Trans-Siberian Express (17 page)

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Mikhail watched as the doctor let himself into his own compartment, leaving him alone in the passageway, then he went back inside.

The gray-haired lady had tidied Vera’s bed and gone back to her own compartment. Mikhail poured a glassful of water and lifted Vera so she could drink. He put the pills between her lips and urged her to swallow the water. She gagged momentarily, then gulped and looked up at him, her eyes shining. Her lids were heavy, like little hoods.

“You must let me go back to Moscow, Mikhail,” she said.

“Whatever you wish, my darling.”

“I wish I was stronger, Mikhail.”

“I understand.”

“You must forgive me.”

“Of course, my darling.”

He lifted her frail figure from the bunk and held her to him, feeling the tears start, trying with every effort of his will to keep his shoulders steady so that she would not know he was crying.

GODOROV
stood in the frigid space between the cars and felt the cold seep into his bones. Cold seemed to ease his pain, perhaps freezing the nerves. He leaned against the frigid metal walls. Immobility always increased his misery and on the train it was compounded unmercifully. The only escape was to continue moving, walking along the passageways, never alighting in one spot for more than a few moments. But the memories of his old agony never stopped, dredged up from his subconscious, perhaps, by the movement of this infernal train. Soon he would be confronting Shmiot, and he would wipe out his debt of pain.

It gave him courage to think in those terms. He knew he had been strong and had let nothing stand in the way of that central idea. There had been false alarms, of course. Many times he had seen a face in the crowd that he was certain was Shmiot’s: the shape of the head, the arch of the nose, the wide-set, cruel eyes. Sometimes he would spend days stalking a likely prospect, studying the man, wondering if his memory was playing tricks on him, and, for a while, he had begun to see Shmiots everywhere. But he knew that he would have no trouble identifying Shmiot at close quarters. There was a sharp cloying smell about the man that he was sure would be the final confirmation.

The idea of Shmiot, the imagined act of revenge had given Godorov’s life a goal. And the sweet cry of pain as he dug his knee into Shmiot’s spine and crushed his testicles would be to him like the sound of a thousand angels welcoming him into the Gates of Heaven.

A man and a blonde woman came into the space between the trains where he stood in the frigid air, his back against the metal walls. The man looked at him briefly, then turned his eyes away, holding open the heavy door for the woman. An American, Godorov thought. The woman was tall, well-proportioned, self-assured as Natasha had been.

Natasha, too, had been one of the sustaining pillars of his life, an oasis from the desert of his hate, although his memory of her had faded with the passage of time. Sometimes, when even movement could not relieve the agony of his pain, he would find that empty place in his memory where Natasha lay buried, resummoning the images of her with great care, as if the slightest jolt might break them into a thousand pieces.

Even now, beyond the agony of his pain, he remembered his homecoming evening, the night he returned to Georgia after the war. The whole village seemed to have conspired to leave Natasha and him alone, and they walked along beside the fields that surrounded the village. The arc of the sky was full of stars, which seemed like a million candles lit especially for his triumphant return.

He spread his tunic along the edge of a stack of hay and they lay on it, looking up into the sky. It was the vision of that sky that left the strongest images in his memory and years later, in moments of his greatest pain, he could trace the exact patterns of the constellation frozen in the vast bowl of blackness.

He knew they had made love, but that he could not relive. He remembered only that somehow Natasha’s naked flesh had become luminescent. That was the apogee of his life, the one sweet irrevocable moment of joy, the beginning and the end, all at the same time.

Ten years later there was a second homecoming, and this time he limped through the town from the railroad station with a heavy, broken step. His father had died by then and his mother was ravaged by sickness and worry. She barely recognized him at first, and she had opened the door indifferently, as if to a stranger.

He had stayed around the house for only a day or so. He left as soon as he had caught a glimpse of Natasha, or someone whom he had imagined to be Natasha. She was a dull hulk of a woman in a shabby coat, holding a small, equally dull-looking little boy by the hand as they waited patiently in line in front of the store. Seeing her convinced Godorov that even this the Gulag had taken away from him. Only his hate was left.

The momentary relief from pain that the cold had induced disappeared quickly and each bounce jarred his spine again. He passed through the restaurant car, and waddled his way through the crowd waiting at the entrance. As he walked, he heard a rippling wave of laughter pass through the people in the car. All eyes had turned toward him. Godorov had grown used to ridicule. He had quickly discovered after his injury that his walk made people smile. Some of the men at the Gulag had even gone as far as to quack when he passed. At first he had been quick to take offense, getting in fistfights and putting the new strength in his arms and shoulders to good use. Then one day he twisted a man’s ear right off and that won him the permanent respect of his fellow prisoners.

Now, in the restaurant car, he knew instinctively that he was being laughed at and he stopped suddenly to glare into the face of one of the diners, a foreign-looking sandy-haired man with a high-pitched laugh. He shook his head helplessly as he met Godorov’s stare, unable to control himself, pointing at something behind Godorov. He turned sharply to find a little boy following him, imitating his walk. The little boy stopped in his tracks as Godorov caught him. For a moment they stared at each other. Then, turning, Godorov moved quickly out the other end of the carriage. He heard the laughter begin to ripple again, and knew that the boy had resumed his imitation.

He pushed through the carriage doors into the hard class, with its peculiar disarray and mixture of smells. Soon the laughter began again. People who stood in the passageway looked at him curiously, unable to contain their amusement; others poked their heads out of their compartments to join the fun. He knew that the boy, exhilarated by the attention, was still following him. Without looking back, he goaded his broken body into greater speed which, he knew, only emphasized the waddle and increased his pain.

Pushing into a crowd watching a chess match, he moved on quickly, hoping to lose the child in the crowd. Looking back, Godorov could see the little boy waddling along, stopping when he stopped, moving when he moved. He passed through other hard-class carriages. Still the boy dogged him and the laughter rang in his ears. Finally he reached the last carriage, only to be confronted by a fierce-looking soldier with a machine gun hitched across his chest. The young soldier looked beyond him at the boy and snickered too. Then Godorov sensed that the train was grinding to a stop. Squinting through a mud-caked window he read the word “Omsk” and saw the ever-present statue of Lenin, polished and glistening in the bright light of the station.

Painfully, he climbed down to the platform and made his way down the length of the station to where the soft-class carriage was standing. He knew that boy was still behind him. People giggled, clucked their tongues and pointed to call the scene to the attention of others. Godorov’s irritation was growing now. Who among them, he thought bitterly, could possibly know how deeply abused he felt? But then, his whole life had been the same.

As he walked along the platform, the boy waddling in his wake, his mind began to focus on a plan of revenge. He stopped for a moment and looked back into the face of the boy. Emboldened by the sensation he had created, Vladimir walked right up to him and stopped just a few feet away. Godorov forced a broad smile. The boy returned it, reassured that his little imitation apparently had won the admiration even of its victim.

Godorov turned again and headed into the station, a long, low building. Few people were inside, just the usual malingerers trying to keep warm. They slumped on benches, dozed or read papers, trying hard to look like passengers waiting for a train. They ignored the spectacle of Godorov and his shadow, and he was able to survey the station’s interior. He had no fixed idea what he was looking for, only that it had become important to him to find a method of revenge. In the far corner of the station he saw a small anteroom, its door ajar. He headed toward it, followed by Vladimir, who continued to perform even though no one was watching. Godorov paused for a moment to pick up a newspaper lying folded on the floor, then he moved on. The boy followed, intent on his performance.

Once inside the room, Godorov quickly stepped aside, flattening himself against the wall behind the door. The boy followed, a lamb to the slaughter, Godorov told himself. He folded the newspaper again to increase its thickness. Then, before the boy could turn, Godorov ducked out of the room and slammed the door, at the same time inserting the newspaper between the door and the jamb. The pressure created a tight wedge. Vladimir would not be able to open it from the inside.

Godorov went straight back to the platform, where passengers clustered around the carriage entrances. A fat woman in a dirty housecoat, her hair wrapped in paper curlers, stood on the platform beside the soft carriage, searching the faces in the diminishing crowd.

“Vladimir!” she screeched.

The people on the platform stared.

“Vladimir,” the woman cried frantically. A uniformed official walked toward her.

Godorov reached for the handhold and painfully hauled his squat body onto the metal steps. At the top he turned to watch the spectacle, chuckling to himself.

“Vladimir,” the woman cried again, her hysteria mounting. “Vladimir!”

A fat man pushed past Godorov, shoving him aside rudely and clambering down the steps.

“I can’t find him on the train,” the man said.

“My god, where is my Vladimir?” the woman cried, her voice shrill. “Vladimir!”

The uniformed official tried to restrain her, but she slapped him sharply in the face and began to run, her heavy breasts jiggling under her housecoat.

“The little brat’s probably hiding somewhere on the train,” the young train attendant said. She stood behind Godorov on the steps.

“I tell you, he’s not on the train,” the fat man insisted, his pose of officiousness gone now. He knelt to check the undercarriage of the train, looking like a man at prayer.

“You must get this train moving,” another uniformed man said. He had just emerged from the station and, by his bearing and attitude, was obviously in charge.

“She says her little boy is not on board,” the first uniformed official explained.

“The schedule must be maintained,” the man in charge said with emphasis.

Godorov watched calmly. Now there is something to imitate, he told himself, watching the jiggling flesh of the hysterical woman.

“Vladimir!” she screamed as she ran back and forth like a stuck pig. Her housecoat had become undone, partly revealing her fat and pendulous breasts.

Godorov sensed a crowd forming behind him. He saw a small gray-haired woman, the American and the blonde lady.

“They have lost a boy,” the gray-haired woman volunteered.

“How unfortunate,” someone said.

“Dennis the Menace,” the American said, smiling.

Tania looked toward the front of the train.

“The mother is standing on the tracks in front of the engine and the engineer is furious.”

The crowd thickened around the uniformed man in charge. A tall military officer wearing the KGB insignia stalked through the crowd, confronting the man in charge.

“We need your help, Major,” the man said. “Could we use some of your men to help find the missing boy?”

“You must assist us, sir,” the fat man pleaded, while the officer looked down at him contemptuously. Then he strode toward the rear of the train, signaling as he walked.

Suddenly groups of soldiers materialized, fanning out in all directions along the platform, machine guns banging across their chests as they moved. The train attendant darted into the crowd, then emerged to report back to the passengers huddled on the steps.

“The troops are searching the train and the station,” she said.

“Suppose they don’t find the boy?” The gray-haired woman asked Godorov softly.

He shrugged. What did it matter? he thought. It was something to enjoy, a rare moment of pleasure, a harbinger of what he might feel with Shmiot. Besides, something had at last bent to his will. The delay might mean a massive disruption in the schedule of trains rolling over the six thousand miles of the Trans-Siberian track. And that was no small achievement. He, Godorov, had forced his will on others.

The troops had just begun to search the soft-class carriages when a shout went up.

“They’ve got him. They’ve got him,” someone yelled and all eyes turned toward the entrance of the station to see little Vladimir emerge, smiling and obviously enjoying the sudden attention. People began to applaud and the boy’s mother stopped her incessant screaming and clutched him, squirming, to her ample body.

“That ends that,” the train attendant said, lifting herself back aboard. The crowd hustled into the train, Godorov along with them. He felt the pain in his wracked body sputter and shift as he stretched out on his bunk. He was oddly content. It was an emotion he could barely identify, but once he had, his pain eased and he slipped quietly into a deep sleep.

THEY
had lost more than a half-hour, Tania observed as she shined the samovar. The little brat had somehow gotten himself stuck in a room in the Omsk station and had been pounding on the doors, but everyone inside the station had run out to the platform to see what was happening. When a train was late, it reflected badly on all the personnel, including herself. Delays always made her work harder. Up beyond Lake Baikal the stations were few and far between. Maybe the engineer would skip them if he saw no signs of passengers.