It took him a whole day of walking to reach the right neighborhood and then he had to approach a family on the street, show them his French map, and say, “Ou est la gare Kursky?” He chose a family because it seemed safer for him than approaching either a woman, who might be afraid, or a man, who might be a cop. They pointed him in the right direction, with many friendly Russian words he couldn’t understand.

Sam made it to the Kursky Station in the evening, but it was still quite full and busy. Trains were leaving regularly for distant cities. He found a schedule board and looked up at it for a long time. To his great relief, he saw that the words were written in the Latin alphabet as well as Cyrillic. He recognized most of the names—St. Petersburg, Odessa, Vladivostok—but he couldn’t see anything that said Nizhny Novgorod. At first, he assumed that his exhaustion and his eagerness had combined to make him skip right over the name. He looked over and over, but still didn’t see it. He walked along the line of counters and cages where station employees helped customers, studying their faces. Should he try one of the women because women are naturally softhearted or would they be ready to feel irritated by his approach? The pretty ones must get asked for dates and flirted with all the time, and who knows what the others would feel?

Then he heard words in English. There was a man behind a counter who wore a uniform reminiscent of a train conductor’s. He was telling a couple who looked American that their fare was nine hundred rubles. Sam turned his head to be sure he wasn’t cutting in line in front of someone and then stood in front of the man.

The man looked at him, expecting him to speak.

Sam said, “Sir, I can’t seem to find Nizhny Novgorod on the schedule.”

“Gorky,” the man said. “The city used to be called Gorky and the railway never changed it. All Russians know that, so we don’t have any trouble. Just people from other countries.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” said Sam. He was genuinely relieved. He had imagined another day walking to some other distant station.

“I’ll help you. When would you like to go?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Very good. There is a train at 2204. Would you like a ticket?”

“Yes, please.”

“It will be nine hundred rubles. One hundred eleven U.S. dollars and fifty cents for a one-way second-class ticket or fifty-five dollars for a third-class ticket.”

“And first-class?”

“I’m sorry, but those seats are all reserved already. It’s four hundred sixty-seven miles and takes eight hours and ten minutes, so people reserve the best seats ahead of time.”