In Siberia by Colin Thubron

Author:Colin Thubron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061862922
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-09-24T16:17:02+00:00

That night I was startled awake. Stepan, drunk, had blundered across the room and grabbed for his bag of belongings on the wall. In the frame of our window, blocking out the stars, the silhouettes of two men were beckoning him away. He lit a nurse’s lamp on the floor, then dithered towards my bed. His ancient head seemed to surmount the body of a stunted youth, its muscles barely slackened around his stomach. His hand extended towards me, rubbing its remaining fingers against his thumb. ‘Money?…money?…’ I closed my eyes. Then he let out a soft ‘Ya-aach!’ and tugged on his pullover, a pair of split trousers, his hat. The faces outside were still pressed against the glass.

The next moment a nurse rushed in and seized him by the arm. ‘You’ve had enough drink!’ she screamed. ‘You’ve had enough!’ He wrenched himself free, but she seized him again and he collapsed on to his bed and started to sing in a plaintive alto, like a woman. The faces vanished from the window. For a long time I lay trying to sleep, listening to the whimpering of the awakened child, while Stepan’s singing faded away.

In the dawn I went out to escape him, past the shuttered houses and growling kennels, to the river. A steamer was expected at noon, and I was hoping to leave. Half the day I waited among the thistles and grass on a high foreland, straining my eyes for the shadow of a ship. But the grey flood of the Yenisei suddenly looked hostile, flowing between dead banks, and nothing came. There had been storms upriver, somebody said.

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