by Greg Wilson
There was a light, thank goodness. A single weak bulb contained within a cracked glass housing mounted to the box beam that braced the ceiling of the car. Its dim glow ebbed and flowed with the speed of the engine and the roll of the carriage as he worked.
There was no way for him to know how long he had: how soon it would be before the train might reach its next stop or when the freight car might be opened. So he had worked feverishly, straightening the bent nails as best he could with his fingers until they bled, then hammering them back into place, using the heel of his fist to begin with and, when that wasn’t enough, searching around frantically until he found an old wooden mallet that had been discarded in a corner. Only after that, after the lid was back in place and Florinskiy was alone again in the world of death, did he start thinking about what to do next.
The freight car was half full, its contents of crates and pallets stacked around the perimeter, save for the wide space set aside for the sliding door. It was locked of course. Otherwise, Nikolai presumed, with the possible exception of Florinskiy’s coffin, nothing within the carriage’s four walls would be likely to ever reach its final destination.
Nikolai moved quickly amongst the piles of cargo, reading their markings in the flickering light. It was a transit train. Florinskiy had researched the details. Its journey would end at Novosibirsk, the Siberian capital, and, if the information he had gleaned was correct, it would make only brief stops to set down and pick up passengers along the way. Any cargo not bound for Novosibirsk would be off-loaded there for trans-shipment. Most of it, by the destination labels, onto the next train travelling on the West Siberian fine, through Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Kirov and on to Moscow. The same route Nikolai himself would take.
They had left Novokuznetsk at eight. By his calculations that would give him close to twelve hours before his disappearance was likely to be discovered. As for ensuring that his means of escape remained a mystery, he would have to depend on Borisov for that, and Borisov would do it, he was sure. Out of self-interest if nothing else.
He found a space between two pallets of aluminum ingots destined for Novosibirsk and a crate of machine parts bound for Tyumen and settled down into it, wedging his back against the plank walls. He was crossing over now. Crossing the bridge that had separated him from himself. From both his past and his future.
Two hours… three. He wasn’t sure how long, but despite his determination to stay awake he must have dozed off, sleeping through the stops on the way. He wasn’t even aware that they had reached Novosibirsk until the carriage came to the final lurching stop that threw him sideways and slammed his head into the skin of the crate beside him.
He shook himself awake. Blinked and blinked again, trying to clear his brain. The headache was back. A massive throbbing pain that dulled his thinking. The result of the tension, he assumed, and the tide of poisonous chemical fumes his system had absorbed in the hours he had been confined in the coffin.
He began to clamber to his feet but then a heavy grating sound filled the carriage and he felt the floor and walls begin to shudder as the massive door began to slide open, spilling a widening shard of dazzling sunlight across the inside of the carriage. Panic gripped his stomach and he shrank back again, burying himself in the small cavern, shielding his eyes from the unaccustomed light.
He sat motionless, listening. Hearing the sound of his own tight, shallow breathing and listening for something more. For the voices and movement that he knew would be certain to follow and then the cries of consternation as the railway workers clambered inside and discovered him, but nothing happened. Nothing at all.
A minute, maybe two, and he rose uncertainly to his feet, faltering at the stabbing cramps in his limbs as his joints unwound, then slowly, cautiously, he stepped away from his hiding place, around the pallets of ingots to the open door.
He stood at its side for a moment, blinking against the light, peering tentatively along the platform. Outside an old man in overalls was working his way along the wagons, undoing padlocks, throwing bolts, hauling the massive panel doors back along their tracks. Apart from him, no one. Could it be this simple?
He didn’t pause to ask himself the question a second time. Just sprang down from the opening onto the concrete siding and began walking, head lowered and limping at first, until the oxygen started flowing through his bloodstream and the muscles of his legs began to work then, as they did, quickening his pace and striding faster, lifting his head to the seamless pale blue dawn sky and tasting the breath of freedom.
He found a covered overpass that seemed to connect the freight platforms with the main terminal. Took the stairs two at a time and started across the bridge towards the massive building at the other side.
The station hall was a curiously romantic confection. Not what he expected of Siberia. The massive walls above its blue stone base had been freshly painted: a vivid aqua that contrasted with the dazzling white of the decorative columns and lintels and the huge central archway that wrapped the entry. It reminded Nikolai of something: a building he had seen somewhere… St Petersburg?
A shiver ran through him as he came closer. No. Not St Petersburg. Moscow. The house in Ulitsa Prechistenka. The one with the black and gold gates and the brass plaque beside them with the single inscription: ZAVOSET.
And then it all came back to him.
The footfalls on the stone lobby floor. The clouded glass panel. The chill air rushing into the foyer. The sound of gunfire. Blood and splintered bone. Natalia’s scream and Larisa’s tiny, pale face filled with terror looking down at him from the window above.
He closed his eyes and swallowed, forcing the images away. Clenching his fists by his side and moving forward, faster. Taking each step as it came. Closing the distance.
The station had all he needed.
In the market that crowded the footpath outside he found a stall selling men’s clothes. He stank, he knew it. Of diesel and sweat and formaldehyde, probably death and fear as well. He saw it in the eyes and expression of the stall keeper as she took an involuntary step backwards while he rifled through the piles of goods laid out on her plank table. He didn’t bother trying to bargain. Just passed over a thousand of Florinskiy’s rubles in exchange for a pair of black jeans, a belt, socks, undershorts and a cheap T-shirt and moved on. Found another stall a little further along selling footwear and paid five hundred – twice what they were worth, he supposed – for a pair of sneakers, then wound between the tables picking up the other things. Sunglasses first. Then a cheap digital watch, a throwaway razor, some soap and, last of all, a liter of water. When he had everything he needed he paused to count how much remained of Florinskiy’s money.
A little over seven thousand rubles. It might last a week if he was careful but eventually it would run out and then what?
Natalia had a saying. What was it? He strained to remember, then it came to him. Tomorrow’s worry will come soon enough, Nikolai.
He smiled as he remembered the way she would say it… the lecturing tone, the stern expression. His mind wandered for half a minute then he pulled himself back. Folded the notes, slipped them into his pocket and made his way back inside the station hall, searching for the washrooms.
He found them on the ground floor in the corner closest to the street. The attendant sitting in the anteroom took ten rubles for the use of a towel and locker and ten more for the shower and toilet. Nikolai counted out the coins, nodded without speaking and moved on, pushing through the door to the right, registering the strangely incongruous silhouette painted on the dimpled glass: the profile of a bearded man in a top hat, a thick cigar set between his lips.
The washroom itself was surprisingly clean. There were toilets one side, open shower stalls the other, separated by gray steel lockers and benches between. The hiss of spraying water and a cloud of steam rose together from the cubicle at the far end indicating another presence, but otherwise the cavernous tiled hall was empty.
Nikolai scanned the numbers on th
e cabinets until he found the match for the tag the attendant had given him then slipped his money, papers and purchases inside, locked the door and snapped the rubber key band onto his wrist. That done he cracked the seal on the bottled water and drank it in one go – gulped it down without stopping – then stripped off the clothes Borisov had given him, wound them tightly around the empty bottle, carried the bundle across to the waste bin and stuffed it deep inside. He was returning naked across the tiled floor when the sound of the shower spray from the end stall died and a dripping figure stepped out of the cubicle and into the hall.
The man was in his forties, Nikolai judged, short and overweight. A roll of flabby skin broiled bright pink by the heat of the shower lolled over the edge of the towel he held pinned across his stomach. Long unruly strands of ginger hair lay plastered here and there across his scalp, dribbling water down his chest. He saw Nikolai and froze, slack-jawed like a startled animal, uncertain of which way to turn or what to do next. As Nikolai watched he saw the man’s eyes flickering nervously between his face and his naked torso.
It took him a moment to understand. The tattoo. He had forgotten about it completely.
The fat man’s eyes darted again to Nikolai’s chest, then back up even more quickly, as though he were pretending he hadn’t noticed it, that it wasn’t there.
But it was, and this wasn’t prison any longer. After nine years of imprisonment Nikolai had stepped into another dimension. A world inside out. A place where survival now depended on blending in, not standing out, and already he had made his first mistake.
He held the man’s gaze, wondering whether he could read the cryptic language of the tattoos. Had he seen the death heads and did he understand their meaning? And, if he did, would he talk? Would he be likely to mention this encounter to someone else? His wife, perhaps? A friend? Or worse, the police? And if he did, what would be the consequence? Then, as Nikolai was considering all of this a strange thing happened. Astonishingly, the fat man bowed to him. Forward, from the waist, in a gesture of obeisance, his hand clutching the knot of the towel around his belly, the trails of water from his hair now dribbling onto the tiled floor at his feet.
For several seconds he remained like that while Nikolai regarded him with dismay, then he straightened upright and turned aside towards the lockers without another glance, as if Nikolai wasn’t there. Not ignoring him, but as if he had become invisible.
Beyond where the man had been standing a full-length mirror was fixed to the wall. Moisture had eaten its way between the glass and its silvered backing, leaving ragged, brackish scars of decay around its edges. What remained was weak and faded, its reflection blurred and indistinct, like oil smeared on water, but it was enough. Enough for Nikolai to see his entire body for the first time in almost a decade and realize that the figure confronting him might almost have been that of a total stranger.
It was lean and taut in a way it had never been before, his skin as pallid as a ghost, molded in tight contours around the muscle and bone beneath its surface, its whiteness contrasted sharply with the dark and ugly intricacy of the tattoo that sprawled across his chest. His waist had become narrower and his shoulders broader, a consequence of the relentless exercise he had forced on himself as part of his discipline of survival, but most confronting of all were the changes to his face. He had seen them before, of course, but they had been gradual and until now he had never really noticed their full extent. His face was narrower, the bones that formed its framework sharper and more pronounced and beneath his brow his dark eyes appeared much deeper set. Hollow but defiant and uncompromising. Watchful and suspicious it seemed, even of themselves.
Seeing himself as he now did, Nikolai could understand the stranger’s reaction. He had been afraid. It was as simple as that.
Each day of prison had taken something from him until the void had grown so deep that it had seemed as if his soul was being scooped out from within and that eventually he would collapse and crumble and disintegrate. Then, at some imperceptible point, the erosion had stopped and the process had reversed. The chasm had begun to fill again, not with what had been taken, but with something else. Something totally different that had settled like liquid granite, layer by layer at his core, reconstructing him, rebuilding him from the inside out until it reflected itself in every part of his being – his movements and expressions, the way he held himself, most of all the eyes. Something so foreign that even now he didn’t fully understand it.
Inside it had become the essence of his survival but out here it would have to be controlled since now he realized that even without trying it gave him the power to generate fear.
The platzcart ticket cost three hundred rubles. It was third class – sitting only – but at that moment for Nikolai freedom alone was luxury enough. He bought fresh kulebyaka and pirozhki from a food stand, found a seat alone in a corner of the waiting lounge and consumed them ravenously, then went back for more and coffee, as well, this time. After that he settled down to wait for the boarding call. It came a half hour later. A woman’s voice amplified over the speaker system.
West Siberian Express to Moscow. Departing from track number two in fifteen minutes. All aboard.
He set his new watch by the station clock. Six thirty-three a.m. Waited until the straggles of Moscow-bound passengers gathered to a throng at the platform gate then joined it, merging with the crowd.
For most of the trip he slept, drifting awake occasionally as they pulled into stations along the way, once or twice wandering out to the platform for food and drink and then returning again to the bench seat he had claimed at the back of the carriage and where he was left undisturbed by his fellow passengers. It was just before five in the morning two days later when the locomotive finally pulled in to Yaroslavskiy Station on the north-eastern edge of Moscow. When he slipped down from the carriage onto the platform his legs slurred uncertainly beneath his weight. He wondered whether that was because of the forty-eight long hours he had spent on the train, or the uncertainty of what awaited him now that he had reached his destination.
At a stall on the concourse he bought another T-shirt, black this time, found the washrooms and showered and shaved then walked outside, stepping tentatively onto the Moscow pavement into the early morning bustle of Komolskaya Square. From where he stood the apartment was less than a kilometer away. That was where it had ended so that was where he would begin.
So much remained unchanged yet so much was different. The park opposite had become official now, even had a brass plaque dedicating it to the residents who had protected it through the last long years of the Soviet era. There were more trees and the gardens were more formal and carefully tended. He walked across the grass and stood at its center, studying the building where he and Natalia and Larisa had once lived.
The front door that haunted his nightmares – the one in which he remembered studying his own reflection – was gone. Nikolai smiled bitterly to himself. Changed completely, just as he had been. The new door was more substantial and refined than the one that had stood there previously. A statement of the new residents’ perception of themselves, he presumed.
Above the ground floor the brick facade had been painted, the wooden window surrounds replaced with new metal frames that gave the place an anonymous, almost sterile appearance. He looked around. The other buildings had changed as well and the cars that lined the street were newer and cleaner and more expensive than those he remembered. He turned his gaze back to the entry and let his mind wander. Imagined the old door. Natalia holding it wide for Larisa to come outside and play, smiling and flicking the strand of hair back from her eyes as their daughter skipped past her across the threshold. He stared at the empty doorway for a long moment then snapped his head aside, closing the shutter on the past. Spun around and focused instead on the carousel, the place where he had imagined the sniper must have been lying in wait the night they had taken him.
How often, since Florinskiy had woken the hope within him, had h
e imagined himself returning here and finding them? Finding everything just as he had left it? Had he really expected that, or had he expected what he had found, and what there really was?
Nothing. There was nothing for him here.
He turned and started to go but stopped again just as suddenly.
To the edge of the park an elderly woman was raking the grass, hunting down stray leaves and scraps of rubbish, collecting them and depositing them carefully in a large bin. She seemed familiar and he looked at her again. Remembered how a decade ago he had watched her doing the exact same thing.
She stopped then. Stopped what she was doing and looked at him as he made his way towards her, but her expression was one of curiosity rather than recognition. Then as he came closer she took a step back.
Did he really appear that frightening, he wondered? Without even intending to?
He dipped his head towards her and tried a smile. Noticed a discarded soft drink bottle lying on the ground between them and bent to pick it up. Lobbed the plastic bottle into the waste bin and she smiled at him in return.