Eastbound

by Maylis de Kerangal

The back window is free again and Aliocha leaps to it, magnetized to this unique focal point on the world—like an eye in the back of your head—captivated by the sight of the tracks that hurtle backwards into the landscape, striped ribbon alternating light and dark, stroboscope lighting up his face, and soon, hypnotized, he touches the point in space where the forest swallows the still-hot rails, engulfs the ties in a well of mystery, bit by bit he forgets the train car, forgets the guys smoking behind him and the smell of skin suctioned to the walls from sweat, all he is now is this vanishing point that devours space and time; he coincides with it, grows obsessed, ready to pour himself too into the great black hole, to tumble in headfirst, anything but Siberia, anything but the barracks, so concentrated in this moment that he doesn’t hear the two guys coming up behind him, bellies out jostling him, sandwiching him, then pushing roughly and pressing him against the wall as though trying to shove his body into it.