Authors: Vladimir Sorokin
“Goodbye,” she said, bowing her head.
He walked out into the courtyard. The sled was already there, and Crouper sat holding the reins. Someone was busy in the barn, and the gates were open wide. The doctor looked at the sky: overcast, windy, but no snow.
“Thank God.” The doctor took out his cigarette case, lit up, and began to settle in. Crouper waited until he was wrapped and buttoned up; then he smacked his lips and jerked the reins. Inside the hood the doctor could hear snorting and the already familiar clatter of tiny hooves. The sled set off and Crouper took hold of the steering rod.
“You know the road?” asked the doctor, inhaling the invigorating cigarette smoke with pleasure.
“There ain’t but one hereabouts.”
The sled moved slowly out of the courtyard, the runners squeaking.
“How much farther?” The doctor tried to remember.
“Roundabout nine versts. The road’ll take us through New Forest, then there’s Old Market, then there’s fields—a baby could make it ’cross.”
“Drive safely!” came a familiar female voice.
The miller’s wife stood on the porch.
The doctor silently waved his hat, holding it by the earflap, which was rather awkward, and Crouper smiled and waved his mitten:
“S’long Markovna!”
The miller’s wife watched them as they moved farther and farther away.
“She’s an interesting woman, I have to admit,” thought the doctor. “How quickly everything happened … But did I want it to? Yes, I did. And I don’t regret a thing…”
“The miller’s got hisself a good woman.” Crouper smiled.
The doctor nodded.
“Luck, that’s what,” said Crouper thoughtfully, pushing his hat back off his forehead. “Like they says, ‘On lucky days, even a rooster lays.’ So there ye go: one fellow’s kind and loving, but luck don’t shine on him. Then some drunk with a foul mouth catches hisself a wife of gold.”
“But how did that drunk manage to get the mill?”
“He got lucky.”
“How so? The mill just fell straight from heaven?”
“Don’t know ’bout heaven, but his papa, he’s one of the little fellers, too, made hisself a fortune on taxes and bought that mill, and put his son in it. And that was that.”
The doctor had nothing to add, and for that matter, he didn’t feel like chatting with Crouper first thing in the morning.
“Markovna, she does all the work. He just shouts at everthin’ in sight.”
“Ah, to hell with him…” the doctor said, putting an end to the conversation.
Speeding along the riverbank, where the night before they’d trudged behind the broken sled, they passed willows and haystacks. They moved along smoothly at a clip, and the fresh, untouched snow whooshed softly under the runners. Soon, that same bridge appeared. Crouper kept to the left, turning onto the road. Though covered in new-fallen snow, it was quite discernible.
“How d’ye like that, ain’t nobody passed by after us!” Crouper nodded at the road. “All gone and hid ’emselves from the blizzard.”
“Maybe they drove by and then the tracks were covered.”
“Don’t look like it.”
The sled moved swiftly along the road. Bushes, bushes, and more bushes began to appear. The wind blew at their backs, giving the sled some help.
“Zilberstein is probably cursing me. But what could I do? There isn’t even a telephone here. ‘It doesn’t work in winter!’ Ridiculous! Nine—no, eight—versts now. Getting closer … I’ll start the vaccinations straightaway, the delay won’t matter…”
Before them a birch grove came into view.
“C’mon now, faster.” Crouper clicked and whistled. “Get a move on.”
The little horses increased their pace obediently.
They entered the grove at full tilt. Birch trunks lined the road.
“What a beautiful grove,” muttered the doctor.
“Eh?” Crouper turned toward him.
“I said the grove is beautiful.”
“Beautiful. If’n ye just chop it down.”
The doctor chuckled.
“Why chop it down? It’s pretty just the way it is.”
“Pretty,” Crouper agreed. “Won’t last long. They’ll cut it down anyway.”
Snow began to fall, at first lightly, but by the time they’d passed through the birch grove, large flakes fell thick and fast.
“Wouldn’t ye know it!” Crouper laughed.
The road led through a field, but there weren’t any markers to be seen. Neither were there any traces of runners on the road. The field lay ahead, lost in the snowstorm; only here and there overgrown weeds or the rare bush stuck out.
They had driven half a verst when the sled slid into deep snow.
“Whoa!” Crouper pulled back on the reins.
The horses stopped.
“I’ll go look for the road.” Crouper jumped down, grabbed the whip, and walked back.
The doctor remained alone in the sled. Snowflakes continued falling in a dense veil as though they’d never stopped. Under the hood the horses snorted and stamped their hooves.
About ten minutes passed, and Crouper returned:
“Found it!”
He turned the sled around, leading it along his own tracks, while he tramped next to it, his legs plowing deep swaths through the snow.
They regained the road. But the doctor would never have guessed that this was a road; only Crouper could distinguish it in the snowy field.
“We won’t go fast, yur ’onor, sir, else we’ll up and drive off it!” Crouper shouted, wiping the snow off his face.
“Drive as you see fit,” the doctor replied. “What about the runner?”
“Still holding. I nailed it together.”
The doctor nodded in approval.
They moved slowly along the road. Crouper steered, gazing ahead. The snow thickened and the wind picked up, forcing the passenger and the driver to shield their faces.
The doctor sat with his collar pulled up and the rug all the way to his cheekbones. But the snow flew right into his eyes, under his pince-nez, and burrowed into his face, filling his nostrils.
“Damn it…,” thought the doctor. “They don’t put up stakes to mark the roads … Could be a lawsuit if you think about it … Doesn’t matter to anyone. Not the road authorities, the forest rangers, the patrols … What could be easier? Chop down a cart full of stakes in the fall, hammer them in every half verst at the least—though more often would be better, of course—so people can travel without worrying in winter. Swinishness, that’s what it is … It’s downright … obscene.”
In front of them an endless, shapeless field stretched on, as though there were nothing else on earth, nothing but these miserable bushes and weeds.
“Slow going till Old Market, and then it’ll be easier!” Crouper shouted.
“How does he see this road?” thought the doctor in amazement, hiding from the blizzard. “Professional instinct, no doubt…”
But soon they drove off the road again.
“Ay, damnation…,” said Crouper.
Once again he walked back, drawing a line in the snow with his whip. The doctor sat there like a snowman, buried in the blizzard, just brushing the flakes from his nose and pince-nez now and then.
Crouper disappeared for a long time; the doctor considered firing three shots from the revolver that lay in his travel bag.
When Crouper finally returned, he was completely exhausted, his jacket open at the chest, his face red.
“Well, did you find it?” asked the doctor, shifting and brushing bits of snow off.
“Found it,” said Crouper, breathing heavily. “But almost got lost meself. Cain’t see nothin’.”
He scooped some snow off the sled and took a bite.
“And how will we make it?”
“Bit by bit yur ’onor, sir. God willing, we’ll make it to Old Market. From theres on the road’s wide, packed down.”
Crouper smacked his lips. The horses reluctantly scraped their hooves against the drive belt. The sled didn’t budge.
“What’s the matter? Get yurselfs a bellyful at the miller’s?” Crouper upbraided them.
The sled barely moved.
The doctor got down and banged on the hood in annoyance:
“Let’s go.”
The horses snorted; the roan let out a piercing neigh. And the others neighed, too.
“No need to scare ’em,” said Crouper, displeased. “They ain’t scaredy beasts, thank God”
He jerked the reins and smacked his lips:
“There now, come along.”
The sled strained. Crouper held the steering rod, leaned his other arm on the hood, and pushed. The doctor pushed against the back of the sled.
The sled started. Crouper steered it, but soon stopped and wiped his face:
“Cain’t see a thing … Yur ’onor, sir, you go on ahead and follow my tracks, elsewise it ain’t clear which way to go.”
The doctor went ahead, following Crouper’s tracks. The snow quickly covered them, and the wind blew straight in the doctor’s face. The tracks stretched on ahead, and then began to bear right, going in a circle, it seemed to the doctor.
“Kozma! The tracks are circling back!” the doctor shouted, shielding himself from the wind.
“Means I went round and round out there,” Crouper shouted. “Keep left and walk straight!”
The doctor bore left and suddenly fell to his waist in snow.
“Just figures … Damn it…,” the doctor mumbled.
As though mocking them, the wind blew harder, tossing snow in their faces.
“Now this…” The doctor stood up, leaning on Crouper.
“The devil pushed us into a gully!” Crouper yelled in his ear. “Quick, while the tracks are still there! There they are, just ahead!”
The doctor stepped decisively ahead, raising his legs high and pulling them out of the snow. The sled followed him.
The doctor walked on, keeping his eyes wide open behind his ice-coated pince-nez. Finally, just as he began to be truly exhausted and his fur-lined coat seemed heavier than a pood weight, he made out a track barely distinguishable in the snow.
“Tracks!” he shouted, but snow fell in his mouth and he began to cough, leaning into the blizzard.
Crouper understood and directed the sled along the tracks. They soon came out onto the road.
“Thank the Lord!” said Crouper, crossing himself when the sled was finally on hard snow. “Have a seat, sir!”
Breathing heavily, the doctor plopped down on the seat and leaned back, too weak to close his coat. Snow had filled his boots, and he could feel that his feet were wet, but he didn’t have the energy to remove his boots and brush off the snow. Crouper covered him with the rug.
“We’ll stand a tad, let the horses rest.”
They stopped. The blizzard howled around them. The wind had gathered such force that it pushed the sled, causing it to sway and jerk like a living creature. The strong wind also blew the snow off the road, however, and the way was visible now—well traveled with hard-packed snow.
The doctor wanted to smoke but didn’t have the strength to take his beloved, handsome cigarette case out of his pocket. He sat in a daze, his blue nose protruding between his hat and his collar, wishing with his entire being to overcome this wild, hostile, wailing white expanse that wanted only one thing from him—that he become a snowdrift and cease forever to desire anything at all. He remembered his winter doctor’s visits to patients, but he couldn’t recall a storm so intense that the elements impeded him. About three years ago, he got lost with the mail carriage, and he and the coachman lit a fire that night until a transport saw them and helped them out; and there was the time that he ended up in the wrong village, having driven almost six versts too far. But this was the first time he’d experienced such a powerful blizzard.
Crouper, no less tired than the doctor, dozed a bit. He remembered that before setting off he’d left the station boy to close the oven flue so the house would be warm when he returned. The house had warmed up, that was certain, but its master had spent the night elsewhere. He imagined his
izba
, unheated since morning, and Hoop, the hog, who would be hungry by now. He thought that if the boar squealed with hunger this morning, his neighbor, Fyodor Kirpaty, would think to look in and give him some feed. He thought about the clock ticking alone in the dark, unheated house. Or maybe the clock had already stopped … That’s right, it’d stopped, of course, he hadn’t wound it … He felt chilled and uncomfortable.
“Hey!” the doctor shoved him. “What are you doing? Sleeping? You can’t sleep, you’ll freeze.”
Crouper turned and shook himself, coming to his senses. He began to shiver.
“Naw, I’s … just resting up a bit.” He took hold of the steering rod and tugged on the reins.
The horses moved without urging, apparently feeling the smooth road. The sled carried on.
The road went straight and, miraculously, the strong wind bared it, blowing the snow into drifts on the side. Thus they crossed the field fairly fast and easily; but then the road sloped down and was lost in the snow. Crouper hurried and walked alongside. No sign of the road remained: in the hollow, the snow was equally smooth everywhere while the blizzard whirled and wailed above it.
“I’ll … Damnation.” The wind knocked Crouper down, but he held on to the steering rod.
The wind in the hollow blew so hard that the sled swayed. They lost the road right away and the sled halted in deep snow. Without a word, the doctor got down and walked on ahead through the snow. He found the road quickly; he tested it with his feet and kept going. Crouper followed in his path.
Slowly, step by step, they moved ahead. The doctor kept walking … He stumbled, sank into the snow, and staggered in the wind—but he didn’t lose the road. The hollow went on and on. Suddenly, the doctor saw a hill coming closer, then realized that it wasn’t a hill but some sort of whirling snow cloud, racing toward them. He crouched. Over his head flew an impenetrable vortex of snow; his pince-nez was torn from his face and fluttered on its ribbon.
“Lord Almighty, forgive me for my sins…,” the doctor muttered, falling down on all fours.
The tornado stormed by, and to the doctor it seemed like a vast helicopter of impossible size. The horses neighed in fright under the hood. Crouper squatted, too, but didn’t let go of the steering rod.
This frightful thing passed over them and disappeared.
The doctor put on his pince-nez and looked at the rise ahead, the way out of the hollow. He saw the bared road.