This is the first part of my book, 3rd draft.
Stolypin: passenger car for prisoners
lagger: concentration camp
maloteki: youngling
contras: political prisoner
blatari: petty criminal
The times in which I have found myself blinded by complete and utter darkness are the times in which I have found myself presented with the gift of sight. In this life I have looked upon a multitude of horrors: despicable things of which the common man will never see as much as a glimpse of. This constant view of ghastly abominations gives birth to the most tiring pain, and one grows fatigued by it. In shadow, I am not compelled to persist in the continuous opening of my eyes; if I were to open them I would see nothing but a blank, empty darkness.
For some, darkness is intimidating, as there is a ceaselessly growing anxiety and speculation as to what actually exists beyond that darkness. But if those who fear the dark would become cognizant of the fact that there is nothing to see, their fear would itself disintegrate. I have allowed myself to do so. I have allowed myself to relinquish the staunch hand I once held upon reality, and in doing so I now find comfort in the darkness. It is as though I am being held in the tender arms of my beloved mother once again; it is a sanctuary from the deplorable affairs of the world, affairs of which no one truly wishes to partake in. Within this haven, I may contemplate all things without the deceiving cajolery of vision. The tiring exercise of looking upon the world’s horrors is no longer present, and all memories of such linger in the deepest basins of my mind, but never enter my direct river of thought. And so I am left free to my own contemplation, free to see within myself, thus conjuring the most remarkable thoughts of all.
As was the case in the stolypin rail car I rode in across the trans-Siberian railway. It was entirely dark in every respect. Even the rays of heavenly sun were incapable of breaching the rail car’s depths, as there was not a single window or crack in its wooden walls. Yet this was not dissuading in the least, as I was conscious of the fact that if I were capable of looking upon the world beyond the stolypin car, I would gaze only upon an endless barrier of evergreen trees swiftly flying by as the train roared through the taiga. The prospect of infinite rows of trees was bleak in itself, but the inside of the stolypin would certainly be worse to behold.
Although I lacked the ability to see the other occupants of the bunker, their gripes and moans were constant reminders of their presence. The train had made a stopover at the Khabarosvk station, and at that time I had reckoned my companions to be numbered somewhere between twenty and thirty. I was unaware of how many of those still possessed a beating heart, although I was sure that it was remarkably fewer than the original number imprisoned within the car. Occasionally I would hear an awful retching as one of them let his guts fly loose about the wooden floor, which was already fairly sodden with a layer of piss. The smell of the entire place had initially nearly brought me to suffocation, but I eventually grew accustomed to it, and so even the plaguing scent of vomit no longer daunted me. The combination of the breath and body heat of my companions was perhaps more discomforting than their appalling scent, as we were traveling in the heat of summer, and the very air of the bunker was humid to the extent of asphyxiation. The entire stolypin was bedeviled by an incredible lack of fresh air. Instead, the air we were allotted was terrible, as it was afflicted by a terrible, stale taste. My threadbare clothes clung to my skin pathetically, soaked with sweat. I had stripped down to a single layer of old military underwear, presented to me at our stopover in Khabarovsk. This hardly provided any alleviation; it felt as though my very innards were boiling, my skin slipping off my bones.
Yet I was able to evade the atrocious conditions of the stolypin by the simple act of closing my eyes. I was glad for the darkness, as it provided salvation from the heinous situation I partook in, providing sufficient clarity of thought.
The days passing had long since become irrelevant. I have never found much meaning in time; I have found it to be a mere idea, invented by men who do not suffer with the passing of it the way in which I have. A man who has lived his life behind the joyous barriers of ignorance cannot understand a man who has suffered. To a man who has suffered, time ceases to exist, as his suffering will never truly end; it will follow him forever as the ghost of his unspeakable past. It is futile for a suffering man to count days, as it only increases the level of his pain. And so the numerous days I spent in the stolypin rail car coalesced together, each one equally tedious and awful to the one prior.
In those many days, I scarcely allowed myself to slip into slumber. The heat itself proved to hinder one’s ability to sleep within the stolypin, but at night I purposely diverted myself from seeking shelter within the arms of Morpheus. It was fear, perhaps, that has always kept me from sleeping much in an unfamiliar situation. During the course of my life, everything that once had appeared to be constant proved to be the exact opposite as it was ripped from me. Who was to say that the level of security the rail car provided would not be purloined from me as well?
The extreme heat within the rail car also gave birth to a terrible fatigue. When a man is left to the mercy of the cruel elements, his mind will often play games with him: it instructs him to take unnecessary naps; it will hinder his appetite; it will even coerce him to attack his brother. On many of those occasions, a man must ignore the requests of his own mind. As my mind generally yields an intelligent rationale, it is difficult not to oblige even its most idiotic commands. Yet, as I sat in the corner of the stolypin, I committed myself to remaining awake. My eyelids lay heavy, begging to be allowed a moment’s rest; but I knew that a moment would revolutionize into an eternal slumber.
At times I entered a trance-like state, most likely due to dehydration and lack of rest, in which my thoughts materialized themselves into entities before me. They were ghostly forms, scarcely visible through the gloom. The fear of insanity initially overthrew my overwhelming languor. I ignored my reveries, slapping myself across the face, thrusting myself back into the real world within the car. As the time passed, however, my ability to think diminished, and I fell victim to the insanity of my chimerical phantasms.
Before me there sat my brother, my Fabi, his appearance identical to the way in which I had last seen him. He was only three years my junior, and that proved adequate enough for me to be selected to make the next journey and for him to remain at the maloteki division of the munitions factory in Leningrad. Prison life had not treated him well; the adorable fat of which so often occupies a child’s face had entirely vanished from his. Instead, his cheeks were eerily gaunt, aging him far beyond his twelve years.
“Pavel? Pavel! Where are we going?” He was sitting with his legs crossed, a smile stretching the skin taunt against his cheeks.
“We are traveling east, to the sea port of Vladivosk: the largest city of the east.” I said aloud.
“To another factory?”
“I don’t know.” I was loosing energy quickly, but could not bear to resign from my fanciful conversation. It was pleasing to dissemble and pretend that he was still within arm’s reach.
“I’m sure it will be all right.”
I nodded slowly, my neck cracking. “It will.”
He did not speak again for several moments, and I studied his face intently, memorizing every fold of skin, every pockmark.
“Will you care for me, Pavel?”
My heart strained at his words. My eyes then grew wet – somehow my body still possessed some liquid – and I was too exhausted to bring a hand to my face so as to swab away the tears, so they slid down my face. “Yes,” I assured the ghost-Fabi. “Always. Remember that.”
And it was a lie. It tore my soul to remember the way in which I had consoled him, day after day, back in the factory in Leningrad. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. Nothing will happen when you brother is here.” But what was to happen to him when I was no longer present?
These visions, real-life depictions of my failure, haunted me incessantly, their frequency increasing as time passed and I grew more dehydrated. They grew to the extent that I could not open my eyes without the spectral image of Fabi appearing. Perhaps it was these streaks of lunacy that prompted me to continue living, as the memory of my Fabi provided me with yet another reason to persist: one day I would retrieve my kin.
“Fabi,” I called out to him softly. “Fabi…”
“You ought to rest now,” he said. “You need some sleep. Everything will me fine in the morning.” The matronly inclination of his words struck me as odd, and I soon became aware that I was no longer speaking to my Fabi; a woman’s face had replaced his. I did not recognize the woman particularly, yet there was a panging within my heart, informing me that the face belonged to my mother. “Just sleep, little Pavel. Sleep.”
I reached a thin, shaking hand out to her in an attempt to touch her face. One touch, I had convinced myself, and I would discover the reality within my dreams; I would truly be held within her loving arms once again.
“Your father will be home in the morning. We’ll all go to the cinema.”
There was then a great clamor, and I found myself lying upon the wooden floor, my face immersed in a pile of another man’s vomit. I looked up, searching once again for the face of my mother, but she and my brother were no longer there; all I could see was complete darkness. I was too weak to bring myself to a sitting position again, and so I resolved to remain there, perishing in a pile of another man’s feces…
