Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Never mind, I was bouncing towards Batumi in a cold drizzly dusk—into the unknown, a place I'd never been. Its very dreariness and decrepitude were a consolation. I could see from the border, the roadside, Sergei in his old car, and the men laboring with pushcarts that this was a benighted place, not expensive, and slightly creepy—wonderful, really, because I was alone and had all the time in the world. No sign of any other tourist or traveler; I had walked across the frontier into this wolfish landscape. And if Sergei was correct in saying that there was a night train to Tbilisi, it would be perfect.

It seemed to me that this was the whole point of traveling—to arrive alone, like a specter, in a strange country at nightfall, not in the brightly lit capital but by the back door, in the wooded countryside, hundreds of miles from the metropolis, where, typically, people didn't see many strangers and were hospitable and did not instantly think of me as money on two legs. Life was harder but simpler here—I could see it in the rough houses and the crummy roads and the hayricks and the boys herding goats. Arriving in the hinterland with only the vaguest plans was a liberating event. I told myself that it was a solemn occasion for discovery, but I knew better: it was more like an irresponsible and random haunting of another planet.

Batumi was a low coastal town of puddly streets and dimly lit shops and Georgians in heavy clothes hunched over, plodding in the rain. On the outskirts were plump central Asian bungalows, and approaching the center of town at dusk was like entering a cloudy time warp where it was permanently muddy and old-fashioned. In the 1870s it had been a boom town built on the oil fortunes of the Rothschilds and the Nobels.

"Football," Sergei said.

We passed a muddy soccer field.

"Sharsh."

We passed a round church with an elaborate spire and a sharp-edged Christian cross on top.

"Shakmat

club."

Shakmat is Persian for checkmate: "king death." The chess club, a big building and one of the newest in Batumi.

We kept going, and Sergei conveyed to me in broken English that the train station was not in Batumi but farther up the coast in a village called Makinjauri, where passengers boarded and tickets could be bought.

This, the last, westernmost stop on the Trans-Caucasian Railroad, was not a station but rather a rural platform under a grove of leafless trees and bright lights. Near it stood a ticket booth, the size and shape of one of those narrow little carnival sheds that offer tickets to the merry-go-round. I bought a first-class berth to Tbilisi for about $15 and felt I had lucked out, for the train was not leaving for hours. I paid off Sergei and enthusiastically tipped him for being helpful, then wandered around, looking for a place to eat.

Babushkas in aprons, bulky skirts, headscarves, and thick leggings welcomed me into a cold, lamp-lit one-room restaurant, and one of them, explaining with gestures, made me a Georgian dish—a big round puffy loaf filled with cheese and baked in a pan, then cut into wedges. Peasant food, simple and filling. I drank two soapy-tasting bottles of beer and asked for more detail, which they cheerfully gave me: as we were in Batumi, this was Adjaruli

cuisine—west Georgian style.

Some factory workers stopped in, and their English was sufficient for them to explain to me that they came here every evening at this time for the stew; so I ordered some of that, too, and like them, ate it with a wheel of bread.

"What country?"

"America."

"Good country. I want to go!"

A sense of out of this world, I scribbled in my notebook between bites. Cold, dirty room, old beaky women with raw hands in thick clothes; poor lighting, jumping shadows, a sputtering samovar, people talking in low voices; all weirdly pleasant. At the ragged edge of Georgia—the ragged edge of Turkey, too—I was happy.

At some point the rain stopped. The darkness turned frigid, the night glistening with frost crystals that were star-like, and overhead, stars were visible above the Black Sea. At Makinjauri Station, on the exposed platform, a hundred or so people waiting for the train were stamping their feet and chafing their hands to keep warm, yawning because it was so late and so cold.

I had a compartment to myself. I bought some bottled water from a stall on the platform. Two blankets and a quilt were piled on my berth, and after punching my ticket the conductor gave me a sealed package: bed sheets with bunnies printed on them.

So I lay down and read the opening pages of Conrad's The Shadow-Line and fell asleep as we traveled north along the coast and then headed inland.