To Vladivostok!

The train came to a sudden halt. The tall Ural Mountains towered over the valley, leaving only hints of sunlight peering through small cracks in their tips. Friday evening last, I was granted extended leave from my Romanian post. Since then, I’ve been stuck on a steam train the Tsar benevolently granted to my company towards our next destination. What a gracious surprise! I had thought at the time, but this now, I hadn’t wished upon myself.

The speakers came to life, and the conductor began. “Apologies for the sudden stop. We are now on the move again. Do not step outside of the train, even when stopped. Traitors will be shot,” he asserted. “I don’t want to have to do this, but the Tsar’s will came from the hands of god, after all. So we pray for our safety.”

Across Russia, we were taught how the Tsar’s holiness and divinity eclipsed our personal autonomies. Reading just one non state approved book proved its absurdity. If us downtrodden workers of the world should have just one thing in common, it shall be ourselves. I slumped further into my seat, bumping my head hard into its back.

As the train began rolling, steam creeped through the cracks in the floor, its strong coal smell generating coughs among the company. Looking carefully around the train cabin wearied by the stares of a thousand eyes before me, there was a dilapidated, decrepit decalcomania, decorticating the wallpaper behind it, with the caption underneath reading “Baby Moscow.” Perhaps it reminded me of my own at home.

As we began to turn the corner, the sun penetrated the glass windows, reflecting off of their security bars into my eyes. Glancing down to avoid the glare, I noticed that we were pulling into Yekaterinburg station. As we began the final approach, I felt the rumble of a dozen other trains and trucks. In just a second, an ear-piercing screech emanated from the scraping of senescent rust on train wheels against the station’s tracks. Suddenly, a gush of the freezing, eastern Siberian air rushed up my shoulder into my face. A mailman and maintenance worker, appearing to be in a state of frigidness akin to mine, rushed inside the cabin. Coming in ahead of the mailman, the maintenance worker walked through the aisle beside me, nearing the “Baby Moscow” decal. Observing it as if he was admiring, I realized it was a creation of his own.

I could hear shouts coming from outside my train window, aimed at the maintenance worker. “Excuse you! Troublemakers have defaced the Tsar’s image two stations down! No time for your personal projects!”

As the maintenance worker’s short-lived moment of joy elapsed, I looked back at “Baby Moscow”, watching as a single splash of decal coating covering her mouth slowly dripped onto my table.

Turning my gaze back towards the area in front of me, I became aware of an envelope that the mailman had given me. I scanned the room for him to extend my gratitude, but just as quickly as the maintenance worker, he had gotten off the train as well.

Redirecting my attention to the letter, I impetuously ripped apart the paltry paper hiding my fate from me.

Hastily steering my gaze from line to line, my mind floated from word to word, as it put piece to piece together, completing the grand message which it had deciphered. A beg from my wife as to the neglect and seperation our relationship had suffered through as a result of my nonstop Tsar-appointed posts in foreign fields.

Stuck inside these four walls, and sent inside forever, I tidied the envelope and placed it in my satchel. One day, justice would have to be served. I know it in my heart. Once, I will be able to rekindle and restore my love, and it would matter not what vast tracts of deserts and tundras I would have to traverse or how many Christmases would pass before I was home, because it would be a small price to pay for salvation, to feel the warm embrace of my wife, and for the desolated lives of the workers of the world to be rejuvenated.