Then there was a knock at the door. I reached out and opened it.
The customs officer turned out to be a burly, red-faced guy with eyes that were already turning puffy. For some reason, when he spoke to me, he abandoned the standard routine and simply asked me, without the officialese:
‘What have you got? Get your bag out.’
He inspected the compartment carefully. He got up onto the ladder and glanced into the luggage rack just below the ceiling. And then finally he focused his attention on the bag lying all alone in the middle of the bottom bunk.
I lowered the other bunk and sat down. Still saying nothing.
‘Open the bag, please,’ the customs officer demanded.
‘Can they smell money, or something?’ I thought sullenly and obediently unzipped the bag.
One by one the plastic bags ended up on the bunk. When he reached the bag with the money the customs officer brightened up noticeably and reached out in a reflex response to slam the door of the compartment.
‘Well, well, well …’
I had already prepared myself for a hypocritical tirade about permits and even to have to read a paragraph out of a book – like every written law, perfectly understandable words strung together so that they made absolutely no sense at all. To listen, read and then ask hopelessly: ‘How much?’
But instead, I mentally reached my hand out towards the customs officer’s head, touched his mind and whispered:
‘Go now … Go on. Everything’s okay here.’
The officer’s eyes instantly became as stupid and senseless as the customs regulations.
‘Yes … have a good journey …’
He swung round stiffly, clicked the lock open and staggered out into the corridor without another word. An obedient wooden puppet with a skilful puppet-master pulling his strings.
But since when had I been a skilful puppet-master?
The train moved off about ten minutes later and all that time I was trying to make sense of what was happening. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was doing exactly what was needed. First that creature in the park beside the factory, and now this customs officer whose mind had instantly gone blank.
And why on earth was I on my way to Moscow? What was I going to do when I got off the train? Where was I going to go?
Somehow I was already beginning to feel certain that everything would become clear at the right moment. But only at the right moment, not before.
Unfortunately I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain yet.
I slept for most of the day. Maybe it was my body reacting to all the unexpected answers and new skills. Just how had I managed to see off the customs officer? I’d reached out to him, felt his dull crimson aura with the shimmering greenish overlay of dollar signs … And I’d been able to adjust his intentions.
I didn’t think ordinary people could do that. But what was I, if I wasn’t an ordinary human being?
Oh, yes. I was an Other. I’d told the werewolf in the park that. And I’d only just that moment realised it was a werewolf that had attacked me in the park. I remembered his aura, that bright yellow and crimson flame of Desire and Hunger.
It was as though I was gradually clambering up a stairway out of the blackness. Out of a blank chasm. The werewolf had been the first step, the customs officer the second. I wondered just how long the stairway was. And what would I find up there, at the top?
So far I had more questions than answers.
When I finally woke again we had already passed Tula. The compartment was still empty, but now I realised that was because it was the way I wanted it. And I realised that I usually got what I wanted in this world. The platform at Kursk Station in Moscow drifted slowly past the window. I was standing in the compartment, already dressed and packed, waiting for the train to stop. The female announcer’s muffled voice informed everyone that train number sixty-two had arrived at some platform or other.
I was in Moscow, but I still didn’t know what I was doing.
As usual, the most impatient passengers had already managed to block the corridor. But I could wait, I was in no hurry. After all, I’d be waiting anyway, until my slowly reviving memory prompted me or prodded me, like a mule driver with a stubborn, lazy mule.
The train gave a final jerk and came to a halt. There was a metallic clang in the corridor, the queue of people started and came to life, spilling out of the carriage one by one. There were the usual exclamations of concern and greeting, and passengers trying to squeeze back through into compartments to fetch things they hadn’t been able to take out the first time …
But the confused bustling around the carriage was soon over. The passengers had got out and received their allocation of kisses and hugs from the people meeting them. Or not, if there was no one there to meet them. There were still a few, craning their necks as they gazed around the platform, already shivering in the piercing Moscow wind. But the only people left in the carriage were waiting to pick up the usual parcels of food and so on that relatives had sent in the care of the conductor.
I picked up my bag and walked towards the door, still with no idea of what I was going to do next.
Probably I ought to change some money, I thought. I didn’t have a single Russian kopeck. Only our ‘independent’ Ukrainian currency. But unfortunately it wasn’t currency here. Just before we reached Moscow I’d prudently slit open one of the wads in the plastic bag and distributed some of the bills around my various pockets.
I always did hate billfolds.
What was that thought? Always … My ‘always’ had only begun last night.
With an instinctive shudder at the cold embrace of winter, I strode off along the platform towards the tunnel. Surely there had to be someone changing money at the station?
Rummaging about in my unreliable memory, I managed to establish two things: first, I didn’t remember the last time I’d been in Moscow but, second, I had a general idea of how the station looked from the inside, where to look for the bureau de change and how to reach the metro.
The tunnel, the large waiting hall in the basement, the short escalator, the ticket hall. My immediate goal was over there on the second floor, beside another escalator.
But this currency exchange looked as though it had been firmly closed for a very long time. No chink of light, no board showing current exchange rates.
Okay. Then I had to head for the exit and turn left, towards the ramp that sloped down to the Chkalovskaya metro station. The place I needed would be near there.
A white retail unit, a staircase up to the second floor, empty little booths flooded with light, a turn … The security guard glanced up at me quickly and then relaxed when he recognised I was new in town.
‘Go on, there’s no one inside,’ he told me magnanimously.
I carried my bag into a tiny little room, featureless apart from a rubbish bin in the corner and, of course, a small window with one of those little retractable drawers that always reminded me of an endlessly hungry mouth.
‘Hey,’ I reminded myself, ‘don’t forget just how recent your “always” is.’
But even so – if I was thinking like a man who really had lived thirty-five years, surely there must be some reason for that?
Anyway, we could get to that later.
The hungry mouth instantly consumed five one-hundred-dollar bills and my passport. I couldn’t see who was concealed behind the blank partition, and I wasn’t really bothered to get a look. All I noticed were the fingers with pearly nail-varnish, which meant it was a woman. The mouth reluctantly slid open and belched out a sizeable heap of one-hundred-rouble notes along with several smaller denominations. Even a few coins. Without counting the money, I put most of it into my shirt pocket, under my sweater, keeping just the smaller bills and the coins for my trousers. I put my passport in my other breast pocket and threw the receipt, a small rectangle of green paper, into the rubbish bin.