Aliocha, a Russian conscript, is on a the Trans-Siberian railroad headed to his post. He, you will not be surprised to learn, does not want to go to Siberia. In his efforts to escape, defect, disappear, he meets meets Hélène, a French woman who is also trying to leave Russia. In a mere 137 pages, you witness their inner and outer worlds collide as they become accomplices despite the vast differences in age, language, and experience.
This is a short book — I read it during my lunch break — but it packs a big punch. As with the best travelogues (this is a thriller but it is also a train story, after all) the vistas and the train itself are characters too:
…then suddenly the night tears open and the landscape hardens outside, clean, geometrical, pure lines and new perspectives, the end of the organic night, the forest rises up in the razing light of dawn and it’s still the same forest, the same slender trees, the same orangey trunks, a forest identical to itself to this extent is insane, even if you glimpsed a river welling up beneath the ice, bushes of pale flowers, snow in brownish puddles along the length of a muddy path, rooftops, fences, even then it’s still the same forest, on and on, not the ocean but the skin of the earth, the epidermis of Russia, the claws and the silk, and then in the first rays of dawn their faces are revealed.
And there are many great moments of pure tension in this story, because every character is a potential enemy or accomplice. Aliocha is so young, and so scared, and Hélène is surprisingly clear-eyed about her role in his life – scared too, of course, but more grounded. It’s interesting to read about two characters who want nothing more than to disappear.
There is so much tension throughout the novel, thanks to De Karangal’s prose – our protagonists don’t share a language, so their communication is rife with opportunities for deception or catastrophe; neither does Hélène share a native language with her Siberian lover, who leaves her a voicemail that is so perfect and unexpected and heartbreaking that I feel I need to include it:
‘You must be near Irkutsk by this time and, strangely, I like knowing you are that city–the “a” dark and deep, nearly a closed “0,” the warm vibration of the “r”, rolled in the base of his throat; my love, soon you will see Baikal, make sure you leave the door of the compartment open, you can see the lake from the corridor for a full half hour, make sure you don’t miss it, it’s a treasure for the Russians, the country’s pearl, but for me, for us, the men of Siberia, it’s simply the sea–the labials that linger, the dentals that collide, the light hiss of saliva under the upper lip–yes, I said “us, the men of Siberia,” I’m rediscovering my country, Hélène, and I am happy…’
(The part where the train rounds to Lake Baikal and everyone in the train crowds the windows to see and applaud – it’s a truly beautiful, stirring page; I re-read it three times!) There’s of course the class contrast as evidenced by the relative comfort of their train cars; and the fact that Aliocha is so, so hungry but unable to eat while hiding; there’s the omnipresent, overwhelming desire to flee while the train hurdles on irrespective of your wishes. Tension builds and releases with each train station stop, each soldier on the platform, each cabin check by the steward or police.
5/5 Highly recommend if you are into tense stories with happy endings, train travel, Siberia, or short books with amazing prose.