Yuri, Toshek, and Vlad

     Yuri, Toshek, and Vlad got on the train in Kiev. Embassy Joe had routed me through Kiev to have time with my "assistants" as the slow train through the Ukraine was now making its way toward Samara, Russia. Yuri, though extremely nervous and always tending to issues or taking notes, spent time talking to me and was filled with information that he mostly agreed to share. Toshek and Vlad, both Ukrainian, were just plain scary guys. Toshek, tall and thin with dark hair that stuck out on one side of his head and was matted down on the other, had this half smiling look in his eyes and face that almost never changed. He too, like Yuri, was tooth challenged and the combination of a shit eating grin with spaces between his teeth unnerved me. I knew my feelings were a bit unfair towards Toshek and I figured I'd eventually get used to it but hadn't yet in the 4 hours I'd been around him.  As for Vlad, Yuri warned me to keep my distance from him and not to speak too much English when he is around.

     Yuri suggested, "Even if asks you question or tells you something, just move head or be silent...and don't make smiling too much."

     "Why? what's up with him? He knows I'm an American...I assume."

     "He get very nervous on people sometime.  He can shout easy and maybe try to hurt people if he thinks you are laughing at him. That's why no smiling from you. Americans smile too much. But I see you not making smiles so much. That's good."

     "Thank you for the advice.  I'll do my best to keep a serious face and avoid Vlad."

     "One more something about Vlad: He is still taking care of last job for someone. If he leaves sometimes, probably is taking care of things for his job."

     I didn't exactly understand what Yuri meant at the time but I had witnessed Vlad sneaking back to the luggage car and opening windows. My assumption was that he was smoking a cigarette there since we were in "No Smoking" compartments. Vlad, a powerful looking man over 6 feet tall with a purposeful gait whenever he walked, would scan all around him as he took half the steps I would getting back to the luggage car.  He wore a very dusty jacket with matching dusty pants that looked color coordinated with his dark sandy hair that I imagined was "bowl cut" by himself. And, to go with what Yuri had said, his chiseled Slavic face and deep set eyes looked madder than hell all the time. A jaw clenched with tendons taut in his neck and muscles of mastication on his head constantly twitching and writhing.

     While I had hardly seen Toshek at all and started wondering if he had gotten off someplace along the way, avoiding Vlad wasn't as easy as I had hoped.  With two days on a train to Samara, there were few places to hide and we found ourselves face to face more than a dozen times. The train was not packed tight with people but very few compartments had any vacant seats. Every time I got up from my converted sleeping berth, Vlad would watch me and usually stand up to see better if I went in the direction of the luggage car.  Twice I was held up next to the luggage car by passengers standing in the corridor talking. Both times Vlad drifted out and stared at me until I passed the people and continued toward the restaurant car.  He definitely didn't like me being anywhere near his things and/or he was hiding something in the luggage car I figured.  So far, the only thing I had seen him doing in the luggage car was standing by the open window with one arm out and the other arm holding what looked like a sleeping bag or duffle bag. The bag was very shiny and black, though, like a garbage bag for yard work. That seemed strange. I ran ahead quickly when I realized he might react to me watching him.

***

     Our sleeping compartment was three bunks on either side. The top two sleeping berths would fold down against the wall with the middle bunk becoming a back rest during the day when we four were awake and sitting on the bottom "beds".  With my assistants moving about all day back and forth to the luggage car and the restaurant car, we were rarely all four in the compartment at the same time, except at night. I hadn't slept well the night before they joined me and on this first day together, around 2pm, I asked Yuri if he minded if I took a short nap on one of the bottom bunks.  He nodded and pointed to the free bunk across from him. "Not a problem."

     There were six blankets in our compartment and some pillows without pillow cases that smelled pretty badly. The odor was identifiable somewhere between armpit and old urine.  I grabbed one of the blankets...kind of like an American moving blanket or quilt with half the stitching out or loose. The fill in the blanket was coming out. It was a strange dark-colored sawdust. I put the pillow in my jacket and zipped it up.  As I was taking my shoes off and getting ready to lie down, Yuri handed me a small plastic cup with vodka in it and said, "Maybe you will get better napping if you take a small drink. Please!"  Surprised but not refusing it, I smiled at Yuri and shot it in one gulp.  Recognizing from the flavor that this was "bimber" (moonshine from sugar) it nearly came up as quickly as it went down. I'd never gotten used to sugar based bimber in Poland and had an immediate gag reflex when I smelled it.  Miraculously, I kept it down but my eyes were watering. Yuri said, "Not many Americans like our national beverage I think. Rest for now."

     Hard to say how long I was asleep. The bimber took effect quickly and I was out. With a bit of a sleep deficit, I quickly started dreaming.  It was a repeat of the absurd scene I'd witnessed leaving a small town in the Ukraine the afternoon before. The train was slowly picking up speed and rocking side to side as we began passing small farms along the way. On a steep berm next to the tracks, I'd seen an older man masterbating openly with one hand and waving at the train with the other. I had a beer in my hand at the time and was staring directly at him through my open window as I stood in the corridor. Others in the train, also looking out through open windows, were laughing out loud and waving at him. The scene was the same in my dream except for the two boys sitting near him watching and cheering him on. That dream faded and the next began. I was suddenly on a huge open plain with rockets and jets scattered on the ground as far as the eye could see.  I was surrounded by them and suddenly I was in a panic that I was going to die from the fumes of all the rocket fuel that the ground had soaked up from these behemoth boosters lying all around.  I started running in the dream but couldn't get anywhere as events started going in slow motion.

     With a start I woke up and for an instant couldn't see very well. I reached for my face quickly and my vision came back, as a handful of three inch long cockroaches went scurrying off. Realizing they had been on my face, I was extremely upset and tried to get to the WC to wash my face off. Someone was in the bathroom at the time and I waited in the corridor with my towel and a bar of soap. I washed my face after a mother and daughter came out of the WC. Feeling a little better I joined Yuri back in the compartment.

     "Why you look so upset?" he asked.

     "I woke up with cockroaches on my face!"  I said loudly and with more than a hint of disgust.

      "Probably thirsty. They were taking a drink from your face...maybe tears from your eyes or something from nose or mouth."

     "Shut the fuck up. Jesus, I can barely take that."

     As I was expressing myself in more colorful terms than usual and in English that was louder than my usual hushed whispers, Vlad came down the corridor and around the corner with a very curious look on his face. He and Yuri exchanged some comments about my being a drinking fountain for cockroaches and then Vlad left. He was headed back to the luggage car.  I asked Yuri what Vlad and he were talking about. Yuri thought for a few seconds about his answer and said, "Vlad hopes nothing bad happens to you while he's around."

     "What the fuck does that mean?!"

     "I don't know."