Eastbound

by Maylis de Kerangal

No longer is the future like an inert and viscous landscape, a long corridor of dirty snow: he has a plan and this is enough to make him relax, to slow his pulse and ease his anxiety.

feelings: this young soldier also embodies the entire country, he’s an archive of all the Russian wars—“the homeland our mother, the war our stepmother,” Anton had taught her this adage one night