Yellow Blue Tibia

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At dawn we boarded a special train. The track had recently been repaired. We all commented on the extraordinary and heroic efficiency with which war damage was being repaired all the way across the city. Sergei declared that the sunrise resembled a frozen explosion: clouds strewn about the sky like shreds of raw meat, and a vivid orange-yellow billowing-up of colour behind the eastern horizon. Our military escort didn’t know what to make of this. It’s possible they suspected bourgeois decadence in such talk. It’s possible they were right to be suspicious. Certainly the sky contrasted very sharply with the iron and stone of the city: grey and silver and rust. The eye was inevitably drawn to the frozen rage of sunrise. Such colours. We were on our way to meet Comrade Stalin himself, in person, and all of us feeling almost as honoured and excited as we did terrified. Then Sergei, as perverse as ever, tried to get the whole carriage singing patriotic songs, but the soldiers didn’t join in.

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