TANIARevekka Romoran lay on the lower bunk in her compartment. As she massaged her feet, she calculated the amount of work she would bestow on her assistant, to keep the old thick-headed crone out of her hair for most of the night. Tania decided to have her clean and polish the samovar, reload the coal fires, polish the brass window protectors in the corridor, vacuum the drapes and carpeting, clean the toilets, and polish both the windows and the interior paneling.
The old woman’s body odor lingered in the compartment. Tania got up with a sigh. She knew she would have to spray the room, although the medicinal stench of the spray was equally unpleasant. Cleanliness was a key ingredient to her peace of mind, not only because it was important in her work, but because it had beeen ingrained in her from childhood. “Wash, Tania. Brush, Tania. Scrub, Tania.” Her mother had been a chambermaid in a Leningrad hotel, and Tania never forgot her railing against the sloppiness of the guests, their disgusting slovenly habits, which not only increased her work load but filled her with everlasting contempt.
“They use the towels as toilet paper, then they drop them all over the carpets. You can’t imagine their disgusting habits.”
Tania was even more obsessed than her mother had been. She was particularly sensitive to smells, and could differentiate the odors of a person’s mouth, armpits and crotch. Sniffing at an unmade bed, she could form an opinion of its occupant’s character from both the odor and the way in which the sheets had been ruffled. She evaluated her passengers according to how they treated their compartment, and she had formed an unfavorable opinion of humanity from her ten years as a sleeping-car attendant, a Petrovina, on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Naturally, as befitted her profession, all her judgments were private. This was her 415th run from Moscow to Vladivostok as Petrovina in soft class. The train, she knew, had become her real home, her life. It was no accident that she had won no fewer than five medals for zealousness and industry. Vacations on the Black Sea at the huge railroad workers’ resort were boring. Worst of all, she could not sleep in stationary beds and she always returned to her little compartment with the joy of a homecoming. For Tania, life began as the great wheels rolled and bounced over the square joints of the rails.
She had never married. How could one in such transient circumstances? Not that sex was unavailable to the train attendants. When she had started her career on the railroad at the age of twenty-one, the older women had warned her.
“It’s the vibrations,” she had been told. “It makes them sexy. And the drinking and boredom unhinges them. But be careful. You never know who might be an inspector.”
There were, of course, all sorts of horror stories about attendants who had been caught with men, or raped by drunks, or mauled by peasant soldiers, who copulated like pigs in a barnyard. But she prided herself on her ability to fend those types off. There were times, though, when a man’s advances somehow coincided with her own desires. She remembered Colonel Patushkin vividly, a tall, spare man, wearing an immaculate uniform with shiny insignia and red epaulets. He had walked toward her on the platform, his lips fixed in a confident half-smile. She was surprised at her own interest, since she was used to seeing Russian military officers on their way to some base in Siberia. There was a special aura about him, she decided, feeling a kind of electricity as she shook his hand.
“I am Colonel Patushkin,” he said, his warm deep-blue eyes looking into hers. She looked up at him dumbfounded, suddenly losing track of time and place and the demands of her other passengers. It occurred to her after he had been shown to his compartment, that he might have mistaken her attitude for rudeness. Determined to correct that impression, she found herself giving the colonel special attention. When he and his fellow officer left their compartment for the restaurant carriage, she rushed in with a mind to tidying up, dusting the curtains, rubbing the brass fittings to a pretty shine, fluffing up the bedclothes, cleaning the ashtrays and vacuuming the rug. Instead, she found herself fingering the colonel’s pressed and brushed uniform, putting the material to her nose and smelling deeply, wondering at the uncommonly clean masculine smell.
During the first two days of the journey she could barely get the colonel out of her mind. One night she burst in as he emerged from the adjoining washroom, a towel in a perfect arc around his neck and his curly black hair still damp from combing. Once, toward evening, she had come in quietly with a glass of tea and had seen him in his underwear, white neatly starched shorts and soft ribbed undershirt. He was alone in the compartment, standing with his back toward her, and she let her eyes wash over him, taking in his tall smooth body, and across the center of him the neat white underwear.
Later she realized that it had been reckless of her, especially since she was sure he had seen her reflection in the darkened window. When he had finally turned, taking the tea glass from her, she imagined that his eyes had lingered over her face longer than usual.
“Thank you, Tania,” he said, and she imagined that he returned her admiration. Later, lying in her upper bunk, her mind was assailed by a jumble of uncommon thoughts and images, involving the colonel and his deliciously white body. She imagined that her hands were his and performed acts upon herself that made her breath come in short gasps and filled her body with wonderfully exquisite feelings.
During most of the next day, she used every possible subterfuge to enter his compartment, providing him and his companion with an excess of service. She was certain, too, that he was being extra attentive to her actions, watching her coolly as he sat in the one easy chair, his long legs crossed, a book open on his lap, his shirt collar open at his white throat. She was taking particular care about her appearance and her clothes and, when the train stopped briefly at Novosibirsk, she dashed into a station store to buy a lipstick. Later, she coated her lips lightly with it and smeared some into the skin over her cheeks. Then, admiring herself in the mirror, she brushed her chestnut hair, pinning it up with particular care.
The senior attendant, a large chunky woman with a brooding expression, rarely talked to her, except to bark an order or smirk when something had not been done to her satisfaction. But seeing Tania so freshly turned out caught her attention.
“What are you painting yourself up for?” she hissed. “Got some man giving you the eye?”
“Of course not,” Tania had replied, blushing.
“Better watch out,” the senior hissed.
Tania knew she was under surveillance now, but could not help herself. She worked harder too, approaching her chores with remarkable zeal to prove to her superior that she was only interested in improving her job performance. It was only when the senior attendant had gone off to eat or sleep that she moved closer to the colonel’s compartment, keeping close to the door, like a starved puppy, peering in to catch his eye.
As the journey had progressed, she began to feel the pressure of time. In just twenty-four hours they would arrive at Chita and the colonel would depart. She began to grow anxious, wondering how she could possibly cope with the farewell, as if they had been lovers for years. The fact was, as she later remembered, they had exchanged no more than a few polite words, she of inquiry, he of casual response, mostly “Yes, thank yous” or “No, thank yous.”
But she was now certain that somehow she had gained his attention. She entered the compartment while the other soldier was in the restaurant car and began tidying the upper bunk. She was quite conscious of her own movements, stretching upward to puff pillows and smooth the linen dust cover. It was then that he stood up and, politely waiting for her to descend, touched her shoulder, and spoke the only complete sentence that she was ever to remember.
“You are a remarkably dedicated comrade,” he said. She felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder and, blushing deeply, she placed a hand over his. Then, overcome by the gesture, she had run out of the compartment and rushed into her own, to douse her face with cool water. Luckily, the senior attendant was stretched on the lower bunk, her face to the wall, and she was snoring noisily as usual.
Later, when the train stopped at the Irkutsk station, Tania stood beside the car breathing gulps of fresh air and feeling the impending sadness of the colonel’s imminent departure. Chita was next. A bright moon hung in the distance, unreachable and mysterious, like her relationship with the handsome dark man. Her melancholy was intense. It was only after she had climbed up onto the metal step again that she felt her depression ease, for she saw in the window the face of the colonel, who had apparently been watching her.
When the train began to move again, she waited near the samovar, watching the doors close, and some of the passengers, including the colonel’s companion, walked unsteadily toward the restaurant carriage. When the passageway was empty, she poured out a glassful of tea and placed it in the filigreed container, then, watching it shake in her hands, opened the door of the colonel’s compartment.
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.