Mountains, forests, beaten tracks …

Soldiers streamed along well-worn roads and goat-tracks like litter on the torrents of spring.

Soldiers in their thousand besieged the stations and railway halts. At night the sky was lit by the glow of their campfires. All were bent on getting on a train, and the trains were full.

Trains rolled north amidst songs, whoops and whistles …

The rattling goods wagons were filled to the brim with men, like bags full of grain.

‘Friends, let us on!’

‘There's no room.’

‘We’ve got to move … Two weeks we’ve been waiting.’

‘Go ahead. We ain't stopping you.’

‘Find us a space …’

‘We’re full up.’

‘Comrades!’

‘Full up.’

‘From the Turkestan Regiment …’

‘Where d’you think you’re going? Afonya, put a match to his beard, will you?’

‘I’m a delegate. This is a ballot box,’ yelled Maxim in a hoarse voice, holding the box up in front of him like an icon. Nobody took any notice. Groans, squeals, shouts … The trains flew on in clouds of smoke and dust. And thousands of hearts rolled north, overtaking the wheels and tap-tap-tapping as they went:

…go-ing home …

… home …

… home…

Maxim took from his kitbag his last chunk of black bread, heavy as earth, and started waving it in the air as the wagons rolled by.

‘Hey, hey!’

A huge pockmarked Cossack caught it in the air, and snatched up Maxim's bags and Maxim himself and dragged him in through the window.

‘Away we go!’

It was crowded, but bearable.

‘Shut the door, it's cold,’ snarled somebody from under a seat. But the door had been torn off and burned long ago, and all the windows smashed.

‘Put up with it; you’re going home.’

From the top bunk a big cropped head was leaning down, with mischievous eyes glinting, and telling with great relish a story about Grisha Rasputin: ‘In he goes to the Empress's bawdoir, drops his velveteen breeches and gets straight down to business!’

‘How many times can you do it?’ she asks.