Trans-Siberian Express (11 page)

He had drawn the curtains and the room was dark except for the occasional pinpoints of light along the track. She put down the tea on the table, as usual, and almost immediately felt the colonel’s hard body against hers, his mouth searching out her lips, digging deeply between them with his tongue. The crush of his body against hers seemed a culmination, a release from pain, and the feel of his mouth on hers seemed to trigger an enormous wellspring in the depths of her body. She felt her own hunger to touch his flesh, his clean white pure delicious-smelling flesh. She felt the melting of her body, and the pleasure of an inner warmth that she had never experienced before.

They stood locked in this embrace for a few moments, their hearts pounding against each other, the colonel’s breath and her own coming heavily through their nostrils. She felt the colonel’s hands, his clean white hands, roam over her body, playing with her erect nipples through her tight brassiere. Then she felt him reach under her dress and roll down the elastic of her panties, stepping backward so that she could kick them free, which she did instinctively. She felt her nakedness against the length of his trousers; then he stepped back again and fumbled with his pants. With her eyes closed, she felt him return to the standing embrace, his mouth against her ear, breathing heavily, while his fingers reached downward, searching for and finding what she had always termed her secret place. Then she felt herself being guided so that her back was buttressed against the ladder to the upper bunk; his body arched and somehow he was entering her secret place, and suddenly she screamed as a sharp pain ripped through her, filling her body with a kind of hysteria.

He ignored her protest, and pressed his lips against hers as if to smother a scream, his tongue reaching deep into her mouth. Without mercy he battered her body in a staccato motion, like the relentless thrust of pistons on the wheels of the train, and then his breath was coming in deep gasps, until there was a final choking sound and the shiver of his pleasure.

Then he was quiet. Her back ached and her thighs burned with the friction of the material of his pants. He slipped from her body and she felt a wetness in her crotch which offended her sense of cleanliness. He said nothing and before she could raise her aching body to a fully standing position he had moved into the adjoining washroom, leaving her alone in the darkened compartment.

She smoothed her dress down and sought in the semidarkness for her panties. She picked them up and put them in the pocket of her smock, looked around the compartment briefly, force of habit requiring that she check its condition. The bunks, of course, were in perfect order, since they had not used them. It crossed her mind that perhaps some drops of blood or moisture had fallen on the rug, but she could explore that later.

She felt a sharp pain inside her as she moved toward the door and opened it a crack. The passageway was, thankfully, empty. Then she let herself out, hearing behind her the rush of water in the sink. He was a clean fastidious man, she remembered saying to herself as she moved quickly to her own quarters. She washed herself carefully, and then her panties, which she hung across a string to dry, and climbed wearily up to her bunk, knowing that she was neglecting her duties, but feeling weak and somewhat shaky from her new experience.

But she had no frame of reference, only her expectations. He is my first love, she told herself, and blamed her disappointment on the tight quarters and their need for secrecy. And yet, the experience conditioned her for all future couplings, which always took place in similar circumstances—in darkened compartments, with fastidious men who barely spoke. She learned how to position herself against the lower bunk so as to avoid the bruises of her first experience, and she boasted to herself that she had never spent more than twenty minutes in a man’s embrace. To disappear any longer would be unfair to the other passengers and might be noticed by her superiors. To lose her job, to have to leave the railroad, was unthinkable.

The railroad made her important. Aside from her general duties, she was often singled out for special assignments by the dour, official-looking men who sometimes rode the trains asking for specific information about certain passengers. She had learned that zealousness in those assignments would always earn her special commendations from her superiors. Beside her bunk she kept a clipboard with the diagram of the train and the names of the passengers neatly penciled in over each of the nine compartments entrusted to her care. She picked up the clipboard now and went over the list, mentally impressing a picture of each passenger in her mind. In the compartment next to her was the strange-looking cripple and the middle-aged gymnast, an odd combination, she thought. Both men were beefy and bull-like and, worst of all in her lexicon of horrors, dirty-looking. In the next compartment were the redheaded KGB agent and another man, whom she had not yet seen. When she came into the compartment he was always out of sight, hiding, she knew, in the washroom. She could not imagine how he had gotten on the train without her knowledge, but she did not question the KGB. She knew that they watched her carefully as she tidied up their compartment. And she knew that the big box they had shoved under the bottom bunk was filled with electronic eavesdropping equipment.

She also knew whom they were watching—that American doctor, who shared the next compartment with a big attractive blonde whom she recognized from previous journeys. On the other side of the doctor was the tall distinguished gentleman—a general, she would say, judging from the two uniforms on the clothes bar. Experience had taught her to recognize the ranks of the Red Army, but it was most unusual for a general to be traveling in civilian clothes. Perhaps she should tell the KGB men. But the general was very polite and distinguished, not unlike Colonel Patushkin.

Two English-speaking gentlemen shared the compartment next to General Grivetsky. She squinted at the clipboard to read their names, wondering if the phonetics were correct. Albert Farmer, nationality British. She supposed that was the thin gentleman with the amusing sparkle in his eyes, always making little jokes in English. He was carrying a British diplomatic passport and was with the British Embassy in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia. She made a mental note to remind him that he must be ready to change at Ulan-Ude, where the Trans-Mongolian Railroad intersected with the Trans-Siberian.

The big, sandy-haired, forever-complaining Australian was Kenneth MacBaren. She had met lots of Australians and New Zealanders in her time, big-boned men and women who took the Siberian route to the Pacific as a kind of exotic short cut to their own continent. They seemed to laugh a lot, like Americans, although they weren’t quite as noisy. MacBaren, however, was on the surly side.

In the next compartment were those slobs of a Russian couple on their way to Khabarovsk with their bratty son. They had filled their compartment with smelly foods, most of which would stink in three days’ time, and they were constantly leaving bits of sausage and cheese all over the place, grinding some of the garbage into the carpet. What were their names? She squinted again at the clipboard. Mr. and Mrs. Trubetskoi. The wife was fat and Tania knew from experience that people like this would rarely leave the compartment. They would loll about, she in her torn flowered house coat, he in his soiled pajamas, eating their way across Siberia and leaving their dirty nest only to empty their bowels and bladders.

But the worst part would be the little brat, Vladimir. He had already made a mess of the toilet, and she had discovered bubble gum stuck to the underside of the upper bunk. She positively hated all little boys, most of whom could not cope with the boredom of the long journey. Little Vladimir had arrived in a state of hysteria and, she knew, he would only get worse as time wore on. But Comrade Trubetskoi was a high-ranking Party official, so Tania dared not be too open about her disgust.

In the compartment next to the Trubetskois’ was the gray-haired American lady. Fortunately, Tania knew little English, so the talkative lady would present no problems. Her rommate was an elderly Mongol woman who spoke no Russian and spent most of her time drowsing on her bunk.

In the last compartment were the young couple Ginzburg, probably on their way to Birobidjan, that little jerkwater town in the Jewish area. Tania resented that town, not because it was supposedly reserved for Jews, a subject on which she was ambivalent, but because the Express stopped there for only one minute. Then she would have to scramble, usually at some ungodly hour, to see that the passengers ticketed for that miserable place got off in time. They stopped at Birobidjan so briefly one had barely time to jump off the metal steps before the train picked up speed again. Passengers for Birobidjan had been more numerous lately, probably because Moscow had increased the pressure on Jews. It was not a subject that particularly interested her. As far as she was concerned, Jews were just the same as all the other passengers, to be treated with equal care. She had noticed, though, that the Ginzburg couple seemed particularly frightened, especially the woman.

When Tania had finally finished the catalogue and fixed her impressions in her mind, she clicked off the little light over her bunk and settled her body comfortably. She could feel the movement of the train beneath her, the rolling of the great metal wheels, a rhythm occasionally broken by the strike of metal on a faulty joint. She knew every joint on each stretch of track, every tie, every dip of the roadbed and could sense every subtle change in the rhythm, as if it were her own heartbeat.

“They have just fixed this stretch of rail,” she told herself drowsily as she slipped with quiet confidence into a well-earned sleep.

IT
had been a wild, impulsive idea, Mikhail Moiseyevich Ginzburg thought as he lay in the upper bunk, knowing that Vera was below him, also unable to sleep. Three years ago he had presented himself to the authorities and declared his intention to go to Israel. He knew he was taking a chance, rolling dice with their lives, but some people were actually getting out and things were getting worse. It had become obvious, over the last five years, that neither of them would ever get a promotion again. And Vera Danilovna wasn’t even Jewish.

He remembered how he had argued for a promotion with the head engineer, Kishkin, a warmhearted, good-natured man, who had been one class ahead of him at Kiev University. Kishkin was far from brilliant and Mikhail had spent long school nights cramming Kishkin’s head with the details of aeronautical engineering. They were both students trying to get ahead in the only way they knew, by educating themselves in a useful profession. Engineers were always in demand in the Soviet Union and they knew that, if they graduated in the top ten percent of the class, they would have a shot at the best jobs.

They had started together. Now Kishkin was the boss. Mikhail had tried not to be jealous. He was smarter than Kishkin, but that was not what the higher-ups considered an essential characteristic of leadership. At first, Mikhail had refused to believe that his Jewishness was a factor. How could that matter?

It did matter, he learned later. It began to matter a great deal. This was no subtle campaign to hold down Jewish advancement. It was government policy. Others began to be advanced over him.

“What the hell can I do?” Kishkin had said. They were walking along one of the streets in a deserted old section of Moscow. Kishkin had chosen the meeting place. After all, there was no point in being conspicuous. And the head engineer’s office might even be bugged.

“But you know I deserve that promotion.”

“Yes.”

“There is no question at all about my competence?”

“None.”

“The bastards.”

“I did fight for you, Mikhail Moiseyevich. I did not go down without a fight.” Mikhail believed him, but could not believe that Kishkin had pressed the argument. They walked along the deserted streets, faces sunk deep into the high collars of their overcoats.

“Did you really make a stand?” Mikhail spluttered.

“Within the limits of what any reasonable man could expect,” Kishkin said gently.

“It’s a question of moral courage,” Mikhail shot back.

“Bullshit,” Kishkin said swiftly. “My choice was no promotion for Ginzburg or no job for Kishkin. Well, Kishkin has a wife and two children. At least Ginzburg still has a job. And everybody knows that anti-Semitism is cyclical. It will pass.” Kishkin put his arm around Ginzburg’s shoulders. “This burst will pass, Mikhail.”

“I’ve got to get the hell out of this rotten country,” Mikhail said suddenly, feeling the genuine sympathy of his friend, knowing that nothing could be done.

“That’ll cook your goose for sure,” Kishkin said, stopping and grabbing Mikhail by both shoulders. “They’ll fire you. You won’t get a job anywhere.”

“It’s only a matter of time anyway.”

“You Jews,” Kishkin said angrily. “Why can’t you ever be satisfied with anything?”

Mikhail paused; his own anger seemed to disappear. Is he talking about me, he wondered? Me? A Jew? There had never been the slightest hint of religion in his upbringing. You couldn’t find a more dedicated Bolshevik than his father, who often ridiculed the bent and pious Jews, in their strange beards and odd clothing, walking to their broken-down synagogue. And he, Mikhail, had married a non-Jew; hardly given it a thought, since the only reminder of his antecedents was a word on his passport. And now Kishkin, his friend, was flinging that ancestry in his face.

“You’re right, Kishkin.” He could feel the tendons in his throat tighten, the blood rushing to his head. “Why do you put up with us? If we are so impossible, why don’t you let us the hell out of this great Soviet paradise? Why keep the parasite inside the walls?” He could feel the cutting edge of his hysteria now, as his voice echoed and reechoed in the deserted street. He watched Kishkin stiffen.

“For crying out loud,” Kishkin hissed. “Can’t you lower your voice?”

“Jew. Jew. Jew,” Mikhail screamed, his voice echoing in the empty streets.

“You crazy bastard,” Kishkin cried, as he turned and walked, then ran into the darkness.