Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Another $4 ticket. I used my time in Bukhara to write up my notes, and when Farrukh took me to the station to leave, I was so impressed by his dependability I offered him a tip. He said no, he would take only the agreed-upon amount, and with smiles and gestures he indicated that we were friends and that when I came back to Bukhara he would take me to meet his family—his wife, his two small children; we'd have a home-cooked meal. He already knew that I liked manti and pigeon eggs.

We hugged, we touched our hearts, we exchanged salaams, and I was off.

***

EVEN BEFORE THE NIGHT TRAIN, the Bukhara Express, drew out of Bukhara Station, the two men in my compartment had settled themselves at the little table where I was writing and begun preparing their evening meal of tortured chicken and vodka. Without removing their heavy leather coats, they made ready. One twisted the top off a big bottle of vodka, the other unwrapped a roasted chicken and, using his hands as though shredding paper, tore the chicken into fragments, scattering bones and meat and grease on the table. He also unwrapped a package of grated carrot and a loaf of bread.

"Woodka" the man with the bottle said, pushing it into my face. I could see that they were already drunk and would just get drunker.

"No thanks."

But he insisted, so—to be companionable—I took a swig. And then I left the compartment and saw that we were moving slowly into the darkness.

The provodnik—why were they always such brutes?—demanded my ticket. With the two drunks in mind, I asked if he would sell me a ticket to Tashkent. We were due to arrive in Samarkand at two in the morning; if I changed my mind, I could simply stay aboard.

The train was technically full—the ticket seller at Bukhara had told me that. But provodniks are wily birds; they control all seats on the train; anything is for sale, at their discretion.

"Five dollars," he said.

I paid up and he wrote me a ticket.

Back at my compartment, the two drunks had finished the grated carrot and the bread and the chicken—they had chewed and spat out the bones. They had nearly finished the bottle of vodka.

From time to time they sit beside me and put their faces against my notebook, marveling at the page of my writing, I wrote. And they stared crazily at me with the weepy boiled-looking eyes of drunks, trying to focus. They were so soused they did not bother to wipe their greasy cheeks, their food-spattered faces.

Because the crooked provodnik had sold more tickets than he had seats or berths for, the compartment began filling up with hopeful travelers. In addition to the two drunks, their leather coats gleaming with chicken grease, there was a pale young man, then two young women, also in leather coats, and a big boy in a baseball hat.

Farce, I wrote on the scrap of paper in my hand, a crossword puzzle I'd found in my briefcase, from an old Friday Herald Tribune, one of the harder puzzles I kept for my idle days. As there were now six other people in the four-berth compartment, and still a vodka bottle being passed around, I primly excused myself and slipped into the corridor, where I stood peering out through the windows at the plowed fields, the cows, the sheep, the steppes of Gidjuvan.

Studying the clue Keeping Don Juans at bay, I worked out Bucking the pass, and I was nudged by one of the drunken Uzbeks, who had followed me and was staring over my shoulder. Central Asian language was another clue, five letters. I inked in Azeri. The man was breathing hard, but what could I do? Just look busy. Finishing off a dressy outfit. Ah yes, clichés in the form of spoonerisms. I wrote Knotting the tie.

The man was still breathing hard, his alcoholic halitosis like car fumes. Azeri was wrong. I wrote Uzbek, and had the solution.

"Krussvort" the Uzbek said, putting his face against the scrap of paper.

The same word in Russian, I later discovered.

At about ten o'clock I went back into the compartment. Now there were eight people, three of them sleeping stretched out, four of them jammed together on a lower berth (two were women), and one had tucked himself on the shelf of the overhead luggage compartment above the door. One, the upper berth, was empty—mine.

This was obviously the compartment where the provodnik stuck the extra passengers who had bribed him. He entered as I lay down on my berth and, pointing, indicated that in a few stations I would have to trade places with the man crouched in the luggage hole.

The drunks were snoring, the lights blazing in their eyes. The women had removed their leather coats and were wrapped in quilts. Soon everyone was asleep, even me.