When our train reached Port Baikal the mountains rose almost vertically before us. Two great iron ships, like cumbrous obsolete toys, were moored near the shore. The mouth of the first tunnel, guarded like all the others by a sentry, opened to swallow us up.
Sometimes, between tunnels, one caught a glimpse of the lake, vast and empty. This formidable body of water fills a cleft in the earth’s surface over five thousand feet deep by the latest soundings, and stretches for three hundred and ninety-five miles in a north-easterly action. The bed, which is subject to volcanic tremors, is believed to be the source of subterranean rivers and the depths harbour strange prehistoric snails, shrimps and molluscs, and small viviparous fish which disintegrate if they are cast ashore by a storm. Seals have at some remote period found their way into the lake and acclimatized at its northern end.
Where the line crossed a cleft in the mountainside pine trees perched on rocky pinnacles appeared high above us out of the mist, as if rooted in air. Beside a control cabin the railwaymen, or the military, had set up parallel bars and rings to relieve their boredom and isolation, and the stiffness of muscles from hours of sentry-go.
As we entered one of the long tunnels the speed of the train dropped almost to walking pace and great lumps of rock began to fall on the roof of our carriage, whilst water splashed down the windows.
‘Surely if we went a little faster not so many rocks would fall on us,’ said Dorothy.
‘But if there’s a rock-fall we should hit it a lot harder if we were going fast,’ said Nick consolingly.
The lights of Mysovsk were twinkling in the distance before we gathered for our evening drink, assured now by a steady supply of vodka from the dining car organized by Co. He had also scrounged a tin of apricots, so we strained off the juice and laced it with spirit. Although we could get boiling water from the samovar at any time of day or night, ice was unobtainable, and there is something almost repellent about tepid vodka taken neat. Mixed with any liquid which is not positively unpalatable, it becomes warmly therapeutic.
The moon was like a large slice of water melon when we climbed down onto the platform for a stroll. The dread Circum-Baikal loop, which had haunted the engineers and caused the deaths of so many men, was behind us, and we felt buoyant with relief.
Next morning there was a hint of ice in the clear autumn sunshine and wisps of mist round the hill-tops. The attendant was perched on his seat reading Pushkin. ‘Your colleague ... ?’ we enquired. He beamed and opened the door of their cubby-hole. We were greeted by a symmetrical face and a radiant smile. The abscess had burst. Now we should once more be unable to tell the two apart.
‘Only the English helped me,’ he said, and wrung our hands. In the restaurant car the tables were spread with fresh cloths, but although it was ten o’clock there was no sign of coffee, or any other passengers.
‘You may stay,’ said Galina pleasantly.
For days I had carried round a couple of pretty handkerchiefs in the hope of finding the girls alone.
‘Put this in your pocket, Galina. Here is one for your friend, too.’ She looked round hastily and stuffed the handkerchiefs into the opening of her blouse.
The train was running down a wide valley by a flashing river. The wooden houses had flowering plants in their windows and sunflowers leaned their heavy heads over the small wooden fences. Haystacks resembling large domed beehives clustered in the fields and fat white geese like bundles of clean laundry stretched their naked necks and hissed at the train.
‘The biologist has challenged the army officer to a cockfight on the rails,’ said Nick at breakfast. ‘The train will stop somewhere around midday.’ But in fact it stopped sooner, with a great deal of fuss and flurry. The brakes had gone wrong and we were about to cross the Yablonovy Mountains.
‘Nichevo,’ said the engine driver cheerfully, and the whole train turned out to enjoy the sunshine and the contest, we and Shimada happy to break off our Japanese lesson.
Both the challengers perched on the same rail with their hands locked round their knees, then edged towards each other in a series of small frog-like jumps. The object was to dislodge one’s opponent from the rail by barging him, though it was no use being violent as one would then be in danger of falling off oneself. The two men were fairly evenly matched, the officer having the advantage of bulk, though the biologist was very nimble, and he won two bouts out of three. After this, other people had a go, but very few were able even to move along the rail without falling off.
‘He is a very famous man,’ said the officer, glancing at the biologist. The automatic reticence which we had acquired prevented us from asking why.
The construction of the Trans-Baikal section of the railway had been dogged by labour troubles. Most contractors refused to contemplate the job. Those who did, faced by a categorical refusal on the part of the local Buryat tribesmen to work on the railway, were obliged to employ gangs of convicts, who gained a year’s remission of sentence for eight months work. Even so, they engaged in a paralysing go-slow until the contractors devised a piecework system with bonuses for the amount of work done. Output then really looked up, but there were the usual percentage of varnaki, or escapees, who made their way back to Russia, thieving and murdering as they struggled through the forests. Peasants living in isolated houses would put out food at night to avoid being attacked by these desperate men or having their houses set on fire.
The terrain, like that between Irkutsk and Baikal, was extremely difficult, and engineers were forced to follow the swift and tortuous course of the rivers, blasting a hold for the permanent way or shoring it up with embankments. In one place the harassed engineers decided to divert the course of a river and lay the line along its bed. As the Circum-Baikal loop was the last part of the railway to be built all supplies had to take the long sea route and be carried up the Amur and the Shilka rivers on barges.
The Yablonovy Mountains gave way to an open plain. In the distance beside a lake lay the town of Chita, low-built and unattractive. It was here that the gently-nurtured wives of the Decembrists, who accompanied their husbands into exile after the failed revolution of 1825, lived out the wretched years.
The station of Chitá is described in the Great Siberian Guide of 1901 as second-class and two kilometres from the town. Forty years later it was still second-class and the town did not appear to have grown much. Passengers for Manchukuo were leaving our train. Normally we should have taken this route to Dairen, saving two days on the journey to the Pacific. Now, only because of the epidemic of plague, we had been allowed to go the long way round to the closed city of Vladivostok. The biologist, to whom we had earlier said a discreet goodbye, was welcomed by a group of officials.
In the Russian section of our Intelligence Requirements handbook the naval base of Vladivostok was designated as a prime target. It was the only Russian naval harbour in the Far East, and the headquarters of their Pacific Fleet. Ever since the Revolution the area had been banned to foreign visitors and we had been unable to obtain any information about the port installations and the naval units based there.
‘The plague may have served some useful purpose after all,’ said Kenneth thoughtfully. ‘Somehow we must get a sight of the naval harbour.’
Breakfast was late and it seemed that lunch was going to be late too. Passengers for the Vladivostok line were not allowed to leave the train, so we moved, as a group, into an empty carriage with wooden bench seats. This proved to have been a mistake, as the carriage was soon invaded by a fiercely unkempt woman with a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush. As the brush swished between our feet Kenneth lifted his so that the woman could clean more easily. With a furious gesture and a torrent of angry words she threatened him with her bucket, calling her colleagues to join in the attack.
‘She says the time has passed when you can lift your foot to a Soviet citizen,’ said Co, who was trying in vain to soothe her. At this moment, Untourist made one of his rare appearances and t
he group of women withdrew muttering and leaving a pool of dirty suds on the floor.
That evening over drinks we were seized for the first time with a feeling of boredom.
‘By this evening we shall have been a week in the train,’ said Dorothy.
‘I’m beginning to feel that I’ve walked every step of the way,’ Nick grumbled.
‘I did something like that,’ said Co quietly.
We all looked up, startled.
‘You see, when the Revolution started I was on holiday in the Crimea with a group of school friends and a tutor. Fighting began south of Moscow, so he decided we’d better go across country on foot, hoping to join the White Russians on the way. Somehow we missed them and after more than a year we reached Vladivostok. When we got there we didn’t know what to do next. In the end the Red Cross put us in their camp on Russian Island at the mouth of the harbour and I stayed there for over two years, until they were able to trace my parents.’
‘Weren’t they delighted to see you?’
‘They were surprised,’ said Co.
I reached for the copy of de Fries. ‘Mr de Fries, who did a lot of foot-slogging, reckoned that he took 1,500 steps to a verst, that is 2,250 steps to a mile. The distance from Moscow to Vladivostok is 6,524 miles, and from the Crimea just about the same, so that allowing for losing your way from time to time, you’d have taken ...’
Nick was scribbling on his bridge pad. ‘Just about fifteen million steps,’ he announced.
Next morning the landscape had only a few birches and pine trees to offer, with stumps to add variety. We went to breakfast at ten by our watches only to find it was officially eleven o’clock and the tables were occupied by passengers hungrily wolfing bowls of stew. Somehow we had got out of step. Mr Shimada hissed rather less politely than usual and, back in our compartment, even encouraged me to drink some of the vodka he had brought from the dining car. The Soviet officer was out of sorts and wandered into our carriage in search of codeine. We were getting quite a reputation as home doctors.
All along the Trans-Siberian Railway Russian influence prevailed. Station staff and most of the people concerned with the line were of Russian origin, but ever since Irkutsk we had seen slit-eyed Mongolians coming in from the surrounding country. Many of these were Buryats who, owing to a religious taboo on washing their bodies, were so filthy that they were shunned by the Russian recruiting ofIicers for fear of contagion. Now, they are adapting to modern conditions and are considered to be the most intelligent of the natives of Siberia.
Looking out of the window after lunch we saw that about a kilometre of the left-hand side of the track was screened by a ten-foot fence made of solid baulks of timber. Just as we were wondering what this blank wall could be hiding, we noticed Untourist standing in the corner and watching us.
The next day we woke up with tummy pains and sampled some of our own remedies. It is strange how much less faith one has in one’s own medicine. There is nothing but the label to reassure you, and you miss the obvious goodwill and comforting patter of a human being concerned to help.
At Bureya, needing a little healthy exercise, we started to clean the windows once more. There was no sign of Untourist. Bureya was classified in the Great Siberian Guide as a fourth-class station, but it was charming with its wooden platforms and beds of cherry pie, begonias, zinnias and phlox. Two centuries ago, before invasion and conquest by the Russians and the wholesale slaughter of the Buryat inhabitants, the Amur valley was a fertile area producing abundant crops of wheat. Like Latvia it had suffered the crushing effect of a Russian takeover.
We were following the Far Eastern section of the great Trakt highway. Since this was narrow, there used to be an established rule of precedence, rapid horse-drawn traffic having priority. The great caravans of tea coming up from China were expected to draw aside to let fast vehicles pass, but the drivers, overcome by fatigue or an excess of vodka, often allowed their animals to wander along the middle of the road until they themselves were woken by the lash of a whip.
At Obluchya we got out to enjoy the lovely valley with its meandering river and emerald water meadows. Wooded spurs jutted in from the Manchurian border. Behind them, the mountains were blue. A whole train of flat cars stacked with birch logs drew up beside us. They looked clean and fresh in the shining air, warm now and comforting. Our map showed that we were only three hundred miles from the sea.
Normally Untourist tended to avoid us at platforms, probably fearing more awkward questions. This time he walked boldly up. ‘I have to tell you that there have been complaints.’
‘Complaints?’
‘Yes. You were seen spying on the airfield near Novobedayka.’
‘But we didn’t see any airfield.’
‘No, but you looked.’
So that was it. The great fence. This was farcical, but it could be dangerous.
‘We couldn’t help looking out of the window. There was nowhere else to look.’
Finding conversation with us profitless as usual, Untourist walked away. But it was an uncomfortable moment. Had someone really denounced us, or was he just trying to demonstrate his zeal? Would the matter be followed up?
We were reading quietly when the train drew in at a station. There was the sound of shots, engine whistles and sirens hooting. We jumped up and looked out of the window. The station name was written up in Hebrew. Sentries with fixed bayonets were posted at the exits. Further down the line a man rushed across the track. There were more shots.
Untourist, as was his habit, had gone to earth, but one of the Russian passengers, an engineer to whom we had lent our copy of Murray’s Guide, was chatting to our attendant.
‘What’s going on?’ we asked.
‘Nobody knows.’
‘Where are we? Is that placard really in Hebrew?’
‘This is Birobidzhan, the Jewish Republic which was founded jointly by America and the Soviet Union after the Revolution. Most of the Jews who live here are Russian, but there are a few from other countries.’
The engineer made to get down onto the platform, but a soldier with a fixed bayonet stopped him. He turned to us. ‘We’d best sit quietly in the carriage.’ He smiled teasingly. ‘I hear you’re in enough trouble already.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘I’m leaving the train at Khabarovsk. You don’t know my name and in any case I feel you will not repeat what I say, so for a moment I will speak my mind. It is difficult for a foreigner to understand Russia. It can be difficult even for a Russian. We have adopted many Western ways, but beneath the surface Russia is Asiatic. Serfdom was abolished in 1861. Slavery was not. And I fear that perhaps it never will be ...’
We were an hour late arriving in Khabarovsk, due to a long wait while we gave first aid to an engine whose driver appeared to be a friend of our own. Though it was already after midnight we decided to stay awake for the crossing of the Amur. Under a swelling moon the great river spread between its banks like a lake. The bridge, supported by an island in the middle, is three kilometres long—the longest in the USSR.
After Khabarovsk the line leaves the Amur and turns abruptly southwards to follow the Ussuri through the maritime territory to Vladivostok.
Chapter 23
When we woke next morning the sun was warm and there were small clouds of mosquitoes in the air. To our right the hills of Manchuria rose through the autumn mist. The four hundred and seventy-five miles of line from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok took six years to build. Labour troubles were even worse than in Trans-Baikalia. Chinese coolies imported to work on the line proved idle and inefficient, and were terrified of the Manchurian tigers, which still roam the area. Hundreds of these were shot or poisoned and their hearts and livers, claws, whiskers, bones and blood were dried and ground into a powder which was sold to the Chinese to promote courage. (Now a limited number of tigers are caught each year and sent to zoos and circuses.)
Large sections of the terrain were marshy and treacherous, and swallowed
the track as if in a quicksand. Years after the line was completed there were long stretches where the speed of the train could not safely exceed five or six miles an hour.
In order to defend the frontier from marauding Tungu tribes on the Chinese side, Cossacks were given free transport to the banks of the Ussuri, a grant of land, a stock of horses, cattle and guns, and a capital of twenty roubles. For two years, while they cleared the land, the Cossacks were exempt from all but emergency military service. They were so successful in subduing the Tungus that they frequently took their herds across to the Chinese side of the river to graze them on Tungu ground.
After breakfast we found that the upper bunk had not been folded back. This was the last day, and we should reach Vladivostok by evening. At our request, the attendant bundled up our bed linen and restored outward order, and we settled down for our final morning with Mr Shimada. This time, poising two coloured pencils in the air, he drew us a beautiful map of our route to Tokyo, showing the ports of Najin and Chongjin in Korea where our boat to Japan would call. His delicate outlines traced the coast of Japan, the line from Tsuruga on the west coast to Tokio, the intervening mountains, and Fujiyama marked with its exact height. We still treasure this map.
Baltic Countdown: A Nation Vanishes Page 20