…as i ease into the seat. something is wrong, even though it feels so right. for the first time since i’ve been here, i’ve managed to get a seat on the bus home. i am deeply suspicious. i even have a choice – one with no view through the window on the left, or one with no view through the window on the right. naturally, i take the seat with no view on the left.
the lack of a view through the window is one of the many features of riding siberian buses that makes them so endearing. there are several reasons why you can’t see out of the window – the window is dirty or it is covered in ice or there is a frilly pink curtain in the way. siberians aren’t big on curtains in their own homes, perhaps because there is no word for ‘privacy’ in russian, but when it comes to buses they really go to town. and it is always the slightly over-fussy style of curtain that you find in domestic british toilets. to complement this look, there are also fading pictures of kittens or puppies dotted around the place, while the driver very often has to peer through a variety of enormous rubber plants to see where he is going. i’m sure if i looked carefully, i’d find a wool-knit matrooshka doll with a toilet roll underneath.
the source of this travelling toilet chic is the conductor. there is one on every bus and it is invariably a woman. as in all good matriarchal homes, she takes care of the money (18p for anywhere in the city) and keeps the bus spotlessly clean, while the driver, invariably a man, enjoys himself cutting up pedestrians and ladas. i like to think of them as a slightly grumpy couple who might bicker with each other but otherwise show the kind of tough united front that stymied both napoleon and hitler. indeed, the only time i’ve seen the driver leave his seat-cum-armchair was when a slightly drunken man complained for all of two seconds about the driver’s staccato clutch control. the conductor immediately launched into a defence of her ‘husband’ while he simply stopped the bus in the middle of the road, walked up the aisle, literally picked the man up and threw him out of the door.
when choosing which bus to get on – there are so many you can wait a minute or two for the next one – an important factor is the size of the conductor. basically, is she a porker? porkers are rare here – you see about one a week, as opposed to one a minute in britain – but there a couple on the buses. and size really does matter because, despite the number of them, the buses are massively overcrowded. in the mornings it’s not too bad. this is largely because i’m not an early starter and also because my stop is populated by special dwarf russians. these little people take up less room and therefore it feels less congested. sadly for them, all the buses are german (i know this because charmingly they still have all the german signs on them, my favourite being one written in seven different languages, none of which is russian). germans are generally quite tall and so the handrails are placed at an appropriate reach for their height, one which is several inches above the arm length of the little people. the little people then have the choice of whether to fall over every time the driver changes gear, or to jump up, grip on and hang suspended from the rail for the duration of the journey. some of the older desperate ones will grab onto your coat like someone drowning and you have to beat them off or face being pulled to the floor with them.
in the evenings normal size is resumed and a fat conductor can make the difference between life and death. this is because every journey feels like an attempt on the world record for the number of people in a confined space. it is staggering. you can only take shallow breaths, not only because there is very little oxygen left on the bus, but because you are so crushed you can only breathe in when the people around you are breathing out. and this is just the static situation – when the conductor starts moving down the aisle people have to make way for her and the only place available is other people. there is a kind of domino effect and a fat conductor can be felt some 20-25 people away as she rolls slowly through the crowd like a human ball in a claustrophobic’s nightmare of 10-pin bowling.
naturally, only the strong survive, but as the weak ones are crushed and die, this engenders a blitz-like spirit among the rest of the passengers. we all laugh as we sway back and forward to the rhythm of the bad driving, and go into fits when the bus stops and someone else actually tries to get on. there are cheers if they manage it by clambering over heads and lying on top of people in the seats. and if someone wants to get off, it is like the culmination of a successful escape plan if they manage it. for not only do they have to get past the hundreds of bodies, conscious and unconscious, between them and the door, they also have no idea where they are. the windows are dirty, iced up, covered in german stickers, shrouded in pink toilet curtain and finally blocked by the heads of all the people. if we are lucky, someone finds a tiny crack through all the obstacles and sends word back – ‘permyakova!’ if it’s your stop, you steel yourself, square your shoulders and begin your escape. ‘mozhne?’ you say jokingly – ‘is it possible?’ of course, it isn’t, not without someone getting hurt, but this is the ritual and everyone understands – if you break their leg forcing your way through, it is an honourable injury and they accept it without malice just as you would for them. when you finally make it to the outside, the fresh air is painful in your lungs, like a starving man eating too much too soon. but at least you have made it.
all of which makes me suspicious about getting a seat on an uncrowded bus. this state of mind is not helped by the fact that, as usual, they are playing the theme from the godfather over the bus stop tannoy. is someone going to be iced and only us ignorant few don’t know about it? the doors close and the bus pulls away. like all the buses it is old and at every gear change it makes a noise like bruce lee before he launches the decisive kick at someone’s head. i begin to sweat, nervous. the conductor comes and issues my ticket. i recognise her. she is one of the porkers but i am not crushed by her movements. i grip the armrest, all this relaxed and comfortable travelling is making me tense. the bus stops. no one gets on. it is silent. we all look at each other fearfully. this is wrong. it is like we have contravened one of the deeper moral precepts – murder, adultery, baked potatoes without pickled onions. what is going on? suddenly the conductor starts moving down the aisle asking for our destinations. she reports back to the driver. he is not happy as only he should be allowed to sit in comfort. he tells us as much over the tannoy. we agree and offer to bunch up in a corner but it is no use. he kicks us all off and, pathetically, gratefully, we all clamber aboard the next bus, happy to be crushed and starved of oxygen once again.
