The Blizzard (2 page)

“Epidemic?” The bread man rubbed his eyes with big, calloused fingers that had dirty nails. “I heard about it. They was talkin’ about it at the post office in Khoprov just yesterday.”

“There are sick people waiting for me there. I’m bringing the vaccine.”

The head on the stove disappeared, then the stairs creaked and squeaked. Kozma descended, in a fit of coughing, and came out from behind the stove. He was a short and stunted, skinny, narrow-shouldered man about thirty years old, with crooked legs and the kind of oversized hands tailors often have. His nose was sharp. His face, puffy with sleep, was kind and tried to smile. He stood barefoot in his underclothes in front of the doctor, scratching his tousled red hair.

“A vax-seen?” he said respectfully and cautiously, as though he was afraid to drop the word on his worn, cracked floorboards.

“A vaccine,” the doctor repeated, and took off his fox-fur hat, which had made him feel overheated right away.

“But there’s a blizzard, doctor, sir.” Crouper glanced at the dimmed window.

“I know there’s a blizzard! And there are sick people waiting for me!” the doctor raised his voice.

Scratching his head, Crouper went to look out the window, which was insulated with hemp chinking stuffed in around the sides.

“I didn’t even fetch the bread today.” He flicked a patch of window where the hoarfrost had melted from the stove’s heat, and looked out. “After all, man don’t live by bread alone, ain’t that right?”

“How much do you want?” The doctor was losing his patience.

Crouper looked back at him as though he expected to be beaten; he walked silently over to the right of the stove where there were buckets on the bench and shelves with earthenware pots and kettles, picked up a copper ladle, scooped some water out of the bucket, and began to drink so fast his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“Five rubles!” the doctor proposed, in such a threatening tone of voice that Crouper flinched.

He began to laugh, wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve:

“Now what would I be needing…”

He put the ladle down, looked around, and hiccupped.

“But, I … I just fired up the stove…”

“People are dying out there!” the doctor shrieked.

Avoiding the doctor’s gaze, Crouper scratched his chest and squinted at the window. The doctor stared at the bread man with such an expression on his tense, large-nosed face, it was hard to tell whether he was ready either to beat him or to burst into tears.

Crouper sighed and scratched his neck:

“Hey, youngster, you just…”

“Wha?” Vasyatka opened his mouth, not understanding.

“Sit tight. When it catches—close the flue.”

“I’ll do that, Uncle Kozma.” Vasyatka took off his sheepskin coat, tossed it on the bench, and sat down next to it.

“Your sledmobile … what power is it?” the doctor asked in relief.

“Fifty horses.”

“Good! We’ll be in Dolgoye in about an hour and a half. And you’ll drive back with five rubles.”

“Come on now, yur ’onor…” Crouper smiled, waved his claw-like hand, and slapped himself on his thin haunches. “Alrighty, let’s go harness up.”

He disappeared behind the stove and soon came out in a thick homemade gray wool sweater and padded pants held up almost to his chest by an army belt; he clutched a pair of gray felt boots under his arm. He sat down on the bench next to Vasyatka, tossed the felt boots on the floor, and began wrapping his footcloths.

The doctor went outside to smoke. Nothing had changed: gray sky, snow, wind. The farm seemed to have died—there wasn’t a human voice or dog’s bark to be heard.

Platon Ilich stood on the porch and inhaled the refreshing cigarette smoke. He was already thinking about tomorrow: “I’ll do the vaccinations at night and in the morning we’ll go to the cemetery and take a look at the graves. We have to hope that the weather hasn’t interfered with the quarantine; if someone made it through the lea pastures—you’ll never find him. In Mitino there were two cordons and even that didn’t help—they broke through, and started biting the population … I wonder if Zilberstein is there already. I hope he’s there! It’s easier to vaccinate when you’ve got four hands. He and I could get through the whole village in one night … But no, leaving from Usokh, he won’t get there before me … It’s forty versts, and in this weather … Just my luck … A storm like this…”

Meanwhile, Crouper had put on his boots, thrown on a small black coat and tied it with a sash, tucked a pair of long heavy mittens under the sash, pulled on a hat, picked up a loaf of bread from the table, cut off the heel, and stuck it under his coat; he cut off another piece and took a bite. Still chewing, he winked at Vasyatka, who was sitting on the bench:

“A gulp of tea to warm the bones now, eh? But ain’t no time: just looky what a fuss he’s making. Epi-demic! Where’d he come in from?”

“Repishnaya, I think.” Vasyatka rubbed his eyes with a fist. “With the post horses. The mail driver, he went straight to bed.”

“Why shouldn’t they sleep, ’em fellers…” Crouper took a farewell glance at the stove, cuffed Vasyatka on the head, and went out into the backyard chewing his piece of rye bread.

The bread man’s yard was just as plain and old as the
izba
: a lopsided stall abutted it, stores of firewood were piled in disarray, and in the distance was a hay shed with a collapsed roof that had been hastily covered with poles and straw; close by a dark threshing barn looked like it hadn’t seen a threshing for at least four years. In contrast, a small stable resembling a bathhouse was new: it had a shingled roof, well-chinked walls, and two insulated windows. Next to it, under a snow-covered lean-to, stood the sledmobile. Crouper plowed through the snow in a fast, bowlegged gait, reached the stable, stuck his hand under his shirt, pulled out a key on a string, and opened the hanging lock.

From behind the door came an intermittent, shrill sound, like the trill of a large cricket. Then three more chimed in, then more, more, and more, until suddenly it seemed an entire swarm of crickets was chirping away noisily. Then came a grunt. The chirping in the stable grew even louder.

“Now, you lot, I’m here, I’m comin’…” Crouper unlocked the door, threw it wide open, and entered the stable.

He was met by pleasant, familiar smells. Leaving the door ajar so there would be more light, he walked through the smithy and tack room straight to the horses’ stalls. A joyous chirping filled the stable. In contrast to Crouper’s miserable hut and yard, his stable was exemplary: spanking new, clean, and tidy, a clear indication of the owner’s true passion. The stable was divided in half: the smithy and tack room began right at the door. There was a workbench with a small forge, also a tiny oven the size of a samovar, with a bellows fashioned from a beekeeper’s fumigator, and instruments neatly arrayed on the workbench: knives, little hammers, tiny pincers, a gimlet, saws, and a jar of horse ointment with a brush inside. In the middle of the workbench was a ceramic cup filled with tiny kopeck-sized horseshoes. Next to it was another cup that held tiny nails for the shoes. Little wooden yokes were strung in rows on the nearby wall, like dried mushrooms. A large kerosene lantern hung over the forge.

Beyond the forge and tack was the feed in a large woven basket filled with finely cut clover. Then came a partition, and behind it—the horse stalls. Smiling, Crouper leaned over the partition, and the modulating whinnies of fifty small horses filled the air. They occupied various stalls: some in pairs, some five together, some in threesomes. Each stall had two wood troughs—one for water, the other for feed. In the feed trough lay the white remains of the oatmeal Crouper had fed the horses at five that morning.

“Now, the lot of ye—we gonna go for a drive?” Crouper asked his horses, and they neighed even louder.

The younger ones reared and bucked; the shaft horses and the steppe horses snorted, shook their manes, and nodded. Crouper lowered his large, rough hand, still holding the piece of bread in the other, and began petting the horses. His fingers caressed their backs, stroked their manes, and they neighed, tossing their heads and stretching their necks. They playfully nipped his hand with their tiny teeth and pressed their warm nostrils against his fingers. Each horse was no bigger than a partridge. He knew every single one of them and could tell you what its story was, where it was from, and how he got it, how it worked, who its parents were, and describe its likes and dislikes—its personality. The backbone of Crouper’s herd, over half of it, consisted of broad-chested bay mares with short, dark red tails. Then came the chestnuts and dark-maned sorrels, eight more bays, four grays, two dapple grays, and two roans—one black roan and one red.

There were only stallions and geldings.
Little mares
were worth their weight in gold, and only horse breeders could afford them.

“Righty, a nice bit of bread,” said Crouper as he crumbled the bread and threw it into the troughs.

The horses leaned over. When he’d handed out all the bread crumbs and the horses had finished eating, Crouper clapped his hands and commanded loudly:

“Ha-a-a-rness!”

With a jerk he lifted the gate that opened all the stalls at once.

The horses walked along the cleanly swept wooden chute and mingled in a herd, greeting one another, nipping, whinnying, and bucking. The chute led to a partition wall, behind which the sled stood. Crouper gazed at the herd; his face brightened and he looked younger. His horses always made him happy, even when he was tired, drunk, or feeling downtrodden. He slid back the partition, letting the horses into the harness of the sledmobile. The herd moved briskly despite the cold billowing from the sled’s frozen interior.

“There ye go, there ye go,” Crouper encouraged the horses. “Ain’t so bad, you c’n stand the cold…”

He waited for the last horse to enter, then slid the partition shut, quickly went outside, locked the stable, and hid the key under his coat. Hurrying around the stable with a bowlegged gait, he raised the hood of the sled. The well-trained horses had moved into place and were waiting to be harnessed. There were five rows of ten horses under the hood. Crouper quickly pushed the horses’ heads through the collars and strapped them in. They went peacefully; only the two bays in the third row began to bicker and disturb the peace, as usual.

“Ye just wait, I’ll give ye a taste of the whip!” Crouper threatened them.

Harnessed up, the first row of ten well-fed shaft horses, all bays, pawed the frozen ribs of the drive belt. The chestnuts in the third row lowered their long-maned heads for their master, so he could place them in their collars, while the bays held themselves with the dignity of the highest order of the equine race, their ears perked forward. The grays kept on munching indifferently, the sorrels snorted and tossed their heads, and the dappled grays pranced impatiently. The energetic red roan neighed, baring his young teeth.

“There ye goes.” Crouper slid the wooden bolt of the hood across, locking all the horses in place; he took the tar pot, smeared the bearings of the drive belt, put on his mittens, grabbed a small whip, and went to fetch the doctor.

The doctor was standing on the stoop, smoking the last of his second
papirosa
.

“We c’n go, yur ’onor, sir,” Crouper informed him.

“Thank God…,” said the doctor, flicking his cigarette butt with an annoyed gesture. “Let’s be off, then.”

Crouper took one of the doctor’s travel bags and they walked back through the mudroom and into the courtyard, to the sled. Crouper unfolded the bearskin rug, the doctor seated himself, and while Crouper strapped his bags to the coach box in back, the doctor examined the horses. He seldom had occasion to see little horses and even less to travel by them, and though tired from the wait, he regarded them with interest as they stood in five rows under the hood, their little hooves striking the ribbed strip of the frozen drive belt.

“Small creatures, and yet they come to our aid in difficult, insurmountable circumstances…,” he thought. “How would I have continued on without these tiny beasts? It’s strange … all hope now lies with them. No one else will take me to this Dolgoye…”

He recalled the two ordinary horses that had brought him to this accursed Dolbeshino three and a half hours ago; they were utterly exhausted by the blizzard and were now lodged in the station stables, probably munching on something.

“The larger the animal, the more vulnerable it is to our vast expanses. And humans are the most vulnerable of all…”

The doctor stretched out his gloved hand, splayed his fingers, and touched the rumps of the two dark bays in the last row. The little horses glanced at him indifferently.

Crouper approached, sat down next to the doctor, fastened the rug, took up the reins, and flicked his whip:

“And off we go! Heigh-yup!”

He made a clicking sound with his tongue. The horses strained, and their hooves scraped against the drive belt; it responded with a screech and began to move under them.

“Heigh-yup! Ha!” cried Crouper as he whirled the whip over their heads.

The muscles of their small hindquarters rippled, the horses’ yokes creaked, the hooves scraped against the drive belt, which began to turn, turn, turn. The sled set off, and the snow squeaked under the runners.

Crouper stuck the whip back in its case and took hold of the reins. The sled was moving out of the yard. There weren’t any gates left, all that remained of them were two crooked posts. The sled moved between them, Crouper maneuvered it onto the high road and, smacking his lips, winked at the doctor:

“Off we go!”

The doctor raised his coat’s baby-beaver collar in satisfaction, and slid his hands under the rug. They soon left the high road: Crouper turned at the fork; to the left the road led to distant Zaprudny; to the right, Dolgoye. The sled turned right. The road was covered with snow, but here and there occasional mileposts and bare, wind-tossed bushes could be seen. The snow kept falling: flakes the size of oats fell on the horses’ backs.

“Why aren’t they covered?” asked the doctor.