Off the Rails

by Beppe Severgnini

  As we delve into the mysteries of the restroom and struggle to silence the radio, the train rolls through the darkness toward Zagorsk, past the dachas of the Muscovites, and arrives at Yaroslavl at three in the morning. The fact that this city on the Volga was the terminus of the railroad around 1860, when the idea of the Trans-Siberian Express was first conceived, is not enough to get anyone out of their bunks. In the morning, after discovering that they serve salami and not much more for breakfast, I devote myself to the landscape: flat, green, no animals in sight, even though the Atlas of the Soviet Union claims that this is “a land of cattle and dairy products.” In Danilov I make the acquaintance of several strapping representatives of the army of Soviet railroad workers (3.5 million employees), who in this circumstance are resupplying the train with water: elderly women, who in Italy would be spending the winter on the Riviera, but here leap from one track to another, brimming over with vim and vigor.

  As the enormous Soviet forest streams past the windows—a quarter of all the trees on earth, larch trees as far as the eye can see—I discover on a shelf in the corridor various pamphlets meant for the travelers’ political education: among the most interesting ones are Contemporary Trotskyism Versus Peace and Détente and True and False Interests for the Rights of Man, which cheer me up until we reach Kirov at one thirty in the afternoon. That city used to be called Vyatka, until Stalin renamed it after his friend Sergei Mironovich Kirov, perhaps to console himself for having had him killed. Toward evening, after crossing the river Kama, we reach Perm, 895 miles from Moscow. This city was called Molotov from 1940 until 1957, but since Soviet place-names are always a matter of opinion, Khrushchev changed the name back to Perm. We stop here for fifteen minutes. That’s not much time, but it’s more than enough for the North Koreans to ransack the station’s kiosks: with badges featuring Kim Il-sung on their chests, they rush out all together and come back loaded down with mineralnye vody (mineral water) and moss-colored sandwiches.

  Second Day

  While we were sleeping, the train has taken a number of interesting initiatives. It’s climbed over the Ural watershed; it’s passed the obelisk eleven hundred miles from Moscow with EUROPE written on one side and ASIA on the other; it’s entered a different time zone from the capital; and finally, it has stopped in Sverdlovsk. From here on, we’re in Siberia, and we follow the trakt, the route that the czar’s couriers rode from Saint Petersburg to Irkutsk, on the shores of Lake Baikal. We roll through ramshackle towns with dirt roads, few cars in sight, and only the occasional motorcycle with sidecar. We cross paths with the Rossiya, the red train that runs from Vladivostok, and an endless succession of freight trains—on average, one every two minutes—which bring lumber and minerals to Moscow, and whose diesel engines spill grimy dirt in through our windows. Thanks to that, but not only that, the compartments are starting to take on the lovely appearance of little stables. Even though we change our clothing every day and wash with the assistance of the little rubber ball, our cleanliness is rudimentary. Thanks to Lyuba and Lyuba, the two restrooms are always reasonably clean, though with every passing hour, the odor of the robust Russian air freshener becomes increasingly nauseating.

  At eleven a.m., the train stops at Ishim, where it’s drizzling, and then departs as usual without warning, obliging a crowd of loitering passengers to chase frantically after it. The landscape is becoming interesting. As Lyuba and Lyuba confirm with a military nod of the head, this is the steppe, where Siberia starts to get serious. Here the population is mostly Russian, but there are also enclaves of Kazakhs, Estonians, Ukrainians, Tartars, and Germans, the latter being soldiers in the Red Army whom Stalin chose to transport here from the Volga region, where their ancestors had settled at the invitation of Catherine the Great. Chekhov passed through here in 1890, aboard a horse-drawn tarantass, and was struck by the “black earth” and the “distinctive Russian stench.” We, too, see the black earth, and we get plenty of the Russian stench from Boris’s dining car, which we are obliged to visit twice a day. There, a waiter with the appearance of a Polish count pretends he has understood our orders, and then invariably brings us salami and cucumbers.

  At last, on the steppes of Ishim, we see livestock grazing. Cows, for the most part, which must somehow have learned to survive the climate of these places: snow on the ground for 150 days a year, an average winter temperature of five degrees below zero, and hard frosts every month of the year except for July and August. We cross the Barabinsk steppe, a colossal expanse that runs from the fifty-third to the fifty-seventh parallels north, and arrive in Novosibirsk, widely called the Chicago of Siberia, at 2:25 a.m., a time of night when Siberian railway stations don’t offer a lot of amusements.

  I try to take a picture of the engine, but I’m courteously invited to cease and desist by Big Lyuba: trains, stations, and bridges, nye razreshayetsya. We pull out. Someone, in the darkness, claims to have seen the river Ob.

  Third Day

  The morning is bright and sunny and the train climbs up into the mountains. Finally, in the curves of the tracks, we are able to see the whole train, from the engine to the very last car. It’s almost hot out, and little Russian girls, with their regulation hair bow, wait obediently in the stations: Bogotol, where we arrive at seven in the morning; Achinsk, where the train stops for three minutes, just long enough to admire the local station, which in every way resembles an armor-plated diner. Each time the ritual is identical: little uniformed men check the wheels of the trains; passengers get out to stretch their legs, running back and forth like drunken ants; a few people tarry to purchase raspberries—one ruble a paper twist—and come dangerously close to missing the train. After Krasnoyarsk, which we are told is much nicer than its station, the train crosses the Yenisey River, enormous and covered with rafts, and then pushes on into the taiga, the Siberian forest, which is teeming with insects in this season, including the klesh, a tick that causes encephalitis, and against whose bite all the inhabitants have been vaccinated. In the afternoon we reach Tayshet, the terminus of the BAM (Baikal–Amur Mainline), the railroad that leads directly to the Pacific, built at the behest of Stalin and at the cost of the lives of half a million unlucky wretches. Again today, unfortunately, the grim ritual of the evening repast is repeated, and every day Boris the restaurateur keeps moving it a little earlier, because he insists that the stomach follows the sun, and the sun doesn’t follow Moscow time the way the clocks of all the stations do. Around four in the afternoon, we very sadly troop in procession toward the dining car, where the usual soup with yogurt awaits us, accompanied by the perpetual salami and cucumbers and an egg with peas: this vegetable first appeared at breakfast, and we won’t shake it till the end of the trip. To drink, we can choose between sickly-sweet apple juice and salty mineral water. In spite of numerous attempts to bribe the waiter, no beer and no vodka are forthcoming. Those drinks seem to have been abolished aboard the Trans-Siberian Express after several unseemly episodes that took place some time ago (did someone dare try to seduce Big Lyuba? we wonder).

  Fourth Day

  At six in the morning we pull into Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia, an educated and tolerant city, 3,225 miles from Moscow and 2,367 from Beijing. Many Russians get off here, dragging packages and children as they go, and among those who board the train is a powerfully built, extremely blond schoolteacher, heavily made-up and teetering on very high heels. Despite the early hour, she wants to speak in English, and even though no one asked her, she informs us that she is bound for the school at Ulan-Ude, on the other side of Lake Baikal. The lake appears once the woman finally stops talking, after two tunnels—the first ones since we left Moscow—guarded by soldiers. The train plunges downhill, runs along the lakeshore for a few hours, and then heads east again. It reaches Ulan-Ude at 2:42 p.m. Moscow time, but it’s almost dark because local time is 8:42 p.m. Having dedicated the entire day to an experiment with time zones—stick to Moscow time as far as Irkutsk, then suddenly le
ap forward to local time—I’m vaguely agog. Before going to bed, I’m forced to suffer the Lyubas’ latest low blow: in order to battle the smells in the restroom, where several dozen people have been taking turns for the past four days, they have drastically increased the quantity of Russian air freshener. The resulting aromatic cocktail is lethal; without bothering to wash, I’m in my bunk by 3:30 p.m. Moscow time, while the train rolls on through the darkness of the Transbaikal region.

  Fifth Day

  After Lake Baikal, everything changes: the mountains become hills, the faces in the stations become Asian—this is the land of the Buryats, who speak a variety of Mongolian—and Ulan Bator isn’t far away. Only the party slogans on the roofs and walls are still the same, even more deeply stirring here than in Moscow. A short distance after Chita, our car is uncoupled from the Trans-Siberian Express proper, which continues on to Vladivostok and the Pacific. Our train instead heads south toward Manchuria, following the rails of what was once called the Chinese Eastern Railway. Even though five days of travel have broken the spirit of many passengers, a few continue to stand with great dignity at the windows; the Buryats ride by on horseback, the land is a rolling plain, and the houses have sheet metal roofs and firewood already stacked for the winter, which around here must be a serious proposition.

  We arrive in Olovyannaya at 6:25 a.m. Moscow time, 12:25 p.m. local time, crouched on our seats: Lyuba and Lyuba are cleaning the compartment, and they refuse to vacuum around passengers’ feet. Ortensia tells me, with a smile: Don’t expect me to do this when we get back home. Somewhere near here, on the banks of the Onon River, Genghis Khan, son of a Mongol tribal leader named Yesugei, was born in 1162; eight hundred years later, the Soviets have managed to ruin the place.

  I thought I’d seen the ugliest station on the Trans-Siberian Express, but Dauriya, where packs of stray dogs chase after carts on dirt roads, is worse than Olovyannaya, and Zabaykalsk is worse than Dauriya. Zabaykalsk is the border crossing, and here the Soviets give the greatest expression of their refinement in the art of irritating their fellow man: everyone has to wait for three hours, a thorough check of all luggage, and a “political check” of my books. When I ask them why they’re doing a political check when we leave the USSR, instead of more logically checking when we enter, all I get in response is a bored glance. When I try to lower the windows, a soldier barks at me to raise them immediately. When I point out that it’s hot in there, he says that doesn’t matter. Having exchanged the rubles that are wanted by nobody anywhere else in the world, and having changed the wheels on the train because in China the track gauge is narrower than in Russia, we depart.

  The North Koreans, who can tell they’re getting closer to home and are therefore understandably depressed, have remained seated for three hours in a waiting room that’s so horrible it becomes fantastic: stucco, high windows, flowered armchairs, the smell of mold, the usual Soviet television set as green as an aquarium, and a black-and-white photo exhibit on the province’s economic success. Moscow is 4,142 miles away, but that’s the spirit of the thing.

  The Chinese are waiting for us at Manzhouli, and they seem to have agreed in advance to smile, all together and at once. The customs formalities would have been straightforward except that two young Americans don’t have a Chinese entry visa, and the Russians don’t want them back. The Chinese think it over for two hours, and then, still with smiles on their lips, they inform the Americans that they must buy two visas then and there at a price of about five hundred dollars apiece. The Americans complain loudly, but they pay. We depart again.

  Our two Russian roommates by now have realized that Ortensia and I are on our honeymoon. But there’s not much they can do—the train is full, and we must share this compartment all the way to Beijing. I sense they feel pity for us when they start talking in heavily accented English to each other, so we can understand them.

  FIRST GIRL: Hey, my friend! Why don’t we go for a walk along the train?

  SECOND GIRL: Good idea, my friend! And we won’t be back for at least half an hour!

  So these poor bastards can have sex, I guess they mean. But when they leave, Ortensia and I hold hands across our beds and start to laugh—happy, as you can be only when you’re in your twenties, and in love.

  Sixth Day

  The Chinese don’t like station stops. We cross the northern part of Inner Mongolia without stopping; we cross the forty-eighth parallel; we descend toward Harbin; we cross the newly flooded Jilin province. Big Lyuba sits majestically in her post beside the restroom, where the sheer concentration of air freshener makes it possible to stay only briefly, while holding one’s breath. Little Lyuba gazes dreamily out the window and thinks about the Soviet border guard for whom she had dolled herself up.

  We arrive at Beijing at eight thirty in the morning, only two hours late. The most spectacular sight in the station is the crowd of twelve French passengers with backpacks slung over their shoulders, excitedly waiting to leave for Moscow. Boris the restaurateur, who still hasn’t run out of peas, lurks in his galley, just waiting for them.

  I look at my wife: she’s still smiling.

  8

  From the Baltic to the Bosphorus: The Last Summer of Communism

  1989: The Delights of the Repin Express

  The idea is simple: board a train in Helsinki and get off at Istanbul, traveling the rails of Actually Existing Socialism. A trip of this sort means translating mysterious timetables, struggling with sleeping bunks that fold up like pocketknives, and, most of all, confronting state tourism office clerks, who are determined to persuade us that it’s faster by plane. All of this while trying never to lose our tempers, and instead almost inevitably losing them: the trains of Eastern Europe, in fact, can’t be reserved from the West, they travel packed to the gills, and they either have dining cars that ought to be reported to the World Health Organization or else simply don’t have them. There are magnificent consolations, though: Bulgarian conductors who sing through the night, keeping the whole sleeping car wide-awake, a party of Russian smugglers, American tourists who buff the window glass for hours before realizing that the dirt is outside. You look for trains, in other words, but what you find is passengers. And around these parts, the passengers have plenty of stories to tell.

  The journey begins at the Rautatieasema in Helsinki, one of the few stations on earth that deserves a visit even if you have no train to catch: it’s a sort of art nouveau temple designed by the world-famous architect Eliel Saarinen, in front of which four stone colossi welcome travelers with a sad expression. I do happen to have a train to catch, though, and it’s standing at Track 6, surrounded by the small crowd that always seems to gather every time a plane or a ship departs for a Communist country. Many of the passengers are lugging big cardboard boxes, which—based on the illustrations on the boxes—contain everything from a tape recorder to a vacuum cleaner to show off to their friends back home as precious treasures.

  The express train no. 23 is heading for Leningrad, 275 miles away, beyond lakes and national borders. It’s a Russian train, riding on broad Soviet tracks with a five-foot gauge, which the Finns have adopted to avoid complications. Next to it sits the express train for Joensuu, with the phrase SELVÄÄ SÄÄTÖÄ written on its side: six diaereses in just two words, probably a record even around here. My train is called the Repin Express, taking its name from the painter Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844–1930), whose house is included on the Vladimir Ilych Lenin Slept Here tour offered by the Leningrad Intourist office. The passengers in car no. 1 are more interested in the furnishings of the compartments: a table that becomes a sink; a mini-wardrobe with six clothes hangers; two beds, even if this is a day trip. The train departs at 1:12 p.m., and immediately the cool air of a Finnish summer wafts in. Or at least it does until 1:15, when the Russian conductor comes through and with a faint smile fastens all the windows shut. “Air-conditioning,” he says, as if it were a luxury that we don’t deserve
.

  The Repin Express goes through Kouvola, where a gardening stationmaster has planted flowers in the shape of the initials VR (Valtionrautatiet, or Finnish railways); then it cuts south of the lake region and pulls into Vainikkala, the Finnish border crossing, at 4:15 in the afternoon. It stops here for twenty minutes, and the passengers, keenly aware of the buffets that await them in the train stations of Russia, hurry to stock up on provisions, pushing past people struggling with baggage carts and dragging suitcases. Two American retirees from Vermont ask me, “We’re entering Russia. Aren’t you excited?” and then walk away when I assure them that I’m very excited indeed, and that if I’m eating Toblerone chocolate, it’s only to disguise the tension. The sole person who remains aboard the train is a Russian with a grim expression, perhaps a diplomat serving in Finland, who occupies at the same time both compartments two and five. This man’s son keeps going back and forth between the two compartments, saying “excuse me” to everyone in English, and generally making everyone hate him. He’s a chubby eleven-year-old, the Soviet version of a little American raised on cheeseburgers and milkshakes: a Boston Celtics T-shirt, jeans, and track shoes. The Vermont retirees look at him and seem happy: children, the wife tells the husband, really are the same everywhere around the world.

  The train pulls out and arrives in Luzhaika, a Soviet border crossing. Two policemen board the train and ask the passengers to stand up, to make sure that there’s no one hiding in the space below the mattresses, as if they were afraid of a possible invasion by an army of contortionists. The Soviet Union that stretches out before the Repin Express seems like a country that’s just emerged from a time machine: old cars, motorcycles with sidecars, elderly female level-crossing guards with pitiless gazes, like Socialist women always have when they’re given a badge, a cap, or an official paddle. Before Vyborg (which was Finnish until 1940, and used to be called Viipuri), the railway runs among and over the little lakes that fringe the Gulf of Finland. This section of the journey is a symphony of undergarments: fishermen in their underpants, soldiers in sleeveless undershirts, and two young girls working a pedal boat, bare legs flying. Only after the passage of the tenth railcar do they notice that an entire trainful of people knows what color their panties are, and they cover their eyes, laughing.