THIRD PART OF THE TRIPTYCH, the darkest

A cold dusk shrouds the earth–that autumnal dusk when the sky is snowy and wintry and the clouds are bound to disintegrate into snow towards dawn. The earth is silent and black. Steppe. Black earth. The further the steppe, the higher the ricks, the lower the cottages, the rarer the settlements. Out of the steppe–over the plundered desert–out of the black chink between the sky and steppe–blows a winter wind. In the steppe there is the barely audible swishing of the sward after the mowing of the grass, the rye and the wheat. Soon a glassy moon rises. If the storm clouds trail after, there will be snow, and not hoar frost. –Grain.

The oxen stand for a long time by the crossing. The oxen’s necks are bowed, the oxen stand humbly, humbly they look into the steppe, steppe inhabitants. A train crawls past, further off. There is no church in the settlement, a miserable mosque towers up. Steppe. The train crawls along slowly–the brown freight car, cluttered with people, as these people are with lice. The train is silent: people hanging on the roofs, on the footboards, on the buffers. And at the little station “Mar loop-station,” where trains never stop and they don’t even change the points, the train buzzes with human buzzing: from roof to roof to the engine the people are crying out something frightening, about something, in this cold dusk. And “mack” stops the train. A young man on duty wearing a cap with a red hatband–out of boredom–meets the train on the platform. The people head from the train to the puddles for water. The train buzzes like a beehive, buzzes, moves off, squeaking, like a large coach, and on the sleepers remains a peasant woman with eyes frenzied in pain. A peasant woman is running after the train and frenziedly shouting:

“Mitya, dar-ling! Feed my kids!”

Then, waving her bundle, a peasant woman runs somewhere beyond the sleepers, howling and yelping like a dog. Ahead is the empty steppe distance–the peasant woman turns and runs to the station, to the man on duty, who’s still standing on the platform out of boredom and in boredom. The peasant woman looks at the man on duty worryingly, her lips shaking, and her eyes filled with pain.

“What’s up with you?” says the man on duty.

The peasant woman remains silent, shouts out in a fit and, screaming, again runs away somewhere to the side, shaking her bundle. The guard, an old Tartar, says gloomily:

“The woman’s about to go into labor. The woman’s having a child. –Hey, woman!–come ‘ere!… A Russian peasant woman is like a cat,” –and the old man leads the peasant woman to the station cottage, into his own small room, where on a bunk a rotten hay mattress and sheepskin coat were thrown down. The peasant woman, exactly like a cat, throws herself onto a plank bed and whispers maliciously:

“Go away, loudmouth–go away! Call a woman…”

But there is no woman on the station.

The man on duty walks along the platform from end to end, looks into the dark steppe and thinks maliciously:–Asia!

The steppe is empty and silent. In the sky moves the glassy small moon. The wind swishes stale and cold. The man on duty wanders along the platform, then goes to the office. Behind the wall a woman is groaning. The duty man rings to the neighboring station and speaks the way all Russian duty men speak:

“Akhmytovaaa! No. 58 is on its way. Is one comm-ming this way?”

But none was coming. The duty man sits on a hard government issue settee, flicks through “The Awakening,” flicked through a thousand times, and lies down so as not to sit. –The old man brings in a lamp. –The duty man is sleeping sweetly.

After his shift the duty man goes home to the village. “Mar loop-station,” at which trains never stop and they don’t even change the points, immediately vanishes in the darkness. Around there is emptiness and steppe. The duty man goes past the burial mound: a steppe burial mound towers death-like and silently–who, when, what nomads piled it up here, and what does it contain?–the withered feather-grass swishes by the burial mound. The black earth in the lanes has been trampled flat, like asphalt, and it squelches underfoot.

The village is silent, only the dogs bark. The duty man crosses the Tatar district, descends into the ravine, where the Mordva settled, climbs up the hillside. In her cottage the soldier’s wife puts the kasha onto the table, pork dripping, the milk. The duty man eats quickly, changes into more elegant clothes and goes to visit the school mistress.

At the school mistress’s the duty man puts into its holder one burning torch after another, and says in a melancholy way:

“Asia. Not a country, but Asia. The Tatars, Mordva. Poverty. Not a country, but Asia.”

And the duty man thinks about his own poverty.

The school mistress stands by the stove, muffling herself up in a downy shawl, already looking her age. Then the school mistress heats the samovar and makes the rye coffee…

Late at night the duty man goes to bed in his cottage, beside the soldier’s wife. The bed creaks, a guitar twangs. The cricket chirrs, in the corner behind the little stove a piglet snorts. The soldier’s wife clears the table, goes outside. Behind the slender clayey wall she can be heard defecating and chasing away a dog which had hurried to eat up her excretia. The duty man listens and thinks about unusual things: about wealth, beautiful, elegant women, about fashionable dress, about wines, gaiety, luxury, which will come to him… The soldier’s wife prays for a long time, whispers her prayers. The light is dimming, and the soldier’s wife in bare feet over the earth floor, scratching herself, goes to the duty man’s bed.

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.

A soldier from the food collecting detail climbs into a silenced freight car.

“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 hunger, 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.

Dusk. In the gray dusk the soldier’s wife thirty years of age (it’s sweet to kiss such a soldier’s wife nights!) stops the man burning with the last flush of consumption, beckons to him and whispers:

“Come to my place, lad. Nobody’ll be back. I’ll give you some bread. The bath’s heating up.”

And in the bathhouse, in the red reflections, the man sees: on the woman’s stomach and groin has broken out an even marble-like cold–syphilitic–rash.

At dusk something heartrending cries out: in the mosque the muezzin, a muezzin just like the rest. At dusk the Tatars pray, having spread out their little carpets, directing their glances to the East, to the unseen Asia.

The last black necklace of the crows’ wedding flies by–a melancholy wedding.

And back over the empty steppe crawls train No. 57 mixed, loaded with people and bread.

And “Mar loop-station,” where earlier they didn’t change even the points, is building a fairytale career: the dreams of the young duty man are coming true. At “Mar loop-station” a barrage detail is stationed, internal customs. Now the trains stop here for days and nights. And day and night the campfires burn and around the station are crowds of people. In the well and pools there is no longer a drop of water. And for water they run two versts, to the little river. It’s impossible to walk two paces without stepping in human excrement. The first aid cars are crammed with the sick. From the food train, where machine-guns sternly protrude, come happy songs, a dozen concertinas groan. Around there is moaning, wailing, crying, praying, cursing. The duty man is speaking curtly with the leader of the detail, few words–the duty man knows well, what it means to rub a cuff with a cuff–the duty man can send the train away in ten minutes and he can hold it up for days–the duty man can receive and send off a train at night, when the train guards “are not working because of lack of light”–and the duty man has–women, wine, money, new clothes, excellent tobacco, Heinemann et Cie sweets–the duty man talks like a commander using few words, and he has no time, languishing, to wander up and down the platform.

Through the plundered black steppe crawls the train No. 57 mixed, crammed with people, flour and filth… Falling, falling into the desert of night is the wet snow, the wind swirls, the heated goods vans jingle. Night. Darkness. Cold. And already long since in the dark abyss the red lights of the campfires have been blazing at the “Mar loop-station,”–frightening, like a feverish mirage. In the freight cars where people are sitting and standing on people, nobody sleeps, the freight cars remain indistinctly silent. The train is stopping slowly, the wheels screech indistinctly. The campfires burn, by the campfires in the snow people huddle together and bags roll about. The station cottage is silent. In the darkness, in a group, with their committees,
the freight car officials of train No. 57 combined are gathering. Snow. Wind. Two men go away, arrive. For a minute by the station cottage the duty man appears, speaks like a commander.

Silence.

Whispering.

And through the freight cars the officials run quickly.

In the freight car darkness. An official bolts the door behind him. In the freight car there is silence.

“Wot?” –somebody asks wheezingly. The official breathes quickly and, it seems, joyfully.

“Women, girls–for you!” says the official in a hurried whisper. “I ordered girls and women, the best, to be sent to them, to the army men, I myself,” he says, “can do nothing…”

And in the freight car there is silence, only the official is breathing.

“Girls, women–eh?”

Silence.

“The women have got to go! Nothing you can do about it,” someone says gloomily. “Bread, bread we’re carrying!”

And again silence.

“What then, Manyush–let’s go…” –the voice sounds like a snapped string.

Out of the freight cars, in the darkness, into the snow, watchfully crawl the women, and behind them the doors are hurriedly bolted. The women silently, without words, gather in a group. They wait. Wires are humming somewhere closeby. Someone approaches, stares, speaks in a whisper:

“Have you assembled–everyone?… Let’s go… There’s nothing you can do… Bread. Lend a hand, women–girls… Whichever girls are virgins–don’t you go away, or else… something…”

Then the women stand for a long time by the rear freight car of the food train–until a young lad in an unbelted soldier’s blouse comes running:

“Ah, women! Been patient long enough?! We need some women–it’s a high priority. –And is this the whole herd of you? Look–there’s no need for so many–look you’ve taken a fancy to! Girls, pick out a dozen, the ones that are prettiest. And–be sure they’re healthy–mind!”

Night. Falling, falling snow. Wires hum. The wind hums. The lights from the campfires shimmer. Night.

In the office near the duty man crowd the officials and, changing the voice to some absurd-sweet and foul-squeaky one, vying with each other, backing away, they treat the duty man–with little melons, alcohol, brandy, cigarettes, tobacco, calico, thick woolen cloth, tea… The duty man, to speed the night on, tells dirty jokes in field-marshal fashion, and the officials absurdly-sweetly laugh, in embarrassment lowering their eyes.

At dawn train No. 57 mixed whistles, moves away, like vertebrae from the spinal column, and–leaves “Mar loop-station.”

Bread!..

Behind the siding in the steppe lies the burial mound after which the loop-station is named. Once a man had been killed near the burial mound, and on the gravestone somebody etched out in clumsy letters:

“I was what you are–

But you will be what I am.”

The boundless steppe, the burial mound, are all buried under snow, and of the inscription on the gravestone only two words remain:

“I was…”

In autumn in the evening near the hill in the town of Ordinin the campfires flare up: this will be the hungry folk heating their soup, those folk who wend their way in their thousands into the steppe for bread, and from the bottom of the hill sad songs float up. That night, Andrei Volkovich:–the stones of the embankment showered down, flew together with him down the ravine (the wind of fall whispered–gviuu), and everything crumbled like sparks of eyes from the fall–and then remained only the heart. The vigilante above shouted something, and then the campfires of the hungry, the sleepers, a snatch of a song of the hungry folk.

“Now then. One question–in Dostoevsky fashion–a little question:–that duty man from “Mar loop-station”–was he not Andrei Volkovich or Gleb Ordinin?–And another way:–Gleb Ordinin and Andrei Volkovich–were they not that man, who was burning with the last flush of consumption?–our such Russian Ivanushka the Fools, Ivanushka the Tsareviches?”

Dark is this third part of the triptych!

–In Semyon Matveev Zilotov’s book–in the book “Intelligent existence, or a moral view of the value of life” there is the sentence:

“Is there anything more terrible than to see lack of faith strengthening at the very moment when the powers of nature are sick from exhaustion, in order to look with revulsion on the terrors surrounding the beds of the dying, and proudly bequeath to the universe an example of daring and impiety.”