The Blizzard (13 page)

“That’s good!” The doctor nodded seriously. “You don’t like angry people?”

“No, sir, I don’t. I’d go a whole verst roundabout to miss a man what’s mean and nasty. When I come up agin’ ’em—I get sick. Feel like throwing up, like I ate bad meat. Take that miller. Soon as I see him, hear him, I feel it comin’ on, don’t need to stick two fingers down my gullet. I don’t understand, yur ’onor, how come some people gotta be so evil?”

“There’s no such thing as evil people. Man is good by nature, for he is created in the image of God. Evil is man’s mistake.”

“Mistake? Awful lotta mistakes around. When I was a boy, couldn’t stand to see no one whipped. I’d get whipped, well, all right then, I’d have a cry, and that’s that. But soon as they put someone else over the bench I’d just get sick, almost faint. Once I growed up, too, whenever I sees a fight—makes me sick, like I got rocks in my stomach. Awful lot of bad mistakes, yur ’onor.”

“Terrible, Kozma, terrible. But there’s far more good in life than evil.”

“I guess there’s a bit more.”

“Good, good is so important!”

“Good’s important, ’course it is. Do good, and it’ll come back twice over.”

“Well put, Kozma! You and I are going to the end of the world in order to do good for people! And what a wonderful thing that is!”

“Sure enough, yur ’onor. As long as we get there.”

They drove through the grove and arrived at the fork. Both roads—the one to the left that led into the field, and the other, which turned right toward some bushes—were high with snowdrifts and untraveled.

“There’s our road!” Crouper turned the rudder decisively to the right, and the sled shifted with a slight squeak and moved along the snow-covered road.

The doctor noticed that it was already getting dark. He took out his watch. It was exactly six.

“How is that possible?” he thought. “How long was I at the Vitaminders? Could it really have been almost six hours? How many hours does the product last? I should ask them…”

The road ran past patches of underbrush. It was a decent road, no wider and no narrower than others, and packed down, so it was visible even in the deepening twilight. The blizzard hadn’t slackened; it was just as strong as ever.

After the turn the snow blew straight at their faces. The sled slowed down.

Crouper steered, and the horses pulled, their hooves making a crunching sound inside the hood. The doctor looked straight ahead.

Soon it was entirely dark. There was no moon. But this didn’t bother either the doctor or Crouper. They continued on their way, just as calmly and surely. The doctor felt that the blizzard itself was showing them the way, forcing Crouper to steer directly into the wind. Snowflakes flew out of the dark into the travelers’ faces, and they just needed to keep heading in that direction, without turning.

“Drive into the wind, overcome all difficulties, all nonsense and foolishness, move straight on, fearing nothing and no one, move along your own path, the path of your destiny, move onward steadfastly, stubbornly. That is the very meaning of our lives!” thought the doctor.

The sled leaned to the left, its nose tipped downward into the snow, and it stopped. The horses snorted and whinnied.

“Now we’ve gone off.” Crouper got down, stepped into the snow, and immediately sank in almost to his waist. “Tarnation…”

The doctor also got down and brushed off the snow.

“It’s a gully!” Crouper shouted to him from the ditch. “Thank God we didn’t fall in! Yur ’onor, gimme a hand to get outta here…”

The doctor walked toward him but sank down himself; groaning, he grabbed the driver’s arm and pulled. They turned over and over in the snow, helping each other. First the doctor pulled Crouper out of the ditch, then, once out, Crouper helped the stumbling doctor. Rolling around and around in the snow, they grumbled and cursed; the doctor lost his hat, but Crouper grabbed it.

Once they had made it out of the gully, they sat in the snow, leaning against the sled, and rested.

“We’ll be needin’ to push the sled,” Crouper said, asking the doctor for help.

“We’ll do it!” said the doctor, energetically shaking his hat as he stood up. “Just show me how!”

Crouper pushed against the back of the seat and gave the horses the command to back up.

“Whoa now … back, back, back…”

The doctor pushed from the other side.

After four tries they managed to slide the sled out of the ditch. They rested a bit, then sat back down and drove on. The road ran along some bushes, then sloped downward and dissolved into the snowy darkness. It was completely impossible to make it out. Crouper got down and walked ahead, feeling for the road with his feet. The doctor picked up the reins and slowly steered after him. They inched through the dip and eventually made it out. And here Crouper lost the road. He walked around in circles, up to his knees in snow; he kept falling into ditches, tripping, falling, and getting up again. The doctor could barely see his figure in the darkness.

Finally, Crouper returned, utterly exhausted; he fell to his knees and embraced the sled:

“Lordy…”

“Well, what is it?” asked the doctor.

“It’s gone an’ disappeared, like the earth swallowed it…”

“What do you mean ‘disappeared’? Where did it go?”

“God knows … The devil must be leadin’ us on, yur ’onor…”

“Let me go and look for it.”

“Wait up, yur ’onor, sir…”

But the doctor headed energetically into the snow-spitting blackness. First he decided to walk straight ahead of the sled. But after about thirty steps through deep snow he hadn’t found anything resembling a firm road. He returned to the sled and went to the left. He immediately ran into bushes. The doctor walked around them and continued on, trying not to deviate from the direction he’d chosen. But bushes again blocked his path. He again skirted them. The snow became very deep, and the doctor fell down.

“Nothing!” He spit at the wind-blown bush and gave a tired laugh.

Exhaustion, darkness, and the blizzard had not deprived Platon Ilich of the extraordinary, joyous, and buoyant mood that he had acquired earlier in the day at the Vitaminders.

“What an adventure!” he thought, breathlessly stomping through the snow. “This will be something to remember. I’ll tell Zilberstein, and he’ll have to buy me a drink, the skinflint…”

He started to go around the bush but tripped on something and fell. His hat went flying. The doctor sat up and stayed put for a while, exposing his overheated head to the blizzard. Then he put on his hat and felt around in the snow. He had tripped on a large boulder.

“Glaciers … The great glaciers … They rolled across Rus, bringing stones with them. And a new era began for humanity: man took up the stone axe…”

Pushing against the boulder, he rose. He reversed direction, following his tracks. But he was soon off course and for some reason ended back at the boulder.

“I went in a circle,” thought the doctor.

He spoke out loud:

“Why?”

Straining his eyes in the darkness, he picked out his tracks. Once more he followed the path he had just tamped down. And once again he arrived at the boulder.

“Nonsense!”

He laughed, removed his pince-nez, and for the hundredth time wiped it with his white scarf, which fluttered in the wind. Again he went around the mysterious bush. According to the tracks, it seemed that he had been going in circles the whole time.

“This can’t be. How did I get to the bush in the first place?!”

The doctor remembered that he had gone around the bush to the right the first time. Moving away from the stone, he headed left. But there were no tracks leading to the bush. He spit and walked straight on. He soon ran into another bush, most unpleasantly. Its branches painfully snatched the pince-nez from his face.

“Damnation…” The pince-nez dangled from its cord; he grabbed it, went around the bush, and continued on.

Ahead was darkness, wind, and snow. There was no end to the deep snow underfoot. There was no road, nor any trace of people. He trudged through the snow a bit longer, and stopped. He could feel that his boots had filled with snow and his feet were very cold. He didn’t want to return to that damned bush. He took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs:

“Kozzz-maaaa!”

The only reply was the howl of the blizzard.

He shouted again. To the right he heard something that could have been an answering shout. The doctor headed toward the voice. The snow was now so deep that he was literally climbing over it, wallowing about, backstepping, and sinking down again. Exhausted and breathless, he finally came to the sled. Motionless and covered with snow, it looked rather like a large snowdrift in the dark. A snow-dusted Crouper sat in it, shivering. He didn’t react to the doctor’s appearance.

The doctor almost collapsed from exhaustion.

“Didn’t find a damned thing…,” he exhaled, grabbing on to the sled.

“Well, I found somefin,” Crouper said, his voice barely audible.

“Where?”

“Over there…,” Crouper replied, without moving.

“Why are you sitting here?”

Crouper said nothing.

“Why are you sitting here?!” shouted the doctor.

“Just waitin’ fer ye.”

“Why aren’t you moving, you fool! Let’s go!”

But Crouper didn’t move; it was like he’d turned into a snowman. The doctor pushed his shoulder. Crouper swayed and snow fell off him in pieces.

“Let’s go!” the doctor shouted in his ear.

“Froze through, I am, yur ’onor.”

The doctor grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him; Crouper’s hat slipped down on his face.

“Let’s go!”

“Wait a bit, I’ll warm up a little…”

“What do I need to do, crack your head open? Decided to kick the bucket, have you, you idiot?”

Under the hood the roan whickered, apparently worried about his master. The other horses began to whicker as well.

“Let’s go, you dimwit! Quick now!” said the doctor, shaking the driver.

“Sir, we shud get a fire goin’, warm us up a little. And then go.”

Quite unexpectedly, this statement had a completely calming effect on the doctor. He imagined the flames of a fire and immediately realized how cold he felt after crawling around in the snow.

“The temperature has dropped…,” he thought in passing.

He softened right away, let go of Crouper, wiped his frozen nose, and turned his head:

“Where would you start a fire?”

“Right here’s where we’ll start it,” said Crouper, nodding vaguely to the side. He slid off the seat and straightened his hat. “There’s bushes here, lotta bushes. I’ll go and see what I c’n find.”

Crouper disappeared into the whirling snow before the doctor had a chance to answer.

“Where’s he going, the fool?” the doctor thought irritably, staring into the darkness; but he suddenly relaxed and felt overcome with exhaustion.

He climbed up on the seat, wrapped himself in the rug, and sat down, shivering. Everything swirled and howled around him. The doctor just wanted to sit still, without moving, or hurrying anywhere, or doing anything, even talking. His wet feet were cold. But he didn’t have the strength to take off his boots and shake out the snow.

“I have alcohol,” he remembered, but just as quickly remembered something else: “Drunks freeze more quickly. Mustn’t drink, not a drop…”

He dozed off.

He began to dream of his ex-wife, Irina: she sat with her knitting on the spacious, sun-filled porch of the dacha they had rented on the Pakhra River. He had just come from town on the three-o’clock train. It was a short day, Friday. The weekend was ahead: he’d brought her favorite strawberry cake from town, but it was too big—huge, in fact; the size of the couch. He set the cake down on the green, sun-warmed floor of the veranda, walked around it along the wall hung with living photographs, and was headed toward his wife, when he suddenly noticed that she was pregnant. Obviously in the seventh or eighth month, for that matter—her belly filled his favorite dress, the one with little blue flowers; she was knitting something quickly, and smiling at her husband.

“What’s this?!” He fell on his knees in front of her and embraced her tightly.

He cried with joy, he was so happy, so impossibly happy; he would have a son, he knew for certain that it was a boy, and his son would be there very soon; he kissed his wife’s hands, those gentle, weak, helpless hands, and they kept on knitting, knitting, knitting, not reacting to his kisses; he cried with joy, tears were streaming onto her hands, her dress, her knitting. He touched Irina’s belly, and suddenly understood that her belly … was a copper cauldron. He touched the pleasant copper surface, pressed his ear to the copper belly, and heard something gurgling inside, something beginning to hiss and burble pleasantly. The belly warmed up. He pressed his cheek to the warm belly and suddenly realized that oil was beginning to boil inside it, and that little horses would be cooking in that oil, and that when they were done, they’d be like fried partridges, and that he and his wife would set them out on Mama’s silver serving dish and feed the horses to their long-since-grown son, who, it turned out, was sleeping in the attic at that very moment, and they could hear his loud, mighty snore, which made the dacha shake and the wood planks of the veranda tremble, tremble, tremble ever so slightly.

“Look, Platosha,” said his wife, showing him her knitting.

It was a pretty, intricately knit horse blanket for a little horse.

“We’re having fifty children!” his wife said joyfully and gave a happy laugh.

The dream fell apart from a sharp blow.

Platon Ilich had trouble opening his eyelids. The snowy dark continued to swirl around him.

There was a repeat blow. Crouper was cutting chips off the rounded edges of the seat back with an axe.

The doctor began to turn around and was immediately seized by the shivers, which made their way from his feet to his head. During the short nap his immobile body had stiffened from the cold. The doctor shook so hard that his teeth chattered.

“Just a sec…,” Crouper muttered, fussing about somewhere nearby.