Men of Snow (30 page)

                                          ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was one day as the light began to dim, a short day of light like all the rest, that Leon noticed one of the prisoners watching him. He looked away and waited, saw through one of the cracks the sweep of snow turn grey out over the treeless plains, knowing that something was building, the prisoner was still intent on him and the acid of fear began to burn.

‘Don’t say anything,’ Adam whispered, ‘He’s watching us like a hawk.’

Up till now they usually only spoke when the train was in motion.

‘He’s getting edgy. I can tell. The scum is going to blow. If he asks you, tell him. If you don’t he’ll give you no chance.’

As the prisoner stumbled over a few of the others came with him.

‘So, what the fuck do you want?’

‘Steady,’ Adam tried.

‘Steady my fuck,’ answered the prisoner as he swayed to the motion of the train.

‘So look at the legless shit we have here, got the look of the Yid. Speak to me brother, fucking open your gob.’

‘I speak,’ muttered Leon, forcing himself to look up at the eyes and mouth wrapped in layers of material under a felt hat.

‘A Polak.’

‘I....I don’t want to be here.’

‘And what if I say I do, that I love a fucking train ride to God knows where. Does God know where?’

‘No, he doesn’t.’

‘But you’re a fucking Yid. And you,’ he grunted as his eyes shifted to Adam, ‘who sucks on the skinless cock, arsing a fucking Jew boy, you squalid little cunt.’

‘No,’ Leon tried.

‘What’s no?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There are too many Polaks on this train for my liking.’

‘We don’t want to be.......’

‘Here,’ interrupted the rag, ‘Well you are so fucking watch it close because if the Yid needs a beating it will be you giving it to him,’ the rag said to Adam.

‘Trying to stay alive brother like everybody else.’

‘Well you haven’t done a very good job.’

‘He does nothing,’ was Leon trying.

‘You don’t say.’

‘In this country for too long.’

‘For what?’

‘For doing Germans.’

‘Our good allies.’

‘Nothing....nothing good about them.’

The train rattled over points, the smell of steam filtering into the wagon as the rags began to lose interest.

‘Fuck it,’ were the last words from the rag who suddenly looked lost and weary as he stumbled a step forward and spat in Leon’s eyes before turning away like a lost drunk.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Adam sighed.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ was Leon’s response.

‘Well it nearly did to me.’

CHAPTER 13

Now, when the guards would finally manage to break the ice around the locks on the wagon doors less and less of the prisoners made the effort to get to the food first.

‘We’re not half way yet,’ Adam told Leon, ‘It makes it easier for me because I’ve done this journey before. I thought it would make things worse but it doesn’t do that at all. I know roughly where we are. I know what to expect more than the first timers. Maybe that’s why the rags didn’t give us the hard time I thought they were going to.’

‘Do you believe in revenge?’ was Leon’s question

‘Absolutely,’ was the immediate answer.

‘I’m not asking because I’m religious.’

‘I have read a lot. I have probably read a lot more than you. Just because I didn’t get a proper education with teachers and the like, doesn’t mean that I can’t read and understand what books say.’

‘And what do books say?’

‘You’ll know as well as me. It’s seen as a terrible sin, a terrible failure. ‘

‘Have you ever felt like you wanted to do it?’

‘I’ve been screwed by too many people. I wouldn’t know where to start. But you, well all I hear is this Brucker, this German shit.’

‘Him,’ Leon sighed.

‘You’d like to have him.’

‘More than anything.’

‘Even getting free of this lot.’

‘Even that.’

‘Christ it must be bad.’

‘It’s worse than bad, worse than anything. He liked to watch. He gave out his orders and then watched.’

‘And you can’t forget him.’

‘Never.’

‘Which for us might not be that long.’

‘I....I just can’t stand the idea that Brucker might get through the war, might remain untouched,’ came Leon’s more intense voice before he rested back.

‘Take it easy cos this is doing you no good. Just thank your Russian stars that them rags didn’t do for us.’

‘It...it will never stop.’

‘Maybe it’ll keep you going.’

Leon turned his head towards him and said, ‘I want...want you to talk.’

Adam’s eyes screwed up as he stared back, ‘When everybody else has always been telling me to shut up.’

‘I’m a Jew, a Polish Jew.’

‘Even my wife.’

‘You shouldn’t be doing this. It might kill you.’

‘I told you. I tried the other last time and I’m not doing it again. It was the silence that nearly finished me off.’

Ice wind blew through the cracks. Frost was smeared on the inside of the wagon and the shit hole was blocked.

‘Tell me....tell me about your wife,’ whispered Leon as the coldness squeezed every part of his body and the train shuddered as again it started to slow.

‘She got bored.’

Adam was stopped by a sudden coughing. He pulled down the layers of cloth from his face to gulp in more of the frozen air.

‘Christ. Christ,’ he managed to complain, ‘Fuck this.’

‘She was your wife.’

‘She hated it when I wanted to talk, especially about anything political. She’d just stare up at the ceiling and then after a few minutes would get up and go out of the room. It’s like she knew that it would be the politics that would finish it for me.’

‘Jews believe in the power of the word.’

‘Well good for fucking Jews cos it’s never done me any favours.’

‘In books.’

‘Them as well.’

‘I’m cold....very cold,’ came Leon’s complaint.

‘I’ve always talked politics, ever since I was young.’

‘The train’s stopping.’

‘I remember seeing my father come home every day from the mine, filthy and knackered. To begin with I thought that was all there was.’

‘Are we going to get fed?’

‘Are you listening?’

‘I’m trying to listen. I....I find....find it hard to concentrate. I’m hungry.’

‘We’re all fucking hungry.’

‘Are we going to be fed?’

Adam pulled in his shoulders and tried to move the position of his legs before he said, ‘I’m trying to work out when was the last time.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to get up,’ mentioned Leon as he stared across at some of the other rags pulled up into mounds of clothes that were beginning to frost over.

‘I was coming down Printov Street, in our town, when I saw the government official. He was being driven in a car with his own driver and was sat there on the back seat like the fucking lord of everything. There was my father coming home filthy and so tired he could only manage his tea and then go to bed, day after day, nothing different. But this big shot was in his chauffeur driven car. I must have been ten or eleven and it was the first time I had properly looked, you know, seen what was going on.’

‘Will you help me stand up if they come with the food?’

‘A Russian has to believe in something.’

Light flickered across the wagon. Steam momentarily clouded in the shafts of new light as the train finally screeched and shuddered to a stop.

‘It’s warmer when we stop,’ said Leon.

‘All of life is a few having it over the rest. But I believed in the revolution. I really did. It was going to give real power to everybody for the first time. But I should have known. We all should have guessed. Some of our brothers in red made the attempt and I couldn’t leave it. My wife, she knew what was coming.’

‘You talked too much.’

‘I wouldn’t shut up. So it was Vorkuta for me, cutting down fucking trees.’

‘I’m glad you talk.’

‘So you said.’

‘It’s....it’s more human.’

‘I’m not sure I know what that is.’

‘It’s talking.’

‘Well I must be one, human, but one who never learnt his lesson. So I was in the cafe scrounging scraps when over the road a fucking goods train jumped the tracks. Industrial espionage they called it.  Because I was within a million miles of what happened they had me again. It’s like they knew I was there. They were just fucking waiting.’

‘Is it night?’ Leon asked.

‘It’s always night up here.’

‘Did you hear that? I can hear people outside. There are people outside. Can you hear them?’

‘We must have stopped at some God forsaken place. That or they’re changing guards or they’re just preparing to leave us here and let the winter do its job.’

‘You said they wanted us alive.’

‘That’s just my theory. We never get told anything so we don’t know.’

‘You said they did.’

‘Not want us. Just require us for cutting down trees for a crazy new railway line Stalin wants or to dig coal in the Vorkuta mines.’

‘It has to be better than this train.’

‘You get more entertainment, especially when a rag wants to get out of the heavy work so he tries to slice off his hand with a shovel or cut the muscles down the back of his leg so he can’t walk. If it gets really bad you know what they do. We call em Christmas decorations, human decorations hanging from trees all over the work area of the forest. Some try and escape but they’ve got three thousand miles of snow plains to cross full of murderous wolves and temperatures below 50degrees. So you stay there.’

‘We must be at a station.’

They could hear more voices and then the noise of the guards coming along the train.

‘It doesn’t feel right,’ was Adam’s opinion.

Abruptly came the noise of the guards’ shovels breaking through the ice on the locks followed by the sound of metal on metal.

‘Fucking hurry up!’ one of the prisoners complained.

Some of the bundles of clothes on the bunks began to move. Other remained where they were.

‘Christ there’s more fucking dead than alive in here. Get a move on you bastards and open the fucking doors,’ muttered another prisoner.

                                          ----------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                            

Eventually the doors were shuddered open to allow a blast of cold air and snow to fill the wagon.

‘You don’t move. You don’t move,’ they were told, ‘you clean this out. We get brushes and you sweep this shit place clean.’

‘What’s the point?’ was Adam’s weary question.

None of them could get down from the wagon until all the straw had been swept out and the dead ones had been dragged to the edge where they were lifted and rolled out.

All their breaths merged into huge clouds of condensation that mixed with the train’s steam so they almost disappeared into it.

Eventually they could climb down beside the track with Adam carefully supporting Leon across the wagon and then down off the edge, slipping him down slowly until his dead feet touched snow.

Some of the prisoners were told to lift the corpses. They were taken away from the tracks and laid in the snow. The rest watched as the bodies were lifted out of the wagons. The prisoners were so weak it took six of them to carry each body.

Finally the food was given out. The train had stopped near a cluster of huts. People were pushing handcarts along a frozen track and from them the guards were handing out big chunks of bread and a mug of hot water from a huge samovar.