His companion fidgeted a little.
“What an idea!... Really, damnation.... You should have told the chief of the station....”
“What for?... He’d laugh! A common thing. You might almost call it the system. In Petersburg there’s a gentleman sitting in some office.... He’s got a board in front of him with numbers on it. Arrival.... Departure.... And the engineers are listed too.... Pay—so much. Versts—so many. Versts—that’s the length of the run,—a useful number, profitable, steady, that can be increased. The pay for the men is minus.... And this fellow just cracks his head, thinking how to run the largest number of miles on the smallest number of engineers. Or even make the distance larger than ever.... It’s a sort of silent game with numbers, so to speak.... And a most ordinary chap bothers with it.... He wears a poor coat and necktie, and he looks respectable.... A good friend and a fine husband.... He loves his child and gives presents to his wife on holidays.... His job is harmless, and he merely decides simple questions. The result is that sleep kills people.... And across the fields and through the ravines of our beloved country on such moonlight nights as this trains tear along like this, and the watch is kept by the sleepy, swollen eyes of the man who is responsible for hundreds of lives.... A moment’s slumber....”
The legs of the mathematician in their checkered trousers stirred: he got up from his seat in the shadow and sat down on a bench.... His fat, expressionless face, with its thick, clipped mustache, made you uneasy.
“Stop your croaking, for heaven’s sake,” he said angrily. “However you argue, the result is the same, devil take it.... I wanted to fall asleep....”
Pavel Semenovich looked at him in surprise.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you crazy? We’ll get there all right, if God wills. I merely want to point out how the terrible and the usual are combined.... Economy is the most ordinary idea of life.... But sometimes it involves death.... It is even measurable by the law of probability....”
The mathematician, still more angry, took out his cigar case and said, as he began to smoke:
“No, you’re right: the devil knows: the rascal’ll fall asleep, and all at once.... These beasts of railroad men.... O, let’s talk of something else. The devil take these fears.... Are you still vegetating in Tikhodol?... You’ve stuck there a long time....”
“Yes,” answered Pavel Semenovich, a little embarrassed. “It’s such a wretched place. It’s just like living in a yoke.... A teacher, prosecutor, excise official.... When you once land there, you’re forgotten, and removed from the lists of the living....”