Our mother had no business yanking us from Moscow, no matter how painful the city had become. Wasn’t it bad enough, with our father declared an Enemy of the Czar? Denounced by People, Coss and State? How could she thereupon haul her daughters along, like huddled gypsies, following the slender rails to a stark and snowy place. To a community of self-banished outcasts, encamped within distant sight of the prison-gulag where father (according to bribed hints) was held. My sister, Yelena, and I learned from the oldest schoolmaster - suffering - how to endure the way that only Russians can. The bare and diminished winter sun had little strength to warm our adolescent flesh. But cold possessed power to penetrate, sinking razor teeth through every bundled layer that we wore. There we joined work crews of the semi free, who trimmed giant-boled trees and harnessed them behind grunting beasts who puffed, snorted and vented steam as they dug into icy dust, hauling treasure toward the rails.
