Alex and Zeldovich strode past the rows of glistening green railway carriages. They were strikingly clean and shiny after the gloom of the waiting room. The carriages seemed taller than the American variety and certainly wider, since the Russian railroad track gauge was the widest in the world. Excited faces peered out from the windows as he passed, and he could see people in the "hard" class carriages, cheap sections that housed four in each compartment, already on their bunks.
Zeldovich clattered up the metal stairs of a carriage near the front of the train. A woman in a linen smock met them at the top of the stairs, and quietly exchanged words with Zeldovich. She was a large, big-breasted woman. When she opened her mouth in a half smile, a stainless-steel eyetooth shined.
"I am pleased to meet you, Dr. Cousins," the woman said, holding out her hand.
"She is the attendant in this carriage," Zeldovich said. "I know she will make your trip very comfortable."
"I'm sure," Alex said politely.
Zeldovich turned and pulled off his glove, a deliberate act of courtesy, and held out his hand. Alex was surprised. He had hardly expected Zeldovich to let him out of his sight. Could he have been wrong, he wondered.
"I hope you have a pleasant journey," Zeldovich said, his little eyes blank as he pumped Alex's hand vigorously in the heavy Russian way. Then he clattered back down the metal steps, leaving Alex to ponder his unexpected retreat. They are giving me a false sense of security, he thought. Or throwing me to the jackals.
Following the attendant down the corridor, over an Oriental patterned carpet, Alex peered into each compartment as he passed. By American standards, they were commodious. Two bunks were ranged along one side of the wall. Over each bunk was a net catchall. There was also a table, covered with a cloth, on which stood a lamp with a tasseled shade. An Oriental rug covered the floor and red velvet curtains hung on either side of the window. The walls were done in deep-toned mahogany. There was a hint of Victorian in the decor, which Alex found particularly inviting.
Looking ahead, he could see a shiny metal samovar, laid on a faintly glowing bed of charcoal. Large pails of charcoal stood on the floor beneath it. A small metal scoop was sticking out from one of them. This apparatus would be the principal source of heat for the train.
At the entrance to compartment number four, the attendant turned and took Alex's bag from him. As she carried it inside, Alex could not resist glancing into the compartment over. Sitting there was the general Alex had seen in the station. He had already usurped the only chair and was staring out of the window, his head bathed in heavy clouds of cigar smoke.
The attendant returned to the passageway. "If there is anything you wish, ring the buzzer inside," she said. Then she whispered, almost conspiratorially, "My name is Tanya."
The moment Alex entered his compartment, he felt a decided change in atmosphere. A heavy smell of perfume hung in the air, distinctly Russian. It was the same overpowering scent worn by the nurses in Dimitrov's dacha. It smelled as if it had been made in one gigantic vat of strawberries.
Someone had already arrived and opted for the lower bunk. It was obviously a woman. This, Alex had learned, was another idiosyncrasy of the Soviet Union, which championed sexual equality to the point of arranging accommodations with stubborn disregard for the gender of the passengers. Alex felt a tug of excitement. Except for a brief unsatisfactory episode with one of Dimitrov's heavy-thighed nurses, he had been celibate for the past six weeks.
A suitcase lay open revealing feminine underthings-pink panties, a garter belt, a brassiere with a dainty little ribbon between the cups. There were dresses too, hanging on a bar at one end of the compartment. Alex flung his bag on the upper bunk and hoisted himself up two steps of the wooden ladder to feel the mattress. It was firm, and the pillow seemed well stuffed. Alex smiled with relief. At least his nights on the train would not be as uncomfortable as he'd feared.
He noted that both his suitcases had been placed neatly under the lower bunk. He slid them out. They were heavy, difficult to swing to the upper bunk. As he did so, he accidentally bumped the woman's suitcase, disarranging a scarf. His eye caught a gleaming bottle of vodka stuck in one corner of her suitcase. He looked around, then carefully covered it with the scarf again.
Opening one of his own suitcases, he felt under his pajamas for his leather toiletry case. It wasn't there. Pushing down with his palms, he could feel its outlines under layers of clothing. Someone had searched his belongings. He felt a surge of paranoia, his brief sense of freedom at Zeldovich's departure diminished. They were watching after all.
He removed the toiletry case, placing it in the net bag over his bunk. He hung his two suits in the open closet next to the dresses and felt a sudden intimacy. Like home, he thought, although Janice and he had separate closets. He felt the material of one of the dresses, jersey, smooth. As he moved toward his suitcase again, he glanced into the passageway and saw the squat man whom the train agent had tried to humiliate. He waddled past, in a sudden movement looked at Alex, then looked forward again.
Removing his pajamas and robe next, he hung them on a hook next to the flowered robe of the anonymous woman. He hung his long coat and fur hat next to his suits, embarrassed that he had taken up so much room. When he finished with all the details of settling in, his ear began to register an undercurrent of music, faintly audible. Following the direction of the music, he saw the perforated disc of a speaker built into the wall, and beside it the volume knob.
He turned the knob, but the volume did not change. It had to be broken. He was in for it now, he thought, making a mental note to call the attendant. He knew the music would become an annoying sound, like the maddening drip-drip of water from a loose spigot.
With great creaking noises, as the coupling strained and the wheels rolled on the wide-gauged track, the train began to move. It gained momentum slowly, picking its way cautiously through the rail yards. Peering out through the grayness, he watched the swarm of babushkas sweeping under harsh floodlights. Beyond, on the edge of the light, Alex could see the decaying boilers of aged steam locomotives and the rusting hulks of old carriages ready for the scrap heap. He pressed his head sideways against the cold glass and watched the train station recede. Behind him was the darkening, barely visible skyline of Moscow.
"The tea is lovely," a woman's voice said in English. He quickly turned, embarrassed at being caught. She was standing inside the compartment, holding a glass of tea in her graceful long fingers. The glass was fitted into a podstakannik, a silver-filigreed metal container. He watched her settle into the single red velvet chair. She crossed her long, well-muscled legs and watched him through her brown lashes. He recognized her as the woman who had intimidated the train agent with her sexuality.
"The tea in this car is excellent," she said. "Just press the buzzer. The Petrovina will get you a glass."
She had meant to be charming, he realized, but instead he felt slightly intimidated. He pressed the buzzer, more to recover his calm, than out of a desire for tea.
"I speak Russian," he said. Was it meant to be a lion's roar? It came out as a bleat.
"Wonderful," she said, in English again.
She leaned her head back, smiling broadly, showing a line of gold fillings. He calculated she was somewhere in her mid-thirties. It was her size that must have caused his sudden anxiety. She was close to six feet tall, he reckoned, with an extraordinary figure that was beautifully proportioned to her size. She was the ideal of Russian beauty, like the paintings of sturdy peasant girls smiling in the wheat fields that were hung everywhere in Dimitrov's dacha.
"Well then, what shall it be?" she asked. Her voice had depth and timbre. It was her boldness, too, that had caught him by surprise.
"Russian train. Russian tongue," he said, slipping onto the lower bunk, which obviously served as the only other seat in the compartment.
"Okay," she said in English, then laughed and switched to Russian. "I wanted to practice my English," she said. "Perhaps later, okay?" She laughed again, raised her tea and touched her full lips to the edge of the glass.
Tanya appeared in the doorway, awaiting orders. "Tea, please," Alex said. She nodded, departing. "I am Anna Petrovna Valentinova," his blonde companion said, extending her hand. He took her long fingers in his, feeling their heat and strength.
"Alex Cousins." She probably knew that already.
"I'm going to Irkutsk," she volunteered.
"The Paris of Siberia," he commented, suddenly cautious, remembering Dimitrov's odd warning. "Be discreet," he had urged, repeating it over and over in the last days. Why? Alex had wondered. Dimitrov held all the cards. And this woman was probably his agent.
"My husband has an important post in the university in Irkutsk," she said. He imagined he caught a slight sigh. "I myself am a Professor of History there."
Alex was not surprised. If they were going to vest her with a profession, why not choose one that was esoteric? Or was it? Everywhere in the Soviet Union there were women in professions dominated by men in America-doctors, lawyers, trainmen, construction workers, professors. There was, he had learned, a surplus of twenty million women in the Soviet Union, the result of long years of war. He studied Mrs. Valentinova. Underneath the sensuality, he detected a hard earnestness and intellectual power. She was certainly different from his wife, Janice, the archetypal American housewife, who was motivated by acquisitiveness and all the anxieties and insecurities it created. Not that this Russian woman was without her little vanities. He noted how carefully she had applied her mascara, the light, artistic rouging of the high cheekbones, delicate painting of her lips. He remembered the lacy underwear he had seen in her suitcase. They are outflanking us everywhere, he thought with some amusement.
Tanya appeared with a glass of tea on a small tray. Alex removed two unwrapped lumps of sugar from a steel bowl Tanya offered, then watched her depart. While blowing on the tea, he peered out of the window. They were passing through a tunnel. The total blackness beyond the window created a dark mirror in which he could see himself and Mrs. Valentinova. They looked like a contented Victorian couple ensconced in their cozy living room.
"It's been two months." Mrs. Valentinova sighed. "I had to attend an important seminar at Moscow University. They are redoing the Russian encyclopedia, a mammoth task. The mass of details is enormous."
He had been watching the woman, but listening only peripherally. The train was picking up speed now. On one bounce of the compartment the tea slopped over his fingers. The woman laughed.
"The roadbed," she said. "Roadbeds in other countries, they say, make the trains sway. Ours bounce. They put the tracks together in an odd way." There was a very long pause.
"The Russians have to be different," he said, filling the vacuum with a clichéd response.
"You notice that about us."
"Is the Pope Catholic?"
He was sorry he had said it, wondering if the wisecrack would be misinterpreted as sarcasm. His experience with Russians had discouraged his propensity for wisecracks. At Dimitrov's dacha he had discovered that each casual one-liner needed further explanation, until by the end, the humor was gone. But the woman seated across from him had blinked her eyes and nodded with a wry smile, as if she had understood. Did she, he wondered, or was she simply trying to be ingratiating?
Through the open compartment door he watched the parade of people. Most took sly glances inside, then turned away. One well-dressed gentleman turned and smiled at them. A little boy was dragged past. He stuck his tongue out at Alex.
"Vladimir!" The sharp, dominating voice of his mother rang through the passageway.
A man wearing striped pajamas passed. Alex stared, and Valentinova laughed.
"It's a Russian traveling costume," she said.
"Pajamas?"
"It's quite practical. Very comfortable and saves wear and tear on the clothes." She paused. "It's quite respectable, really." Alex's thoughts abruptly took an odd turn as he watched the woman, larger than life, slumped in her chair, her long legs crossed, a bit of white skin showing where the garters met the tops of her stockings. His imagination followed the whiteness up her thighs, beyond, and he could feel himself stiffen. It is one of those male fantasies come true, he thought. How many times had he wished that chance would create opportunity? Like now. This beautiful Amazon dropping from heaven less than a yard from him.
"My husband prefers to fly," she went on. "He can't understand why I'd want to spend four nights on a bouncing train when a plane ride takes only seven hours."
Alex sensed that she was deliberately explaining her presence. Yet, despite his suspicions, he could understand the compelling sense of isolated time and space that a train journey induced, a suspension, an interruption of the life cycle. He could define his feelings about it quite accurately, and yet he had slept on a train only once before in his life, when he had first taken the sleeper down from New York to Washington. He had had an upper berth then, but even after twenty years he could still recall that excitement of finding himself tucked into the cozy shelf while the wheels churned somewhere below, moving him securely over a mysterious road to nowhere.
However calculated her intent, Mrs. Valentinova's comment had served to eliminate her husband from this experience, and, despite his caution, Alex felt a commonality between them, a sharing of more than space.
The train kept picking up speed. He finished the dregs of his tea and looked at his watch.
"That won't do you any good," she said, smiling broadly. He felt like a small boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
"The train runs on Moscow time, despite the fact that we travel through five time zones between here and Irkutsk. I always just take off my watch." To prove the point, she undid her wristwatch and tossed it into her open suitcase. "The human clock"-she pointed to her stomach-"will be more accurate."
The mere mention triggered his hunger.
"Don't worry, the restaurant car is open from nine in the morning to eleven at night." She seemed alert to every one of his responses.
"My clock is ringing now," he said, getting up. "Would you care to join me?"
"I'm afraid our clocks are not synchronized," she said.
"I didn't eat much for lunch," he explained, embarrassed by his own banality. Sliding his bag from under her bunk, he pulled out a medical journal to take with him. He looked toward Valentinova, but she had already turned away, and was staring into the darkness outside the moving train.
