Trans-Siberian Express (44 page)

See, he wanted to tell her, taking a life is no small thing. But it was too late now. He felt her anguish and, above all, his love for her.

THE
train was called the “Vostock” and it originated in the Khabarovsk station. The carriages were still icy, although the attendants had apparently stoked the charcoal heaters earlier and a pleasant warm red glow was coming from the brazier under the samovar. A mannish attendant, with thick legs and a heavy growth of black hairs on her upper lip, took their luggage and ushered them through the soft-class passageway. Alex had thrust a pile of bunched-up rubles into her hand.

“Together, please,” he whispered.

The “Vostock” was even more Victorian than “The Russiya.” Mirrors were everywhere and polished brass fittings were reflected in the heavily varnished wood paneling. Beside each mirror were two glass globe lamps etched with poppies. The windows were partly covered by red velvet tasseled curtains. The compartments were slightly better equipped than “The Russiya’s.” A bathroom adjoined the compartment. Both the top of the toilet and the floor of the bathroom were carpeted. A gleaming shower head lay on the sink. The bunks were arranged one above the other as in “The Russiya,” but the pillows seemed fluffier, more inviting.

“Goose feathers,” Anna Petrovna said, smiling as she sank her hands into the softness.

With the compartment door closed, Alex felt safe, transported to another place, without danger, warm and friendly. Anna Petrovna removed her heavy coat and hung it on a metal hook. She went into the bathroom and he could see her looking in the mirror.

“A witch,” she said.

Removing his own outer clothing, he joined her in the bathroom, crowding his face into the mirror. He rubbed his cheeks. He needed a shave.

“And the beast,” he said, nibbling her ear. They were a honeymoon couple, he imagined. Perhaps a little long in the tooth, but even that could not dampen his spirit. He felt the strength of his love for her.

Anna Petrovna pushed him gently out of the bathroom and closed the door, leaving him alone in the pleasant compartment. In the background, music was playing, an American tune, “Home on the Range.” He hummed along, half-remembering the long-forgotten words. He felt himself in a totally private world, far removed from any sense of the present.

The sun had begun to ascend over the high-rise buildings of the Khabarovsk skyline, throwing spears of light into the compartment, taking the edge off the chill. Earlier he had felt fatigue. But here in this Victorian world, he felt only a sense of impending good fortune, a world without worry.

Under him the wheels began to creak, turning reluctantly at first, then easily as the train gained momentum. He deliberately avoided looking out of the window. The city itself could remind him of their ordeal, and he did not want to linger over such memories. He would respond only to the reality of the moment in this special envelope of time. Next to his love for Anna Petrovna, all else was trivial. Nothing was more powerful. Compared to it, death and danger seemed unreal.

The train was picking up momentum now. The familiar bouncing movement began again and, with it, the disorientation of his sense of time. He removed his watch and slipped it into his pocket. Time was an enemy now, as it had been to Dimitrov. He could think of Dimitrov now without guilt, merely another victim of fate like Zeldovich, like the young soldier, like the young woman who had been passed off as Grivetsky.

Anna Petrovna stepped into the compartment again. He reached out to her and she came into his arms. His lips sought hers.

“You are my life,” he whispered, burying his face in her hair. Stepping back, they began to undress each other. He loved the sight of her tall, well-made body. Was she seeing him, too, as a gift? What had gone before between them now seemed prologue as they stood there in the unreality of the Victorian compartment facing each other. What was happening was beyond science, beyond logic, an immutable mystery.

He moved toward her and they reached out and joined, flesh to flesh, in an act as ancient as life. They lay motionless, feeling the power of it, the gift of it to each other. He wanted to speak, but could not find words, knowing that he was speaking to her without them and listening to her as well.

He was certain that she felt the same wonder in it, although she said nothing. It was this feast of her that moved him, gave him a life beyond himself. He had no questions now, but the fears were returning as he thought of the future, and he became even hungrier for her flesh, entering her again, drowning in the warmth of her. They lay still, but the movement of the train beneath them provided the rhythm of nature. He imagined that they had become part of the train, had merged with it, not resisting its power.

He must have drowsed. He could judge how much time had passed by the change of light in the compartment. The sun had mellowed. Dashes of pink filtered through the brightness. Lifting his head and squinting out the window he could see a brown barren landscape, low hills dotted with scraggly, leafless trees. Anna Petrovna stirred against him, her lips swollen with sleep, her breath shallow.

The train slowed, and Alex thought of his grandfather, speaking of his own train journey nearly sixty years before. He could see the aged face, the eyes glowing like coals.

“In Siberia, the journey is never over,” his grandfather had said. “No one ever arrives.” Now Alex felt the same panic, the same anguish of the journey.

We are all cast from the same clay, he thought. But the Russians did not accept that. They had such a vain sense of their own separateness.

“They cannot live with our foreignness without wanting to conquer it,” Dimitrov had mused one day.

“Who?” Alex had asked.

Dimitrov’s eyes had narrowed. “All of them. They are not content unless they can get their fangs into us, and bleed us into submission.”

“Who is them?”

Dimitrov had looked at Alex for a long time.

“Not you, Kuznetsov.” He had paused. “Them.” He had moved his head, implying someone else’s presence in the room.

“Who is
them?
” Alex had asked again, beginning to feel idiotic.

“Everyone who is not us,” Dimitrov answered finally, and Alex had shivered as if the words were a cold chill.

“These people are all crazy,” Alex whispered out loud. He felt Anna Petrovna stir.

“What?”

“I just made a social comment,” he said, drawing her close to him.

“I heard you say ‘crazy.’ ”

“You heard correctly.”

“Whom did you mean?”

“All of us,” he answered quickly. “Do you think Dimitrov is dead?” he asked.

“You are uncertain?” She seemed startled. She rose on an elbow and looked at him. Her lips began to tremble.

“Of course I am uncertain,” he said, meaning more than the state of Dimitrov’s condition. “Would he really have done it?”

“You still have doubts?”

“Yes.”

“And do you think he would have let you leave the country alive?”

“Yes, I think he would.”

“Before the strike?”

“He trusted me.”

“With his body. Not with his secrets.”

He wanted to tell her that he was not afraid to die, that he was afraid only for her, and, most of all, for the end of what they had found together.

“What does it matter now?” he said.

Anna Petrovna sighed and closed her eyes. He felt his own drowsiness. I will not think of it again, he promised himself, yawning and falling into a deep sleep.

When he opened his eyes, Anna Petrovna was already dressed, sitting stiffly in the chair as her hand moved swiftly over some writing paper. He watched her for a moment, then swung his legs over the side of the bunk, feeling the chill seep into his feet.

“I am writing to my children,” she said quickly, raising her eyes.

He stood shivering, naked, looking out into the passing landscape. They were apparently traveling on a high plateau. It was raining. Below, a wooded valley, the tree barks shiny with wetness, spread downward into the mist.

Dressing quickly, he turned occasionally to watch her, deeply intent on her composition. Her pen moved swiftly, her hand balanced carefully against the train’s motion. Perhaps they would really escape, he thought, and this is a sign she is coming with me? He dared not pursue the issue further, afraid to be disappointed. He would postpone thinking about that for the present; there were too many uncertainties. If Miss Peterson had somehow failed to notify the American Embassy, their chances of leaving Soviet soil would be considerably reduced. He smiled at himself in the mirror as he scraped off a two-day beard. He was more aware of himself, physically, than he had ever been. Anna Petrovna had given him that.

“Hungry?” he asked, putting on his jacket.

She looked up from her writing and smiled absently, nodding. Behind her the rain beat against the window of the train. He waited while she folded the letter into the envelope, sealed it and put it into her pocketbook.

In the passageway, the heavyset attendant looked up from stoking the furnace and glared at them.

“About an hour,” she shouted. “Be ready please with your baggage.”

The restaurant was in the next carriage and they passed through the familiar freezing space. The restaurant carriage was nearly deserted. The manager, a woman with an ugly birthmark on her cheek, greeted them with an obviously insincere smile.

“Breakfast?” she asked, then added quickly, “We are nearly shut down. We have only tea and eggs.” She ushered them to a table. At the far end they could see the Australian from “The Russiya.” Across the aisle were two Mongols. Alex watched as Anna Petrovna looked at them and turned her eyes away quickly. He knew what that meant. Sitting down heavily in his chair, he studied Anna Petrovna’s pale face across the table.

“Them?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“They are watching us?”

“Yes. They must have gotten on at one of the stops during the night.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Is the Pope Catholic?” she said in English, startling him and making him smile. Again he dared not think beyond the moment, especially now.

The manager of the car brought two plates of eggs bathed in grease. Another plate contained soggy pieces of black bread.

“Nothing is going to ruin my breakfast,” he said. “Not even the food.”

The manager brought a pot of tea. Alex felt the pot. It was cold.

“The hell with you, you fat whore,” he called after her.

Anna Petrovna smiled as she broke off a piece of soggy bread and dipped it into the yolk of the egg.

“The food tastes like shit,” the Australian yelled across the carriage. The manageress turned and glared at him.

Alex raised his fist without turning around to face the man. “Right on.”

“What’s that mean?” Anna Petrovna asked.

“It means something like ‘Give them hell.’ ”

“Right on,” she said, lifting her fist in imitation. But her eyes were misty and her lip trembled. Reaching across the table, he squeezed her hand.

“The best time in Washington is in the spring. The cherry blossoms bloom around the Tidal Basin and the tourists make it seem like it’s one big party.”

“We have lots of tourists in Irkutsk,” she said, holding back her tears.

“The Paris of Siberia.”

“They tell me it’s an exaggeration.”

“Everything in this place is an exaggeration.” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.

“It’s nearly the end of this fucking train ride,” the sandy-haired man yelled. As always, Alex could not tell whether he was drunk or simply mean with boredom. He looked out of the window. The train was passing through the outskirts of a town. In the distance, he could make out the inevitable high-rise apartments, stamped out of the same architectural pattern.

He pushed his plate of eggs away uneaten and gulped down his tea. The loudspeaker system was playing “Auld Lang Syne.”

The sandy-haired man stood up and started unsteadily down the aisle between the tables, stopping at theirs.

“They can shove their goddamned trains up their ass.”

Alex looked up at him. He could smell his breath. Both drunk and mean, he thought.

“You’ve been damned consistent,” Alex said, smiling.

“They’re a filthy lot,” he mumbled, moving on. Except for the two Mongols, Alex and Anna Petrovna were alone in the carriage now. Outside, a gloomy city came into view. School children bundled in wet slickers and heavy galoshes moved along the wet asphalt streets. Anna Petrovna’s lids brimmed with tears.

“What are their names?” he asked, feeling guilty suddenly, as if he had stolen something.

“Pyotor and Ivan,” she whispered.

“Fine names.” He tried to remember what she had told him about the children, but he felt his throat constrict. He kept swallowing, holding back his own tears. They stood up and he put a handful of kopecks on the table.

“Thanks for nothing,” he said to the manageress.

As they began to move up the aisle, the two Mongols rose. Alex could feel them plodding after them.

In the soft-class car the attendant had already brought their bags out and was watching the train slide into the Nakhodka station. In the pouring rain, it was a dismal scene. People huddled together for shelter under the eaves of the station house. When the door opened, Alex could smell a faint salt tang in the air. Even now, as they followed the attendant through the passageway, down the metal stairs onto the slippery wooden platform, he told himself to think only of the moment. Don’t anticipate, he pleaded with himself. The attendant left the bags on the platform and clambered back inside. The two Mongols stood beside the train, waiting, their fur hats soaking in the heavy rain. Alex turned to Anna Petrovna. Drops of rain rolled off her hair onto her face and down her cheeks like a great river of tears.

“Dr. Cousins?” A man holding a big umbrella came toward them.

They waited until the man reached them. He was tall, neatly dressed in a dark raincoat and wore an expression of eager ingratiation.

“He is KGB,” Anna Petrovna whispered.

Well then, Alex thought, it is all over. They have finished their game with us. He squeezed Anna Petrovna’s hand, more to find courage than to give comfort.