“Thanks a lot, you stormy petrels!4 I’ve lived to see it! Coming with a revolver against your brother, a worker! Why did I say the train would go no further? Comrade passengers, be my witnesses, what sort of country this is. Anybody who wants to hangs around, unscrewing nuts. Up yours and your mother’s, what’s that to me? Devil stick you in the ribs, I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about you, so they don’t pull some job on you. And see what I get for my cares. Well, so shoot me, mine layers! Comrade passengers, be my witnesses, I’m right here—I’m not hiding.”
Various voices were heard from the group on the railway embankment. Some exclaimed, taken aback:
“What’s with you? … Forget it … As if we … Who’d let them? They’re just … To put a scare …”
Others loudly egged him on:
“That’s right, Gavrilka! Don’t give up, old Steam-traction!”
A sailor, who was the first to free himself from the snow and turned out to be a red-haired giant with such an enormous head that it made his face look flat, quietly turned to the crowd and in a soft bass, with Ukrainianisms like Voroniuk, spoke a few words, funny for their perfect calm in those extraordinary night circumstances:
“Beg pardon, but what’s all this hullabaloo? You’re like to get sick in this wind, citizens. Go back to your cars out of the cold!”
When the crowd began to disperse, gradually returning to their freight cars, the red-haired sailor went up to the engineer, who had not quite come to his senses yet, and said:
“Enough throwing hysterics, comrade engineer. Leave that hole. Let’s get going.”
14
The next day, at a quiet pace, with slowdowns every moment, fearing to run off the slightly snow-powdered and unswept rails, the train stopped at a life-forsaken waste, in which they could not immediately recognize the remains of a station destroyed by fire. On its sooty facade the inscription “Nizhni Kelmes” could be made out.
It was not only the train station that kept the traces of a fire. Behind the station a deserted and snow-covered village could be seen, which had obviously shared its sorry fate.
The end house of the village was charred, the one next to it had several beams knocked loose at the corner and turned butt end in; everywhere in the street lay pieces of broken sledges, fallen-down fences, torn sheet metal, smashed household crockery. The snow, dirty with ashes and soot, had bare black patches showing through it, and was spread with frozen swill and charred logs, traces of the fire and its extinguishing.
The depopulation of the village and the station was incomplete. There were individual living souls in it here and there.
“Did the whole village burn down?” the train master asked sympathetically, jumping down onto the platform, when the station master came out from behind the ruins to meet him.
“Greetings. Glad you’ve arrived safely. Burn we did, but it’s something worse than a fire.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Better not go into it.”
“You mean Strelnikov?”
“Himself.”
“What did you do wrong?”
“It wasn’t us. The railroad was just tacked on. It was our neighbors. We got it at the same time. See that village over there? They’re the culprits. The village of Nizhni Kelmes of the Ust-Nemda district. It’s all because of them.”
“And what did they do?”
“Nearly all the seven deadly sins. They disbanded their poor peasants’ committee, that’s one for you; they opposed the decree on supplying horses to the Red Army—and, notice, they’re all Tartars, horse people, that’s two; and they didn’t obey the order about the mobilization, that’s three—so you can see.”
“Yes, yes. It’s all clear, then. And for that they got it from the artillery?”
“Precisely.”
“From an armored train?”
“Naturally.”
“Regrettable. Deserving of pity. However, it’s none of our business.”
“Besides, it’s a thing of the past. But my news won’t gladden you any. You’ll be staying here for a day or two.”
“Stop joking. I’m not here for just anything at all: I’ve got draft reinforcements for the front. I’m not used to standing around.”
“This is no joke. It’s a snowdrift, you’ll see for yourself. A blizzard raged for a week along this whole section. Buried it. And there’s nobody to shovel. Half the village has run away. I’ve set the rest to work, but they don’t manage.”
“Ah, confound you all! I’m finished, finished! Well, what to do now?”
“We’ll clear it somehow and you’ll go on.”
“Big drifts?”
“Not very, I wouldn’t say. For stretches. The blizzard went slantwise, at an angle to the tracks. The hardest part’s in the middle. There’s a mile and a half of hollow. We’ll really suffer there. The place is packed solid. But further on it’s not bad, taiga—the forest sheltered it. The same before the hollow, there’s an open stretch, nothing terrible. The wind blew it away.”
