brief formality. I was wrong.
It didn’t take the officer long to spot the bags under my bed, and to guess that they weren’t mine. He demanded my neighbours’ passports, and when the train came to a halt a few hundred metres further east in the imposing station of Brest, he put the documents in his pocket and signalled for Svetla to follow him over to the customs shed. Katya sat with her head in her hands.
Problemi!
Meanwhile, babushkas, old farm women in heavy dark clothes and flowery headscarves, appeared at our window offering bread and milk,
shampanski
and
wódka.
Soviet-built tracks are wider than those in the rest of Europe, apparently to stop armies invading by train, although as Hitler followed this route, it doesn’t seem to have worked as a deterrent. What it did now was delay us for several hours while the
Polonez
was shunted into sidings to have its bogies replaced. The shadowy, cavernous shed, the team of oil-blackened men winching up each carriage in turn, all that banging and clanging was like something out of a Soviet propaganda film.
After the shed, we were shunted onto the station platform. Katya remained sombre, playing with her calculator and flicking away the unwanted attentions of bag ladies. I went over to eat something at the unexpectedly grand station restaurant. Unable to read the menu or to understand the waitress’s explanation, I ordered the only thing I could: chicken and vodka.
An hour or so later, the light faded and disappeared, the waitress handed me a bill, guards marched up and down the platform, and the driver sounded the train whistle. Katya said nothing, but looked even whiter than before and as brittle as a doll. Then, just as the last whistle blew, Svetla jumped on, breathless, triumphant.
Dollari
and wits had got her through. The friends hugged, cried and giggled in relief.
‘Shampanski?’
asked the last, desperate babushka. ‘No,’ Katya insisted, already worrying about the
problemi
ahead, of getting their bags onto an internal flight from Moscow, of getting out of the airport in Siberia. ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking we would need some cheering, and bought several bottles and a bottle of vodka to chase the bubbly down.
The
Polonez
finally lived up to its express status: we shot through the Belarus and then the Russian night. While Svetla remained quiet and Katya was tense and terse, the rest of the carriage was in celebratory mood. Someone unpacked a new tape machine and the corridor was transformed into a casino, cluttered with small gambling tables and already opaque with smoke. The
shampanski
and vodka flowed faster than the River Bug. The attendant, who knew what was coming, locked himself into his compartment.
When my neighbours finally caught up with the mood on the train, Katya pulled out another plastic bag: while I had been in the station restaurant, she had found another chicken. We squatted around the offering, greasy hands dismembering the bird and passing around the first of the bottles I had bought.
‘Mmmm, chicken!’ Katya cooed, to which I couldn’t resist asking, ‘Don’t you have chicken in Siberia?’
The women laughed at my simplicity. Of course they had chicken in Siberia. Was there anywhere that didn’t have chicken? Chicken was one of the world’s great levellers, something we all have in common.
‘But it tastes different in different places,’ Katya explained. ‘I bought this one in Brest from a woman who raised and cooked it herself. See how much flesh it has! In Siberia’ – and she said that word with such emotion that even I had to sigh, ‘in Si-bare-ia, it is cold. Very cold. Our chickens have to stay inside. They don’t get fresh air, they don’t exercise, they are not meaty, they have no fat.’
‘It’s not just the taste she likes,’ Svetla said, teasingly, slightly drunk, patting her firm, flatter stomach and flashing her gold teeth. ‘She thinks that if she sticks to chicken then she won’t get fat.’
‘No,
It didn’t take the officer long to spot the bags under my bed, and to guess that they weren’t mine. He demanded my neighbours’ passports, and when the train came to a halt a few hundred metres further east in the imposing station of Brest, he put the documents in his pocket and signalled for Svetla to follow him over to the customs shed. Katya sat with her head in her hands.
Problemi!
Meanwhile, babushkas, old farm women in heavy dark clothes and flowery headscarves, appeared at our window offering bread and milk,
shampanski
and
wódka.
Soviet-built tracks are wider than those in the rest of Europe, apparently to stop armies invading by train, although as Hitler followed this route, it doesn’t seem to have worked as a deterrent. What it did now was delay us for several hours while the
Polonez
was shunted into sidings to have its bogies replaced. The shadowy, cavernous shed, the team of oil-blackened men winching up each carriage in turn, all that banging and clanging was like something out of a Soviet propaganda film.
After the shed, we were shunted onto the station platform. Katya remained sombre, playing with her calculator and flicking away the unwanted attentions of bag ladies. I went over to eat something at the unexpectedly grand station restaurant. Unable to read the menu or to understand the waitress’s explanation, I ordered the only thing I could: chicken and vodka.
An hour or so later, the light faded and disappeared, the waitress handed me a bill, guards marched up and down the platform, and the driver sounded the train whistle. Katya said nothing, but looked even whiter than before and as brittle as a doll. Then, just as the last whistle blew, Svetla jumped on, breathless, triumphant.
Dollari
and wits had got her through. The friends hugged, cried and giggled in relief.
‘Shampanski?’
asked the last, desperate babushka. ‘No,’ Katya insisted, already worrying about the
problemi
ahead, of getting their bags onto an internal flight from Moscow, of getting out of the airport in Siberia. ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking we would need some cheering, and bought several bottles and a bottle of vodka to chase the bubbly down.
The
Polonez
finally lived up to its express status: we shot through the Belarus and then the Russian night. While Svetla remained quiet and Katya was tense and terse, the rest of the carriage was in celebratory mood. Someone unpacked a new tape machine and the corridor was transformed into a casino, cluttered with small gambling tables and already opaque with smoke. The
shampanski
and vodka flowed faster than the River Bug. The attendant, who knew what was coming, locked himself into his compartment.
When my neighbours finally caught up with the mood on the train, Katya pulled out another plastic bag: while I had been in the station restaurant, she had found another chicken. We squatted around the offering, greasy hands dismembering the bird and passing around the first of the bottles I had bought.
‘Mmmm, chicken!’ Katya cooed, to which I couldn’t resist asking, ‘Don’t you have chicken in Siberia?’
The women laughed at my simplicity. Of course they had chicken in Siberia. Was there anywhere that didn’t have chicken? Chicken was one of the world’s great levellers, something we all have in common.
‘But it tastes different in different places,’ Katya explained. ‘I bought this one in Brest from a woman who raised and cooked it herself. See how much flesh it has! In Siberia’ – and she said that word with such emotion that even I had to sigh, ‘in Si-bare-ia, it is cold. Very cold. Our chickens have to stay inside. They don’t get fresh air, they don’t exercise, they are not meaty, they have no fat.’
‘It’s not just the taste she likes,’ Svetla said, teasingly, slightly drunk, patting her firm, flatter stomach and flashing her gold teeth. ‘She thinks that if she sticks to chicken then she won’t get fat.’
‘No,
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