Stanley Stewart - In the Empire of Genghis Khan - A Journey Among Nomads

The soundtrack of Orgon II + III , so far as one could tell, was of frogs mating. The dance itself was a frenzied affair with some brilliant and very physical performances. The dancers kept their clothes on and the orgasms, if there were any, were difficult to distinguish from the triple pirouettes. The audience however seemed rather stunned. Presumably Orgon II + III was a bit much for people emerging from seventy years of social realism, when culture was devoted to happy peasants striding into a golden future of social justice, international peace and good harvests.

I walked back to the hotel through a park where orgasmically dysfunctional families were sharing ice-creams. Young people loitered around the ubiquitous kiosks which sold beer and snacks, and shoals of drunks floated between the park benches. Someone suggested after the war that the smouldering ruins of Stalingrad should be left as a monument to the defeat of Fascism. But Stalin understandably did not like the idea of his name being associated with a pile of rubble, so large sums were diverted to the city’s reconstruction. The results are pleasant if uninspiring. The town is given to wide avenues interrupted by parks and war memorials. There are red sandstone apartments with balustraded balconies, built in the fifties as a reconstruction of the past, which look like they will last for ever, and yellow concrete tenements with damp stains, built in the sixties as a vision of the future, which look like they might not see the weekend.

I went for dinner in the grandiose restaurant in the hotel. In Stalin’s day it had presumably hosted power lunches of the Party hierarchy. These days it is as spectacular and as empty as a mausoleum. I sat by a tall window overlooking the square. The service left plenty of time to admire the marble columns, the gilt chandeliers, the vast ornate mirrors, and the tables laid with silver and fine linen. The waiter appeared to be the lift operator’s elder brother. It took him five minutes to cross the vast hardwood floor with a glass of rust-coloured water on a silver tray. He was deaf and I had to write the order in large letters on a napkin. He scrutinized this for some time, then, turning away without a word, embarked on the long journey towards the kitchen.

I was savouring the pleasure of dining alone when Olga appeared from beyond a fat pillar and sank into the seat opposite.

‘I have ticket,’ she said, lifting the precious article from her bag. ‘You go Saratov on the morning train, then changing for Almaty train.’

I thanked her enthusiastically but she waved her hand.

‘I wish I was going with you,’ she said, propping her elbows on the table and searching her molars, with a toothpick, for some remnant of her dinner.

‘To Kazakhstan?’ I asked. It was not a destination beloved of many Russians.

‘To Saratov. My village is there. On the other side of the river.’

I had not thought of her as coming from elsewhere, especially a village. She seemed so ingrained in this city with its opportunities for compromise and anonymity.

‘What is it like, your village?’ I asked.

‘ Krasivoje ,’ she said. ‘Beautiful. The apple trees have the flowers now. There is the Volga. It is like a …’ she searched for the word, pointing at the ceiling.

‘A chandelier?’ I suggested.

She shook her head impatiently.

‘A tobacco-stained ceiling?’

She frowned. ‘No, no.’ She flipped her hand to indicate something further.

‘The sky? Ah-ha. Paradise.’

‘Like paradise,’ she said. Her face had softened. ‘My son is there, with his babushka. ’

She looked at me and I realized I had been promoted. A son was not an admission for potential clients.

‘How old is he? I asked.

‘Eight,’ she said. ‘I send money. But I will not bring him to Volgograd. Never to this city.’ She shook her head emphatically as if it was the city and not the human heart that was responsible for her downfall.

The advance notices for the Kazakhstan Express had not been encouraging. Everything I had heard or read about this train described it as a nightmare. The Intourist women in the Hotel Volgograd politely changed the subject when I mentioned it. The guidebook to Russian railways pleaded with readers to avoid it altogether. Even Olga was uneasy about the Kazakhstan Express.

Prostitutes, pimps, drug-pushers and thieves were said to have all the best seats; the sixty-hour journey to Almaty was standing room only for those without underworld connections. The passengers were described as drunk and belligerent, and the conductors locked themselves in the guard vans to avoid the knife fights. Robbery apparently was more common than ticket collecting. Passengers, it was said, were regularly gassed in their sleep and stripped of their possessions. Reports of the Mongol hordes in thirteenth-century Europe could hardly compete with the reputation of the Kazakhstan Express.

Arriving from Moscow, the Kazakhstan Express crept into Saratov station a couple of hours late, a shabby exhausted-looking train with windows too grimy to allow any view of the interior. The reassuring women attendants of Russian trains clocked off at the end of their shift and were replaced by Kazakh conductors, short stocky men with tattoos and pencil moustaches.

First impressions were encouraging: I boarded and passed down the corridor without a single confrontation with a knife-wielding thug. Predictably my bunk was already occupied by someone else who had paid a bribe to the conductor but after some negotiation I managed to secure a place in another compartment at the end of the carriage. It had the air of a bordello. Scarves had been hung over the windows flooding the place with a subdued reddish light. Women’s undergarments were strewn about like decoration. There was a heavy odour of cheap scent and the table was crowded with hairpins, combs, make-up, cigarettes and two empty bottles of Georgian wine. Amidst the debris three women lay on the bunks, slumbering odalisques, snoring gently in the sprawling postures of sleep.

I climbed onto one of the upper bunks and set about secreting my valuables about my person. The limited banking facilities on the journey ahead meant that I was carrying bundles of cash. I lashed thick wedges of roubles around my midriff and filled my boxer shorts with American dollars. The reputation of the train and the atmosphere of the compartment reminded me of a story that I had heard recently about the Trans-Siberian Express. A friend had been obliged to share his compartment with a demure-looking woman who was a librarian by day and a hooker by night. From Moscow to Vladivostok, she had entertained a succession of clients on the upper bunk. I peered over the edge of my bunk at my travelling companions. With their scarlet lipstick and false eyelashes, they had obviously dispensed with the librarian disguise. I wondered briefly if Russia was turning me into a deranged puritan, seeing debauchery at every turn.

We rattled across the Volga and rode away into the late afternoon through an endless plain of wild flowers. Lines of telegraph poles shrank to nothing where dirt roads tipped over the edge of the flat horizons. Villages marooned in all this space were shambolic entities. Everything looked home-made. The houses were made from scavenged planks while the tractors appeared to be assembled from wheelbarrows and old sewing machines. A town hove into view, announced by box cars and grain silos. Ancient cars lumbered through its streets, raising slow clouds of dust between concrete tenements and vacant lots. A row of smashed street lamps dangled entrails of loose wires. In these regions public utilities had a short life. Drunks used street lamps for target practice, and young entrepreneurs stole the glass and the bulbs for the black market. Then we were in the country again, turning through bedraggled meadows where brown and white cows lifted their sad heads as the train passed.