A Book of Railway Journeys

by Ludovic Kennedy

  Prison released in me the ability to write, and I now gave all my time to this passion, brazenly neglecting my boring office work. There was something I had come to value more than the butter and sugar they gave me—standing on my own feet again.

  Well, they jerked a few of us to our feet—en route to a Special Camp.

  They took a long time getting us there—three months. (It could be done more quickly with horses in the nineteenth century.) So long that this journey became, as it were, a distinct period in my life, and it even seems to me that my character and outlook changed in the course of it.

  The journey was bracing, cheerful, full of good omens.

  A freshening breeze buffeted our faces—the wind of katorga and of freedom. People and incidents pressed in on every hand to assure us that justice was on our side! on our side! on our side! not with our judges and jailers.

  The Butyrki, our old home, greeted us with a heartrending female shriek from a window—probably that of a solitary-confinement cell. “Help! Save me! They’re killing me! They’re killing me!” Then the cries were choked in a warder’s hands.

  At the Butyrki “station” we were mixed up with raw recruits of the 1949 intake. They all had funny sentences—not the usual tenners, but quarters. When at each of the numerous roll calls they had to give dates of release, it sounded like a cruel joke: “October, 1974!” “February, 1975!”

  No one, surely, could sit out such a sentence. A man must get hold of some pliers and cut the wire.

  These twenty-five-year sentences were enough to transform the prisoners’ world. The holders of power had bombarded us with all they had. Now it was the prisoners’ turn to speak—to speak freely, uninhibitedly, undeterred by threats, the words we had never heard in our lives and which alone could enlighten and unite us.

  We were sitting in a Stolypin car at the Kazan station when we heard from the station loudspeaker that war had broken out in Korea. After penetrating a firm South Korean defense line to a depth of ten kilometers on the very first day, the North Koreans insisted that they had been attacked. Any imbecile who had been at the front understood that the aggressors were those who had advanced on the first day.

  This war in Korea excited us even more. In our rebellious mood we longed for the storm. The storm must break, it must, it must, or else we were doomed to a lingering death!...

  Somewhere past Ryazan the red rays of the rising sun struck with such force through the moles-eye windows of the prison car that the young guard in the corridor near our grating screwed up his eyes. Our guards might have been worse; they had crammed us into compartments fifteen or so at a time, they fed us on herring, but, to be fair, they also brought us water and let us out morning and evening to relieve ourselves, so that we should have had no quarrel with them if this lad hadn’t unthinkingly, not maliciously, tossed the words “enemies of the people” at us.

  That started it! Our compartment and the next pitched into him.

  “All right, we’re enemies of the people—but why is there no grub on the kolkhoz?”

  “You’re a country boy yourself by the look of you, but I bet you’ll sign on again—I bet you’d sooner be a dog on a chain than go back to the plow.”

  “If we’re enemies of the people, why paint the prison vans different colors? Who are you hiding us from?”

  “Listen, kid! I had two like you who never came back from the war—and you call me an enemy of the people?”

  It was a very long time since words like this had flown through the bars of our cages! We shouted only the plainest of facts, too self-evident to be refuted.

  A sergeant serving extra time came to the aid of the flustered youngster, but instead of hauling anyone off to the cooler, or taking names, he tried to help his subordinate to fight back.

  Here, too, we saw a faint hint that times were changing—no, this was 1950, too soon to speak of better times; what we saw were signs of the new relationship between prisoners and jailers created by the new long sentences and the new political camps.

  Our argument began to take on the character of a genuine debate. The young men took a good look at us, and could no longer bring themselves to call us, or those in the next compartment, enemies of the people. They tried trotting out bits from newspapers and from their elementary politics course, but their ears told them before their minds could that these set phrases rang false.

  “Look for yourselves, lads! Look out the window,” was the answer they got from us. “Look what you’ve brought Russia down to!”

  Beyond the windows stretched a beggarly land of rotted thatch and rickety huts and ragged folk (we were on the Ruzayev line, by which foreigners never travel). If the Golden Horde had seen it so befouled, they would not have bothered to conquer it.

  On the quiet station at Torbeyevo an old man walked along the platform in bast shoes. An old peasant woman stopped opposite the lowered window of our car and stood rooted to the spot for a long time, staring through the outer and inner bars at us prisoners tightly packed together on the top bed shelf. She stared at us with that look on her face which our people have kept for “unfortunates” throughout the ages. A few tears trickled down her cheeks. She stood there, work-coarsened and shabby, and she looked at us as though a son of hers lay among us. “You mustn’t look in there, mamma,” the guard told her, but not roughly. She didn’t even turn her head. At her side stood a little girl of ten with white ribbons in her plaits. She looked at us very seriously, with a sadness strange in one of her years, her little eyes wide and unblinking. She looked at us so hard that she must have imprinted us on her memory forever. As the train eased forward, the old woman raised her blackened fingers and devoutly, unhurriedly made the sign of the cross over us.

  Then at another station some girl in a spotted frock, anything but shy or timid, came right up to our window and started boldly asking us what we were in for and for how long. “Get away,” bellowed the guard who was pacing the platform. “Why, what will you do? I’m the same as them! Here’s a pack of cigarettes—give it to the lads,” and she produced them from her handbag. (We had already realized that the girl had done time. So many of them, now roaming around free, had received their training on the Archipelago!) The deputy guard commander jumped out of the train. “Get away! I’ll put you inside!” She stared scornfully at the old sweat’s ugly mug. “You go and —— yourself, you ——!” “Give it to ’em, lads,” she said to encourage us. And made a dignified departure.

  So we rode on, and I don’t think the guards felt that they were protecting the people from its enemies. On we went, more and more inflamed with the conviction that we were right, that all Russia was with us, that the time was at hand to abolish this institution.

  ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN,

  The Gulag Archipelago

  (trans. Thomas P. Whitney)

  ELSEWHERE

  India

  1. In the days of the Raj

  For the British the railway stations of upcountry India were fulcrums of Anglo-Indian security, as those cable stations were oases in the Outback of Australia. Steam, piston grease, the stuffy smell of waiting-rooms, starched white dining-room napkins, smudgily printed time-tables, soldiers at junction platforms drinking tea out of saucers—all these were basic ingredients of Anglo-India, as organic to the Raj as hill-stations or protocol. The Indian railways stimulated the Englishman’s imagination, and gave him a Roman pride. In Indian cities the grandest and most ornate of the public buildings were usually the railway stations and offices, hulking mock-oriental caravanserais, Saracenic, Moghul, all domes, clocks, whirligigs, stained-glass windows, immense glass-and-girder roofs, beneath which the railway lines lay like allegories of order in chaos. There the great trains steamed and hissed: the British engine-driver grandly at the cab of the mail-train locomotive; the British conductor with his check-board at the first-class carriage door; the British stationmaster at the end of the platform, dressed splendidly in dark blue, like an admiral at the quay; the British pas
sengers stalking down the platform in a miasma of privilege, pursued by coveys of servants and porters with bags, children, bedding, and possibly a goat to be tethered in the guard’s van, and provide fresh milk for the journey. All around was the theatrical confusion of India, which Empire had tamed: a frenzy of Indians, in dhotis, in saris, in swathed torn rags, in nosecups, ankle-bangles, turbans, baggy white shorts, scarlet uniforms, yellow priestly robes, topees, bush-jackets, loin-cloths; hawkers shouting in hollow voices and peering through train windows with blazing eyes; office messengers hurrying importantly by to post their letters in the mail-coach box; entire families sitting, sleeping, clambering about, feeding babies or apparently dead on piles of baggage, tied up with string; and sometimes a desperate beggar, a man with no face or legless boy darted terrifyingly out of nowhere to seize upon a likely straggler,

  The British gentry travelled first-class, usually with a servant compartment next door—on the South India Railway a little window linked them, for milord to give his orders through. The Indian gentry travelled second-class; British other ranks, commercial men and mechanics went intermediate; and pushed, levered, squeezed, squashed into the slatted wooden seats of the fourth-class compartments, travelled the Indian millions. A journey across India took anything up to a week, and the wise sahib took his own padded quilts and pillow, his own tiffin-basket (which should always be kept furnished, Murray’s Handbook advised, “with potted meats, biscuits, some good spirit, and soda water”), and a few good books (such as, Murray suggested, Sir W. Hunter’s Indian Empire, or Sir Alfred Lyall’s Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India). There were refreshment rooms at most junctions, but the experienced traveller telegraphed his requirements ahead, and as the train drew into Chanda or Gadag, out of the shadows would leap a man in white, carrying your luncheon on a tray, covered with a napkin—fiery curry, vivid chutney and onions, chupattis, to be washed down with a draught of Scotch from your tiffin-basket. So immediate was this service that it was as though the man had been awaiting you there all morning, holding his tray: but you had to eat fast, for before you left he would want the plates back, and as the train moved off again, with a creaking of its woodwork and a distant chuffing of its engine, you might see him bowing perfunctorily still as he retreated to the Vegetarian Food Stall for the washing-up.

  The Indian railways provided all sorts of social services, ancillary to their grander functions. Murray is full of their usefulness. The stationmaster at Jungshahi would arrange your camel for you. There was a comfortable Waiting Room (‘with Baths, etc.’) at Neral. Travellers to Verawal might find it convenient to get permission from the stationmaster to retain their first-class railway carriage at the station, and to sleep in it at night. For the Englishman in India the railways were a reassurance, a familiar constant in an often unpredictable world. With Newman’s Indian Bradshaw on one’s lap, a stalwart engine-driver of the Great Northern Railway up front, and the certainty of a tonga awaiting one at Kathgodam station, one could lean back in one’s seat (“unusually deep,” Murray says) in rare security. Someone, somewhere, it seemed, had got the hang of the place. To travellers in the remote Himalaya, one marvellous moment of a descent into the plains was the sight of a distant plumed railway train, steaming across the flatlands with a whisper of starched linen and chilled champagne. To the new arrival at Bombay, awaiting apprehensively the plunge into the Indian hinterland, nothing could be more comforting than the Punjab Mail, glistening and eager in the gloom of Victoria station, as British as the Crown itself, and sure to be on time.

  Morning shave on the Bengal Express, 1910

  JAN MORRIS,

  Pax Britannica

  2. The Grand Trunk Express

  The lumbering express that bisects India, a 1400-mile slash from Delhi south to Madras, gets its name from the route. It might easily have derived it from the kind of luggage the porters were heaving on board. There were grand trunks all over the platform. I had never seen such heaps of belongings in my life, or so many laden people: they were like evacuees who had been given time to pack, lazily fleeing an ambiguous catastrophe. In the best of times there is nothing simple about an Indian boarding a train, but these people climbing into the Grand Trunk Express looked as if they were setting up house—they had the air, and the merchandise, of people moving in. Within minutes the compartments were colonized, the trunks were emptied, the hampers, food baskets, water bottles, bedrolls, and Gladstones put in place; and before the train started up its character changed, for while we were still standing at Delhi Station the men stripped off their baggy trousers and twill jackets and got into traditional South Indian dress: the sleeveless gym-class undershirt and the sarong they call a lungi. These were scored with packing creases. It was as if, at once—in expectation of the train whistle—they all dropped the disguise they had adopted for Delhi, the Madras-bound express allowing them to assume their true identity. The train was Tamil; and they had moved in so completely, I felt like a stranger among residents, which was odd, since I had arrived earlier than anyone else.

  Tamils are black and bony; they have thick straight hair and their teeth are prominent and glisten from repeated scrubbings with peeled green twigs. Watch a Tamil going over his teeth with an eight-inch twig and you begin to wonder if he isn’t trying to yank a branch out of his stomach. One of the attractions of the Grand Trunk Express is that its route takes in the forests of Madhya Pradesh, where the best toothbrush twigs are found; they are sold in bundles, bound like cheroots, at the stations in the province. Tamils are also modest. Before they change their clothes each makes a toga of his bedsheet, and, hopping up and down and working his elbows, he kicks his shoes and trousers off, all the while babbling in that rippling speech that resembles the sputtering of a man singing in the shower. Tamils seem to talk constantly—only tooth-brushing silences them. Pleasure for a Tamil is discussing a large matter (life, truth, beauty, “walues”) over a large meal (very wet vegetables studded with chillies and capsicums, and served with damp puris and two mounds of glutinous rice). The Tamils were happy on the Grand Trunk Express: their language was spoken; their food was served; their belongings were dumped helter-skelter, giving the train the customary clutter of a Tamil home.

  I started out with three Tamils in my compartment. After they changed, unstrapped their suitcases, unbuckled bedrolls, and had a meal (one gently scoffed at my spoon: “Food taken with hand tastes different from food taken with spoon—sort of metal taste”) they spent an immense amount of time introducing themselves to each other. In bursts of Tamil speech were English words like “reposting,” “casual leave,” “annual audit.” As soon as I joined the conversation they began, with what I thought was a high degree of tact and courage, to speak to one another in English. They were in agreement on one point: Delhi was barbarous.

  “I am staying at Lodi Hotel. I am booked months ahead. Everyone in Trich tells me it is a good hotel. Hah! I cannot use telephone. You have used telephone?”

  “I cannot use telephone at all.”

  “It is not Lodi Hotel,” said the third Tamil. “It is Delhi.”

  “Yes, my friend, you are right,” said the second.

  “I say to receptionist, ‘Kindly stop speaking to me in Hindi. Does no one speak English around this place? Speak to me in English if you please!’”

  “It is really atrocious situation.”

  “Hindi, Hindi, Hindi. Tcha!”

  I said I’d had similar experiences. They shook their heads and added more stories of distress. We sat like four fugitives from savagery, bemoaning the general ignorance of English, and it was one of the Tamils—not I—who pointed out that the Hindi-speaker would be lost in London.

  I said, “Would he be lost in Madras?”

  “English is widely spoken in Madras. We also use Tamil, but seldom Hindi. It is not our language.”

  “In the south everyone has matric.” They had a knowing ease with abbreviations, “matric” for matriculation, “Trich” for the town
of Tiruchirappalli.

  The conductor put his head into the compartment. He was a harassed man with the badges and equipment of Indian authority, a gunmetal puncher, a vindictive pencil, a clipboard thick with damp passenger lists, a bronze conductor’s pin, and a khaki pith helmet. He tapped my shoulder.

  “Bring your case.”

  Earlier I had asked for the two-berth compartment I had paid for. He had said they were overbooked. I demanded a refund. He said I’d have to file an application at the place of issue. I accused him of inefficiency. He withdrew. Now he had found a coupé in the next carriage.

  “Does this cost extra?” I asked, sliding my suitcase in. I didn’t like the extortionate overtones of the word baksheesh.

  “What you want,” he said.

  “Then it doesn’t.”

  “I am not saying it does or doesn’t. I am not asking.”

  I liked the approach. I said, “What should I do?”

  “To give or not to give.” He frowned at his passenger lists. “That is entirely your lookout.”

  I gave him five rupees.

  To my relief, the whistle blew and we were on our way. The engineer read the Nagpur paper, I ate my Nagpur oranges and then had a siesta. I awoke to an odd sight, the first rain clouds I’d seen since leaving England. At dusk, near the border of the South Indian province of Andhra Pradesh, broad blue grey clouds, dark at the edges, hung on the horizon. We were headed for them in a landscape where it had recently rained: now the little stations were splashed with mud, brown puddles had collected at level crossings, and the earth was reddened by the late monsoon. But we were not under the clouds until we reached Chandrapur, a station so small and sooty it is not on the map. There, the rain fell in torrents, and signalmen skipped along the line waving their sodden flags. The people on the platform stood watching from under large black umbrellas that shone with wetness. Some hawkers rushed into the downpour to sell bananas to the train passengers.