Purgatory

PERM, Russia — The Trans-Siberian is as close an experience to Purgatory as is possible in the Earthly realm.

This is especially true of the middle days in the journey, the ones where there is no arrival nor departure. The day begins and ends on the train. There is nothing in particular to look forward to, everything that exists at the reveille where be there at bedtime, and the day's only marker will be that the destination is now just three days away as opposed to four.

Being stuck on a train for so long means that at some point, the traveler must surrender the idea of the destination. It would be madness to countdown the minutes in an 84 hour journey across the tundra. Instead the train must be accepted as a new way of living.

No longer I am bound by expectations or goals, there is no point to life on the train. The car will move 1,000 miles today whether or not I brush my teeth. I could not move from my bed, and it would still be a successful day. The key to making it to Ulan-Ude is forgetting that there is an Ulan-Ude, and then just be.

My entire existence is a train car, and most of the time there I am confined to the compartment. The four of us are not overly compressed inside, and I am especially fortunate to have a top compartment. This means I have the luxury of returning to my own personal space at any time, where I can lie flat or sit Indian style, face the window or the door. During the day I spend most of my time on the bottom bunk, with doubles as Olga's bed at night. Usually I sit closest to the door, Olga near the table, but sometimes this can be reversed. If Sergei is out sometimes I stretch my feet across the aisle, legs flat. This is my favorite position, it feels like a recliner.

What do I do in these various seating positions? There are first and foremost the distractions I brought aboard. My iPod is best, with its 3,900 songs and 200 Podcasts. I learn about a new digital camera with 10 megapixel resolution from David Pogue of the New York Times, investigate North Korean counterfeiting with a reporter from the BBC, and wonder with the Slate Gabfest crew if Barrack Obama's campaign will fly. There are songs, too, my favorite being from the group Peter, Bjorn and John. It's called "Defects on My Affection." The chorus asks a single, piercing query:

"The question is
Was I more alive than I am now?
I have to happily disagree.
I laugh more often now,
I cry more often now.
I have to disagree."

I play the song twice, but then save the third repetition for inside my head. There's no way to charge the device on board, or at least now way that I can figure out. That means I'll have to make the trip on only one tank. I shift my iPod use to maximize battery life: backlight turned off, no skipping songs, no games, no video. I carefully make playlists and don't deviate from them. Even with careful rationing, the battery looks like it won't make it past day three.

I also brought books. I could see my mother's brow furrow when I decided to bring eight books and an equal number of socks. She tried to convince me that I might not need a book about Eritrea. Combined the books weigh about 15 pounds and take up quite a bit of space in both my suitcase and pack, but I don't care. They're worth every ounce. Today I pounded through this year's Booker Prize Winner, The Inheritance of Loss. I bought this for my sister at Christmas, but after she pounded through the copy I swiped it and brought it out.

The novel centers around several people tied by an estate in the Indian town of Darjeeling. The patriarch lives a lonely existence on the fringes of the Himalaya, content to be alone while the other people pine for Delhi and New York. Although written by an Indian-Englishwomen, the book is Russian in scope, chronicling three generations of despair. These are lonely, desperate people, who live broken lives and yearn for an emotional payoff that never comes. Reinforcing the link to Russian literature is a strange plot detail: the little girl who figures in most of the story is the daughter of Indian astronauts both killed on a mission in the Soviet Union. Since this act sends most people in the book into the pit of misery they will stay stuck for the rest of their lives, it could be said that Russia is these people's undoing.

And that's about it really. Besides reading and listening to music, I eat, go to the bathroom and stare out the window. It sounds terribly boring, and somewhat quixotic. Why go all the way around the world to do something easily accomplished on the couch with a bag of Doritos? But inside today's nothingness there were moments of transcendence, when everything felt all right with the world. Even though I'm not doing anything, it still feels like I am on an adventure, crossing the terra incognito on the map. I may be in purgatory, but I'm strangely alive while serving my time.