The Speculist

Chapter 28

Part IV

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

Reuben sat back and sighed. What a character this Dave Coffey was.

He looked down at the book, still open across his lap. There was something fascinating about the shape of that design. If he stared at it long enough, it almost seemed to move. It was like it was rotating very slowly. He stared a little longer. After a while the design stood still and the train car itself slowly began to spin.

Reuben looked up, shaking his head to clear his thoughts.

That was odd, he thought.

It wasn’t just the dizzying sensation. That was clearly due to the optical illusion or whatever it was that made him think the picture was moving. There was something else — a giddy feeling. It seemed to come from a part of himself that he seldom accessed: a part that was always there, but that he managed to forget about most of the time. It was the same place that the shadow came from. It was a place that echoed with the words everybody dies.

But the sensation of movement was not the shadow. It was a feeling of constraints being lifted, of something being let loose.

Reuben stared at the picture again.

Time passed.

Reuben suddenly snapped his head back — from where? — and remembered that he was in the train car. Coffey had been gone for a long while. It had been a long while, hadn’t it?

All Reuben knew was that his head was pounding. Vertigo swept over him. He was certain he would vomit.

He took a deep breath, got to his feet, and decided to find the lavatory.

The train car was dark. Reuben made his way down the passageway towards the toilets at the end of the car. He passed several berths, most closed up for the night. One or two were open, their passengers drinking or talking or having a smoke, or simply looking out the window at the passing sullen darkness. The car was quiet. The ride was bumpier than Reuben would have expected.

David Coffey was nowhere to be seen.

Reuben passed the car’s babushka just outside the toilet. She muttered something to him in Russian, but he couldn‘t quite make it out. Possibly asking him whether he wanted tea.

“I just need some water,” he said, knowing that she wouldn’t understand. He slipped through the door and into the restroom. He realized at once that he had not adequately prepared himself for this experience. The smell, primarily. The floor was wet. In fact, every surface in the tiny compartment was wet. And the toilet fixtures were made of wood.

“And this is first class,” he said aloud.

Before he could make his way to the sink, a wave of dizziness struck him, and he fell to his knees. Something was happening to him — he was being turned around or turned over or, somehow, turned inside out. He closed his eyes. After a moment, the sensation passed.

He made his way to the sink; the water from the tap was ice cold. He splashed some on his face. It didn’t help that much. The dizziness was beginning to pass, but there was still a throbbing in his head. He finished in the restroom and stepped back into the passageway. The old woman was gone.

Fetching him a glass of water? He doubted it.

He made his way back to his berth. He had left the sliding door cracked opened, but now it had been slid fully shut. He tried the door only to realize that it had been locked, too.

Nice, he thought. That’s really nice.

He rapped lightly on the door.

“Hey, Dave,” he said. “What’s the big idea? Open up.”

There was no response from inside. Reuben made a fist and pounded on the door a couple of times. This time he heard Coffey moving, making his way to the door. The latch clicked, and the door slid open slightly.

“Shto?” It was a Russian man. Late fifties, early sixties. He was groggy, as though he had been awakened from a sound sleep. Reuben looked down the passageway to make sure that he had knocked on the right door.

He had…of course he had. This was the berth he had just left a few minutes earlier.

“Uh, I’m sorry to disturb you, but this is my compartment.”

The man blinked, trying to make out what he was seeing and hearing.

“Shto? Nye gavaroo po Ingliski.” What? I don’t speak English.

“Okay,” said Reuben. He sighed. Nyet problyem. How does one say, “hey, you stole my seat” in Russian? This wasn’t the sort of thing he and Ksenia had covered in their regular language sessions at the casino.

He took a stab at it.

The man clearly didn’t understand.

He tried again.

The man asked him a question in Russian. Reuben wasn’t sure he understood. He may have been suggesting that Reuben was on the wrong car, which was impossible. He had never left the car. It was a quick jaunt down the aisle to the toilet and back. At last the sleepy Russian man turned around and said something to Coffey, who it occurred to Reuben should have cleared this whole thing up before it started. In fact, it never should have started in the first place. Why did he let this guy into their compartment? Didn’t he know they only slept two comfortably?

The man slid the door open wider to reveal that the person he spoke to was not David Coffey, not at all. It was a woman of about his age, perhaps a bit younger. She had on a thick fur coat, with which she had obviously hastily wrapped herself. Reuben could see that she was wearing a nightgown beneath it.

This made no sense. From the way they were dressed, the fact that the man had clearly been soundly asleep, and from their personal effects — which Reuben could see were scattered in the compartment — it was obvious that these people had been there a while. What had happened to Coffey?

“What you want?” the woman asked in heavily accented English. Her expression was severe. She appeared to have less patience than her bewildered husband.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am. But can you tell me what happened to the man who was in this compartment before? Where did he go?”

The man said something to the woman in Russian. She responded and then turned back to Reuben.

“You have make mistake,” she said. “You go to wrong car, maybe go to wrong berth. No man here.”

“I guess he left after I did. Did he leave my luggage? If you will allow me to get my belongings, I’ll find another place and I won’t disturb you any further.”

She rolled her eyes impatiently.

“You are in wrong place. Maybe you drink too much? Your belongings not here.”

Reuben felt himself losing patience, which he knew wouldn’t help in a situation like this.

“Listen,” he said, steadying himself as the train lurched unexpectedly, “I was in this compartment before you people. There was another man here with me. I guess he left while I was in the toilet and then the two of you showed up, found the compartment empty, and helped yourselves to it. That’s fine. But I left my luggage behind and I need it.”

“No,” the woman said sharply, “is wrong. We are here, in this place, since we leave from Moscow. We do not move into this berth halfway to St. Petersburg. You have no belongings here.”

Apparently responding the disturbance, the babushka arrived on the scene. Not the same one as before, Reuben noted. This one was taller, fatter, and apparently older.

She conferred with the Russian couple for a moment and then turned and walked away.

“What’s going on?” asked Reuben.

“She goes to get…what is word…conductor. He take you to correct place.” With that, the woman slid the compartment door shut. Reuben heard it click locked.

Great, thought Reuben. It just keeps getting better. A few minutes later, the babushka returned with a distinguished-looking uniformed gentleman. Reuben thought he recognized him from earlier in the trip, but he wasn’t sure.

“Hello. What is your name, please?” he asked in perfect English.

“Stone. Reuben Stone.”

He shook Reuben’s hand.

“What seems to be the difficulty, Mr. Stone?”

Reuben did his best to explain the situation. The more he heard himself insisting on what had occurred, the more he wondered whether he hadn’t made a mistake.

The conductor listened, nodding gravely. He then turned to the babushka and spoke with her for a moment.

“Mr. Stone,” he said, turning back to Reuben, “It appears that you have made a mistake. This is not your compartment. I will be happy to assist you in finding your correct place, if you will please show me your ticket.”

Reuben was suddenly glad that the train had been so cold and that he had kept his coat on. He wouldn’t want to compound his difficulties by having no ticket. Strange that it didn’t seem nearly as cold, now. And there was something else different, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He reached into his pocket and produced his ticket, handing it to the conductor.

The conductor studied it or a moment. He looked back at Reuben, puzzled.

“I’m very sorry, “ he said, “but I believe there’s been a mistake. Have you another ticket? A more recent one?”

“What do you mean more recent? I bought that this afternoon in Moscow.”

The conductor shook his head.

“No, sir. Look at the date — this ticket is more than four months old.”

He showed the ticket to Reuben. Reuben couldn’t read most of it, but the date was correct: January 8.

What the hell was the conductor talking about?

For his part, the conductor smiled patiently at Reuben.

“This must be a ticket from a previous journey, still in your coat pocket. Try again, and maybe you will find the ticket you bought today.”

“No, what are you saying? I bought it today and it has today’s date stamped on it.”

The conductor examined the ticket, now looking puzzled himself.

“No, sir,” he said. “This ticket is dated January. Eighth January.”

“So?” Reuben asked, exasperated. “What is today?”

“Today is 17th May, Mr. Stone.”

This is insane, thought Reuben.

He looked at the ticket again.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I wasn’t feeling well and I suppose I got confused. Can you please help me find my luggage and the man I was traveling with?”

“May I ask to see your papers, please?” the conductor asked at last.

Not an uncommon request, even in post-Soviet Russia. Reuben was once again thankful that he had kept his coat on. He produced his visa and passport from his breast pocket and handed them to the conductor.

The conductor studied them for a long while, looking up at Reuben from time to time as he did so.

“Very, well, then,” he said at last. “Will you follow me, please?”

He led Reuben down several cars until they came to an empty berth oddly situated at the back of a third-class coach. The coach was packed with people, most of them trying to find a way to sleep in the cramped, narrow seats. Those who were awake were apparently all smoking, and a thick haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air. Several of the smokers eyed Reuben suspiciously as he made his way down the aisle.

The conductor slid open the door to the tiny berth.

“You may sit here for a while, Mr. Stone,” he said.

“What about my luggage?”

“I will go to look for your belongings. Meanwhile, sit down here and relax.”

“The man I was with is named Coffey. David Coffey.”

The conductor nodded.

Reuben sighed heavily as he sat down on the uncomfortable, barely upholstered, wooden bench. He looked at the window as he tried to make some kind of sense out of what was happening.

Then it occurred to him what else was different: it wasn’t as dark as it was supposed to be.

The sun had set hours earlier, shortly after the train’s departure from Moscow. Reuben looked at his watch; it was a little after 10 PM. It had seemed like the middle of the night because it was so dark and because people were trying to make the best of the sleeping time on the long train ride to St. Petersburg.

Only now it wasn’t so dark. Fully half the sky was gray — not black — fading off to a silver western horizon. Reuben wondered if he had fallen asleep for longer than he realized. Had his watch stopped? Was dawn approaching? He looked again. This was not dawn; it was dusk. This is what had bothered him earlier in the corridor, what he couldn’t put his finger on.

How had it become lighter out?

Reuben struggled to think of an explanation. Maybe it was a geographic phenomenon. The train was going north, after all. And the farther north you went, the longer the day. Of course. St. Petersburg was famous for its White Nights, nights where the sun set, or came close to setting, but it never really got dark.

There was only one problem with this theory. It was January. There were no White Nights in the winter. In wintertime, he should be witnessing the opposite phenomenon: the farther north you go, the shorter the day gets.

There was only one explanation. It really was May.

But that was impossible.

Well, not impossible, come to think of it. Reuben touched his wounded forehead. He hadn’t been well. He had taken a blow to the head a while back — apparently longer ago than he realized — the kind of injury that might lead to all kinds of complications. Dr. Chevlenko had said it: there was no such thing as a superficial brain injury. It was just that no adverse effects had surfaced yet.

And now, apparently, some had.

Reuben tried to put the sequence of events together. He had boarded the train in January. He got a headache somewhere along the way and decided to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom he blacked out, only to be revived some time later. Several months went by of which he now had no memory. Perhaps he was confused and disoriented throughout that period. And then, tonight — taking a similar trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg — he went to the bathroom again, triggering a similar episode.

Only this time he woke up thinking that it was still January, and that he was still on the first trip.

“Yeah, bullshit,” Reuben said aloud.

Of course, that would be the expected reaction of a deranged man given a logical explanation of his delusions.

So it was just a coincidence that the ticket from the earlier trip was still in his pocket. But since he was on the train in May, it must mean that he had a ticket for this trip on him somewhere, too. Reuben might be able to accept the notion that he was deranged, but he would never allow that he was a freeloader.

Maybe the ticket was in his other pocket. He reached in and found not the ticket, but something that completely destroyed the memory-lapse theory.

It was a sandwich, wrapped in aluminum foil. He quickly unwrapped it and confirmed — yes, it was a turkey sandwich. Betty had made it for him that morning out of the leftovers from Christmas dinner. He had meant to eat it earlier but had forgotten all about it after Coffey had shown up. At this point, it was no longer terribly appetizing.

But it was clearly no more than a day old. A four-month old sandwich — if Reuben cared to picture such a thing — would be disgusting. This sandwich was just a little squashed, and perhaps the bread had gone a bit dry.

What the hell, he thought. He took a bite.

Not that bad, actually.

He tired to think of some alternative explanations. Perhaps he had, in fact, started out on this trip in May, not January, and in his disoriented state he was now remembering that he left in January.

But that wouldn’t account for the January ticket.

Or he had left in January, and blacked out in the restroom as he speculated earlier, and Betty had given him another sandwich from a different turkey when he left on this trip in May.

Right.

And he had just happened to put it in the same pocket.

And for some reason he was holding only the ticket for the earlier trip, not for the one he was on now. And he was coincidentally dressed in exactly the same clothes that he wore in January.

No, it didn’t wash.

Just to be sure, he decided to give finding the May ticket one more try. He checked each of his pockets, coat and pants, with no luck. He sat back and sighed. Then he realized…the conductor had not returned his passport and visa.

He got up and went to the door. It wouldn’t budge. He tried it again; no luck. That didn’t make any sense.

Then it did.

A tiny cramped compartment in the back of third class that you could lock from the outside.

Reuben was being detained. He was a prisoner.

He thought about trying to force his way out of the compartment, but what would be the point? Was he going to jump from a moving train? He suddenly wished he had one of those mobile telephones that his former employer sold.

A quick call to Sergei would sure come in handy about now.

Reuben chuckled. Not that one of those WorldConneX phones was likely to work out here in the middle of nowhere.

Well, it was all a mix-up of some kind. He wasn’t really worried. More confused than anything else.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep. He awoke to the sound of the latch clicking on the door of his tiny compartment. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dazzling light. It was now morning; the train had stopped. The door to the compartment slid open. It was the conductor, along with two other men, uniformed.

Cops.

“Mr. Stone,” said the conductor, “Please accompany us.”

They led Reuben off the train and into the station. Reuben noted that they had not yet updated the sign in the station. It still read Leningrad.

Posted by Phil at March 1, 2004 12:00 AM | TrackBack