Longer than you can last in this cold, Emil.
His fingers screamed, but he forced himself down the ladder and again slogged toward the rear of the train. It began to move.
Barely able to see, he held out his hands, tried to anticipate the ladder. The one at the rear of the second hopper car slipped through his gloves, and the train began to pick up speed. He snagged the front ladder on the third hopper but couldn’t hold on.
Knowing he was about to be left behind in the storm and the darkness to die, Emil put his hand on the side of the third car, waiting to feel it end before he reached higher and grabbed at the oncoming ladder of the fourth car with both aching hands. He caught an upper rung with his left and the side of the ladder with his right and was immediately dragged along as Corporal Gheorghe had been dragged in his dream. The Romanian had let go in the dream, and Emil had jumped after him into darkness.
But not this time. With everything Emil had left in him, he held tight with his left hand and stabbed up his right, finding a higher rung. With two more brute strength moves upward, his boots found the ladder’s lowest rung.
Coated with snow, battered by wind, gasping, sweating, he hung off the ladder like some giant white cocoon for almost a minute. When his teeth began to chatter, he climbed again. At the top of the ladder, Emil reached over the side of the car, feeling for coal. He felt nothing but wind, so he straddled the side of the coal car and reached down as far as he could with his right foot.
Nothing. Was it empty? At least partially.
Figuring he could at least get down out of the wind, Emil brought his left leg over, and dangled by his fingers a second before letting go. He fell three meters and hit heels first in snow on steel. The shock went up both his legs, buckling them. His upper body crashed so hard, the wind was knocked out of him, and for a few moments he thought he’d cracked ribs.
When Emil finally managed to sit up, however, he realized he’d been right. Here, in the pitch darkness deep in the front right corner of an empty hopper car, he was well sheltered from the northwest wind. And the snow seemed to be lessening.
Heartened by that, he struggled upright and cringed before spreading his legs wide and leaning his back into the corner, brushing at his clothes and trying to get as much of the wet, caked snow off him as possible. The first few chunks he put in his mouth and sucked out the moisture to quench his thirst. Then he unbuttoned the coat and lifted his shirts and sweater to expose his belly to the cold, hoping that some of the sweat on him would escape.
Stay as dry as possible. Move to stay warm. Survive, he thought.
When Emil believed he’d gotten most of the snow off his outer clothes, he began kicking the snow on the floor of the railcar away from his corner and soon created a knee-high arched wall of snow in front of him. Ducking down in the darkness, he felt as if the wall had cut even more wind. He lost track of time, building the wall to chest height.
Brushing the snow off his clothes yet again, Emil winced at the sore ribs as he finally lowered himself to the floor of his little fortress and leaned back into the corner. The wind was almost completely gone now, and it was no longer snowing. He closed his eyes, telling himself he’d have to eat at some point. He had money from selling scrap wood to the cooks, more than one hundred rubles in a buttoned shirt pocket. Now he just needed a place to spend it.
Vents began to form in the cloud cover. Through one, he saw the quarter moon, and for reasons he did not understand, he felt warmed seeing it and warmed further when the clouds fully parted and he was able to locate the North Star. I can navigate and walk at night if I have to.
After taking off his coat to shake the remaining snow off it, Emil sat on the steel floor in the corner of the hopper car and dozed despite the constant aching cold beneath him. Then he felt and heard the brakes slowing the train yet again.
This time lights appeared. They were pulling into some kind of station. Able to see now, he spotted another ladder, this one on the opposite interior wall of the hopper. He knew he should stay where he was, cover himself with snow, and hide behind the crude wall he’d built.
But if he did not know where he was, how could he figure out where he was going? For all Emil knew, he might be on his way to Moscow or Leningrad. He buried that thought straightaway. Although the tracks they’d ridden had curved and meandered, the North Star did not lie. They’d been heading steadily west.
But how far west?
Unable to tamp down his curiosity, Emil climbed out of his snow fortress and sneaked across the car. He climbed to the top of the inner ladder, nervous because the lights were so bright. Part of him wanted to take a quick peek. But he figured that might create a flash of movement and attract attention. As slowly as he could, Emil raised his eyes just above the side of the hopper car and scanned left and right before slowly lowering his head.
He was in a large rail yard with many freight cars on other tracks. There were men working on a loading dock well ahead of him. The men were so far away, Emil decided to
