The eyes were blue, heavy with sleeplessness and pain.
The man strode methodically up and down, swinging his bayonet, with only one thought in his mind: when would his hour of freezing torture be up? Then he could escape from the hideous cold into the heavenly warmth of the heated cars with their glowing stoves, where he could crawl into a crowded kennel-like compartment, collapse on to a narrow cot, cover himself up and stretch out.
The man and his shadow marched from the fiery glow of the armored belly as far as the dark wall of the first armored car, to the point where stood the black inscription:
'The Proletarian'
Now growing, now hunching itself to the shape of a monster, but never losing its sharp point, the shadow dug into the snow with its black bayonet.
The bluish rays of the lamp shone feebly down behind the man.
Like two blue moons, giving out no heat and trying to the eyes, two lamps burned, one at each end of the platform.
The man looked around for any source of heat, but there was none; having lost all hope of warming his toes, he could do nothing but wriggle them. He stared fixedly up at the stars.
The easiest star to see was Mars, shining in the sky ahead of them, above the City.
As he looked at it, the gaze from his eyes travelled millions of miles and stared unblinkingly at the livid, reddish light from the star.
It contracted and expanded, clearly alive, and it was five-pointed.
Occasionally, as he grew more and more tired, the man dropped his rifle-butt on to the snow, stopped, dozed off for a moment, but the black wall of the armored train did not depart from that sleep, nor did the sounds coming from the station But he began to hear new sounds.
A vast sky opened out above him in his sleep, red, glittering, and spangled with countless red-pointed stars.
The man's soul was at once filled with happiness.
A strange unknown man in chain-mail appeared on horseback and floated up to the man.
The black armored train was just about to dissolve in the man's dream, and in its place rose up a village deep in snow - the village of Maliye Chugry.
He, the man, was standing on the outskirts of Chugry, and a neighbor of his was coming toward him.
'Zhilin?' said the man's brain, silently his lips motionless. At once a grim voice struck him in the chest with the words:
'Sentry . . . your post . . . keep moving . . . freeze to death.'
With a superhuman effort the man gripped his rifle again, placed it on his arm, and began marching again with tottering steps.
Up and down.
Up and down.
The sky that he had seen in his sleep disappeared, the whole frozen world was again clothed in the silky, dark-blue night sky, pierced by the sinister black shape of a gun-barrel.
The reddish star in the sky shone, twinkling, and in response to the rays of the blue, moon-like station lamp a star on the man's chest occasionally flashed.
The star was small and also five-pointed. *
The urgent spirit of the night flew on and on above the Dnieper.
It flew over the deserted riverside wharves and descended on Podol, the Lower City.
There, all the lights had long been put out.
Everyone was asleep.
Only in a three-storey stone building on Volynskaya Street, in a room in the house of a librarian, like a room in a cheap hotel, the blue-eyed Rusakov sat beside a lamp with a green glass shade.
In front of him lay a heavy book bound in yellow leather.
His gaze travelled slowly and solemnly along the lines.
And I saw the dead small and great stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
...
And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
As he read the shattering book his mind became like a shining sword, piercing the darkness.
Illness and suffering now seemed to him unimportant, unreal.
The sickness had fallen away, like a scab from a withered, fallen branch in awood.
He saw the fathomless blue mist of the centuries, the endless procession of millenia.
He felt no fear, only the wisdom of obedience and reverence.
Peace had entered his soul and in that state of peace he read on to the words: And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. *
The dim mist parted and revealed Lieutenant Shervinsky to Elena.
His slightly protuberant eyes smiled cheerfully.
'I am a demon,' he said, clicking his heels, 'and Talberg is never coming back. I shall sing to you . . .'
He took from his pocket a huge tinsel star and pinned it on to the left side of his chest.
The mists of sleep swirled around him, and his face looked bright and doll-like among the clouds of vapor.
In a piercing voice, quite unlike his waking voice, he sang:
'We shall live, we shall live!'