“Good?” asked the doctor.
“Good,” Crouper replied, breathing through his nose noisily.
The doctor closed the bottle and put it away in his travel bag. He squeezed Crouper by the wrist.
“Don’t be mad.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’m just tired … Sick of everything.”
Crouper nodded. The doctor looked around glumly.
“You hurry up those horses of yours somehow, hear?”
“They’ll go on their own soon. It’s in the little ones’ blood, yur ’onor. They’re scared of dogs and wolves. And weasels.”
“But the wolf tracks are cold!” the doctor exclaimed with a hurt expression.
“That’s right, but the fright’s still there.”
“Not that much farther to go, anyway.”
“We’ll get there.”
“There are very sick patients waiting for me,” the doctor said without any hint of reproach. He retrieved his cigarettes.
Crouper raised the collar of his sheepskin coat, shivered, and grew quiet.
The doctor, on the contrary, felt a surge of energy and warmth after drinking the alcohol. It felt like a tropical flower had blossomed in his belly.
“Down to the last two!” He grinned as he showed Crouper his cigarette case.
Crouper didn’t move.
The doctor lit up. The irritability and impatience had left him. He smoked and squinted into the snowy plain. His eyes teared up, but he didn’t feel like moving and wiping them. He blinked, but the tears stayed in his eyes, making everything around him swim, and the corners of his eyes felt pleasantly cool.
“Why are we always hurrying somewhere?” he thought, inhaling the cigarette smoke and blowing it out again with pleasure. “I was in a hurry to get to Dolgoye. What would happen if I arrived tomorrow? Or the day after? Nothing at all. The people who’ve been infected and bitten will never be people again anyway. They’re doomed to be shot. And the ones who’ve barricaded themselves inside their izbas will wait for me one way or the other. They’ll be vaccinated. And they’ll no longer fear the Bolivian plague. Zilberstein won’t be happy, of course. He’s waiting for me, cursing me up and down. But it’s not in my power to overcome this cold, snowy expanse with a wave of my hand. I can’t fly over the snowdrifts…”
Finishing his papirosa slowly, he tossed the butt into the snow.
A cloud crawled over the moon, plunging the field into the dark of night.
“Sleeping?” The doctor poked the driver.
“Naw,” Crouper answered.
“Don’t sleep.”
“I ain’t sleepin’.”
The cloud moved past the moon. The field brightened again.
Crouper felt warm and calm after drinking the liquor. He sat with his knees pulled to his chest, holding on to his sides, his hat practically down to his nose. He peeped out at the expanse of moonlit field. He no longer thought about his unheated house, he just sat there and looked. The doctor was on the verge of asking him about the horses, when and why they first became scared of wolves, how soon they’d come out of it and be ready to pull the sled, but he changed his mind. He, too, sat motionless, giving himself over to the absolute calm stretching all around him.
The wind had completely died down.
They sat like this for a while longer. Neither the doctor nor Crouper wanted to move. Tufts of cloud crawled across the moon and moved on, crawled across the moon and moved on. Crawled across the moon and moved on.
The doctor remembered that there was still a bit of alcohol left in the bottle. He took it out and took two large gulps with a pause between. He caught his breath and handed the bottle to Crouper:
“Drink up the rest.”
Crouper came out of his trance, took the bottle, drank the remainder obediently, and put his mitten to his mouth. Stashing the empty bottle in the travel bag, the doctor scooped some snow from the matting, put it into his mouth, and chewed on it. Warmth spread throughout his insides once again. He cheered up and felt a surge of energy. He wanted to move and do something.
“What do you say, my good fellow, let’s be off!” The doctor clapped Crouper on the shoulder. “Can’t stay here forever.”
Crouper got down, turned back the matting, and looked inside the hood. The horses looked at him.
“Let’s go,” Crouper said to them.
Hearing these familiar human words, the horses neighed discordantly. Nodding in approval, Crouper covered them, sat down, and tugged on the reins:
“Heigh-yup!”
The horses’ hooves clattered timidly on the drive belt, as though they’d forgotten how to do the work humans needed them to do.
“Heigh-yup!”
The sled jerked, and the runners squeaked.
“Heigh-yup!” the doctor shouted, laughing.
The sled took off.
“Now that’s more like it! And not a wolf in sight!” The doctor poked Crouper in the ribs.
“They got ’customed.” Crouper smiled with his swollen lip.
They slid smoothly across the field. The snowy road could be seen quite well: it protruded slightly, stretching like a ribbon toward the dark horizon.
“That’s more like it. And not a wolf in sight!” the doctor repeated, patting himself on the knees.
He was in a good mood.
The horses slowly gathered speed.
“There we go, there we go…” The doctor kept patting his knees happily.
They passed through a bit of forest and came out into a large, clear field again. The moon shone bright.
“Why are they so weak?” the doctor asked, elbowing Crouper. “Don’t you feed them well?”
“I feed ’em enough, yur ’onor.”
“Give them a taste of the lash, make them run like the wind!”
“They ain’t got over their fright as yet.”
“What are they—foals?”
“Naw, they ain’t foals no more.”
“Then why are they so slow? Come now, use the lash!”
“Heigh-yup, c’mon!” Crouper slapped the reins.
The horses sped up a bit. But it wasn’t enough for the doctor.
“Why are they crawling along like slugs?! Heigh! Get going!” he said, knocking on the top of the hood.
The horses sped up some more.
“Now that’s more like it…,” said the doctor happily. “Not much farther to go now. Yup yup! Get going!”
“Heigh-yup, yup!” Crouper shouted and clucked.
He suddenly wanted to show off his horses, although he realized that they were tired.
“Aw, let ’em run for it at the end, maybe as they’ll warm ’emselves!” he thought. He himself felt a jolly warmth throughout after polishing off the alcohol.
“Come on now—give them a taste of the whip!” the doctor demanded. “Why are they hiding in there like mice in a pantry? Take that sackcloth off!”
“Well, that’s right now, it c’n come off … Ain’t snowin’, and it ain’t too cold…,” Crouper thought, and deftly unfastened the matting as they went, rolling it up.
The doctor saw the horses’ moonlit backs. They looked just like toys.
“Come on, let me…” The doctor pulled the whip out of the case.
“Aw, why not let ’im crack it,” Crouper thought.
The doctor stood, drew back, and cracked the whip over the horses’ backs. “Yip-yip!”
They ran faster. The doctor cracked the whip again:
“Heigh-yuuup!”
The horses snorted and picked up speed. Their legs gleamed and their backs undulated, reminding the doctor of the rough, surging sea that he and Nadine had seen in October in Yalta, the sea he hadn’t wanted to enter at all at the time; he’d stood on the shore, staring at the waves, and Nadine, in her striped bathing suit, kept pulling him into the water, teasing him for being overly cautious.
“Heigh-yup!” He lashed the horses so hard that a shiver went down their spines.
They rushed ahead. The sled flew across the field.
“See, that’s the way to do it!” the doctor shouted in Crouper’s ear.
The frosty air slapped them in the face. Crouper whistled.
The horses ran, and the snow swooshed under the runners.
“That’s the ticket! There you go!” The doctor plopped down on the seat, waving the whip. “That’s the way to go!”
Crouper whistled as he drove along skillfully. He felt good, too; he realized that it was only another three versts to Dolgoye. The field ended, and fir trees began to appear along the sides of the road. Pretty fir trees, cleared of snow, lined the way.
“Let’s goooo!” the doctor shouted, whirling the whip over the horses and knocking the pince-nez off of his nose.
The sled sped through the fir trees. Crouper could make out the contours of a firmly packed bump or hill ahead on the road, but he didn’t slow the horses:
“We’ll skip on by!”
The sled flew up and hit the hill hard; a crack resounded. The travelers flew off their seats and landed in the snow. The sled stopped on the hill, leaning heavily to one side. The horses snorted and stomped under the hood.
“Damn it…,” the doctor muttered. He’d lost his hat, and grabbed his knee, wincing with pain.
“Shit…” Crouper pulled his head out of a snowdrift and rubbed the snow off his face.
He floundered about in the drift, looking for his hat, but, on hearing the horses’ frightened snorts, he hurried to them and checked under the hood. The horses whickered, looking for help from their master.
“Now, now…” Pulling off his mittens, he began petting them gently. “It’s all right, all right … Not hurt, are ye?”
None of the horses appeared to be injured. The collars and the strong straps had held them.
“Y’er all right, all right … Coulda been worse…” He stroked their backs, which were damp and steaming from running.
Holding his knee, the doctor moaned. He had whacked it hard against the sled.
Once the horses were calm, Crouper went looking for his hat. Fortunately, the moon was bright and still free of clouds. Crouper soon found the hat, shook the snow off, and stuck it on his head. Then he went over to the doctor. The doctor was sitting in the snow, moaning, shaking his uncovered head, and cursing. Crouper picked up the doctor’s hat and put it on him.
“Ain’t broke nothing, did ye?” Crouper asked.
“Damn…” The doctor felt his knee. “I don’t think so. Damn … It hurts…”
Crouper grabbed him under the arms. Cautiously, the doctor tried to stand but immediately moaned and fell back in the snow:
‘Wait a minute…”
Crouper squatted nearby and only then realized that he’d broken his lower front tooth against the rudder.
“Ay, darn it…” He touched the broken tooth in his mouth, shook his head, and grinned: “How d’ye like that!”
The doctor scooped up snow and held it to his knee:
“Just a minute…”
Holding the snow, he turned unseeing eyes on Crouper:
“What was it?”
“Cain’t say, yur ’onor…” Crouper touched his tooth. “We’ll take a look.”
“Why didn’t you hold the horses back?”
“You was the one floggin’ ’em on!”
“I was flogging!” The doctor shook his head indignantly. “I flogged, but you were steering, you damned idiot … Damn … Hmmm … Ouch!”
He winced, leaning over his knee, his fat lips puffing.
“I thought: it’s just a little bump, we’ll skip right over.”
“We sure skipped over it!” the doctor laughed bitterly. “I almost broke my neck…”
“And the bump is smooth,” said Crouper, standing up and walking over to the sled.
He walked around to the front, looked closely, and froze. He crossed himself:
“God a’mighty. Yur ’onor, take a look at what we runned into.”
“Wait, you fool…,” the doctor moaned.
“Lord a’mighty, tarnation! Yur ’onor!”
“Shut up, you fool.”
“It’s a … Ain’t no one’ll believe it…”
“Ow…” The doctor rubbed his knee. “Give me your hand.”
“Lordy, why such a misfortune, what did I do…?” Crouper sat down and anxiously slapped his mittens on his felt boots.
“I said, give me a hand!”
Crouper returned to the doctor and helped him stand:
“God must be mad at me, yur ’onor. Looky what’s come ’bout.”
He appeared totally lost, and the smile on his birdlike mouth was pitiful, like a beggar’s.
The doctor finally managed to stand and straighten up. Leaning on Crouper, he stepped on the hurt leg. He moaned. He stood a bit, panting. He took another step:
“Ow, damn it…”
He stood, frowning. Then he hit Crouper upside the head.
“Where have you taken me, you idiot?!”
Crouper didn’t even flinch.
“Where’ve you taken me?!” the doctor screamed into his hat.
A strong, pleasant smell of alcohol came from the doctor.
“Yur ’onor, there’s a … over there…” Crouper shook his head. “Prob’ly better ye don’t look.”
“You idiot!” The doctor put on his pince-nez, took a step, frowning, glanced at the listing sled, and threw up his hands. “What kind of bastard are you?!”
Crouper said nothing.
“Bastard!”
The doctor’s voice thundered through the snow-covered fir trees.
Crouper stepped away toward the tip of the sled and stood there, sniffling.
“Were you just born an idiot or what?” Limping, the doctor hobbled over to him, stopped, and looked.
And froze, his eyebrows raised.
Right in front of the sled, something was sticking out from under the snow. At first the doctor thought it was the twisted stump of an old tree. But when he looked closer, he could make out the head of a dead giant. The sled’s right runner had run straight into his left nostril.
The doctor couldn’t believe his eyes; he blinked and moved closer: the hill they’d flown up was nothing other than the corpse of one of the big ones, covered in snow.
Forgetting all about the pain in his knee, Platon Ilich approached the sled and leaned over. The huge, frozen head had tangled hair, a wrinkled brow, and thick eyebrows; the force of the blow had knocked some of the snow off of it. The runner had disappeared into the nostril of the fleshy nose. The snowflakes on the giant’s eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair shimmered silver in the moonlight. One dead eye was full of snow; the other, half closed, stared threateningly at the night sky.
“Oh my God in heaven,” muttered the doctor.
“Well, that’s the thing of it…,” Crouper said with a doomed nod.
The doctor squatted next to the head and brushed the snow off the covered eye. It, too, was half closed. The mouth was hidden in a snowy beard, and the tip of the sled hung above it. Attached to the giant’s protruding ear was a heavy copper earring in the form and size of a sixty-pound weight. It sparkled in the snow.
The doctor touched the earring cautiously. He touched the enormous, frozen nose with its rough, greasy, pimply skin. He turned around. Crouper stood there, and from the sorrowful expression on his face one might have thought that the sled had driven into the nostril of his long-lost brother.
The doctor began laughing and fell back into the snow. His laughter rang out amid the firs. The horses replied with uneasy whinnies from inside the sled. This elicited a new fit of laughter from the doctor. He writhed on his back in the snow, laughing, his pince-nez sparkling and his fleshy mouth open wide.
Crouper stood still, like a wet jackdaw. Then he began to cluck his tongue. He smiled and shook his absurdly large hat.
“You’re a real master, Kozma!” The doctor wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes.<
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“Well now, how on earth?… No one’d believe it, if’n we told ’em, yur ’onor.”
“They certainly wouldn’t!” exclaimed the doctor, shaking his hat.
He stood up and brushed off the snow. Limping, he stepped back and looked:
“That lug must be about six meters tall … Had to go and kick the bucket here…”
Crouper noticed a large, round object under the snow next to the giant’s corpse. He pushed the object with his foot, knocking the snow off. A basket of woven twigs appeared. Crouper brushed off the snow with his mitten: glass sparkled. He cleaned the snow off the object. It turned out to be a large, three-bucket, green glass bottle set in a basket holder.
“So that’s it, yur ’onor…” Crouper cleared the snow from the enormous bottleneck, and sniffed it. “Vodka!”
He kicked the crust of ice on the bottle, knocked it off, and turned it over. Not a drop came out.
“Drunk up the whole thing, he did,” Crouper concluded reproachfully.
“He drank it,” the doctor agreed, “and gave up the ghost right on the road. There you have it, good old Russian stupidity.”
“Coulda least leaned up against a tree,” said Crouper, scratching his rear end. He realized he’d said something silly: this giant could only have leaned against a hundred-year-old fir, not one of the young saplings all around.
“Get drunk and collapse on the road … Utter idiocy! Russian stupidity!” The red-faced doctor smiled wryly; he took out his cigarette case and lit up the last papirosa.
“The worst part is—it’s the same runner crashed again, yur ’onor.” Crouper sniffed and scratched himself. “If only it hadn’t of…”
“What?” The doctor didn’t follow. He puffed on his cigarette.
“It’s the same runner what cracked back apiece.”
“You’re kidding! The same one? Damn it! So what are you standing around for?! Pull it out of that lout!”
“Just a minute, yur ’onor…”
Crouper looked in at the horses, leaned hard against the sled, and clucked:
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”
Snorting, the horses began to step backward. But the sled didn’t budge. Crouper realized what the problem was; he looked under the sled and clucked sorrowfully:
The Blizzard Page 13
