He likely drew inspiration from the thought that as long as paper exists, somebody has to write on it.
Other passengers followed the philosopher’s lead.
Navrotsky brought a jar of stuffed peppers. Lavoisian brought meat patties with shreds of newspaper clinging to them. Sapegin brought pickled herring and shortbread, and Dnestrov offered some apple jam.
Others showed up, too, but Ostap was no longer granting favors.
“I can’t, my friends, I can’t,” he kept saying, “you do one person a favor, and the rest come begging.”
Ostap liked the journalists very much.
He would have felt touched by their generosity, but he was so full that he was completely unable to experience any emotion whatsoever.
He struggled back to his bunk and then slept for most of the day.
It was the third day of the journey.
The passengers were desperate for something to happen.
The Eastern Line was still far away, and nothing noteworthy was going on. The journalists from Moscow, exhausted from forced idleness, eyed each other suspiciously.
“Has anybody wired anything interesting to their office?”
Finally, Lavoisian couldn’t take it anymore and sent the following telegram:
“Passed orenburg stop smoke billows locomotive stack stop mood cheerful comma delegate cars talk eastern line only stop wire instructions aral sea lavoisian”
Word of the telegram got around, and a line formed at the telegraph counter in the next station.
Everybody sent brief reports regarding the cheerful mood on board and the smoke billowing from the locomotive’s stack.
A window of opportunity opened for the foreigners right after Orenburg, when they spotted their first camel, their first yurt, and their first Kazakh in a pointy fur hat with a whip in his hand.
At the small station where the train was delayed briefly, at least twenty cameras were aimed straight at a camel’s snout.
This was the beginning of things exotic: ships of the desert, freedom-loving sons of the plains, and other romantic characters.
The blue-blooded American woman emerged from the train wearing dark, round sunglasses and holding a green parasol to protect herself from the sun.
A gray-haired American pointed his Eyemo movie camera at her and filmed her in this outfit for a long time.
First she stood next to the camel, then in front of it, and finally squeezed herself in between its humps, which had been so warmly described by the attendant.
Short and nasty Heinrich weaved through the crowd saying:
“Keep a close eye on her, or she’ll accidentally get stuck here, and then there will be another sensation in the American press:
‘Fearless woman journalist in the clutches of deranged camel.’”
The Japanese diplomat stood right in front of a Kazakh.
They eyed each other silently.
They had absolutely identical, slightly flattened faces, bristly mustaches, smooth yellow skin, and eyes that were narrow and a bit puffy.
They would have passed for twins, if the Kazakh hadn’t been wearing a rough sheepskin coat with a cloth sash, while the Japanese wore a gray London-tailored suit; and if the Kazakh hadn’t learned to read just the year before, while the Japanese had graduated from universities in Tokyo and Paris twenty years earlier.
The diplomat took a step back, looked through his camera’s viewfinder, and pressed the button.
The Kazakh laughed, climbed onto his small ungroomed horse, and rode off into the plains.
But at the very next stop the romantic story took an unexpected twist.
Behind the station one could see bright red oil drums and a new yellow building made of wood. A long row of heavy machinery—their tracks pressed deep into the ground—stood in front of it.
A young woman wearing black mechanic’s pants and felt boots was standing on a stack of railroad ties.
The Soviet journalists took their turn.
They slowly advanced toward the woman, holding their cameras at eye level.
Menshov crept forward at the head of the pack.
He held an aluminum film cartridge in his teeth and made a series of rushes, like a infantryman in an attacking line.
But while the camel posed in front of the cameras as if he had a solid claim to celebrity, the girl was a lot more modest.
She suffered quietly through a handful of shots, then blushed and left.
The photographers then turned their attention to the machinery.
As luck would have it, a small caravan of camels was passing near the horizon—directly behind the machines.
Together they formed a perfect shot, which could be captioned
“The old and the new” or
“Who wins?”
Ostap woke up just before sundown.
The train continued across the desert.
Lavoisian wandered up and down the corridor, trying to talk his colleagues into putting out an onboard newsletter.
He even came up with the name: Full Steam Ahead.
“What kind of a name is that?” said Ostap.