by Anna Tambour
Snores of many resonances, breaths of many ranknesses (including stale imitation-cheese snacks) came from their mouths as each dreamt—of home.
The Guruprasads turned to each other. He motioned with his eyes.
She hardly moved, yet that roll of the eyes and wriggle added up to one hundred and ten percent agreement.
47 seconds later, Mr and Mrs Sandeep Guruprasad of 135 Station Road, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, jumped off the train. She hadn’t actually jumped. He had needed to gather her in his arms, as the long jump down to the gravel of an unkempt track is not for the inexperienced—though he was proud that he could jump with ease and still thrill his wife, whose eyes flashed as they landed. As she unwrapped her fragrant arms from his neck, he almost wished that the situation had been more dangerous. He would have loved to have leapt from a moving train. Some time in the future. In their current adventure, this leap had been from a train that was, yet again, as unmoving as an inflexible mind.
The time was 2:14
The 2:07 arrived at 2:16, luckily late, as it was no one’s job in the train station to remember such things as a train that should have been gone over 24 hours ago, being in the way of an express.
The chief train driver wiped the sweat from his brow. If the 2:07 had been on time.
He could hardly forgive himself for this almost accident. Look what love does. He didn’t think it good enough that no one here noticed. It was as if they were all somewhere else.
Mr and Mrs Guruprasad boarded the 7-minute-late train with no remark at its lateness, nor a look back in sadness at the train they’d just left. Certainly not that! Mr Guruprasad would have liked to know the timetable, but in that regard, this country was the wild west. He was not a superstitious man, nor a spiritual one. But no doubt about it, this train had arrived as a stroke of luck. He had heavily disapproved of that mutiny, and wished to get as far away from the mutineers as one small world made possible.
The train took off as if it were in a hurry to make up time, or to get somewhere.
As he and his wife settled in their higher-and-lower bunks, they both tingled with pleasure. Their new companions were not only cracking sunflower seeds already, but holding out bags of friendship.
Oblomov. Mrs Guruprasad rolled the sounds on her tongue. Imagine lying in bed being your natural condition. Such bliss.
“Kulak . . . ” sang the rushing train, and soon Mrs Guruprasad was sung to sleep.
Not so for Mr Guruprasad. Far into the snowy evening, he scratched away. He could not deny his logbook. “Don’t stop now,” it begged. “How absolutely riveting. How revolting! How brave. How almost unbelievable. Tell me more.”
Flags of inconvenience
THE SUPERSTITIOUS will draw their own conclusions, but rational observers will cite Luck that the last few hours had been free of track irregularities in the responsibility zone of Railway Work Unit 894685 (the station master for the town of L—— and his staff of five). The unit had been in the station master’s office since just before 2:00 p.m. and had entirely forgotten about any damned trains.
The staff were in revolt, and threats by their chief to report them for insubordination had only made the instigator laugh.
“We’ll go above you,” threatened the assistant station master.
His superior was waiting for that. “Do, Igor Igorovich. Be my guest.”
The signalman was resigned to his lot. “That’s life. They’ve cheated us.”
“To each, what he can get his hands on,” said the chief. “What do you think I get?”
“Plenty,” said the assistant.
“Nothing of value,” said the chief.
“A tin of caviar here. A little diamond there? Don’t deny it. We know. You call that nothing?”
The chief re-assessed the assistant. “Have you not been taught, ‘Nothing can have value without being an object of utility,’ or do I have to assign you Remedial Political Consciousness?”
“C’mon, Igor,” said the signalman. “Some are born to carry, and some to get.” He had never wanted to be a mover of smuggled goods, but he had even less wanted to be a rebel.
“I’m a signalman,” he said. And at the utterance, he started violently, as the Signalman’s Nightmare hit him at 200kmh. That train on the track that’s been there since yesterday. No one had moved it even though he had repeatedly said that it needed to be moved for today’s 2:07, but the other members of his work unit said it wasn’t their job and that it would be done in good time by whosever job it was; and no one had come, and it had been there solid as Party Headquarters when the assistant chief had forced the meeting in the chief’s office at 1:45; and it was now 2:11 and the 2:07 must have been overdue; for if it had been on time, they’d have heard the crash all the way to Moscow.
There was still time to hear it.
Two EMERGENCY STOP flags rested behind the chief’s chair. The chief thought them dashing. The signalman vaulted the desk, knocking the chief to the ground, grabbed the flags, and flung the door open so fast that it hit the assistant in the back.
The chief hit his head on the side of his desk, but it jolted his memory into working condition. He looked at the clock on the wall, and felt sick. He hoped against hope that Signalman First Class Zhora Bychok would be able to stop that train—if need be, with Comrade Bychok’s body.
His assistant helped him to his feet. He hastily reminded the assistant of the time; and then, its importance.
The assistant, being the Assistant, said: “Uh.”
Then the Chief Train Station Master and the Assistant, and the other two members of Railway Work Unit 894685 rushed to the platform, knowing of course, that there was nothing they could do this late in the inaction, but watch.
Snow and tears
THE CHIEF OF POLICE rolled into the police station, roaring happy. It had been a good lunch with the Governor. The trade in caviar was going splendidly. The case of sprats in rock salt was due to go out to the Governor’s special friend on the 2:07, compliments of the Governor.
“When life is smooth, life is smooth,” sang the Police Chief.
“So how’s everything been here, Shukov?” he asked the ex-acting police chief, now once again, merely his assistant.
“All normal,” said Shukov.
The chief winked. “The shipment go off swimmingly?”
Craftily, at an unnaturally early hour this morning, he’d caught up to Shukov walking to work. Taking his inferior’s arm, he gave Shukov a special job, involving “a crate that contains”—not only informing him of the contents, but adding, “I hope you appreciate the responsibility of this State secret.”
Shukov pleased the chief by replying that he’d assign the big black van to transfer the “fishy prisoner” (the police chief’s sense of humour was more famous by a rank, than the assistant police chief’s). Their business concluded before 8:00 a.m., the chief released the younger officer whose pace increased till it was almost a trot. Shukov was, after all, acting chief of police till the chief arrived at work.
“Swimmingly,” said Shukov, sweating. The time was now 2:07 and three seconds.
He’d had to spend too much time policing today to take care of the important stuff. Only with minutes to go had he remembered that blasted crate. He winced at the tone he’d used to the men he detailed to take the thing to the station. Two quiet chess players, innocently eating onions and enjoying their well-earned break. He’d shouted at them, something about “lazy bones”. He hoped they would take a little time with the van, go find a loiterer to beat up or something, before they came back. As it was, there were ten men in the room who had witnessed his lack of good command, and they were still here, all writing reports. The day could not end soon enough for the man who despaired, at the moment, of ever being Chief of Police.
“Who’s that?” asked the chief. He was in that stage of happiness that he wanted to cause trouble.
Shukov glared at Savva from behind the man’s enormous back. The chief had b
een out of the office for two days, so hadn’t known of the Case of the Painted President. The acting police chief had thought the chief would be happy to find that his second in command had so smoothly directed that cover-up operation, and now had the perp in custody.
Now that the chief was less than a truncheon away, and reeking of competitive drinking and unexercised aggression, Shukov realised that having a political incident happen was an incident, all right, in the record of a police chief.
“He’s just leaving,” said Shukov in as offhand a manner as he could summon. “Was waiting for a paper to be signed.”
The chief looked around at the ten men and his second in command. Bang went his hamlike fist on the counter. “Eleven men,” he roared, “and a citizen has to wait?”
“He was just leaving,” said Shukov, sounding hurt and begging Savva with his eyes.
“Comrade Commander,” said Savva, to the police chief. “They have been most helpful. I was just sitting for a moment.” He patted his belly. “Ulcer, you know.”
“Well, then,” said the chief amiably. “May the force be with you.”
Savva heard laughter above the call of duty as he pushed open the door and walked down the police station steps as if he were strolling in a museum. It wouldn’t do to look hurried.
He didn’t know which way to go, where they would be, but just then he saw the woman in red coming towards him. She looked surprised to see him, but he was surprised to see her, too. Not that he wanted to see her.
“Are they finished with you?” she said.
He nodded.
“Wonderful,” she said, her eyes shining.
It made him uncomfortable. “Where’s everybody?”
“In the park.”
“Let’s go.”
“Let’s,” said she.
Galina saw them first. She didn’t say anything out loud but the way she looked at Savva was plain.
But then, confusingly, she turned to the woman in red, the one who’d just stood passively behind the others in the police station. “From the bottom of my heart—” Galina said, reaching out to the woman, who turned away.
“I didn’t do anything,” said the woman. She wasn’t looking beautiful at the moment. Savva compared them—Galina, upright and proud in her uniform, and the woman in red, rumpled and oddly, now dull-eyed.
“Let’s go,” said the woman.
“Let’s,” said Savva. The sooner the better.
“Are you released?” asked the old man.
“Yes,” said Savva, already walking.
“I’m delighted to see you, young man,” said the old man. “I look forward to your tale of adventure.”
“On the train,” said Savva. “Where’s—”
“There he is,” said Galina. And indeed, after moving the train to that out-of-the-way track, Comrade Shurov had returned. He could see that Savva was safe and well, and that Savva and Galina were eager to get home.
The group made their way in a purposefully casual stroll, as fast as they could. Galina looked out of the side of her eyes at Savva, but he was preoccupied. He seemed to be looking out for something, or someone.
Galina pulled out a hairpin and stuck it somewhere else in her piled up mass. We’ll never leave the train again.
A block before the station, he saw something.
“Wait here, please,” he said, and ducked around the corner.
Of course they waited, but for Galina, it was torture. Each second took an hour to come and go; and still, no Savva.
It was all of 92 seconds when Savva appeared again, strolling like any family-man citizen on a winter day, carrying ice creams for everyone. What better time to eat ice cream than when it’s snowing, as it had just begun, lightly, to do? He handed the ice creams out one by one, till he got to Galina. His eyes travelled down her jacket to the buttons straining on her belly, and then up to her eyes. “From me, according to my ability,”—he held out the last two ice creams—“to you, according to your needs.”
“Znnnnnh.” The chief train driver had burst into tears.
The woman in red wiped her eyes.
Nick would have bawled his eyes out if he had had eyes.
“Is something wrong?” asked the Omniscient, who had been very involved trying to solve the mystery of the guilty man’s release.
“Let’s go home,” said Yuri Shurov, a great train driver.
Git ’im up
RILEY WAS TORN from a dream of sitting in a fast highway-side Bob’s Big Boy, polishing off one of their Super Big Boy Combos, a plate of Chili Spaghetti waiting on the side. He was just dipping a fry into ketchup when he woke to a screech of brakes.
It was the sound of that late 2:07, which, in the manner of late trains, took off almost as fast as it had arrived. Riley knew diddlysquat about the 2:07, but he was no fool about trains.
“Wouldn’t you just know it,” he bellowed. “We’re stuck in this place tighter’n a dog turd under a shoe.”
In moments, he’d rousted the mutineers from their trusting slumber, and they met at his bunk—easier than him moving.
Two tidy bunks met the outraged stares of the members of the group.
“No good cowards. Musta cleared out under our noses,” said Riley’s pardner.
“Musta,” said Riley. They’d even taken their plastic bags of garbage.
“Shoot!” said the member of the group whose house was built to accommodate, at scale, the length and twists of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway as it was upon completion in 1901. The spectacular part was where it ended at the Grand Canyon. He’d had the canyon excavated, too, and it was not only quite a sight, but impressively dangerous, seeing as how he hadn’t covered it over, but just flanked it with big ol’ sofas and a wetbar. By rights, he should have been Riley’s pardner, but Riley, whose wife banned trains from the house, ignored anyone who had better than a K-Mart Christmas special.
Riley’s pardner scrunched his mouth up and tossed his head. A gob of spit hit the top empty bunk, and though there was no ping like there is with a spittoon in the movies, it was something. The pardner was an actuary from Vermont, but the best part of a holiday is the chance to be anyone you want to be. “What we gonna do?” he asked Riley.
“Well . . . ” said Riley.
They waited while he thought.
“You’ve roamed the train?”
No one had thought to do that.
“Go huntin” he said, “and if you find anyone, bring him here.”
“Yes, boss,” someone actually said.
There wasn’t room enough for six men to make it through 1A’s door at once, but once out the door, the posse broke into a stampede.
They might never have found anyone if it weren’t for the noise Valentin made as he closed the door to his compartment.
The actuary saw him. Not only that, but 4 men burst the door open, and the actuary caught him red-handed. “Why, you little weasel,” said the actuary, who was himself the very model of a model little weasel. “Lookee here, boys!”
“Hey!” said one man, grabbing the plastic bag that Valentin had in his hand. It said Marlboro. He looked in the bag, and shook it at Valentin. “Whadya do with my stuff?”
“Nothing, sir,” insisted Valentin. “I clean. You like clean, no?”
“I stored my dirty underwear here,” the man whose bag was stolen said to the others. “Where is it, you little turd?”
“I do the same thing,” said someone.
“Only way to travel,” said someone else.
The actuary narrowed his eyes at Valentin. Though the actuary had never been a leader before, he pulled out his L.L. Bean Collectors Knife, the one with the serrated blade.
Valentin’s eyes bugged out of his head.
“What else you got here?” said the actuary, who in one swoop, fell upon Valentin’s bunk and slit it open, wide as a hog’s belly. That bed was packed tighter than a hog’s guts. The insides came out, first, as a swelling multicoloured mass . . . and then
that just expanded and expanded. Marlboro, Courvoisier, Payless, Red October and Los Angeles Duty Free. The names kept coming. There were names from everywhere. Dozens of names. And there was silver and gold, red and blue and pink and green, and lots and lots of white. That mattress must have had more plastic bags and wrappers than a day’s pickup in the city of Denver.
The posse kept their prisoner at bay while they tore open the rest of the compartment. They found nothing else that could have been stolen except, possibly, one pair of felt boots. They left the compartment only after the ones who’d had their laundry bags stolen were satisfied that each bag had been retrieved and was now in its owner’s keeping, safe and sound.
As to the prisoner, he was a grizzling mess, especially after the one with the knife had made strips of the red leatherette, and directed the others in wrestling the thief’s hands till they were tied tighter than a—
“Hold on,” said the actuary. “He’s gotta be searched.”
So they untied him and tore his jacket off.
“Here boss,” said the man who had a thing about bosses. He handed the actuary something from the jacket’s inside breast pocket. It was a book, and it was damp.
“Whew,” said the actuary, making a face at Valentin. “You sweat more’n you clean. And . . . lessee. You read better, too!”
“Lessee,” said his acolyte.
The men gathered around. “That dirty little,” said someone.
“They act like they don’t know English—”
“And then they read porn.”
“Just what you’d expect.”
“Innit.”
“Think I got all day?” The voice of the former leader of the gang broke, like a plate glass window, all over them. He loomed in the doorway, not being able to get himself and his walker through without some heavy manoeuvring. “Whadaya got?”
“A thief, boss.”
“You idiot,” yelled Riley, “and call me Toots. We want a driver, and I couldn’t give a cotton pickin’ if he stole the teeth outa your mouth.”