Kolia Read Online Free PDF Page A

erected in train stations, attempted to add a little inspiration of their own. Stalin’s face still stared out from placards and posters and Ilyich was everywhere.
    Kolia regularly repeated what Iosif had told him to buoy up his spirits in the camp. Appear to be weaker than your aggressor. Breathe slower than your enemy. Eat only two meals a day to train your body to withstand hunger. Sleep less. Think more. Read everything you can and anything you want to. But above all, constantly question what others tell you, even books, even Victor Hugo. Even me.
    High winds began to fill the car with dust that was inhaled and expelled into handkerchiefs as black threads of soot.
    At Irkoutsk, a small gang of thugs took control of the car when the provodnik went for his break, threatening the other passengers, who were in fact just as bad off as they were.
    â€œShow me what you’ve got in your bag.”
    â€œThat’s not a good idea.”
    â€œShut your trap, okay? You say nothing, you open your bag, and you dump it out. And then we see if you’ve got anything we like.”
    â€œI wouldn’t advise you to do that.”
    One of them, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, decided to play the big gangster and grabbed Kolia by the throat, repeating through his teeth: “Show me what you’ve got in your bag.”
    â€œI said I wouldn’t advise you to do that.”
    The boy held a paring knife right under his nose, the blade still carried traces of the fruit it had recently cut into. In an instant, he grabbed the boy’s wrist and forced him to drop the weapon.
    â€œYou misjudged your victim, little man.”
    Kolia drove his knee into the boy’s groin and then landed a punch to the solar plexus of the tall, skinny guy with a broken nose, who was standing behind him. He lifted his sleeve and revealed his gulag tattoo.
    The ringleader spat on the floor and swore in a dialect that Kolia didn’t understand. Then he made his retreat with the rest of his gang of halfwits in tow. Kolia lowered his sleeve.
    When daylight broke, the gang of petty thieves was nowhere to be seen. On the bench beside Kolia, there was some dried blood and the pocket watch that he had managed to lift from the skinny guy with the boxer’s nose. Stealing from a thief didn’t count.
    At Pervouralsk, the train crossed continents. There is a natural border between Asia and Europe where the landscape flattens into an expanse of plains that are much too great for one man. It would take him a thousand years to know them well.
    After the episode with the would-be thieves, Kolia slept like a baby, numbed by the monotonous rhythm of the train and his own exhaustion. Every now and then, a small settlement of isbas would appear in the middle of nowhere; the log houses displayed a very rudimentary construction, but appeared to be inhabited. A young boy wouldn’t stop crying. He kept pissing in a corner and licking his runny nose, and every few minutes, the car’s resident drunk would bellow a drawling reprimand at the boy, as though he were the child’s father. The mother seemed completely worn out. She stared through the window at a moving point on the horizon, and completely ignored her son.
    The only time Kolia left his seat by the window was to get something to eat or go to the toilet. As the train progressed, more and more passengers got on board, heralding the imminence of their arrival in Moscow. There was no more tea. The passengers all wanted something hot to drink, even though the compartment was stifling. But the provodnik merely repeated, “We’ll be arriving shortly.”
    The train pulled into Yaroslavl Station — the nine-thousand-kilometre journey’s final destination — on Thursday, August 5,1954. It had crossed two continents and seven time zones. Kolia waited until the car was empty before getting up. The provodnik made it clear by pointing to the exit that he