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.