The Yellow Arrow


"The Yellow Arrow" is the allegorical short story by Victor Pelevin written in 1993. It was published in different collections of works of the author.

Plot

The story is set in "The yellow arrow". It is a train without an end or a beginning, it makes no stops going to the destroyed bridge, which is a whole world for characters. The main character tries to understand this world and to get out of the train in contrast to the other passengers who being indifferent to their fate carry on as usual - trading in nickel melted down from the carriage doors, attending the Upper Bunk avant-garde theatre, and leafing through Pasternak’s Early Trains.
The author uses allegories in the story, as the railway theme is displayed in all objects of this world.
"I am closest of all to happiness—although I won’t attempt to define just what it is—when I turn away from the window and am aware, with the edge of my consciousness, that a moment ago I was not here, there was simply the world outside the window, and something beautiful and incomprehensible, something which there is absolutely no need to ‘comprehend,’ existed for a few seconds instead of the usual swarm of thoughts, of which one, like a locomotive, pulls all the others after it, absorbs them all and calls itself ‘I’."