1THE LIAR
Beijing, 1899
There is a woman on the platform with a borrowed name. With steam in her eyes and the taste of oil on her lips. The shrill, desperate whistle of the train turns into the sobbing of a young girl nearby and the cries of the trinket vendors, hawking their flimsy amulets as protection against Wastelands sickness. She forces herself to look up, to stare at it face on, the train that looms above her, hissing and humming; waiting, vibrating with pent-up power. How huge it is, how implacably solid, three times the width of a horse-drawn carriage. It makes the station buildings look as flimsy as a child’s toys.
She concentrates on her breath, on emptying her mind of any other thought. In and out, in and out. She has practiced this, day after long day these past six months, sitting at home by the window, watching the pickpockets and traders below, letting it all wash over her, letting her mind run clear as water. She holds on to the image of a river, slow-moving and gray. If she can just let it carry her to safety.
“Marya Petrovna?”
It is a moment before she realizes she is the one the porter is addressing, and she turns to him with a start. “Yes! Yes.” Too loudly, to cover her confusion. Too unused to the unfamiliar syllables of her new name.
“Your cabin is ready and your luggage has been taken on board.” Sweat beads his forehead and leaves a damp, darkened line around his collar.
“Thank you.” She is gratified to hear that her voice does not tremble. Marya Petrovna is unafraid. Newborn. She can only go forward, following the porter as he disappears into the steam, broken by glimpses of green paint and gold lettering in English, as well as Russian and Chinese. The Trans-Siberian Express. Beijing–Moscow; Moscow–Beijing. They must have spent the last months painting and polishing. Everything shines.
“Here we are.” The porter turns toward her, wiping his brow and leaving behind a dark, oily smudge. She is uncomfortably aware of her own clothes, chafing her skin in the heat, the black silk drinking up the sun. Her blouse claws at her neck and her skirt is tight around her waist, but she has no time to worry about her appearance because the porter is holding out his arm, stiffly, and she is climbing the high steps up onto the train, her hand taken by another bowing uniformed man, she is being swept along the corridor, thick carpet beneath her feet. She is on the train and it is too late to turn back now.
In front of her, a man with a beard and gold spectacles and the kind of voice that elbows all other voices out of the way, leans out of the window and shouts in English, “Where is the Station Master? Be careful with those boxes! Oh, I do beg your pardon.” He squeezes himself against the window and attempts a bow as Marya approaches. She limits herself to a small smile and an incline of the head and leaves him to his hectoring. She has no wish for social niceties, nor the curious, appraising gazes of men, already observing her black mourning garb, noting her solitary state. Let them note. All she wants is to be alone in her cabin, to shut the door and close the curtains and gather a comforting silence around her.
But she is not to be allowed, not quite yet.
“Really, do stop fussing, I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.” An elderly lady approaches from the other end of the carriage, dressed in dark-blue silk and followed by her maid. “Is this really First Class?” She peers at Marya, and then at the cabin door beside her. “I had been led to believe this train was the finest money could buy. I confess, I cannot see it…”
Hearing the familiar sounds of well-to-do St. Petersburg, thousands of miles away from its wide streets and tall houses, gives Marya a painful tug of homesickness.
“Your cabin, madam,” says the steward, bowing to Marya but looking nervously at the elderly lady, who inquires, “Are you travelling alone?” while swatting away her maid, in her attempts to drape another shawl over her shoulders.
Marya sees a mixture of pity and reproach in her gaze, and flushes.
“My maid was unable to make the journey. It was too much of a strain on her nerves.”
“Well, it is good that our nerves are made of stronger stuff. My weak-spleened nephews spent months trying to dissuade me from this journey with tales of all the terrors that may befall us, but I believe they only succeeded in scaring themselves.” She gives an unexpected smile and pats Marya on the hand. “Now then, where is my cabin? If Vera here doesn’t have me stuffed into an armchair with a cup of tea in my hand very quickly, I can’t swear to her behavior.”
“Right here, Countess.” The steward gives a much deeper bow and a theatrical wave of his arm. The maid—Vera—opens the door at arm’s length, as if afraid of the horrors within.
“Ah! So we are to be neighbors,” says the Countess.
Marya gives a curtsey.
“Oh, we shall have none of that here. My name is Anna Mikhailovna Sorokina. And I will call you…?”
Another catch of the breath, a lurch like the feeling of missing a step she hadn’t realized was there, but the Countess seems not to notice. “My name is Marya Petrovna Markova,” she says.
“Well, Marya Petrovna, I look forward to making your acquaintance further. We shall, after all, have plenty of time.” And with that, the Countess allows herself to be guided into her cabin by her little maid, who has been regarding Marya from under her eyelashes.
“Will you require any more assistance?” The steward licks his lips and swallows. He’s afraid, Marya thinks, and somehow this gives her more courage.
“No,” she replies, more firmly than she expected. “No, I require no assistance.”
Her bags have been neatly packed onto the rack above the bed, which has been made up into a couch for the day, padded with plump cushions. Everything looks new. The Company must have poured money into it, displaying its confidence in the gold embroidery on the cushions and the bright brass on the walls and the deep-blue carpet, soft beneath her feet. Everywhere there is the lettering of the Trans-Siberia Company, entwined around the flower vase and the light fittings and embossed on the porcelain teacups and saucers on the little table by the window. Her day case sits on the armchair beside it. The window is framed by blinds and blue velvet curtains. On the other side of the glass run two thick iron bars. She stares at them a moment, then walks over to the wall, where two doors are set into the polished mahogany. One opens into a wardrobe, where her dresses and shawl already hang, unpacked by unseen hands. The other opens onto a cabinet with a compact white porcelain sink, shining silver taps and a shelf holding a hairbrush and little pots of creams from Paris, and above it all a silver-edged mirror.
As a child she had been fascinated by the old gilt mirror in her mother’s bedroom. Clouded with silver, she used to think it made her look like a spirit, emerging from the underworld or swimming up out of a lake. Whichever idea happened to catch her fancy, she would enjoy the feeling of being someone else, just for a while, before her mother called her down for tea with her grandmother, or her father quizzed her with mental arithmetic. She had thought that as she grew older she would grow more certain of herself and what she wanted to be. But now, this new Marya, what does she want?
She closes the cabinet door, not wanting to see. From her day bag she takes out a battered book, its cover threadbare and its pages creased with use. She knows every word, could copy every illustration from memory, but there is something comforting about its physical presence. Valentin Rostov’s famous Guide to the Wastelands—her father’s copy, that she would read in secret, dreaming of the train and the world outside its windows, imagining herself onboard. But not like this. Not alone. A sudden, sharp loneliness engulfs her. The train has not even departed yet and she has not followed the first piece of Rostov’s advice: Above all, do not attempt the journey unless you are certain of your own evenness of mind.
Outside on the platform porters and stewards usher the final stragglers aboard and order tearful relatives back toward the gates. Mechanics with oil-streaked faces stride purposefully alongside the train. A gaggle of men with notebooks are kept back by a harassed-looking Station Master. A sudden flash of light, and she sees a man emerge from a black cloth behind his photographic equipment. It will be in all the newspapers tomorrow morning; a journey turned into a story before it has even begun.
A series of clangs proclaim the locking of doors and the dropping of iron bars. She focuses on breathing in and out, in and out. Nothing outside can get in, nothing inside can harm us. She bites her lip and tastes blood. Iron to keep us safe. The platform is empty now but for the small figure of the Station Master. She watches him raise his flag and look up at the station clock. Faces from behind the platform gates stare at faces behind the bars of the train windows. Some of them are weeping. Rostov’s words swim into her mind: It is said that there is a price that every traveller through the Wastelands must pay. A price beyond the mere cost of a ticket on the train.
Rostov paid the price with his faith. With his life, some think. His Cautious Traveller’s Guides had made him famous throughout Europe, directing the traveller to the most hygienic restaurants, the worthiest museums, and the cleanest beaches, noting the finest churches and enumerating their altarpieces and frescoes, their martyrs and saints, for wherever a traveller wandered in that continent, he could know that God wandered beside him. But his final book was a guide to a land which could only be seen from behind glass. No churches remain in the Wastelands of Greater Siberia; no galleries or fountains or public art to tell the familiar stories.
On the platform, a moment of quiet stretches longer than it should have done. Then the flag falls, and the Trans-Siberian Express, in a slow cacophony of steam and screeches and creaking wheels, begins to move. As the train drags itself away from the platform the photographer’s flash goes off and for a moment the clouds of steam are filled with light.
Marya steps backward, blinking away the sudden brightness, and the train rolls out of Beijing Railway Station, toward the uncertain spaces ahead.
2THE CHILD OF THE TRAIN
Better to be moving. That’s what train folk say. Better to have rail beneath you, wheels to rock you, a far horizon to reach. On Leaving Day most of all, better for the wait to be over. And the wait has been so long, this time. Ten months of enforced stillness, it is enough to send the calmest of minds mad. Zhang Weiwei, sixteen years old, stands at the window in the little vestibule that leads through to the working end of the train. Here, in the carriages closest to the engine—the crew quarters, the garden carriage, the stores—passengers are not allowed; only the porters and stewards rush by, too busy to pay her any attention. She watches the solid stone buildings of the station recede. High walls enclose the track and groups of small children dash sure-footed along them, their faces covered by masks that turn them into yellow-horned, bulbous-cheeked monsters, waving and dancing their ritual of parting or warning or glee. On the other side of the walls, along the alleys and avenues, shutters will be slamming closed, water boiling on stoves will be thrown out as tainted, couplets will be muttered to ward off bad dreams. The city will be listening, and only when it can no longer hear the sound of the rails and the whistle of the train will it let out its breath and go about its business, content to turn its mind away from the nightmares that lie to the north.
She sniffs. How she has missed these acrid smells, the creaking mechanics of her train, the old familiar terror and excitement, the noise—so constant that she ceases to hear it until it is gone. How she has longed, these past months, for movement, for speed; she has craved it like the red-eyed men in Third crave liquor, gasping for the last drops from the jar, maddened to find it empty.
But now that they are moving again the air vibrates with tension. She has heard the whispers among the crew. Too soon. Too soon for the train to ride again, why not wait for winter and the safer passage through the snow, when the land is drowsy with the cold and danger cannot hide amidst the trees? In summer the land is wakeful, hungry. It is too soon to take the risk.
Not soon enough for her. But then again, she is too in love with risk, Alexei always says.
“And who on this train isn’t?” she replies, and he has to acknowledge the truth of it; that they are—all of them—half mad with Wastelands sickness already, with a longing and fear that they would struggle to articulate but which beckons them to the Trans-Siberia Company. They are the ones who hear the Wastelands from the safety of their cities and homes, who cannot resist the call of the great train. They present themselves at the grand Company offices in their London headquarters, or on Baiyun Road or Velikaya Street, knock on the famous wood-paneled doors and stand before unsmiling, gray-haired men who regard them sternly and demand to know why they should be thought worthy. Most are turned away. The chosen few are tested and observed for any indications that they may be susceptible to a landscape that disorders the mind, that drives men to throw themselves at the windows of the train, to scratch their fingers bloody at the doors, desperate to reach the outside. Should no such inclination become apparent, they are given the dark-blue uniform of the Trans-Siberian Express, a contract, a handbook and a Bible on which to swear allegiance to the Queen. From that moment onward they are part of the crew—part of the Company that stretches halfway across the world.
But Weiwei is different. Weiwei is the child of the train. Born neither here nor there, in no country, under no emperor’s star, she came bawling into the world as her mother left it, at the very mid-point of the Wastelands, on the floor of the Third Class sleeping car, on a night when phosphorescence turned the creatures of the plains into ghosts. She was swaddled in sheets bearing the Company crest, and passed between the porters and the cooks and a wet-nurse found among the passengers in Third. One week later, when the train stopped at the Russian Wall, she screamed, because until then she had only known movement and noise. Company officials in Moscow were at a loss for what to do with her, never having had to deal with an unexpected orphan before. (Her mother had disguised her pregnancy and had professed herself to her fellow travellers as being quite alone in the world.) But while the Company was inclined to frown upon such maternal carelessness, they decided the best course of action would be to return the child to Beijing on board the next train, and to deliver her into the capable hands of the Chinese state.
And so she was carried and fed and changed by her wet-nurse and whatever member of the crew happened to have a free hand at the right moment. But when the train reached Beijing, and the Captain came to take her to the authorities, the stokers said she’d brought them good luck, and that the coals had burned brighter on this journey; the kitchen boys said the butter had turned just right, for the first time, leading a passenger in First Class to compliment the Cook, something which had never been known to happen before. The night porters said they had liked her company, as she had listened solemnly to their bawdy stories and made barely a wail of complaint. And so the Captain said (at least, in the stories Weiwei was told), “If she earns her keep she may stay. But there will be no spare parts on this train—she must make herself useful, like all of us.”
Her first job, then, was as a talisman, a good-luck charm. She slept in the warmth of the kitchen or in a nest of canvas sacks in the luggage car or sometimes in the engine box itself, where the stokers would later tell how she would regard the glowing coals gravely, as if she understood even then their importance in keeping her safe. Later, she was put to work carrying messages from one end of the train to the other, and by the time she was six years old she was a rail rat through and through; everyone’s child, and no one’s. No one’s but the train’s.
“You loitering, Zhang?”
Here he comes now, Alexei, only a few years older than her but already promoted to First Engineer, swaggering down the corridor with a railman’s gait, sleeves rolled up to show the tattoos on his forearms—complex, congratulatory patterns that Company engineers give themselves after each crossing. Marks of brotherhood (she has never seen a female engineer), and of memory. They touch their arms, sometimes, when they talk of journeys past; of cranks that failed and shafts that barely held. Gears and cogs have turned into abstract patterns on their skin; into ways of remembering. She tries to see whether there is a new design, one to mark the last crossing, but he sees her looking and rolls down his sleeves.
She has barely seen him these last couple of weeks, though they have all been quartered onboard while in the station, preparing for departure; the engineers and the stewards and the porters and the cooks; the drivers and the stokers, the countless parts of the clockwork of the train as it grinds slowly back into gear. A little rusty, a little slower than before; there’s an odd stuttering to once familiar routines, a new hesitancy, as if they are all afraid to move too fast in case something should break. The few times she has caught a glimpse of him he has been always moving, filled with a restless energy after their long months of inaction.
“First check?” she asks, to fill the silence. She glances at the clock on the wall. Two minutes before the hour.
“First check,” he replies. The engineers’ days are filled with checks and tests, a relentless schedule that scrutinizes every inch of the train’s complex mechanics, the Company’s much-vaunted proof of the train’s safety measures. “They’ve doubled them … We’re not going to have a moment to ourselves.”
They speak in Railhua, the language of the train, a mixture of Russian, Chinese and English that began with the builders of the line, although the Company frowns upon it and tries to insist on the use of English.
“You’d think they didn’t trust you,” she says without thinking, then sees his expression darken. “I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t matter.” He brushes it away with a wave of his hand and she is caught by a sharp pang of regret for an ease that has been lost. Another thing that the last crossing took away.
“Be careful, Zhang.” He looks like he wants to say more but the clock has begun to chime the hour and he is too much of a railman to ignore it. “Just be careful,” he says again, and she bristles at the implication that she is not.
Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Brooks
