“Hey, little apple!
Where are you rolling?”
Sasha held Irina’s hands. She was smiling, her chin buried in an old woolen scarf. Her hands were cold. A white vapor fluttered at her lips as she whispered: “We must not think of it as ten years. It sounds so long, doesn’t it? But it really isn’t. You know, some philosopher said that time is only an illusion or something like that. Who was it that said it? Well, it doesn’t matter. Time can pass very quickly, if one stops thinking of it. We’ll still be young, when we’ll ... when we’ll be free. So let’s promise each other not to think of anything else. Now, promise?”
“Yes,” he whispered, looking at her hands. “Irina, if only I hadn’t ...”
“And that’s something you’ve already promised me never to mention again, not even to yourself. Darling, don’t you see that it’s really easier for me — this way — than to have remained at home, with you sent here alone? This way, I’ll feel that we have something in common, that we’re sharing something. Aren’t we?”
He buried his face in her hands and said nothing.
“And listen,” she whispered, bending down to his blond hair, “I know it won’t always be easy to remain cheerful. Sometimes one thinks: oh, what’s the use of remaining brave just for one’s pride’s sake? So let’s agree on this: we’ll both be brave for each other. When you feel the worst, just smile — and think that you’re doing something for me. And I’ll do the same. That will keep us together. And you know, it’s very important to remain cheerful. We’ll last longer.”
“What for?” he asked. “We won’t last long enough anyway.”
“Sasha, what nonsense!” She pulled his head up by a strand of hair, looking straight into his eyes, as if she believed her every word. “Two strong, healthy creatures like us! And, anyway, I’m sure those stories are exaggerated — if you mean the hunger and the consumption. Nothing is ever as bad as it’s painted.”
The wheels grated under the floor, slowing down.
“Oh, God!” Sasha moaned. “Is that the station?”
The car jerked forward and the wheels went on knocking under the floor, like a mallet striking faster and faster.
“No,” Irina whispered breathlessly, “not yet.”
The student by the window wailed, as if he were grinning, to the rhythm of the wheels:
“Hey, little apple,
Where are you rolling?”
And he repeated, slowly, biting into every word, as if the words were an answer to a question, and the question itself, and a deadly certainty of some silent thought of his own: “Hey ... little ... apple ... where ... are ... you ... rolling?”
Irina was whispering: “Listen, here’s something we can do: we can look at the moon, sometimes — and, you know, it’s the same moon everywhere — and we would be looking at the same thing together that way, you see?”
“Yes,” said Sasha, “it will be nice.”
“I was going to say the sun, but I don’t suppose there will be much sun there, so ...” A cough interrupted her; she coughed dully, shaking, pressing her hand to her mouth.
“Irina!” he cried. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” she smiled, blinking, catching her breath. “Just a little cold I caught. Those G.P.U. cells weren’t heated too well.”
A lantern swam past the window. Then there was nothing but the silent snowflakes splattering against the glass, but they sat, frozen, staring at the window.
Irina whispered: “I think we’re approaching.”
Sasha sat up, erect, his face the color of brass, darker than his hair, and said, his voice changed, firm: “If they let us write to each other, Irina, will you ... every day?”
“Of course,” she answered gaily.
“Will you ... draw things in your letters, too?”
“With pleasure.... Here,” she picked a small splinter of coal from the window ledge, “here, I’ll draw something for you, right now.”
With a few strokes, swift and sure as a surgeon’s scalpel, she sketched a face on the back of her seat, an imp’s face that grinned at them with a wide, crescent mouth, with eyebrows flung up, with one eye winking mischievously, a silly, infectious, irresistible grin that one could not face without grinning in answer.
“Here,” said Irina, “he’ll keep you company after ... after the station....”
Sasha smiled, answering the imp’s smile. And suddenly throwing his head back, clenching his fists, he cried, so that the student by the window shuddered and looked at him: “Why do they talk of honor, and ideals, and duty to one’s country? Why do they teach us ...”
“Darling, not so loud! Don’t think useless thoughts. There are so many useless thoughts in the world!”
At the station, another train was waiting on a parallel track. Guards with bayonets escorted some of the prisoners out. Sasha held Irina, and her bones creaked in his huge arms, and he kissed her lips, her chin, her hair, her neck, and he made a sound that was not quite a moan and not quite a beast’s growl. He whispered hoarsely, furiously, into her scarf, blushing, choking, words he had always been reluctant to utter: “I ... I ... I love you....”
A guard touched her elbow; she tore herself away from Sasha and followed the guard down the aisle. At the door, Sasha pushed the guard aside, savagely, insanely, and seized Irina again, and held her, not kissing her, looking at her stupidly, his long hands crushing the body of the wife he had never possessed.
The guard tore her away from him and pushed her out through the door. She leaned back for a second, for a last look at Sasha. She grinned at him, the homely, silly grin of her imp, her nose wrinkled, one eye winking mischievously. Then the door closed.
The two trains started moving at once. Pressed tightly to the glass pane, Sasha could see the black outline of Irina’s head in the yellow square of a window in the car on the next track. The two trains rolled together, iron mallets striking faster and faster under the floor, the glow of the station swimming slowly back over the dark floor of the car that Sasha was watching. Then the grayish patch of snow between them grew wider. He could still touch the other train with his outstretched arm if the window were open, he thought; then he could still touch it if he were to fling his whole body straight to the other train; then he could reach it no longer, even were he to leap out. He tore his eyes from that other window and watched the white stretch that was growing between them, his fingers on the glass, as if he wanted to seize that white stretch and hold it, and pull with his whole strength, and stop it. The tracks were flying farther and farther apart. At the level of his eyes he could now see the bluish, steely gleams of wheels whirling down narrow bands in the snow. Then he did not look at the snow any longer. His glance clung to the tiny yellow square with a black dot that was a human figure, far away. And as the yellow square shrank swiftly, his eyes would not let it go, and he felt his glance being pulled, stretched, with a pain as excruciating as a wrenched nerve. Across an endless waste of snow, two long caterpillars crawled apart; two thin, silvery threads preceded each; the threads led, disappearing, into a black void. Sasha lost sight of the window; but he could still see a string of yellow spots that still looked square, and above them something black moving against the sky, that looked like car roofs. Then there was only a string of yellow beads, dropping into a black well. Then, there was only the dusty glass pane with patent leather pasted behind it, and he was not sure whether he still saw a string of sparks somewhere or whether it was something burned into his unblinking, dilated eyes.