Free Compartment No 6 by Rosa Liksom Page A

sagging, the chimney half collapsed. They stood in the brisk air as if waiting for the inhabitants to come out, then the girl climbed the rotted steps to the door and knocked. Nothing happened. They tried the door – it was unlocked. The man was turning to go back to the car when a fearless Ostyak woman with beautiful features appeared at the door and gestured something to the girl.
    â€˜She’s deaf,’ the man said in a weary voice.
    The girl gestured towards the skilfully built yurt and then pointed to her eyes. The Ostyak woman laughed silently and nodded. She put on a large pair of rubber boots and came out of the house to escort the girl to the yurt, smiling shyly. The cold wind swept over the frozen dirt floor of the yurt. The quickening light of spring made its way in through the yurt’s open door. It served as a fishing shed. Rotting, crumbling net staves, fish traps woven from bast, a small rusted milk separator and a lidless box made of planed birch full of mouldy grain.
    As the girl stepped back outside, the man pulled the car up next to the yurt.
    â€˜A filthy bunch, arms half a metre long and bodies a metre, and shapeless,’ he snorted, turning the car back towards the highway. ‘That whore right there’d be in her element hunting rabbits. They all ought to be forced to be normal Russians, without sparing the torture, if that’s what it takes. What they need is a father’s iron hand!’
    Silence pressed heavy on the car for a moment.
    In the afternoon, when the disc of sun hung over the roofs of the highest houses, they reached the godforsaken town of Tomsk. The man drove up and down the unploughed, truck-rutted streets. The sun was fleeing purple into the far west, to the north the bashful, rose-red evening blush held still for a moment as a gritty yellow snow began to fall. The north wind battered the sides of the car. The man stopped in front of a beer house on the outskirts and left the engine running.
    The girl stretched her legs in the back seat. The engine chugged and sputtered tiredly, sometimes screeching and lurching as if it were having a heart attack. The chassis shuddered, the springs squeaked. Exhaust seeped into the car and made her cough. She turned off the engine. Soon it was so cold in the car that she got out.
    The door to the beer house was in constant use. An endless stream of thick-soled felt boots came and went.
    When the man got back to the car reeking of yeast it was the wee hours of the morning.
    â€˜I got caught up in talking with a kid in there. One of those Samoyeds from the Taimyr district. A genuine drinking spirit.’
    The wind had changed to the south and had a spring-like tune. Clumps of snow slid from the roofs of the houses and thudded onto the shovelled pavements. The man passed out in the front passenger seat with a bottle of vodka in his hand. The girl turned the ignition key. The engine grumbled angrily and died. She turned it again – it howled for a moment. She imitated the man, coaxing the engine for a long time with gentle words, then turned the key again. It squawked pathetically, but didn’t die. She let it run, praising it at length before she gave it some petrol and somehow got it to move forward.
    She drove Soviet style, with only the parking lights on as she moved through a city slashed with morning shimmer. A red Lada Combi stood empty at the edge of a bridge. The driver’s-side door hung open obscenely, the flickering tail-lights blinking at the sky. The night’s last stars trailed around the rising sun and the wind-knocked lampposts went out one by one. The girl looked at the pink blocks of flats, their narrow, loose-hanging storm windows dragged back and forth by the strong southern breeze.
    The car bounced up and down over Tomsk’s narrow streets. She stopped at intersections and looked into street-corner mirrors that warped and broke up the peaceful cityscape. The man dozed, drooped, started