were called into the office and received our wages. After work, I went to the station and waited for my friend. The minutes flew by. It was [34] already 5 o’clock. My travelling companion was nowhere to be seen. I was gripped by a feeling of unease. What if he wasn’t coming? He finally showed up, out of breath, a few minutes after five. His excuse was that he hadn’t yet said goodbye to his brother. He proposed that we put the journey off till the following day, because he couldn’t leave without seeing his brother. I couldn’t agree to that. I felt that I couldn’t go back to the factory. I was burning with impatience. We went to ask when the next train was leaving. The answer was half past one at night. We bought two tickets for Minsk. The couple of hours we had to remain in Vitebsk were a torment. We had nowhere to go. We were afraid to stay at the station: what if we were asked where we were travelling to? What if someone from the factory saw us and got suspicious? Until about 12, we roamed around the city. The brother of my travelling companion and a friend who worked with me at the factory hung around with us. It was hard for us to say goodbye. We were heavy-hearted. Who knew if we would evermeet again? And what would happen to us on the way and to them here? But the raging blizzard drove them home and us to the station. The station was full of departing passengers. We sat down in a corner and pretended to be asleep, although we couldn’t even dream of sleeping. Around one in the morning a militiaman approached us. We were terror-stricken. He woke us up and asked “Where to?” (Kuda?) Without thinking for too long, we replied “to Orsha for work”. The people around us, mostly peasants, stared at us. It seemed to us that they could read on our faces everything that was in our hearts and minds. The policeman was satisfied with our reply and left.
The train pulled out. We lay down on the third, top bunk. In […] we changed trains. There was a terrible snow storm, which […] people. In the morning, we arrived in Minsk. We looked around us, worried that warrants might have been issued for our arrest. We went straight to the ticket office and asked when there was a train for Baranowicze [35]. The ticket clerk replied that she sold tickets for Baranowicze only to passengers with travel permits. Without a travel permit, we could go only as far as the border at Negoreloye. We walked into town and found our way by chance to a factory kitchen that was a centre for all the bezhentsy. We talked to various refugees and acquaintances. Everyone was thinking about the same thing: how to get home. Anacquaintance gave us a place to spend the night.
BIA ŁY STO K AN D THE WESTERN BE L ARUS [ 18] 211
