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The customs agent flipped through Miss Zhou's passport and inquired why she had unused visas to Burma, Thailand and Saudi Arabia. "I changed my mind," she replied meekly. The innocent ingenue glow faded from her cheeks. He led her away after that. I remained on the train, riding to the wheelhouse to watch the undercarriages being changed to fit the Russian five-foot gauge.
As our car lifted from its Chinese wheels, a stunning Mongolian woman offered a cigarette. She rolled the r and voiced the qu when she said her name: Turquoise. At age 26, she remained single. "Marry who?" she asked incredulously, sweeping her arm across the vast darkness beside the tracks.
Her black eyes showed nothing. For the last five years she'd been living in Sydney, happy, lean and tan. Then her mother fell ill, and she had to come home. She opened her passport. It belonged to a plump, pale girl in gaudy lipstick, blouse and pageboy hair cut. "This is me when I live in Mongolia," she sighed.
The train settled back down atop wider wheels.
Depending on the passenger's perspective, the train moved in different directions. It bore us all toward Moscow, but like the morning's illusion, not everyone felt they were going forward. Turquoise called the train a lifeline, yet she was heading back to her old self and mother's death. The conductors sighed that the train was a humdrum, routine job returning them to cities they'd seen. The female traders made the train a rolling warehouse, bringing housewares and clothing west. They, too, repeated their biweekly ritual, powdering their cheeks, coloring their lips, and unbuttoning the tops of their blouses to persuade the officers who searched their compartments to forget duty. I was on vacation atop tracks that became a century-old timeline, revealing its ironic history at every stop. The railroad was constructed to keep Chinese out of Russia by populating eastern Siberia with homesteaders. Now the immigrants flowed in the opposite direction.
Miss Zhou returned with hands full after our stop at Erlian station. "They made me buy these pills. 230 yuan! Take what you want. I only need the ones for headaches. Hey, want some grapes?" She held up a bunch and tossed me her new yellow who vaccination card. "They gave me a shot. My arm hurts." She stretched it out, revealing a lump. "It hurts when I do this." She did it five times, hyperextending her elbow and twisting her wrist in a motion reserved for throwing a screwball. She winced. "They said it was hepatitis A." She lowered her voice. "They also gave me an AIDS test." Her face flushed. "In China, there's no AIDS. How embarrassing." I said China did, in fact, have AIDS. Miss Zhou shook her head and buried her face behind the newspaper she'd bought on the platform. I read the date. Yesterday's.
After clearing the border, the train for Miss Zhou barreled unimpeded toward her new life in Moscow. Though it was nearly dawn, she was wired, relieved that the $300 she paid to an agent for her Russian tourist visa had actually bought her a real one. I told her she'd only made it to Mongolia. The Russian border loomed a day's journey ahead. Miss Zhou's face fell, and she stared at my map, running her seamstress fingers over the black lines that apportion the world.
Day Two
We followed the route of an ancient tea caravan between Beijing and Moscow. Officially, we were on the Trans-Mongolian line until we linked up with the Siberian route the following day. The felt slopes of Mongolia teemed with birds, horses, marmots and wildflowers. Miss Zhou and the Chinese passengers bunched at the windows and whooped and laughed. On a Chinese train, there is a converse relationship between serenity and raucousness. The more peaceful the outside, the louder the inside grows.
Miss Zhou shared her bowl of instant noodles with me, while the conductors boiled frozen dumplings, part of the stash they'd brought from Beijing. Wang Fei sang over the p.a., a piece of Chinese culture clinging to the train like a hobo. Miss Zhou knew the words. The Chinese passengers heard her, crowded into our compartment, and sang in unison. "I only love strangers."
Mongolia's purple sunset rolled past unseen.
Day Three
After easily clearing customs—no inoculations, no questions—Miss Zhou decided she liked Russia. She awoke to the steaming, ice-coated shores of Lake Baikal, leaned from the window and smiled silently. A marker said 5,587 more kilometers to Moscow.
At Irkutsk Miss Zhou bought omul, the indigenous smoked fish, from a platform babushka. "Too oily, it stinks to death," she frowned upon bringing her treasure into the compartment. Its head fell off, thumping to the floor. Miss Zhou sighed. "I love rice. Do they have rice in Moscow?"
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