Chapter 5, The Sleeping Carriage, Section 1 Summary

Kolya wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking of how things are soon to change. He will have to leave his friends and his life, but he does not seem too upset. Instead, he regrets having an old woman for a mother. He listens to her coughing on the other side of the curtain that separates their room and tries to imagine the place they are going. He knows they are going on a train, and thinks about the trips he's taken in his life, the sound of the train wheels. These good memories remind him of the worst memory in his life, when his father had to leave in the middle of the night. In the weeks after, other boys beat Kolya up, saying his father was a traitor, but Kolya knows...