A Bus Ride

Svetlana Molchanova

 

A crowd of people at the tram stop is a sure sign of traffic problems. “No use waiting for the tram,” a young man shouts. “They’re not running.”

That means I have to take the bus. Buses crawl at a ridiculous 30 km per hour even when the roads are clear and are never in a hurry to leave a stop. I get on a Mercedes bus, a powerhouse from the 90s. It might have navigated the streets of a European city prior to being considered eco-unfriendly and sold to Russia.

“When are we leaving? Stop dragging your feet!” Presumably, someone has just about had enough. The bus driver does not bother to answer and spends another couple of minutes at the stop making them five in total. It’s insane. Sometimes bus drivers spend more time loitering at the stop than actually driving. Their wages are ridiculously low, and some work for 12 hours straight every day to make ends meet, so the more passengers they collect, the better.

I look around. A big cross with the inscription Spasi i Sokhrani (Save and Protect) dangles in front of the windscreen; pictures of hot girls are lodged in crevices on the dashboard. As usual there are also some ads on the side windows of the bus: job vacancies at a meat-processing plant, rules and regulations on what to do if you spot an abandoned bag and an advert for an eye clinic with illegible print.

I have a window seat. The road is bound to be a long one, taking me across the city. Although the landscape is familiar and unpicturesque, looking out the window has a soothing effect on me. One starts to get a philosophical perspective on everything.

Normally the city looks gray and grim: insipid high-rises, muddy roads and dusty trees, with gaudy billboards being the only colorful spots. It is always like that: If something tries to look catchy and appealing, it will most certainly turn out to be a hoax. But since it snowed heavily yesterday, everything is crystal white. The branches are coated in sparkling ice, and a blanket of white envelopes the city. It feels like being in a fairy-tale.

An announcement in a loud and cheerful voice brings me out of my reverie. “Ladies and gentlemen, May we have your attention please? The Starlit Band is here to entertain you!”

They are bus performers, who get on at one stop, sing a song, make some money and get off at the next. Usually, they are a child and an adult, with the kid singing out of tune to some dull music. But these are different. The two guys seem to be music students. Professionally, they play and sing an upbeat yet conventional pop song about never ending love. I do not fancy their choice much, but the live performance is really on par with what you get at a concert. “I hope you enjoyed the song and agree to support the young musicians,” says one of them. Then he goes down the aisle and collects donations in his backpack.

My phone rings. It’s my colleague. Although I am officially on an annual holiday, I get two or three job-related calls every week. “Zdorovo, Petrovna,” a voice greets me informally, using my patronymic, “we have a problem.” For the next fifteen minutes, I carefully explain what is to be done. After I finish, I see that I have missed a call from my husband. I call him back.

“Hi, wasup?” It turns out that his friend is coming for the weekend, and they are going fishing. There is nothing my husband loves more than winter fishing. He can talk about it for ages. While others are craving a summer vacation, he always takes his annual leave during the colder season to practice his hobby. Fortunately, he never brings back many fish. For one thing, it has been my firm request for many years, as descaling and gutting fish always falls on my shoulders. Moreover, his expeditions normally do not yield much fruit.

Suddenly the bus speeds up, turning left and right trying to dodge potholes. The standing passengers tilt and fall, grumbling. But the bus driver can rejoice – he did not let his fellow colleague overtake him and reached the bus stop first.

A gaggle of adolescent girls gets on. Thin nylon stockings, short-fitted jackets, no hats. Even the sight of the girls makes me shiver.  An old lady looks at them with a critical eye and mutters: “They say it will get as cold as -23 °C tonight.” The girls giggle and move to the other end.

Although there is a heating system, it is quite chilly inside the bus because the doors constantly open. Winter lasts for about five months, but Russians’ tolerance for cold is not very high, and most people would rather dress warmly than fortify themselves against low temperatures. Actually, it is usually witheringly hot in flats and houses in winter. Heat breaks no bones, the Russian proverb goes.

As we pass a church, a woman crosses herself. Another woman, wearing a hijab and sitting nearby, is engrossed in her smartphone.

A mom with a toddler gets on. One of the senior ladies offers to let the child sit on her lap. When the kid is seated, a bunch of grannies start talking to her:

“What is your name?”

“How old are you?”

“Here, have a piece of candy.”

The kid takes it, and her mother says: “Now, what should you say.” The child looks overwhelmed and bursts out crying. The grannies are anxious to put a stop to it.

“Oh, you’re such a big girl, big girls don’t cry.”

“Look what a beautiful car is passing by.”

The mother takes her child in her arms, and someone offers them a seat. She hugs and kisses her daughter. “Now, that’s okay. Everything’s all right,” she soothes the kid. But the wailing continues till the girl gets tired and can only sob.

The bus stops in front of the market and a knot of elderly people get on. They carry heavy bags filled with groceries. The prices at that market are some of the lowest in the city, so the retired often go there to buy in large quantities. Such shopping tours allow them to save some 50-100 rubles, and subsidized bus tickets make the trip even more appealing. Trifles like exhaustion and backache are never taken into account.

“Everything is soooo expensive now. A loaf of bread was 20 rubles last week, now it’s 25!!! And the sunflower oil. Here you can buy it for 75 rubles per liter, but in a store you can never find anything for less than a hundred. I remember in Soviet times a loaf of bread was 20 kopecks and a sausage was 2.20 per a kilo,” a senior lady with heavily loaded bags reminisces.

“Yes, and people went to Moscow to do grocery shopping, because here the shelves of the shops were empty. We had a meat-processing plant in the city back then, but you could never buy their products here, though in Moscow they were readily available,” a middle-aged man chipped in.

“But there was law and order,” the woman continues “and the plants were operating, everyone had a job. And now… They have closed them down and turned everything into malls.” She keeps groaning and grumbling for quite a while with no one interrupting her, but I guess everyone feels relieved when the woman finally falls silent.

The traffic has slowed to a crawl, which is unusual for this time of the day – too early for traffic jams. There is probably an accident ahead. Then, someone near the windscreen gasps:

“Just look!”

Everyone peers out the windows. The road has become a canal filled with knee-deep steaming water. The cars are barely able to make it through. The bus is higher, but some of the water gets through the doors and into the bottom of the steps. The passengers who are near the windows pull out their smartphones to film and take photos of the flood. The driver starts cursing. “Why on Earth can’t they repair the water mains once and for all?! Only last week, a pipe burst in the very same place. And here we go again!”

“They could have laid new pipes if they really wanted to solve the problem,” someone says. “But why take the trouble when you can make money hand over fist repairing the bursts constantly.”

The speech receives murmurs of approval. The water piping system is old and rusty. Accidents happen on a daily basis. One can’t help but wonder at the cycle of work: first they build a road, then in a week or two a pipe bursts underneath, so workers dig a hole and repair the damage, causing additional traffic jams, as vehicles have to drive around. Then the road is paved again. This asphalt buckles over the winter, and the cycle starts anew.

It takes us 40 minutes to drive along the drowned section of road and the roundabout, while normally it takes not more than 2-3 minutes. We pass the next two or three stops without any trouble. I turn my attention to my social media feed. I am still scrolling through it when I realize that someone wants to get off the bus without paying the fare. It seems totally wrong when one does not wish to pay for the service provided. What seems even more wrong is that other passengers have to wait till the argument is over and the bus continues onward. Eventually the woman pays for her trip, and I go back to scrolling. It takes me another 10-15 minutes to realize that we are still in the same spot.

I lift my eyes and see that some people are getting off the bus. A few are quarreling with the driver. Something is definitely going on. I also head to the exit. It turns out that the central road is being blocked due to the Ski Festival held at the stadium nearby. What is meant to be a sports event is usually a display of power and unity with long speeches by big-shot politicians, performances by singers and dancers and cheers from the crowd consisting of schoolchildren and students who are normally bussed in right from their institutions. The nearby roads are blocked so that there will be no traffic commotion within sight. That means the bus will have to turn round and go back without finishing the route.

“Why don’t they have a water ski festival at the roundabout?” someone sneers. “It looks like they don’t even have to prepare the venue.” Two middle-aged ladies complain that they have not arrived at their destination and will not pay the fare. The driver says that there is nothing he can do about the roadblock, and he is not to be blamed for it. This type of conversation continues for a while until the ladies understand it is no use quarreling and pay for their tickets to get off. I also pay the fare and descend the steps. As I exit, I overhear a vicenarian talking to her friend: “You know, I’ve had a driving license for ten years, but I don’t drive a car. I sometimes confuse the gas and brake pedals and I need an instructor to help me learn how to drive. I’m really sick and tired of our public transportation system.”

I join the crowd of people heading along the street to bypass the festival venue. An elderly lady is struggling with her shopping trolley and two groceries bags. I offer her a hand, but she says she is fine. Probably, she doesn’t trust her bags to anyone.

As I pass a municipal building, I see a banner saying, “Happy Holidays, Our Beloved City!” It is there throughout the year, no matter what the season is or whether there are any special occasions. When it fades in the sun, they just replace it with a new one.

The blaring of the music and speeches through a loudspeaker can be heard in the area of the stadium, but I have no time to spare and hurry on. It starts snowing. The tiny snowflakes prickle my face. At last I make it to the bus stop outside the blocked area… just to find that it is overcrowded with people. “I’d better call a taxi,” I say to myself, rummaging through my bag for the smartphone.

The battery is dead. The frost has drained it. I am bound to be fashionably late.

It’s getting colder. I desperately try to keep warm by rubbing my hands and hopping on both feet. It must seem like ridiculous behavior in a grown woman, but no one cares. My eyes become watery, and my nose, I guess, turns crimson. At last, I manage to squeeze myself into the fifth bus. It is not a direct one. I will have to transfer to get to my destination, but as long as I am in a place where it is a bit warmer, I do not care. There are way more people in the bus than are allowed onboard. I stand on one foot and am not able to reach the handle, but nonetheless I am in no danger of falling: The bus is so packed that I have no room to fall.

A young girl at the back tries to push her way to the exit but fails. “Push harder,” some passengers advise her, “then you’ll manage to bulldoze your way out.” But the girl is no bulldozer, so she is forced to go two or three extra stops before the crowd gets a little thinner and lets her out.

It is nice that they have a bus map displayed on the window, so I know when our paths will separate and I will have to descend. Then I will catch a minibus called a marshrutka. It will drive me to the industrial and residential outskirts of the city, where, for kilometers, the road goes along the railway, separated from the latter by a wall. This wall is covered with graffiti art so one will always have something to look at when travelling into this otherwise dull area. A girl with a tear-drop is depicted next to some aliens, with the city skyline in the background. This painting is followed by a dachshund with a bun on the side and ketchup on top. My favorite is a 3D ruby rose.

A couple of guys with a rusty piece of white goods get on the bus, completely blocking the only door. The driver starts to protest, but the guys assure him that they’ll get off at the next stop, which is just opposite the scrapyard they are heading to. “Helped my auntie get rid of an old stove,” one of them explained. “She really is a nice old body.” The driver sighs and shakes his head, but says nothing. “I thought my heart was made of stone,” he continues, addressing his pal now, “but then I met this girl. She’s such a charming little thing. Sorry, buddy, don’t got no money on me,” he says turning to the driver when they arrive at the stop. The driver seems to be glad to see the last of them, even though he has gained nothing.

It starts to get warmer as we approach the flare of a local refinery. It is burning day and night, and the few locals still residing in the area joke that they need neither lanterns outside nor central heating inside. The buildings here are dark gray with soot, and the sky is orange from the glare. The whiff of burning rubber is in the air. The pipes here have always been molten hot, and we used to heat our sandwiches on them when I was a kid. Now the community around the refinery is in decay as people are moving out. Stray dogs have come to take their place, their barking heard round the clock.

I am addressed by a woman asking about her stop. I explain that she will have to get off at the stop after the next one. She can’t hear me properly, so I speak up. The driver, overhearing, butts in and says: “It is five speed bumps away.” I chuckle, but the woman looks puzzled. “We’ve just crossed one sleeping policeman, and there are five more and then it’s your stop,” he explains. You can always feel it when a bus rides over a speed bump as you bounce up and down. I used to like it when I was a schoolgirl and would have a back seat if given an option to experience this sensation in full, but nowadays I would rather enjoy a smooth ride.

Finally, I arrive at the destination and get off. It is quite dark already and the street is poorly lit with lanterns. I summon my courage and start walking as briskly as I can up a narrow path trampled in the snow. But my progress is rather slow as the path is uneven. Time and again I step into the knee-deep snow giving way to anyone heading in the opposite direction. The street is built up with Khrushchyovkas, drab gray five-storied apartment buildings from the 1960s (the Khrushchev era) with low-cost tiny flats. The only bright spots are the shop signs of the outlets located on the ground floor. Huge icicles are hanging from the roofs, and I put my hood up over a fluffy bobble beanie to have some extra protection, just in case. Anyway, it is freezing, and frost is the best protection against falling icicles… apart from clearing snow off the roofs.

After climbing up what locals call a mountain, I have to go down the metal staircase. I cling to the banister, descending carefully. Although the stairs have been cleared of snow, there is still a thin layer of ice on them. They run to a lane with garages on both sides. The garages are used not only for cars, but also as a getaway or a mental health retreat for men. The only way out for pedestrians or cars alike is down the remaining third of the slope that kids use for sledding in winter. The snow here is packed hard.  A sled might have come in handy. It would have allowed me to get to the bottom in an instant. Instead, I start moving sideways, carefully, pausing after every step. If I fall down and hurt myself, chances are, I won’t be found till morning. “Stop speculating,” I say to myself. “There’s only a little way to go.”

At last, I reach the foot of the hill. I really doubt any car can make it down in winter.

The most trying part of my journey is over, and I reach a small detached house at the end of the street without much difficulty. I ring the doorbell and, when the hostess answers the door, say hello.

“Hi, Katia. We’ve been waiting for you for ages!”

“Sorry. It’s been a really long trip.”