Night moves over the steppe. Stalely swishes the sward of the mown grasses. By the burial mound the feather-grass rings. In the steppe the microscopic station “Mar loop-station” cannot be seen.
And train No. 57 mixed crawls over the black steppe.
People, human legs, arms, heads, stomachs, backs, human manure–people, crawling with lice, as the freight cars are with people. The people, who had gathered here and stood out for their right to travel with the greatest Kulak fortitude, for there, in the hungry provinces, at every station dozens of hungry people dashed for the freight cars and across their heads, necks, backs, legs they crawled over people to the inside–they were thrashed, they thrashed, tearing, throwing down those already traveling, and the slaughter continued until the train moved off, conveying those who had got wedged in, and those who had recently climbed in prepared for a fresh fight at the next station. The people journey for weeks. All these people have long since lost the distinction between night and day, between filth and cleanliness, and had learned to sleep sitting, standing, hanging. In the freight cars along and across in several tiers bunks were laid out, and on the bunks, under the bunks, on the floor, on the shelves, in all the chinks, sitting, standing, lying, people were silent–to make a noise at the station. The air in the freight car is polluted with human stomachs and shag tobacco. At night in the freight car it is dark, the doors and hatches are closed. In the freight car it is cold, the wind blows through the chinks. Somebody is snoring, somebody is scratching himself, the freight car squeaks like an old carriage. It’s impossible to move in the freight car, as the feet of one lie on the chest of another, and a third has fallen asleep above them, and his legs have gone and stood by the neck of the first. And still–they move… A man whose lungs must have been eaten away presses instinctively against the door, and near him, having opened the door, the people, men and women exercise their natural needs, hanging over the crawling sleepers or squatting–a man learned in complete detail how this is done–everyone differently.
A man burning with the last flush of consumption has strange and muddled sensations. Thoughts about stoicism and honor, his small room, his pamphlets and books, hunger–all this has flown to the Devil. After many sleepless nights, the thoughts, like a man’s with a fever, were differentiated, and the man felt his “I” breaking into two, into three, his right hand living and thinking in its own way, independently, and arguing about something with the divided “I.” The days, nights, heated freight cars, station settlements, third classes, footboards, roofs–all merged, got entangled, and the man felt like falling down and sleeping immeasurably sweetly–let them walk over him, let them spit on him, let the lice pour forth all over him. Stoicism, pamphlets about socialism and consumption and books about God–the man is thinking about a new, unusual brotherhood–to fall, felled by sleep, to huddle against a man–who is he? syphilitic? has he got typhus?–warm him and warm oneself by his human body warmth… Hooters, whistles, bells… The brain seems coated with down, and, because down is always hot and scorching hot, his thoughts are scorching hot, unusual, persistent and passionate, on the border of feverish nonexistence… In his brain the transom on the doors is rocking, rocking, the doors are creaking, and women, women are hanging out, they are squatting over the crawling sleepers. Sex!…
Yesterday at a small station a peasant woman walked up to a wagon. By the doors stood a sentry.
“Darling, let me on for Christ’s sake! There’s no way we can get on, y’see, darling,” said the peasant woman.
“There’s nowhere, aunty! And you can’t. There are no places!”–answered the soldier.
“For Christ’s sake.”
“And how will you pay?”
“Somehow or other.”
“You give me a cuddle.”
“Anything you fancy… let’s make a deal…”
“Aha! Well, climb under the bunk. Our greatcoats are lying there. Hey, Semyon, take this woman on!”
The soldier crawled under the bunk, the people crowded around, and the man’s heart twinged with an immeasurable sweet pain, brutal–he wanted to shout out, thrash, throw himself on the first woman, be immeasurably strong and cruel, and here, in the presence of the people, rape, rape, rape! Thought, nobility, shame, stoicism–to the devil! A wild animal!
It rocks, the transom in his brain is rocking… Women, women, women… His “I” is painfully distinctly being divided in two, and his heart is boringly arguing about something with his chest… The freight car crawls along, it squeaks, it rocks.
The man falls asleep standing and falls, felled by sleep, at somebody’s feet. Somebody rolls on him. The man is sleeping sweetly, deafly, like a stone. The freight car deafly sleeps… A station, whistles, jolts… The man wakes up for a minute. The man’s head–the man’s “I” is split into two, split into three, split into ten–his head is lying on a woman’s naked belly, pungently smelling of carbolic acid, his thoughts throng, like mottled peasant women at the fair–thoughts are flying to the devil!–a wild animal! instinct!–and the man kisses, kisses, kisses the naked female belly passionately, painfully–who is she? where’s she from?–The peasant woman slowly wakes up, scratches herself, says sleepily:
“Finish, loudmouth… Oh, you smarty!..” –and she begins to breathe unevenly.
Steppe. Emptiness. Boundlessness. Darkness. Cold.
At the station, where the train met with the dawn, people run to the empty wells and to the puddles for water, they start fires to warm themselves up and boil potatoes–and in the empty freight car a corpse has been discovered: yesterday an old man was suffering from typhus, now the old man is dead. Gray dawn murkiness. From the black chinks of the steppe horizons comes the wind, cold and evil. The clouds are low–there’ll be snow. Sleepers, freight cars, people. The fires burn like red lights, there’s a smell of smoke. By the fires where the potatoes are boiling–while the potatoes are boiling–the people take off their shirts, jackets, trousers, skirts, they shake the fleas into the fire and press out the nits. The people journey for weeks–into the steppe! for bread!–there’s no bread, there’s no salt. The people avidly eat the potatoes. The train has stopped and will remain for a day and a night, two days and nights… At dawn the people in their hundreds split up and wander through the surrounding villages, and in the villages (the further into the steppe, the lower the cottages, the higher the ricks) breaking up into small clusters, the people go begging. The peasant women stand under the windows, bow down and sing:
“Give aaalms for Chriiiist’s saaake!”
The train will remain for a day and a night, two days and nights. The freight car officials go up to the dutyman, from the dutyman to the Cheka. The Whites had been here–the station is a freight car taken off its wheels, or rather a number of freight cars, placed in a row, with smashed-in gaps for doors. In the office–a dark freight car–the “stove” is smoking, there’s a smell of sealing wax, wires and people buzz.
A man whispers to the duty man.
“I-I-I c-c-an’t, Sir!” says the duty man in a self-satisfied bass voice. “A full complement. A hundred and fifty axles, seventy-five wagons. I-I-I c-can’t, Sir!…”
The man strokes with his cuff the duty man’s cuff and slips him a packet.
“C-comrades! –I-I-I can’t! I accept only on those occasions when I can help, but on this occasion–seventy-five cars, a hundred and fifty axles. I-I can’t sir…”
He strokes his cuff with his cuff–he must be offering to “grease his palm.”
But it turns out–the duty man could. Towards evening a new train arrives, new hundreds light campfires and press out the fleas–and this train got away first at night. The people run to see the dutyman, the duty man’s not there–a new duty man (this was–the guards assured them:–he is not here, d’you hear… He was beaten up seven times in that week, d’you hear…)… The people run to the Cheka–but towards night a detail of the food collecting battalion came, and a search of the car is carried out.
“Well, which? what?”
An old man on a bunk takes off his cap and pushes it round from hand to hand.
“Club together, lads, two roubles fifty kopeks each!..”
In the new dawn the train moves away.
On the platform appears the duty man, and the train with a thousand voices bids farewell:
“Scuuum! Briiibetaaakeer!…”
The train is going so slowly that it is possible to get out and walk alongside. Steppe. Emptiness. Cold. Hunger. In the daytime over the steppe rises a sleepy sun. In the autumn silence over the plundered fields fly crow flocks–melancholy flocks. The cottages of the infrequent hamlets smoke with a blue strawy smoke–melancholy cottages.
At night snow falls, the earth meets the morning with winter, but along with the snow comes warmth, and again it is autumn. It’s raining, the earth is crying, blown about by a cold wind, enveloped by a wet sky. The snow is lying in gray patches. The hoar frost became a gray veil.
In the village of Stary Kurdyum, sprawled over the steep slopes by a steppe stream like fly stains, nobody knows, that just there by the horizon, lies–Asia.
In the village of Stary Kurdyum, on the Russian side, on the Tartar and Mordvinian–in front of the cottages in little barns and behind the cottages in the ricks, on the threshing floors–lie wheat, rye, millet, corn–crops. They had cleared up the crops, now rest, peace.
That day at dawn in the village of Stary Kurdyum, on the Russian side they are stoking the bathhouses. The bathhouses–mud huts–stand along the river. Barefooted girls draw the water, in the cottage the owner kindles the ashes, gathers up the rags, and everyone goes to get steamed–old men, muzhiks, brothers-in-law, sons, children, mothers, wives, daughters-in-law, young girls, all together. In the bathhouse there are no chimneys–in the steam, in red reflections, in the crush white human bodies are pushed together, they all wash with the same lye, the owner rubs everyone’s back, and everyone runs to the stream to bathe, in the gray dawn hoar frost. The snow lies over the gullies by the stream.
And on the Tartar side, beyond the stream, where there is a mosque, at that hour, after Friday, the Tatars, having spread out their little carpets, pray towards the East, the invisible sun, then, having wiped their hands and feet, in stockings and embroidered skullcaps walk into a circular cottage, laid out with carpets and cushions, sit in the center of the cottage, on the floor, and eat mutton, smacking their lips, with their hands, over which flows the lard. An old man eats the sheep’s eyes. The women who, it seems, are not invited to eat, stand behind the men with jugs of water.
And at this hour into the village of Stary Kurdyum comes the “artel” of workmen who have come for bread.
By the outskirts, by the long winch of the well stand the Mordva in a cramped bunch, women wearing caps, with legs like timbers, and small tiny men with wispy beards, in hats like clay washbasins and wearing shirts beneath their knees, tied around the chest and with combs in their belts:–wild people even more silent then the ancient sphinxes. A grubby little man, squinting, stooped, runs up to the new arrivals, takes off his hat, smiles palely, screws up his eyes, whispers:
“Give me silver monnaie!.. monnaie… I’ll give you some rye, I’ll give you wheat!… Silver monnaie!”–and he runs back to his own.
A woman in a cap, and with legs like timber, takes his place.
“Give me silver monnaie! I’ll give you some rye, I’ll give you wheat!” says the peasant woman, she smiles and runs back, screwing up her eyes, which are like sunflower seeds, and dim like a worn soldier’s button (China-town?!).
On the steep slope from the nearby bathhouse there dashes a naked girl with disheveled hair, she runs like one berserk to the stream, from there to the cottage and back to the bathhouse. From the other side from behind the stream dash the Tatars, mounted, dangling their legs, accompanied by Tatar children and dogs’ barking. The Tatars surround the new arrivals, dangle their legs, restraining the horses, extend their hands for the shaking. One shouts out, clownishly sneering:
“Buy me! Me–Saviet, Cammittee, Camissar! buy me! Hundred roubles! You hungry, we change goods!” –and smiles cunningly. “Come my place! We roast sheep! Me–Saviet! Me want–me sell, no want–no sell!… You no go next door!”
The snow lies in gray patches, the hoar frost has become like a gray veil, and invisible are the boundless steppe boundaries. In the village of Stary Kurdyum nobody knows that just there, beyond the fold of the sky–Asia. The peasant woman, the one who arrived with the hungry people, thinks “Rye, if for cloth when we have the chance ten roubles each will do, but if for money–a hundred… Ticking like calico, printed calico–with darkness, for the old women… Fustian…”
Two men are walking along the road with bundles under their arms. A peasant woman is standing by the well. One of the two surreptitiously approaches the peasant woman and says, surreptitiously:
“Will you change flour for goods, missus?”
“But what goods is it?”
“Cotton textiles. Cloth, printed calico… Different goods.”
“Well, wait… Into whichever house I beckon, common in!”
She beckons. They go. They knock their foreheads against the lintel–they enter the cottage. In the cottage half the cottage is stove, on the stove are an ancient old woman and half a dozen scruffy kids, in the corner a pig, in the red corner–the master, ikons, a general and the Tsar’s family.
They cross themselves. They bow down. They shake hands in turn with the host and all the household. And they ask to eat–and eat silently, avidly, hurriedly –pork fat, mutton, kasha, broth, bread, again pork fat, again mutton. The host in the red corner sits in silence, in silence he observes–the host’s eyes have grown into his beard.
The host says to his daughter-in-law:
“Dunka, get the bath ready!”
They go to wash, and, when steaming, Dunka draws the water for them.
When the guests return, the host says to Dunka:
“Dunka, put on the samovar.” And to the guests:
“Now, what goods have you got? Show me!”
The guests spread out their goods. The host looks at them with a host’s look, keeps silent. The peasant women, both of the family and those who have crammed into the cottage, get stuck to the goods as if to honey. A guest holds a piece of red material up to the hostess, prods the hostess in the side and says playfully:
“Master, look! It’s made you look twenty years younger–younger than a young peasant woman!–Mistress! climb on the stove as fast as you can, hide yourself from the master!”
“Stand back! Light up!” –the peasant woman spreads out into a pancake.
But the guest, squinting, winds some sort of trouser cheviot around his legs, thrusts his knee out to everyone and praises it. The peasant women select the necessary and the unnecessary. Another guest is talking to the host–about the harvest, about the war, about the famine, about how in Moscow the Moscovites all have as much cloth, cars and calico as they want and how in Moscow they are falling down dead from hunger on the streets.
They serve tea. They all drink with palms and fingers extended, blow, keep silent. If you can’t deceive you won’t sell. When they’ve drunk half a dozen glasses each, the host, arms akimbo and sullen, asks:
“Well, what about a price, then?”
The peasant women move away to the door, with naively-indifferent and secretly-afraid faces.
The boss had entered the deal.
“Your goods–our money,” –the guest replies hurriedly, “We’ll exchange it for flour.”
“We know, for flour! We’ve now got sixty-two poods on the go.”
The guest’s face becomes distorted with pain and insult, the guest laments like a woman:
“A-a– You value your own goods but not ours?… A-a… And who knocked up the price?… –all of us?… We’re croaking on the streets from hunge
r, and you want to skin us even more! A-a! Who knocked up the price?… Who knocked up the price!? –All of us!”
“Mistress, pour out mo’ tea,” says the host dryly.
Again they drink with palms and fingers outstretched, again they bargain. Again they drink tea and again they bargain. The peasant women stand by the doors, keep humbly silent. An old woman asks from the stove for the tenth time:–“Who’s come?…” Lads have already stuck to the girls in the entrance hall, having run all around the village. A piglet snorts. Under the stove the young cocks cluck.
Finally the host and guests do a deal: all the goods–wholesale–three arshins–a pood. The host is satisfied, because he has swindled the guests. The guests are satisfied, because they have swindled the host. The host feeds the guests once more–with cabbage soup with pork, wheat pancakes with sour cream and butter, kasha with mutton lard–and leads them to the inn to swig moonshine. Varangian times!
By the inn on a pole a wisp of hay dangles orphan-like in the gray wind. Dogs thoughrout the village are barking. On the Tatar side, where the guests feet were washed and they were fed on the floor, from cottage to cottage crowds dragged themselves in search of buyers. The lifeless Mordva stand without children in a tight small group. Beyond the outskirts lies the steppe–endless, boundless. A cold wind is blowing from the steppe, it’s raining, and the earth is weeping. In the inn the muzhiks are drinking moonshine, bawling, and, half-cut, they go to the Tatar commissar to pay him taxes and duties, to better transport the rye to the halt: they’ll take the rye by night, with a detail of men armed with sticks.
The Reds and Whites had been in the village of Stary Kurdyum several times each, whole sidestreets lie burnt and plundered. In the village of Stary Kurdyum live people, stuffed with bread, with pigs and calves, which they also feed with bread; they live with the burning torch, they light the torch with flint; they live half-naked… Over the steppe in broad waves moves robbery and the counter-revolution, blazing like distant nocturnal glows, sounding like the tocsin… In the village of Stary Kurdyum there are no young men; some have gone off to the Revolution, others have gone off with the Whites.
The Naked Year Page 15