Inhabitant of the State - Platonov Andrei. Страница 2

«Of course!» the people of Koz'ma would confirm. «The Soviet authority has us in the watering aspect as first thing. Our turn will come, and we shall drink our fill! Or did we not drink since old times? We just go downtown and drink.»

«Absolutely right,» Pyotr Yevseyevich would determine. «And one also has to appreciate in addition that life goes drier and stingier with thirst, and one feels it more from the languish.»

«One cannot escape it without water,» the peasants would agree. «One lives as if just swallowed a burning log from a fire.»

«This is merely an imaginary impression,» explained Pyotr Yevseyevich. «One would imagine many things when one has a desire to drink. The sun also seems to you and to us a heat and a force, but one can hide and quench it with some steam from a kettle — at once there will be chill on the table-cloth. It only seems that way to you and to us in the middle of the mind…»

Pyotr Yevseyevich always regarded himself and the State with more respect than the population, unaware of the sense of it, since the population constantly exists alongside with and is provided by the State with the necessary life.

Usually Pyotr Yevseyevich was offered food in Koz'ma — not because of kindness and plenty, but out of a feeling of security. However, Pyotr Yevseyevich would never eat others' food: bread grows on a peasant's lot only for one, not for two — and so Pyotr Yevseyevich had nothing to eat out of. The sun, it also burns sparingly and socially: it does not warm up more bread than for one labouring eater, therefore, there should be no feeding of guests in the State.

Amidst the summer the village of Koz'ma, as well as all rural places, suffered from diarrhea, because the berries on the shrubbery and the greens in the gardens ripened. These fruits would drive the stomachs to nervousness, to which the watery substance from the pond added. To prevent that public suffering, the young communists from Koz'ma would start to dig wells each year, but they would become worn down by the power of impassable sands and would lie on the ground in languish of fruitless labour.

«How could you do all this without proper arrangement?» Pyotr Yevseyevich would upset himself and rebuke the young communists. «This is the soil of the State, the State will also give you a drinking well — wait automatically, and for now drink the rains! Your work is to plough the soil within the bounds of your lots of land.»

Pyotr Yevseyevich would leave Koz'ma with a certain grief that citizens lack water, but also with a happiness of expectation that, therefore, the forces of the State must be coming there and he shall see them on the way. Moreover, Pyotr Yevseyevich liked to weaken his peace of mind, as a test, also by devising a small doubt. This small doubt in the State was on Pyotr Yevseyevich's mind after Koz'ma because of lack of water in the village. At home Pyotr Yevseyevich would take out an old map of Austro-Hungary and spend a long time examining it in quiet meditation; he cared not for Austro-Hungary but rather for a live State outlined by its borders, a hedged and protected meaning of civil life.

Under a painting of the Battle of Sevastopol, which adorned the warm, stable dwelling of Pyotr Yevseyevich, there hung a popular map of the united Soviet Union. Here Pyotr Yevseyevich would observe with more concern: he troubled himself about the unshakeability of the border line. But what is a border line? It is a still frontier of a live and faithful army behind whose backs the bent-down labour peacefully sighs.

In labour there is a meekness of squandered life, but this spent life is accumulated in the form of the State, and one must love it with an undivided love, because it is in the State that the life of the living and of the dead is untouchably preserved. Buildings, gardens and railways — what are they but a short life of labour captured for ages? Because of this, Pyotr Yevseyevich was right in feeling compassion not for the transitory citizens but for their work, petrified in the image of the State. All the more necessary was it to conserve all labour that was to become the common body of the State.

«Are there not birds on the millet?» Pyotr Yevseyevich would suddenly remember with agitation. «They peck at the young seeds, and what would then feed the population?»

Pyotr Yevseyevich would hurry to the millet field and, indeed, saw the feeding birds.

«What is going on, oh my Lord God? What will remain whole, if nothing of good can rest peacefully? These wild elements have exhausted me — rain, thirst, sparrows, stopping trains! How can the State live against this? And yet there are people who are offended at the country: are they real citizens? They are descendants of the Horde!»

Having driven the birds off the millet, Pyotr Yevseyevich would notice under his feet a weakened worm that did not manage to follow moisture into the depths of the earth.

«Now this one exists also, gnawing at the soil!» Pyotr Yevseyevich would fume. «As if the State cannot do without it!» And Pyotr Yevseyevich would crush the worm to death: let it now live not in the history of humanity, which is already crowded enough, but in Eternity.

At the beginning of the night Pyotr Yevseyevich would return to his flat. The sparrows also became quiet then and would not come to eat the millet; so the tiny seeds would become more ripened and firm through the night — it would be harder to peck at them tomorrow. With the consolation of this thought Pyotr Yevseyevich would finish eating the crumbs of the morning breakfast and would lay his head to slumber, but could not fall asleep. He would imagine things: he would listen and hear the stirring of mice in co-operative enterprises while the watchmen sat in tea-houses riveted to the function of the radio, not believing it for joy. Somewhere in a seldom visited steppe the kulaks are chasing a village correspondent, and the lonely worker of the State falls down powerless under the brunt of thick force, similarly to the bread of life falling down dead under an unbalanced storm.

But the memory was merciful: Pyotr Yevseyevich remembered that near Urals or in Siberia, as the newspaper said, a powerful factory of complicated threshing machines was started by construction; and at that recollection, Pyotr Yevseyevich lost consciousness.

In the next morning the old roofers would go to work past his windows; a glazier carried his material on his shoulder; and a co-operative cart was transporting beef. Pyotr Yevseyevich sat as if in distress, while he was in fact delighted by the quietness of the State and the manners of working people. There, the meek, silent old man Termorezov entered the consumer's bakery; he daily bought himself a roll for breakfast and left to labour at the barn of Communist Industrial Union, where the ropes were manufactured out of hemp for the needs of peasantry.

A barefoot girl tugged a goat by a string to graze in the backyards. The goat's face with its beard and yellow eyes resembled the devil; it was however permitted to eat grass on the territory, therefore the goat was important too.

«Let the goat be also,» Pyotr Yevseyevich would ponder. «One could reckon it a junior calf.»

The door to the dwelling opened, and a known peasant, Leonid from the village Koz'ma, appeared.

«How do you do, Pyotr Yevseyevich,» Leonid said. «You should have waited yesterday with us, but instead you hurried away to your flat…»

Pyotr Yevseyevich became flustered and afraid.

«But whatever has happened? Eh? Is not all well in the village there? I saw a beggar drop a burning cigarette — did he burn the estate?»

«Well, the village is well and good out of that cigarette… But right after you left, there were two carts coming from the other end, and an old man in a carriage behind them. The old man says, 'Citizens, do you perhaps need deep water?' We say, 'We do, but we ain't got power to reach at it.' Then the old man says, 'All right, I am a professor from the State and I will get you the water from the mother layer.' The old man spent the night and went away, and two technicians remained with instrument and started to feel inside the soil. Now, Pyotr Yevseyevich, reckon us as we were with drinks. For this I brought you a jug of milk: were it not for you, we would have dug in vain, or sat there without drinking, but then you would walk around and say: wait for the motion of the State, it foresees everything. That has happened. So drink, Pyotr Yevseyevich, our milk for this…»