that musor. Was that all true?”

“Of course it was true. Are you calling your aunt a liar?”

“You’re my cousin, not my aunt.”

“I prefer aunt. It gives me a sense of power with no real responsibility.”

“You’re not my aunt.”

“I disagree.”

“Are you really a reporter? Do you really know Aline Kabaeva?”

“No. But I read an article about her in a New York paper once.”

“Huh?”

When they got to their cabin, Nadia locked the door behind them.

“From now on,” she said, “we don’t leave the room unless we need to use the bathroom. And we watch each other’s back at all times. Agreed?”

Adam hesitated and then nodded. “Agreed.”