Vienna is not even listed on the posted schedule. But instead Dortmund — which never had a chance in its 3–0 loss to Leverkusen yesterday, and today Bremen has to beat Bochum in an away game, otherwise that blows any chance of the UEFA Cup too. I don’t want to think about that and so buy a newspaper. You know what a train trip will be like within the first fifteen minutes, usually within a minute or two.
The train to Dortmund via Vienna is ready for boarding. I don’t have a seat reservation. I’m choosy and inspect the cars both outside and in. When I finally find one without compartments, most seats are occupied. The unoccupied ones are either on the aisle, or the upholstery glistens with a fresh grease spot, or they’re right next to the smoking section. There’s always some reason why a seat is unoccupied or still available. I return to one where the heater has an especially loud rumble. The train fills up. I’m not someone people like to sit down next to. That’s not a recent insight, but it still hurts even if I do breathe a sigh of relief whenever, after hesitating briefly, someone moves on.
I’m amazed at how soundlessly we pull out. But it isn’t us at all, it’s the Budapest — Moscow train. Or is it just switching tracks? I don’t see anyone at the windows.
I unpack the blue folder with my “Incident in Petersburg” story, slip my cell phone into my breast pocket along with my ballpoint, and pick up my copy of One-Minute Stories, which had lain on my lap on the plane and on my nightstand in the hotel. I tug at the dark red ribbon marker, open to page 18, and as our train lurches punctually at 9:35, begin to read the story entitled “The Bow.”
Even though as a train pulls out I usually panic at the thought that I’ve left my bag on the platform, I love riding trains. Just as you walk twice as fast on moving sidewalks at airports, I have the feeling I’m accomplishing more on a train than at home. In addition to all the reading and writing you get done, by successfully managing a change of place you easily triple the value of your daily output. And so I start to read, but am interrupted at once by bites of conscience, since I need to look through “Incident in Petersburg” and collect my thoughts about what I’m going to say to Petra three hours from now.
Beside me, on the other side of the aisle, is a French family. The parents smile, we exchange nods, the children are urged to say bonjour, which, however, neither the boy (curly hair) nor the girl (straight hair) does.
Green landscape outside and gardeners’ yellow containers, walls of seven narrow concrete slabs. Home supplies — Praktiker, OBI, hp — Nissan (by next Sunday, Hungary will be in the EU), the Danube, low shores, new huge buildings, with observatories on the roofs, circus-tent roofs — of course they only look that way. Then blocks of apartments — best guess, Khrushchev era — green again, small houses. The sympathy people extend to young families. They scatter stuffed animals, comics, and a book by James Ellroy on each of their four seats and set off in the direction of the dining car just as we stop in Kelenföld. Then Shell, Honda, Plus, Kaiser’s billboards lining the road. The buildings on the far side merging into the green. Perfect travel weather, IKEA, Stella Artois, Baumax.
I slip the ribbon marker back in, close One-Minute Stories, open the blue folder. I don’t know what to tell Petra. I’ve been under way for sixteen minutes now. “Sixteen”: Who was it that said “sixteen” so urgently? Suddenly I have the word “sixteen” in my ears but as if spoken by a foreigner, “sixteen” and “all the bells are tolling.”
I read my story, this is work, no longer Sunday, no more freedom, no more independence. I’ve deliberately kept the tone unliterary, as if I myself have had to write up the police report that never got written.
“Saint Petersburg, December 1, 2000. I was in the city to join my translator Ada Beresina in presenting the Russian edition of 33 Moments of Happiness at the Goethe-Institut and the university. For me it was a dream come true, because as I liked to boast during that week, my book was returning to its city and to the language of most of its characters. I was living in the Pension Turgenev on a side street off Upper Nevsky, not far from the Moika Hotel. I had exchanged money in a currency shop located below street level in an apartment house across from my own building, and so still had my passport. With wallet and passport in the inside breast pocket of my jacket and my little backpack slung over my shoulder, I strolled along the Neva, watched floes of ice passing in the water and thought of Vienna.…
“At the Marble Palace I left the Neva and crossed the Field of Mars, heading in the direction of the Nevsky. Standing around the Flame for the Unknown Soldier were several people I first took for soldiers. As I approached a young man said something to me. His body language was somehow servile — his gaze shifty, his face and hands grimy. He asked me the time. It was shortly after noon. He then asked me for money, he was hungry. I pulled out my wallet, gave him ten rubles, and moved on. Keeping to the right of the monument as I walked away, I noticed he called something over to the young men warming themselves at the Flame for the Unknown Soldier. In the next moment the pack was after me, half of them children. They were pleading, their hands clasped together as if in prayer, shouting, ‘Kushat, kushat!’—eat, eat. I didn’t try to run away. After all, it was broad daylight, in the middle of St. Petersburg. Or maybe I didn’t think that, maybe I was just embarrassed. Make a run for it? I probably guessed it would have been no use. Even as some high-pitched voices went on whining their ‘Kushat, kushat!’ I could hear other low voices calling out to one another, agreeing on tactics. It was only then that I realized the situation I was in, and at the same time didn’t want to believe it. I stopped in my tracks. Barely a moment later they had the better of me. The strongest of them had jumped me from behind and now held me in a clinch, pinning my arms to my body.…
“I bellowed like I’ve never bellowed before. I bellowed like an ox, twisting, tossing back and forth like a wild boar, like a bear attacked by a pack of dogs. They were truly everywhere. Tucking my body, I held tight to my backpack. All that my wrenching back and forth accomplished, however, was that my glasses fell off, and I thought: All I need! When I looked up my eyes met those of a woman hurrying toward me. Her shame and my shame — there’s nothing more to say. A hand was thrust down into the breast pocket of my jacket, inching bit by bit for my wallet and passport. My jacket was buttoned, my coat, too, but no matter how loud I screamed and twisted and turned, the hand thrust forward, farther and farther, it wouldn’t have taken much and …”