RuKsaK

Russian trains have numerous classes. Platskart is about the cheapest – a wagon full of about 40-odd hard bunks. It’s all open, so can get noisy and as a foreigner you quickly become conspicuous. It is cheap though, and when the roubles have been low, I’ve used it.
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The last time I told the previous post I was travelling on this class for the first time. I was with Bolshoi Dom. We were maudlin and a little drunk after a head spinning weekend in Moscow. It was getting cold. After talking about my granddad, we talked about writing in similar tones.
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Writing’s something I’ve talked about to many people, many times – often getting solemn and sober about it. Talked so much about it – done so little; a playboy eunuch. It’s genuinely embarrassing – I mean that. That makes this blog stuff all the more absurd.
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We both agreed:
‘Writing is hard – we shouldn’t bother.’
‘We don’t.’
‘Not sure I have the stories.’ I couldn’t agree with him.
‘I just don’t know how to do it well.’ was my reply.
I entered a respectively enthused trickle of encouragement:
‘Maybe, if we just gave it a go – it’d work.’
Ha – I was lying. Wish I’d suggested collaboration, but a requesting a quick bum-fuck would’ve been better received.
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It got really cold. I was on the bottom bunk, the one made of two seats and a folded-down table. I was covered in all my clothes and a few blankets, but couldn’t sleep. On arrival, at 6am, I looked from the window, but couldn’t – ice was caked quarter-inch thick on the inside. We were hungover from the whole weekend and feeling reluctant about the week’s work ahead. The train station’s red electronic display told us it was minus 28 degrees Celsius.
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Walking home I saw an old woman chopping up the icy pavement with a rigid hoe – that made me a little ashamed, for not too long - I was knackered. The area was called Proletarskaya after all.
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The last time I went by platskart I was on my way to a job interview on a Saturday morning from St.Petersburg. I was with Natasha. It was almost exactly four years ago, so not cold, but just as skint.
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We bedded down at the same time as everyone and this time I slept.
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I was woken by Natasha screaming something a few hours later. A flabby tank of a man was standing wearing nothing but a t-shirt:
His right hand was below his waist,
in his hand was his penis,
coming from his penis was a line of piss.
At the end of the line of piss were my socks
inside the socks were my feet.
He was pissing on me!
Pissing on my feet!
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I’m not a fan of exclamation marks, but describing this situation has me cornered.
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In the morning, in Moscow, the same man moved my neck a position down in the queue for the toilet – the rest of my body followed, so he pissed and phlegmed before me.
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Writing is not the same as being publicly pissed on in your sleep. It truly isn’t. The differences are finite, but only just. I was going to, like a cheesy joke, list the differences, and even some glib similarities, but, no.
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If you’ve got this far, leave a few.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Platskart