Trains

In the old days, there was something peculiar about them.

Standing on the platform, waiting to board—that mix of coal and worn steel, even though the trains were already electric. Stepping into the carriage, moving through the narrow corridor to the compartment where crisp white linens sat sealed in plastic bags, beside mattresses and pillows that weren’t so crisp. Unpacking the linens, letting the nutty scent of fresh laundry out in the air and into the nose, then making the bed.

Then came the food—the unwritten order of meals for a long journey: grilled chicken, boiled eggs, cucumbers and tomatoes, sausage and cheese for sandwiches, and instant noodles, of course. If the trip began late in the evening—and it usually did—aluminum foil would open all across the carriage. The compartment, the whole car, became a single dining room filled with the unmistakable smell of grilled chicken. The men drank something stronger, the women something lighter, and the kids carried on as kids do, reluctantly giving in to sleep on the upper bunks while the adults talked louder and then quieter as the drinking deepened. And then there was only the meditative sound of the wheels—circling, clunking—pulling the train away and into the dark.

Then came the morning, and the t-shirts were covered in small white pills that wouldn’t quite come off. The conductor brought tea in a beautiful faceted glass sitting proudly in a carved steel holder. And the long-awaited smell of instant noodles filled the car, pushing out the fumes and the chicken and everything else. On ordinary days, noodles were off-limits—bad for the stomach, they said. On trains, somehow, they were fine. Everyone loved them.

There was the tambour between the cars where people smoked—that suffocating tambour, clouds hanging permanently in the air, no windows to open. Adults would disappear in there and return like ashtrays, ash and smoke worked into their clothes, their skin, their hair. Sometimes they’d drift to the restaurant car and bring it all with them. And the eating, the smoking, the drinking continued in circles.

On the railroads south, in summer, when workers and students and families traveled to the Black Sea resorts, the carriages bloomed. Sweat and socks in need of a wash hung in the air like an invisible garland, mixing with the familiar fumes, the chicken, and the southern beer that traders sold on provincial platforms. A day and a half of fragrant riding—to the rest, to the south, to the sea.

And then the last few hours, when it passed close enough to the sea that passengers opened windows, and the fresh salt air consumed everything—the fumes, the socks, the sweat. The food was gone by then. Gazes fixed on the azure expanse, on the waves. People began leaving, stop by stop, until the ride was complete and there again was the platform, the coal, and the steel.