When Jenya took me downtown in his Japanese right-hand drive, we found the train was late. Or maybe we were early, but anyway, he took me to buy some music to kill time.

“You should buy this guy’s music.” Jenya waved three cassettes at me. “He was imprisoned by Stalin for his lyrics.” Obediently, I handed my roubles over to the handsome drunk whose forearms dangled out of the stall – but Jenya wasn’t finished. “You should also buy this.” His index finger rested on another cassette. “It is military music. There are lots of whistles, and shouting of ‘Ya!’”

He looked at me, deadpan “You know, I really hate prison music. The people who listen to it are worse than morons.”

Prison music? My attention was distracted by the stall guy… God, he was really drunk. As I sifted through the tapes he intermittently popped his head out, shouting random phrases in English like “one hundred percent bamboo!” I spotted some Pink Floyd, and handed over more money. The guy seemed barely able to see the notes. “Very good Russian illegal unauthorised copies!” he shouted. Then he mumbled a phrase I didn’t understand, but which ended in “America”, and spat with feeling on the floor.

Jenya had a ready collection of stock sayings at his disposal. The night before, bemoaning his friends turning up unannounced at his flat, he complained, “An unexpected visitor is worse than a Tatar”.

After walking the length of the train, I realised not a soul spoke my language, or any language I spoke. I encountered an attractive man in the corridor who stopped me, and demanded: “Ruski?” I shook my head. “Polski? Deutsch?” I shook my head. “Français?” I suggested, desperately. He exhaled sharply through his nose and continued down the carriages.

The next morning we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, about a fifth of the way to Moscow. I spent the first half of the day sitting in the restaurant car, blowing my nose and sniffing, thinking with deep melancholy of a short affair I had left behind in Mongolia. Boris, the waiter, gave me a remedy for my cold. He placed it carefully in front of me, his eyes chocolate pools of concern.

“You are alone. No friends. You should be with friends. Ha ha ha!” He slapped his leg, and raised an imaginary glass to his lips. Then his face fell back into a pantomime expression of concern.

“I am meeting a friend – podruga– in Moscow.”

Boris, palpably relieved, patted my shoulder.

I had a headache, and only one Paracetamol. I plugged into Pink Floyd to ease the pain, and was still listening to it by the afternoon, watching the taiga shoot by: pines, birches, long grass, bushes, the occasional meadow or wooden-built village.

Sunset spread over the interminable forest as I lost consciousness.

The next day I lived the previous day all over again, Pink Floyd accompanying me as we hurtled through the blackening tunnel of unchanging taiga. The children continued to play in the corridor outside, and I spent a laborious afternoon learning Russian with the family in my car. We were imprisoned by forest. I pined for open air.

Watching the trees of identical shade, texture and height whir by, I was gripped by ennui. I wondered if this is why the pioneers of the New World cleared the forest. It menaced them. I moved my watch slowly forward, not knowing what time it was anywhere.