Everything Flows Read Free Page B

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    â€œThat’s what makes one mad,” pronounced the young economist. “These peasants we’re talking about are Russians—not some national minority or other! One of them started haranguing me: ‘Five years we lived on linden leaves...Since 1947 we’ve been working without any pay...’ They just don’t want to work—and that’s all there is to it. They don’t want to understand that everything now depends on the people.”
    He looked around at the gray-haired old peasant listening to the conversation in silence and said, “Don’t be angry, Grandad. The State has begun to address your needs—now it’s up to you. You must all fulfill your duty as laborers.”
    â€œA likely story. There’s not the least consciousness in any of them—all they ever think about is food!”
    This discussion—like most discussions, whether inside or outside a railway carriage—was never resolved. An air-force major with gleaming gold teeth looked into the compartment and said reproachfully to the three younger men, “Well, comrades? How about getting down to some work?”
    And off they had gone to their neighbors—to finish a game of cards.
    But now the long journey was nearly over. The passengers were packing away their slippers and depositing on the tables remnants of food: pieces of stale bread, chicken bones that had been gnawed till they were blue, pallid sausage ends wrapped in layers of skin.
    The sullen conductors had already collected all the crumpled sheets and pillowcases.
    The little world of the railway carriage was about to disperse. Jokes, faces, and laughter would all be forgotten—as would chance confidences and painful confessions.
    Ever closer drew the vast city, the capital of the great State. Finished were the thoughts and anxieties of the journey. Forgotten were the tête-à-têtes at the end of the carriage with the woman from the compartment next door, while the great Russian plain rolled past before your eyes—just outside the clouded windows—and the water in the storage tanks sloshed heavily about behind your back.
    The close-knit world of the railway carriage—a world that had come into being for only a few days and that was governed, on its straight or curved path through time and space, by the same laws as every other man-made world—was now melting away.
    So great is the power of an enormous city that it makes every heart miss a beat—even the carefree hearts of those who are traveling to the capital to stay with friends, to roam around shops, to visit a zoo or a planetarium. Entering the force field generated by a world city, entering its taut invisible network of living energy, everyone feels a sudden moment of confusion and apprehension.
    After nearly missing his place in the queue, the economist had been to the washroom. Still combing his hair, he had gone back to his seat. Now he was scrutinizing his fellow passengers.
    The construction superintendent was putting his expense sheets in order. A great deal of alcohol had been drunk during the last few days, and his fingers were trembling.
    The trade-union inspector had already put on his jacket. Entering into the force field of agitated human emotions, he had turned timid and silent; his supervisor, a gray-haired, bilious old witch, was sure to have a few things to say to him.
    The train rushed past brick factories and little village houses made from logs, past tin-gray fields of cabbages, past station platforms where the night rain seemed to have made gray asphalt puddles.
    On the platforms stood sullen men and women from the Moscow suburbs, wearing plastic macs over their coats. Sagging beneath the gray rain clouds were high-voltage power lines. On the station sidings stood gray wagons, ominously labeled: SLAUGHTERHOUSE STATION. CIRCUIT LINE .
    And the train thundered on with ever increasing speed, with a kind of malign joy. It