Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia (8 page)

Delicatessen is a casual café. Like so many restaurants in Moscow, it’s hidden underground. This struck Rose and me as odd when we first moved here. As if the city were not cold and imposing enough, there is no outward sense of life or energy on many streets. At first it was easy to conclude that this gigantic capital somehow lacked nightlife. But as you spend more time here, you realize there is an underground world—many bars and restaurants are, on the outside, just a metal door, often unmarked. When you know the right door and come inside, you often enter a welcoming (and usually smoke-filled) place, a warm, cozy respite. Now, when a pack of Western journalists and diplomats gather in any café for a boisterous night of conversation—especially speaking English—there are the occasional glances and stares from other tables. There’s always the chance it’s a security agent eavesdropping—a fear that becomes more acute when you travel, by train or otherwise, to the more remote parts of the country. But the odds are that any glances or stares are coming our way because, well, we’re a boisterous bunch of revelers speaking a foreign language and interrupting another table’s peaceful dinner.

Some of my fondest memories of Moscow were from places such as Delicatessen. The café epitomizes both what’s right and wrong in the new Russia. On the one hand it’s encouraging that this bustling capital has shed its Soviet armor and joined other international cities in being welcoming to outsiders. The café is a gathering spot for expatriates and has an English menu and a pleasant staff. At the same time the café is also a nighttime playground for Russia’s young elite—an unavoidable reminder that central Moscow has grown wealthier and more posh in the post-Soviet years, as many villages and communities elsewhere have struggled.

Once you find a cozy spot in a place such as Delicatessen, it’s tempting to spend the entire night there, because who wants to go outside in the cold more often than you need to? Rose and I would sit with expat friends—other journalists, diplomats, or English-speaking lawyers or bankers—and talk over wine or vodka for hours, chatting about politics or relationships or the frenetic way of life in Moscow.

Boris, Sergei, and I decided to order a bowl of pasta each and share a bottle of Chilean merlot. “You know, that was one of the first secrets I learned, moving here,” I told my two colleagues. “In Russia, French and Italian wines are so overpriced. There’s a feeling they must be the best, because they are French. And Italian. But South American wines? South African wines? You can get them here so cheaply because Russian wine drinkers haven’t figured out that those are good wines, too.”

Rose and I saw wine preferences as a meaningful measure of how far Russia has come since Soviet times (they drink and appreciate good French wines!) and how far it hasn’t (they still undervalue more obscure wines highly respected in the West).

My observations about Russian life often resonated with Boris and Sergei, who would add their own thoughts. Occasionally they just politely nodded, which I took as a sign that I was trying too hard to see deeper meaning in every experience in Russia. I seemed to be trying too hard here. The three of us smiled and took a swig of the underpriced Chilean merlot.

“Boris, didn’t you tell me you like Georgian wine?”

We had discussed wine from Georgia, the former Soviet republic to the south, which claims to be the birthplace of wine. Ancient vineyards there fell into disrepair in Soviet times but have made a comeback since.

“You had a Georgian friend who liked giving toasts and overserving you, right?”

“It’s a big story.” Boris smiled. “Eto istoria druga, Gia.”

“The story of my friend, Gia,” Sergei said, translating through a mouthful of spaghetti.

The warning from Boris that this was quite a story had Sergei a tad on edge because it meant so much unanticipated translation. But he was also eager to listen.

“Gia and I—and both our families—lived in the same communal apartment in Moscow until I was in the fifth grade. There were ten families. In one flat.”

In a way Boris was lucky. His family was Jewish but didn’t advertise it. As Jews, not anywhere near the top of the hierarchy in Soviet times, Boris and his family could have been assigned to live somewhere far less pleasant than Moscow. Having the government offer a job and an apartment in Moscow, or any big city, was considered a luxury. Of course, everything is relative.

“My parents, my aunt and me, shared a single room, eighteen square meters.”

“How did everyone fit?” I wondered aloud.

Boris took his two index fingers and put them flat against each other, pointing in opposite directions, representing two beds, touching like Tetris blocks. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not sure how my parents survived. But David, they were the best years of my life. I had my friends and family, all in one place. There was a babushka from another family who loved to cook. I can still taste her veal cutlets.”

Sitting with Boris and Sergei in this basement café, I began to appreciate why Boris cherished those times. The world outside—frightening and dark and complicated. The world inside—cramped, yes, difficult, absolutely, but simple. I wouldn’t wish for his life. No doubt, I’ll never understand it. But I was understanding why Boris has happy memories of youth.

“When we were both in fifth grade, Gia moved away to Georgia. And things got worse. Families just weren’t getting along anymore. One woman spat in other families’ food.”

Sadly, that was reality for too many Russians. In her 1999 book,
Everyday Stalinism
, Australian-American historian Sheila Fitzpatrick described Soviet communal apartments as cauldrons of jealousy and paranoia. “Private property, including pots, pans and plates . . . had to be stored in the kitchen, a public area . . . jealously guarded by each individual family. Demarcation lines were strictly laid down. Envy and covetousness flourished in the closed world of the
kommunalka
, where space and family size were often mismatched and families with large rooms were often deeply resented by families with small ones.” She told the story—not uncommon—of a Moscow apartment where one family essentially spied on another, “writing denunciations to various local authorities. The result was [that] the family was successively disenfranchised, refused passports and finally, after the father’s arrest, evicted.” But “against the horror stories,” she added, “must be put the recollections of a minority whose neighbors in communal apartments were mutually supportive and came to constitute a kind of extended family.” Many of those positive memories came from Russians who, like Boris, lived in these environments as children. They had “less developed private-property instincts than their parents, often liked having other children to play with and found it interesting to observe so many varieties of adult behavior.”

S
ERGEI AND BORIS
had different Soviet upbringings. Sergei, in that ramshackle house outside Donetsk, Ukraine, is the son of a coal miner. And Boris was the urban kid in Moscow’s over-packed communal apartments. Neither experience was easy. Both experiences shaped who these men are.

Boris lost touch with Gia and thought he’d never see him again. But then a decade later, as a teenager, Boris was in a hotel lobby in Moscow, and felt a tap on his shoulder.

“I didn’t recognize him until he started speaking. But it was Gia. I can’t explain how exciting this was.”

Gia and his mother had come to Moscow from Georgia for a soccer game. They ended up skipping the game and drinking all night with Boris.

“When I got home, my dad was furious at me for being drunk. Until I told him I was with Gia and his mom. He was so very happy.”

Boris calls Gia his “pervy droog”—first friend. After the unexpected reunion, they stayed in touch. But once the Soviet Union fell, things got complicated. Boris and Gia lived in different countries—Boris in Russia, Gia in Georgia. Boris did take a few trips to Georgia. The first time he visited Gia, though, Boris never
saw
any of Georgia, even though it was his first time in the country.

“We just spent three days straight in Gia’s house, eating Georgian food, drinking wine, and talking about everything.” Boris had to promise his wife that on their next trip, they would be tourists and see more of Georgia than a dining room table and the bottoms of wine glasses. “Gia died of cancer several years ago,” Boris said. He paused in thought, perhaps chronicling the relationship through the years in his mind. Whatever memory he settled on brought his big lips into a smile.

Hearing him describe this friendship was powerful. Sure, I have a “first friend.” Her name is Marissa Goldstein. We grew up together, our parents were best friends, and we remain close to this day. We sign off e-mails to each other, “ff.”

But something here was different. Boris and Gia and their families were forced into a tiny urban space. Their friendship was built on mutual survival, on sharing a hiding place away from the uncertainty outside. To me, this makes the intimacy deeper. And then it was taken away, not because Gia’s family decided to move of their own will. Few families moved from one Soviet republic to another of their own will. They were forced to move. And then the next chapter of history intervened—Russia and Georgia became two different countries, making it even harder for two friends to remain close. Theirs was not a unique friendship, strained by distance and circumstance. But somehow, I understood why Boris looks back on his boyhood as a simpler time. After years of upheaval that split the two friends apart—not to mention disrupted Russian families’ lives in so many other ways—Boris, as Western-leaning and cosmopolitan as he may be today, looks back nostalgically on his Soviet childhood as the happiest time of his life.

. . .

T
HINKING BACK
TO
Boris’ story, I feel a mix of curiosity and anticipation as Sergei and I wait for the strangers who will share our cramped space on the train tonight.

For now, it’s just the two of us sitting in the four-bed compartment. Our
provodnik
ducks in from the hallway to deliver glasses for tea. They are icons of a Russian rail journey—simple glasses that fit neatly into decorated silver holders that are emblazoned with PZD. Our
provodnik
, now that we are all warm inside the train, is becoming warmer herself. She asks if we would like her to bring us some tea bags. Tea is free. Packets of sugar cost three rubles (ten cents). Sergei and I say yes to both. The train lurches forward and backward a few times, acting like an aging person revving up the momentum to crawl out of bed. And finally, train No. 240 settles on to her path out of Moscow, picking up speed. It seems like Sergei and I will be alone in the compartment tonight. Sure, it means more space and more privacy. And yet I’m disappointed.

4
•
ANOTHER SERGEI

A
S THE TRAIN
moves away from the station, a younger woman, perhaps in her late twenties, and a man around Sergei’s age appear outside the door to our compartment. They are lurking quietly—as it turns out, waiting for me and Sergei to move. They boarded at the last minute and are just now making it to their compartment—
our
compartment.

Following a custom Sergei taught me, we lower-bed dwellers politely move out of the compartment, allowing our roommates space to spread out their linens and make their upper beds. This requires using our lower beds as footspace while reaching above to arrange things. The four of us finally make our beds and get situated, and all seem exhausted. We chat enough for me to learn that the young woman is Ilona. Her long blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail, with a Russian Orthodox cross dangling down over her brown sweater. Travel fatigue is evident in her eyes. “I live in two places right now.” She is speaking Russian, Sergei is translating, and I am keeping my questions to a minimum as we are way past bedtime. “My boyfriend lives in Moscow. I was visiting him. Now I’m heading home to central Russia.” Traveling so often, Ilona sees the train as a third home.

The Russian rails carry nearly a billion riders per year. Ilona is in second class on a ten-hour trip, a ticket that likely cost her in the neighborhood of three thousand rubles (about one hundred dollars). Had she chosen third class, she could have made the trip for perhaps half that. Our ticket for the four-hour journey to Yaroslavl was 1,200 rubles per person (forty dollars). Much depends on the quality of the particular train, but it’s possible to get a third-class seat from Moscow to Vladivostok—six days, six thousand miles—for as little as two hundred dollars one way. More well-off Russians use the train to see family whenever they wish, or to travel to somewhere like Moscow or St. Petersburg for vacation. Russians with less money, especially in remote villages, might spend months or even years scraping together enough money for one third-class ticket to see a family member in a place that takes a few days to reach.

Rounding out our foursome tonight is Viktor, whom I recognize as a fellow member of the team admonished for using electronic ticketing.

Outside our window, everything is masked by darkness. But I know what’s out there, since I left Moscow for Vladivostok in daylight last time. The landscape is whizzing by. Vast, sprawling Moscow first: endless blocks of bland Soviet-style apartment buildings, colorful mega-malls with IKEA furniture stores, flower shops, and
produktys
, or minimarts. Then the city will give way to snowy forests and the occasional crumbling village, with smoke rising from a few chimneys. By far, Russia takes up more of the earth than any other country. I knew this. But the earlier Trans-Siberian trip I did back in 2011 made me
feel
it. Four, five, six hours would pass, and all we would see outside was empty, white wilderness. Then a forest. Then a small city, with some decaying buildings—often an empty Soviet factory. Then hours more of nothing. The map would show that these hours barely made a dent in the trip across the country.

Last time I did this leg from Moscow to Yaroslavl, I wandered into the adjacent compartment and sat down for a while with a man named Sergei Yovlev, an employee of Russian Railways. He’s in his fifties and often travels by train back and forth between Moscow and his hometown of Yaroslavl. Sergei is a midlevel bureaucrat, and I got the feeling his nicely pressed pinstriped blue suit, which he wears every day, is a symbol of pride, the uniform that reminds his family that he’s working hard on these trips that take him away for days at a time.