"Inhabitant of the State" - читать интересную книгу автора (Platonov Andrei)

Andrei Platonov (1899-1951)

Inhabitant of the State

Translation (c) 1997 by Serge Winitzki

An aged man liked transportation to the same extent as co-operative
enterprises and the perspectives of future construction. In the morning he
would take a bite at yesterday's tidbits and would go out to observe and to
enjoy. At first he would visit the railway station, mostly platforms for
storage of incoming freights, and there he felt joy at the accumulation of
goods. The steam locomotive snuffled with its thick, peaceful force and
slowly pulled off carloads of public substances: bottles of sulphuric acid,
mounds of ropes, institutional luggage, and unmarked bags with something
useful. The aged man, by the name Pyotr Yevseyevich Veretennikov, was glad
that his city was being supplied, and would go to the cargo delivery
platform to see whether the trains were leaving for the far ends of the
Republic, where people worked and waited for the cargo. The springs of the
departing trains were tightly compressed: they were carrying so much of the
required weight. This also was satisfying to Pyotr Yevseyevich -- the
people over there, for whom the goods were intended, will be provided for.
Not far from the station a settlement of dwellings was being built.
Pyotr Yevseyevich daily followed the growth of the constructions because
thousands of working families will be sheltered under their warm roofs, and
the world will become happier and more honest after their settlement. Pyotr
Yevseyevich would leave the construction field deeply touched by the sight
of labour and material. All this prepared substance would soon, through the
diligence of comradely labour, become a sturdy coziness from the harm of
the weather during fall and winter, for the very contents of the State, in
the form of its population, to be whole and tranquil.
Farther on Pyotr Yevseyevich's way was a smallish forest already used
by the rural public. The wood was only marginally enriched by standing
pines which were however a little worn down. In a dividing trough in that
forest an earth surveyor was sleeping; he was not yet old but weary,
perhaps from earth management. His mouth had opened itself in sleepy
lassitude, and a live, disturbing smell of resinous pines entered the depth
of the surveyor's body and made him healthier there, so that the body was
again capable of managing the wheat ploughmen's earth. The man rested and
was being filled with the happiness of shared repose; his tools, the
theodolite and the measuring tape, lay on the ground and were being
hurriedly examined by ants and a dry spider that always lived individually
due to its stinginess. Pyotr Yevseyevich tore some grass out of its
accumulation in the trough, shaped that grass into a soft pulp of sorts and
put it underneath the sleeping head of the earth surveyor, bothering him
gently to attain comfort. The surveyor did not awake; he only moaned
something like a plaintive orphan and sunk again into sleep. However, it
was already better for him to rest on a soft grass. He would sleep tighter
and survey the earth more accurately -- with this feeling of useful
participation Pyotr Yevseyevich went on to his next activities.
The forest ceased quickly, and the earth under the trees became