Andrei Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World

“Well, I’m not ordinary, but I’m lonely just the same,” Frosya said, with surprise in her voice. “Or no, I probably am ordinary…”

Her father reassured her: “Well, just how are you like those old women? There aren’t any of them left now, they died off a long time ago. You’d have to live a long time and study hard to become one: but there were good women, too…”

“Papa, go on into your own room,” Frosya said. “I’ll give you your supper soon, but right now I’d like to be alone.”

“It’s time for supper,” her father agreed. “Or else a summons will come from the station: maybe someone’s sick, or has got drunk, or had some kind of family row—anything could happen. Then I’ve got to show up right away; the trains must never stop. Ah, your Fedka is speeding along now on his express train—the lights are all shining green for him, the tracks are clear for forty kilometers ahead of him, the engineer is looking far ahead, the lights are on in his locomotive—everything’s the way it ought to be!”

The old man was dawdling, loitering, and he went on mumbling his words. He loved to be with his daughter, or with anybody else, when his locomotive was not filling his heart and his mind.

“Papa, come on and eat your supper!” his daughter ordered him. She wanted to listen to the grasshoppers, to watch the pine trees in the night, and to think about her husband.

“Well, she’s in a bad way… ,” her father said softly, and he walked away.

After she had fed her father, Frosya walked out of the house. The club was full of sounds of rejoicing. They were playing music, and she could hear the chorus of clowns singing: “Ah, the fir tree, what a fir tree! And what cones are hanging on it! ‘Tu-tu-tu-tu’ goes the engine, ‘ru-ru-ru-ru’ goes the airplane, ‘pir-pir-pir-pir’ goes the icebreaker. Bow down with us, stand up with us, sing ‘tutu’ and ‘ru-ru,’ more dancing, more culture, more production— that’s our goal!”

The audience inside the club stirred, murmuring shyly and torturing itself with happiness, following the clowns.

Frosya walked on by; beyond the club everything was already empty, this was where the protective plantings began along the main line. Far away, an express train was coming from the east, the engine was working with its steam cut down, the locomotive was eating up distance with an effort and lighting everything in front of it with its shining searchlight. Somewhere this train had met the express train speeding to the Far East, these cars had seen him after Frosya had parted from her beloved man, and now she stared with careful attention at the express train which had been near her husband after she had been. She walked back to the station, but while she was walking there the train had stopped and gone on again; the last car disappeared into the dark forgetting all the people it had passed. Frosya did not see a single unfamiliar, new person on the platform or in the station—none of the passengers had left the express train, there was nobody to ask anything—about the train it had met or about her husband. Maybe someone had seen him, and knew something.

But only two old women were sitting in the station, waiting for a local train in the middle of the night, and the cleaning man again swept the dirt under her feet. They are always sweeping when someone just wants to stand and think; nothing satisfies them.

Frosya walked a little away from the man with the broom, but he caught up with her again.

“Do you happen to know,” she asked him, “if the express train No. 2 is going along all right? It left here in the daytime. At the station, haven’t they reported anything about it?”

“You are supposed to walk out to the platform only when a train is approaching,” the cleaning man said. “At present no trains are expected, so go back into the station, citizen…. All the time different types keep coming here—they should stay at home and read the papers. But no, they can’t do that, they’ve got to go out and scatter more rubbish…”

Frosya walked along the track, next to the switches, away from the station. Here was the roundhouse of the freight engines, the coal feeder, the slag pits and the locomotive turntable. High lamps lighted the area over which clouds of smoke and steam were floating: some engines were accumulating steam in their boilers, ready to move out, others were releasing steam, cooling off for cleaning.

Four women with iron shovels walked past Frosya, and behind them was a man, either a foreman or a brigade leader.

“What have you lost, good-looking?” he asked Frosya. “If you’ve lost it, you won’t find it again, whoever’s gone away won’t come back…. Come along with us and help the railroad out.”

Frosya was thoughtful.

“Give me a shovel,” she said.

“You can have mine,” the brigade leader said, and he gave the woman his shovel. “Listen, you old ladies!” he said to the other women. “You start at the third slag pit, and I’ll be at the first.”

He led Frosya to a slag pit where the locomotives cleaned their fireboxes, told her to go to work, and then went away. Two other women were already working in the pit, shoveling out the hot slag. It was hard to breathe, because of the steam and the gas, and throwing the slag out was awkward because the pit was so narrow and hot. But Frosya felt in better spirits; here she could relax, be with people who were friendly, and see the big, free night lit up by the stars and the electric lights. Her love was sleeping quietly in her heart; the express train was disappearing far away, and in an upper berth of a hard carriage, surrounded by Siberia, her beloved husband was sleeping. Let him sleep, and worry about nothing. Let the engineer keep on looking far ahead, and not have any collision!

Soon Frosya and one of the other women climbed out of the pit. Now they had to shovel the slag they had thrown out onto a flat car. Throwing the hot coals up onto the flat car, the women looked at each other and from time to time talked, to rest a little, and to breathe in some fresh air.

Frosya’s friend was about thirty. She was shivering for some reason, and she kept fussing with her poor clothing. She had been let out of jail today, where she had been held for four days on the denunciation of a bad man. Her husband was a watchman, his job was to walk all night long around the cooperative, with a rifle, and he was paid sixty rubles a month for this. When she was in jail, the watchman took pity on her, and went to the authorities to ask them to let her go, although she had been living until her arrest with a lover who had told her suddenly all about his swindling, and then, obviously, got frightened and wanted to destroy her so there would be no witness. But now he had got caught himself, let him suffer for a while, she was going to live in freedom with her husband: there was work to be had, they were selling bread now, and the two of them together would somehow manage to acquire some clothes.

Frosya told her that she had sorrows, too; her husband had gone far away.

“He’s just gone away, he hasn’t died, he’ll come back!” her friend told Frosya comfortingly. “I got bored when I was arrested, locked up like that. I never was in jail before, I’m not used to it; if I had been, then it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I’ve always been such an innocent, the authorities never touched me. When I got out of there, I went home, my husband was glad to see me, and he cried, but he was afraid to put his arms around me: he figured, I’m a criminal, an important person. But I’m just the same, I’m not hard to approach. And in the evening he has to go to work, no matter how sad it makes us. He picks up his rifle—let’s go, he says, I’ll treat you to a drink of fruit juice; I’ve got twelve kopecks, which is enough for one glass, we’ll drink it together. But I just feel sad, it won’t work. I told him to go to the buffet by himself, let him drink the whole glass and when we get a little money and I’ve got over my prison sorrows, then we’ll both go to the buffet and we’ll drink a whole bottle…. That’s what I said to him, and I came out to the tracks, to work here. They might be moving ballast, I thought, or shifting rails, or something else. Even at night, there’s always work to be done. So, I thought, I’ll be with people, it will calm my heart, I’ll feel all right again. And it’s true, here I’ve been talking with you as if I’d just found my own cousin. Well, let’s finish this flat car; they’re giving out the money in the office, in the morning I’ll go out and buy some bread… Frosya!” she yelled down into the slag pit; a namesake of Frosya’s was working there. “Is there much left?”