usb siberia 2

in Siberia

*  Starting my train journey from Busan- Pyungyang- uradivostok through Siberia

to Moscow and crossing the frontier to Paris, my final destination!

2

On the running train which left Moscow Station for Irkusk, he stood leaning his body against the window frame, sipping hot Samobar teas. The snow-covered prairie outside with no hills, nor mountain seen above the horizon was like the silent and silver-colored sea, on which several islands of forests floated. Surprised and unbelievable at the fictitious scene spread before his eyes, he rubbed them and looked outside again, but it was the same as the scene seen before. 

The slow train kept running into the prairie of Siberia through every station where it stopped and departed repeatedly. The next day on the train he wished to experience passing by train over the Ural Mountains , so he looked out again and again. He was informed that the Siberian Railway train starting from Moscow should go beyond the Ural Mountains in order to reach Irkusk located deeply in Siberia. Whenever some rather low ridgelines came into sight, he thought that they would be parts of the Urals, expecting to see the main body of the Urals. However, the view he could catch was only the sleeping sliver-colored sea, not the Ural. To him, the snow-covered horizontal prairie, with forests and the endless horizon, looked as if it were still the silent sea with islands, not the Urals. In other words, it seemed to him that he was aboard a ship on a voyage, looking out the sea with island, not in a train running through the prairie. He was for while in a optical illusion.  As you know, he has been influenced in spite of himself by the sea in his hand, the very sea which he used to live by in his boyhood. Anyway  he did come to realize the fact that when he mumbled to himself, “Why do the Urals reveal themselves where they are thought to be? “, he had passed over the mountains without knowledge of it.

 

The Siberian Railway train was as if it were a running hostel and the train compartment, which he was in, was also as if a hostel room with 6 two-story beds. As a difference between both sides ,he felt, was that in the compartment he could hardly understand others because between him, who was completely ignorant of Russian language, and the passengers, who was illiterate in English. It was was not a trifling thing, because he could not but endure the inconvenience caused by his ignorance of Russian all the time on the train where there could be no mutual understanding between both sides. So he frequently stepped out of the compartment into the empty space between the compartment and another. As for him, the cold space outside the compartment, which let him feel easy and enjoy seeing the landscape outside in spite of severe coldness. But he had to continuously rub away the ice on the window to look out.  

From departure to Irkusk, his destination, what he saw on the running train was the gray-colored sky, snow-covered earth wider than the ocean, silvery forests in deep silence. He tried to lessen the feeling of uneasiness owing to his inability to talk with others by sipping hot Samobar teas, with his eyes turned out on the landscape. He thought Siberia was worthy of the name. Though it was in the beginning of March, the land still was sleeping under the thick cover of snow drifts like in winter.

On the one hand, the next day after his first night in the coach, it was warm and carefree. Three men looking like manual laborers sat around a table, playing a card game and a dog sat unmoved under the bed at a corner in the coach. The carefree scene reminded him of a work of Cezanne’s titled “a card game”.

 

Then surprisingly, in the Siberian Railway train the 3-class passengers were not allowed to step in the dining car. Probably it would be for that reason that there were no one without a couple of bundles of something to eat and drink. To him it was not a trifling problem, because he prepared nothing to eat but a lump of Russian bread and a bottle of water before getting on board. First he was much perplexed at it, but soon had a mind to stand the difficult situation with the bread and water in his bag for 5 nights till his destination.

 

 Toward evening while the train stopped for a while at the station in a city, a lot of local residents crowded into the platform with everything to sell in their hands or on their heads. Most of peddlers seemed to be Siberian housewives looking warm-hearted. In a moment the platform turned into a special market for passengers to buy necessities in ! He felt very lucky that he met such a market there. Needless to say, he could buy some necessary foodstuffs and beverages plus a bottle of wine.

It was from then on that he could get more comfortable on the running train free of the obscure uneasiness. He again looked outside through the window of the running train to enjoy the panoramic landscape of the Siberian Taiga forests spread far and wide. In a way, the scene was a picturesque landscape caught in the consciousness of a foreign passenger aboard the train was dashing to the east through the Siberian Taiga forests,

with the Ural far away behind. In case of his Siberian train Journey, with Moscow Station as the starting point and Irkusk the final destination, the snow-covered prairie and forests was most impressive to this foreign passenger.

 At a time it was getting darker outside, he was reminded of the day when he set out on a trip to Russia. The day was also the moment to bid farewell to his son who was , for some days to come,scheduled to go to LA to live there, He had shared the precious time with his son for the last 7 days. He bid farewell to his son ,saying his son, “It’s time to say goodbye to you. Today I leave home to make a trip, and you leave home for USA to live in LA before I am back home from my journey, When can I share again in the future the happy moment like it with you.”And I should have added an advise, “Hey, boy! Regarding your goal for the future life,   whatever it might be, let it be a goal with obstacles before it which seem to be hardly possible for you to get over immediately’ . 

the landscape of the Siberian prairie spread wide and far before his eyes did not look intimidating contrary to it in his earlier imagination . It looked common and like a generous old man living next door, in spite of its great width and wildness. The prairie of Siberia was greatly different from the landscape of Rocky Mountains with a lot of sharp cliffs in harshness. It showed so stern a look that he as a backpack traveler , had felt scared, thinking that the mountains would not allowed any human being like him to blindly to come closer.

In contrast to Rocky Mountains, this horizontal prairie of Siberia with no barrier to prevent his view toward the line between the sky and the earth did not get him scared. This wild being , in spite of its hugeness in size, hade an intimate look which made him feel   easy. Though he felt severely cold stepping out of the train whenever it stopped, The wide prairie with no visible end to any direction from him on the train, it never threaten this stranger. It never made him nervous or psychologically uneasy. In a sudden the Siberian landscape looked as if it were the bosoms of mother.

It was a moment after he passed a coupe of nights on the train.  Knowing that the next station the train was to stop at was Omsk.  he was reminded of a sad scene of a prisoner and a dog, embracing each other in order to endure loneliness, despair and the bitter cold, in the Omsk Prison in “The House of The Dead”. The novel was one of Dostoyevsky’s which he had read in his high school days. As the writer himself was thrashed at the Omsk Prison, it was thought that the novel was of his own life. Other novels like “ Crime and Punishment

‘ and  “The brothers of Karamazov “ by the writer was the popular novels among most students in Korea at that time when he was a student.

Anyway the names of Siberia and Omsk has been familiar since then and he came to understood more deeply about how was the lives of the Siberian exiles through  George Kennan, an American historian who remarked as follows:

“There is no other boundary post in the whole world that has seen so much of human suffering and so many broken hearts. More than 170,ooo exiles have traveled this road since 1878, and more than half a million since the beginning of the present century. In former years, when exiles were compelled to walk from their places of arrest  to the places of their banishment, they reached the Siberian post only after months of toilsome marching along muddy or dusty roads , over forest-clad mountains, through rainstorms or snowstorms, or in bitter cold...... Some gave way to unrestrained grief; some comforted the weeping; some knelt and pressed their faces to the soil..... and collecting  a little earth to take with them….. crossed themselves hastily , and with a confused jangling of chains and leg fetters, moved slowly away past the boundary into Siberia.

...........'

The train stopped at the station of Omsk. It was the very place of exile where , it was said, Dostoyevsky had spent 4 years in prison, he got down and walked on the snow-covered platform, picturing in his mind the scene regarding how did the exile and a dog share their reliance on each other, described in his novel as follows:

 

 The exile, who accidently meets a dog in the prison,

is overwhelmed with pity for it and comes nearer to it.

The dog first stands very cautious, snarling at him ,

but after a while gets ready to receive his mind.

As an abandoned dog with no person to rely on,

it has been hungry for friendship with a person whom it can trust,

He caress the dogs’ head. He gives the bread for him to the dog

The dog which turns docile wags its tail looking at him. The dog has outlived there with no person to take care of itself for a few years.

Since then the dog is sure to be where the exiles is.

Now finding out him waling alone in the forest, it barks and runs to him.

He squats to embrace it in his bosom. It puts its paws on his shoulder, licking his face.

 

 

On the passenger train there was a Russian woman, loudly dressed, looking in her 40s, who shared with him the two-storied berth. The lower berth was where she was . She had her own way in such a narrow space, paying no attention to his feeling. She giggled with two men passengers  next to them. She even revealed her hostility to him by complaining to him on the upper berth that a part of the bed cloth above gliding down was unpleasant to her eyes. He disliked her attitude but could not but say sorry. When the train stopped at a station, a young woman passenger got on, with a newborn baby on her bosom, and took her seat on the lower berth near them. Then the baby began to cry and would not stop it . The mother tried in vain to get the baby calm down. At the right moment the woman loudly dressed got out of her berth and approached the baby and held it in her bosom, lulling the baby to sleep. All of them there including him felt greatly relieved to see what she did.

On the third day at dawn when the train stopped at a station, the  Russian woman on the lower berth , nervous and hostile to him was getting off there with her three bags.   

기차가 정차하기 훨씬 전부터 그녀가 어두운 기차의 흔들림 속에서 짐을 꾸리고 두꺼운 외투를 입은 채 얼굴, 몸 단장하는 것을 나는 윗 칸에서 누워 듣고 있었다.