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.’