Towards evening the train stops near a big station.The lamps have only just been lighted along the line; against the blue background in the fresh limpid air the lights are bright and pale like stars; they are only red and glowing under the station roof, where it is already dark.All the lines are loaded up with carriages, and it seems that if another train came in there would be no place for it.Yasha runs to the station for boiling water to make the evening tea.Well-dressed ladies and high-school boys are walking on the platform.If one looks into the distance from the platform there are far-away lights twinkling in the evening dusk on both sides of the station -- that is the town.
What town? Yasha does not care to know.He sees only the dim lights and wretched buildings beyond the station, hears the cabmen shouting, feels a sharp, cold wind on his face, and imagines that the town is probably disagreeable, uncomfortable, and dull.
While they are having tea, when it is quite dark and a lantern is hanging on the wall again as on the previous evening, the train quivers from a slight shock and begins moving backwards.After going a little way it stops; they hear indistinct shouts, someone sets the chains clanking near the buffers and shouts, "Ready!" The train moves and goes forward.Ten minutes later it is dragged back again.
Getting out of the van, Malahin does not recognize his train.His eight vans of bullocks are standing in the same row with some trolleys which were not a part of the train before.Two or three of these are loaded with rubble and the others are empty.The guards running to and fro on the platform are strangers.They give unwilling and indistinct answers to his questions.They have no thoughts to spare for Malahin; they are in a hurry to get the train together so as to finish as soon as possible and be back in the warmth.
"What number is this?" asks Malahin "Number eighteen.""And where is the troop train? Why have you taken me off the troop train?"Getting n o answer, the old man goes to the station.He looks first for the familiar figure of the head guard and, not finding him, goes to the station-master.The station-master is sitting at a table in his own room, turning over a bundle of forms.He is busy, and affects not to see the newcomer.His appearance is impressive: a cropped black head, prominent ears, a long hooked nose, a swarthy face; he has a forbidding and, as it were, offended expression.Malahin begins making his complaint at great length.
"What?" queries the station-master."How is this?" He leans against the back of his chair and goes on, growing indignant:
"What is it? and why shouldn't you go by number eighteen? Speak more clearly, I don't understand! How is it? Do you want me to be everywhere at once?"He showers questions on him, and for no apparent reason grows sterner and sterner.Malahin is already feeling in his pocket for his pocketbook, but in the end the station-master, aggrieved and indignant, for some unknown reason jumps up from his seat and runs out of the room.Malahin shrugs his shoulders, and goes out to look for someone else to speak to.
From boredom or from a desire to put the finishing stroke to a busy day, or simply that a window with the inscription "Telegraph! " on it catches his eye, he goes to the window and expresses a desire to send off a telegram.Taking up a pen, he thinks for a moment, and writes on a blue form: "Urgent.Traffic Manager.Eight vans of live stock.Delayed at every station.
Kindly send an express number.Reply paid.Malahin."Having sent off the telegram, he goes back to the station-master's room.There he finds, sitting on a sofa covered with gray cloth, a benevolent-looking gentleman in spectacles and a cap of raccoon fur; he is wearing a peculiar overcoat very much like a lady's, edged with fur, with frogs and slashed sleeves.
Another gentleman, dried-up and sinewy, wearing the uniform of a railway inspector, stands facing him.
"Just think of it," says the inspector, addressing the gentleman in the queer overcoat." I'll tell you an incident that really is A1! The Z.railway line in the coolest possible way stole three hundred trucks from the N.line.It's a fact, sir! I swear it!
They carried them off, repainted them, put their letters on them, and that's all about it.The N.line sends its agents everywhere, they hunt and hunt.And then -- can you imagine it? -- the Company happen to come upon a broken-down carriage of the Z.
line.They repair it at their depot, and all at once, bless my soul! see their own mark on the wheels What do you say to that?
Eh? If I did it they would send me to Siberia, but the railway companies simply snap their fingers at it!"It is pleasant to Malahin to talk to educated, cultured people.
He strokes his beard and joins in the conversation with dignity.
"Take this case, gentlemen, for instance," he says.I am transporting cattle to X.Eight vanloads.Very good....Now let us say they charge me for each vanload as a weight of ten tons; eight bullocks don't weigh ten tons, but much less, yet they don't take any notice of that...."At that instant Yasha walks into the room looking for his father.
He listens and is about to sit down on a chair, but probably thinking of his weight goes and sits on the window-sill "They don't take any notice of that," Malahin goes on, "and charge me and my son the third-class fare, too, forty-two roubles, for going in the van with the bullocks.This is my son Yakov.I have two more at home, but they have gone in for study.
