Riding the Rails Of Distress- Ch. 5

The night was long, and scary, and noisy, and sleepless. I would have loved to have been in Seattle, but alas, we were hurtling across the Asian Steppe instead. Swaying and snoring to the rhythm of the rails, dawn was approaching. Sleep had finally overtaken our weary bodies, but fate had a few last tricks to play on the SteppeSister Family before we reached our destination.

This particular trip was taken during the height of harvest season, late in the summer when fruits and veggies were ripening. Farmers were busy rushing their bounty to markets north to Moscow and time was of the essence. Our train pulled into a city deep in the heart of the agricultural region, and the plink-plinking of the brake checks woke us up out of our sleep deprived stupor. The ladies selling fried rice or steamed meat-filled dumplings sang out their wares, and the rumble of a train passing us on the adjacent track throbbed in our heads.

All was going well, and I even began to imagine that I could fall back asleep. But all of a sudden, a loud pounding on our door jolted me awake! Panicked, I threw on my pants. Perhaps I should have left them off; it might have done just the trick to scare the early morning intruders away.

Again, and again; bang, bang, bang!

A-low?! A-low?!!

We open the door and were brusquely told that our compartment (indeed all the compartments) were going to be loaded with produce. Take a guess at how many LARGE watermelons and Christmas melons can fit into an Asian train coupe? 36. 36 melons were deftly crammed into every inch of spare space we had. They were by my feet. On my sheets. But by then, I didn’t care about my sheets anymore. What was the use? They were in the under-the-bed compartments, up in overhead luggage compartment, next to my food bag under the table- everywhere.

Our language wasn’t good enough back then to resist, but by then, 18 hours of hell, it really didn’t matter. We didn’t have the emotional fortitude to fight anyway. So, we inhaled the sickly sweet smell of ripening melons for the remaining 6 hours of the trip.

The conductor then went around the side of the train which faced the station and began to shut every window shade and door, and opened up the doors on the side away from the view of anyone who shouldn’t see what was about to transpire. We didn’t know what that would be, but knew it was probably going to be something that wasn’t supposed to be going on. We didn’t want to see it, whatever it was, so we barricaded ourselves in once more.

We would soon find out we should have had the door open, and taken care of the “morning business” as soon as possible, but we shut it anyway, hoping that anymore would-be knockers would be warded off like 4 years olds who go under the covers to keep evil monsters away. We could hear quite a commotion outside the door, and wondered aloud to each other what on earth could be going on out there. After about a half an hour of banging, scuffling, yelling, and otherwise keeping us awake, things began to die down, and then the train lurched out of the station with its usual crash.

Gingerly, we opened the door, to find the ENTIRE corridor of the train filled with boxes, floor to ceiling. Boxes of tomatoes, grapes, bananas and other fruits and vegetables were stuffed in that train car like a Texan coming out of a steakhouse. It was a classic case of passenger train turned freight train. They, so kindly, left 6 inches of space between the boxes and the wall; just enough to suck in your gut and squeeze through. Thanks. The loaders were so desperate for space that they actually unscrewed and took OFF the AC/ heating units from the floors in the corridor!! Any hope for fresh air was now gone, and there were still 6 hours left to endure. The smell would just grow, not only from the quickly ripening melons, but also from the quickly rotting toilet. Speaking of the bathroom, they even thought about the lavatory door, and left enough space to open it about 4 inches. Not only was this new arrangement colossally inconvenient, it was downright dangerous!!

None of us had peed yet, and the need was quickly begging for attention. The kids once more, needed to fertilize their shoes, so a new arrangement needed to be found. We stacked the boxes a little better, so that the mommies and the daddies could also enter the gas chamber and take care of what they needed to. That accomplished, we scooched our way along the space meant for models like Twiggy, and with eyes glazed over, wondered just how much more we could take. You didn’t think this was the end of our time in purgatory, did you?? Only time would reveal just how bad things could really get…