Too Much / Not Enough: Translating Reed Grachev

A tram outside the Leningrad metro in 1987.

Two years ago, while translating the stories of Reed Grachev, a suppressed Russian writer of the mid twentieth century, I encountered a passage told from the perspective of a bus driver: He observes that the bus is very full, then looks in the mirror at an unnamed someone and wonders why she isn’t giving the “signal.” He starts the bus and sees that some people have been left behind at the stop. Unstated, but self-evident to any Russian reader, is that the unnamed someone is the conductor (in charge of selling tickets), who should have given the driver a “signal” to close the doors when the bus was at capacity.

Grachev’s stories are full of public transportation. On trams, buses, trains, and trolleybuses, people are jostling and crowded. The sensory overload of these tight spaces contrasts with the emotional state of his characters, who are, almost without exception, alienated. Each is searching for a connection beyond the physical and is thus, one could say, in transit. The bus driver observes that the bus is packed,