Read Compartment No 6 for Free Online Page B

and looked at her with mawkish helplessness. The grim mood in the compartment made for a tight squeeze. The girl looked at his hands. They were tough and demanding.
    â€˜If you don’t want anything else, what about in the mouth? I’m just so damned tired of hiding in the corner and jerking off.’
    The girl wiped her lips dry with the back of her hand.
    â€˜Or if that’s no good, just one in the cheek would be all right. Strictly no hands. Georgian style.’
    He unfastened his belt. ‘You’re not exactly a honey-pot, but you’ll do. Same kind of bitch as all the rest. But that’s all right. Twat comes with, arse is extra!’
    Her eyes burned with unshed tears, which she tried to get rid of with a cough. He looked at her now and a worried expression came over his face.
    â€˜Are you catching a cold? I’ll make you some medicine. Get some vodka, add some pepper and a dash of honey. That’ll kill a flu.’
    He started looking for his vodka bottle. The girl yanked open the compartment door and left.
    A frozen marsh of delicate, snowy grasses bloomed in the train window. The landscape continued hour after hour almost the same, but constantly changing with the light. A blue thicket and a snowbank flashed across the frozen plain. A wavering line of men in grey-blue quilted jackets and trousers walked along the ridge of a snowbank with pickaxes in their hands.
    Dark, smoking clouds appeared in the sky, soon covering the shimmer of the sun completely, and an oppressive dimness fell over the icy landscape. The train braked and slowed. A three-legged dog hobbled along the flat gravel roadbed trailing a thin trickle of blood. The train arrived in Tyumen station.
    â€˜The train will stop for an hour or two,’ Arisa shouted. ‘In other words, as long as it likes.’
    There was a heap of wooden boxes on the platform. The girl piled three of them together to climb up to the corridor window, took a cloth handkerchief out of her pocket, and wiped one of the panes clean.
    When she’d cleaned the window she walked towards a station building veiled in dark red billowing mist. She went around the building and stopped at the south end. The station was ugly and dilapidated, the gutters were broken and pieces of the tin roof hung over the upper windows. The foundation was cracked in several places. The whole building slumped. Behind it she could see the glimmer of a dirty factory complex.
    One of the tall oak doors was open and she followed a crippled crow into the station hall. The room was empty and spacious, the air damply cold and heavy, a skiff of fog floating above the quiet. Two white-toothed dogs dozed by the drinks stand; the smell of muffled talk and stale buns drifted from the coffee stall. A wandering photographer stopped her, showed her his Moskova 2 camera, and asked if she wanted a picture of herself. She didn’t.
    She stopped for a moment at the entrance to the buffet before going to the counter to order pickles and smetana. Twelve well-fed flies with glistening wings buzzed over the stained menus. Paper napkins blew from one table to the next. A leathery piece of meat, a watery gruel of macaroni casserole, and a cake decorated with pink icing roses stared at her from the glass case.
    The station bell rang for the third time and the train rocked into motion. The oil town rose smouldering in the bright, frosty sunshine and hovered, all highrise rooftops gliding ever higher towards the lid of sky. The train sped past the freezing Soviet villages and housing areas. The limbo of unnamed towns was left behind. Pop music drifted from a distant compartment.
    The marshy plain was left behind and a birch forest weighed down with snow filled the land. The train moved in jerks now. A long line of freight trains carrying oil and coal appeared in front of the engine.
    Hours, minutes, seconds later the train picked up speed and the oil towns and surrounding oil wells and