The Blizzard (12 page)

*   *   *

The doctor opened his eyes. He was writhing in the arms of two servant women. His body was convulsing like an epileptic’s. Nearby, the bodies of the three Vitaminders were writhing convulsively, too. The servants held them back carefully. The convulsions began to subside. All four of them gradually began to return to their senses.

The Kazakh girls wiped their faces, stroked them, and muttered soothing words in their own language.

“A superproduct,” said Bedight, who had calmed down and taken a sip of water.

“Nine points…,” Slumber muttered, wiping his wet face and blowing his nose. “Maybe even nine and a half.”

Lull Abai said nothing: he just shook his melon-shaped head and wiped the narrow slits of his eyes.

For several long minutes the doctor sat still, dumbfounded. His pince-nez hung around his neck; his nose seemed to have grown even bigger and hung imposingly over his lips. All of a sudden he stood up, crossed himself vigorously, and spoke in a loud voice: “Thank the Lord!”

And then he began to sob like a child. He fell to his knees, his face buried in his palms. Two girls approached and embraced him. But Bedight gave them a warning sign and they stepped back.

After sobbing awhile, the doctor took out his handkerchief, blew his nose noisily, wiped his eyes, put on his pince-nez, and stood up.

“How marvelous, we’re alive!” he said.

He suddenly started laughing, waving his arms about, and shaking his head. His laughter turned into a giggle. He giggled and giggled, to the point of hysterics.

The Vitaminders smiled. And they, too, began to giggle; they fell off their chairs onto the floor, into the arms of the servants. Laughter tormented them for some time. Eventually they stopped laughing, calmed down, shook their heads, began to chuckle, and once again dissolved into laughter. The doctor suffered from the giggles more than the others; it was the first time he had tried the pyramid product. He writhed on the felt floor; he squealed and sobbed; saliva sprayed from his mouth; his hands flapped; he whined; he turned his head back and forth, shook his finger at someone, exclaimed, lamented, and giggled, giggled, giggled. His nose turned red, like a drunk’s, and blood flowed into his trembling cheeks.

Bedight made a sign to one of the girls, and she sprayed water on the doctor’s crimson face.

He gradually grew calmer and lay on his back, hiccupping. After he caught his breath, he sat up. The girl gave him some water. He drank and sighed deeply. He took out his handkerchief again, and again blew his nose and wiped his face. He put on his pince-nez. Looking seriously at the Vitaminders sitting at the table, he spoke:

“Brilliant!”

They nodded understandingly.

“How much?” the doctor asked, rising from the floor and straightening his clothes.

“Ten.”

“I’ll take two.” He fished in his pocket for his wallet and took out all there was—two tens, a three, and the five promised to Crouper.

“Of course, doctor,” Bedight smiled. “Zamira!”

The girl opened the chest and took out two pyramids. The doctor tossed the two tens on the black table. Bedight picked them up with slender, sensitive fingers. The girl put the pyramids into a sack and handed it to the doctor. He took it and shook his head energetically:

“Time for me to go, gentlemen.”

“You’re going to leave?” Slumber asked.

“Absolutely!”

“Perhaps you’d stay the night with us?” Bedight touched his left shoulder, and the girl rushed over and began to massage it.

“No! I must be off, off!” said the doctor with a vigorous turn of the head. “Time to hit the road!”

“As you see fit. But it’s warm and comfy here.” Bedight winked at the girls. “Especially at night.”

The servant girls laughed and suddenly sang in chorus:

“Lull Abai, we’ll say goodnight. With roses, Bedight. Lay thee down and sleep, Slumber!”

The Vitaminders smiled.

“Lay thee down and rest, Lull Abai!” the slenderest of the girls cried out in a delicate voice.

Lull Abai’s round face grew even puffier. The Vitaminders’ smiles seemed to urge the doctor on: he desperately wanted to get outside and leave this felt comfort.

“I thank you, gentlemen!” he said in a loud voice, nodding as he headed toward the felt door, which one of the young women opened in advance.

“Drop by on the way back,” said Slumber.

“You may be assured!” the doctor muttered decisively, as he disappeared through the door.

The girl grabbed the doctor’s travel bags and followed him.

In the entryway the servants helped the doctor put on his coat. Bakhtiyar appeared.

“Now, where’s my driver?” said the doctor, turning his head and pulling his hat on.

“In the hut.” Bakhtiyar gestured toward the opening cut into the felt.

The doctor looked in.

Crouper was dozing, sitting on the sled with his felt boots resting on the open hood. The little horses stood between his legs, chewing.

“Kozma! My dear friend!” the doctor exclaimed joyfully.

He was happy to see Crouper, the sled, and the horses.

Crouper woke right away, turned, and lifted his boots out of the hood. The doctor set down the package with the pyramids, embraced Crouper, and pressed him to his breast.

“Well, I…,” Crouper began to speak, but the doctor hugged him tighter.

Crouper froze, bewildered. The doctor stepped back and looked him straight in the eye.

“All people are brothers, Kozma,” the doctor said seriously, and with some solemnity. He laughed joyfully. “I missed you, friend!”

“Well, I just caught a few winks here.” Crouper looked away, smiling in embarrassment.

Bakhtiyar watched them with a smile.

“Did you think of me?” asked the doctor, giving the driver’s emaciated body a shake.

“Uh, I thought ye was asleep.”

“No, my man! No time to sleep now. We have to live, Kozma! Live!” He shook Crouper: “Are we off?”

“Now?” Crouper asked timidly.

“Now! Let’s go! Let’s go!” said the doctor, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Well, I guess we could go…”

“Let’s go, friend!”

The horses, still chewing the oat flour Crouper had given them, lifted their heads and snorted, watching alertly.

“If ye say so, I reckon we’ll be off…”

“I say so, friend! Let’s go! We have to hurry to do some good for people! You understand me?” asked the doctor, clapping him again.

“’Course I understand.”

“Then let’s be off!”

He let go of Crouper, who immediately busied himself with the sled and set to strapping down the travel bags.

“Hide this one way back!” said the doctor, nodding at the package with the pyramids.

Crouper stuck the package under his seat.

Bakhtiyar unbuckled the laser cutter from his belt and aimed it at the felt wall. A blue needle of cold flame sparkled, an unpleasant crack was heard, and foul-smelling smoke appeared. Bakhtiyar deftly cut an exit in the wall and kicked it. The piece of felt toppled over. The blizzard rushed into the shelter. The doctor ran outside. The blizzard whirled and whistled about him.

The doctor took off his fur hat, crossed himself, and bowed to this familiar, cold, white, whistling space.

“Heigh-yup!” Crouper’s voice sounded muffled from within the shelter.

The sled slid through the opening, leaving the warmth of the felt shelter.

The doctor put his hat back on and shouted, spreading his arms wide as though to embrace the blizzard, like he had Crouper, and press it to his breast:

“Woo-hooo!”

The blizzard wailed in reply.

“Ain’t settled down at all, yur ’onor.” Crouper grinned. “Look how she’s hootin’ and howlin’.”

“We’re off, off, off!” the doctor shouted.

“You head straight that way—and you’ll come right to the village!” Bakhtiyar shouted, hiding behind the shelter.

“Marvelous!” the doctor replied, nodding at him.

“C’mon now, have aaaat it!” Crouper cried out in a thin voice; then he whistled.

Having warmed up and eaten, the horses started off energetically and the sled raced across the field. This whole time the blizzard had neither intensified nor slackened: it blew just as before, and just as before, the snowflakes fell and visibility was poor all around. Crouper, who had also warmed up and eaten, and had even managed to snooze a bit, no longer had any idea which way to go, but he felt no anxiety on that score. Moreover, the doctor exuded such an aura of certainty and correctness that it immediately washed away any doubts or sense of responsibility that Crouper had.

He drove along, glancing at the doctor’s warmed-up nose.

This large nose, which not long before had been freezing, blue, dripping, and so frightened that it hid in the beaver collar, now exuded confidence and exhilaration, triumphantly parting the foggy atmosphere like the keel of a ship. The change was so remarkable that Crouper felt joyful and a bit mischievous.

“Well now, our Dr. Elephant, he’ll get us outta here.”

The doctor kept clapping him on the shoulder. He didn’t hide his happy face from the wind. The doctor felt wonderful. He hadn’t felt this wonderful for a long time.

“What a miracle is life!” he thought, peering into the blizzard, as though seeing it for the first time. “The Creator gave us all of this, gave it to us unselfishly, gave it to us so that we could live. And he doesn’t ask anything of us in return for this sky, these snowflakes, this field! We can live here, in this world, just live, we enter it like a new home, specially built for us, and he hospitably opens his doors for us, opens wide this sky and these fields! This is truly a miracle! Indeed, this is the proof of God’s existence!”

He inhaled the frosty air with pleasure and thrilled at the touch of every snowflake. With his entire being he recognized the full power of the new product—the pyramid. The sphere and cube provided an experience of impossible, unattainable joy, something that did not and could never exist on earth, something that man dreams of in his most unusual and deeply hidden dreams: gills, wings, a fiery phallus, physical strength, travel across amazing expanses, love for unearthly creatures, copulation with winged enchantresses. The bliss of innermost desires. But after the sphere and cube, earthly life seemed squalid, gray, and commonplace, as though it were deprived of yet another degree of freedom. It was difficult to return to the human world after the sphere and the cube …

The pyramid, however, allowed earthly life to be discovered anew. After the pyramid you didn’t just want to live, you wanted to live as if for the first and last time, wanted to sing a joyous hymn to life. And therein lay the true greatness of this extraordinary product.

The doctor touched the pyramids under the seat with his foot: “Ten rubles apiece. On the expensive side, of course. But worth it, worth that kind of money … Hmm … I vaguely remember the location. How many pyramids did that dolt Drowsy lose there? Five? Six? Or maybe a whole trunkful? They have
product
trunks, after all, each constructed specifically for its own product: one for spheres, another for cubes, and this one for pyramids. How deftly they’re placed in the trunk—without gaps, like one monolithic piece. High-tech manufacturing. Could he really have lost a whole trunk’s worth? How many would that be? Twenty? Forty? All lying there under the snow now … An entire fortune…”

“Here we are, yur ’onor, Old Market!” shouted Crouper.

The few
izba
s of Old Market moved toward them out of the storm.

“We’ll ask the way now!”

“We’ll ask, my man, yes we will!” The doctor gave Crouper a resounding slap on his padded knee.

The sled left the fields of virgin snow and drove onto the snowy village street. Dogs began to bark in the yards. They drove up to an
izba
. Crouper hurried to knock on the gates. The doctor, sitting in place, lit up and inhaled the smoke greedily.

No one answered for quite a while. Then a woman came out wearing a long sheepskin coat. Crouper spoke briefly with her, and, happy, returned to the doctor:

“I knew it, yur ’onor! We go as far as the little grove, and then there’s a fork. Our way is to the right! It’s a straight road from there, straight to yur Dolgoye, no turning anywhere! Only four versts!”

“Wonderful, my good fellow! Just wonderful!”

“We’ll find the fork before twilight, and from there even a blind man could make it!”

“Let’s be off, then! Let’s be off!”

They settled in, wrapped their coats tight, and took off. Old Market soon ended. The road was lined with bushes; here and there a lone dark reed stuck up through the snow.

“Look at that!” said Crouper, shaking his head. “The villagers don’t even cut the reeds. That’s the life!”

He remembered how he and his late father cut reeds in the autumn, then tied them and covered the
izba
. Every year they covered the roof in reeds. And the roof was thick and warm. Then one time it burned down.

“Kozma, tell me, my good fellow, what is the most important thing in life for you?” the doctor suddenly asked.

“The most important?” Crouper pushed his hat up off his eyes and smiled his birdlike smile. “I cain’t say, yur ’onor … The main thing—is that everthin’s all right.”

“What does that mean—‘all right’?”

“Well, so’s the horses are healthy, there’s enough to buy bread … and so’s I got enough firewood, and I ain’t sickly.”

“Well, then, let’s say that your horses are healthy, you’re healthy, too, you’ve got money. What else?”

“I don’t rightly know … I used to think I might start me up some bees. At least three hives.”

“Let’s say you’ve got your beehives. What else?”

“What else would I be needing, then!” Crouper laughed.

“Is there really nothing else that interests you?”

“Don’t know, yur ’onor.”

“Well, what would you want to change in life?”

“In my own? Nothin’. We’re just fine as is.”

“Well, then, maybe in life in general?”

“In general?” Crouper scratched his forehead with his sleeve. “So there wouldn’t be so many ornery people ’bout. That’s what.”