The Wolves of Eternity, page 62
‘Thanks, I can manage on my own,’ I said, as I lifted the rucksack aloft and shoved it onto the luggage rack before sitting down and opening my book. The journey, in several stages, would take some twenty-four hours in all, so I could just as well get myself into travel mode from the off: read, sleep, listen to music, with no clear-cut boundaries in between, a flow to mirror that of the landscape through which we passed.
Seva was with his paternal grandmother and Oksanka was borrowing my flat while I was away, so there was nothing for me to worry about.
‘Are you going to St Petersburg?’ the man said, having sat down across the aisle.
‘Yes,’ I said, glancing up at him before returning to my book.
‘Holiday, perhaps?’
From the corner of my eye I saw him bend down and take a clear bottle and a glass from the little rucksack between his feet.
I pretended I hadn’t heard. He poured himself a drink and put the bottle back in the rucksack.
‘Sorry, do you want one?’ he said.
I put my finger on the page to mark my place, looked up at him again and shook my head before going back to the sentence I’d already read.
He sipped the clear alcohol and leaned back with the glass resting in his hand.
‘I’m going all the way up to Karelia,’ he said. ‘My brother’s getting on at St Petersburg, we’re going up there together. Fishing trip. We’ve got an old cabin up there. Haven’t been for years. The place will be falling down now.’
I sensed him staring, but kept my focus on my book.
‘You want to read,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind me. I won’t disturb you.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘But I do want to read, yes.’
The carriage filled up. A mother and her two boys came in, the mother, in her thirties, sat down opposite me, the two boys, ten and twelve, perhaps, in the window seats. As we pulled out of the station, I put my headphones on and switched on my Discman. There was a CD already in it. Beethoven’s late string quartets.
I couldn’t read with my music on at the same time, so I sat looking out the window as I listened, at vast, run-down satellite towns, then gradually fields and woodland, scattered houses, villages. Under the grey summer-night sky everything was beautiful, even the wonky sheds that here and there stood behind wooden fences alongside the tracks, the clustered shopping outlets on the edges of the towns, empty, shining their yellow light into the grey. Or perhaps it was the music that imparted some of its beauty to what passed by outside the window.
The mother produced a loaf of bread and some plastic containers of food that she opened on her lap before handing one each to her sons along with a hunk of bread she tore from the loaf, before she herself began to eat from the one that was left. Chicken and potatoes, glistening with fat. The boys, dark-haired with identical fringe cuts, tucked into their meal without a word. They hadn’t spoken at all since they came in, it occurred to me now. The three of them clearly belonged together, a family unit, and yet their togetherness seemed so very different from Seva’s and mine.
Once they’d finished eating, the mother gathered the containers together and put them back in her bag, handed them each a paper tissue for them to wipe their mouths and fingers, and then a bottle of water that was passed between them before it too was tucked away into her bag.
The boy sitting next to her leaned his head against her shoulder. She put her arm around him and closed her eyes. The other one sat with his forehead against the pane, staring out without moving.
Why did I envy her?
I knew nothing about her. I even had a little boy of my own.
And, not least, my freedom.
The music was sorrowful, but not cheerless. There was such movement in it. When I listened properly, as I did now, it was as if it reached into something that never moved in me otherwise and that was quite unfamiliar to me. It wasn’t hard to think that the music was drawing a map over my inner being, following its every rise and fall, all its hills and valleys, flatlands and forests, in such a way that I only then became aware of them, but as I sat looking out into the still and pale night, it struck me too that perhaps there was nothing there before the music ventured inside, that it was the music that created it.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep, the music as if far above me for a moment, growing more and more distant, like a boat you’ve fallen out of that remains floating on the surface, while you slowly sink to the bottom beneath it.
* * *
*
I woke up as a voice over the loudspeaker announced that we’d be arriving at St Petersburg in a few minutes.
‘Good morning,’ said the man across the aisle. I got the unpleasant feeling he’d been watching me while I’d slept. He looked to be rather drunk, his face stiff and expressionless.
I gave him a weary smile and got up to go to the lavatory, wondering for a second whether to get my sponge bag out of my rucksack so I could brush my teeth and do myself up a bit, but there was something ever so slightly intimate about it that I didn’t want him to see, so I didn’t bother. But then there was a queue, so I went back and sat down again. The washrooms at the station would be better anyway.
‘That was quick,’ he said.
I flashed him a look of annoyance. He held both hands up in the air and leaned back in his seat.
Then he laughed.
‘If looks could kill, I’d be dead now.’
The mother on the other side of the little table was still asleep, her cheek resting against the head of the boy next to her, who was awake and sitting awkwardly by the looks of it. I assumed he was reluctant to move in case he woke her up. The other boy, next to me, was sleeping too, his head tipped back, mouth wide open.
There was something about the two boys that reminded me of animals. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t heard them speak, but saw their dark eyes peering out warily at the world. The way one of them had curled up to his mother.
People started getting to their feet, taking their luggage down from the overhead racks in anticipation of our arrival.
I felt so miserable. There was no reason to, quite the opposite, I had two whole weeks ahead of me at a research station in the forests by the White Sea, with all the time in the world to concentrate on what I enjoyed best.
The train slowed into the station. Through the windows I could see the platforms teeming with people. I’d been expecting the annoying little man to pipe up with some parting remark, or at least say goodbye, but to my relief he disappeared without a word. I waited until the carriage was almost empty before making my way out. I washed my face in the station washrooms, put some lipstick and eyeliner on, brushed my hair and put on a clean T-shirt, then bought myself a cup of tea on the concourse and went and sat down with it on a bench on the platform while I ate the sandwiches I’d made the evening before.
The people boarding the train for Chupa were quite different from the passengers that had come from Moscow. Their clothes were cheaper-looking, their bodies more unshapely, faces wearier. I saw the annoying man again, walking along the platform with another man who looked almost identical. Each carried a fishing rod and a rucksack with a sleeping bag rolled up under the top cover. He’d said he was going to Karelia, so I’d no reason to be surprised. Fortunately, it looked like their reservations were at the other end of the train.
The mood in the carriage was quite different on this leg of the journey, the people around me chattering and laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Perhaps it was just down to the different time of day, but something told me it was something else. People made as if they were at home, some produced food and drink, not clutched to their chests, but spread out almost like a picnic, while others played cards or listened unabashedly to the radio.
The journey would be sixteen hours, arriving at Chupa just after four the next morning. Bochanov had promised to lay on transport for my onward journey from there, he’d said there’d probably be several more coming on the same train, but the driver wouldn’t be there until seven at the earliest, so there’d be a couple of hours to kill at the station.
He’d been surprised when I’d called him and asked if his offer still stood, but he said yes without hesitation. I’d thought he would, knowing he’d always go to some lengths for me, and felt rather guilty about it afterwards, as if I was taking advantage of him.
But of course I wasn’t, I told myself now. I’d never promised him anything, and it was he, as my supervisor, who’d invited me.
The first stop wasn’t for four hours, a small station in the middle of the forest. There was nothing else nearby, only this long, single-storey brick building on one side of the four tracks that were separated by concrete platforms. There was a cafe at one end, the air inside thick with cooking smells, a little shop at the other that sold everything imaginable, and a waiting room in the middle.
Like most of the passengers, I stepped out to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. The platform milled with people, most had a cigarette in their hand. Some pedlars moved between them with baskets filled with cheap samovars, dolls, plates, embroidered tablecloths, napkins and scarves. I crossed the tracks and joined the queue at the cafe, where besides a cup of tea I bought some pirozhki and a bottle of water, a yogurt and a packet of biscuits.
The sun beat down, the air was hot and dry, the forest, so close to the building, was motionless. My skin was sweaty and horrible. I began to feel uncomfortable in the midst of so many people, so I went away from the station building, towards the end of the platform. Once I was on my own, I stopped and put my bag down, and sipped my tea for a moment while staring down the tracks that ran ruler-straight through the forest. The air shimmered above the sleepers and steel. Nothing else moved.
A dreadful feeling of emptiness came over me.
Turning to look back at the crowd of people, the feeling only intensified, I saw their frames to be lumpy sacks with arms and legs sticking out, hair that grew like grass from their skulls and faces, they were creatures, as alien to me as beetles or mites.
It lasted only a short moment, then everything was as before. But the sense of meaninglessness remained. Sitting in my seat again and staring out at the wall of trees that now, as the journey continued, sporadically opened out to reveal plains, fields or villages, I felt a cold, slow-burning panic that I tried to force back by clinging to clear and rational thoughts, because what I felt was indeed irrational, completely irrational, it was something that didn’t belong in me, something unfamiliar that had suddenly taken me up in its clutches, unconnected to any reality of mine, unconnected to the truth of my life.
But what I told myself didn’t help.
I was scared.
All I wanted was to shut myself in and be on my own in a room somewhere.
But I had to sit here, in the open.
What was I scared of?
Not that they were going to harm me.
It was just that they were there.
I felt every thud of my heart, and what came with it, a rising sense of tension and dread, pumping into my organism with every beat.
Nothing had happened.
Nothing had changed.
No one wanted to hurt me.
And yet, my heart, and yet, that terrible feeling, coursing through me.
It was a panic attack, I told myself, and clutched at the thought. It was a panic attack, it wasn’t me, I was the same as before.
It would pass over in a minute and everything would be all right again. All I had to do was sit still and wait. Look out the window and not think about anything.
* * *
*
A few hours later, the strange feeling began slowly to ebb away. The hours in between had been awful. When they were over, the terror I’d felt seemed inconceivable. It was as if I’d been poisoned by something.
If it was a panic attack, it could happen again. But I could do something about that, not just wait until the next one.
I decided to get in touch with a therapist as soon as I got home again, and with that I took out the food I’d bought and began to eat while gazing through the window at the trees that stood close to the tracks, pine and spruce mostly, awash in the sunlight that still flooded into the forest, the lakes we occasionally passed glittering and glistening.
After I’d eaten, I fell asleep, utterly exhausted by the enormous tension that had clenched me so tightly. When I woke up, it was still light outside, though it was nearly eleven at night. Many of the other passengers around me had gone to sleep, though a group at the rear of the carriage were wide awake, four young students drinking beer, in front of them three women in their fifties playing cards as I went past on my way to the lavatory. This time, I had my sponge bag with me, and washed and tidied myself up as best I could, imagining that I wouldn’t sleep again before we got there and reasoning that I could just as well do it now.
The last couple of hours I simply sat looking out, listening to the CDs I’d brought with me. The sky had gone cloudy, a greyish-white wash, and where its light met the darkness of the ground a wispy opaqueness materialised, veiling the landscape, duller between the trees than above the lakes. The night wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t light either. The feeling it gave me was quite the opposite of what I’d experienced at the station in the forest, when all meaning had vanished and left only emptiness. Now it was life I saw, and depth. Everything out there was living. The swaying trees, the low ferns, the thick heather, the soft moss. Into the soil their roots strove, into the air their leaves. Life upon life, stretching away into the distance.
I don’t know why that white night brought such a feeling out in me, only that it did. Perhaps it was because of the way its refracted light had enveloped the forest and revealed it to me at the same time. I saw its secret, though only as that: a secret.
Of course the birds were messengers. Not from the spirit of night, but from the forest. Birds were the forest in flight. Ants were the forest as they teemed. When they died, they decomposed and became soil into which the trees slowly sent their roots. If you filmed that, an injured or sick animal that crept away to hide, died and rotted, and then ran that film backwards, the soil would pull apart to become an animal that rose up and slunk away. If you could do the same with the forest itself, the soil would pull apart everywhere, as if under a bombardment, and animals would rise up and slink away wherever you looked.
The soil was dead life that made new life possible. The forest was self-sufficient and self-creating, it took on ever-new forms, in slow, unpredictable shifts, such as that which led four-legged mammals to climb the trees, where they swung about as apes, and to climb down again onto the plains, where they rose up as human beings. Or the butterflies, the butterflies. The beavers. The badgers, the pines, the wolves, the birches, the hawks. The bark beetles, the heather, the owls, the dragonflies and damselflies, the oaks, the lichen, the lichen.
How could I get inside it all?
Make a small section, perhaps. Two, three trees. Observe and analyse everything that went on there, from the microlevel upwards. In the trees, among the trees, beneath the trees, in the soil.
Even that was way too big, and way too vague. What they wanted was a simple, well-defined research-worthy problem. One that had to do with the uptake of inorganic phosphate compared to organic phosphate, for instance, or the relationship between Serpula lacrymans fungus and mycorrhiza, or investigations of mycorrhiza in relation to various specified plant species.
But what if I could join forces with someone? A joint project, in which different clear-cut research problems came together?
A small organisation in which the whole was more important than its constituent parts!
I’d have to speak to Bochanov about it.
* * *
*
The train arrived at Chupa at ten minutes past four. The station building was grey, rather small and neglected like the rest of the area in which it was situated, where low, barrack-like structures were dotted about, surrounded by tall grass and scrub of the kind that might grow at the side of a road, though here it was everywhere. Rain drizzled as I stepped out onto the platform. The air smelled of wet concrete, wet grass. Most of the twenty or so passengers who got off soon disappeared in cars that had either been waiting to pick them up or else had stood parked and ready for them to drive away on arrival. The little man and his brother were among them, dumping their rucksacks and fishing tackle in the back of a pickup before getting in and driving away. I hadn’t seen him at all during the long journey and assumed he hadn’t even known we were on the same train. And even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have given it a thought.
I pulled the hood of my anorak up and tightened the cord under my chin. I felt quietly excited, the way one always did when staying out all night, when the idea of sleep would become increasingly hostile, as if the body somehow identified all sorts of other possibilities and suddenly regarded a life without sleep as an option to be seriously considered. At the same time, there was something good about sitting quite still and not succumbing to restlessness.
The drizzle became steady rain. The four students from the train went past me into what I supposed was the waiting room. Shortly afterwards, I did likewise, pulling my hood down, getting my book out and settling down to read. Sleep exerted its pull, as if tugging on my conscious thoughts, wanting to drag me away. I didn’t give in to it, but didn’t fight it either, and soon dozed off, waking again when my book dropped to the floor, picking it up and tucking it away in my rucksack, before leaning my head back and sleeping once more. The next time I woke it was because the students were leaving, and I got to my feet, befuddled, hoisted my rucksack onto my shoulder and hurried after them in the direction of a white minibus that had parked in front of the building. As the driver loaded their luggage into the back, I went up to him and asked if he was going to BBS. He nodded.
