BACKGROUND: Peter has been in St. Petersburg for the weekend, visiting girlfriend Nadia and her daughter Anna. It's a special weekend, as Nadia and Anna are to emigrate to Canada the following Wednesday. The two days they have spent together have even exceeded Peter's already high expectations, culminating in the three of them enjoying a farewell dinner at their favourite restaurant together with Nadia's best friend Marina. After the meal, they go straight to the station from where Peter's train to Moscow is due to depart a little before midnight. From this point, the chronology of events is as follows:
11.00 PM - Nadia, Anna, Marina and Peter arrive at the station.
11.00 PM to 11.10 PM - Nadia, Anna, Marina and Peter say their good-byes.
11.10 PM - Exeunt Nadia, Anna and Marina; given the masses of packing still to be done in the following 48 hours, there is little point in them staying for another 45 minutes in temperatures around –2 C and ensuring they miss the last bus home.
11.20 PM - The carriage attendant opens the doors of carriage 13 and boarding begins. Peter boards the train, finds his place and hangs up the suit he will have to wear the next morning when he goes straight from Moscow's Leningrad station into the office.
11.20 PM to 11.40 PM - Peter is alone in the compartment, peacefully reading his copy of the St. Petersburg Times. He is beginning to think that maybe, as on his outward journey the previous Friday night, he will have the unaccustomed luxury (which he had ascribed to the current economic crisis) of the four-berth compartment not being full.
11.40 PM - Enter two noisy Russian men apparently in their mid-to-late twenties. As soon as they enter, the smell of alcohol is palpable. The several bottles of Baltika beer they are carrying hints that the liquor already ingested will not be the last of which they will partake before they finally retire.
11.40 PM to 11.50 PM - Peter painfully attempts to sidestep entreaties to join the two Russians, who introduce themselves as Vasilii and Sergei, for a drink. The chosen method is a feigned, comprehensive ignorance of the Russian language. Vasilii in particular seems reluctant to see this as a barrier to continued communication even though the smattering of English words known to him and his friend appears to be of a quantity equal to the numbers who still believe that the US President "did not have sexual relations with that woman". The conversation is far from sparkling - it follows along the lines of "Drink?" "No!" repeated over and over for several minutes.
11.50 PM - The final passenger in compartment 8 of carriage 13 arrives. He is a grey-haired man in his forties. Vasilii and Sergei attempt to engage him in a conversation of slightly more depth, but other than telling them that he is called Felix and is travelling to Moscow on business, he is largely, and understandably, reticent to join the conversation.
11.50 PM to 11.55 PM - Vasilii and Sergei talk among themselves while seeing off their first bottle of Baltika. Peter and Felix are occupying the bottom two bunks but Sergei sits on Felix's bunk, while Vasilii decides to ignore the fact that Peter has been in a reclining position throughout and has thus made it impossible for him to sit on the bed and face Sergei. He simply seats himself on Peter's legs. It becomes clear from their conversation that they are railway workers who are going to Moscow for a work-related reason.
11.55 PM - Train No.1 (the "Red Arrow") from St. Petersburg to Moscow leaves, exactly on time.
11.57 PM - Felix says that he is going to the restaurant car for half an hour. He suggests that Vasilii and Sergei have a drink, and that when he returns it will be time for bed. Peter already knows that the railwaymen will not want to stop drinking in half an hour but rather naively hopes that they might continue their alcohol consumption elsewhere. In Felix's absence, Vasilii moves to sit next to Sergei on the lower bunk opposite Peter. Sergei convinces Vasilii that further entreaties to Peter and Felix to join the fun are pointless - Peter is foreign and Felix is old, so they can't be expected to behave like real Russian men.
12.05 AM - Peter puts down his copy of the St. Petersburg Times, turns his back and attempts to fall asleep, though he knows that, with the light still on and the conversation continuing with its volume unmoderated, the task is likely to be a forlorn one. He catches one last glimpse of Sergei taking from his bag a bottle containing a luminous yellow liquid which, according to the label, should be lemonade. While this may be true, their rapid further intoxication gives rise to the suspicion that another substance may have been added.
12.05 AM to 12.30 AM - Peter resolves on a policy of keeping his back turned and trying to ignore everything which will occur in the compartment. However, he underestimates the difficulty of following this plan.
12.30 AM - Felix comes back to the compartment and gets into bed. The railwaymen leave.
NOTE - timings from this point onwards are approximate, and their accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
12.30 AM to 2.25 AM - The light remains switched on. The railwaymen come and go, regularly failing to close the door when they leave, and managing to increase the volume of their conversation the longer time goes on. Sergei's watch sounds at one o'clock and will do so again, every hour on the hour throughout the night. During the times the railwaymen are in the compartment, they sit opposite one another on the top bunks. At one point, Sergei attempts to pour the luminous yellow liquid into two cups, but his aim is somewhat lacking and he manages to direct liberal quantities onto the bed occupied by Peter below. When the railwaymen are out of the compartment, sleep is possible, but given their regular and noisy comings and goings, any rest is fitful at best.
2.25 AM - Felix decides to turn the light off and tells the railwaymen that if they want to drink and talk, they should do so outside the compartment. Sergei wonders whether he and his friend have been disturbing their fellow passengers, to which Felix replies emphatically in the affirmative. Sergei apologies are, needless to say, noisy and lengthly, and therefore completely counter-productive.
2.25 AM to 2.40 AM - Sergei and Vasilii abide by requests to continue their merriment outside the compartment, but unfortunately their location of choice is directly outside the door. They awaken passengers from other compartments and, entirely predictably, the recriminations are loud and prolonged.
2.40 AM - The railwaymen finally retire.
2.40 AM to 3.35 AM - Peter manages to sleep.
3.35 AM - Peter is awakened, as the railwaymen have apparently found slumber impossible. They are talking in what they probably assume, mistakenly, to be whispers, but it is not the voices which have roused Peter. It is the fact that Sergei has dropped a (mercifully unopened) bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, which has landed on his legs. Felix wakes up, and, after he has remonstrated with them, the railwaymen elect to continue drinking outside the compartment.
3.35 AM to 5 AM - Peter again manages to snatch some sleep.
5.00 AM - The railwaymen noisily re-enter the cabin, and, almost on cue, Sergei's digital watch beeps to signal the new hour. Vasilii and Sergei manage to reach their bunks, not without difficulty, though Sergei in particular looks to be perched slightly precariously, his legs dangling over the edge of the bed.
5.10 AM - Peter is once more asleep.
5.20 AM - Peter is no longer asleep, since Sergei has fallen out of his bunk, landing on Peter's legs before rolling onto the floor.
5.20 AM to 5.25 AM - Having with some difficulty managed to stand, Sergei makes concerted but unsuccessful efforts to reach his bunk. Eventually he gives up and lies on the floor once more.
5.35 AM to 5.40 AM - Sergei begins to mutter incomprehensibly to himself, prompting Felix to rouse himself angrily and demand that Sergei gets into his own bunk. Sergei seems incapable of understanding the request, and eventually Vasilii gets up to assist him in complying.
5.45 AM - Peter drifts off to sleep.
6 AM - Peter is woken by Sergei's watch, which instead of beeping to signal the new hour, plays "The Yellow Rose of Texas" for a whole twenty seconds.
6.05 AM to 7.20 AM - Peter dozes.
7.20 AM - The radio is turned on throughout the carriage, rendering further sleep impossible save for the alcohol-facilitated slumbers of Vasilii and Sergei.
7.20 AM to 8.25 AM - Peter lies in bed weighing up the pros and cons of extreme physical violence towards the railwaymen, then gets up, queues for and uses the bathroom and puts on his suit ready to go straight to the office. He then admits to Felix that he does have some grasp of Russian and the two of them enters into mutual commiserations. Felix is most anxious to issue an apology on behalf of the Russian nation.
8.25 AM - The train arrives, right on schedule.
8.25 AM to 9.00 AM - Peter takes the metro from the station to work. During the ten minute walk from the nearest metro station to the office, Peter gets a drenching, because it is physically impossible for him to carry his umbrella at the same time as his bag and his lap-top computer. It is a totally fitting end to the journey - fully in keeping with the previous nine-and-a-half hours.
