‘They’re unloading supplies.’ Potoaki sat down beside me again and brought out his bottle of vodka, ‘It will be up to me to find out the kind of guns we’ll be confronting.’ With a self-important movement of his hand he finished his vodka.
‘I hope you don’t broadcast that particular piece of information so efficiently,’ she said. She stood up, arranged her dark shirt, then carefully reseated herself. ‘Has anyone the time?’
I took out my watch. It had stopped. I replaced it in my pocket. ‘I am sorry.’
‘We must be nearing Hrihorieff’s territory.’ Potoaki bent across the dark-faced man who sat reading a newspaper by the window. He wiped away condensation. There was nothing but ice inside and out. He rubbed at his waistcoat. ‘That salami of yours must have been cat and rat.’ He belched, it can’t have been dog. Dog never disagrees with me.’ He laughed. We were all becoming irritated. He could sense it. He apologised, farted, and left the smell behind him as he stepped again into the corridor. We kept the door open, in spite of the cold, until the air was clearer. Nobody mentioned the source of the smell. The train stopped completely. I thought I heard shouts from the locomotive. Booted feet ran past our carriage. There was a clatter. The feet ran back. Our train began to build up steam and again we were moving. Potoaki came in and told us there had been trees on the line. Soldiers had cleared the track. ‘They’re used to it. I’ve never seen such efficiency.’ He hesitated. ‘I’d hoped for a smoother ride. You’d think they’d let refugees through.’
The dark man with the newspaper was puzzled. ‘We’re not refugees.’
‘They don’t know that, do they? What bastards these people are. Worse than the Poles.’
‘You’re from Galicia?’ asked the woman.
‘I spent years in Moscow. And two years in Siberia.’
‘Where in Siberia?’ asked the man opposite him.
‘Near Kondinsk. Then I was a few months in the army.’
‘I know Kondinsk,’ said the man who had asked the question. He looked at me. ‘Are you a “Siberian”, too?’
‘Happily,’ I said, ‘not.’
‘It’s an experience,’ said Potoaki. ‘It gives you a better idea of what you’re fighting for. You live like the peasants. All our people should do it voluntarily. It keeps your feet on the ground.’
‘Or under it,’ said the dark man. Only I and Marusia Kirillovna did not laugh at this.
‘You get your milk in slices up there.’ Potoaki became nostalgic.
‘You had milk?’
‘The peasants did. They were often very kind. You have to saw it. Have you watched them sawing their milk?’
The man opposite nodded but now he was looking sceptically at Potoaki, as if he did not believe the man had been a political prisoner at all. There was a great deal of elitism involved. Whatever your intelligence, the length of your Siberian sentence gave extra weight to any argument you might make. They were like savages. And all obviously were originally well-educated.
The train was going faster. Soon it was moving as rapidly as any pre-war Express. This cheered us. ‘We could be in Odessa by morning,’ said Potoaki. He relaxed.
His fellow Siberian said quietly, ‘I never feel lonely now. Not after so much solitude. Every spring I am utterly re-born. A new person. But with the same political convictions, of course. That, however, is the mind. The mind remains. But the spirit is re-born every spring.’
He was becoming as much a bore as Potoaki. The man by the window uttered a choking, tubercular cough. The coughing grew worse. He began to snort and wheeze.
‘It’s asthma, I think,’ said the woman. She made to open the window. We all protested.
‘Get him into the corridor.’ Potoaki helped the man to his feet. Blood was on his lips. He tried to suppress the coughing and at the same time gasped for air. ‘What we need is a doctor.’
From boredom and to show I was a good comrade, I got up and moved along the carriage, asking if a doctor were present. Naturally, there was not. Any person with a real profession would have refused to be in the ‘political’ carriage. They would have had proper work to do. The coughing subsided as I returned. Ice was falling away from one of the forward windows, melted by gusting steam. I saw a few bare trees and small, snow-covered hills. We passed what I took to be gypsy fires. I felt much better now that we had picked up speed.
