And He Continued His Wanderings

(Pages from the Life of Johann Walla the Elder)

After two days of travel, the train car carrying Ivan and Pyotr was, for some reason, ordered to be emptied, and all its "passengers" were redistributed among other cars. Vanya ended up in the last car, where he was assigned a free spot near the so-called "toilet"—a crude structure made from a sheet of tin that screened off a "hidden cabinet" from the rest of the space. He did not complain, and after a brief introduction to his nearest neighbors, he began to study his surroundings.

It was certainly not the most prestigious location, but it had one advantage: from here he could see everything happening in the car, while he himself could only be noticed if someone looked carefully. In other words, he was out of sight of his fellow sufferers, and he immediately appreciated this circumstance. Especially after they had ridiculed him (though not yet maliciously) for proposing they pray to God and scolded him like a small, naive child. Vanya was certainly grieved, but comforted himself with the thought that in this corner he could quietly kneel and pray without irritating them. There was more than enough space, and he decided to move Pyotr here—the friend who had been taken to the other side of the car during boarding. But it was not to be. The car swayed so violently from side to side that after just two or three steps, he stepped on someone and prudently returned, accompanied by a torrent of curses. Therefore, he decided to postpone any further attempt until some lengthy station stop, which, as it happened, occurred quite frequently. While the train was moving and with such violent rocking, he would need, at worst, strength and agility—which the extremely emaciated Ivan simply did not possess. Nor did the other men, for that matter. There were no benches or shelves in the car, and for days on end people sat or lay on the floor. On that same floor lay watermelon rinds and heaps of roughly peeled onion skins, which Vanya promptly used to fill his hungry stomach. Not a delicacy, of course, but it satisfied his hunger. It must be said that the men sitting nearby watched this meal with silent amazement or pity: saying, they say, the boy has lost his mind from starvation. There were some who turned away in disgust, but none followed his example.

"You should wait, son," said David Kranz, propping himself up on his elbow—Ivan's countryman and fellow sufferer. An elderly soldier from Spaaren, he was the only one who had not laughed at him for suggesting prayer. "You'll burn out your whole insides, and whether there will be water or not is another question. Sometimes a bucket arrives here, but the water in it is already gone. It's easy to perish here, and God, even if He exists, won't help. Be patient; perhaps we'll arrive at our destination soon."

"Yes, soon," said his neighbor with bitter mockery. "Not before a year passes. We stand by every pole for half a day." And he waved his hand sadly. "Let him eat, boy; maybe he'll go faster then. He's already barely clinging to life anyway. It's clear that he's constantly praying. That means he's in a hurry to meet his God. As for us, we won't get anywhere."

"And if we do get there, we'll be destroyed," another breathed out hopelessly. "They're taking us to die, soul-killers. Look how many of our kind have already perished, and they don't care a bit."

And silence fell. The others, too, fell silent in sorrowful contemplation at these words. Each, of course, thought of his own concerns, but the thought was one for all: why are they treating us this way? Why have people who, not long ago, considered you their countrymen become so embittered? How can they take pleasure—real pleasure—in watching dead bodies of their own compatriots thrown straight from the car into the snow? Questions, questions. Without expecting answers. Because each person asks them only of himself. Even sharing with a neighbor is frightening. Truth be told, there are informers here too, hoping to survive through betrayal of their neighbor. A thin, microscopic hope—but hope nonetheless.

And indeed, it became harder to survive with each passing hour, with each passing minute. Every day brought new corpses. It was, strangely enough, the strongest, most physically robust men who died first from hunger. The meager rations, which were clearly insufficient for restoring their strength, took their toll. And four buckets of water a day was not enough, especially for those in the depths of the car. The elderly countryman had warned of this. Of course, Ivan, too, grew weaker with each day, but he was still "livelier" than his neighbors and did not experience the kind of thirst that would be utterly unbearable. He continued to search through the pile of rubbish on the floor for onion pieces and ate them, separating them from the husks. Strangely, this gave him strength. Another significant advantage was that from his corner he could observe everything happening in the car, and this distracted him from dark thoughts and greatly sweetened the tedious, dragging time. But once it had the opposite effect, forcing him to grieve: on the third or fourth day, Vanya saw how, at the next station, soldiers were carrying out to the door opening the soldiers who had passed away during the night. The event had become so ordinary by now that no one, including him, felt any particular emotion about it. But this time the guards dragged to the open door a corpse whom he recognized by the blue jacket as his friend Pyotr, and this scene struck his heart with a burning reproach: he had never attempted again to call Pyotr to him. Who knows—perhaps a shared prayer might have saved him from such an early death. Gathering his last strength, Vanya dragged himself to the door opening in hopes of saying farewell. But the soldiers had already managed to undress and throw the body out. Thrown out just like the others, straight into the snow. Vanya stood and looked at the stiffened bodies at the foot of the railway embankment and felt an unbearable pity—both for them and for himself.

And all around stretched a barren steppe. Not a single tree, not a hillock, not a single noticeable bush. Only in the far distance, across the entire horizon from edge to edge, a dark, bluish-black band of endless, ancient taiga. The harsh, boundless Siberian expanses.

"What are you lingering here for?" the harsh shout of a sergeant brought him back to reality. "What are you staring at, I'm asking?"

"My friend is there," Vanya gestured. "Was… my friend…"

And he wept.

"Well, that's something!" the serviceman grunted, somewhat taken aback by such compassion—something he had long ceased to encounter among those in his charge. But he quickly regained his composure. "You yourself haven't gone far from him, so pity yourself instead. Come on, come on, get away from here. Any minute now…" And, without finishing, he gently pushed the weeping boy away from the opening.