ATKundur, Tania hopped from the metal step to the station platform and removed the suitcases of the inspector and the railway policeman. Between them, they guided the pale-faced Ginzburg down the steps. His hands were handcuffed behind him, making it difficult for him to balance himself as he shuffled downward.
Ginzburg’s teeth chattered, his lips turning blue quickly in the immense cold. A crowd of passengers surged toward the hard-class carriages, while debarking passengers fought their way outward, opposing armies filtering through each other’s lines. A statue of Lenin, finely polished, gleamed in the faltering light of late afternoon.
Sokolovich stepped aside and contemplated the two suitcases standing on the platform. He picked them up and balanced them in either arm as Voikov began to prod Ginzburg to movement. But Ginzburg resisted, angering the policeman.
“Please,” Ginzburg protested. His eyes rested on Tania, who looked away.
“Get along, you bastard,” Voikov said.
“Please,” Ginzburg said.
Tania stole a glance at him. He was looking toward the baggage car.
“You must let her off in Birobidjan,” he shouted, as the railway policeman dragged him away. But the instructions from Voikov were quite clear. Tania looked at him as if to reassure herself that she had understood correctly.
“At Khabarovsk, send her back to Moscow.” He had written out the instructions and handed her the woman’s passport. “Arrange for a box. She’ll stink up the place if you don’t. I’ll wire Moscow to find her family.”
Ginzburg had been sitting glumly on the lower bunk, handcuffed to a metal support. He had appeared not to be listening, lost in his own thoughts. Now she realized that he had heard it all.
“At Birobidjan,” Ginzburg shouted as Voikov dragged him into the station. They disappeared inside and Tania grabbed the handrail and lifted herself aboard. As she stood on the steps shivering, a little man came running out toward her. In his hand she could see the familiar envelope of a telegraph message. Another message, she thought. It was the third one. She had already delivered two of them to the KGB man, who sat brooding in his compartment.
“Zeldovich?” the little man asked.
“I’ll take it.”
The little man hesitated a moment, shivering violently. He had rushed out without his coat.
“It is urgent,” he said. “They are burning the wires from Moscow. The bosses are accusing us of inefficiency. There will be hell to pay if the message is not delivered. You will promise that he gets it?”
She watched him turn and run back to the warmth of the station. Holding the message in her hand, she continued to stand on the lower step as the train moved sluggishly out of the station.
She looked at her watch. They had finally made up the lost time. Loss of time reflected on all of them. Despite everything, she mused with satisfaction, they were adhering to the schedule. The idea had a calming effect, and she sensed that she had begun to make peace with herself over her indiscretions.
She had tried very hard to please Sokolovich and felt that she had won his approbation. He had even taken her aside after Ginzburg’s arrest and shared a confidence. She had been at the samovar, loading the charcoal from the pail to the heating bed. At first he had loitered around, waiting for a passenger to pass. Then he had touched her arm, startling her, but the unusually benign expression on his face told her that he was about to say something of special meaning.
He looked toward the KGB soldier, a brief glance. But Tania had seen it, and knew that what was coming was for her ears only. “We clean our own laundry, right, Tania?” He had even used her first name.
She understood at once, although she had, of course, shown no emotion. He could have been a KGB agent and, as she knew, he was capable of great subterfuge. She merely nodded her head to indicate that she had caught his meaning. And she had felt great pride in it. The trains move in spite of them, in spite of their foolishness, she might have said, but she kept silent.
In the passageway, she saw little Vladimir, standing with his eyes glued to the window as they pulled out of the station. He had been the instrument of Ginzburg’s arrest, and it frightened her to see him. She did not dwell on the matter. It is not my business, she told herself, even though she knew, from her own careful observation of the passengers, that Ginzburg had not left the train at Krasnoyarsk.
As Tania walked toward Vladimir, he looked up, then ran away and hid in the toilet at the far end of the carriage. She wondered if the boy sensed that she knew he had lied.
She passed the guard, deliberately ignoring him, and knocked on Zeldovich’s compartment door. She waited, tapping the envelope against the metal door, hearing someone stir within.
When the door opened, she was startled by a sudden surge of familiarity. Something was reminding her of Grivetsky. She handed Zeldovich the message, all the while looking beyond him, over his shoulder into the compartment. It was the smoke. She smelled the same peculiarly rich cigar smoke that had filled Grivetsky’s compartment at their first meeting and which still lingered there. Zeldovich slammed the door in her face, but not before she had confirmed the aroma. Somehow she had felt the general’s presence, as if the smell were not just a reminder, but a personal message to her. She shook off the idea that the general was in Zeldovich’s compartment, sitting relaxed in a chair as she had first observed him. Actually, this reminder was more annoying than anything else, since she had managed to forget Grivetsky and, with him, the entire record of her sordid indiscretions. The raw wound of her humiliation was now opened again, and once again she could not believe that Grivetsky had used her so badly. Again she felt the tug of suspicion about Grivetsky’s hasty departure. She went into her quarters and shook the old crone. The woman gasped, swallowed in mid-snore, and opened her eyes.
“I am going to tell them about the bribe you took from the Jew.”
The older woman blinked, not understanding.
“I am going to tell the inspector.”
“What?”
A nerve palpitated in the old crone’s cheek and her eyes narrowed with fright.
“The inspector. Sokolovich. I am going to tell him that you were bribed by the Jew.”
The woman gasped.
“Please—” she began, but it was happening too fast and she could not think of what to say.
“I want you to tell me the truth about General Grivetsky.” Tania gripped the woman’s shoulders and raised her to a sitting position.
“It was not my business,” the woman said, trying to shake loose.
“Quickly,” Tania hissed. The smell of the cigar smoke was still in her nostrils.
“They had him between them,” she whispered, her resistance gone, her body limp. “His head was bobbing. I thought he might be drunk. I should not have looked.”
“Looked where?”
“Out the window. They pushed him out of the door. It was all very fast. He rolled into the river. Then they threw off his bags.” She looked up at Tania, pleading.
Tania felt the tears begin, then run down her cheeks.
“I did not want to look,” the woman whispered urgently. “I turned away quickly and put it from my mind. It is not my business.”
Tania pushed the woman back on her bunk as if she had been holding something unclean. “You must not report me,” the old woman pleaded, her chest heaving. She repeated it over and over again like a litany.
“Shut up.” Tania snapped, wiping the tears away with her sleeve.
The woman continued whimpering, but Tania’s mind was drifting. How proud she had been of the general’s interest in her. He had not abused her. Now she could mourn a lost love.
“You will not report me?” the woman whined.
It was an intrusion, angering Tania again. “Get out,” she snapped.
When the old woman had gone, Tania undressed. Carefully, she laved her body in the sink, soaping herself, scrubbing as hard as if she was peeling away old skin. Rinsing off the soap, she patted her skin until it tingled, feeling the sweetness of her own cleanliness. Then she tightened the sheets of her bunk and slipped between them.
The initial chill made her shiver, and she lay stiffly, waiting for the warmth which came moving upward from her feet, over her legs and thighs, to her breasts. The train bounced beneath her reassuringly, and she listened contentedly to the sounds of her world, the tiny click of metal wheels on the track rivets, the clank and heave of metal couplings, the whoosh of the freight cars that passed heading westward.
She felt a drowsiness descend, an uncoupling, as if her mind were being let loose to roam. Her thoughts turned happily to the general, the neat cut of his uniform, his elegant carriage and, best of all, those moments in which he confided his anxieties. What had seemed indiscretions only a few hours before were now, in her mind, heroic deeds. She had sacrificed a bit of herself, endangered her status on the railroad, the most meaningful thing in her life. She recalled the anticipation which she had felt in those moments of preparation, before he was taken from her, and her hands began to stroke her thighs. Her nipples came erect, rubbing against the cool cotton of the sheets, and she felt herself reaching out for him. Her hands were his hands and they were greedy for the touch of her. He pursued her, his fingers caressed and reached inside of her and she felt his ardor, the relentlessness of his passion, and heard him whisper words of devotion in her ear. Waves of surrender engulfed her as she drowned willingly in the pleasure of it, feeling his pleasure as well, his release, his fulfillment.
Whether she had slept or fainted or both, she could not recall, except that now she was being shaken awake and was resisting with all her will. Then she was sitting up, slowly recovering her sense of time and place, and there before her was the wrinkled face of the old crone. The window was pitch-black.
“He wants to get off at Birobidjan,” the older woman said.
“You woke me for that?” Tania said angrily.
The old woman flicked a switch and the little bulb on the wall behind the bunk lit up. Tania gathered the blanket around the naked upper part of her body.
“You must forgive me, Tania Revekka,” the older woman pleaded.
Tania smiled thinly. The woman was simply stupid, worse than a child.
“So let him off,” she said, forgiving now, remembering what the woman’s confession had given her.
“He can’t move his legs.”
“Who?”
“The man who was in the compartment with the Jew.”
Him again, Tania thought, a sudden image of the pale, squat man flashing through her mind. She lifted the clipboard with the list of passengers from its place on the hook near her bunk.
“He is ticketed to Khabarovsk.”
“I know. But he wants to get off at Birobidjan. He has been making a great racket about it.”
Tania remembered the general’s fear of the man, and the little brat mimicking his walk. Still shrouded in the blankets, she slipped out of her bunk onto the cold floor. She lifted the woman’s thin wrist and peered at the face of her watch.
“I will be right out,” she said. “We are forty minutes out of Bira. We will only have a minute or two.”
Godorov was sitting on his bunk. Beside him on the floor of the compartment was a battered cardboard suitcase, its frame dented, the clasps broken, held together by rope. Somehow he had managed to pack and dress. The collar of his coat was turned up and his little eyes peered out. Tania was startled at his appearance. Whereas he had once appeared sinister, he was now frail. The look of the hunted dog had vanished and in its place was an enigmatic indifference. His legs trembled as they hung over the side of the bunk, his battered shoes tapping lightly and helplessly on the floor.
“You will please carry me off the train at Birobidjan.”
Tania wanted to ask why, but he was too obviously determined. It is not my business, she told herself, stifling her curiosity about the man’s condition. The old crone picked up the cardboard suitcase and moved quickly through the passageway.
“And the body in the baggage car,” he began. “I have been charged with its burial.”
“You, too?” Tania said flippantly.
Was he joking? She was under orders to return the body to Moscow.
“I have money,” he said, taking a wad of rubles from his coat pocket.
She turned away quickly, wondering if the guard who stood in the corridor was listening. The compartment door was open.
“Put that away,” she said.
His proposition was insulting. Did she look as if she would be receptive to a bribe? Human garbage, she told herself, feeling the train begin to slow.
Godorov suddenly reached out and grabbed the edge of the upper bunk and, grunting with strain, hoisted himself to a standing position. Tania tried to support him, but his weight was enormous. The old crone came back and let Godorov edge his other arm over her shoulder.
“He is like a ton of lead,” Tania said as they moved him out into the passageway. The guard looked at them curiously, then turned away. Not your business, eh? Tania thought, as they struggled ahead.
In the space between the cars, Tania opened the door and let Godorov sink to the steps as she squinted into the distance. Ahead, she could see the sparse lights of Birobidjan. Of all eastern Siberia, Birobidjan had always appeared the most desolate place of all. Years ago, when Tania had first started on the railroad, she had been told that Stalin had chosen it as a place for the Jews.
“It is a rotten place,” someone had said and it had stuck in her mind. “A perfect place for them.” It was the kind of stop along the line that seemed an afterthought.
Godorov looked up at her.
“Just leave me on the platform and remove the body from the baggage car. I will give you the rubles when the job is done.”
Tania looked down at him contemptuously. The old crone turned away.
The train pulled into the station. Half the lights were out, and the others barely lit the platform. Not a single person was in sight. A banner, frayed by the wind, hung limply between two poles.
Tania stepped over the seated figure and stood waiting at the foot of the steps. Godorov reached out and lifted himself by the handrail, while the older woman supported him and Tania braced herself to receive his weight. She looked around in the darkness for a place to leave him, and spotted a wooden crate standing against a brick wall near the edge of the platform.
“Hurry,” Godorov said.
The two women, bowed under his weight, carried him across the platform, his lifeless legs dragging behind. Puffing with effort, they deposited him on the crate. Even in the bad light, Godorov’s ashen face glowed with sweat.
“Now the body,” he urged.
Tania looked back at the train. The empty restaurant car cast the only light in the deserted station. Not a single passenger had debarked and both ends of the platform ended in total blackness. Godorov removed the rubles from his pocket and waved them in front of the two women.
“Hurry,” he said. “You will not get this until you do it.”
Tania looked down at him with disdain, remembering how he had once struck fear in the heart of the general. She looked at her watch. A man appeared in the dark doorway of the station house and waved at the engineer. Tania and the old attendant moved toward the train, still watching the man, who sat helplessly on the crate.
“Hurry,” he shouted.
“Stupid man,” Tania hissed, turning quickly and running for the train, which had already started to move, the old crone hobbling behind her.
They watched from the metal steps as the man slipped off the crate onto the platform and tried to crawl forward, like some strange reptile. He was shouting something, but Tania could not hear. She watched until he faded out of sight, a black blob passing finally into invisibility.