“Yes, on the train from Moscow, it’s being cleaned in a siding—”
They could hold back no longer. Guffaws burst from them. “How did you find us?” they finally managed to ask. “Where are you from?”
“Well, England.”
“England!” They jumped up and made me take one of their seats, having first wiped it with a sleeve. “Train Number 9, eh—don’t worry, we’ll find it for you. We’ll give Sergei a shout, over there.” And they began to make calls on a huge oily telephone, still chuckling and muttering to each other, “An anglichanka! In our budka!”
So this was a budka. I looked about me. The hut was built of riveted metal plates. On two walls, large, rectangular windows were arranged in portrait rather than landscape fashion, running from roof to floor. I suddenly realized what it was: half a train carriage, standing on one end.
Outside the budka, a huge red locomotive hissed to a halt. The plums hopped nimbly onto a running board beside the driver.
“Hup!” they called out, swinging me aboard, and we chugged away down the snowy line.
“The bag’s got her passport in—English,” they told Sergei.
“Don’t want to lose that,” said Sergei, putting his foot down. After a few minutes we came to the siding. “There she is,” he called out over the noise of the engine. “Which car were you in?”
Train No. 9 showed no sign of activity. The windows were dark, there was no movement inside. My passport was surely fetching a nice price at the back of the railway station, with a slice of Christmas cake thrown in. When we reached car 12, I climbed down. The snow was deeper here, and I had to force my way through to the door. Sergei and the plums were peering out of the engine window. I knocked, feeling ridiculous.
Almost instantly, the door swung open and a willowy man in overalls made an elaborate bow.
“Charlotta Hobson, I suppose?” he said, and handed me my bag.
We dropped the plums back at their budka, leaving the cake with them, and Sergei took me on to the station. We rattled over those rails and blasted on the horn like devils. A glimmer of sun was showing on the edges of the fir trees, and Sergei took a couple of swigs from a filthy bottle of spirit. It was almost ten o’clock on the last day in the history of the Soviet Union.
Back in the hostel, I pushed open the door and found the room had turned silver. Ira had pinned hundreds of single strands of tinsel to the ceiling. You couldn’t see much, but the tinsel brushed your face pleasantly as you moved through it. I was just able to make out Joe smoking, Ira chopping onions into a frying pan, and Emily, head down, searching for something in the bags under her bed. The TV was on with the volume turned down and the Waterboys were booming out of the stereo.
“Privyet,” said Ira, grinning. “How’s things?”
“Hey!” said Emily, pulling her head out from under her bed. “You’re back! What did you bring us?”
The atmosphere in the hostel was strained and excitable. In previous years most of the students would have gone home for the New Year holidays, but with inflation many couldn’t afford it and the place was full. In the kitchen, people were struggling to cook for tonight’s feast. The cleaners had gone on strike ten days earlier, the heap of trash in the corner reached five feet up the walls, and still people were adding more. Occasionally the dirt settled and slid farther out into the room, and everyone who was fighting and shouting over the few electric rings that worked would curse and kick it out of the way.
Now and again, someone would say, “Hey, everybody, let’s remember that today’s a holiday. Let’s wish each other peace and good spirits.”
And someone else would growl, “Yeah right, peace to you, you idiot. When are you going to cork your ears up, the air blowing through your head’s disturbing me.”
The Armenians had already begun their celebrations, and Garo was lurching along the corridor, trying to hug the komendant. A tiny girl in a pinafore saw them coming and hid in the stairwell, clasping to her chest the bowl of coleslaw she’d been making. But the men were heading for the stairs and they soon spotted her.
“It’s Thumbelina!” they cried. “Come here, my beauty, come and celebrate with us. Look what a tasty salad she’s made, the little mousekin!” and on and on. She blushed furiously, dodged under their arms, and hurried away to her room, muttering beneath her breath.
Emily and I were on our way downstairs to Room 99. An invitation had been awaiting my return, decorated with a picture of Santa Claus holding a samovar. “The Great Chamber of 99 requests the pleasure of your company in greeting the New Year,” it announced. “Celebrations will commence with a Grand Parade in formal dress.” And beneath, in large letters: “THIS UNIQUE EVENT WILL NEVER BE REPEATED.”
There were to be fifteen of us, and Liza Minnelli was cooking a sort of goulash with paprika. She kept coming in and out, searching for more ingredients and telling us how delicious the dish was. “You won’t believe it!” she repeated each time. “It’ll blow you to fragments!”
Emily and I sat down with Nina to peel a bucket of potatoes.
At four o’clock, Viktor came in, announcing, “Happy New Year.” He poured us all a few grams.
“Isn’t it a bit early?”
“In Vladivostok,” he explained.
As the sky darkened, the new year swept toward us across the endless steppe.
This unique event was indeed unlikely to be repeated. From midnight, we would be living in a new country, the Russian Federation, a country with a new flag, a new anthem, and a new constitution. The command economy would be abolished and the free market would transform the way Russians lived and worked. The legal code would be rewritten, along with the marriage service, the history books, and the maps. New banknotes would have to be printed; Soviet slogans all over the country would be taken down; institutions, streets, whole cities would change their names. The army, much depleted, would be confined to the country’s new borders with the independent states of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. For the second time in the twentieth century, Russia was starting afresh.
Which, as Mitya pointed out at dinner that evening, gave us more than enough toasts to last all night long.
“Bozhe moi, Mitya, you’re not going to torment us with politics all evening, are you?” cried Liza Minnelli. “Eat, everyone, drink. It’s a party.”
We were sitting on the beds in Room 99, crammed around a long table that the girls had somehow assembled. Plate after plate of zakuski, snacks to be eaten with the vodka, lay before us; when the plates ran out, saucepan lids and pieces of paper were used instead. We fell upon the food, and Viktor, who had brought his new girlfriend, barely more than a schoolgirl, made a short speech about the fact that vodka was pure spirit, or near enough, and therefore should not be tainted by worldly things such as politics or money (“Meaning you should always drink other people’s,” interjected Tanya). Vodka, he continued, should only come into contact with the finer things in life—poetry, and love—and so he proposed a first toast for the evening: “To the hymen.”
The goulash arrived and worked its magic: as the first taste hit the roof of the mouth, a fierce little fireball flew up both nostrils and exploded behind the eyes. A chorus of snorts stopped all talk and Liza Minnelli looked pleased with herself. “I warned you,” she said complacently. “I said it would blow you to fragments.”