The train at 23:40 on Day 3 is quieter than any train you have been on. The wheels under the car make their own sound and nothing else makes sound. The corridor is dim. The other compartment doors are closed. The woman in the compartment next to yours is snoring lightly and you can hear her through the wall and the snoring does not disturb you because the snoring is someone else's sleep, which is not something you have.
You put on the long shirt that is still not yours and the jeans and the boots. You step into the corridor. A man passes you going toward the samovar, his phone in his hand. A minute later he passes the other way, still looking at his phone. You file him. You go to the dining car because you do not want to be in your compartment.
The dining car at 23:50 is a different car than the one Lenz was in. The lights are dimmer. The waitress is a different waitress — younger, with a boredom that is not unkind. The two men playing chess are different two men. A woman in a dark green sweater is at a table by herself with a bottle of beer and a novel.
There is one other person — a man in his late twenties, maybe thirty, at a table near the galley. Light-brown hair. A grey T-shirt. A backpack on the seat beside him. Dutch, you think, before you know why you think it — something in the jaw, something in the wide frame of the shoulders that European-not-Russian-not-Mediterranean tends to mean. He is drinking beer from a glass and reading a book whose cover you cannot see. He looks up when you come in.
You sit at the table behind his.
You order beer. Two hundred and sixty rubles. The waitress nods. You pay. You drink.
Fifteen minutes go by.
"Is it OK?" He has turned halfway on his bench. His English is Dutch the way a Dutch person's English is — almost no accent and also, at the edges, a specific placement of the stress. "This is my first time on this train."
"Mine too."
"Where to?"
"Vladivostok."
"Ulan-Ude. I get off at Ulan-Ude." He smiles. The smile is a smile of a man who has been on the train alone for two days and has decided he has had enough of being alone.
His name is Pieter. He works as a photographer for a Dutch magazine that is not called the New Yorker but operates in that register. He is on his way to do a story about the last monks of a monastery in Mongolia. He has been in Moscow for a week. Before that, Rotterdam. Before that, he has been a lot of places a photographer is in a decade that is like this one. He shows you the book — a Dutch novel you do not know.
You tell him less. You tell him you are doing research. You tell him you are a student.
He does not ask what research.
He drinks his beer. You drink yours. Another forty-five minutes.
The waitress starts cleaning tables. The chess-men leave. The woman in the dark green sweater marks her book and goes.
Pieter stands.
"I am in car 8. The compartment-mates are with me in Moscow. I have a compartment to myself tonight. If you want."
"Yes."
You say yes and you mean yes.
You walk back through two cars together. His hand is not on your back; his hand is not on you at all. He walks slightly ahead because the corridor is narrow and he is the one who knows which compartment. The corridor smells of heater and old upholstery and the slight diesel of the train's body. You notice that your own body is awake in a way it has not been since before Istanbul. You notice the length of your own spine.
The compartment is small. The bed is single. He closes the door. The lock is the small button kind. He locks it.
He does not rush.
The jacket goes on the hook. The shirt comes off over his head. The shoulders are wider than you expected — a photographer's shoulders from carrying cameras a long time. There is a small tan-line at the collar. There is hair on his chest you can count if you wanted to.
You take off the long shirt that is not yours.
His hands on your hips are warm. His hands are dry. His mouth on your mouth is the mouth of a person who wants to be there and has decided.
Keep your face still.
You do not keep your face still.
Later. 02:50.
The train is moving through a dark you cannot name. His arm is across your stomach. He is not asleep; he is close to it. Your mouth tastes of beer and him. You are breathing in a way you had forgotten breathing felt like.
He turns his head. His eyes are blue. You had not noticed.
"Is this OK?" He asks.
"Yes."
"I am glad."
He kisses the top of your shoulder and closes his eyes. His arm stays.
You are awake.
You lie awake and watch the ceiling and you do not think anything you can name. Your body is the body that has just done this. Your body is the body that was read in a dining car two nights ago by a man whose name is Adrien Lenz and whose hand has a scar. Your body is the body that has been on the train for three days.
I did that.
I chose that.
I do not know what I just did. I know I chose it.
Keep your face still.
04:42.
He is asleep.
You get up. You put on the long shirt. You put on the jeans. You put on the boots. You look at him once and he is a man asleep on a train, and he is not going to be in your life after Ulan-Ude, and the not-being-in-your-life is part of what you chose.
You take a piece of paper from his table and write, in English: Thank you for the compartment. V.
You leave the note on the pillow where your head had been.
You unlock the door.
You walk back to your car through the corridor that is still dim and still smells of heater and now also smells, faintly, of a body that was yours ninety minutes ago.
You enter your compartment. The woman next door is not snoring anymore; she has gone quieter in a deeper part of her sleep. You sit on your berth.
The light outside is going grey. Not the grey of rain. The grey of a sky that is about to be something and has not yet decided what.
I am twenty-three.
I am on a train.
I am on my way east.
I chose that.
I do not know what I just did. I know I chose it.