At this, Kopionkin’s thoughts changed; he had once seen an unneeded man weeping in the wartime steppe. The man had been sitting on a stone, a wind of autumn weather blowing in his face, and not even the Red Army transport train would accept him, because he had lost all his documents—and the man himself had a wound in his groin and it was unclear whether he was weeping on account of being left behind or because his groin had become empty while his life and head had been preserved in full.
