That's what I call life! The bureaus for buying gold and all that sort of thing, doing a brisk trade.... The life of the streets in full swing... a fine town...."
"And stuff for a pair of trousers costs half a year's salary.
The speculators are strangling us.... And they all have such high foreheads, you know, and blue serge suits.... They sit in the cafes selling order-sheets. You get up in the morning—no matches in the town.
And a week later there they are—a ruble a box.
Another time it's needles.
I gave my wife two needles and a reel of cotton for her birthday.
I used to give her diamond earrings.... The intellectuals are perishing, dying out...."
"The speculators should be ruthlessly shot down...."
"Now Mr. Comrade, none of your Bolshevism here!"
"What's the news in Kiev? Is the hetman sitting tight?"
"So long as the Germans hold out. They say another claimant to the Ukraine has appeared—Vasili Vishivanni.
He's a descendant of the Hapsburgs, but he goes about in Ukrainian dress."
"Time to sleep, gentlemen, let's put out the candle."
"Put out the candle?
We're in a train, aren't we?"
"It would be safer.... The windows can be seen from the fields, as the train passes."
Silence fell upon the compartment.
The thump-thump of the wheels suddenly became very distinct.
Sparks from the engine flew into the darkness of the steppe.
Then somebody croaked out in the last stages of indignation:
"Who said: 'put out the candle'?" (Silence.
An eerie sensation.) "Aha, the candle! So's he can rummage in the luggage.
Find out who it was, and take him to the end of the carriage and chuck him out of the train."
Somebody began drearily sucking his teeth.
A panic-stricken voice exclaimed:
"I was travelling last week, and a woman had two bundles stolen with the crook of a stick...."
"That's the Makhno men, you can be sure of that!"
"The Makhno men wouldn't soil their hands for two bundles. Robbing trains—that's their job."
"Don't let's start talking about them in the night, gentlemen."
Stories were told, one more horrible than the other.
Bloodcurdling incidents were related.
It now appeared that the district through which the train was carrying them at such a leisurely pace was a perfect den of thieves, that the Germans always tried to avoid it, and that the guard had actually been removed at the previous station. In these villages the men flaunted beaver coats, the girls went in silks and velvets.
Not a day passes but—rat-tat-tat—either the train is fired on from a machine gun, or the last few carriages are uncoupled and pushed along the rails, or the door opens when the train is at full speed, and bearded men with axes and sawed-off guns come in: hands up!
The Russians they simply strip to their skins, but when they get hold of a Jew...."
"A Jew?
What have the Jews got to do with it?" shrieked out a clean-shaven man in a blue serge suit, the one who had been so enthusiastic about Kiev.
"Why should the Jews be blamed for everything?"
This shriek put the finishing touch to the eerie atmosphere.
Voices died down.
Katya again closed her eyes.
She had nothing worth stealing, unless it were the emerald ring.
But she, too, was seized with an enervating fear.
In order to still the painful sinkings at her heart she tried to recall once more the charm of that unfulfilled night.
But she could hear nothing but the wheels beating out in the dark void: "Kat-en-ka, Ka-ten-ka, Ka-ten-ka, everything's over and done...."
The train stopped abruptly, as if it (had come up against a stone wall, the brakes emitted metallic squeals, chains rattled, glass rang, some boxes fell heavily from an upper bunk.
What was most astonishing of all was that nobody so much as gasped.
People leaped from their seats, looking from side to side, listening tensely.
Words were unnecessary—it was clear that they were in for something unpleasant.
Rifle shots rang out in the darkness.
The clean-shaven man in the blue serge suit rushed out of the compartment, plunging hither and thither in the attempt to find a hiding place.