Free The People's Train by Thomas Keneally Page A

with joy and returned to the kitchen to get what she called the comestibles. These turned out to be cucumber sandwiches and a hearty English-style fruitcake, bleeding a fruity sap in the humid air. I saw a great cherry glisten in the midst of the dark cake. Opulence, I thought.
    Amelia darted to a cupboard for one last errand and brought forth a decanter of sherry and another of what looked like whisky. She also placed three dainty if minuscule wineglass-shaped vessels for us to take our choice of the liquors.
    Amelia said, Not as exciting as the Samarkand Café, Tom, but we rough Queenslanders do our best.
    With tongs, Amelia put two sandwiches on my plate and a healthy slice of fruitcake. Oh, she then said, scraping her chair backwards rapidly. I meant also to fetch my atlas. If you don’t mind, Tom – if it involves no personal pain to you, of course – Hope and I would dearly love you to point out where you come from in Russia.
    It won’t cause me any pain, I assured her, laughing and partly lying as well.
    She excused herself and vanished again from the room.
    When she was gone, Hope laughed, a first full-throated laugh.
    She blames me for being curious about Russia. But she’s the one who’s curious. Mind you, she knows Russian history...
    Amelia was back with the large volume, which looked heavy enough to snap her thin wrists. Please, she said, pour yourself some whisky, Tom.
    I nearly did so, to celebrate the headiness of this teatime with Hope, but all my training went against it. The men who drank were the ones most often caught, most often subverted.
    Thank you, Mrs Pethick ... Amelia. But I am not a drinker.
    Admirable, said Amelia. You, Hope?
    Hope was already pouring herself a tumbler, as frankly as a man would.
    Amelia was leafing through the enormous atlas.
    Mr Samsurov ... Tom ... while I was making tea, did my young friend Hope say anything to you about my prosecution file?
    No, I said. But whoever took it did a brave thing.
    Or perhaps the public prosecutor is simply inefficient, Hope suggested.
    I hope you didn’t do it, my dear, Amelia told Hope, because it was too great a risk. And anyhow, I was rather looking forward to pleading guilty to the impaling of Deputy Commissioner Cahill with a hatpin. I am a soldier at heart. She laughed at her own idea.
    Then whoever took the file, said Hope, has really spoiled your fun, haven’t they, Amelia?
    They rather have, Amelia agreed, and winked at me, but did not sit until she’d opened the page to a splendid map of Russia. She placed it in front of me. My finger strayed along the north-eastern Ukrainian– Russian border, and I read the transliterated names of rivers and towns. I found the place.
    I was born here, I told them, near the Ukrainian border. My village was near this place, Yelets. Yes, Glebovo. There. Well, I’m surprised we are important enough for an atlas of the world! My mother was Ukrainian but of Russian stock. My mother’s family were part of the plantation of Russian people in Ukraine.
    A garden of people, I thought. Some of them nettles and weeds, but like many such plants, tall – that couldn’t be denied. It was a long time since I’d spoken the name of Glebovo.
    But I kept on prattling away. I think my temperament is like my mother’s and grandmother’s, I announced. I remembered for a second Maxim Gorki’s love for his grandmother.
    My father was a decent fellow, I told them. But music and drink consoled him for the state of the world.
    I paused. Then on I went. Pulling the clots of information up out of a deep vein.
    It is black soil around there, I told them. Like some of the Darling Downs.
    All at once I was captured by an image of my young parents, riding in a cart to the Yelets monastery, to the Church of the Assumption, to have their wedding blessed. It was a blessing that left them poorer. I was born at the right time, though, a time when the new system of schooling had arrived. Without my letters, I’m sure I could