by Jon Steele
“Why, it looks like a museum piece.”
He stepped back, saw the tender box. It was black like the locomotive and reflected as many stars. There were five cars hooked behind the tender; all of them were the same color as the locomotive. Oddly, all the windows were tinted black. He stepped back, shielded his eyes from the blinding red star, and looked at the locomotive’s windows. They were darkly tinted, too.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Stepping around the front of the locomotive, he saw Platform One was empty. No passengers with baggage waiting to board, no ticket ladies, no service crews. Then he noticed the rest of the station platforms were empty, too. No people, no other trains.
“What is this? Where is everybody?”
He climbed the steps of the platform and walked to the doors of the station. Inside were the grand staircases and great clock and murals of Russian village life; all the lights were blazing, but there were no people at all, not even the police. He walked the length of the terminus, checking all the windows.
“Mogu vam pomoch?” May we help you?
Kabulov turned around.
Two men stood on either side of the steps to the forward passenger car. They were dressed in black leather jackets; they had earpieces in their right ears. They had the look of FSB, successors to the dreaded KGB. And as Kabulov walked toward them, he was sure that’s who they were.
“What is going on? Where is the Trans-Siberian Express?” Kabulov said.
“It has been rescheduled for tomorrow for technical reasons.”
Kabulov nodded to the black train. “But what’s this?”
“This is a private train.”
Kabulov looked back into the station, then to the men. “I don’t understand. Where is everyone?”
“The station has been secured until this train departs.”
That’s when Kabulov remembered the empty platforms and tracks. And all the way from the tapper’s hut to the terminus, no shunting of trains in the switching yard; no activity at all. He looked at the black train again, saw there were no registration markings. Only someone of great importance could reschedule the Trans-Siberian and close down Vladivostok station, he thought. The last Russian of such importance was Stalin. Another thought came to Kabulov: If the man on the train was as important as Stalin, and the two men staring at him now were FSB, then he should stop asking questions and leave immediately.
“Uh, well, I’m sorry to disturb you. No one told me about the rescheduling. I’ll go back to my hut.”
He turned to leave, praying they would let him go.
“Stop,” a voice called.
Oh, no.
He turned around and faced the men. “Yes?”
“I believe you have a duty to perform,” said one man.
“A duty?”
“You must tap the wheels of this train.”
“You want me to tap these wheels? They look brand-new.”
“The passenger, as we are sure you have imagined, is someone of great importance. He also has romantic regard for tradition. He would expect you to perform your duty.”
Kabulov brightened. “Oh, I’d love to. The P36 was always my favorite train, and this one is a thing of beauty. They built these trains in Kolomna, you know, the last one in 1956. But they were green and the wheels were . . . Say, you’re not taking this all the way to Moscow, are you?”
“Why do you ask?”
Kabulov was sure they were joking, and he laughed. “Oh, come now. There hasn’t been a steamer on the line since Brezhnev. The coal stations required to refuel are long gone. And it’s almost ten thousand kilometers to Moscow.”
“We will leave the line at kilometer 1776.”
Kabulov scratched the top of his hat again. “That’s in the Ural Mountains. Where Asia becomes Europe.”
“You know the place, do you?”
“Of course I do. I know every section of track from here to Moscow. There’s nothing there but an obelisk marking the top of the Urals. It says ‘Europe’ on one side and ‘Asia’ on the other. There’s not even a station, not even a loading platform. Well, there is a madwoman, and another fellow who lives on wild berries he collects in the summer. Sometimes the local stops there, but never the Trans-Siberian.”
The men smiled at him. “Thank you, dyadya. We appreciate your interest in our affairs,” one said.
“Yes, dear dyadya,” the other said.
Kabulov should have felt better hearing them call him uncle; it was a term of affection and respect from the old days. Except just now, being thanked for his interest in where the train was going, Kabulov saw something vicious flare in their eyes. The men were toying with him like cats with a mouse. He froze stiff, waiting for something terrible to happen. Instead, the men responded to a signal in their earpieces.
“The passenger is arriving with his entourage,” one man said.
“Perhaps you should begin your duty so that we may leave on schedule,” the other said.
“Yes. I’ll do that. Thank you.”
Kabulov took the steps down to the tracks, walked to the far side of the locomotive. A feeling of relief washed over him.
“Let’s do this quickly, Kukushka, and be done with it.”
He lowered the hammer from his shoulder and walked along the driving wheels and trailing wheels, tapping each one.
Cling, cling, cling.
Kabulov listened. He had been a tapper all his life. He knew the sound of every train wheel in Russia. But this . . . the rings weren’t just true, they were hitting harmonics like church bells, and the sound sustained and swirled through the deserted train yard. He continued along the tender and passenger cars, adding tones to the sound from the locomotive. The train’s running gear began to hum with a low frequency drone as if vibrating on the rails. He swung his hammer to test the last wheel of the rear car.
Cling.
“Something tells me this train isn’t running on coal, Kukushka.”
He came around the back of the train, climbed onto the platform, and reached down with the hammer to tap the wheels.
Cling, cling.
He sensed movement. He looked up and saw a tall man with silver hair exit the terminus. He wore dark glasses over his eyes and seemed to float across the platform in his black sable coat. The FSB men bowed as the man boarded the forward passenger car. Then from the terminus came four more men, walking two by two. They didn’t look like state security, they looked odd; from Western Europe perhaps. And they carried a metal container between them. They loaded the container into the third car with solemn care. Kabulov was telling himself it looked like a coffin when he realized the FSB men were watching him.
“Oh, dear.”
He quickly lowered his eyes, continued forward. As he passed the two men, he felt their terrible eyes watching him, still.
Cling, cling, cling.
By the time Kabulov reached the locomotive, his hands were trembling. He considered jumping off the platform and slipping away to the tapper’s hut. But maybe the FSB men would feel insulted and cause him trouble, he thought. Agents of state security may have changed their initials from KGB to FSB, but their claws were just as sharp, especially these days. No one dared to question them. There were rumors of secret gulags in the Tomsk Oblast, and talk of people disappearing for no reason. Kabulov gathered his courage and turned to say good night . . . but the two men were gone.
“Hello?”
Just then the great clock inside the terminus rang for midnight and the Tannoy above Platform One exploded with music as it did with every departure of the Trans-Siberian Express. Always at midnight; always the anthem of the Soviet Union. Then the train’s whistle cried and there were slow chugs of steam from the chimney. The beautifully gleaming thing began to pull away. The chugs came faster and the train disappeared into the night.
Oleg Kabulov stood very still, listening for the sound of steel wheels. He did not hear them; he only heard that same drone from the running gea
r. Pulsing, fading. Like the chanting of priests in Blessed Nicholas Cathedral, he thought. Yes, that was it . . . like vespers. When the sound vanished, Kabulov shuddered. He signed himself three times.
“O angel Bozhiy, khranitel moih svyatih, okhranyu svoyu zhizn v strakhe Bozhyem.”
He raised his hammer to his shoulder and shuffled back to his hut.
“Kukushka, that was a very strange business. Best not mention it to Svetlana. She’s very superstitious and would worry so. She would think evil has returned to Russia. This will be our secret, da?”
ii
She did not know how long she had been sitting there. It felt like a long time, or the next second; she couldn’t tell. She was still holding the pajamas to her face, holding the scent of soap and powdered skin deep within her body. She wanted to stay in the moment; it was safe here. There were no dead outside her door, or bad shadows lurking in the forest. Here, she could keep the fearful dream away. But a primal urge overcame her and she lowered the pajamas from her face to breathe. She folded them neatly and rested them on the camp bed.
“I need to . . . I need . . .”
She looked about the concrete room.
It looked like a bomb had hit it.
Glasses, plates, and jars scattered over the floor. Most of them broken, some still intact. There were spilled foods and teas and shards of the bathroom mirror that had flown wildly when she attacked the bitch with the vacant gaze in her eyes. What a fucked-up place, she thought. But it was better than ending up in a fucking cocoon woven by bad shadows. If she stayed down here, stayed quiet, the bad shadows would not find her. They’d gone back into the forest; she saw it happen in the dream, and they were telling her to stay underground until she woke up. She closed her eyes and wished the fearful dream away.
They won’t find me, they won’t.
She took a breath and opened her eyes. She stared at the storybook on her lap. She opened it and turned slowly through the pages, wondering if she had ever read the story to the little boy.
“You must have. Somewhere, sometime.”
She slowed her breath and tried to imagine it . . . then she could almost see it happening. The little boy wearing his pajamas after a bath and sitting on her lap. He snuggled against her body, looking at the pictures and listening to the sound of her voice as she read the story about a band of silly-looking pirates who rescued a beautiful princess. She imagined the boy pointing to the characters he liked. The giant flying caterpillar named Pompidou would’ve been a big hit, and the silly-looking pirates with the paper hats, too. Even the evil wizard named Screechy was pretty silly-looking in his long robe embedded with stars and his matching conical hat with a rooster on top. And there was a fat gray cat named the Miserable Beast who was actually very nice in the story. It was the Miserable Beast who found the beautiful princess locked in the tower of the evil wizard’s ice castle. And in seeing her, sitting alone while combing her hand through her long blond hair, the Miserable Beast fell in love with the princess and told her so with a heartfelt Mew.
She stared at the drawing of the princess and cat nose-to-nose. They sat across a small wooden table in a narrow room of wooden walls and a crooked roof. There was a bed in the background and an old radio on a shelf. A sensation came over her: I know that place. She sat back on the camp bed, rested her back on the concrete wall. She turned through the pages, picking up the story.
The funny-looking pirates fly above the Boiling Seas of Doom on Pompidou and arrive at the evil wizard’s ice castle. The Miserable Beast leads them to the captured princess, and the pirates rescue her. But before escaping from the tower, the princess reminds the pirates about the future-teller diamond and all the pirates say, “Oh, yeah, the future-teller diamond.” As long as the evil wizard had it he could control the princess and command her to return to him. So the Miserable Beast takes the pirates and the princess through the secret passages of the ice castle to where the evil wizard hides the future-teller diamond. It’s locked behind bars, and only the cat can fit through. But he’s a little too fat, and the pirates must get behind the beast’s butt and push him through with a mighty, “Vers l’avant!” Forward! The Miserable Beast slips through and he takes the future-teller in his mouth and the pirates pull him back through the bars with a mighty, “Vers l’arrière!” Retreat! The cat slips through the bars again and they all run away to find Pompidou. But before they take off, the princess says they must take the Miserable Beast of a cat, too, because he helped them. All the pirates say, “Oh yeah, we have to take the cat because he helped us.” So they all jump onto Pompidou the giant caterpillar and fly back over the Boiling Seas of Doom and around the moon and past the stars. They hide the future-teller in a secret cave under a cathedral in the land of Lausanne. They all drink tea in a vineyard overlooking a crescent-shaped lake. It’s a spring day. The swallows are coming back to Lausanne. Everyone’s happy.
Fin.
Her eyes moved over the drawings: vineyards, a crescent-shaped lake, a cathedral in the land of Lausanne . . . I know that place. She turned back to the page with the princess and the cat sitting nose-to-nose in the small room. She imagined the little boy on her lap reading the story with her, imagined it was one of his favorite pages. Imagined him pointing his finger at the cat, imagined the little boy’s voice.
“Boo.”
She had no idea what the word meant, only that it sounded like something the little boy would say. She imagined the little boy’s finger sliding from the cat to the princess. She heard his voice again.
“Maman.”
That was a word she knew; it was French for mother. She looked at the woman in the drawing, leaning with one elbow on the table, facing the fat gray cat and combing her hand through her hair. She pulled at her own hair, held it before her eyes. Her hair was filthy, but it was the same color as the storybook princess.
She lifted the book closer for a better look. A folded piece of paper slipped from the back and landed on her lap. She laid the storybook on the camp bed and unfolded the paper. It was finely woven cotton and bigger than the book’s pages. On it was a series of drawings—an artist’s study of a woman asleep. A damn good artist at that. There were close-ups of the woman’s hands, her hair, her face.
“Hold it.”
She leaned over the princess in the storybook, stared at her. She looked at the sleeping woman in the artist’s study.
“This is the same woman.”
She closed the book, glanced through the title.
“Une histoire drôle de Marc . . .”
She looked at the portrait. There was a scrawl in the corner of the page. It was the same name.
“Marc Rochat.”
She set the name on the paper close to the dialogue balloons in the book. The script had been written by the same hand. Same woman, same artist.
“Marc Rochat knows who this woman is.”
She looked at the drawing of the sleeping woman.
“Not only does he know her, he loves her.”
She closed the book, stared at the title once more.
piratz
Une histoire drôle de Marc Rochat
pour Mademoiselle Katherine Taylor
She got up and walked quickly around the room, looking for the biggest chunk of mirror there was on the floor. She found one shard the size of a carton of cigarettes. She kicked the surrounding debris aside and cleared a space on the concrete floor. She knelt down, laying the storybook and portrait above the chunk of mirror. She looked into the glass. All she could see were a pair of vacant eyes; the eyes of the woman in the mirror she’d tried to murder with the skillet, but it seemed the bitch refused to die.
“Get lost, I’m busy.”
She looked at the princess in the storybook. The eyes were the same shape as those of the woman in the mirror.
Wait. Something was different.
Slowly, Katherine turned her head from side to side, watching her reflection. She could not detect a difference, then she realized t
he eyes in the mirror were shaded. She looked up at the ceiling, saw she was directly under the light. She used the sleeve of her cloak to push away the debris to her left. She scooted over and shifted the chunk of mirror around until the light hit it and reflected into her eyes. She moved her head from side to side again.
There. Stop.
The vacant gaze in the woman’s eyes was fading. Eyes the color of emeralds were emerging now, or trying to. Something else. There was a tiny flaw in the left iris; a silver squiggle. She reached for the storybook and pulled it closer. She looked at the princess, the close-up of her face nose-to-nose with the cat. She saw the same squiggle in the left iris of the princess.
“Well, well, what do you know?”
She got to her feet and walked in slow, clockwise circles. Bits of glass crunched under her shoes as she reached the perfect orbit between the storybook, the artist’s sketch of the sleeping woman, and the mirror, her eyes focusing over each thing. Seeing her eyes in the mirror this way, they were in shade; that way they reflected the light from the ceiling. She kept walking and coming into the light. Fuck me.
“My name is Katherine Taylor.”
She heard the muffled sound of her voice; she continued her orbit into the shade and spoke louder.
“My name is Katherine Taylor . . .”
Then seeing the princess, then the sleeping woman, then the light returning to her eyes.
Clink, clink.
Her foot knocked a glass jar. It skidded over the concrete floor, hit the legs of the camp bed. She stared at it, tipped her head the better to read the handwritten label: Violette’s Garden. She walked over, pulled the Glock from her belt, and tossed it on the bed. She reached down, picked up the jar. It was one of the teas from the shelf.
Violette’s Garden: for remembrance of pleasant memories.
“. . . and this is not a dream.”