asked and kept changing his place, seeking a sheltered spot. At last he settled himself so that he felt no cold wind and said: “Now it’s good,” finished gnawing the shoulder, licked his fingers, wiped them with a handkerchief, and, having thanked his hosts, observed:
“It’s coming from the window. You should stop it up. However, let’s get back to the subject of the argument. You’re wrong, doctor. Roasted hare is a splendid thing. But, forgive me, to conclude from it that the countryside is flourishing is bold, to say the least. It’s a very risky leap.”
“Oh, come now!” Yuri Andreevich objected. “Look at these stations. The trees haven’t been cut down. The fences are intact. And the markets! The peasant women! Just think, how satisfying! There’s life somewhere. Somebody’s glad. Not everybody groans. That justifies everything.”
“It would be good if it were so. But it’s not. Where did you get all that? Go fifty miles from the railway. There are ceaseless peasant revolts everywhere. Against whom, you ask? Against the Whites and against the Reds, depending on who’s in power. You say, aha, the muzhik is the enemy of all order, he doesn’t know what he wants himself. Excuse me, but it’s too early to be triumphant. He knows it better than you, but what he wants is not at all what you and I want.
“When the revolution woke him up, he decided that his age-old dream was coming true, of life on his own, of anarchic farmstead existence by the labor of his own hands, with no dependence and no obligation to anyone at all. But, from the vise grip of the old, overthrown state, he’s fallen under the still heavier press of the revolutionary superstate. And now the countryside is thrashing about and finds no peace anywhere. And you say the peasants are flourishing. You know nothing, my dear man, and, as far as I can see, you don’t want to know.”
“Well, so, it’s true I don’t want to. Perfectly right. Ah, go on! Why should I know everything and lay myself out for everything? The times take no account of me and impose whatever they like on me. So allow me to ignore the facts. You say my words don’t agree with reality. But is there any reality in Russia now? In my opinion, it’s been so intimidated that it has gone into hiding. I want to believe that the countryside has benefitted and is prospering. If that, too, is a delusion, what am I to do, then? What am I to live by, who am I to obey? And I have to live, I’m a family man.”
Yuri Andreevich waved his hand and, leaving it to Alexander Alexandrovich to bring the argument with Kostoed to an end, moved closer to the edge of the berth and, hanging his head over, began to look at what was happening below.
A general conversation was going on there between Pritulyev, Voroniuk, Tyagunova, and Vasya. Seeing that they were nearing their native places, Pritulyev recalled how they were connected, what station you had to get to, where to get off, how to move further on, afoot or with horses, and Vasya, at the mention of familiar villages or hamlets, jumped with lit-up eyes and delightedly repeated their names, because listing them sounded to him like an enchanting fairy tale.
“You get off at Dry Ford?” he asked breathlessly. “Well, of course! That’s our junction! Our station! And then most likely you go down to Buiskoe?”
“Then down the Buiskoe road.”
“That’s what I said—Buiskoe. The village of Buiskoe. As if I don’t know! That’s our turnoff. To get from there to us you keep bearing to the right, to the right. Towards Veretenniki. And to you, Uncle Kharitonych, it must be to the left, away from the river? You’ve heard of the river Pelga? Well, so! That’s our river! And to us you go by the bank, by the bank. And on that same river, a bit higher up the Pelga, our village! Our Veretenniki. Right up on the cliff! The bank’s ste-e-ep! We call it ‘the counter.’ When you’re standing on top, it’s scary to look down, it’s so steep. For fear of falling. By God, it’s true. They cut stone there. For millstones. And my mama’s there in Veretenniki. And two little sisters. My sister Alenka. And Arishka, my other sister. My mama, Auntie Palasha, Pelageya Nilovna, she’s like you, I’d say, young, fair. Uncle Voroniuk! Uncle Voroniuk! I beg you, in Christ’s name … Uncle Voroniuk!”
“Well, what? What are you saying it over and over for, like a cuckoo bird? ‘Uncle Voroniuk! Uncle Voroniuk!’ Don’t I know I’m not an aunt? What do you want, what do you need? Want me to let you slip away? Is that what you’re saying? You clear off, and I go to the wall for it, and amen?”
Pelageya Tyagunova absentmindedly gazed off somewhere to the side and said nothing. She stroked Vasya’s head and, thinking about something, fingered his blond hair. Every once in a while she nodded her head and made signs to the boy with her eyes and her smiles, the meaning of which was that he should not be silly and talk to Voroniuk out loud about such things. Just wait, she meant, everything will take care of itself, don’t worry.
13
When they left the Central Russian region and made their way east, unexpected things came thick and fast. They began to cross troubled areas, districts ruled by armed bands, places where uprisings had recently been quelled.
Stops in the middle of the fields, inspections of the cars by antiprofiteering units, searches of luggage, verifications of papers became more frequent.
Once the train got stuck somewhere during the night. No one looked into the cars, no one was awakened. Wondering if there had been an accident, Yuri Andreevich jumped down from the freight car.
It was a dark night. For no apparent reason, the train was standing at some chance milepost on an ordinary, fir-lined stretch of track in the middle of a field. Yuri Andreevich’s neighbors, who had jumped down earlier and were dawdling around in front of the freight car, told him that, according to their information, nothing had happened, but it seemed the engineer himself had stopped the train under the pretext that it was a dangerous place and, until the good condition of the tracks was verified by handcar, he refused to take the train any further. It was said that representatives of the passengers had been sent to entreat him and, in case of necessity, to grease his palm. According to rumor, the sailors were mixing into it. They would bring him around.
While this was being explained to Yuri Andreevich, the snowy smoothness down the tracks near the engine kept being lit up by flashes of fire from the smokestack and the vent under the engine’s firebox, like the breathing reflections of a bonfire. Suddenly one of these tongues brightly lit up a piece of the snowy field, the engine, and a few black figures running along the edge of the engine’s chassis.
Ahead of them, apparently, flashed the engineer. Having reached the end of the footboard, he leaped up and, flying over the buffer bar, disappeared from sight. The sailors pursuing him made the same movements. They, too, ran to the end of the grid, leaped, flashed in the air, and vanished from sight.
Drawn by what they had seen, Yuri Andreevich and a few of the curious walked towards the engine.
In the free part of the line ahead of the train, the following sight presented itself to them. To one side of the tracks, the vanished engineer stuck halfway out of the untouched snow. Like beaters around their game, the sailors surrounded him in a semicircle, buried, like him, waist-deep in the snow.
The engineer shouted:
