A thin-lipped blond man in a black polo neck sweater slipped into the carriage and sat at a table on his own, furthest away from the reporters. His cheekbones were so sharply defined they looked as though they had been cut by an ice-axe. Scowling at the carriage, he pecked at his soup.
“Who’s that?” asked Jones.
“That’s Dr Limner,” said Duranty, “Professor Aubyn’s personal factotum.”
“Where’s the great man?”
“He likes to keep himself to himself,” said Duranty. “Tomorrow they’re taking us to a collective farm so we’ll see quite a lot of him then.”
“May I ask another question?” said Jones, tentatively.
Duranty’s eyes flickered with their habitual amusement. “Go ahead old boy, go ahead.”
“Back in Britain, in the right-wing press, there’s talk of famine here in Russia. Is there any truth in that?”
Fischer seemed as if he was girding himself to say something – but Duranty leaned forward, colliding with Natasha and spilling red wine over her frock. The clean-up operation was diverting and involved a fair amount of mockery from Lyons, Fischer and Wells.
Once order had been restored, Jones tried again.
“So, this talk of famine?”
Gesturing to Natasha and Evgenia, Duranty smiled. “George Bernard Shaw came to Russia just a few months ago on a fact-finding trip. These two ladies were his translators. What did you make of him, girls?”
Natasha looked at Oumansky, who was staring at his feet, then spoke. “For a westerner, George Bernard Shaw has a fine analytical command of the problems that the Soviet Union faces. But…” She gave a sly glance at Oumansky, checking that he was still lost in his boots. “He didn’t do yoom-yoom.” Her delivery of the phrase made it sound indecent, provoking yet more laughs from the newspapermen. “I prefer the Flying Welsh,” she added, and with that she rested her hand on Jones’ thigh, again.
“Evgenia?” prompted Duranty.
She was staring out into the darkness.
“Evgenia?” Duranty repeated, this time a command.
She put her fingers of her right hand to her neck and ran them along her jawline but said nothing.
“What did you make of George Bernard Shaw’s line on famine, Evgenia?” pressed Duranty.
“Most memorably,” she replied, “George Bernard Shaw said, ‘I did not see a single under-nourished person in Russia, young or old. Were they padded? Were their hollow cheeks distended by pieces of India rubber inside?’”
“That’s what he said, girl,” Duranty snapped back, “not what you made of him.”
“It is for others to judge. My function is simply to be the people’s translator, Mr Duranty. I do not wish to trespass beyond my position. That would be a disservice to the revolution and to the Party.”
“Bravo, old girl, bravo,” Duranty replied.
“And you, Duranty? What do you make of these famine rumours?” Jones asked.
“Look at this feast. We’re supposed to be going through the dead centre of the very worst of the famine zone, according to the propagandist press which hates the Russians. I'll wager you won’t see anyone starving.”
The train pulled to a halt at a primitive station, lit feebly by a few lamps. The restaurant car had become unpleasantly stuffy. Zakovsky, chicken leg in hand, stood up to open a window to allow some fresh air in. He nibbled on the leg but something about it displeased him and he lobbed the remains out of the open window. The engine sprang back into life and the carriages concertinaed as the train got under way once more.
Looking up from his plate, Jones made out six or seven small boys emerge from the outer darkness, racing for the officer’s chicken leg. A small, very thin boy got there first – but he was pole-axed by a punch from the biggest lad of all. The thin boy lay on the ground, a pool of blood by his head. Jones craned forward to see the end of the scene, hoping that he would get up – but the train picked up speed and what happened next was swallowed up by the night.
Perhaps it was the lack of motion that woke him. Jones was disorientated at first, his neck cricked, but slowly he took in his surroundings, the dining car empty apart from Oumansky and Lyons talking quietly over glasses of vodka on a separate table. Through the window, Jones made out a sickle moon, ringed by cloud. It cast a feeble, silvery glow onto the dark forest outside.
The train had stopped. It was two o’clock.
Standing up, he stretched and headed towards the train compartment he was sharing with Duranty. Once outside, he tapped once on the door and, hearing no reply, slid it open a fraction. There was no light inside the compartment. Before his eyes adjusted, he heard a low animal grunt of a man in ecstasy, then made out the form of Duranty, sitting in the lounge chair by the window. Kneeling in front of him, but unidentifiable in the scant moonlight, was a woman, half-naked, her hands tied behind her back with some black cloth, her head dipping low into his groin.
“Well, you found the sex old boy,” Duranty’s voice was amused. “Blood and gold next. Won’t be too long. Come back in half an hour.”
Jones slid the door tight shut and hurried down to the end of the carriage, where the maid with the potato face smiled at him thinly. He stepped outside onto the footplate. The cold scoured his throat. Hoarfrost had turned the silver birch trees into a ghost army frozen in motion. Except for the soft chug of the locomotive’s idling engine, the night was still.
Who was she?
The more he turned it over in his mind, the more he wondered whether it might – it couldn’t be – Evgenia. Jealousy, self-loathing and doubt tumbled inside him. He felt tempted to jump off the train and march off into the frozen emptiness, never to be heard of again. His parents would care, but no-one else.
“Evgenia. Evgenia. Evgenia.”
Repeating her name didn’t soothe him, didn’t answer his stupid, revolting question. Had it been her with Duranty?
Soldiers in Genghis helmets came out of the dark, walking fast towards the front of the train, moving past him in silence. Shrinking back into the shadows on the footplate, he stopped counting when he got to a hundred. At the end came a small knot of civilians, well-dressed for the cold. Jones noted one family, a massive red-bearded father, an accordion around his neck, a handsome mother and a plump boy with rosy apple cheeks coming along behind. Then came more soldiers shouldering two wooden carts covered with cloth.
Freezing, bewildered, he watched the last of the soldiers file past him, then returned to the restaurant car, knowing he’d rather spend the night there than in Duranty’s compartment. He called for vodka from Gazdanov, the waiter.
When a glass arrived, he knocked it back in one and ordered a second, then a third. For the fourth, Jones watched as Gazdanov returned with a litre bottle and two glasses. The waiter poured two shots, one for Jones ans one for himself. They clinked glasses and drank, after which the waiter left Jones the bottle and bid him goodnight. Jones worked the bottle mechanically after that. It was three quarters empty by the time the train gave a shrug and pulled itself nonchalantly forwards.
Shortly, they passed through a city – but, by this time, Jones was drunk. The vodka bottle and little glass bobbed up and down before his eyes. Looking up through the windows, he made out a great railway station, brilliantly lit, empty of people apart from a knot of well-fed and warm-looking civilians gathered around two carts laden with food. His eyes closed and opened and he took in what was laid out on one cart: oranges, chicken, blinis, sausage, bread – and, beside it, a plump boy dancing a jig while stuffing an enormous sandwich into his mouth. It was the same boy Jones had seen earlier that night, walking besides the halted train. He couldn’t get the name of the city on the station platform because it was in Cyrillic but clumsily he took out his notebook and tried to write what it looked like in Roman script. It took him three goes, but eventually he got it roughly right: “Xapkob”. Jones had a Russian-English dictionary but it was in his bag and that was in the compartment with Duranty. He wasn’t going back there tonight.