Inhabitant of the State
Page 2
At the end of his journey Pyotr Yevseyevich accidentally arrived to the railway station; hearing the worried honks of the steam locomotives, he did not completely trust the railroad. Immediately an indignation rose in Pyotr Yevseyevich: in the third class waiting hall a boy was burning government-supplied logs in a stove, although it was summer.
«You slime, why do you burn fuel?» asked Pyotr Yevseyevich.
The boy did not take offense, as he was used to his life.
«I was told so,» he said. «They let me spend nights at the station for this.»
Here Pyotr Yevseyevich could not think of a reason why one would need to heat up the stoves in summer. But the boy himself helped Pyotr Yevseyevich to disperse the puzzlement: there were heaps of rotten logs at the station, and to avoid carrying them out it had been decided to burn them in the stoves of the rooms and let the heat come out of the doors.
«Give me, Mister, a couple of kopecks!» asked the boy after his story.
He was asking ashamedly, but without respect for Pyotr Yevseyevich. However, for Pyotr Yevseyevich the question was not the two kopecks but the place of this boy in the State: was he necessary? Such thoughts have already started to torment Pyotr Yevseyevich. The boy reluctantly told him that his mother and girl sisters lived in the village and had only potatoes to eat. Mother had told him, 'Go away, perhaps you shall find life somewhere. Or else, you'd have to suffer with us, but I love you.' She gave him a piece of bread she borrowed in the village, or maybe she lied and had gone out peddling. The boy took bread, went out to the railways and climbed into an empty car. Since then he was going places: he had been to Leningrad, Tver', Moscow and Torzhok, and now he was here. Nobody would give him a job, saying: he has little strength and there are many orphans already.
«So what are you up to?» Pyotr Yevseyevich would ask him. «You have to live and wait until the State looks back at you.»
«Can't wait,» the boy answered. «The winter will come soon, I am afraid to die then. Even in summer people die. I have seen one in Likhoslavl': he went to sleep in a garbage box and died in there.»
«But don't you want to return to your mother?»
«No. There is nothing to eat and many sisters, their faces are pock-marked and the men do not marry them.»
«Why didn't they get vaccinated in time? The state doctors vaccinate everybody at no expense.»
«I don't know,» the boy said coolly.
«You do not know,» Pyotr Yevseyevich exclaimed with annoyance, «but now one has to take care of you! Your family is at fault for all this: the State vaccinates against smallpox for free. If your sisters were vaccinated when they needed it, they would be long married now, and you would have a place at home! But if you don't want to live according to the State — so now you have to wander by railroads. It is all your fault — go to your mother and tell her! So why should I give you the two kopecks after this? Never! One must get vaccinated in time, citizen, or else one would have to free-ride the trains and wander on the rails!»
The boy was silent. Pyotr Yevseyevich left him there alone, not feeling any more pity for the guilty.
At home he found a notice: he had to report tomorrow for the next re-registration at the labour exchange, where Pyotr Yevseyevich was registered as an unemployed from the Union of Soviet Salespeople. He liked to visit the labour exchange, feeling that he was serving the State in that institution.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 510cb616-6d1a-497c-aaaf-841edbcdbb54
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 2006-05-24
Created using: FB Tools software
Document authors :
Ego
Document history:
v1.0 — converted 2 fb2 by Ego
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