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

trenchy furrows and yet undivided lots of rye ploughland. Ordinary villages
lived behind the rye, and above them was air from the frightening space, --
Pyotr Yevseyevich considered air a good thing also, since from it breathing
was delivered to the entire area of the State. Windless days bothered him
however; the peasants have nothing to grind with, and the infected air
stays over the city, whereby the sanitary condition is worsened. But Pyotr
Yevseyevich bore his anxiety not as a suffering but as a concerned
necessity which occupies the entire soul by its meaning and thereby makes
the burden of one's own life imperceptible. At the moment, Pyotr
Yevseyevich was a little worried for a locomotive that was hauling up some
rough freights with sharp, stifled wisps of steam which reached at Pyotr
Yevseyevich's tense feelings. Pyotr Yevseyevich stopped and with a helpful
compassion imagined the ordeal of a machine pushing the stagnation of
sedimentary weight forward and uphill.
"If only nothing bursts in the couplings," Pyotr Yevseyevich
whispered, grinding his teeth between the itching gums. "And if only there
is enough fire, it has to burn the water! Let it be patient, it's not far
until the end now..."
The locomotive slithered up slope with screeching rims but did not
give in to the cars that stuck to the rails. Suddenly the locomotive
started giving out frequent and worried honking, asking for the way
through. Apparently the semaphore was closed and the engine-driver was
afraid that he would not be able to start the train up the slope after a
stop.
"Oh my God, and what is going on!" Pyotr Yevseyevich exclaimed and,
smitten with sorrow, energetically set out to the station in order to
examine the accident.
The locomotive gave three whistles, meaning stop, while Pyotr
Yevseyevich found a total calmness reign at the station. He sat down in the
third class waiting hall and began to torment himself: "Where is the
State?" he thought. "Where can its automatic order be found?"
"Shchepotko!" the agent on duty shouted to the train marshall. "Let
the fifty-first through to the eighth. Make a remark to the mechanic and to
the head that we are full with transit. Did you dispose of the tanks
there?"
"Yes, sir!" answered Shchepotko. "Do not accept any more, I have no
place to put it. We need to finish with the fifty-first."
"Now it's quite understandable," Pyotr Yevseyevich calmed down. "The
State is here because the concern is here. We only need to tell the
population to exist quieter, or else the machines would burst under its
demands."
With a satisfied distress, Pyotr Yevseyevich left the railroad
juncture to visit a nearby village named Koz'ma.
In that Koz'ma village there lived twenty-four homesteads. The huts
were built on the slopes of a functional ravine and have suffered this
condition for seventy years. Beside the ravine, the village suffered from
thirst; due to thirst people ate poorly and did not procreate properly.
There was no fresh and quenching water in Koz'ma: there was a small pond
amidst the village, at the bottom of the ravine, but this pond was hedged
by a dam made from manure, while the water flew there from under the