The passenger compartments are slightly larger than the bathroom, almost large enough to contain the four bunks with which each is equipped, plus maybe one and a half of the four adults who are supposed to be accommodated therein. You can stretch out on these bunks in comfort if you answered the casting call for Tattoo on Fantasy Island. The compartment window does not open, and there’s no fan or other form of ventilation, and no window shade. In the summer in southern Siberia, the sun shines eighteen hours a day. If your compartment is on the south side of the train, as mine was, you can use it to bake pies. A few of the windows in the corridor do open, and some relief can be had by sticking your head out and letting your jaw hang open in the breeze. I saw most of Siberia the way your dog sees I-95. Each train car carries two middle-aged ladies whose job, as far as I could tell, is to walk up and down the corridor making sure no one smokes. You can drink on the train, you can puke on the train, you can yell and quarrel and party all night, you can cook tripe on alcohol stoves and make fetid picnics of smoked fish and goat cheese, but you can’t smoke. In order to smoke, you have to stand between the cars and risk getting shoved under the wheels by all the people from the adjoining compartments who are standing between the cars, too, because everyone smokes in Russia. And this is the first-class section of the train. In second class, the corridor runs through the middle of doorless compartments with four bunks on one side and a fifth above the window across the aisle. Below this bunk are two seats with a hinged flap between them. Raise the flap and you get yet another bunk. There haven’t been so many people on top of each other at bedtime since the U.S.A. in the 1960s. Russian trains are reeking, grubby, airless, and clamorously loud. The cars sway in sudden and violent motions. Rail sections are laid haphazardly, with large gaps between rail ends. Instead of clickety-clack, Russian trains go KA- WANK! KA-WANK! KA-WANK! I ended up angry, but not about the discomfort or lack of services. What was maddening was more abstract—how the train had been designed with no consideration for anyone on it. In fact, there seemed to have been active malice. Mere negligence wouldn’t explain that bathroom. In the old Soviet Union, nobody had to like this train—or anything else. Nobody had a choice. People couldn’t go on a competing railroad. People couldn’t go on a Greyhound bus. People couldn’t even—considering what a trip to Siberia usually meant—not go.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online