Kolia Read Online Free Page A

criminals, as well as the children of dissidents.
    Kolia wrote a letter to Iosif’s sister, Tanya. The letter would certainly be read by some nameless third party who would most likely censor it. He decided not to take any risks and wrote it in Russian, composing four rough drafts on the flaps of two cardboard boxes. In simple language, he described his pardon, his arrival in Magadan, and his daily life in Khabarovsk. He expressed how much he wanted to see Moscow and his strong desire to move there. He wrote of Iosif’s disappearance, but carefully avoided the word dead . Without mentioning the source, he quoted a Russian poet he didn’t particularly care for, simplifying the passage somewhat and working it into his letter as if the words were his own: I will cross my motherland, slipping through like the slanted rain of summer . Perhaps Tanya would understand. He wanted to impress her — if she agreed, the trip could be made that summer. He mailed the letter at the post office and began to count the days.
    In his growing impatience, he started to daydream. He attempted to take stock of his country and to measure the scope of his time in it. He had been free for six months. He had lost the only person who had ever really mattered to him; now he clung to the photo of Tanya and the clipped French sentences of her letters.
    It was a passport photo taken in Moscow in 1951. On the back, beside the date, was her name: Tanya Branch . Kolia had found it in the envelope containing Iosif’s documents. For months, he slept with the photograph in his hand as if it were a religious icon. She was the spitting image of her brother, without the wrinkled skin, and with hair that turned to curls at her shoulders. In the chaos of Khabarovsk, he found himself incapable of approaching women, in spite of his intense adolescent desire. He kept the photograph with him always.
    Forty-two days later, Kolia found out that Tanya’s Russian sentences weren’t anywhere as concise as those she wrote in French, but full and graceful, almost sinuous: as if she were clearing a path towards meaning and truth, in order to unearth them.

TOWARDS MOSCOW
    IN HIS SUITCASE KOLIA HAD packed provisions for the trip: four sausages, some smoked herring, and three round loaves of bread, one of which he had cut into slices to dip in his black tea. Apart from that and his papers, not much else. His ticket for Moscow was rolled up tightly and rested between his lips like a cigarette. The day felt summerlike and he instinctively readied himself for the squalls of dust that would leave his teeth coated in grit.
    He studied the movement of the passengers on the platform in order to determine how to board the train. His papers were checked first — the only trace of the gulag was his place of birth — and then Kolia faced the provodnik who stood in front of the entrance to the car.
    â€œTicket.”
    As he unrolled his ticket, Kolia’s knapsack dropped to the ground and his blanket fell open. The provodnik took a step backwards and then accepted his ticket with disdain. On the blanket, Kolia had sewn his name, Nikolai Vladimirovich , and, in a statement of bravado, the years 1937 , 1943 , and 1953 . The dates were glaringly obvious. The Great Purge, the war, the death of Stalin — events that traced Kolia’s genealogy, like the branches of a family tree with no trunk.
    He sat beside the window behind a big family who smelled strongly of something they were eating, something good. He ate some bread and waited for the train to leave. The open compartment filled up in a matter of minutes. Moscow, which he had once seen in a photograph, lay at a distance of almost nine thousand kilometres from where he sat. The train started moving.
    The bartering had already begun throughout the car. Food was being exchanged for papirosa cigarettes or fabric, and anything else that one party had but the other didn’t. People were reading books