't new
at all. It was the river--the river Dvina. Now the Dvina is in
Polotzk. All my life I had seen the Dvina. How, then, could the Dvina
be in Vitebsk? My cousin and I had come on the train, but everybody
knew that a train could go everywhere, even to Russia. It became clear
to me that the Dvina went on and on, like a railroad track, whereas I
had always supposed that it stopped where Polotzk stopped. I had never
seen the end of Polotzk; I meant to, when I was bigger. But how could
there be an end to Polotzk now? Polotzk was everything on both sides
of the Dvina, as all my life I had known; and the Dvina, it now turned
out, never broke off at all. It was very curious that the Dvina should
remain the same, while Polotzk changed into Vitebsk!

The mystery of this transmutation led to much fruitful thinking. The
boundary between Polotzk and the rest of the world was not, as I had
supposed, a physical barrier, like the fence which divided our garden
from the street. The world went like this now: Polotzk--more
Polotzk--more Polotzk--Vitebsk! And Vitebsk was not so different, only
bigger and brighter and more crowded. And Vitebsk was not the end. The
Dvina, and the railroad, went on beyond Vitebsk,--went on to Russia.
Then was Russia more Polotzk? Was here also no dividing fence? How I
wanted to see Russia! But very few people went there. When people went
to Russia it was a sign of trouble; either they could not make a
living at home, or they were drafted for the army, or they had a
lawsuit. No, nobody went to Russia for pleasure. Why, in Russia lived
the Czar, and a great many cruel people; and in Russia were the
dreadful prisons from which people never came back.

Polotzk and Vitebsk were now bound together by the continuity of the
earth, but between them and Russia a formidable barrier still
interposed. I learned, as I grew older, that much as Polotzk disliked
to go to Russia, even more did Russia object to letting Polotzk come.
People from Polotzk were sometimes turned back before they had
finished their business, and often they were cruelly treated on the
way. It seemed there were certain places in Russia--St. Petersburg,
and Moscow, and Kiev--where my father or my uncle or my neighbor must
never come at all, no matter what important things invited them. The
police would seize them and send them back to Polotzk, like wicked
criminals, although they had never done any wrong.

It was strange enough that my relatives