Authors: Vladimir Sorokin
“They’re exhausted, they are, my little horses.” Crouper slapped his mitten on the tarp. “Don’t worry, it’ll go easier now.”
The road began a gentle turn to the left, and fortunately a milepost appeared here and there.
“We pass the pond, and then the road’s straight through New Forest, cain’t hardly get lost,” Crouper explained.
“Let’s do it, my man,” the doctor encouraged him.
“They’ll rest a bit, and we’ll ride on.”
Hauling the sled at an unhurried pace, the horses gradually recovered from the torturous hill. They rode along like this for about two versts. By then it was almost completely dark. The snow fell thick, and the wind was still.
“Over there’s the mill pond.” Crouper pointed ahead with his whip, and the doctor thought he saw a large, snow-covered haystack in front of them.
They drew closer, and the haystack turned out to be a bridge over a stream. As they crossed it, something scraped at the bottom of the sled. Crouper grabbed the steering rod to straighten the angle, but the sled abruptly swerved to the right; it careened off the bridge, stopping in a snowdrift.
“Ay, damnation,” Crouper exclaimed.
“Don’t tell me it’s the runner again,” muttered the doctor.
Crouper jumped down, and his voice sounded:
“All right now, c’mon! C’mon! C’mo-on!”
The horses began backstepping obediently. Crouper threw his weight against the front of the sled and heaved. The sled barely made it out of the snowdrift; Crouper disappeared into the wintry shroud, but returned quickly:
“It’s the runner, yur ’onor. Your bandages come off.”
Irritated and exhausted, the doctor unfastened the rug, descended, and walked around the sled. He leaned over, barely able to distinguish the cracked tip of the runner.
“Damn it!” he cursed.
“Uh-huh.” Crouper snuffled.
“We’ll have to bandage it again.”
“What fer? We’ll go a coupla versts and it’ll come off again.”
“We must go on! We absolutely must!” The doctor shook his hat.
“Stubborn, he is…” Crouper looked at him, scratched his head under his hat, and gazed into the distance:
“Here’s what I’ll tell ye, yur ’onor. The miller lives near here. We’ll hafta go there. It’ll be easier to fix the runner.”
“A miller? Where?” asked the doctor, turning all about, seeing nothing.
“Over yonder, where the window’s lit up,” said Crouper, flapping his mitten.
The doctor peered into the snowy darkness and was indeed able to make out a faint light.
“I wouldn’t go to his place for ten rubles of money. But ain’t no choice. Don’t want to catch our death out here.”
“What’s wrong with him?” the doctor asked distractedly.
“Cusses. But his wife’s a good woman.”
“Well, then, let’s go right this instant.”
“Only let’s walk, ’cause the horses’re too tuckered to pull.”
“Let’s go!” The doctor headed directly for the light and sank into snow up to his knees.
“Thataway’s the road!” Crouper pointed.
Swearing and stumbling in his full-length coat, the doctor reached the utterly invisible road. Crouper strained to direct the sled, but he urged the horses on, walking next to them and holding the steering rod.
The road snaked along the banks of a frozen river, and the sled crept forward at an agonizing pace. Crouper grew tired and out of breath steering it. The doctor walked behind, giving the back of the seat an occasional push. Snow fell, thicker and thicker. At times the snowfall was so dense the doctor thought they were making circles around the bank of a lake. Now and then, the light ahead vanished completely, and then a twinkle would appear.
“We just had to run over that pyramid,” thought the doctor, grasping the back of the sled. “We would have been in Dolgoye a long time ago. This Kozma is right—there are so many pointless things in the world … Someone manufactures them, transports them to cities and villages, convinces people to buy them, and makes money on bad taste. And people do buy them, they’re thrilled, they don’t even notice the uselessness, the stupidity of the thing … It was just that sort of idiotic object that caused us so much harm today…”
Constantly correcting the sled, which kept bearing right, off the road, Crouper thought about the hateful miller, about how he’d already vowed to himself two times that he’d never go near there again. Now here he was once more, and he’d have to have dealings with him.
“Musta made a weak vow,” he thought. “I vowed on Commemoration I’d never set foot … and now here I am a runnin’ to him for help. If’n the vow was strong enough, nothin’ woulda happened, the angels woulda carried me over that mill on wings. And now—rush, knock, beg … Maybe I shouldn’t make no vows? Like Grandpa said: Don’t do no harm, and don’t make promises…”
Finally, ahead of them two willows arose, half buried in snowdrifts, and beyond them was the miller’s house with its two lit windows, perched right on the riverbank, almost hanging over the water. Through the snowstorm the frozen waterwheel looked to the doctor like a round staircase leading into the river from the house. The image was so convincing that he didn’t question it but assumed that the staircase was a necessary part of the household, used for something important having to do, most likely, with fishing.
The sled inched up to the miller’s house.
A dog began to bark behind the gates. Crouper got down, walked over to the house, and knocked on the lit window of a gatehouse. After a while, the gatehouse door opened a bit and someone, invisible in the dark, spoke out:
“What is it?”
“Hey there,” said Crouper, approaching him.
“Oh, you.” The person who’d opened the little gate recognized Crouper.
Crouper recognized him as well, although this was only the worker’s first year with the miller.
“I, um, I’m taking the doctor here to Dolgoye, and our runner broke, and it’s not too convenient to fix it out in the wind.”
“Ah … Just a minute…”
The little gate closed.
Several long minutes passed, then behind the gate there was some movement, the bolts clanked, and the gates started to open with a squeak.
“Enter the yard!” the very same worker shouted in a commanding voice.
Crouper smacked his lips loudly, directing the sled through the gateposts. It slid into the courtyard and the doctor walked in after it. The worker immediately shut and locked the gates. Though it was dark and snowy, the doctor could nonetheless discern a fairly spacious courtyard with a number of buildings.
“Mr. Doctor, welcome,” came a woman’s voice from the porch.
The doctor headed toward the voice.
“Watch your step, don’t trip,” the voice warned.
Platon Ilich could barely make out the door, and he tripped on the step; his hand grabbed the woman.
“Don’t trip,” she repeated, supporting him.
The woman exuded a sour country warmth. She held a candle, which immediately went out. The woman was the worker’s wife. She led the doctor through the mudroom entrance and opened the door.
The doctor entered a spacious
izba
, richly appointed by village standards. Two large kerosene lanterns illuminated the space: there were two ovens, one Russian, one Dutch; two tables, kitchen and dining; benches, trunks, shelves for dishes, a bed in the corner, a radio under a cozy; a portrait of the sovereign in an illuminated, iridescent frame, and portraits of his daughters Anna and Ksenia in the same type of frame. A double-barreled pistol and a Kalashnikov were hung on moose antlers, a tapestry depicting deer at a watering hole was attached to the wall, and a vodka still rested on a wooden stand.
The miller’s wife, Taisia Markovna, sat at the table; she was a large, portly woman about thirty years old. The table was set with a small round samovar and a two-liter jar of homemade vodka.
“Welcome, please come in,” the miller’s wife said, rising and adjusting the colorful Pavloposad shawl that had slipped from her round shoulders. “Goodness gracious, you’re all covered in snow!”
The doctor was indeed completely covered with snow. He looked like a snowman children make at Shrovetide—except for his bluish nose, which protruded from beneath his big, snow-covered fur hat.
“Avdotia, don’t just stand there, give him a hand,” the miller’s wife ordered.
Avdotia started brushing the snow off the doctor and helped him to take off his coat.
“Why on earth were you traveling at night, and in such a snowstorm?” The miller’s wife came from behind the table, her skirt rustling.
“When we left it was light,” the doctor answered, handing over his heavy, wet clothes, and remaining in his dark-blue three-piece suit and white scarf. “We broke down along the road.”
“How horrible.” The miller’s wife smiled, approaching the doctor, holding the end of her scarf in her plump white hands.
“Taisia Markovna,” she bowed to the doctor.
“Dr. Garin.” Platon Ilich nodded at her, rubbing his hands.
As soon as he entered the
izba
he realized that he was freezing, exhausted, and hungry.
“Have tea with us, it will warm you up.”
“Gladly.” The doctor took off his pince-nez and squinted at the samovar as he began to wipe the lenses gingerly with his scarf.
“Where have you come from?” the miller’s wife asked.
Her voice was deep and pleasant; she spoke in a slight singsong and her accent wasn’t local.
“I left Repishnaya this morning. It turned out there weren’t any horses in Dolbeshino, so I had to hire a local driver with his own dray.”
“Who?”
“Kozma.”
“Crouper?” squeaked a little voice at the table.
The doctor put on his pince-nez and looked: next to the samovar, a little man sat on the table with his legs dangling over the edge. He wasn’t any bigger than the shiny new little samovar. His clothes were small, but entirely in keeping with the clothes of a prosperous miller: he wore a red knit sweater, mousy gray wool trousers, and stylish red boots, which he swung back and forth. The man held a tiny hand-rolled cigarette, which he had just finished gluing with his little tongue. His face was unattractive, pale, and he had no eyebrows. The sparse fair-colored hair sticking up from his head turned into a sparse light beard on his cheeks.
The doctor had often had occasion to see and treat little people, and thus he showed no surprise. He retrieved his cigarette case, opened it, and took out a
papirosa
. Screwing it into the corner of his fleshy lips with an accustomed gesture, he answered the little fellow:
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Well, some driver you found yourself!” The little man laughed nastily, putting his homemade cigarette in his unpleasant, large mouth and taking out a lighter the size of a three-kopeck coin from his pocket. “The devil knows where that guy’ll take you.”
He struck his lighter, a stream of blue gas flared, and the little man stretched the lighter up toward the doctor.
“Crouper? Where is he?” The miller’s wife turned to look at the maid, her calm brown eyes slightly shiny from vodka.
“In the barnyard,” the maid answered. “Should I call him?”
“Of course, tell him to come in, he can warm up.”
The doctor leaned down toward the little man, who stood politely, the lighter thrust upward forcefully, as though he were holding a torch. His hand shook, and it was clear that he was drunk. The doctor lit his
papirosa
, stood up straight, inhaled, and then exhaled a wide stream of smoke over the table. The little man bowed slightly to the doctor:
“Semyon, Markov’s son. Miller.”
“Dr. Garin. You and your wife have the same patronymic?”
“Yes!” the little man chuckled, and swayed, steadying himself against the samovar, then snatching his hand back immediately.
“Markovna and Markich. Just turned out that fucking way…”
“Don’t swear,” said the miller’s wife, coming over. “Sit down, doctor, have your tea. And there’s no sin in having a bit of vodka in this weather.”
“No, no sin,” agreed the doctor, who really wanted a drink.
“Of course! Vodka after tea keeps the soul frost-free!” the miller squeaked. He staggered over to the jar, embraced it, and gave it a ringing slap.
He was the same height as the bottle.
The doctor sat down, and Avdotia set a plate, a shot glass, and a three-pronged fork in front of him. The miller’s wife picked up the bottle, pushing aside the miller, who sat down abruptly on the table, bumping his back against a hunk of wheat bread. She filled the doctor’s glass: “Here’s to your health, doctor.”
“What about me?” whined the miller, dragging on his little cigarette.
“You’ve had enough already. Sit there and smoke.” The miller didn’t argue with his wife; he just sat, leaning against the bread, puffing away.
The doctor lifted the shot glass and downed it quickly and quietly, still holding a
papirosa
in his left hand; he caught some sour cabbage on his fork and had a bite. The miller’s wife placed a piece of homemade ham on his plate, and potatoes fried in lard.
“Anything else, Markovna?” Avdotia asked.
“That’s it. Go about your business. And tell Crouper to come in here.”
Avdotia left.
After taking several deep drags on his
papirosa
, the doctor quickly stubbed it out in a small granite ashtray full of tiny cigarette butts, and began to devour the food.
“Crouuuu-per!” the miller drawled, skewing his froglike lips, which were already ugly enough. “She went and found the dear guest. Crouper! Just a bum, that scum!”
“We’re always pleased to have guests,” the miller’s wife said calmly, pouring herself some liquor; she smiled at the doctor and ignored her husband. “To your health, doctor.”
Platon Ilich’s mouth was full, so he nodded silently.
“Pour
me
some!” whined the miller.
Taisia Markovna set down her glass, sighed, picked up the bottle, and splashed some vodka into the steel thimble that stood on a tiny plastic table. The doctor hadn’t immediately noticed the standard plastic table made for little people standing between the dish with the ham and the cup with pickles. The thimble gleamed on the little table, which held glasses and plates with the same food as the big table for regular people, slivers sliced from the larger portions: a snippet of ham, a dab of lard, a piece of pickle, bread crumbs, a marinated mushroom, and some cabbage.