Now we journey by night only, without a time-table or lights,
and again under a drizzling rain. The train stops without whistling
and as silently starts again. Around us all is still, as in October;
the country-side is shrouded by night. Men alight at each stop after
Polotsk; no one sits down again; and at every stop thirty miles of
narrow gauge railway lead to the trenches. What monotony after
Moscow! after the hustle and clatter of an endless day! There is the
faintest glimmer of dawn, and the eastern sky looks like a huge green
bottle.
"Get up--we have arrived!"
Budslav station; the roof is demolished by aeroplane bombs. Soldiers
sleep side by side in a little garden on asphalt steps beneath
crocuses. A drowsy Jew opens his bookstall on the arrival of the
train: he sells books by Chirikov, Von Vizin, and Verbitskaya. And
from the distance, with strange distinctness, comes a sound like
muffled clapping.
"What is that?" "Must be the heavy artillery." "Where is the
Commandant?" "The Commandant is asleep!..."
A week has passed by in the trenches, and another week has commenced.
The bustle of the first few days is over; now all is in order. In a
corner of a meadow, a little way from the front, hangs a man's body;
the head by degrees has become severed from the trunk. But I do not
see very much. We sleep in the day.
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