The Railway (9 page)

The next morning, the boy set off towards the depot. Some goods wagons had been brought there the previous evening and Belyalov's lorries were already starting to arrive. The boy still felt a little sick from the day before. He had washed under the tap but he was afraid to drink, and anyway it was impossible to stay there long; someone coming from the little bazaar the other side of the ice-cream stall was about to start washing two bunches of radishes. The boy did, however, stand there while this man – whom he had never seen before – washed his radishes, and the boy even waited for him to go away, leaving one radish – as red as a red shipping buoy – bobbing about in the stream of water. There was only this one radish; the boy had thought there were several, but when he reached down into the pit beneath the tap, the redness shining beneath the water turned out to be from eggshells dyed red with onion juice – and the boy remembered hearing from the other children that this Sunday was the beginning of Easter.

The radish he had eaten was burning his hungry stomach and, as he walked along the railway track in the fierce sun, he was hoping that the men would be loading fruit. When he came to the first wagon, however, he realised that there had been no need to hurry: the wagons were not being loaded but being unloaded, and the sacks being piled into Belyalov's lorries were full of onions.

Still, if he got himself taken on, he would at least earn a few roubles to keep himself going through these hungry days. He walked round a lorry that had been backed up to the wagon and saw that four winos had already staked their claim: it was no good hanging around there. The boy asked the driver if they were unloading any more wagons; the driver nodded in the direction of a man in a suit and said, “He's the head clerk, he'll know.”

The boy felt lost: if only Artyomchik were with him… Artyomchik knew all these head clerks. The two of them could do a wagon together.
But without Artyomchik... He himself was too small. The head clerk wouldn't even talk to him. At the moment the head clerk was arguing with three strangers. They were sitting beneath the wagon and playing hard to get.

“Come on, get cracking!” said the head clerk. “Don't worry – we'll get you a fourth comrade soon!”

“Nod likely, boss. We dud wud druck – ad dad's your lod! Now we wod our half-lidre.”

“One and a half roubles per ton. Come on now!”

Recognising Tolik-Nosetalk, the boy went up to him and offered to join them. Someone cleared his throat, someone else told the boy to fuck off, but Tolik, sounding as if he himself were the station director, said, “I dow de boy. Powerful as a forklivd druck, he is!”

In the end they settled on three and a half roubles for two tons. The boy dragged the sacks out from up above and placed them on the men's shoulders. Staggering and cursing, covered in dust and sweat, the men were soon on their fifth or sixth lorry. Sometimes a lorry driver would climb up into the wagon, go to the opposite corner, untie one of the sacks and blather on about how wonderful last year's onions had been. But not even Tolik-Nosetalk would tell him to fuck off, since he too was desperate for something to eat. As soon as they'd unloaded half the wagon, the men jumped out onto the flat space below. Tolik asked for three roubles from the head clerk and said to the boy, “Rud over do de codod fagdory ad ged some
Vermood
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and ady dam food you like!”

The boy rushed off, but all he could find in the shop was a stale railway loaf, some tinned flatfish and some sticky “Cherry” caramels... And he got so out of breath on the way back that his head was still spinning even long after he'd sat down again. The rail seemed to be transmitting every clack and bang made by the diesel shunter working on the other track, but the sun was at the very top of the sky and it was impossible to move even a centimetre from the shade of the wagon.

“Drig up!” said Tolik-Nosetalk. “Or some fukkuvadidspector will be roud.”

The boy wanted to join in – especially when Tolik threw his head back and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down and a red stream dribbled from the corner of his lips and down his dusty chin. “Your turn!” someone said to him as the bottle went round the circle. The boy refused and regretted it. The bread he had chewed so greedily got stuck at the back of his mouth, and anyway there was a piece of greasy tinned fish blocking his throat just a little further down. He didn't in the least want any of the “Cherry” caramels, let alone any of the stinking onion
– and when they suggested he finish up what was left in the bottle he practically grabbed it from them and gulped it all down in one go.

The wine was sweet and disgusting. But it tickled his throat and the unchewed bread at last began to move down, although his head now felt as if the diesel shunter were at work right beside him and his cheeks were swelling up and their heat had dried his sweat and turned it into a tense hot film and all this made him want to let out a volley of curses. Yes, he wanted to tell that damned lorry driver what he thought of him. Feeling as if he were jumping off the edge of a precipice, he found himself saying, “Fucking cunt – saying the fucking onions are too fucking small!”

But no one listened to the boy's quiet words – one of the three men was spreading out a copy of the cotton factory news sheet as he lay down in between the rails, where a few stems of shepherd's purse were swaying from side to side, the second was throwing away the empty bottle and tins, and Tolik-Nosetalk was rolling some home-grown tobacco. The boy didn't know what to do next, but he felt he had to do something; he tried to clamber out from beneath the wagon, but the fierce sun drove him back, and, no longer able to support his own weight, he collapsed onto the track and lay there just as he had done ages ago – or was it only last night?

Later they made a start on the other half of the wagon. At first the work went smoothly; once they'd finished, they were going to go to the cotton factory shop to get some more drink. The boy was looking forward to this. But when there was only one more lorry to load, a car drove up and even Tolik-Nosetalk was alarmed. “Belyalov's here – ged fuckig movig widdose sacks!”

First Belyalov went to the wagon next to them; then, along with the head clerk, he came to their own wagon. The clerk nodded in the direction of the boy and began, “This boy now…” Belyalov immediately scrambled into the wagon, walked straight to the far corner, came back towards them – and suddenly there was no stopping him: “Who put a minor like him in the wagon? Do you really have no idea, do you really not understand, what the law calls this? Exploitation! Yes, exploitation of children! How can a boy like him lift sacks?” And so on, with a lot of drivel about standards of safety technology, and so on.

He ranted for ten minutes. It was a little unclear whether he was ranting at the head clerk or at the winos, but in the end, of course, the one who got thrown out was the boy; and however much the boy pleaded with Belyalov, reminding him how he'd made crates for him at the depot and saying that it wasn't the first time he'd loaded, or rather unloaded, a wagon, Belyalov just went on yelling that he didn't want to be put behind bars and that if a minor was wandering around without parental supervision, then he'd make it his business to get this minor taken back to his school and that the head clerk should take a note of the boy's surname and draft a letter about him – and then off Belyalov went to his car. And when the treacherous head clerk got out his indelible pencil and a scrap of paper, the boy felt he was going to start howling any minute and that nothing could be worse than crying in front of bastards like these, who would exploit his childish tears to tell him to bugger off if he was going to be such a baby – and so he jumped down onto the ground and went on his way, ignoring the head clerk's question, “Where do you go to school?”

He walked along the dusty road beside the railway line and his tears seemed to run all the way down his body and end up on the ground, transforming the dust behind him to clay. He wanted to escape from all this humiliation and he couldn't; his feet were sinking into a quagmire; and when he got to the first fence between the road and the depot, he fell down beside it, wept himself into a state of desolate fury
and, his insides now clenched tight as a fist, began to wait for Belyalov's car to come round the bend. He was going to smash Belyalov's windscreen with the stone that was burning in his hand; he'd show Belyalov he could do a bit more than just lift sacks... He kept thinking up more and more ways he could punish that stupid fat-face – as well as that cheating shit of a clerk – but none of this did anything to soothe a burning in his chest that was stronger than hunger, a burning that made him unable to think of anything else at all – and then, instead of Belyalov's Volga, which had gone on its way long ago, he saw one of Tolik's gang coming round the bend. The man didn't know the way to the cotton factory shop. “You come with me, my boy, you can show me the way!” he said; and the boy with the parched face went with him, not really knowing why.

They turned into the sidestreet – and there was the last of the lorries coming up behind them, piled high with sacks. Looking straight in front of him, the man said, “Quick, one of those sacks is ours! Stop gawping! Quick – there's no mirror on that side!” The lorry was struggling with its load and, before it could catch up with them, they crossed over. The whole of the empty space between the cotton factory and the wool factory was now filled by a cloud of dust like the tail of a comet, and the boy remembered how he had wanted to throw a stone at Belyalov's car; as if they were a curse, he found himself repeating the words, “I'll show you, you bastard, how I can lift sacks!”

“You chuck it down, I'll do the rest!” said the man, and when the lorry was five yards ahead of them, the boy ran after it, leaped up and gripped the top of the tailboard with one hand as he got his foot onto the trailer hook and pulled on the top sack with his other hand. The sack plopped down into the dust and the boy plopped down after it, landing on all fours and grazing his palms and legs so that they bled – but that was something he only noticed later, after he had thrown the sack onto one shoulder and carried it over to the blind wall at the back of the wool factory. The man was waiting; he'd already taken off his overalls, and he quickly flung them over the sack. The boy's palms and knees started to hurt, but somehow this was exciting – even more
exciting than managing to carry the sack so easily; when the lorry disappeared round the corner, he spat through his teeth and said to the man, “Come on – get fucking moving with that sack!”

The man quietly heaved the sack onto his shoulder. After they'd gone round the corner, he slipped through a little gate while the boy sat on the bank of the canal and began to wash the blood and dirt from his hands. The man came out, swore and said, “First the bitch said she'd grass us up. Then she paid me enough for a couple of bottles. Fuck the bloody bitch! Let's go!”

Then the man went to the cotton factory shop, emerged with three bottles of Vermooth and said with a chuckle, “Here you are, I've got you your bottle too!” These words at once brought to mind the thick slobbery lips of Tolik-Nosetalk and the disgusting red liquid that had dribbled out of them. Yesterday's nausea had never really passed and once again the boy nearly threw up. “Give me my money!” he said through his teeth, almost weeping with fury. There were no stones or bits of metal to hand, but the man must have felt anxious about his bottles; he at once started apologising, saying nervously that the boy could take all the money he had in his pockets, and why hadn't the boy told him he wouldn't be drinking with them – they had, after all, worked side by side, shoulder to shoulder – and that there wasn't much in his pockets, only small change, but the boy was welcome to take every kopek he had...

Who knows, probably the boy would have taken the change, if only to buy a loaf of bread – but just then the man they called “Malka,” the science teacher, came out of the shop. Seeing him, the boy turned round and walked in the opposite direction, full of an impotent fury and despair made all the more shameful by the way the wino called out after him, “Hey, boy, where are you fucking off to?”

By then he was almost running to the first little sidestreet he could find – to hide there and forget all this and not see anyone, not see anyone... It was late afternoon and the crooked little streets were empty and the boy didn't know what to do with himself. He was hungry and ashamed, and his hunger and his shame felt as if they were one and the same thing; he couldn't have calmed one without getting
rid of the other. He wandered along like a stray dog that has just been beaten, shying away even from the old women who happened to pass by, until he found himself on a street at the end of which, outside the house of the old German woman they called Reitersha, he heard the voices of his schoolmates: “Christ has risen! Christ has risen!” Then he remembered that today was the beginning of Easter – “Eater” as his schoolmates called it – and he realised that Borat and Kutr, Kobil and Vityok, Shapik and Abos were doing the rounds of the old Russian women, just as they went round the Uzbek houses during Ramadan, and that today they were begging for dyed eggs and Easter cakes. Afterwards they would sit down on a bench somewhere and fight egg-battles till every last egg was cracked; then they would cram all the food down and give themselves hiccups.

And he wanted to join them – not because he was hungry but simply because he wanted to join them. Yes, he could stay out late with them
– only what, he couldn't help wondering, what would he do when they all went home? And so, instead of joining them, he just followed them for a while, quietly murmuring with them the words “Christ has risen!” and hearing the old women reply to his mates: “Risen indeed!” But when they all sat down on a bench and began their egg-battles, he felt so lonely, so unbearably lonely, that he just set off wherever his legs took him. After wandering through fields, and through the outskirts of town, he ended up just before midnight by the Russian cemetery; there, on little tables in front of the crosses, glimmering in the moonlight, stood polished glasses full of vodka, and there was a dimmer, paler glow coming from the multicoloured Easter eggs.