He laid careful stress on each word, dropping them one by one. The girl tried to close her ears.
‘It’s depressing to have the same old fight in the middle of the night. It takes all the joy out of life. Last night there was a strong whiff of her rolling over me like a tank in my dreams. Just the thought of her wreck of a pussy makes me want to puke my guts out.’
The train gave a lurch, his hand jerked, and a tear rose in the corner of his eye. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and closed his eyes, cleared his throat and sat up straight, filled his lungs with air and blew it out again.
‘But there’s a limit to everything. I never hit Katinka out in the hall of the communal apartment, or in the street, or at the office. I only hit her in our own room, because otherwise the block watch or the militia would show up and I don’t like either one of them, especially the militia. The number one rule is to not let the boy see it – after all, it is his mother. He’s so big now that he has his own little woman to smack around. I don’t like that… Beat your wife with a hammer and you turn her into gold, that’s what the old guys told me when I was a young man. It’s advice I’ve followed. Maybe too much.’
The girl looked first at the floor, then at a frozen cloud at the edge of the sky. She’d never met a Russian man like this before. Or maybe she had, but she hadn’t wanted to remember it. No Russian man had ever spoken to her like this. Still, there was something familiar about him, his insolence, his way of drawing out his words, his smile, his tender, disdainful gaze.
‘Katinka is a Russian woman, ruthless and just. She works, takes care of the home and kids, she can handle anything. I just think differently than she does. Take my old mother, for instance. We all live next to each other in the same communal apartment, and I think it’s a great thing – Katinka can cook for the old lady at the same time she cooks for herself and the boy, and keep a lookout, make sure Ma’s life has some flavour to it. But it isn’t that easy. For all the twenty-three years we’ve been married that bitch has been demanding that I throw my old mother out.’
The girl got up from the bed to go into the corridor, but he grabbed her tightly by the arm and pointed at the bunk.
‘You’re going to hear this to the end.’
She tore herself free. He dashed at her and seized her by the wrist, firm but fatherly. She slumped down on the foot of the bed.
He went back to his place, lifted a fingertip to his lips, and blew, smiling obscenely.
‘Something that’s always baffled me is how every suitor loves his bride, but every husband hates his wife. As soon as the marriage licence is signed the man turns into a clod and the woman turns into an old bag and discontent starts to gnaw away at both of them. The broad thinks that once they get some of the creature comforts then everything will be all right. She thinks the answer is her own hotplate, a new dressing gown, a floor vase, a kettle without any dents in it, a china tea set. The fellow, on the other hand, thinks, man, if I could get myself a whore, I could stand that old bag a little better. But in spite of everything… Sometimes when I look real hard at Katinka, I feel like I want to say, Katyushka, my silly little thing, my little fool.’
He gave a heavy sigh, reached for the pickle bag, got hold of a pickle, popped it in his mouth, and accidentally swallowed it whole.
‘Us men have nowhere to go. The dames would get by better without us. Nobody needs us, except another man. Right now I feel like drinking a toast to the energy, the toughness, the patience, the courage, the humour, the shrewdness, the deceitfulness and beauty of the Russian woman. It’s the dames that keep this country going.’
He slid his hand under his bunk and pulled out a Tchaikovsky chocolate bar. He opened the wrapper with his knife and offered some to the girl. He didn’t take a piece for himself, just put the bar down in the middle of the table. The chocolate was dark and tasted of naphtha. She thought of Irina, of how she would often sit under the reading lamp in her favourite armchair in the evening and read a book, how the yellow light from the lamp fell on the book’s pages, how Irina’s hands held the book, how her face…
‘Women used to know how to keep quiet. Nowadays they got their traps open all the time. One of the bitches used to put out and smoke at the same time, while I was fucking her. I wanted to strangle her.’
A birch forest, weary with hard frosts and sharp winds, came into view. The naked trees drew graphic lines in the snow. The train sped by, the snow blew into the air and hung there pure and sparkling. Sometimes the window was filled with frozen white forest, other times with blithe, blue, cloudless sky. The girl could hear the tones and rhythms of the man’s voice. His momentary passion quickly evaporated, replaced by a hint of deep sadness.
He thought for a long time. His wet lips moved, now quickly, now very slowly. His posture had fallen; he was sitting with his shoulders drooped. The girl took her drawing things out of her bag and started to draw.
He glanced at her, sighed a little, shrugged his shoulders lamely.
‘Katinka. My own Katinka.’
Silence fell over the compartment. He put his head against the cold windowpane. She got up and went out.
Several passengers were standing in the corridor. A freight train was going past in the other direction, causing their train to rock. The little station building flashed like a turquoise dot in a vast universe. A splash of dirt had been thrown against the corridor window during the night, and a pale light filtered through it. The birches grew sparse, the train quieted its speed, a rusted wreck of metal lay on the neighbouring track, and soon the train was shooting into Kirov station. A sign along the track said that Moscow was about a thousand kilometres away.
The door of the carriage was open. She stood in the doorway. A few small snowflakes drifted in the still, dry cold of the day. A decrepit local train twitched restlessly at the next platform as if it was in the grip of a seizure. People pushed their way out of its innards, desperately gulping the fresh air. The station bell rang once, then twice. She had a glimpse of the black plastic peak of the guard’s cap before Arisa came to close the door.
‘What are you standing there for? Do you want to get off in Kirov? They’d horsewhip you here. Get back into your compartment! You don’t have a citizen’s passport, or an address here. Stupid foreigners don’t understand anything, sticking their noses where they’re not wanted! They foist all the unlucky ones on me. Do you even know who Kirov was?’
The girl tottered slowly back down the corridor of the moving train and looked at the swaying town outside the window. A pack of stray dogs were fighting in front of a baroque administration building and a young man was hitting them with a broken broomstick. She went to the stewardess’s compartment to buy some tea. Arisa sat on the bed, all-powerful, and looked at her pityingly. Georg Ots was singing in Russian on a small transistor radio.
‘Everybody’s lives should be equal,’ Arisa said. ‘Either equally good or equally bad.’
She handed the girl two glasses of tea and three packets of biscuits instead of two.
‘People can handle anything, when they have no choice. Now get back to your own compartment!’
The man sat on his bed. He wore a plaid shirt open over his white longjohns. Under the wrinkles of the white shirt peeped a sweaty, muscular belly. He picked up a small orange from the table and started to tear roughly at the peel. When he’d eaten the fruit he dug a tattered newspaper from under his bunk and blurted from behind it in an irritated tone, ‘People are restless when they’re young. No patience at all. Always rushing somewhere. Everything goes at its own pace. Time is just time.’