They emerge from the red express train onto a long, cold platform at Paveletskaya, thick, black graffitti encircling the steamed-up windows of the limegreen outbound trains, delayed by a power failure out there in the birch woods (the last thing anyone expected to see: a lone swastika tattooed on a low steel fence by a clearing); and then, like the first flakes of snow and in succession: the blond boy in the rumpled coat throws away his receipt on the empty tracks, everyone begins to smoke and chatter as they break into the crowds, suitcases and people collide where the platform funnels through a narrow exit amid the smell of warm bread, and the wave is carried far, past the news kiosks and the wall of men in caps touting taxis, stiffened by the early evening rush; and the wave continues, elbowing through the heavy metro station doors and becoming still more concentrated as it rushes down the escalators smelling of clothes and vodka - into the famous metropolitan soup of coats, boots and faces.
Vanya is freezing on the corner of what he thinks is the place they will meet.
They are singing the Internationale in a deep, eerie voice and waving their red flags in the middle of Teatralnaya Ploshad - he is sure it is not an illusion. Ten Days That Shook the World, he thinks, snapping open the iphone. Jack can hear them in the Kremlin Wall. Still - there is more Ploshad than Party, and more vodka than doctrine is flowing through the crowd.
He has no idea where Natasha is in the labyrinth of the metro and is guessing that neither does she.
He has no idea where Natasha is in the labyrinth of the metro and is guessing that neither does she.