index

How far is it?

How far is it now?

The gigantic gorilla interior

Of the wheels move, they appall me

— Sylvia Plath, Getting There

He is shuffled off into a tin-and-concrete shed, separate from the train station proper. The sign above the door says Customs in five different languages, and the guards speak at least two, Russian, Polish maybe. They laugh with their mouths closed, feigning disinterest. Throw passports back and forth in the hope of soliciting a bribe. “Look at it. It’s warped.” What was he supposed to say to that? The woman is sitting on the other side of the room, out of sight. Passengers sigh as batteries run flat. There is no reception, anyway. She is prickling at his back. “The metal walls”, another passenger says, and his companion nods sagely. The metal walls have no windows, either. Even the sun must pass immigration. For a long while the conductor smokes with the guards, even once all the passengers are cleared. Maybe this is the guards’ retribution. From what he can see, no money has changed hands. The conductor stubs out his cigarette on the concrete counter-top and leaves it there. Two-by-two he leads them into now-night and onto the train.

The woman—she follows him into the cabin, because of course they are assigned the same one. On the door is a large B. All the other cabins are numbered and their tickets read 16. She wrinkles her nose at the smell. Decades of cigarette smoke, and unwashed bodies. He was less sensitive to scents, could dissociate well enough. He can’t even guess at the meaning of the B. Although this will be a three-day journey, she carries only a small duffel bag. There is an angry red mark on her thigh like a wedding garter. He watches it while she reaches on pointed toes for the overhead locker, her hemline riding up high. She settles back into the seat across from him. She didn’t see him looking: he had turned away just in time. The unsaid blooms between them. They are silent for five minutes, ten. And then it’s too late, and nothing can be said, they have waited too long. She gets up again, and unpacks clothes from her bag, arranging each outfit on a coat-hanger. The rail above the window gathers outfits. They blot out the view entirely, save for a chink in the bottom-right. A rainbow menorah, casting coloured shadows like stained glass. He would have preferred to see the city as they leave.

The dining car is scheduled by cabin, and a mangled recording of a bell plays on the tannoy above his head. She lingers for a moment before following a few meters behind. Prickling, prickling. They are assigned a four-seat table, and sit on the diagonals. The first course is some sort of delicate ceviche, green puree, raw raw. The fish is still alive, flicking goblets of sauce onto the white tablecloth. There is a rule to the knives, he knows, but with four in front of him it flees his mind. Maybe he lingers a moment too long. The woman’s hand appears in his vision, pointing to the small, curved knife on the right. He raises his head, but she is already looking away. The wine glasses look like antique medicine bottles.

Later, brownstone factories turn to mushy grey fields, lit only by moonlight. He watches it all through the chink in the corner of the window, digesting. The woman wears silk pyjamas, pale pink, the sort reserved for the semi-public realm. There are no curtains on their sleeping berths. He can tell she is wide-awake. Why wouldn’t they add curtains? How much could that possibly cost?

The train dives into a tunnel, or an indistinguishable succession of tunnels and pitch-black night. The darkness squeezes him, squeezes her, squeezes out the sound of their breathing.

Each compartment has a peep-hole in the door, like a hotel room, except the peeping works both ways. He amuses himself by choosing a number, counting to it, then looking out the hole into the dim passageway. Usually it is empty. Once, around three in the morning, he finds the eye of a fish looking back at him. Probably the hole works both ways so that the secret police can inspect each carriage. Maybe the fish eye was a bit later, four or five. Thereabouts.

He doesn’t sleep. They shoot out of the tunnel into dawn. The woman is already awake, facing him, her face made-up. Hadn’t she cleaned that off the previous evening? Out here—he peeks through the hanging clothes: a fallow field, a road crossing, a silo scarred with black-and-white graffiti—the tracks are old and shake. Morning light dances Technicolour through the fabrics .

The bell never rings for breakfast. Soon it is obvious that the train is empty. He walks up-and-down, up-and-down. The train’s interior is decorated in pink and green, the long-faded colours of industrial control rooms and central planning. When they set off, it was a carriage of dozens, a train of hundreds. The woman remains in the cabin, seemingly uninterested. After a few complete circumnavigations of the carriage, he plucks up the courage to look through the peep-hole of the cabin to the left of his own. Empty. On the window rail hangs a tawdry black suit, and a white evening dress, the sort with big shoulder-pads that went out of style years ago. No, decades. The sliding window is open a crack, and the outfits sway gently in the breeze.

Wheat fields glow blue-yellow as the train barrels onward. At the end of the passageway, the tip of the train, is the engineer’s cab. He has been avoiding it. Authority in these countries frightens him, no matter how petty. He knocks, waits, knocks again. There is another peep-hole in the door, but this one looks only outwards. There is no darkening of the glass, no unseen eye pressing against it. The door is unlocked. Wasn’t the grain harvest late this year? It was on the news at the airport. Late rains. Pluies de printemps. He had better go in.

Through the wide glass windshield the track vanishes asymptotically. The train is driving itself, or rather, has been put into motion and allowed to continue unchecked. There are no reference points from which to gauge its speed. Ten kilometers an hour, or a hundred. Grey fields in the windows, blurred by motion, resemble the clouded sky. They meet at the horizon not as a boundary but as a continuum. The control panel is a Cyrillic palimpsest. скорость, a light screams. Whatever that means. A dot-matrix printer whirs. And hanging to the left of the cab are three uniforms. Driver, conductor, engineer.

The conductor’s cap is unwashed and greasy. The man tries it on. He imagines himself vengeful. The situation enrages him. An empty train. The incompetence of the engineer to have left his post. The bovine complacence of the passengers, chewing cud instead of raising the alarm. He would like to wring their necks, squeeze and squeeze and put the fear of God into them. Wake them from their torpor, make them see how lazy and weak they are— the man removes the cap.

The engineer’s jacket smells septic, like a hospital ward. No, more like an aquarium. Ammonia. He pulls on the jacket. Straight ahead, on the horizon, the track changes colour a little. He presses his face right up against the glass. Closer now. The sleeper has cracked, he can see, and is reflecting the light differently. Not a worry now, but he had better radio in a report. Repeated wear and tear would weaken it further. Cheaper to replace it now and get ahead of the problem. There is a smudge on the glass where his nose rubbed against it.

Something is wrong with the driver’s clothing. It crackles with violence. The man decides against wearing it.

At the other end of the carriage, in the vestibule, the door is locked. Through the scratched Plexiglas he can see the dining car rock and bob like a ship at sea. His porthole is separated from the other car’s by rushing air. When they line up, he glimpses tables, set with cutlery and glasses, and more outfits hanging from the ceiling. One behind the bar, a red suit almost hidden from view by stacks of spirit bottles, and another, the all-black dress of a waitress. A caste system among the staff: red to be seen and remembered, black to fade from existence entirely. He pokes at the lock with a hairpin, scratching the cheap metal. But the door is stuck fast.

This was it, then: the extent of the world available to him.

Back in the cabin, the woman is reading a newspaper. 350 Dead in Mine Collapse. Inky thumbs tear off corners absentmindedly. She watches him reach up for her duffel and pull it down. There is a small padlock on the zipper, gold with a black cross. 1-6-1-2. He knows the combination. Rifling around, he finds what he is looking for, pairs it with an arbitrary coat-hanger from the window. On the seat before him, he assembles the outfit. Then, item by item, he wears it. He slides on the off-white panties, hooks the bra around his chest, struggles into the black skirt, pulls on the blouse. And finally, ties on the polka-dot neck scarf. The one she always wears.

“Well?” She is looking at him expectantly.

The wind-noise outside increases. There would be weather vanes on the farmhouses they were passing, shuttled back and forth by prevailing fronts. So many outfits still hang on the window. Had he chosen the wrong one?

He shakes his head. “Nothing. We can sign the papers, now.”