in our lives?'
'With your life, perhaps, but not mine. I say he must go and go now.'
Wladek did not need to listen to any more of their conversation. Deciding that the only way he could help his benefactress would be to disappear without trace into the night, he dressed quickly and stared at the slept - in bed, hoping it would not be four more years before he saw another one. He was unlatching the window when the door was flung open and into the room came the station master, a tiny man, no taller than Wladek, with a large stomach and an almost bald head covered in long strands of grey hair. He wore rimless spectacles, which had produced little red semicircles under each eye. The man carried a paraffin lamp.
He stood, staring at Wladek. Wladek stared defiantly back.
'Come downstairs,' he commanded.
Wladek followed him reluctantly to the kitchen. The woman was sitting at the table crying.
'Now listen, boy,' he said.
'His name is Wladek,' the woman interjected.
'Now listen, boy.' he repeated. 'You are trouble, and 1 want you out of here and as far away as possible. I'll tell you what I am going to do to help you.'
Help? Wladek gazed at him stonily.
'I am going to give you a train ticket. Where do you want to go?, 'Odessa,' said Wladek, ignorant of where it was or how much it would cost, knowing only that it wa3 the next city on the doctor's map to freedom.
'Odessa, the mother of crime - an appropriate destination,' sneered the station master. 'You can only be among your own kind and come to harm there!
'Then let him stay with us, Piotr. I will take care of him, I Will ...
I 'No, never. I would rather pay the bastard!
'But how can he hope to get past the authorities?' the woman pleaded.
'I will have to issue him a working pass for Odessa.' He turned his head towards Wladek. 'Once you are on that train, boy, if I see or hear of you again in Moscow, I will have you arrested on sight and thrown into the nearest jail. You will then be back in that prison camp as fast as the train can get you there if they don't shoot you first.'
He stared at the clock on the kitchen mantlepiece: five after eleven. He turned to his wife. 'There is a train that leaves for Odessa at midnight.
I will take him to the station myself. I want to be sure he leaves Moscow. Have you any baggage,boy?'
Wladek was about to say no, when the woman said, Tes, I will go and fetch it.'
Wladek and the station master stood, staring at each other with mutual contempt. The woman was away for a long time. The grandfather clock struck once in her absence. Still neither spoke, and the station master's eyes never left Wladek. When his wife returned, she was carrying a large brown paper parcel wrapped up with string. Wladek stared at it and began to protest, but as their eyes met, he saw such fear in bers that he only just got out the words, 'Thank you: 'Eat this,' she said, thrusting her bowl of cold soup towards him.
He obeyed, although his shrunken stomach was now overfull, gulping down the soup as quickly as possible, not wanting her to be in any more trouble.
'Animal,' the man said.
Wladek looked at him, hatred in his eyes. He felt pity for the woman, bound to such a man for life.
'Come, boy, it's time to leave,' the station master said. 'We don't want you to miss your train, do we?'
Wladek followed the man out of the kitchen. He hesitated as he passed the woman and touched her hand, feeling the response. Nothing was said; no words would have been adequate. The station master and the refugee crept through the streets of Moscow, hiding in the shadows, until they reached the station. The station master obtained a one - way ticket to Odessa and gave the little red slip of paper to Wladek.
'My pass?' said Wladek defiantly.
From his inside pocket the man drew out an official looking form, signed it hurriedly, and handed it over furtively to Wladek. The station master's eyes kept looking all around him for any possible danger. Wladek had seen those eyes so many times during the past four years : the eyes of a coward.
'Never let me see or hear of you again,' he said, the voice of a bully.
Wladek had also heard that voice many