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 rejoicing. 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.