Authors: Vladimir Sorokin
The doctor moaned and shook as he gradually awoke. Crouper had hollowed out the snow next to the sled and started a fire.
“Come on, yur ’onor,” he called.
Platon Ilich barely managed to slide down from the seat. He was shaking. Teeth chattering, picking up one leg and then the other with tremendous difficulty, he walked over and sat down in the snow ditch, almost in the fire. While he was sleeping, Crouper had found and chopped up a dry bush. After setting fire to the twigs and pieces of the seat back, he broke off deadwood and stuck it in the fire, covering it from the snowstorm with his own body. Gradually the fire grew to a blaze between the two squatting men. The blizzard tried to put out the flame, but Crouper wouldn’t let it.
The wood caught fire, and the doctor stretched his gloved hands into the flames. Crouper pulled off his mittens and stretched out his large, ungainly hands as well. They sat like that, immobile, silent, squinting when the smoke got in their eyes. The doctor’s gloves warmed up, his fingers got hot, painfully so. The doctor pulled the gloves off. That pain and the fire conquered the shivers. The doctor felt like himself again. He retrieved his watch and glanced at it: a quarter to eight.
“How long did I sleep?” he asked.
Crouper didn’t answer; he continued breaking off pieces of brushwood and shoving them into the fire. Illuminated by bursts of flame, his birdlike face appeared to smile, as if everything was just fine. He didn’t look very tired. His face even conveyed a sort of joy and grateful resignation to everything around him: the blizzard, the snowy fields, the dark sky, the doctor, and the fire flaring in the wind.
While the brushwood burned, the doctor and the driver warmed up. The energy the doctor had acquired at the Vitaminders returned to him; he was ready to drive on, to struggle with the storm. On the other hand, after sitting at the fire, Crouper was drowsy and in no hurry to go anywhere.
“Where’s the road?” the doctor asked as he stood up.
“Right over there…,” muttered Crouper, his eyes half closed and his head down.
“Where?” The doctor couldn’t hear him.
Crouper gestured to the right of the sled.
“Let’s go!” the doctor commanded.
Crouper rose reluctantly. The wind had scattered the last burning branches. The doctor wiped off the snow from the seat and was about to sit down, but, on seeing that Crouper was pushing the back of the seat to get the sled moving, he came around to help him.
“One, two, oooooffff!” Crouper shouted in a weak voice as he pushed.
The horses barely managed to get going. The sled slid along so slowly it was as though there weren’t any horses under the hood at all, just two men pushing a seat that had been chipped away by an axe.
“C’mon, c’mon! C’mon now!” Crouper shouted.
The sled didn’t gain any speed. Crouper stopped pushing it, brushed the snow off the hood, and opened it.
“What is it?” he asked in a hurt tone of voice.
On seeing their master, the little horses whickered discordantly. From their voices it was clear that they were tired and half frozen.
“Ain’t I fed you?” Crouper took off his mitten and petted the horses’ backs. “Ain’t I took care of you? What’s this? C’mon, c’mon now!”
He gave the horses a push. They tossed their heads, bared their teeth, snorted, and looked at their master.
“Yur the only hope now, you good-fer-nothins,” he said, stroking them. “Just got a teeny ways more to go, and here yur wantin’ to loaf about. C’mon now, c’mon!”
He patted the horses on the back.
The doctor started doing exercises and waving his arms. Crouper leaned over under the hood, so that he was hanging right over the horses, his face almost touching them.
“C’mon now, c’mon!”
The horses raised their mouths as much as their collars would allow and started whinnying and grabbing at his face with their lips.
“Go on, tell me, tell me all about it!” Crouper grinned.
Friendly whinnying filled the sledmobile’s hood. The horses stretched toward their master; frosty horse noses pushed at the man’s cheeks and nose and tugged at the tufts of his thin beard. Crouper blew on them hard, as though pushing them away. But this just excited the horses even more. The roan, reaching back harder than the others, almost dislodging his collar, stretched his neck out, bared his teeth, and grabbed his master by the bridge of his nose.
“Ay, ay, ay,” said Crouper, flicking him on the back.
The horses whickered.
“Now that’s it, that’s more like it,” Crouper patted them approvingly. “Ain’t dead, is ye? And none of that!”
Winking at the little horses, he closed the hood, straightened up, and clapped his gloves together to energize himself:
“Let’s go, let’s go!”
The doctor, breathing hard from his exercises, grabbed the back of the seat: “Let’s go!”
Crouper ran around to the other side and grabbed the seat where the axe had nicked it:
“Let’s goooo!”
The sled moved, crawling straight into the storm.
“Let’s go!” roared the doctor.
“Let’s gooooo!” Crouper croaked.
The sled moved across the snow like a cutter across water; Crouper guided it not so much by the barely distinguishable tracks as by his absolute certainty that the road was there, straight ahead, and that it couldn’t be missed.
They drove onto the road.
“Sit down, doctor!” Crouper shouted.
The doctor jumped on as the sled gained momentum, and plopped down on the seat. Crouper pushed the sled a bit longer; then he, too, jumped on and settled down, holding the reins.
The sled drove along the snow-covered road.
Suddenly something happened in the pitch-dark sky, and the travelers could make out a field up ahead, bushes, a black strip of forest to the right, and to the left two huge trees standing alone in the field. They could see the snow falling on the landscape.
The doctor and Crouper lifted their heads: a bright but waning moon shone through a break in the clouds. They could see dark-blue sky between huge masses of gray cloud. “Thank God!” Crouper muttered.
And as though by some miraculous gesture of an unseen hand, the flying snow began to thin and soon stopped altogether. Only an intermittent wind blew snow across the field and road, and rocked the roadside bushes.
“It stopped, yur ’onor!” Crouper laughed, and poked the doctor with his elbow.
“It stopped!” the doctor repeated, with a happy nod of his hat.
Clouds still crawled across the moon, but they seemed weaker. They were quickly blown out of the sky. The stars twinkled, and the moon illuminated everything around them.
The blizzard had stopped.
The snowy road was visible now, the horses pulled, and the sled slid along, its runners whooshing through the freshly fallen snow.
“Looky how lucky, yur ’onor!” Crouper smiled, adjusting his hat. “The lucky man’s rooster will cock-a-doodle-do, and lay him eggs, too.” The doctor was so happy, he wanted to smoke, but he changed his mind: he felt good even without his cigarette. Everything was amazingly beautiful.
The clear night sky expanded above a huge snowy field. The moon reigned supreme in the sky, glinting in a myriad of recently fallen snowflakes and glimmering silver on the frost-covered matting of the hood; on Crouper’s mittens, which held tight to the reins; and on the doctor’s hat, pince-nez, and long fur coat. The stars twinkled like diamonds strewn high in the sky. A chill, faint breeze blew from the right, carrying the smell of nighttime, fresh snow, and a far-off human dwelling.
The previous joyful and overflowing feeling of life returned to the doctor; he forgot his exhaustion and his freezing feet, and took a deep breath of the frosty night air.
“The overcoming of obstacles, awareness of your path, steadfastness…,” he thought, yielding with pleasure to the beauty of the surrounding world. “Each person is born to find his own way in life. God gave us life and he wants one thing from us: that we realize why he gave us this life. It wasn’t simply to live without meaning, like a plant or animal. We were meant to understand three things: who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed. For example, I, Dr. Garin,
Homo sapiens
, created in his image and likeness, am traveling along this field at night to a village, to sick people, in order to help them, to safeguard them from an epidemic. This is the essence of my life, here and now. And if that shining moon were to suddenly collapse and life were to cease, then at that very second I would be worthy of being called a Human Being, because I didn’t turn away from my path. How wonderful!”
Suddenly the horses whinnied and snorted, stamping on the drive belt. The sled slowed down.
“What is it?” Crouper adjusted his hat.
The horses stopped and snorted.
Crouper stood up and looked ahead. On the right, two shadows passed among the thin undergrowth.
“Not wolves?” Crouper jumped down into the snow, took off his hat, and looked closely.
The doctor couldn’t make out anything in particular. But suddenly two pairs of yellow eyes shone in the bushes.
“Wolves!” Crouper exclaimed, waving his hat. “Oy, that’s bad luck…”
“Wolves.” The doctor nodded in agreement. “Don’t be scared. I have a revolver.”
“The horses won’t go that way.” Crouper put on his hat and whacked his mitten on the hood. “Oh, Lord, just what we needs…”
“We’ll scare them off!” the doctor exclaimed. He jumped down from the sled, went around to the back, and began unfastening his traveling bag.
“Two more…,” Crouper said, noticing two wolves further off, to the left.
He looked straight ahead and could make out another wolf calmly crossing the moonlit field in the distance.
“Five!” he shouted to the doctor.
The wolves began to howl.
The horses snorted and neighed in fear.
“Don’t ye be scared, I won’t let ’em getcha.” Crouper slapped his mitten on the hood.
The doctor finally unstrapped his snow-dusted traveling bag, brought it around, and threw it on the seat; he opened it, took out his small, snub-nosed revolver, and cocked the trigger.
“Where are they?”
“Thataways.” Crouper waved his mitten.
The doctor took four steps in the direction of the wolves, but went off the road and plunged into deep snow. He grabbed on to some bushes and shot three times. Yellow flashes illuminated the moonlit plain.
The shots made the doctor’s ears ring.
The wolves trotted off to the right, all five, one after the other. The doctor saw them:
“Now, you…”
He fired two more shots after them.
The wolves continued at the same pace. They soon disappeared into the bushes.
“There, now.” The doctor stuck his revolver, still smelling of gunpowder, into his pocket, and turned to Crouper: “The path is clear!”
“The path is clear…,” said Crouper, fussing about, and opening the sled hood. “But the horses, now…”
“What about the horses?”
“They’re afraid of the wolf smell.”
The doctor looked over in the direction the wolves had gone. They had disappeared from the field.
“But their tracks are cold!” he said, shaking his hat. “What smell?”
Paying him no mind, Crouper threw back the matting. The horses stood silently inside the hood. Turning their heads, they looked at Crouper.
“Don’t ye be scared none, I won’t let ’em getcha,” he told them.
They stood, staring, moving their tiny ears. Their eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“What’s wrong with them?” The doctor leaned over the hood.
“Let ’em stand a spell.” Crouper scratched his head under his hat. “And then we’ll be off.”
“What do you mean, ‘Let them stand’?”
“They had a fright.”
The doctor peered at Crouper.
“I’ll tell you what: don’t play games with me. Had a fright! Am I supposed to dawdle about here all night with you?! Sit down right now! You get them going, damn it! Make it quick! Had a fright! I’ll give you a fright! They’ve been standing long enough! Come on now, make it quick!”
The doctor’s loud voice carried over the field.
Crouper obediently began to cover the horses.
The doctor sat down, placing his traveling bag at his feet; he touched the package with the pyramids—it was still there.
Crouper sat next to him, took hold of the rudder, gave the reins a jerk, and made a clucking noise with his tongue: “C’mon now, my lovelies.”
It was quiet under the hood, as though it were empty. Turning to look at the doctor, Crouper clucked again:
“C’mon!”
Utter silence reigned under the hood.
“Are you mocking me?” asked the doctor impatiently. “All right, give me the whip! Open it up!”
He pulled the little whip out of the case.
“They won’t go, yur ’onor, sir.”
“Open it up, I told you!”
“Don’t, sir. The wolves gets ’em all nervous-like. They won’t move till they comes out of it. One time I hadda stand with ’em near Khliupin fer near on two hours…”
“O-pen up! Open it up!” the doctor shouted, and shoved Crouper.
Crouper fell off the coachman’s seat, lost his hat, and floundered in the snow. The doctor jumped down awkwardly and began pulling the matting off the hood:
“Stand around and wait, will you! I’ll teach you to stand around! People are dying, and he says we should wait!”
Holding his hat in hand, Crouper approached the doctor:
“Yur ’onor, don’t do it.”
“I’ll show you—huh—stand and wait…,” the doctor muttered, pulling the frozen loops of the matting from the hooks.
He suddenly realized that it was Crouper, this aimless man, lacking all ambition, with his disorganized slowness and centuries-old peasant reliance on “somehow or another” and “with luck, everything will turn out,” who was preventing them from moving directly toward the doctor’s goal.
“You stinking asshole!” the doctor thought angrily.
Having pulled off half of the matting, he threw it back.
The little horses stood bathed in moonlight, looking like porcelain figurines. They stared at the doctor.
“Now I’ll show you—get a mooooove on!” The doctor waved the little whip, but Crouper grabbed his hand: