Men of Snow

by John R Burns

  Vision was two narrow slits. He was in a diffused place. He could not move, could not turn his head to see who was talking to him. He blinked half-light that shrouded so many figures that stank and snored and swore and begged, a moving shape of puzzles.

  Shafts of new light cut through the gaps between some of the wooden planks. The sun had started to rise somewhere.

  His bloated tongue followed the contours of his broken teeth, sharp pieces stuck out of his swollen gums. When he tried to open his mouth dried blood stretched between his rubber lips. His hip was in the wrong position and his left knee was a swollen hill. His hands were still burning and the slightest movement of any part of what was left of his body was a scream turned to pain.

  Sleeping was waking. Dreams were thoughts. He had been tortured into a stranger.

  ‘With meditation you don’t find God, you find yourself,’ he was conscious then of hearing the voice, the song, the giving of words, ‘You have to love and respect yourself. Meditation is deep control. It can help you survive. When we get where we’re going we will be separated. There is so much to say but you have to believe in what you hear. For too long I despised who I was. It nearly killed me. In the camps there is too much silence because nobody has anything to say except to threaten somebody. But I have learnt that is not the way. First you find yourself and then you give some of that gift to others. We are the poorest of the poor, the end of the end. But we still have that choice. I have taken the path by allowing myself to feel into whom I really am and I want to share everything. We are here together. We take that chance.’

  There was a moving coldness. Shadows shifted across what he could see. Again water trickled down his burning throat. Inside the emptiness was the voice.

  ‘Have you ever wondered why the Russian language has more words for sadness than any other? Most of them cannot be interpreted into any other language. We are as a nation in a permanent state of longing, disappointment, in a state of deep pity for others, a sense of loss, a need always for something different, a grieving for what has gone. We are too emotional. We are never enough. We not only feel our own lack of success, we feel for everybody else’s as well. We can’t get away from what we are. Whatever we try is doomed to fail. Death is of course life’s ultimate failure and yet we go on. We persist. We are the fools who can still believe in life. It is also my mission, to go beyond and try and reach out to others. Words are all I have. Just being able to talk is wonderful, to break the silence.’

  Legs stepped either side of him. Hands gripped under his arms and he was turned to face the slices of deepening light. Leon was aware of a sudden rousing around him and the rush of new air as he was dragged through the stinking straw to the edge of an open space.

  He was suspended. His body thumped in pain. As he started to fall backwards there was an arm around his waist and a hand on his shoulder as he was lifted down.

  Cold air prickled his skin. Sunlight blodged patterns of moving red into his eyes. Momentarily he lifted up his hands to hold it, to hold the light and to strain his mouth open to eat the air in big mouthfuls. He sensed others lay near him. Alongside was a line of grey shapes standing in the shadow so they merged into a subdued movement.

  ‘It’s alright,’ came the whispered, now recognisable voice, ‘We are being given food. This time the food is actually coming to us. We have stopped near a station. Our leader really must have plans for us. We are entering a new age friend, could be coal or iron or gold or diamonds, the riches of the Tundra, the stuff of the earth that will keep us alive. We’re going north not east. So it could be the coalfields of Vorkuta for us. Whatever happens when they offer you a bowl I’ll give you a nudge so remember to take it, take the bowl. They won’t let anybody else try and help. You have to feed yourself. All you need is something to hold the food so you can get it down your throat because no herrings today it seems, just watery soup. But make sure you hold out both hands, one for the bowl and the other for the bread. Don’t smell it. Don’t taste it. Just swallow whatever you’re given. They’re coming along doling it out. I’ll give you the nudge when they’re here. And keep sitting up. Don’t lie down or they’ll think you’re past it and not bother.’

  Other shapes were rolling past him out of the cattle truck giving a momentary stench of death interrupting the feast of clean, pure, ringing air. Suddenly he was tapped on the shoulder. Slowly his mind tried to remember.

  ‘You can lower your arms now, carefully. Don’t worry, the soup is cold and bread has the texture of a brick.’

  Other voices sounded out, an animation, a confused coming to life beside the creaking train that hissed out steam to push hotter, coal tanged air against his face. Painfully the soup went down his throat. He swallowed bread by softening it in the soup and rotating inside his swollen gums, over the rows of broken teeth.

  ‘Blessed be Uncle Joe and his big plans. Blessed be the war. We are all a bastard offspring of the revolution. Hail to the heroes.’

  He was dizzy in the air and the light. Taste and colours confused him. Other people were close to him with their smells and their sounds.

  ‘Get it down you friend because I can see them coming back, collecting the bowls. Picnic is over. At least the dead of the last days will no longer be with us. Only the half dead left now, only the fittest to survive which means you and me friend. I’m not wasting my words on a goner, not at all.’

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

  Trees swayed through his sleep. He saw the officer, saw Brucker with the scar as he did every time he fell asleep. There were unheard cries. Branches creaked. All was loss.

  Painfully he awoke and tried to shift position stirring the one beside him.

  ‘Well, well, well. It moves. My friend is in movement.’

  Slowly his eyelids unsealed. Lines of light pierced through, flickering light as he felt the motion of the train and smelt all the others laid around him and above him up on the bunks.

  ‘Here lick this,’ was the offer.

  As he turned the palm of a hand was pushed in front of his face.

  ‘It’s melted frost. Lick it because that’s all there is and the bastards salted the soup like they always do.’

  He did what he was told until his throat was clearer and he tried to speak.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Yes, so you can see, not that there’s much.’

  The face was almost hidden in so many layers of cloth wrapped around it. The eyes were small and constantly moving.

  ‘I’m Adam,’ the face said, ‘I’m the one who has been doing all the talking.’

  ‘I know,’ Leon tried.

  But to see was to be aware under a sudden onrush of feeling. He cried without shedding tears. He gasped at how much the crying hurt his chest.

  ‘You go ahead,’ said Adam, ‘I don’t blame you, not at all. Better to have stayed blind friend.’

  ‘He was called Brucker,’ Leon gasped.

  ‘Call who what you like.’

  ‘The German.’

  ‘Brucker?’

  ‘A captain.’

  ‘A bastard.’

  ‘He was called Brucker. I heard his soldiers.’

  ‘Well I don’t reckon he’s here so I wouldn’t worry yourself. Past is past. Mind you we’ve no future so we’re a bit stuck. I’m Adam by the way, the one who has been talking to you. Were you listening? Did you hear what I had to say? Did you hear any of it? But don’t turn your head. Whatever you do don’t do that. No contact. When I talk don’t ever look at me. Keep your eyes shut or straight ahead then if they see your lips moving they’ll think you’ve lost it, which maybe you have, which means I have as well, because the rags will get suspicious. Even though they can’t manage a wank between them, some of em are still crazy enough. They’ve stuffed plenty already. They’ve not a thing to lose, none of em. They kill politicos. They hate em. Is that what you are?’

  ‘I’m a Jew....... from Poland.’

&nbs
p; Adam sighed, ‘A Yid, a Polak. How is it you can speak Russian?’

  ‘I have spent a lot of time in prison with Russians. I listen. I learn.’

  ‘But the rags mustn’t know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Leon said.

  ‘The rags are worse straight after any food. That’s when they have the energy to get started. I can’t work out this lot, my first time they weren’t like this.’

  ‘His name was Brucker.’

  ‘I heard you the first time.’

  ‘We were hiding in the forest.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter friend. The war’s fucked.’

  ‘They found out where we were.’

  ‘Most of the rags are plain criminals, Uncle Joe’s workers. It’ll be Vortuka for us.’

  There was a squat hole in the middle of the wagon, a metal grill over it. Leon watched a prisoner bare his arse.

  When he glanced again he noticed that Adam had a dark ginger moustache and the start of a beard mostly hidden behind the green and brown pieces of cloth he had tied round his head.

  When he closed his eyes there was the louder rattle of the wheels on the tracks and the rush of freezing air. Turning the other way he opened them again to see the snow through a slit in the wall of the wagon, fast pieces of whiteness and a few stunted trees like arrowheads piercing the grey sky.

  His mother and father and sister were looking through a window of a building that he did not recognise. As he turned to wave goodbye flames suddenly started melting the glass behind which they were watching him. He tried to call out but the sounds of a flock of birds drowned out his attempt, huge black birds circling overhead.

  Sleep was for minutes. He awoke in darkness. The train had stopped. Adam was resting against him. It was then he began to make out the figure hanging there from the wagon’s central beam.

  ‘That’s the third,’ came the urgent voice.

  Leon turned as Adam gripped his arm and said, ‘And there’ll be more.’

  The dark hanging figure turned slightly, a shadow slowly spinning.

  ‘They’ll have him down and stripped in no time.’

  Leon saw Kas there in the forest and all the rest of them.

  ‘I don‘t know you,’ Adam suddenly muttered.

  ‘Are we going to make it?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘A Polak and a Jew. They’ll fucking rip you if they find out.’

  ‘They know already.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be here if they did. Usually the rags can smell a Yid or a politico miles off.’

  ‘I want....want to survive. I want to......

  ‘I promised you, promised,’ Adam repeated, ‘and I’m going to make sure it happens, do you hear?’

  As light flickered into the wagon Leon watched some of the prisoners pull down the body and wrestle off everything the man had been wearing, arguing amongst themselves until it was settled.

  Some of them went back to their bunks. The strongest managed up to the third tier, three to a bunk. Others were sprawled out on the floor. A few of them spoke once in a while. The rest were silent other than groans or complaints. They were clothed in layers. Some had fur hats. Others like Adam had heads wrapped in scarves and cloth. What was exposed was bearded and dark with filth.

  The prisoners watched each other warily. There was less and less energy for fighting, for arguments. They waited and slept and stirred only when the doors were opened. Then most of them would push and shove to be ready for the food. The weakest became weaker as they were always last, on the edge of life, often going over into a death that went unnoticed now it was so cold the bodies froze quicker than decomposing. Even the lice were being killed off, but the stench of the living remained, that deep odour of unwashed bodies, of those who never bothered with the shit hole, of those whose wounds never healed, the stink of rotting flesh and everything else the body emitted. The rags on the bunks were so close they squeezed the stench into a concentration of all of it, shit and piss, stained clothes, blood, mouth smells, rotting feet, all of it crushed into the stinking air that even the ventilation from the cracks in the wood could not relieve. Only when the guards opened the doors did the frozen, Siberian fresh air rush through the wagon like a sudden cleansing, a purification of all that was still living.

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

  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.