F I V E -C O RN E RS

Easter Foils Train Bribe Attempt

By Charles Digges

THE CONVENTIONAL wisdom governing train travel in Russia has always been that a bribe will solve everything.

No tickets?

No problem. With a wink and a nudge and a couple hundred grand, you're on your way.

Don't like your seat?

No problem. Cough up a little extra for the conductor and you're living large in a first class cabin.

Geriatric seat mate boring you to death with pictures of the grand-kids and stories about the blockade?

No problem. For less than 10 American dollars, the conductor will slip a mickey in his tea and split the contents of his luggage with you.

Russian Orthodox Easter 1997, however, was the day the bribing stopped.

I was to set off at 8:30 a.m. for the town of Tikhvin, 180 kilometers to the east of St. Petersburg, to write a story about a vote the city was holding to decide whether or not it wants to open a factory that environmentalists say will belch radioactive chrome dust into their tap water. Arriving at Moscow railway station at 8 a.m., I had plenty of time to buy a ticket and stock up on dried goods and true crime tabloids for the four-hour bounce and jolt ahead.

Except that - due to the holidays - the train station's ticket office didn't open until 8:15 a.m.

At 8:16, the sternly bee-hived babushki running the booths filed in and took about another 10 minutes to gossip and crank start their cash registers before serving the first customer in line.

By the time I got to a window, it was getting dangerously close to departure time, 8:27, in fact, but fortunately, my platform was close by.

I threw some money down and asked for a ticket to Tikhvin.

"I can't sell you one," said the troll from behind her thick glass. "Next customer..."

"But why not?" I demanded.

"Because we stop selling tickets 10 minutes before departure."

"But I have been standing in line since 8:00," I said. "You opened late."

"It is Easter, young man. We did not open late and you should have bought your ticket earlier. NEXT CUSTOMER."

It was useless getting heated. The glass was almost certainly bullet proof, and she had already focused her inattentive gaze on the next customer, who was busy shouldering me out of the way. I set out for the platform to buy a conductor.

The platform turned out to be a scene from a David Lean epic about pre-independence India or one of those refugee scenes favored by "United Colors of Benetton" ads.

Wherever you looked down the length of the train, there were people crowded around doors - and in some cases, even windows that had been jimmied - passing children, baskets of food, big parcels wrapped in sheets, shabby boxes, and caged chickens being carried into the cars. Two guys in denim jumpsuits were knocking their hats askew laboring a bathtub through one of the windows .

I found a conductor, who had long given up on collecting tickets, languidly puffing away on a cigarette. I asked him if there was any space.

"No space at all, go away."

I knew the routine.

"Not for any money?" I said, flashing him 200,000 rubles - roughly 15 times what a ticket would have cost me.

"No, literally, there isn't any space. I've already got a family in the bathroom. Please buzz off."

I tried another conductor further up the train with similar results.

This was getting absurd. Conductors weren't taking bribes. Even the engineer had no space. When I knocked on his door, he - along with two little boys, a mother, a father and a dog - peered out and said no.

I scraped out a wad and showed it to yet another conductor, but she said she too had no space.

"Please put that away," she said. "It's too crowded and it won't do you any good."

"But why?" I asked. "This is a train, you're a conductor, I need a seat and I am offering you a bribe."

I've never been in a situation where a substantial bribe wouldn't get you the seat of some legitimately paying passenger, who would be harried out the door. Had we been invaded by Sweden or something?

"Can't you kick someone off?" I asked.

"Ordinarily I would," she said, "But it's Easter. Come back tomorrow when things get back to normal."