One afternoon the young man came over to me and said, 'Angela Davis!'
'Gitler!' said Viktor, grinning.
'Angela Davis karasho,' said Gitler and began to rant in Russian about the way Angela Davis had been persecuted in America. He shook his broom at me, his hair falling over his eyes, and he continued quite loudly until Vassily banged on the table.
'Politics!' said Vassily. 'We don't want politics here.
This is a restaurant, not a university.' He spoke in Russian, but his message was plain and he was obviously very angry with Gitler.
The rest were embarrassed. They sent Gitler to the kitchen and brought another bottle of wine. Vassily said, 'Gitler – ni karashoV But it was Viktor who was the most conciliatory. He stood up and folded his arms, and, shushing the kitchen staff, he said in a little voice:
Zee fearst of My,
Zee'art of spreeng!
Oh, leetle seeng,
En everyseeng we do,
Remember always to say 'pliz'
En dun forget 'sank you'!
Later, Viktor took me to his compartment to show me his new fur hat. He was very proud of it since it cost him nearly a week's pay. Nina was also in the compartment, which was shared by Vassily and Anna – quite a crowd for a space no bigger than an average-sized clothes closet. Nina showed me her passport and the picture of her mother and, while this was going on, Viktor disappeared. I put my arm around Nina and with my free hand took off her white scullion's cap. Her black hair fell to her shoulders. I held her tightly and kissed her, tasting the kitchen. The train was racing. But the compartment door was open, and Nina pulled away and said softly, 'Nyet, nyet, nyet.1
On the day before Christmas, in the afternoon, we arrived at Sverdlovsk. The sky was leaden and it was very cold. I hopped out the door and watched the old man being taken down the stairs to the platform. While he was being moved, the blankets had slipped down to his chest, where his hands lay rigid, two grey claws, their colour matching his face. The son went over and pulled the blankets high to cover his mouth. He knelt in the ice and packed a towel around the old man's head.
Seeing me standing near by, the son said in German, 'Sverdlovsk. This is where Europe begins and Asia ends. Here are the Urals.' He pointed towards the back of the train and said, 'Asia,' and then towards the engine, 'Europe.'
'How is your father?' I asked, when the stretcher-bearers arrived and put on their harnesses. The stretcher was a hammock, slung between them.
'I think he's dead,' he said. 'Das vedanya.'
My depression increased as we sped towards Perm in a whirling snowstorm. The logging camps and villages lay half-buried and behind them were birches a foot thick, the ice on their branches giving them the appearance of silver filigree. I could see children crossing a frozen river in the storm, moving so slowly in the direction of some huts, they broke my heart. I lay back on my berth and took my radio, its plastic cold from standing by the window, and tried to find a station. I put up the antenna – the zombie watched me from behind his clutter of uncovered food. A lot of static, then a French station, then 'Jingle Bells'. The zombie smiled. I switched it off.
Late on Christmas Eve I knocked on the door of the dining car and was admitted by Vassily. He told me, with gestures of shrugging, that the place was closed. I said, 'It's Christmas Eve.' He shrugged. I gave him five rubles. He let me in and got a bottle of champagne, and, as he shot off the cork, I looked around at the deserted car. In the best of times it was cold, but without the trickle of warmth from the stove and buffeted by the snowy wind, it was colder than usual – lighted by a single fluorescent tube and holding only the two of us. I could not imagine anything worse for watching Christmas approach. In the funereal chill Vassily drew up a chair and poured us both a drink. He tossed his back, as if the champagne were rotgut, screwing up his face and saying, 'Yagh!'
We sat facing each other, drinking, not speaking, until Vassily lifted his glass and said, 'USA!'
By then I was drunk enough to remember one of the Russian lessons Vladimir had given me. I touched Vassily's glass with mine and said, Soyuz Sovietski Sosialistichiski Respublik.'
'Steppe!' hollered Vassily. He was singing. 'Steppe! Steppe!'
We finished the bottle, got another, and Vassily continued to sing. Around midnight he broke into a military song that I recognized – the tune at least. I hummed along with him, and he said, 'Da, da!' urging me to sing. I sang the only words I knew, Italian obscenities to his patriotic Russian verses:
Compagna Polacca,
Hai fatto una cacca?
Si, Vassili!
Ho fatto venti kili!
Io ho fatto nelle grande steppe…
Vassily applauded and joined with me in Russian. We stood in the dining car, singing our duet, drinking between verses.
Compagna Tatyana,
Hai fatto un' putana?
Si, Bonanno!
Ho fatto per un' anno,
Io ho fatto nelle grande steppe…
'Merry Christmas,' I said when the fourth bottle appeared. Vassily was smiling and nodding and chuckling hoarsely. He showed me a sheaf of restaurant bills he had been adding up. He shook them and then threw them into the air: 'Wheel' We sat down again, and Vassily, too drunk to remember that I couldn't speak Russian, harangued me for fifteen minutes. I suppose he was saying, 'Look at me. Fifty-five years old and I'm running this crummy dining car. Urp. Back and forth, every two weeks, from Moscow to Vladivostok, sleeping in Hard Class, too busy to take a piss, everyone giving me lip. Urp. You call that a life?' Towards the end of his harangue his head grew heavy, his eyelids drooped, and his speech became thick. He put his head down on the table, and, still holding tight to the bottle, he went to sleep.
'Merry Christmas.'
I finished my drink and went back to my compartment through the bouncing train.
The next morning, Christmas, I woke and looked over at the zombie sleeping with his arms folded on his chest like a mummy's. The provodnik told me it was six o'clock Moscow time. My watch said eight. I put it back two hours and waited for dawn, surprised that so many people in the car had decided to do the same thing. In darkness we stood at the windows, watching our reflections. Shortly afterwards I saw why they were there. We entered the outskirts of Yaroslavl and I heard the others whispering to themselves. The old lady in the frilly nightgown, the Goldi man and his wife and child, the domino-playing drunks, even the zombie who had been monkeying with my radio: they pressed their faces against the windows as we began rattling across a long bridge. Beneath us, half-frozen, very black, and in places reflecting the flames of Yaroslavl's chimneys, was the Volga.
… Royal David's city, Stood a lowly cattle shed…
What was that? Sweet voices, as clear as organ tones, drifted from my compartment. I froze and listened. The Russians, awestruck by the sight of the Volga, had fallen silent; they were hunched, staring down at the water. But the holy music, fragrant and slight, moved through the air, warming it like an aroma.
Where a mother laid her baby In a manger, for his bed…
The hymn wavered, but the silent reverence of the Russians and the slowness of the train allowed the soft children's voices to perfume the corridor. My listening became a meditation of almost unbearable sadness, as if joy's highest refinement was borne on a needlepoint of pain.