luck. I'll make sure they don't realise you're missing for at least two days.'
Stanislaw touched his arm and Wadek caught sight of the prisoners' train in the distance, slowly inching its way towards them. He tensed in anticipation, his heart pounding, his eyes following the movement of every soldier. He waited for the incoming train to come to a halt and watched the tired prisoners pile out on to the platform, hundreds of them, anonymous men with only a past. When the station was a chaos of people and the guards were fully occupied, Wladek ran under the carriage and jum ed on to the other train. No p one showed any interest as he went into a lavatory at the end of the carriage. He locked himself in and waited and prayed, every moment expecting someone to knock on the door. It seemed a life tinie to Wladek before the train began to move out of the station. It was, in fact, seventeen minutes.
'At last, at last,' he said out loud. He looked through the little window and watched the station growing smaller and smaller in the distance, a mass of new prisoners being hitched up to the chains, ready for the journey to camp 201, the guards laughing, as they locked them in. How many would reach the camp alive? How many would be fed to the wolves? How long before they missed him? Wladek sat in the lavatory for several more minutes, terrified to move, not sure what he ought to do next. Suddenly there was a banging on the door.
Wladek thought quickly - the guard, the ticket collector, a soldier - a succession of images flashed through his mind, each one more frightening than the last. He needed to use the lavatory for the first time. The banging persisted.
'Come on, come on,' said a man in coarse Russian.
Wladek had little choice. If it was a soldier, there was no way out, a dwarf could not have squeezed through the little window. If it wasn't a soldier, he would only draw attention to himself by staying there. He took off his prison clothes, made them into as small a bundle as possible, and threw them out of the window. Then he removed a soft hat from the pocket of his suit to cover his shaved head, and opened the door. An agitated man rushed in, pulling down his trousers even before Wladek had left.
Once in the corridor, Wladek felt isolated and terrifyingly conspicuous in his out - of - date suit, an apple placed on a pile of oranges. He immediately went in search of another lavatory. When he found one that was unoccupied, he locked himself in and quickly undid the stitches in his suitj extracting one of the four fifty - ruble notes. He replaced the other three and returned to the corridor. He looked for the most crowded carriage he could find and hid himself in a corner. Some men were playing pitch - and - toss in the middle of the carriage for a few rubles to while away the time. Wladek had always beaten Leon when they had played in the castle, and he would have liked to have joined the contestants, but he feared winning and drawing attention to himself. The game went on for a long time and Wladek began to remember the stratagems. The temptation to risk li~is two hundred rubles was almost irresistible.
One of the gamblers, who had parted with a considerable amount of his money, retired in disgust and sat down by Wladek, swearing.
'The luck. wasn't with you,' said Wladek, wanting to hear the sound of his own voice.
'Ah, it's not luck,' the gambler replied. 'Most days I could beat that lot of peasants, but I have run out of rubles!
'Do you want to sell your coat?' asked Wladek.
The gambler was one of the few passengers in the carriage wearing a good, old, thick bearskin coat. He stared at the youth.
'Looking at that suit I'd say you couldn't afford it, boy! Wladek could tell from the man's voice that he hoped he could. 'I would want seventy - five rublm'
'I'll give you forty,' said Wladek.
'Sixty,' said the gambler.
'Fifty,'said Wladek.
'No. Sixty is the least I'd let it go for; it cost over a hundred,'said the gambler.
'A long time ago,' said Wladek, as he considered the implications of taking extra money from inside the lining of his coat in order to secure the full amount needed. He decided against