Authors: Vladimir Sorokin
“Let ’em breathe a bit, there’ll be time to cover up,” Crouper replied.
The doctor noticed that the driver was almost always smiling.
“A good-hearted fellow…,” he thought, and asked:
“So, then, is it profitable to keep little horses?”
“Well, how’s to put it.” Crouper’s smile widened, exposing his crooked teeth. “So far it’s enough for bread and kvass.”
“You deliver bread?”
“That’s right.”
“Live alone?”
“Alone.”
“Why’s that?”
“My fly got stuck.”
“Hmm … impotence,” the doctor realized.
“But were you married before?”
“I was.” Crouper smiled. “For two years. Afterward, when I buttoned up, I come to see that I ain’t got the knack for a woman’s body. Who’s gonna wanna live with me?”
“She left you?” asked the doctor, straightening his pince-nez.
“Left. And thank God.”
They rode on silently for a verst or so. The horses didn’t run very fast on the drive belt, but they weren’t slow either; you could tell that they were well tended to and well fed.
“Doesn’t it get lonely by yourself out there on the farmstead?” asked the doctor.
“No time for bein’ lonely. In the summer I haul hay.”
“And in the winter?”
“In the winter I haul … you!” Crouper laughed.
Platon Ilich chuckled.
Crouper somehow made him feel good, and calm; his usual sense of irritation left him and he stopped rushing himself and others. It was clear that Crouper would get him there no matter what happened, that he’d make it in time to save people from that terrible illness.
There was something birdlike in the driver’s face, the doctor thought, something that seemed a bit mocking, but at the same time was helpless, kind, and good-natured. This sharp-nosed, smiling face with its sparse reddish beard and swollen squinting eyes, swimming in a large old fur hat with earflaps, swayed next to him in time with the movement of the sled, perfectly happy with everything: the sled, the cold, his well-kept, smooth-gaited little horses, and this fox-fur-hatted doctor in a pince-nez who had appeared out of nowhere with his important travel bags—and even with the endless white plain that stretched far ahead until it drowned in a blur of swirling snow.
“Do you hire out for wagon trains?” the doctor asked.
“Naw, why shud I … The job pays enough. I used to work in Soloukhi for some folks, then I figured out that another’s bread goes down like lead. So I just stick to haulin’ my own bread. And thank God…”
“Why do they call you ‘Crouper’?”
“Ah…” The driver grinned. “From when I was young and I worked at the border. We was cuttin’ a road through the forest. Lived in barracks. I caught the croup, was up all the night long. Everbody’s sleepin’ and here I am coughin’ up a storm, they cain’t get a wink all night. They got good and mad at me and piled on the work: ‘You’s coughin’ all night, don’t give us no peace, so you go chop all the wood, light the fire, draw the water!’ They gave it to me good for that croup, they sure did. That’s what they’d say: ‘Crouper, do this! Crouper, do that!’ I was the young’un in the crew. It just stuck: ‘Crouper! Hey, Crouper!’”
“Your name is Kozma?”
“Kozma.”
“Well, then, Kozma—you don’t cough at night anymore?”
“Nope! The Lord looked out for me. Got a bit of ague in the back when the weather’s bad. But I’m healthy.”
“And you deliver bread?”
“That I do.”
“Isn’t it a bit unnerving to make the deliveries all alone?”
“Naw. By your lonesome is just fine, yur ’onor. The old-timers had a saying: Drive by your lonesome, you got an angel on each shoulder; drive in a pair, one angel to share; but drive in a troika, and the devil’ll grab the reins.”
“Wisely put!” The doctor laughed.
“And that’s the livin’ truth, yur ’onor. When the wagon train’s comin’ back—the whole string of ’em’ll turn off somewheres to drink up their pay.”
“And you don’t drink?”
“I drink. But I knows my limit.”
“Now that’s surprising!” The doctor chuckled as he wriggled around under the rug, trying to take out his cigarette case.
“What’s the surprise in it?”
“Bachelors usually drink.”
“If’n someone brings smoked fish by—I’ll drink. But I don’t keep none at home. What for? No time fer drink, yur ’onor—I got fifty horses to watch over, after all.”
“I see, I see.” The doctor tried to light his cigarette, but the match blew out.
The second blew out as well. The wind had risen noticeably, and the snow fell in large flakes on the horses’ backs, wedged itself into the corners of the hood, tickled the doctor’s face, and made a slight shushing sound on his pince-nez.
He lit up, and peered ahead:
“How many versts to Dolgoye?”
“’Bout seventeen.”
The doctor remembered that the stationmaster had said it was fifteen.
“Can we make it in a couple of hours in this weather?” Platon Ilich asked.
“Who knows? Hard to say.” Crouper grinned, pulling his hat down to his eyes.
“The road is smooth.”
“Right hereabouts it’s a good’un.” Crouper nodded.
The road ran along a field lined with bushes, so it could be seen even without the rare mileposts that stuck up out of the snow. The field soon gave way to a sparse forest, and the mileposts ended, but sleigh tracks merged into the road, marking the path ahead of them, and encouraging the doctor: someone had just recently traveled along this road.
The sled moved along the sleigh tracks; Crouper held the reins loosely, and the doctor smoked.
Soon the forest grew taller and thicker, the road began to descend, and the sled entered a birch grove. Crouper yanked the reins:
“Whoooaa!”
The horses stopped.
Crouper got down and fussed about under the hood.
“What happened?” asked the doctor.
“Gonna cover the horses,” the driver explained, unfurling a burlap tarp.
“Good idea,” the doctor agreed, squinting in the windstorm. “It’s snowing.”
“It’s snowing.” Crouper covered the hood with the canvas tarp, fastening it at the corners. He sat back down and smacked his lips: “Heigh-yup!”
The horses set off again.
“It’s calmer in the forest—there’s just one road, you can see it, no way to get lost…,” thought the doctor. He brushed the snow from his collar.
“How long ago did you decide to use the little horses?” the doctor asked Crouper.
“’Bout four years ago.”
“Why was that?”
“My little brother as lived in Khoprov, Grisha, he died. He left twenty-four horses. And his wife, stands to reason, didn’t wanna take care of ’em. She says: ‘I’m gonna sell ’em.’ Then God’s angel up and made me ask her: ‘How much?’ ‘Three apiece.’ And I had sixty rubles right then. I says: ‘I’ll buy ’em for sixty.’ So we made a deal. I put ’em in a basket and brought ’em back with me to Dolbeshino. Then I got lucky: our bread man, Porfiry, he went off to live in town with his son. I bought his sled fer a good price, and traded a radio fer more horses. And took his place delivering bread. Thirty rubles. That’s what we got to live on.”
“Why didn’t you buy an ordinary horse?”
“Oooorrrrdinaar-y!” Crouper puckered his lips and stretched them forward, which made him look just like a jackdaw in profile. “Cain’t cut enough hay fer an ordinary one. I’m on my lonesome, yur ’onor, like a heron standin’ in a swamp, wher’m I gonna sow that hay! Even fer a cow you cain’t never cut enough hay. I don’t even keep a cow no more, got rid of it. But fer the little ones—nothin’ to it: I plant a row of clover, cut it down, dry it—and it’ll last ’em the whole winter. Grind some oats fer ’em, give ’em a little water—quick as a wink and that’s the end of it.”
“But these days people keep big horses, too,” the doctor pointed out. “In Repishnaya we have a family that keeps a big horse.”
“But that’s a family, yur ’onor!” said Crouper, shaking his head so hard that his hat slipped down even further over his eyes.
Adjusting his hat, he asked the doctor:
“What kinda horse is it?”
“Twice the size of regular ones.”
“Twice? That ain’t much. I seen bigger’uns at the station. You see the new stable there?”
“No.”
“In the fall they builded a ginormous one. I heard tell on the radio how at the Nizhny market there was a cart horse tall as a four-story building.”
“Yes, there are horses that size.” The doctor nodded seriously. “They’re used for extra-heavy work.”
“You seen ’em?”
“I’ve seen them from a distance, in Tver. A draught horse that size was pulling a coal train.”
“Whaddye know!” exclaimed Crouper with a click of the tongue. “How much oats do a horse like that eat in a day?”
“Well,” said the doctor, squinting ahead and wrinkling his nose, “I think that…”
Suddenly the sled jerked and twisted, and a crack was heard; the doctor nearly flew headlong into the snow. Underneath the tarp the horses snorted.
“What…” Crouper only had time to exhale, as his hat fell off and he tumbled chest-first onto the steering rod.
The doctor’s pince-nez sailed off his nose and got tangled in the lace attached to it. He caught it and put it back on. The sled stood at the side of the road, listing to the right.
“Darn you…” Crouper slid down, rubbing his chest. He walked around the sled, squatted, and looked underneath it.
“What’s the problem?” asked the doctor without getting up.
“We banged into somethin’…” Crouper moved to the right side of the road and immediately plunged into deep snow; he turned over, grunting, and squeezed under the sled.
The doctor waited in the listing sled. Finally Crouper’s head appeared:
“Just a sec…”
He threw back the tarpaulin, which the falling snow had already covered, and pulled back on the reins, without returning to his seat:
“C’mon now, c’mon…”
The horses, snorting and huffing, began to prance backward. But the sled simply sputtered in place.
“Why don’t I get off…” The doctor unfastened the bearskin and stepped down.
“C’mon now, c’mon!” Crouper pushed against the sled, helping the horses backstep.
The sled jerked backward, once, twice, and moved off of the unfortunate spot. It came to a halt crosswise on the road. Crouper ran around to the front and squatted. The doctor came over in his long, hooded coat. The tip of the right runner was split.
“There ye go, damnation … Ugh!” Crouper spat on the snow.
“It cracked?” asked the doctor, leaning over to get a closer look.
“It splitted,” Crouper said in an anguished voice, making a squelching sound.
“What did we hit?” asked the doctor, looking in front of the sled.
There was only loose snow, and new flakes falling on it. Crouper began to rake the snow away with his boot, and suddenly kicked something hard, which slid out. The driver and passenger leaned over, trying to see what it was, but couldn’t make out anything. The doctor wiped his pince-nez, put it on again, and suddenly saw it:
“Mein Gott…”
He reached down cautiously.
His hand touched something smooth, hard, and transparent. Crouper got down on all fours to look. A transparent pyramid about the size of Crouper’s hat could just barely be discerned in the snow. The passenger and driver felt it. It was made of a dense, clear, glasslike material. The storm swirled snowflakes around the perfectly even facets of the pyramid. The doctor poked it—the pyramid easily slid to the side. He took it in his hands and stood. The pyramid was extraordinarily light; indeed, one could almost say that it weighed nothing at all. The doctor turned it in his hands:
“What the devil…”
Crouper looked it over, wiping the snow off his eyebrows:
“What’s that?”
“A pyramid,” said the doctor, wrinkling his nose. “Hard as steel.”
“That’s what hit us?” asked Crouper.
“Apparently.” The doctor turned the pyramid around. “What the hell is it doing here?”
“Maybe it fell off a wagon?”
“But what’s it for?”
“Oh now, yur ’onor…” Crouper brushed the snow away in annoyance. “Nowadays there’s so many things that ye cain’t figure out what they’s for…”
He grasped the broken tip of the runner and moved it carefully:
“Looks like it didn’t break all the ways.”
With a sigh of returning irritation, the doctor tossed the pyramid aside. It disappeared in the snow.
“Yur ’onor, we gotta tie that runner with somethin’. And turn right back ’round the way we come.” Crouper wiped his nose with his mitten.
“Back? What do you mean, back?”
“We only gone ’bout four versts. But down there in the hollow the snow’s bound to be deeper, and we’ll get stuck with a runner what’s tied. And that’ll be the end of the story.”
“Wait, what do you mean, go back?” said the doctor. “People are dying out there, orderlies are waiting, there’s an epi-dem-ic! We can’t go back!”
“We’ve got our own … epi-demic.” Crouper burst out laughing. “Just take a look-see how that runner splitted.”
The doctor squatted and examined the cracked runner.
“Cain’t go twelve versts with that. Lookit how the blizzard’s comin’ on.” Crouper glanced around.
The blizzard had indeed grown more intense, and the wind whirled the snow about faster.
“We’ll make it through the forest, and then we’ll get stuck in the hollow at the bottom—and that’ll be it. We’ll be in a real pickle.”
“What if we wrap it with something?” asked the doctor, examining the runner and brushing off the falling snow.
“What with? A shirt? We c’n tie it up but it ain’t gonna last long. It’ll come aparts. I don’t wanna go lookin’ for trouble, yur ’onor.”
“Wait, wait, just a minute…” The doctor tried to think. “Damned pyramid … Listen, what if … I’ve got elastic bandages. They’re strong. We’ll bandage it up good and tight and be off.”
“Bandage?” Crouper was perplexed. “A bandage’s weaker than a shirt, it’ll pull off right straightaway.”
“Elastic bandages are strong,” the doctor declared gravely as he stood up.
He said this with such conviction that Crouper fell silent and shuddered. He suddenly had the shivers.
The doctor strode over to his travel bags, unfastened one of them, opened it, quickly found a package of stretch bandages, and grabbed it. He noticed a vial and various ampoules in his travel bag, and exclaimed joyfully: