NORTHBOUND
There isn’t much I can say about the orphanage in Kirov, either good nor bad. It has left in my memory a shapeless gray blur. By the end of my stay there, which would have been next summer, I had made friends with this little fellow named Mumble (or Buba, in Russian) who came from around Arkhangelsk. We ran away together. Buba had earned his nickname on account of mumbling his homework aloud when cramming it. He was a descendant of timber rafters. Why they had been exiled first to Siberia, then to the Urals, Buba couldn’t say. His father was killed in action in the Battle of Kursk, fighting in a platoon consisting entirely of GULAG prisoners. His mother with two small children was permitted to return to her hometown, but Buba was for some reason given over to rot in the orphan
