The Fierce and Beautiful World

by Andrei Platonov

  She lived in a new, three-room apartment; in one of the rooms her widowed father lived—a locomotive engineer, while the other two were occupied by her and her husband, who had now gone off to the Far East to build and to put in operation some kind of secret electrical devices. He was always busy with the secrets of machines, hoping by these mechanisms to transform the whole world for the good of mankind, or perhaps for something else: the wife did not know exactly.

  The father did not go to work often, because of his age. He was classified as a reserve engineer, replacing men who were sick, breaking in machines that had been withdrawn for repairs, or driving lightweight trains on local runs. They had tried to retire him on a pension a year ago. The old man, who didn’t know what a pension was, agreed at first, but after four days of freedom he walked back on the fifth day to the signal station, sat down on a little mound along the right of way, and stayed there until late in the night, weeping as he watched the engines pounding in front of the trains they were pulling. From then on he started to go to that little mound every day, to look at the engines, to live on his memories and his imagination, and then to go home in the evening as tired as if he had just come back from a long trip. At the apartment he would wash his hands, sigh, report that one engine had dropped a brakeshoe on the 9,000th gradient or that some such thing had happened, then he would shyly ask his daughter for some vaseline to rub into the palm of his left hand as if it had been chafed by the tight governor handle, have his supper, mumble something, and quickly sink into blessed sleep. The next morning the retired engineer would go back again to the right of way and pass another day in watching, through his tears, in dreaming, in remembering, in all the fury of his lonely enthusiasm. If he thought there was something wrong with an engine going by him or if the engineer was not driving it as he should, he would scream his judgment and his instructions from his little hill: “You’ve pumped too much water! Open the valve, you damn fool! Blow off!” “Tighten up your flanges, without losing steam: what do you think that is—a locomotive or a steam bath?” When a train was made up badly, with light, empty platform cars at the front or in the middle of the train where they could be damaged by heavy braking, from his little mound the engineer would shake his fist at the brakeman riding the last car. And when the engineer’s own favorite locomotive went by him, driven by his former assistant Benjamin, the old man would always find something flagrantly wrong with it—even when there was nothing wrong at all—and he would advise the engineer to take immediate steps against his careless helper. “Benjamin, Benjamin, my boy, smash him in the teeth!” the old engineer would scream from his little mound next to the right of way.

  He took an umbrella with him on bad days, and his only daughter brought his dinner out to him on his little hill, because she was sorry for her father when he came back in the evenings, thin, hungry and enraged by his unsatisfied longing for his work. But not long ago, when the old engineer was shouting and cursing as usual from his little elevation, the Communist party secretary of the station, Comrade Piskunov, walked out to him, took the old man by the arm, and led him back to the station. The office manager entered the old man’s name again on the engineers’ staff. The engineer climbed into the cabin of a cold engine, sat down at the controls, and began to dream, exhausted by his own happiness, holding the locomotive control with one hand as if it were the body of all laboring humanity to which he had once more been joined.

  “Frosya,” he said to his daughter when she came back from the station where she had accompanied her husband as he left on his long trip, “Frosya, give me something to chew on, so that if they call me to take the engine out during the night…”

  From minute to minute he expected to be summoned to make a trip, but they seldom called on him—once every three or four days when some combined, lightweight freight shifting was scheduled or when there was some other easy task to be done. Still the father was afraid of going out to work unfed, unprepared, morose because he was always worried about his health, his spirits, and his digestion, since he considered himself an outstanding specialist.

  “Citizen engineer!” the old man said sometimes, articulately and with dignity, addressing himself personally, and in reply he kept a highly significant silence, as if he were listening to a distant ovation.

  Frosya took a pot out of the warming oven, and gave her father something to eat. The evening sun was lighting the apartment slantingly, the light percolated right through to Frosya’s body where her heart was warm and where her blood and her feelings were moving in steady harmony. She walked into her own room. A photograph of her husband as a child stood on the table; he had never had his picture taken after he grew up, since he was not interested in himself and didn’t believe his face had any significance. A little boy stood in the yellowing picture, with a big child’s head, in a poor shirt, with cheap trousers, barefoot; behind him were growing some magical kind of trees and in the distance there was a fountain and a palace. The little boy was looking attentively at a world he still hardly knew, without even noticing the splendid life behind him in the rear of the picture. The splendid life was really in the little boy himself with his wide, enthusiastic shy face, holding a stalk of grass in his hands instead of a toy, and touching the earth with his trusting, naked feet.

  Night was already falling. The settlement herdsman was driving the milk cows back from the fields for the night. The cows were mooing, asking the houses for rest, the women and houseworkers were leading them into the courtyards, the long day was cooling off into night. Frosya sat in the twilight, in the happiness of loving and remembering her man who had gone away. Pine trees were growing outside the window, marking a straight path into the heavenly, happy distance, the low voices of some kind of insignificant birds were singing their last, drowsy songs, and the grasshoppers, watchmen of the darkness, were making their gentle, peaceful noises—about how everything was all right and they would not sleep and would keep on watching.

  The father asked Frosya if she was going to the club; there would be a new program there, with a tournament of flowers, and with the off-duty conductors as clowns.

  “No,” Frosya said, “I’m not going. I’m going to stay here and miss my husband.”

  “Fedka?” the engineer said. “He’ll come back; a year will go by and then he’ll be here…. What if you do miss him! I used to go away, for a day, or for two, and your mother used to miss me: she was an ordinary old woman!”

  “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 rejoicin
g. 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?”

  “No,” the Frosya in the pit answered. “There’s just a little bit here, a few crumbs, that’s all.”

  “Climb up here, then,” the watchman’s wife told her. “We’ll finish up quickly and then we’ll go and get paid together.”

  The brigade leader came up.

  “Well, how’s it going, old ladies? Have you finished the pit? Aha! Well, go into the office, I’ll come right away. There you’ll get your money, and there we’ll see: who goes to the club to dance, and who goes home to take care of the kids!”

  The women all signed for their money in the office: Yefrosinia Yevstafyeva, Natalya Bukova, and three letters a little like the word “Eva” with a hammer and sickle at the end instead of still another Yefrosinia—she was a relapsed literacy student. They each received three rubles and twenty kopecks, and they all went home. Frosya Yevstafyeva and Natalya, the watchman’s wife, went together. Frosya had invited her new friend to her house, to wash and clean up.

  The father was asleep on the chest in the kitchen, completely dressed to his winter coat and his hat with the locomotive badge on it. He was waiting for a sudden summons to some general breakdown where he would have to show up instantly in the center of the disaster.

  The women tended to their business
quietly, powdered their faces, smiled at each other, and went out again. It was already late; at the club they had probably started the dancing and the tournament of flowers. While Frosya’s husband was sleeping in the train far away and his heart was not feeling anyway, not remembering her, not loving her, it was as if she were alone in the whole world, free from happiness and sorrow, and she wanted to dance a little, right away, to listen to music, to hold hands with other people. And in the morning, when he would be waking up alone and remembering her at once, then, maybe, she would cry.

  The two women ran up to the club. The local train went by: midnight, not yet very late. An independent dance orchestra was playing in the club. An assistant engineer immediately asked Frosya to dance to “Rio Rita.”

  Frosya moved into the dance with a blissful face; she loved music, it seemed to her that sadness and happiness were inseparably linked in music as in real life, as in her own soul. When she danced, she hardly rememberd herself, she felt herself in a light dream, with amazement, and her body found the right movements without trying, because Frosya’s blood was warmed by the melody.

  “Have they already had the tournament of flowers?” she asked her partner quietly, breathing quickly.