The Blizzard (18 page)

“It broke off!” Crouper shouted, as he fussed about in the snow.

“Just you…” The doctor had been motionless the whole way, but he suddenly jumped down from his seat; up to his knees in snow, he hurried to the trunk and began furiously unfastening his travel bags.

“Go to hell, you idiot … Go to hell with your sled … and your stinking runner…” He untied the snow-covered travel bags, grabbed them, and walked off.

Crouper didn’t stop him. He no longer had the strength to stand, so he slumped down next to the sled, leaning his back against it; he held onto the broken runner as though it were a broken leg.

“I could have walked there faster!” the doctor shouted without turning around.

He strode ahead along the snowy road.

“Listening to idiots and assholes my whole life!” he muttered angrily to himself as he moved along through the thick snowfall and darkness. “Listening to idiots! And assholes! What kind of life is that?! My God, what kind of life is that?!”

His indignation energized him as he moved through the whooshing snow, his boots stirring up an endless white porridge. He could feel the road with his feet, the well-traveled crust of ice covered with fresh snow.

“Straight on, just keep going straight on…,” thought the doctor, keeping up his pace.

He realized that he shouldn’t fear this lifeless, cold element, but should simply keep moving and moving, overcoming it.

The snowy dark enveloped Dr. Garin. He walked and walked. The sled, Crouper, the little horses—all that was behind him, like a disappointing past; ahead was the road that he had to travel.

“Dolgoye is close … I should have left that fool and walked … I would have reached it long ago…”

He took a step, sank into a ditch, and fell, losing his travel bags. Floundering in the snow, he found the bags, clambered out of the ditch and went back a bit, barely able to make out his tracks in the darkness. He found the road and kept to the right, but again he fell into a ditch, deeper than the first one.

“A ravine…,” he thought.

Apparently, the road passed through a ravine.

“A bend in the road,” thought the panting doctor.

He climbed out of the ditch, took a few steps, and sank into the snow again. There were gullies on all sides.

“Where is the road?” He straightened his hat, which had slipped down over his eyes.

He began to feel carefully for the road with his foot, trying not to sink into the snow. There was something uneven under the snow, and it didn’t feel at all like a road. The road seemed to dissolve into gullies. Searching for the road, the doctor lost all strength and sat down on the snow. His legs grew cold.

“Damnation…,” he muttered.

He sat awhile, then stood up and grabbed his travel bags. He decided to go straight through the damned ravines, in the hope of coming out onto the road. This turned out to be a difficult proposition: he walked, falling and getting up, sinking into the snow and climbing out. But he couldn’t find the road. It was as though ravines had devoured it.

Utterly exhausted, he sat down. The snow, the endless snow, kept falling in heaps from the dark sky, covering the doctor and his tracks.

The doctor started to doze off, and he shivered.

“Just don’t fall asleep…,” he muttered. He stood up and, barely moving, walked on.

There was no end to the gullies. Sinking into the snow yet another time, he lay on his side and crawled ahead, pulling his heavy bags after him.

Suddenly, he felt something even and hard underfoot.

“Here it is!” he exclaimed hoarsely.

Climbing out of the ravine onto the road, he stood a moment, breathing heavily; he set the bags down and crossed himself: “Thank the Lord.”

He picked up his travel bags and walked on ahead. He hadn’t gone more than twenty steps when something moved toward him out of the snowy darkness and appeared to hang right overhead. Staring with wide-open eyes, the doctor could make out something like the trunk of a bent tree overhead, plastered in snow. He began to go around from the left when suddenly he noticed something behind the trunk, something huge and wide that occupied the entire road and from which this trunk extended. The doctor approached cautiously. The huge, wide object was completely covered in snow and rose up and up. Throwing his travel bags down in the snow, the doctor wiped his pince-nez with his scarf and tilted his head back. He couldn’t understand what was in front of him. At first he thought it was a pointed haystack covered in snow. But he touched it and realized that it wasn’t made of hay, just snow. His eyes agog, the doctor stepped farther back. Suddenly, at the top of the strange, vast, snowy shape, he made out the likeness of a human face. He realized that he was standing in front of a snowman of monstrous proportions, with a huge, erect phallus of snow.

“Lord Almighty…,” the doctor mumbled, and crossed himself.

The snowman was the height of a two-story building. Its phallus hung threateningly over Dr. Garin’s head. The snowman looked out of the darkness through two round cobblestone eyes pressed into the snow by a powerful, unknown sculptor. An aspen root protruded in place of a nose.

“God Almighty…,” the doctor muttered, and took off his hat.

He felt hot. He remembered the giant’s corpse and realized that the big one, into whose nose the sled had driven not long ago, was the sculptor of this snow monster. Before his drunken death, he had decided to make something for indifferent and distant humanity from the materials on hand.

The doctor reached up and swung his hat, trying to reach the white phallus above. But he couldn’t. The huge pole hung over him, aimed ominously at the darkness. Snow whirled about, falling on the phallus and on Garin’s uncovered head. The doctor realized that the giant had stuck a tree trunk in the snowman’s belly and packed snow around it. The result resembled an aroused male reproductive organ. The blizzard snowfall had made it even thicker.

Garin took a few steps back to look at the snow giant. It stood with a sort of unflinching readiness to pierce the surrounding world with its phallus. The doctor met the gaze of the cobblestone eyes. The snowman looked at Garin. The hair on the doctor’s head tingled. Terror seized him.

He screamed and ran away.

He ran, stumbled, fell, got up, and, moaning with fear, ran and kept on running.

Finally, he ran into something at chest level and fell flat on his back. It was a forceful blow; it knocked the breath out of him, and colored lights swam before his eyes. He groaned in pain. He gradually caught his breath. He was cold; he looked around and saw that his right hand was holding his hat. He sat up and pulled the hat on his head.

He shivered. Shaking and holding his injured chest, he stood up. In front of him, sticking out of the snow like a milepost, was the broken trunk from an old birch tree. The doctor held on to it, afraid of collapsing in the snow. He pressed against the birch and stood still, breathing heavily. The birch was old, and the bark was puckered. Holding on to the birch, the doctor breathed on it and inhaled its fragrance. The frozen birch smelled like the bathhouse.

“White … cellulose…,” the doctor mumbled into the silver bark.

He realized that he was beginning to freeze.

“Move, move…” He pushed away from the birch and walked on through the falling snow.

He walked without feeling the road, walked through the deep snow, tripped, fell, got up again, and walked on and on and on. In front of him, to the side, and behind him it was all the same—the darkness of night, and falling snow. The doctor kept on walking.

Soon he began to move more slowly, and had more trouble getting out of ditches; he staggered and lost his balance. The snow wouldn’t let go of him, it clutched at his stiffened, disobedient legs. The doctor moved slower and slower. His fingers were freezing; he thrust his wet gloves deep into his pockets and walked on, hunched over.

His knees began to give way. He kept going, but could barely drag his legs forward.

Just when he was about to fall and remain forever stuck in the endless snow, something stopped him. Brushing the snow from his freezing eyelids, the doctor could make out the back of the sled, decorated with roses and notched by an axe along the edges. He couldn’t believe his eyes, and reached out to touch it. Standing there, holding on to the back, he caught his breath. He looked over: the seat was empty. There was no one in the sled.

The hair on his head stood up again. He realized that Crouper had left, abandoned the sled, and abandoned the doctor, abandoned him forever, and that now he was completely alone, alone forever in this winter, in this field, in this snow. And that this—was death.

“Death…,” the doctor said hoarsely, and he felt like crying out of self-pity.

But he had no tears, nor the strength to cry. He fell to his knees next to the sled.

He thought he heard the neighing of a little horse somewhere not far away. But he didn’t believe it.

His frozen lips trembled, and something like a sob emerged from his mouth.

The horse neighed again, quite close by. He looked around. There was nothing but deadly, relentless dark space. Once again a horse neighed and snorted. He remembered the voice: it was the mischievous roan stallion. And he was neighing in the sled. The doctor stared at it in bewilderment.

Suddenly he noticed that the matting that had always covered the hood was all buckled. Thinking it was snow that had fallen on top, the doctor touched the matting. It moved. He opened it a bit.

From inside the dark hood came the smell of horses’ warm breath; inside, the horses tossed their manes, snorted, and neighed. And Crouper’s voice exclaimed:

“Doctor!”

The doctor looked into the hood, stunned. He reached out his hand and touched it. Crouper lay inside, all curled up with the horses.

“You … How?” The doctor wheezed.

“Crawl in,” said Crouper, turning and scooting over. “It’s warm in here. Not long till morning. We’ll wait it out.”

The doctor wanted desperately to get inside that dark, warm space, which smelled so sweetly of horses. He clambered under the hood in an awkward rush. Crouper gathered the horses together, freeing up space for the doctor, who barely managed to squeeze in: his icy chin touched Crouper’s warm forehead, while his arms and legs squashed the little horses. They neighed uneasily. Crouper helped them to get out from under Garin:

“Don’t be afeard, nothin’ to be afeard of…”

The hood made a loud cracking sound when the doctor’s large body crowded in. Crouper lay on his right side and made as much room as he could, allowing the doctor’s wet knees between his legs, pushing the uneasily neighing horses on top of himself and onto the doctor, who lay on his left side. Heaving about like a bear in a den, the doctor wasn’t thinking about the horses or Crouper, he just wanted to hide from the accursed cold, to warm himself.

Somehow they settled down. The horses lay on top of them, huddled together between their legs, and Crouper even managed to place some of them against his neck. He finally managed to free his left arm to reach up and pull the overhead matting closed.

It was totally dark inside the hood now.

“Well, there we goes…,” Crouper muttered into the doctor’s chest, which smelled of sweat and eau de cologne.

Garin was uncomfortable; his hat slipped down over his eyes, but he had no desire to straighten it: he only had enough energy left to breathe. Four horses moved about on his hat. Three others had nested on Crouper’s hat.

“I was thinkin’ ye wasn’t gonna come back nohow,” Crouper spoke into the doctor’s chest.

The doctor was still breathing heavily. Then he suddenly turned sharply, pressing his knees into Crouper. A loud crack sounded behind Crouper’s back: the hood split.

“Ay…” Crouper could feel the crack against his back.

The doctor stopped turning.

“I couldn’t find the road,” he whispered hoarsely.

“’Course not. It’s under snow.”

“Under snow.”

“Cain’t see nothin’ out there.”

“Not a thing.”

They stopped talking. The horses quickly settled down and grew quiet, too. The mischievous roan had thrust his head up his master’s sleeve and was nipping him on the arm.

“And … uh … the … um…” The doctor tried to ask something.

“Wha?”

“Your horses.”

“The horses is here, ’course they is.”

“They’re … keeping warm?”

“They’re warmin’ us, yur ’onor. And we’re warmin’ ’em. Together we’ll stay warm.”

“We’ll stay warm?”

“We’ll stay warm.”

The doctor was silent a moment and then, with barely audible voice:

“I’m frozen. Nearly through.”

“’Course ye are.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“God willin’—ye won’t die. It’ll be light soon. Then, when we c’n see, we’ll fix the runner and set off. Else’n someone passin’ by’ll hook us up.”

“Hook us?”

“Could be. Hook us and tow us in.”

“People actually … travel along this way?” asked the doctor.

“’Course they do. The bread men come early mornin’, people gotta have bread, don’t they? I hitch up at seven. And in your Dolgoye there, people wants to eat, too. Someone’ll tow us—and we’ll get to Dolgoye, ’course we will.”

Hearing about Dolgoye as he fell into a deep sleep, the doctor had trouble understanding what it was, but then remembered that he, Dr. Garin, was on his way to Dolgoye, that he had to bring the vaccine there, that Zilberstein, who’d given the first vaccine dose, was waiting for him, and that he, Garin, was carrying the second dose of vaccine, which was so important, so crucial for people infected with the
Bolivian plague
. He remembered his travel bags, but then remembered that he had dropped them near that ominous snowman, though maybe he hadn’t left them, maybe he picked them up and ran away with them. “Did I leave them or not?” He had trouble remembering. “No, I didn’t leave them, no … How could I leave them? It would be impossible to leave them…” He realized that he’d grabbed them under his arms and run with them, run across the snow, the deep, thick snow, run, run, run, and the snow had stopped, and then it began to melt, melt away, and the grove was flooded with sunlight, the white birch grove, the grove near the church at Nikolaevsky, the one where he and Irina were supposed to be married, she was waiting for him in the church, and he was walking through the grove, through the warm, almost hot, summer grove, the bright grass was bathed in sunlight, bumblebees buzzed about, the birch trunks were warm, heated by the sun, he tucked one of his bags under his arm, and with his free hand touched the hot trunks of the birches with great pleasure; he could already see the church, carriages crowded around it, someone had even come by automobile, it was the banker Gorsky, who else would travel by car? He walked and walked, but suddenly the earth heaved under his feet, and he realized that under the earth, under this loose, warm, summer earth were residents of Dolgoye, infected with
the Bolivian Black
; they had dug tunnels, he hadn’t vaccinated them and they had turned into zombies, they’d gone underground, dug out tunnels, and reached him: they were here, and he ran toward the church, through the grove, ran as fast as he could, but the zombies’ hands, their inhuman, clawlike hands that resembled the paws of a mole—it was called the “mole-paw syndrome,”
pes talpae
—were coming out of the earth, reaching through the grass, grabbing him by the feet, their claws dug into him painfully, they were strong and sharp, they tore off his new patent-leather shoes, but he escaped the claws and ran to the church, and everyone was inside and the priest already stood at the pulpit, Irina wore her wedding dress and stood holding a candle; he stood next to her, someone handed him a candle, he could feel the floor of the church with the soles of his bare feet, the floor was hot, very hot, the earth under it was hot, heated by the zombies’ furious movements, but he liked the feeling, it was so pleasant to feel the heat of the marble floor with his feet that he didn’t want to follow the priest, didn’t want to circle the pulpit with Irina, no, he felt fine just like this, so fine that tears poured from his eyes, and he stood still, and everyone understood him, everyone shared his joy, everyone felt so good, but he was rapturously happy, because he loved everyone, everyone standing in this church, he loved Irina, he loved the priest, he loved his family and friends, he loved the zombies, too, who were stirring and moaning under the floor of the church, he loved everyone, everyone, and now everyone began to move around him, because he couldn’t detach his feet from the
amazing
warmth; all the guests, the priest, the archdeacon with his roaring bass, the singers, and Irina, everyone was circling, circling him, walking and singing, and underground the zombies were circling the church, and they were singing, too, singing into the earth, singing with an earthy buzz, like huge earthen bees, they buzzed underground, they buzzed and droned “many long years…,” and their buzz was so loud and sweet that it tickled, and everyone circled round and round Garin, like the earth’s axis, and all the buzzing and circling made the doctor and his feet ever warmer and joyful …