Daily Pulp

1

In the early years of this century, a travel agency on Nevski Avenue displayed a three-foot-long model of an oak-brown internationalsleepingcar. Indelicateverisimilitudeit completely outranked the painted tin ofmyclockworktrains. Unfortunatelyit was not for sale. One could make out the blue upholsteryinside,theembossedleather lining of the compartment walls,theirpolishedpanels,insetmirrors, tulip-shapedreadinglamps,andothermaddening details. Spaciouswindowsalternatedwithnarrowerones,single or geminate, and some of these were of frosted glass. In a fewof the compartments, the beds had been made.

Thethengreatand glamorous Nord Express (it was never thesameafterWorldWarI),consistingsolelyofsuch internationalcars and running but twice a week, connected St. Petersburg with Paris. I would have said: directly withParis, hadpassengersnot been obliged to change from one train to a superficiallysimilaroneat the Russo-German frontier (Verzhbolovo-Eydtkuhnen), where the ample andl azy Russian sixty-and-a-half-inch gauge was replaced by the fifty-six-and-a-half-inch standard of Europe and coal succeeded birch logs.

In the far end of my mind I can unravel, I think, at least five suchjourneystoParis, with the Riviera or Biarritz as their ultimate destination. In 1909, the year I now single out, my two small sisters had been leftathomewithnursesand aunts. Wearingglovesandatravelingcap,my father sat reading a book in the compartment he shared with our tutor. My brother and I were separated from them by a washroom. My mother andhermaid occupied a compartment adjacent to ours. The odd one of our party, myfather’svalet,Osip(whom,adecade later,thepedanticBolsheviksweretoshoot,because he appropriated our bicycles instead of turning them overtothe nation), had a stranger for companion.

InAprilof that year, Peary had reached the North Pole. In May, Chaliapin had sunginParis. InJune,botheredby rumorsofnewandbetterzeppelins,the United States War Department had told reporters of plans for an aerialnavy. In July,Bleriothadflownfrom Calais to Dover (with a little additional loop when he lost his bearings). It was lateAugust now. Thefirs and marshes of northwestern Russia sped by, and on the following daygavewaytoGermanpinebarrensand heather.

At a collapsible table, my mother and I played a card game calleddurachki. Although it was still broad daylight, our cards, a glass, and on a different planethelocksofa suitcasewerereflectedinthewindow. Through forest and field, and in sudden ravines,andamongscuttlingcottages, those discarnate gamblers kept steadily playing on for steadily sparkling stakes.

“Nebudet-li,t—ved’ustal?”(“Haven’t you had enough, aren’t you tired? “) my motherwouldask,andthen wouldbe lost in thought as she slowly shuffled the cards. The door of the compartment was open and I could seethecorridor window,wherethewires—six thin black wires—were doing theirbesttoslantup,toascendskyward,despitethe lightning blows dealt them by one telegraph pole after another; but just as all six, in a triumphant swoop of pathetic elation, wereabouttoreachthetopof the window, a particularly vicious blow would bring them down, as lowastheyhadever been, and they would have to start all over again.

When,onsuchjourneysas these, the train changed its pace to a dignified amble and all butgrazedhousefrontsand shopsigns,as we passed through some big German town, I used to feel a twofold excitement, which terminal stations could not provide. I saw a city with its toylike trams, linden trees, and brick walls enter the compartment, hobnob with the mirrors, and fill to thebrimthewindowsonthecorridorside. This informalcontactbetweentrainand city was one part of the thrill. The other was puttingmyselfintheplaceofsome passerbywho, I imagined, was moved as I would be moved myself toseethelong, romantic, auburn cars, with their intervestibularconnectingcurtains as black as bat wings and their metal lettering copper-bright in the low sun, unhurriedly negotiate an iron bridge across aneverydaythoroughfareand thenturn,withallwindowssuddenly ablaze, around a last block of houses.

There were drawbacks to those opticalamalgamations. The wide-windoweddining car, a vista of chaste bottles of mineral water, miterfolded napkins, anddummychocolatebars(whose wrappers—Cailler, Kohler, and so forth—enclosed nothing but wood)wouldbeperceivedatfirst as a cool haven beyond a consecutionofreelingbluecorridors;butasthe meal progressedtowarditsfatallastcourse,onewouldkeep catching the car intheactofbeingrecklesslysheathed, lurching waiters and all, in the landscape, while the landscape itselfwentthroughacomplex system of motion, the daytime moon stubbornly keeping abreast ofone’splate,thedistant meadows openingfanwise,theneartreessweepingupon invisible swings toward the track, a parallel rail line allat oncecommittingsuicide by anastomosis, a bank of nictitating grass rising, rising, rising, until the little witness of mixed velocities was made to disgorge his portion of omeletteaux confitures de fraises.