The Blizzard
Page 17
“Xie xie ni, xie xie ni…,” the doctor rasped. He hadn’t once moved his legs, which were numb and seemed utterly alien and useless.
He suddenly began to sob, realizing that Crouper had abandoned him forever, that he hadn’t made it to Dolgoye, that he hadn’t brought vaccine-2, and that in his life, the life of Platon Ilich Garin, it now appeared that a new phase was beginning, one that wouldn’t be easy, would most likely be extremely difficult and grim, something he could never have imagined before.
“Xie xie ni, xie xie n-n-ni…,” the doctor cried, shaking his head, as though categorically disagreeing with everything that had happened and that was now taking place.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, grown thin and covered with stubble over the last few days. He clutched his pince-nez and kept shaking it, shaking and shaking, as though conducting some unseen orchestra of grief, crying and swaying in strong Chinese arms.
The older Chinese looked at Crouper. He lay alone in the emptied hood, looking as though he’d been placed in a grave that was too large for him. His gloved hands clutched his chest, as though holding and protecting his horses; one leg was tucked under, the other was turned out, frozen in an awkward position.
“Search him,” the older Chinese commanded the younger.
The younger man reluctantly followed orders. A silver ruble, forty kopecks in copper, a lighter, and two crusts of bread were found in Crouper’s coat pocket. He had no documents with him. The Chinese began to search under his cold clothes, and discovered two strings around his neck: one with a Russian Orthodox cross, the other, a key. It was the key to the stable. The Chinese tore off the key and handed it to his superior. The man turned the key around in his hand and tossed it in the snow.
“Cover him,” the older man nodded.
The young man took the frost-stiffened matting, now hard as plywood, and covered the hood. The older man pointed at the sack with the horses and headed toward the train. The young Chinese picked up the sack, slung it over his back, and followed. The horses, already tossed about in the dark of the sack, had urinated on themselves and finally managed to calm down; now they just grunted and snorted. Only the restless roan gave a piercing neigh, bidding farewell to his master forever.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vladimir Sorokin is the author of eleven novels, including Day of the Oprichnik (FSG, 2011), Ice Trilogy, and The Queue; thirteen plays; and numerous short stories and screenplays. He wrote the libretto for Leonid Desyatnikov’s The Children of Rosenthal, the first opera to be commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater in a quarter century. His books have been translated into thirty languages. He has won the Andrei Bely and the Maxim Gorky prizes, and The Blizzard was the recipient of both the NOS Literature Prize and the Bolshaya Kniga prize. In 2013, Sorokin was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. He lives in Moscow. You can sign up for email updates here.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Jamey Gambrell is a writer on Russian art and culture, and the translator of Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik and Ice Trilogy. She has also translated works of prose and poetry by Joseph Brodsky, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Marina Tsvetaeva, among others. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY VLADIMIR SOROKIN
Day of the Oprichnik
Ice Trilogy:
Bro
Ice
23,000
The Queue
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraph
The Blizzard
A Note About the Author
Also by Vladimir Sorokin
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2010 by Vladimir Sorokin
Translation copyright © 2015 by Jamey Gambrell
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2010 by Astrel, Russia, as Метель
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2015
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
[Metel′. English]
The blizzard: a novel / Vladimir Sorokin; translated by Jamey Gambrell. — First American edition.
pages cm
Published in Russian under the title Метель.
ISBN 978-0-374-11437-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-70939-6 (e-book)
1. Dystopias—Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Gambrell, Jamey, translator. II. Title.
PG3488 . O66 M4813 2015
891.73'5—dc23
2015010964
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Published with the support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation TRANSCRIPT Programme to Support Translations of Russian Literature