Freshness blew from the woods surrounding the station. Mowed grass on the railroad bed gave off a refined, slightly sharp aroma. That blended with the smell of railroad ties warmed by the sun. With the whisper of a weeping willow over the platform. This tree had grown as if out of nowhere; nobody saw where it began. Its roots were lost below, in the tall grass. Maybe it had no roots at all. It did not even have a trunk: there was only a crown over the platform.
Leeza announced the trains that passed through. She announced them by placing her palms together like a little boat and pressing them against the sides of her nose: it came out like a microphone, only quieter. They had heard announcements like this in the regional capital; nothing was announced at the Kilometer 715 station. Solovyov gave permission for the trains to proceed through the station. Copying his mother’s motion, he lifted the baton with his right hand. He looked through the train just as tiredly. After some time, he achieved the same kind of look from Leeza. Everybody passing through should know this work was just a routine for them.
Solovyov was still sitting with his eyes closed at 20:32. As the train approached, he thought that Leeza had managed to announce it after all. He was sure she was sitting next to him on the bench at 20:32. That his mother was standing in the controller’s booth. She could not help but be there at that time.
They all needed to pull themselves together. To exhale and not move. This instant would remain if they did not frighten it away. Just as there was a moment when it is important for someone wounded in battle not to die. After prevailing over those critical seconds, the body accustoms itself to life once again. That was what the person who turned out to be Leeza’s grandfather had said. If Solovyov behaved himself properly here, on the platform, life would again find its past. Catch hold of it. What had seemed dead would suddenly discover its own pulse and the three of them would return home together: Solovyov, his mother, and Leeza. Everything happening later—the deaths of his mother and grandmother, his departure, studying at the university—would turn out to be a misunderstanding, an impetuous departure from this evening’s coziness.
They would return home. His mother (the clang of the valve on the gas tank) would put on the teakettle. Pour water into a basin and make him rinse off his feet. On the bottom there would be a triangular spot where the enamel was chipped. He would put a cork sailboat in the basin. His grandmother would read aloud from Robinson Crusoe. Leeza would take her cup in both hands. He would slowly move the water around the basin with his feet. The sailboat would begin rocking on the waves. A diesel locomotive whistle would sound somewhere in the distance. No, of course they would not return. Not Leeza. Solovyov raised his eyes toward the controller’s booth. And especially not his mother. The wind from a passing locomotive engulfed him. The 21:47, St. Petersburg–Kislovodsk. The train had gone through unannounced.
Only after turning on the light in the entryway did Solovyov realize it was already dark. He boiled the vermicelli he had brought with him and opened yet another can of food. It was goby fish in tomato sauce again. It seemed almost absurd that they were here. The gobies looked at Solovyov with sadness, making him feel even more unhappy. Moths were beating against the kitchen window. Their wings never stopped working as they clutched convulsively at the frame, rose along the glass, and slid down again.
Solovyov went into his own room, the one he had occupied after his mother’s death. Compared with the overall order in the house, his room constituted an exception. It was not exactly untidy, it was closer to ‘untouched’. something that immediately caught the eye. A Russian language textbook lay open by a bed leg. The cover faced upwards, just as he had left it on the morning of his departure. Solovyov crouched and picked up the book. Tried to close it. It would not close; it could only be pressed shut. With difficulty. With the unyieldingness of a stiffened body. He laid the book on the desk and it opened to the previous page again. The use of ‘not’ with verbs was what had interested him that morning. Always written as two words. What an idiot, thought Solovyov; he slowly stretched out on the bed. The bed squeaked, as usual. He pulled off his T-shirt and jeans, and threw them on the floor. He clasped the pillow with both arms and buried his face in it. Ceasing to exist.
Solovyov awoke from the jingling of bed knobs at the head of the bed. An endless freight train was passing through outside his window. It went slowly, waiting for the far signal to change. Wearily sat for a bit on the railroad tracks.
Solovyov’s whole body sensed its vibration. His arms were still embracing the pillow. He was curled around a balled-up blanket. One freight train replaced the other, heading in the opposite direction; this one went noticeably faster. It continued accelerating, drawing the rhythm of its wheels to the boundaries of the possible. A long time ago, Solovyov and Leeza had listened to that rhythm together. The rumble broke off at its upper limit. The sound of the departing train seemed like an echo in the sudden quiet. Solovyov settled in on his back. He felt a sticky dampness when he pulled the blanket out from under himself.
Solovyov headed for the cemetery early the next morning. On his shoulder he carried a small hoe that he had found in the shed. In his hand was an inexplicably persistent gladiolus that had sprouted in what used to be the flowerbed. The cemetery was in the forest, about twenty minutes from home. It was difficult to divine the road that led there.
Solovyov remembered the first funeral he had seen. He was surprised that people scattered flowers in front of the coffin the whole way. He had seen the men from the station who were carrying the coffin step on crimson aster heads; he thought he could hear them crunch. He had stopped and watched as the procession moved further away. Leeza stayed and stood alongside him. Once everyone had disappeared into the forest, he and Leeza began picking up the flowers. Many of the flowers turned out to be intact. Some did not even have road dust on them. Solovyov’s grandmother would not allow them to keep the flowers in the house; that bouquet upset her very much then.
Solovyov and Leeza went to the cemetery often, especially in summer. They would sit on narrow memorial benches and on stone pedestals warmed by the diffused forest sun. Sometimes (balancing) on metal fences painted to look like silver. Leeza’s white legs would be crisscrossed with pink streaks after sitting on the metal fences.
Crosses stood on the graves; sometimes there were iron obelisks with stars. Monuments were a rarity at the cemetery. They were trucked in from other places, carefully carried around the graves, and set in mortar, with a trowel tapping from all sides. This installation method evoked respect. There was something real and kindred in the name of that action itself, in the trowel tapping or in driving a cigarette butt into crumbly clay. And they were not installed immediately after the funeral but later on, after a year or two, once the ground had settled.
One time a monument with a poetry inscription was installed at the cemetery. It was on the grave of a station chief who had fallen under the Moscow–Sevastopol express train. Solovyov liked the text very much:
Because of the collective signature under the text, Solovyov thought for a long time that the management of the railroad hub had written the beautiful poetry. As was clarified later, however, out of everything that was carved into that slab, the only words belonging to the railroad workers (other than the signature) were ‘We mourn’. While studying in Petersburg, Solovyov learned that poet Semyon Nadson (1862–1887) was the author of those lines that had remained in his memory. Be that as it may, the day the monument was installed, Solovyov told Leeza that in the event of death he would want to have the same kind of monument, with poetry carved into it, installed at his grave. Solovyov said: in the event of death. In the depths of his childish soul, he did not allow such an event.