In the morning a burly man in a maritime uniform without epaulettes came and collected Medea from the sleeping Lavinsky household, and an hour later she was being rocked in the middle of the Bay of Kerch on an ancient cargo steamer of a type so familiar that it might have belonged to the old armada of her grandfather Harlampy. Wheezing and straining powerlessly like an old man, the little steamship struggled into Taganrog only toward evening. By this time the drizzle had turned into a grey light rain and Medea, having sat twelve hours on a wooden bench on the deck with her back straight and her knees tightly together, walked down the gangplank feeling more like a part of the wooden bench from which she had just torn herself than a live human being.
On the landing stage she looked around her: apart from a single streetlamp and a boy who had traveled with her all the way from Kerch, who had been reading a thick tome during the hours of daylight, there was nobody and nothing around. The boy was in that final stage of childhood when being called “young man” still causes confusion.
“Can you tell me, young man, which the best way would be to get to Rostov-on-Don: train or bus?”
“Bus,” he replied laconically.
Beside the boy stood a two-handled basket wrapped in old material with a pleasantly familiar pattern. Medea’s eye lingered on it: faded, barely discernible daisies in round posies . . . The boy seemed to catch her gaze and said something that didn’t make sense, pushing the basket with his foot: “If it fits in the boot, there’ll be room for you too.”
“What did you say?” Medea asked in surprise.
“My brother’s coming from Rostov to pick me up. In his car. I think there’ll be room in it for you.”
“Really? Splendid.”
The spiritual darkness which had enveloped her without relinquishing its grip for an instant since she had read that dreadful, hurried, offhand letter, did not stop her from rejoicing: “Lord, I thank you that you have not forsaken me in my travels, and that you send me your wayside angel as you did to Tobias.”
The youth who, unknown to himself, was performing the office of wayside angel, moved the basket aside with the squared toe cap of his boot and explained to Medea, “He has a large car, a Victory, but he might already be transporting something in it.”
The boy’s speech was correct, and his intonation seemed familiar. He sounded as if he came from a good family. Evidently the thick volumes he read had done him some good.
Some fifteen minutes later a thickset young man came up, kissed the boy, and slapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, Leshenka! Why didn’t you bring Auntie?”
“She said she’ll come in the summer. Her legs are hurting her.”
“Poor woman. How’s she managing there on her own?” It wasn’t an idle question: he was listening for the answer.
“It seemed to me she was getting by. She’s renting one room. The lodger’s a decent man, from Leningrad. He works at the meteorological station. He brought her some firewood in his car. Look, she’s sent some presents.” He nodded at the basket. “I didn’t want to take them, but she insisted.”
The man shrugged. “That’s just how it has to be.”
He went to pick up the basket. The boy stopped him. “Tolya, this lady’s going to Rostov too. Have you got room for her?”
Tolya turned to Medea as if he had only just noticed her, although she had been standing alongside throughout the conversation. “I do have room. I can give you a lift. Where do you need to get to in Rostov?”
“The train station.”
“Give me your rucksack,” he stretched out a hand and slipped it onto his shoulder.
Medea was still murmuring to herself, “Lord, I thank you for all your goodness, for all that you send, and may I have room for it in my heart, rejecting nothing.” This was her ongoing conversation with God, a mixture of prayers memorized long ago and her own voice, alive and grateful.
Medea, who had barely had time to straighten her old bones after sitting so long on the deck, now climbed into the car where it was warm and comfortable. Her damp clothing, if it didn’t exactly dry out, was at least soon suffused with her own warmth. She nodded off and through her half-sleep heard scraps of the brothers’ conversation: something about their sister’s wedding; about the teacher training institute where the boy was a fresh-man; about Simferopol; about the aunt whom he had been visiting in Old Crimea.
“I really ought to visit Nina,” Medea thought blearily through her sleep, remembering her former Theodosia neighbor who had moved to Old Crimea after a fire destroyed her house in their street. Through her drowsiness Medea remembered Nina, and her old mother who had gone out of her mind that very night, and her younger sister whose arm had been burned and to whom Medea had given first aid using a primitive but effective folk remedy.
They brought Medea to the train station in complete darkness in the middle of the night. The driver took Medea’s rucksack and saw her to the ticket office. At one window there was a long, silent queue; the other two windows were shut so firmly it was difficult to believe they were ever open.
Medea stopped in front of one of these unpromising windows and thanked the driver. He took the rucksack off his shoulder, put it on the ground, and said uncertainly, “Would you perhaps like me to take you home for now and you can go on from here in the morning? Just look at this queue.”
Before Medea could thank him, the window by her shoulder opened, and without having time to be taken aback, she asked for a ticket to Tashkent.
“Reserved seats only,” the cashier warned her, “and you’ll have to change twice, at Saratov and Salsk.”
“Fine,” Medea said.
The crowd immediately stampeded with much shrieking and yelling toward the window which had unexpectedly opened, and a furious argument broke out, with some people wanting to keep the old order of the queue, while those who had been at the back and now found themselves nearer the front didn’t think that was at all a good idea.
A moment later, squeezing her way with difficulty through a seething crowd up in arms in pursuit of justice, her ticket in her hand, Medea took the rucksack from Tolya. He could only spread his arms wide in amazement: “Well, that really was a stroke of luck!”
They went out onto the platform and consequently didn’t see that the window from which Medea’s ticket had been issued was promptly closed again, and the crowd, now split in two, seethed in front of both of the closed windows, impatient fists drumming on unyielding plywood.
Medea’s train arrived twelve minutes later, although it was five hours behind schedule. It was only when they were out of Rostov that she realized why the cloth with the daisy pattern had seemed so familiar: it was her own curtain, which she had given to Nina along with many other essentials after the fire thirty years ago. So the aunt in Old Crimea that they had been talking about was her own former neighbor Nina, and the young men were the children of the girl whose burn Medea had treated that night.
Medea smiled to herself and felt reassured. Despite being so much more crowded and having so much more hustle and bustle, the world still functioned in its old way, the way she understood, with small miracles happening, people coming together and parting, and all of it forming a wonderful pattern.
She got two rusks out of her rucksack and a large German thermos with a lid. The tea poured into it back in Kerch was hot and sweet. Medea sat for about four days by the carriage window, stretching out occasionally on the lower bunk and falling into a fitful and vibrating sleep on the bottom of which lay that black, insoluble precipitate of darkness.
The train rumbled slowly on, making countless little stops and standing for long senseless periods at the dual-track passing places. The entire timetable had been vitiated when the train was dispatched with a long delay to its point of departure. At every station and every halt it was met by a crowd wearied by their waiting. Not many people in the slow, dirty train were making as long a journey as Medea. Most of them got in with their baskets, sacks, and bundles for a few stops, crowding the corridors and, when they got out, leaving behind them pungent smells and the husks of sunflower seeds.