STATE GOODS
I passed through several stations with names that sounded heavy to my half-Polish ear: Argayash, Bizhelyak, Kyshtym, Mauk and Ufalei, almost without stopping, but with a few adventures.
We stopped to fuel the engine at the village of Kyshytm (a name with my two “y”s, my least favorite letter, the sound “y” in the Russian language took me a long time to learn to pronounce). I made up my mind to carefully crawl out of my den and run for some boiling water, to brew in the kettle given me by the soldiers some tea that I had snitched in Chelyabinsk. Quite soon I succeeded in climbing through the window unnoticed and pulling up the kettle, attached by a rope.
On the way to get the boiling water, as I walked between the cargo trains, I came across an unexpected sight – the railway
