Authors: Vladimir Sorokin
“I’ve got an idea! An idea!” He took one of the vials and hurried over to the runner.
Crouper kneeled next to him and scraped the snow aside with his mittens. He felt another pyramid.
“How ’bout that, another one,” he said, showing it to the doctor.
“To hell with it!” The doctor kicked the pyramid and it flew off.
He slapped Crouper on the back:
“Kozma, you and I will fix everything! If you had instant glue, would you glue the runner together?”
“Sure I would.”
“Well, then, we’re going to spread this ointment on here, it’s very thick and sticky, and then we’ll wrap the runner with a bandage. In this cold the ointment will harden and pull your runner together. You’ll be able to drive to Dolgoye and home five times with a runner like this.”
Crouper looked mistrustfully at the vial. The label read:
VISHNEVSKY OINTMENT
+
PROTOGEN 17W.
The doctor uncorked the top and handed it to Crouper:
“It hasn’t had time to harden yet … Dip your finger in and spread it on the runner.”
Crouper pulled off his mittens and took the vial carefully with his big hands, but immediately gave it back to the doctor:
“Wait … Then we gotta put somefin under…”
He swiftly pulled an axe out from beneath the seat, walked into the forest, chose a young birch tree, and began to hack away.
The doctor set the vial down on the sled, stuck the bandage roll in his pocket, took out his cigarette case, and lit up.
“It’s coming down hard…,” he thought, squinting at the whirling snowflakes. “Thank God it’s not all that cold, it’s not cold at all, really…”
Hearing the sound of the axe, the horses began to snort under the tarp; the lively red roan whinnied delicately. A few other horses answered him.
Crouper had felled the birch, chopped off a log, and sharpened it against the birch stump before the doctor had finished his
papirosa
.
“There ye go…”
Having completed his task, he returned to the sled, breathing hard, and deftly thrust the birch wedge under the middle of the right runner. The tip lifted slightly. Crouper brushed away the snow under it:
“Now we’ll rub it on.”
The doctor gave him the vial and proceeded to unwrap the bandage packaging. Crouper lay down on his side next to the runner and rubbed the ointment along the crack in the wood.
“Just figures,” he muttered. “I run straight into tree stumps a coupla times, and nothin’ happens, but now, one bump and it might as well been a cleaver … Bloody damnation.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll bandage it up and we’ll make it there,” the doctor consoled Crouper while he watched him work.
The moment Crouper had finished, the doctor pushed him aside impatiently: “Come on, out of the way…”
Crouper rolled away from the runner. The doctor, grunting, sat down on the snow and then heaved himself over on his side, adjusted his position, and began to skillfully wrap the bandage.
“Now then, Kozma, you press the crack together and hold it!” he managed to gasp.
Crouper grabbed the tip and pressed the sides together.
“Excellent … excellent…” the doctor muttered as he continued to wrap the runner.
“Gotta tie the ends up top, else it’ll get cut off on the bottom,” Crouper advised.
“Don’t teach the teacher…,” the doctor wheezed.
He wrapped the runner tight and even, tied the ends up top, and expertly tucked them under the bandage.
“That’s the ticket!” Crouper smiled.
“What did you expect?” roared the doctor victoriously. He sat up, panting, and banged his fist on the side of the sled. “Let’s go!”
Inside, the horses neighed and snorted.
Crouper knocked the wedge out from under the runner, tossed the axe on the footboard, took off his hat, wiped his sweaty brow, and looked at the snow-dusted sled as though he were seeing it for the first time:
“Still, maybe we oughta go back, eh, yur ’onor, sir?”
“N-n-n-no!” The doctor stood up and brushed the snow off his coat, shaking his head in an insulted, threatening gesture. “Don’t even dare think about it. The lives of honest workers are in danger! This is an affair of state, man. You and I don’t have the right to turn back. It wouldn’t be Russian. And it wouldn’t be Christian.”
“’Course not.” Crouper plopped his hat on. “Christ be with us. Cain’t do without ’im.”
“That’s right, brother. Let’s go!” The doctor clapped him on the shoulder.
Crouper laughed, sighed, and gestured with his hand: “At yur service!”
Crouper threw back the snow-covered bear rug and sat down. Having fastened his own traveling bag in back, the doctor sat down next to Crouper, and wrapped himself in the rug with an expression of satisfaction and the feeling of an important job successfully accomplished.
“How’re ye doin’ in there?” Crouper looked under the tarpaulin.
In reply came friendly neighs from the horses, who had been standing in place all this time.
“Thank the Lord. Heigh-yup!”
The horses’ hooves scrabbled against the drive belt, then the sled trembled and moved. Crouper straightened it out, and steered it in the right direction. Glancing at the road, both riders noticed immediately that during the time they’d been working on the runner, snow had covered all trace of the sleighs that had traveled the path earlier; the road that lay ahead of them was white and untouched.
“Whoa, just look at all the snow—a herd of elephants couldn’t pack it down.” Crouper clicked his tongue and tugged on the reins. “Quick, let’s go now, faster.”
The horses, who’d been bored under their tarp, didn’t need any encouragement: they ran energetically on the frozen drive belt, their little shoed hooves tapping noisily. The sled started briskly across the fresh snow.
“If’n we cross the ravine, up ’bove past it, the road is good all the ways to the mill!” Crouper shouted, frowning in the snowy wind.
“We’ll make it!” the doctor encouraged him, hiding his face under his collar and fur cap, leaving only his nose, which had turned slightly blue, out in the open.
The wind blew large snowflakes about and swirled them into snowdrifts. The forest was sparse on either side, with clear indications of felled timber.
The doctor saw an old dry oak that had apparently been split by lightning many years before, and for some reason he remembered the time. He took out his pocket watch and checked it: “Past five already. How we’ve dawdled … Well, no matter … There’s no traveling fast in this kind of snow, but if we can keep at this crawl, we should make it in a couple of hours. How did we manage to run into that strange pyramid? What is it for? Must be some sort of table decoration—it’s clearly not a tool or machine. The transport must have been overloaded, carrying lots like it; one fell out and ended up under the sled…”
He remembered the crystal rhinoceros in Nadine’s house, the rhinoceros that stood on the shelf with her sheet music, the music she picked up with her small fingers, placed on the piano, and played, turning the pages with a brisk, abrupt movement, the kind of movement that instantly conveyed her impulsive nature, unreliable as ice in March. That sparkling rhinoceros with its sharp, crystal horn and dainty tail, curled like a pig’s, always looked at Platon Ilich with a hint of mockery, as though teasing him: remember, you’re not the only one who’s walking on thin ice.
“Nadine is already in Berlin,” he thought. “There’s never any snow there in winter. It’s probably rainy and dank. In the Wannsee, the lake never even freezes over, ducks and swans swim there all winter … Their house is nice, with that stone knight, the centuries-old linden trees and sycamores … How stupidly we parted. I didn’t even promise to write to her … When I get back I’ll definitely write to her, immediately, enough playing the insulted and injured—I’m not insulted and I’m not injured … And she’s marvelous, she’s wonderful, even when she’s nasty…”
“We should have taken that pyramid with us,” he said suddenly, and glanced at the driver.
Crouper, who didn’t hear him, drove along with his usual birdlike expression. He was happy that the sled was riding smoothly, as though it had never broken down, happy that his beloved horses were feeling lively, and that the blizzard wasn’t bothering them.
“How d’ye like that, it don’t even pull to one side,” Crouper thought, moving the steering rod with his right hand and holding the reins with his left. “Means the doctor bound the runner right. He’s got the knack and knows his business. Serious he is, that one. What a big nose. Just drive him to Dolgoye, ain’t nothin’ else will do. Doctors, they’s seen terrible sights, and knows a lot. Back last year that feller went under the thresher at Komagon’s, and in the city they sewed his leg on, and it grew back, runs faster’n it used to … And me, when my teeth acted up, that doctor in Novoselets, he give me a shot and opened up my jawbone … It didn’t hurt one bit, he took out three teeth, and half a cup of blood…”
The road sloped down, the forest grew even sparser, and ahead of them in the snowy mantle of the blizzard the vague contours of a large ravine arose.
“Right about here’s where we gotta hurry, yur ’onor,” said Crouper, “else mine won’t make it to the top in this kinda snow. After all, they ain’t three-story cart horses…”
“Let’s hurry, then!” the doctor answered cheerfully, turning around.
They jumped off the sled and immediately sank knee-deep in snow. The road was entirely blanketed. Crouper wedged the steering rod in a straight position, grabbed the back of the sled where traces of old flaking painted decorations could be seen, and began to run, pushing from behind. But the sled had barely passed the bottom of the ravine and started up the other side when it began to lose speed and then stopped completely. Crouper threw back the tarp and asked the horses: “What’s the matter?”
He flapped his mitten over their backs:
“C’mon, then, the lot of ye! C’mon, give it a tug!”
He let loose a loud whistle.
The horses leaned into the drive belt and Crouper pushed from the back. The doctor helped as well.
“Fas-ter! Fas-ter!” Crouper screeched.
The sled moved, crawling upward with great difficulty. But it soon stopped again. Crouper braced it from behind so it wouldn’t slide down into the ravine. The horses snorted. The doctor was about to fling himself at it again, but Crouper stopped him. Breathing heavily, he spat into the snow:
“Wait a bit, yur ’onor, we’ll get our strength back…”
The doctor was also out of breath.
“Not long now.” Crouper smiled, tilting his hat back. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it up in a bit.”
They stood, catching their breath.
Large, soft snowflakes fell thickly, but the wind seemed to have died down and was no longer throwing snow in their faces.
“I didn’t think it was so steep here…,” said the doctor, leaning against the sled and looking around while he turned his broad, snow-covered hat.
“Right here’s a stream,” said Crouper, breathing heavily. “In the summer ye gotta ford it. The water’s good. When I comes this way I always get down fer a drink.”
“I hope we don’t slide backward.”
“Naw, we won’t.”
After a bit, Crouper whistled and cried out to the horses:
“C’mon now or I’ll let you have it! Give it a tug! Tuug! Tug!”
The horses scraped at the drive belt. The passenger and the driver pushed the sled. It crawled slowly up the hill.
“C’mon! C’mon!” Crouper shouted and whistled.
But twenty paces on they came to a halt once again.
“You … damn…” The doctor slumped limply against the back of the sled.
“Just a minute, yur ’onor, just a minute…,” Crouper muttered in a stifled voice, as though defending himself. “You’ll see, after this we’ll go sliding down real easy-like, all the way to the ponds…”
“Why on earth did they put the road here … where it’s so steep … Idiots…,” the doctor puffed indignantly, shaking his hat.
“Where’s else to put it, yur ’onor?”
“Go around it.”
“But how could ye go around it here?”
The tired doctor waved his hand, indicating that he wasn’t about to argue. After catching their breath, they once again crawled upward to the sound of Crouper’s cries and whistles. They had to pause and rest another four times. When they finally emerged from the ravine, both the humans and the horses were exhausted.
“Thank the…” was all Crouper managed to gasp; he spat back at the accursed ravine and went to check the horses under the hood.
Steam rose from the little horses. They were in a lather, though it could hardly be seen: while they were making their way out of the ravine, twilight had descended. The exhausted doctor took off his hat, wiped off the sweat dripping from his head and brow, then took out a handkerchief and blew his nose like a horn. His thin white scarf had slipped out from under his coat and was dangling from his neck. The doctor scooped up a handful of snow and greedily stuffed it in his mouth. Crouper covered the horses, then kicked off his felt boots and shook out the snow that had gotten into them. Stumbling, the doctor climbed up onto the seat, leaned back, and sat with his face lifted to the falling snow.
“Well now, we made it.” Crouper put his boots back on, sat down next to the doctor, and gave him a tired smile. “Let’s go?”
“Let’s go!” the doctor almost screamed, fumbling for his cigarette case and matches in his deep, silk coat pockets, which were so delightful to the touch. The sensation of the familiar, soft, cozy silk calmed him and reassured him that the worst was now behind them, that the anxiety of the dangerous ravine was a thing of the past.
Platon Ilich lit a cigarette with the special pleasure of a person resting after heavy work. His narrow, overwrought face exuded heat.
“Want a cigarette?” he asked Crouper.
“Ever so grateful yur ’onor, but we don’t smoke.” The driver tugged on the reins and the horses pulled weakly.
“Why is that?”
“Never happened to.” Crouper smiled a tired, birdlike smile. “I’ll drink vodka, but don’t take tobacco.”
“Good for you!” The doctor smiled, just as tired, and blew smoke out of his full lips.
The horses worked quietly, and the sled drove over a snow-laden road, laying down its own path. The forest ended at the ravine; ahead, through the whirling snow a sloping field with the occasional island of bushes and willow reeds could be discerned.