The engineer brought the train into the station with splendid speed, and softly, tenderly braked it to a stop. Nefed Stepanovich, watching this, shed a few tears, forgetting even why he had come to the station.
Only one passenger got out of the train at this station. He wore a hat, and a long, blue raincoat, and his eyes were shining. The woman ran up to him.
“Fro!” the passenger said, and he dropped his bag onto the platform. The father picked it up and carried it behind his daughter and his son-in-law.
On the road, the daughter turned to her father.
“Papa, go over to the depot, and ask them to give you an assignment somewhere, it must be boring for you to have to sit at home all the time…”
“It’s boring,” the old man said, “I’ll go right away. You take the suitcase.”
The son-in-law looked at the old engineer.
“Hello, Nefed Stepanovich!”
“Hello, Fedya. Welcome home.”
“Thank you, Nefed Stepanovich…”
The young man wanted to say something more, but the old man gave the bag to Frosya and was walking away, toward the depot.
“Darling, I’ve cleaned the whole apartment,” Frosya said. “I wasn’t dying.”
“I guessed it on the train, that you weren’t dying,” her husband answered. “I didn’t believe your telegram for long.”
“Then why did you come back?” Frosya asked in surprise.
“I love you, and I was lonely,” Fedor said sadly.
Frosya was suddenly grieved.
“I’m afraid you’ll stop loving me some time, and then I really will die…”
Fedor kissed her cheek from the side.
“If you die, then you’ll forget everything, including me,” he said.
Frosya recovered from her grief.
“No, to die isn’t interesting. It’s passivity.”
“Of course, it’s passivity,” Fedor said, smiling. He liked her high-flown, intelligent words. Fro had once asked him specially to teach her intelligent phrases, and he had written out for her a whole notebook full of intelligent, empty words: “Whoever says a must also say b,” “If it’s so, it’s precisely so,” and other similar phrases. But Fro guessed the fraud for herself. She asked him: “But why is it necessary to say b after saying a, if I don’t have to and I don’t want to?”
At home they lay down at once to rest and fell asleep. Three hours later the father knocked. Frosya opened the door for him and waited until the old man had put some food in his metal box and gone out again. They had probably sent him off somewhere on a job. Frosya closed the door, and went back to sleep again.
When they woke, it was already night. They talked for a little, then Fedor made love to Fro, and they fell silent until morning.
The next day Fro quickly fixed dinner, fed her husband and ate something herself. She was doing everything now any old way, messy, not tasty, but it was all the same to both of them what they ate and what they drank, just so long as they didn’t waste the time of their loving on any material, unimportant needs.
Frosya told Fedor that she would now begin to study well and diligently, she would learn a lot, and she would work hard, so that life could become better for everybody in the country.
Fedor listened to Fro, and then he explained to her in detail his own ideas and projects—about the transmission of electric energy without wires, by means of ionized air, about increasing the strength of all metals by processing their ultrasonic waves, about the stratosphere one hundred kilometers up in the sky where there exist special light, heat and electrical conditions capable of guaranteeing eternal life to a man—this is why the dreams of the ancient world about heaven may now actually come true—and Fedor promised to think out and to accomplish many other things for Frosya’s sake and at the same time for the sake of all the other people in the world.
Frosya listened blissfully to her husband, half opening her already tired mouth. When they finished talking, they threw their arms around each other—they wanted to be happy right away, now, sooner than their future and zealous work would bring results in personal and in general happiness. The heart brooks no delay, it sickens, as if believing in nothing. Smothered with fatigue from thinking, from talking and from pleasure, they woke again fresh and ready for life to repeat itself. Frosya wanted to have children, she would bring them up, they would grow and share their father’s work, the work of communism and science. In the passion of his imagination, Fedor whispered to Frosya words about the mysterious forces of nature which can bring wealth to humanity, about the root-and-branch transformation of the sorry spirit of man. Then they kissed and caressed each other, and their noble dream turned into delight, as if it had been accomplished all at once.
In the evening Frosya went out for a short while, to buy groceries for herself and her husband; all this time, their appetites were growing. They lived through four days and nights without leaving each other. The father had not come back from his trip: probably he had been sent again to take a cold locomotive a long way.
After two more days Frosya told Fedor that they could go on together like this a little longer but then they should get down to business and pick up life again.
“Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, you and I will start to live life the way we ought to,” Fedor said, and he put his arms around her.
“The day after tomorrow!” Fro agreed in a whisper.
On the eighth day, Fedor woke up sad.
“Fro! Let’s get to work, let’s start living the way we should…. You’ve got to start going to class again.”
“Tomorrow,” Fro whispered and she took her husband’s head between her two hands.
He smiled at her, and gave in.
“When do we start, Fro?” Fedor asked his wife the next day.
“Soon, soon,” a sleepy, gentle Fro answered him; her hands were holding his hand, and he kissed her forehead.
One day Frosya woke up late, the day had been flaming a long time outside. She was alone in the room, it was probably the tenth or eleventh day of her inseparable reunion with her husband.
Frosya jumped quickly out of bed, threw the window wide open, and heard the mouth organ which she had completely forgotten. It was not being played upstairs. Frosya looked out of the window. Next to the shed in the courtyard a plank was lying and a barefoot little boy with a big child’s head was sitting on it and playing music.
It was strangely quiet all through the apartment. Fedor had absented himself somewhere. Frosya walked out to the kitchen. There was her father, sitting on the stool and dozing, his head with his hat on resting on the kitchen table. Frosya woke him.
“When did you come?”
“What?” the old man stammered. “Today, early in the morning.”
“But who let you in? Fedor?”
“Nobody,” her father said. “The door was open…. Fedor found me at the station, I was sleeping there on the counter.”
“And why were you sleeping at the station? What’s the matter? Have you no home?” Frosya asked him angrily.
“What of it! I’m used to it,” the old man said. “I thought—I’d be in your way,…”
“Well, all right, you old hypocrite! But Where’s Fedor? When will he be back?”
The father was embarrassed.
“He won’t be back,” the old man said. “He’s gone away…”
Fro was silent in front of her father. The old man was looking carefully at the kitchen dishrags, and he went on:
“In the morning the express went through. He got on, and went back to the Far East. Maybe, he says, he’ll go on from there to China, he doesn’t know yet.”