February 1930 had yielded a good crop: Ignatov brought four batches of dekulakized peasants to Kazan. He sighed with relief and quiet inner joy each time he watched the kulaks disappear behind the transit prison’s sturdy gates. One more useful thing had been accomplished, one more grain of sand had been tossed on the scales of history. This is how a people shapes its country’s future, one grain at a time, one after another. A future that will certainly become a world victory, an unavoidable triumph of revolution both personally for him, Ignatov, and for millions of his Soviet brothers, people like the imperturbable Denisov, one of the romantic twenty-five thousanders, or the cultured, clever Bakiev.
Constant travels had saved Ignatov from the necessity of having a talk with Ilona. He’d popped in once, briefly (“Work, work…”), and she should be grateful for that. He hadn’t stayed the night. She’d figured out what was what. Anyway, what kind of personal life could you have when there’s so much to do just waiting right around the corner!
Hundreds, thousands of families were floating in endless caravans of sledges along the vast expanses of Red Tataria. A long journey awaited them. Neither they nor their escort guards knew where it led. One thing was clear: it was distant.
Ignatov wasn’t pondering the upcoming fate of those in his charge. His job was simply to deliver them. He’d cut Ilona off when she inquired about where they’d send those tormented bearded peasant men whose sledges had been stretching through the streets of Kazan for days on end. They’ll go where oppressors and exploiters can finally atone for their dark past with honest labor, working themselves into the ground and earning – earning! – the right to a bright future. Period.
Nastasya would never have asked such a thing, though. Nastasya… She was a ripe berry, seeping juice. All of February was as hot as May for Ignatov; just the thought of her warmed him. He wanted to believe, too, that the expeditions to the villages for “dekulakizing” – those trips through quiet, snow-covered forests with songs and jokes, those heated evening arguments with local Party activists at the rural councils with a crackling fire and a couple glasses of home brew, and those overnight stays in old mosques and barns, filled with the heat of Nastasya’s body – would always happen.
And then it comes suddenly, like a saber to the top of the head: “You’re going to accompany a special train.”
What’s that? Why me? What did I do wrong? “I’ll obey, of course, comrade leader, but explain to me, Bakiev, my friend: I’m battling kulakdom here, I’m hardly ever out of the saddle. They – the enemy – don’t know it’s peacetime now. They have pitchforks, axes, and rifles. It’s a genuine warfront! I’m needed here! And you’re sending me off just to sit around on a train…”
Bakiev’s gaze through the gold rings of his pince-nez is unusually severe. “We need reliable people like you, Ignatov, for this job. What makes you think it’s going to be easy? It’s twenty train cars chock-full of human lives. And each is a dyed-in-the-wool kulak, harboring a sense of hurt the size of a pig, if not a cow, toward the authorities. Just you try bringing them halfway across the country and delivering them to their destination without them fighting among themselves and scattering along the way. And then there’s the question – can you do it?”
“What do you mean, can I do it, Bakiev? You know me, don’t you? It’s not a complex matter. You put the meanest guards and the strongest locks on the railroad cars. It’s a bayonet in the eye if someone moves their eyebrows the wrong way.”
“Is that so?” Bakiev squints and now it’s obvious how very much he’s aged in this last half-year. So that’s what a warm office, with its oak desk and sweet tea in lace-like tea-glass holders, does to comrades-in-arms. But Bakiev, like Ignatov, is still only thirty years old.
“They’ll get there, there’s no way out. I know what I’m talking about. Believe me, I’ve seen so many of them in this last year, those oppressors. Just reconsider, Bakiev, my friend. And tell me truly, is it not possible to send someone else? Being a nanny for a train is embarrassing…”
“A nanny? A commandant for a special train is just a nanny in your opinion? And a thousand human heads are just trifles? When will you grow up, Ivan? All you want is to ride a steed with your saber unsheathed, and for the wind to whistle loudly in your ears! And it doesn’t matter where you gallop off to or why!” And (here’s the calm Bakiev for you, too): whack! A fist to the desk.
Ignatov whacks his fist in response. “Now, now! What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? I gallop off wherever the Party orders!”
“And the Party’s ordering you to set the showboating aside, too! To accept, today, the assignment on special train K-2437. Departure’s tomorrow!”
“Yes, sir.”
They catch their breath. Go silent. Light cigarettes.
“Please understand, Bakiev, my friend, that my heart is for the Party. It doesn’t just ache for the Party, it burns for it. Everybody’s heart should burn like that. Because what does our country need us for, anyway, if there’s only a candle stub instead of a heart or the gaze loses its fire?”
“I do understand you, Vanya. Please try to understand me, too. Maybe you’ll grasp this later and thank me – because it’s for you, you damned fool, so you…” Bakiev falls silent and vigorously wipes the lenses of his pince-nez with a handkerchief as if he wants to push them out. The glass is creaking. He’s strange today.
“So where are we taking this special train of yours?” Ignatov blows a stream of smoke at the floor.
“To Sverdlovsk for now. You’ll stay in a holding area there and wait for orders. That’s how we send everybody now, until further notice.”
“Yes, sir.” Ignatov’s wondering if he’ll have time before tomorrow to say goodbye to both women. First, certainly, to Nastasya. And later, if there’s enough time, to Ilona, to be done with her for good, to end things.
They shake hands. For some reason, Bakiev suddenly spreads his arms wide and clasps Ignatov to his chest. He certainly is strange today.
“I’ll drop by tomorrow to say goodbye before I leave.”
“There’s no need, Vanya. Consider it said.”
Bakiev attaches the pince-nez to his nose and continues sorting through documents in folders. The papers cover his desk like drifted snow.
Ignatov gets up to leave and turns when he reaches the door. Bakiev is sitting motionless, up to his neck in a paper snowbank. His eyes, magnified by the pince-nez’s bulging lenses, are wearily closed.
Of course he doesn’t make it to Ilona’s. To hell with her.She’ll assume I left on an urgent assignment. He’s gone missing before for a week or two without warning. This time he’ll be away for a month, a month and a half… Exactly how long will he be racing around on the railroad, anyway? Fine, he was ordered to be a commandant, he’ll be a commandant. He’ll eat government-issue chow and get enough sleep; it’s a long trip. He’ll cart away that damned special train if that’s what Bakiev needs so desperately. And then he’ll say, “That’s it, my friend, return me to real work. My soul’s weary. It’s asking for a real task…”