jump to navigation

Aboard the Trans—Siberian Express July 25, 2008

Posted by dodo in : China, Embassy, England, Moscow, Rail Pass, Restaurant, Russia, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Travelling Bag, Trip , trackback

She started sobbing three hours before the border. The conductress tried to console her with a glass of sweet, strong tea but without much success. She remained in the long druggeted corridor, a crumpled figure in a pink dressing gown watching the forests spinning madly by. The tankard holding the glass depicted a Slavic swordsman defending a child and she held it tight as a keepsake.

It certainly was a crying matter. The birch forests of Siberia, so upright, so elegant in autumn, had been broken by this winter campaign. Brought into perfect arcs by wind and snow, the younger birches littered the track-side like ribs and tusks while the old and brittle, unable to bow before the onslaught, rose into the air like splintered spines.

Even the express was beginning to show signs of vulnerability to the elements. The sinks and toilets were blocked with ice and the narrow cubicles connecting the carriages were thick with snow, their door handles stinging. Each cubicle was a treacherous no man’s land, now braved by only a few passengers seeking out the dozing heat of the restaurant car which, nearing the end of its journey, had little to offer. She was, of course, crying for none of these reasons.

Her daughter loved the stations. She was usually dressed and waiting half-an-hour before the express pulled in. Arm-in-arm with the day-conductress, she would walk the length of the train, watching the ice being tapped off the water inlets and the track-hoppers getting a warning from the new MCK engine elbowing its way backwards. When the conductress and the girl turned and began their precarious stiff-armed run along the platform back to the wrought-iron steps of carriage No 3, it was the signal for a dozen others to do likewise. Feet were wiped, the steps were brought in, the samovar was stoked and nostrils which had stuck together like prickly gauze snuffled back to life.

Travel GuidebookAt one station they had cut short their promenade and dived back to get a thermometer. A huddle of passengers gathered round the steps of the carriage to get a look at the reading and, lest their breathing distort the figure, Nadia held it aloft like a fish between finger and thumb. Thirty below. Several minutes before the express was due to pull out, the platform was empty. The station master was in retreat and only the ever-watchful V.I. Lenin peered down the track in the direction of the heroes who had to work on. They stood up from their points-cleaning .to watch the express pass when, to the delight of her comrades, one of them bellowed “Mishka!” to the train driver through a rolled-up magazine. A brief and warming thigh-slapping routine ensued before headscarves bound tight as bandages were again bowed before the task in hand.

It was around Lake Baikal that the woman in pink had been able to share in her daughter’s delight with the journey. She explained to us that she had spent her childhood in a village near Irkutsk. She pointed beyond a wooden pier to the place where she used to sit on a crate beside her father as he fished through the ice. At the age often, her talents had taken her away to Moscow where she had studied, married and made her home. As we watched the train’s shadows turn and fold on the snowy shore, it became clear that she had not forgotten the stories which made this much more than a stark inland sea stretching as far as the eye can follow. Once, before she was born, her father had found a curious bloated and boggle-eyed fish on the shore. He had made a meticulous drawing of his find and had insisted that she take his handiwork with her to Moscow where it adorned, in turn, dormitory, flat and office. She was now taking it to Peking. She could imagine what was going on in the lugubrious depths of Baikal. These strange survivals from pre-history the golomianka, were no doubt nosing around the wreck of Old Prince Khilkov’s locomotive which had plunged through the ice eighty years ago.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured us. “That was in the days when they were laying tracks on the ice; in the days, too, when you could get married out there.” She swept her hand towards the endless expanse of ice and water. “And on a boat made in England.” Her face became as bright as an icon as if she had momentarily glimpsed the old customs of Irkutsk: a bridal party bearing skates of bone and bodices of the finest needle-point standing on the southern shore and looking across Baikal; a sallow-faced groom from Chita smoothing his first moustache and pacing the deck of an ice-locked paddle-steamer.

By the time the express clattered into Zabajjkal’sk, on the Russian side of the border, the attentions of the conductress coupled with her own resolve had prepared the woman for the formalities. All that remained was paperwork and a passage to Peking. She had taken her last look at this obscure outpost of the Soviet Union and now stood with her back to the low sun.

“We will be here for some time. The wheels need to be changed for China and the officials . . .” — she indicated a rank of grey-coated youths further up the platform — “they will expect you to stand in the corridor while they search your room. So please,” she started off towards her own compartment, “no reds under the bed.”

It is indeed the room which interests them — the room, the space, into which a Trans-Siberian stowaway may be fitted. There is room for a couple: one here behind the luggage (hunched like a cosmonaut hurtling into the unknown) and another there beneath the bottom bunk (blankets burying a crouched figure waiting for rebirth). All the lights are up and cold air has come in with the officials. Young men with pale, waxy skins, they are straight out of some Moscow academy. Old hands wear leather gloves, old heads wear fur hats, as if they are badges of office: we hunt, we trap, we tame. These are reluctant hunters, ill at ease and inexperienced, wary lest a nervous glance could give flesh to fear — the fear of coming face to face with a cowering countryman, the fear of finding the loaded chamber in a game of Russian roulette. In this compartment, in this carriage, on this train, it does not happen and they move on to check the papers of the woman and her daughter.

Even as the guards are ushering them into the corridor, the carriage rolls into an immense echoing workshop. A tankard on the compartment table sits as a reminder of the glories of Soviet technology — sputniks and rockets spin out of a world inhabited by the Spassky Tower and an olive branch — and, as if to demonstrate that the mundane is as attainable as the sublime, not a spoon rattles, not a single drop of sweet Georgian tea is spilt, as the carriage is smoothly elevated and the task of fitting a Chinese-gauge undercarriage is taken in hand. The mechanics wink and whistle and smoke aromatic cigars. They look as though they should be on horseback flying towards the sun. Now they swing beneath the iron horse, a race apart from the officials pacing the corridor. Ruddy mortals, crouching and crawling around the undercarriage, they can look up for inspiration to the immaculate lives portrayed high on the walls of the workshop, to those models of determination and robust heroism familiar to all Soviet citizens: Riveters and Liberators, Welders and Flag-bearers, beaming Foundry- women with goggles thrown back on their brows like aviators from the Great Patriotic War.

“We all have to do something for the good of our country.” She had returned to the window and was watching me photograph the posters. “I will be spending three years in Peking, at our Embassy, so perhaps we will meet again when you collect your return visa.”

One month later I did visit the Embassy, a little Russia behind a wrought-iron gate and walls once used to confine Cossack prisoners. There, in a small panelled office, was the drawing of a queer fish waiting like a fabulous train with headlamps ablaze in a Siberian night.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Aboard the Trans—Siberian Express

Comments»

1. China Sightseeing - July 29, 2008

Air tour, bus rim tour, sunrise and sunset tour, helicopter flight and hike in and out of the canyon. … China Sightseeing

2. Youth Pass - July 29, 2008

Book Now which pass duration would you like 5 days in 1 month 10 days in 1 month 15 days in 1 month how many senior passes would you like… … Youth Pass

3. York Pass - September 9, 2008

Lastly, if you want some real savings with all those New York Tourism hot spots, purchase a New York Pass online. … York Pass


LogoAlexa CounterFeedBurner Counter