His wife used to do all his work.
The other track-walker, nearer the station, was a young man, thin, but muscular.
He and Semyon met for the first time on the line midway between the huts. Semyon took off his hat and bowed.
"Good health to you, neighbour," he said.
The neighbour glanced askance at him.
"How do you do?" he replied; then turned around and made off.
Later the wives met.
Semyon's wife passed the time of day with her neighbour, but neither did she say much.
On one occasion Semyon said to her:
"Young woman, your husband is not very talkative."
The woman said nothing at first, then replied:
"But what is there for him to talk about?
Every one has his own business.
Go your way, and God be with you."
However, after another month or so they became acquainted.
Semyon would go with Vasily along the line, sit on the edge of a pipe, smoke, and talk of life.
Vasily, for the most part, kept silent, but Semyon talked of his village, and of the campaign through which he had passed.
"I have had no little sorrow in my day," he would say; "and goodness knows I have not lived long.
God has not given me happiness, but what He may give, so will it be.
That's so, friend Vasily Stepanych."
Vasily Stepanych knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a rail, stood up, and said:
"It is not luck which follows us in life, but human beings.
There is no crueller beast on this earth than man.
Wolf does not eat wolf, but man will readily devour man."
"Come, friend, don't say that; a wolf eats wolf."
"The words came into my mind and I said it.
All the same, there is nothing crueller than man.
If it were not for his wickedness and greed, it would be possible to live.
Everybody tries to sting you to the quick, to bite and eat you up."
Semyon pondered a bit.
"I don't know, brother," he said; "perhaps it is as you say, and perhaps it is God's will."
"And perhaps," said Vasily, "it is waste of time for me to talk to you.
To put everything unpleasant on God, and sit and suffer, means, brother, being not a man but an animal.
That's what I have to say."
And he turned and went off without saying good-bye.
Semyon also got up.
"Neighbour," he called, "why do you lose your temper?"
But his neighbour did not look round, and kept on his way.
Semyon gazed after him until he was lost to sight in the cutting at the turn.
He went home and said to his wife:
"Arina, our neighbour is a wicked person, not a man."
However, they did not quarrel. They met again and discussed the same topics.
"All, mend, if it were not for men we should not be poking in these huts," said Vasily, on one occasion. "And what if we are poking in these huts?
It's not so bad. You can live in them."
"Live in them, indeed!
Bah, you!...
You have lived long and learned little, looked at much and seen little.
What sort of life is there for a poor man in a hut here or there?
The cannibals are devouring you.
They are sucking up all your life-blood, and when you become old, they will throw you out just as they do husks to feed the pigs on.