As night fell and the train became colder I was forced to share the chicken and salami from my very obvious hamper. They were all grateful. Even the woman ate with unfeminine greed. The train was moving very slowly. Since we had not yet passed Vinnitza, it would be a long time before we reached Odessa. Once or twice we heard firing, or saw flashes of rifles and artillery in the distance, but nobody was able to speculate with any authority as to the identity of the antagonists. Marusia Kirillovna suggested it was probably just Haidamaki fighting amongst themselves. I think she could have been right. There were thousands of petty warlords seeking to hold smaller and smaller territories as the major participants moved closer together for the decisive battles of our Civil War. Sometimes shots were fired from the train. We had a Red Army escort which would disembark when it reached a territory occupied by bandits who (like Vietnamese today) found it politic to declare themselves Bolsheviks. Thus they received arms and money to achieve their own petty ends.
Potoaki became bored. He kept leaving the carriage, presumably to use the lavatory (although there was one in the adjoining cubicle) and returning, stamping his feet and clapping his gloved hands together. The woman looked at him with considerable intolerance. ‘Trying to make the train go faster, comrade?’
‘I’m supposed to be at the docks by tomorrow morning,’ he explained. ‘There’s a French ship arriving.’
‘What will you do?’ Another occupant took Marusia Kirillovna’s lead. ‘Speak to each French sailor as he comes ashore? Explain he’s hampering the course of world revolution?’
‘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.’