It was, as so often in Moscow, a woman driver. “You’re a foreigner, gospodina,” she said as Carole got into the seat beside her.
“I’m American.”
“Ah, then you have these troubles, too, with your blacks. For us it’s Asiatics. I won’t even allow them in the taxi. Never want to pay the full fare. Bargain with you, straight out of the bazaars, they are. And the money they earn! Just here for the long ruble, depend on it. Russia for the Russians is the way we should be. Look at the rubles we hand out to the rest of the world. We’re supporting Africa, you know. Every bag of grain they eat, over half comes from Russia. And we’ve got bread rationing! Are you surprised? These Czechs and Rumanians and Bulgarians aren’t much better. Cadging education from us because it’s the best in the world, naturally. Then they go back and stir up trouble at home! And then who has to help them out?
“But you can’t beat the Asiatics for plain ingratitude. Who built them up? We did, of course. Before the coming of Soviet power they were nothing. Camel dealers, bazaar thieves. You heard about the Vladimir rape? Yes, well that tells you a few things. In my district which is crawling with them, a young girl daren’t go out by herself at night. And some not so young.” She howled with laughter. “Although I suppose for some of the old ones it’s their only chance!”
Leaving the taxi at Nogina Street, Carole walked back toward Solyanka Street. He would have to come that way.
For the next half-hour she had threaded back and forth between the side streets behind the Ulitza Solyanka, trying always to keep the crucial corner in sight At just after five o’clock she saw him under a lamp across the street in front of her. She ran forward, her boots slipping in the hard-packed snow. Bundled figures of Muscovites turned to stare after her.
“Alex,” she called. “Alex!”
He reached the curb and turned suddenly, extending his arms to catch her.
“I know what they asked you to do,” she was saying into the fur collar of his coat. “I know why you wanted to stop seeing me.”
He led her quickly into a deep alleyway. A faint blue light shone on piles of stacked wooden crates. In the darkness between them, he kissed her.
“My husband, Tom, found out,” she said. “The KGB wanted you to report on me.” The words bubbled out of her.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
“You didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”
“Carole,” he said hopelessly. “Understand for God’s sake. I didn’t have the right to tell you.”
“You still didn’t trust me with your safety.”
“No, not just for my safety. Others, too.”
“Your parents?”
He didn’t answer. “I’m glad you know, Carole,” he said. “But it can’t make any difference.”
“Alex, I’m leaving Moscow in a few days. Can that make any difference? Can it?”
She watched the struggle played out on his face.
“When do you leave?” he asked after a few moments.
“Thursday. I would have gone tomorrow but I’m having some customs problems with jewelry I brought in. On these trivial things…”
“Hangs a thread?” he said. “Is that the English expression?”
“No, Alex,” she smiled. “But in this case it will do.”
The wind through the alley made the wooden crates creak.
“I must go now,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you I know.”
He reached out and touched her face. “Could you be free tomorrow afternoon? And tomorrow night?”
“My husband wants a divorce. I’m free.”
It was the same journey Zoya had made in the other direction almost a year before. Throughout the second day Anatoly had brought the three women drink and had allowed them off the train at the frequent stops made to clear the line ahead of snow. He had now made it clear that the three women were for the entertainment of Barkut himself.
They lay among the filthy straw in the cattle car peering through the wooden slats at the interminable snow-covered forests that hugged the track. It was impossible to keep despair at bay. And equally impossible to think of escape. Even when they were allowed out into the snowdrifts to wash, Anatoly came with them, his rifle in the crook of his arm.
During the afternoon stop Barkut came. Hardly glancing at the other two, he reached down and seized Anna by the wrist. Dragging her after him he jumped down onto the track.
He took her there before our eyes [Zoya said], Anna made no attempt to resist. It would have been futile anyway. When it was over he got to his feet and walked away tying his cloth belt.
We could see she was crying but quietly, not uncontrollably. She stood up and we stretched out hands to pull her up beside us. I suppose neither of us had even noticed the penals gathering behind her, until one of them grabbed her round the waist and hauled her back down onto the track.
Struggling wildly she was dragged back to one of the other cars. We screamed at Anatoly to help. But he stood in the doorway of the boxcar shrugging. “She’s theirs now,” he said, and slid the slatted door closed.
The train bumped and clanked forward through the remainder of the daylight and into the evening. Sometimes we thought we heard Anna screaming in the boxcar behind us, but over the rattling of the train, the shouts of the penals and the occasional burst of automatic fire loosed into the night, the man-muffled scream of one woman would not carry far… perhaps after a while we pretended not to hear. There was nothing whatsoever we could do to help.
With Anatoly there were five men in the boxcar with us. Throughout the afternoon they had been drinking vodka from the store of bottles in the corner, but apart from a few lewd jokes, they had paid little attention to us. Perhaps it was because they feared Barkut’s return at any one of the many short stops. Both Laryssa and myself knew it would be different during the night.
Anatoly was sitting with his back against the side of the car, dozing across the rifle crooked in his arm. My first intention was to steal one of the bottles of vodka now rolling in the straw. In the light of the swinging kerosene lamp, as I edged toward the nearest bottle, I realized that the other four men were asleep, too.
Perhaps that’s how escapes are made. I stretched out a hand and with the tips of my fingers rolled the bottle within reach. Then moving back to Laryssa I indicated the sleeping men. She understood immediately. As the train slowed yet again, we got to our feet. I picked up a stale and dirty half loaf and shoved it into the pocket of my quilted zek’s coat. The door slid back easily. I followed Laryssa out into the black night.
I suppose we were lucky. We landed a few feet apart in a drift deep enough to break our fall. Even the vodka bottle was intact.
We crawled toward each other and watched the train disappearing along the single-line moonlit track. An hysterical feeling of exhilaration seized us both. We laughed and guzzled vodka until the tears streamed down and froze upon our cheeks. Then both together it seemed we stopped laughing. We were both, I’m certain, thinking of Anna.
We had absolutely no thought of where we might be. From somewhere north of Moscow, at Vologda I think, the line ran almost due north through Kotlas and Pechora, then, as if shying away from the dreaded Gulag area of Vorkuta, it crossed the Ural Mountains to head through wastes of frozen marsh and birchwoods to the railhead at Krasibirsk on the River Ob. The purpose of the single-track line was, I suppose, to transport copper (mined by zeks) from the new field on the northern Urals. I had traveled the route out to Krasibirsk the December before but there was nothing to recognize in these unending forests.