The Blizzard

A thickset Kazakh gestured invitingly. It was obvious that they’d interrupted his meal, though, and that he wasn’t very happy about it.

The doctor and Crouper entered a space that was dimly lit by electric lights and well heated. Two enormous violet Great Danes with sparkling bells on their collars immediately rose from their beds and moved toward them, growling. The dogs’ violet eyes stared at the newcomers, and white teeth sparkled in their snarling pink mouths.

“Shoo!” the Kazakh shouted at the dogs, as he closed the door.

With low growls, the dogs went back to their beds. Nearby were two large gasoline snowmobiles, clothes hung on hooks, and numerous pairs of shoes in neat rows. This was the entryway of the tent. The smell of expensive, precious gasoline, the two snowmobiles, and the two sleek Great Danes had a calming effect upon the doctor, but Crouper felt intimidated. “Take your coats off, make yourselves at home.” The Kazakh bowed slightly to the doctor.

The doctor began undressing and the Kazakh set about helping him.

“My littl’uns need to warm up a tetch.” Crouper took off his hat timidly and smoothed down his soaking-wet hair.

“I’ll ask the bosses in a minute,” replied the Kazakh unflappably, as he continued assisting the doctor.

He helped the doctor pull off his boots and gave him a pair of felt slippers. A Kazakh servant girl wearing a long, brightly colored dress and an embroidered skullcap entered, pulled back a thick curtain with her thin hand, and gestured for the doctor to enter:

“Please, this way.”

The doctor stepped through the opening. Crouper remained standing near the door, hat in hand.

It was brighter and even warmer inside the tent. The large round space with gray walls of the same zoogenous felt gave off a feeling of nomadic comfort as well as the sharp aroma of eastern incense. In the center of the tent, right under the roof vent, three men held court at the traditional low black square table of the Vitaminders. The fourth side of the table was empty. Seven servant girls sat along the wall to one side. The eighth, who had invited the doctor into the tent, quietly took her place with them.

The three men looked at the doctor.

“District doctor, Garin,” said Platon Ilich, nodding at them.

“Bedight, Lull Abai, Slumber,” the Vitaminders introduced themselves, bowing their shaved heads in turn.

Bedight and Slumber had European faces, but Lull Abai was distinctly Asian looking.

“You’ve appeared like an angel from heaven.” The thin, narrow-cheeked Bedight smiled.

“In what sense?” The doctor smiled, wiping his foggy pince-nez.

“We are in desperate need of your help,” Bedight continued.

“Is someone ill?” asked Platon Ilich, casting his gaze about.

“Ill.” Slumber, who had a strong, thickset body, and a simple, almost peasant face, nodded.

“Who is it?”

“Over there.” Bedight nodded. “Our friend Drowsy.”

The doctor turned around. Something lay wrapped in a rug between two of the girls. The girls unfolded the rug and the doctor saw a fourth Vitaminder: he wore a gold collar inset with sparkling superconductors, and his head was shaved. Drowsy’s skull showed numerous abrasions and bruises, and his face was slightly swollen.

The doctor approached him cautiously and looked at him without bending over:

“What happened?”

“He was beaten,” answered Bedight.

“Who did it?”

“We did.”

The doctor looked at Bedight’s intelligent face.

“Why?”

“He lost some expensive things.”

The doctor sighed disapprovingly, squatted, and took the battered Vitaminder’s wrist. There was a pulse.

“But he’s alive,” said Lull Abai, stroking his thin beard.

“He’s alive,” said the doctor, as he touched the Vitaminder’s face, “but he has a fever.”

“A fever.” Slumber nodded.

“That’s the ding-a-ling,” said Bedight, licking his thin lips. “But we don’t have any medicines.”

“And this is a matter for the law, gentlemen.” The doctor’s lower lip pursed as he looked at the beaten man.

“It is a matter for the law,” Bedight concurred, and the other two Vitaminders nodded their shaven heads in agreement. “But we are counting on your understanding.”

“I’ll have to report it,” said Platon Ilich rather indecisively, realizing that in saying these words he might end up back out in the discomfort of the wailing blizzard.

“We will thank you,” said Lull Abai, pronouncing the Russian words carefully.

“I don’t take bribes.”

“We won’t thank you with money,” Bedight explained. “We’ll let you try a sample.”

The doctor looked at Bedight silently.

“A sample of our new product.”

Platon Ilich’s eyebrows climbed upward and he took off his pince-nez to wipe it. The doctor’s nose was pink from the warmth.

“Well…” He pushed his pince-nez up on the bridge of his nose, sighed, and slowly shook his head.

The Vitaminders sat motionless, waiting.

“Of course, it’s hard … to refuse.” The doctor exhaled, overcome by a rush of helplessness. He reached for his handkerchief with a sense of doom.

“We were beginning to fear that you would refuse.” Bedight grinned.

The Vitaminders laughed. The servant girls laughed quietly.

The doctor blew his nose with a honk. Then he laughed as well.

The Kazakh’s well-fed face appeared from behind the curtain:

“Masters, the driver is asking to warm his horses.”

“How many are there?” asked Slumber.

“Don’t know. They’re little ones.”

“Ah, little ones…” Slumber glanced at Bedight.

“Build them a shed,” ordered Bedight. “And give him something to eat.”

The Kazakh withdrew.

“In that case … I … need my traveling bags…,” the doctor muttered, leaning over Drowsy’s beaten body again. “And I need to wash my hands with soap.”

He was ashamed of his weakness, but couldn’t help himself: he’d sampled the Vitaminders’ products when means permitted. They made the life of a provincial doctor much easier. He allowed himself to indulge at least once every two months. But in the last year his finances had been worse, much worse: his already modest salary had been cut by eighteen percent. He’d had to refrain, and so it had been a year since Dr. Garin had shone.

He was ashamed of his weakness, and he was also ashamed of his shame, and then ashamed of this double shame. He became indignant and cursed himself abruptly and furiously:

“Idiot … Bastard … Damned hypocrite.”

His hands trembled. He had to occupy them with something, so he began to unfold the rug, fully exposing the figure lying there. The Vitaminder moaned.

Meanwhile, two girls had brought the travel bags, wiped the snow off them, and set them by the doctor. Two others brought him a pitcher of water, a basin, and a towel.

“And the soap?” asked Platon Ilich, taking off his jacket and rolling up his shirtsleeves.

“We don’t have soap,” replied Bedight.

“No? What about vodka?”

“We don’t keep any of that swill.”

“Ah, I have some alcohol…,” the doctor remembered.

Opening his travel bag, he took out a round bottle, splashed water on his hands, wiped them with the towel, and then washed them in alcohol.

“Let’s see now…” The doctor unbuttoned Drowsy’s shirt, put his stethoscope to the man’s chest, and began to listen, his eyebrows raised.

“We didn’t beat him on the heart,” said Lull Abai.

“His heart’s fine,” concluded the doctor.

He examined the Vitaminder’s limbs. The man moaned again.

“His arms and legs are in one piece.”

“We beat him on the stomach and the head,” said Slumber.

The doctor pulled up the shirt, revealing the Vitaminder’s stomach. He palpated it, concentrating, his red nose hanging over the man. The man kept on moaning.

“No swellings or internal injuries,” said the doctor, pulling the shirt down and leaning over the head. “But here it looks like we have a concussion. Has he been unconscious a long time?”

“Since yesterday.”

“Any vomiting?”

“No.”

The doctor put smelling salts under the man’s nose:

“Come on now, my good fellow.”

The Vitaminder frowned slightly.

“Can you hear me?”

A weak moan came in reply.

“Hold on just a minute now. Be patient,” the doctor comforted.

Garin took out a hypodermic and an ampoule; he rubbed the Vitaminder’s tattooed shoulder with alcohol and gave him a shot.

“It’ll get better.” He removed the hypodermic.

“Why did you roll him up in a rug?” the doctor asked.

The Vitaminders looked at one another.

“To calm him down,” Slumber answered.

“Like in a cradle.” Bedight yawned.

“We rubbed sheep fat on the soles of his feet, too,” said Lull Abai.

The doctor didn’t comment on that bit of information.

After the shot, Drowsy’s cheeks grew rosier.

“Can you move your arms and legs?” asked the doctor in a loud voice.

Drowsy moved his arms and one leg.

“Wonderful. Consequently—we know his spine is intact … What hurts?”

The blood-caked lips opened:

“Huh-huh…”

“What?”

“He-he-hed.”

“Your head hurts?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A lot?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dizzy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nauseous?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Liar … Liar!” Slumber cried. “He hasn’t barfed once all this time.”

The doctor looked at Drowsy’s head:

“No fractures. Only bruises. The neck is all right.”

He retrieved some iodine and applied it to the abrasions on the man’s face. Then he applied calendula lotion.

“Metalgin-plus and rest,” said the doctor, straightening up. “And warm liquid nourishment.”

Bedight nodded in understanding.

“We were afraid he’d die,” said Lull Abai.

“No danger to his life.”

The Vitaminders smiled in relief.

“Well now, just like I said!” Bedight grinned. “Do you have any Metalgin?”

“I’ll leave you five tablets.”

“We thank you, doctor,” said Slumber, inclining his head.

The doctor took out a pack of Metalgin-plus, punched out one tablet, and gestured to the servant girl:

“A glass of water.”

The girl poured some water. The doctor placed the tablet in the patient’s mouth and held the cup for him to sip. The patient began to cough.

“Calm down. The worst is over…,” the doctor comforted him.

He held his hands over the basin. The girl poured water over them. The doctor dried his hands and rolled down his shirtsleeves:

“That’s it.”

The doctor’s heart pounded in anticipation. But he made an effort to look calm.

“Have a seat,” said Bedight, nodding toward the empty place at the square table.

The doctor sat down, tucking his legs under him.

“The product!” commanded Bedight.

Two of the young women sitting by the felt wall opened a flat trunk and removed a transparent pyramid from it. It was exactly the same kind that had broken the runner on Crouper’s sled on the snowy road yesterday.

“So that’s what it was!” thought the doctor.

He now realized just what the Vitaminder wrapped in the rug had lost and why he’d been beaten.

“And he didn’t lose just one … probably an entire case. That’s a whole fortune…”

The doctor looked at the pyramid, which the girl carefully placed in the middle of the table. He had tried the Vitaminders’ two previous products: the sphere and the cube. They weren’t transparent, and were half the size of the pyramid.

“Why didn’t I realize that it must be a product? Idiot … It was too strong. That confused me … Yes, that’s what confused me. But there must have been an entire case of it lying about on the road. A year’s worth of my salary. That’s insane!”

The doctor grinned.

“You already had a try?” asked Slumber, not understanding the doctor’s smile.

“No, of course not. I just … I’ve only tried the cube and the sphere.”

“Everyone’s tried them.” Lull Abai shrugged his beefy shoulders.

“This is a totally new, fresh product,” said Bedight, winking at the pyramid. “We’re still trying it out ourselves. Looking for the limit. Getting ready for the spring.”

The doctor nodded nervously.

“I should come back from Dolgoye by the same road…,” he thought cautiously.

Bedight pushed a button on the tabletop. A gas burner flared under the pyramid.

“It doesn’t vaporize right away,” explained Slumber.

“Not like the cube and the sphere?” Excited, the doctor sniffed and licked his lips.

“No. The entire thing has to heat evenly. About four minutes.”

“We can wait four minutes!” the doctor laughed nervously, dropping his pince-nez.

“Four minutes.” Bedight smiled.

“Four men for four minutes.” Lull Abai’s face dissolved into a smile.

* * *

Meanwhile, Crouper was eating hot noodles with chicken, sitting in a separate shed that had been built just for him. He’d never before seen how things were constructed out of zoogenous felt. The Vitaminders’ servant, the Kazakh, Bakhtiyar, demonstrated the whole process to Crouper with an air of superiority. First he told him to move the sled as close as possible to the wall of the tent; then he stuck three long rake-like combs into the snow, to delineate the perimeter of the shed; and then, putting on protective gloves, he squirted a tube of zoogenous felt paste onto the combs, applied “Living Water” spray, and looked triumphantly at Crouper. Crouper stood there with his birdlike grin, one hand on the sled as though afraid to lose it. The gray paste stirred, and felt fabric began to grow from it fiber by fiber. Despite the snow, three felt walls grew until they surrounded the sled and its owner. Bakhtiyar stood outside.

“Well?” Bakhtiyar asked smugly.

“Handy,” replied Crouper in amazement.

“Technology.”

“Tek-nol-logy,” Crouper repeated in a voice full of cautious respect.

As soon as the felt walls had reached Bakhtiyar’s height, he grabbed the “Dead Water” spray and sprayed the sides of the walls. The felt stopped growing. The Kazakh drove a comb into the top edge of the largest wall, sprayed a bit of “Living Water” on it, and the shed roof began to grow. Inside the room, Crouper crouched on the sled’s seat; watching the roof crawl across overhead, he grabbed the steering rod and reins for some reason. The roof kept going until it reached the opposite wall and completely covered the shed. Crouper and the horses were separated from the storm, the cold, and the light of day. It was pitch-dark and unusually quiet.

Crouper could barely hear the Kazakh spray the “Dead Water” to stop the growth of the roof. Then everything was totally quiet. The horses, sensing that something unusual was happening, stood stock-still.

“How’s it goin’ in there?” Crouper knocked on the hood. The roan neighed. Then the three inseparable black bays neighed; then the buckskins; then the sorrels, then the grays, and finally—the slow chestnuts.

Another five minutes passed, and the sharp sound of an electric knife pierced the darkness. The Kazakh deftly cut a low door in the shed wall and pulled it aside, letting light and warmth in:

“Scared ya?”

“Naw.” Crouper squirmed on the seat.

“Stay. I’ll bring some chow.”

Crouper remained sitting.

Bakhtiyar returned with a bowl of noodles and a spoon:

“Orders to feed ya.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Crouper with a bow of the head.

Though the shed was quite dark, Crouper could see a chicken wing in the noodles. He dug in with pleasure. Sensing that their owner was eating, the horses snorted and whinnied.

“Now, now!” Crouper reprimanded them, knocking on the hood with the spoon. “You still gots a ways to go, it’s no time for food…”

The horses quieted down. Only the rabble-rousing roan neighed in displeasure.

“Just wait, ye red rascal…,” Crouper muttered fondly, chewing the tasty chicken.

He gnawed at the wing and then began chewing on the bone.

“Good folks,” he thought, beginning to sweat from the hot food. “Even though they’re Vitaminders…”

* * *

The transparent pyramid emitted a delicate whistling sound, and evaporated. The burner went out. At the same moment, a translucent half sphere enclosed the four at the table, separating them from the rest of the world; the sphere was of a zoogenous plastic so delicate that only the sound of its closing, reminiscent of an impossibly large soap bubble popping or the sleepy parting of a giant’s moist lips, betrayed its existence.

“Madagascar,” said Bedight, his enfeebled mouth slurring the traditional greeting of practicing Vitaminders.

The doctor wanted to reply “Racsagadam,” but he plunged immediately into another space.

* * *

A gray, overcast sky. Occasional snowflakes. Falling from the gray clouds. Falling, falling. A damp winter smell. Or perhaps a thaw? Or early winter. A slight breeze carrying the smell of smoke. No. That’s the smell of a fully stoked bathhouse. A pleasant smell. Burning birch wood. He moved his head. And heard a dull splash. Near the nape of his neck. He looked down. There was liquid, right near his face. Not water. Thick, with a familiar smell. A very, very familiar smell. But too thick. Sunflower oil! He’s up to his neck in oil. He’s sitting in some vessel filled with sunflower oil. It’s a black cauldron, a large black cauldron with thick sides. There’s a huge plaza around the cauldron. A square filled with people. So many of them! Hundreds, hundreds. They’re packed together. What a huge, enormous plaza. Buildings line the sides of the plaza. European buildings. And there’s a huge cathedral. He’s seen that cathedral somewhere before. Prague, probably. It looks just like it. Yes, that’s it, Prague. Although, maybe it isn’t Prague. Warsaw? Or Bucharest? Kraków? No, it’s probably Warsaw. The main square. And there are hundreds and hundreds of people in the square. They’re all staring at him. He wants to move, but he can’t. He’s tied up. Tied with a thick rope. Tied as though he were in the womb. His knees bent, pressed to his chest, pulled up by the rope. His hands are tied to his ankles. He moves his fingers. They’re free. He touches the soles of his feet. His wrists are firmly bound to his ankles. He’s sitting on the bottom of the cauldron. He’s touching the bottom. He’s like a buoy. That’s how he learned to swim. When he was a boy he pretended to be a buoy. That was a long time ago. On a wide river. It was sunny and warm. His father stood on the shore in a broad straw hat. His father laughed, and his glasses shone in the sun. He pretended to be a buoy and watched his father. Two horses stood on the shore and drank from the river. A naked boy sat on one horse and looked at him disdainfully. But he pretended to be a buoy. That was a long time ago. A very long time ago. And now he’s tied up. In this cauldron. The cauldron is raised. It’s on a platform. The edge of the platform is framed with thick logs. He can see them. The thick black edge of the cauldron blocks the view of most of the platform. The cauldron rests on something. And two thick chains run through the eye rings of the cauldron to two freshly hewn posts. The chains are wrapped around these posts. Exactly four times. And fastened to them with huge, wrought-iron nails. The posts are also on the platform. Beyond the platform is the crowd. Everyone is looking at him. A lot of people are smiling. In the distance, near the cathedral, something is being read aloud quite solemnly, almost sung. Latin? No. Polish. No, it’s not Polish. Some other language. Serbian? Or Bulgarian? Romanian! Most likely Romanian. They’re reading something. Reading with great solemnity. In a slight singsong. They’re reading something about him in a singsong voice! And everyone is listening. Everyone is looking at him. They’re reading something about him. They’re reading something about him alone. It is all about him. They read for a long time. He tries to scoot forward to the edge of the cauldron so he can lean his chin on it and pull himself up. But he suddenly realizes that the rope around his ankles and wrists is also attached to the bottom of the cauldron and is keeping his body centered in it. The rope is drawn through a ring on the bottom of the cauldron, right under him. He touches the ring with his fingers. It’s a smooth half circle. A thick rope runs through it. He realizes that there’s no way he can get out of this cauldron. Even with his hands and feet still tied. The ring won’t let him. Terrified, he screams. The crowd laughs and hoots at him. People show him horns and give him the finger. The women are holding children. The children laugh and make fun of him. He jerks with all his might. For a moment he loses consciousness from the horror of it all. But he comes to when he begins to choke on the disgusting, stinking oil. He has oil in his mouth and nose; he coughs, coughs horribly. What vile vegetable oil! It stinks. There’s so much of it. It’s easy to choke on it. It laps thickly around his body. His grandmother used to pour this oil on sour cabbage. There’s so much of it! The smell is overpowering. Only a slight breeze keeps him from suffocating. The smell makes him dizzy. Here and there, large snowflakes fall into the oil and disappear. They fall and disappear. Fall and disappear. How lucky they are. They aren’t tied down to anything. They don’t owe anyone anything. And now the reader shouts the last word in a loud, triumphant voice. The crowd roars. It roars and people raise their fists. It roars so loud that the roar reverberates in the cauldron and causes faint ripples to form next to the cast-iron edges. Now someone climbs onto the platform. An adolescent boy holding a torch. He’s wearing a suede jacket with copper buttons, red pants, and red shoes with turned-up toes. His face is beautiful, the face of an angel. Long chestnut hair falls to his shoulders. The adolescent wears a red beret with an eagle feather on his head. He lifts the torch high. The crowd cheers. He lowers the torch to the cauldron and leans forward. Only his beret is visible. The eagle feather trembles. There’s a soft crackling sound that grows stronger. It seems to be tarred brushwood catching fire. The crackling gets louder. Dark smoke seeps out from under the cauldron. The adolescent leaves the platform. His beret and feather can be glimpsed in the crowd. The crowd roars and hoots. He makes one more desperate attempt to pull free, exerting himself so hard that he passes gas. The bubbles float up slowly around him. But the ropes don’t give. He jerks, swallowing oil, coughing and gasping for air. The oil splashes around him. Stinking, viscous oil. But the cauldron is unmovable. It won’t budge. He screams so loud that the echo of his voice reverberates against the cathedral and returns to him thrice. The crowd listens to him scream. Then it roars and laughs. He begins to cry and mutter that he is innocent. He tells the crowd about himself. He tells them his name. The name of his mother and his father. He talks about a terrible mistake. He has never hurt people. He talks about the physician’s noble profession. He names all the patients he has saved. He calls on God as his witness. The crowd listens and laughs. He talks about Christ, about love, about the Gospels. And suddenly he can feel with his heels that the bottom of the cauldron is warm. He yelps in terror. Once again he faints for a moment. And again the oil, the stinking oil, brings him to his senses. He regains consciousness because he’s swallowing oil. He’s choking on oil. He vomits oil into the oil. The crowd laughs. He wants to tell them about his innocence, but he can’t. He’s gasping. He’s coughing. He coughs so hard it sounds like shouting. The bottom of the cauldron is heating up. But the ring is still cool. It’s thick and sticks out from the bottom. He holds on to the ring with his fingers. He clears his throat. Gathers his thoughts. Calms himself. Then he appeals to the crowd. He gives a speech. He talks about belief. He tells the crowd that he’s not afraid of dying. Because he is a believer. He tells his life story. He’s not ashamed of his life. He tried to live a worthy life. He tried to do good and to help people. There were mistakes, of course. He recalls a girl whom he made a woman, and who had an abortion. And he later found out that she could no longer have children. He remembers how, when he was a student and was at a party one evening in the dormitory, he got soused and threw a bottle out the window and hit a passerby on the head. He tells them about the time he didn’t go to see a patient and the patient died. He lied a great deal in his lifetime. He gossiped and said spiteful things about friends and colleagues. He said nasty things about the woman he lived with. He sometimes begrudged giving his parents money. He didn’t really want to have children. He wanted to live unencumbered, to enjoy life. It was largely because of this that he and his wife separated. He now repents his bad deeds. He spoke badly of the authorities. He wanted Russia to go to hell. He laughed at Russian people. He made fun of His Majesty. But he was never a criminal, he was a law-abiding citizen. He always paid his taxes on time. The bottom of the cauldron was getting hot. With tremendous effort, he balanced his feet on the ring. It was just a little warm. He held his own feet on the ring with his hands. He said that the worst thing in the world was when an innocent person was executed. That kind of death was worse than murder. Because murder is committed by a criminal. But even a criminal who commits murder affords the victim a chance to save himself. The victim might run away, grab the knife from the murderer’s hands, or call for help. The murderer might miss or stumble. Or simply wound the victim. But when a person is executed, he has no chance of being saved. This is the terrible, merciless truth of the death penalty. He was always and still is an opponent of the death penalty. What is happening now on the main square of this town is even more terrible than the death penalty. Because the death penalty is being carried out against an innocent man. If they have all gathered here to carry out the death penalty against him, an innocent man, then they are committing a grave sin. And this sin will cast eternal shame on their town, and on their children and grandchildren. He feels the oil heating up at the bottom, and warm streams of it rising, displacing the cooler oil. The warm oil is crowding out the cold oil. And the cold oil moves downward. In order to heat up on the bottom, become warm oil, and rise to the top. He talks about the children standing here and sitting on their fathers’ shoulders. The children are watching his execution. They will grow up and find out that he was innocent. They will be ashamed of their parents. They will be ashamed of their town. Such a marvelous, beautiful town. It wasn’t made for executions but for joyous, prosperous lives. His heels slip off the ring and touch the bottom of the cauldron. The bottom is hot. He quickly pushes his heels off the bottom and grabs the ring and rope with the soles of his feet, and holds on to the rope. He talks about faith. Faith should make people kinder. People should love their brethren. Two millennia have passed since Christ’s death, and people still haven’t learned to love one another. They haven’t truly grasped their kinship. Haven’t stopped hating one another, deceiving, and thieving. People haven’t stopped killing each other. Why can’t people stop killing each other? If it’s possible in one family, in one village, in one town, then isn’t it possible in one country at the very least? The ring is heating up. His soles are feeling the heat. He jerks them away, but they immediately sink to the bottom. The bottom is even hotter. His feet recoil. But they can’t just hang in the oil. They have to lean on something. His buttocks sink to the bottom and are burned. He puts his fingers under his buttocks and heels. Balances his fingers on the hot bottom of the cauldron. Then on the ring. The smoke from the fire billows around the cauldron and gets in his eyes. He closes his eyes and shouts that they are all criminals. That their town will be judged by an international tribunal. That they are committing a crime against humanity. That the international tribunal will sentence them all to jail. That an atom bomb will be dropped on their town. The crowd laughs and hoots. The oil is heating up. Hot streams float upward. They lick his spine like tongues of smooth flame. They lick his chest. There’s no protection from them. They get hotter and hotter. The ring is already hot. He gathers air into his lungs. And screams with all his might. He curses the town. He curses the people on the square. He curses their parents and their children. He curses their grandchildren. He curses their country. He begins to sob. He belches forth all the curses he knows. He shouts obscenities, sobbing and spitting. The oil splashes around his head. He can’t balance on the ring any longer. It’s hot. Very hot. And the bottom of the cauldron is now horrendously hot. He can’t even touch it. He pushes off the ring and floats in the oil. Pushes and floats. Pushes and floats. Plashes and floats. Plashes and splashes. He’s dancing in the oil. Oil dancing! He begins to howl. Oil dancing! He howls, no longer addressing the crowd, but the roofs of the buildings around the square. Oil dancing! They’re old tiled roofs. Dance! People live under them. Dance! Whole families. Splash! Women are making breakfast under those roofs. Plash! Children lean against their mothers. Splash! And sleep in their little beds. Children sleep, sleep, sleep. In their little beds. Little pillows, little embroidered pillows. Mothers embroider flowers on the pillows. Children sleep on the pillows. Sleep, sleep, sleep. And don’t awaken. Sleep for days and days. You can sleep. For days and days. And not awaken. No one executes anyone for this. If you don’t wake up. If you keep on sleeping. He shouts and begs to be awakened. He believes the children. He believes the pigeons on the tiled roofs. He loves pigeons. The pigeons can forgive him. Pigeons forgive everyone. Pigeons don’t kill people. Will I die? Pigeons love people. I will die? Pigeons will save him. I’ll die? He’ll turn into a pigeon. I’ll die? And away he’ll fly. I’ll die! The crowd begins to sing and sway. I’ll die! What’s that? I’ll-a-die! A folk song? I’ll-a-die! A song of this people? I’ll-a-die! Of this wonderful people. Isle-a-die! Of this accursed people. Isle-a-die! This evil people. Isle-a-die! The people sing. Isledie! The people sing and sway. Isled! They desire his sublime death. Isled! But he’ll turn into a dove and away he’ll fly. Isled! No, it’s the choir from Nabucco. Isled! They are singing. Isled and away! Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate! Isled! And sway. Isled! They’re singing. Isled! Swaying. Isled. Singing Isled! Swaying. Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Isled! Iled! Iled! Iled! Iled! Iled! Iled! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l-! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l! I-l!

* * *

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 izbas 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.”

“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.

The doctor moaned and shook as he gradually awoke. Crouper had hollowed out the snow next to the sled and started a fire.

“Come on, yur ’onor,” he called.

Platon Ilich barely managed to slide down from the seat. He was shaking. Teeth chattering, picking up one leg and then the other with tremendous difficulty, he walked over and sat down in the snow ditch, almost in the fire. While he was sleeping, Crouper had found and chopped up a dry bush. After setting fire to the twigs and pieces of the seat back, he broke off deadwood and stuck it in the fire, covering it from the snowstorm with his own body. Gradually the fire grew to a blaze between the two squatting men. The blizzard tried to put out the flame, but Crouper wouldn’t let it.

The wood caught fire, and the doctor stretched his gloved hands into the flames. Crouper pulled off his mittens and stretched out his large, ungainly hands as well. They sat like that, immobile, silent, squinting when the smoke got in their eyes. The doctor’s gloves warmed up, his fingers got hot, painfully so. The doctor pulled the gloves off. That pain and the fire conquered the shivers. The doctor felt like himself again. He retrieved his watch and glanced at it: a quarter to eight.

“How long did I sleep?” he asked.

Crouper didn’t answer; he continued breaking off pieces of brushwood and shoving them into the fire. Illuminated by bursts of flame, his birdlike face appeared to smile, as if everything was just fine. He didn’t look very tired. His face even conveyed a sort of joy and grateful resignation to everything around him: the blizzard, the snowy fields, the dark sky, the doctor, and the fire flaring in the wind.

While the brushwood burned, the doctor and the driver warmed up. The energy the doctor had acquired at the Vitaminders returned to him; he was ready to drive on, to struggle with the storm. On the other hand, after sitting at the fire, Crouper was drowsy and in no hurry to go anywhere.

“Where’s the road?” the doctor asked as he stood up.

“Right over there…,” muttered Crouper, his eyes half closed and his head down.

“Where?” The doctor couldn’t hear him.

Crouper gestured to the right of the sled.

“Let’s go!” the doctor commanded.

Crouper rose reluctantly. The wind had scattered the last burning branches. The doctor wiped off the snow from the seat and was about to sit down, but, on seeing that Crouper was pushing the back of the seat to get the sled moving, he came around to help him.

“One, two, oooooffff!” Crouper shouted in a weak voice as he pushed.

The horses barely managed to get going. The sled slid along so slowly it was as though there weren’t any horses under the hood at all, just two men pushing a seat that had been chipped away by an axe.

“C’mon, c’mon! C’mon now!” Crouper shouted.

The sled didn’t gain any speed. Crouper stopped pushing it, brushed the snow off the hood, and opened it.

“What is it?” he asked in a hurt tone of voice.

On seeing their master, the little horses whickered discordantly. From their voices it was clear that they were tired and half frozen.

“Ain’t I fed you?” Crouper took off his mitten and petted the horses’ backs. “Ain’t I took care of you? What’s this? C’mon, c’mon now!”

He gave the horses a push. They tossed their heads, bared their teeth, snorted, and looked at their master.

“Yur the only hope now, you good-fer-nothins,” he said, stroking them. “Just got a teeny ways more to go, and here yur wantin’ to loaf about. C’mon now, c’mon!”

He patted the horses on the back.

The doctor started doing exercises and waving his arms. Crouper leaned over under the hood, so that he was hanging right over the horses, his face almost touching them.

“C’mon now, c’mon!”

The horses raised their mouths as much as their collars would allow and started whinnying and grabbing at his face with their lips.

“Go on, tell me, tell me all about it!” Crouper grinned.

Friendly whinnying filled the sledmobile’s hood. The horses stretched toward their master; frosty horse noses pushed at the man’s cheeks and nose and tugged at the tufts of his thin beard. Crouper blew on them hard, as though pushing them away. But this just excited the horses even more. The roan, reaching back harder than the others, almost dislodging his collar, stretched his neck out, bared his teeth, and grabbed his master by the bridge of his nose.

“Ay, ay, ay,” said Crouper, flicking him on the back.

The horses whickered.

“Now that’s it, that’s more like it,” Crouper patted them approvingly. “Ain’t dead, is ye? And none of that!”

Winking at the little horses, he closed the hood, straightened up, and clapped his gloves together to energize himself:

“Let’s go, let’s go!”

The doctor, breathing hard from his exercises, grabbed the back of the seat: “Let’s go!”

Crouper ran around to the other side and grabbed the seat where the axe had nicked it:

“Let’s goooo!”

The sled moved, crawling straight into the storm.

“Let’s go!” roared the doctor.

“Let’s gooooo!” Crouper croaked.

The sled moved across the snow like a cutter across water; Crouper guided it not so much by the barely distinguishable tracks as by his absolute certainty that the road was there, straight ahead, and that it couldn’t be missed.

They drove onto the road.

“Sit down, doctor!” Crouper shouted.

The doctor jumped on as the sled gained momentum, and plopped down on the seat. Crouper pushed the sled a bit longer; then he, too, jumped on and settled down, holding the reins.

The sled drove along the snow-covered road.

Suddenly something happened in the pitch-dark sky, and the travelers could make out a field up ahead, bushes, a black strip of forest to the right, and to the left two huge trees standing alone in the field. They could see the snow falling on the landscape.

The doctor and Crouper lifted their heads: a bright but waning moon shone through a break in the clouds. They could see dark-blue sky between huge masses of gray cloud. “Thank God!” Crouper muttered.

And as though by some miraculous gesture of an unseen hand, the flying snow began to thin and soon stopped altogether. Only an intermittent wind blew snow across the field and road, and rocked the roadside bushes.

“It stopped, yur ’onor!” Crouper laughed, and poked the doctor with his elbow.

“It stopped!” the doctor repeated, with a happy nod of his hat.

Clouds still crawled across the moon, but they seemed weaker. They were quickly blown out of the sky. The stars twinkled, and the moon illuminated everything around them.

The blizzard had stopped.

The snowy road was visible now, the horses pulled, and the sled slid along, its runners whooshing through the freshly fallen snow.

“Looky how lucky, yur ’onor!” Crouper smiled, adjusting his hat. “The lucky man’s rooster will cock-a-doodle-do, and lay him eggs, too.” The doctor was so happy, he wanted to smoke, but he changed his mind: he felt good even without his cigarette. Everything was amazingly beautiful.

The clear night sky expanded above a huge snowy field. The moon reigned supreme in the sky, glinting in a myriad of recently fallen snowflakes and glimmering silver on the frost-covered matting of the hood; on Crouper’s mittens, which held tight to the reins; and on the doctor’s hat, pince-nez, and long fur coat. The stars twinkled like diamonds strewn high in the sky. A chill, faint breeze blew from the right, carrying the smell of nighttime, fresh snow, and a far-off human dwelling.

The previous joyful and overflowing feeling of life returned to the doctor; he forgot his exhaustion and his freezing feet, and took a deep breath of the frosty night air.

“The overcoming of obstacles, awareness of your path, steadfastness…,” he thought, yielding with pleasure to the beauty of the surrounding world. “Each person is born to find his own way in life. God gave us life and he wants one thing from us: that we realize why he gave us this life. It wasn’t simply to live without meaning, like a plant or animal. We were meant to understand three things: who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed. For example, I, Dr. Garin, Homo sapiens, created in his image and likeness, am traveling along this field at night to a village, to sick people, in order to help them, to safeguard them from an epidemic. This is the essence of my life, here and now. And if that shining moon were to suddenly collapse and life were to cease, then at that very second I would be worthy of being called a Human Being, because I didn’t turn away from my path. How wonderful!”

Suddenly the horses whinnied and snorted, stamping on the drive belt. The sled slowed down.

“What is it?” Crouper adjusted his hat.

The horses stopped and snorted.

Crouper stood up and looked ahead. On the right, two shadows passed among the thin undergrowth.

“Not wolves?” Crouper jumped down into the snow, took off his hat, and looked closely.

The doctor couldn’t make out anything in particular. But suddenly two pairs of yellow eyes shone in the bushes.

“Wolves!” Crouper exclaimed, waving his hat. “Oy, that’s bad luck…”

“Wolves.” The doctor nodded in agreement. “Don’t be scared. I have a revolver.”

“The horses won’t go that way.” Crouper put on his hat and whacked his mitten on the hood. “Oh, Lord, just what we needs…”

“We’ll scare them off!” the doctor exclaimed. He jumped down from the sled, went around to the back, and began unfastening his traveling bag.

“Two more…,” Crouper said, noticing two wolves further off, to the left.

He looked straight ahead and could make out another wolf calmly crossing the moonlit field in the distance.

“Five!” he shouted to the doctor.

The wolves began to howl.

The horses snorted and neighed in fear.

“Don’t ye be scared, I won’t let ’em getcha.” Crouper slapped his mitten on the hood.

The doctor finally unstrapped his snow-dusted traveling bag, brought it around, and threw it on the seat; he opened it, took out his small, snub-nosed revolver, and cocked the trigger.

“Where are they?”

“Thataways.” Crouper waved his mitten.

The doctor took four steps in the direction of the wolves, but went off the road and plunged into deep snow. He grabbed on to some bushes and shot three times. Yellow flashes illuminated the moonlit plain.

The shots made the doctor’s ears ring.

The wolves trotted off to the right, all five, one after the other. The doctor saw them:

“Now, you…”

He fired two more shots after them.

The wolves continued at the same pace. They soon disappeared into the bushes.

“There, now.” The doctor stuck his revolver, still smelling of gunpowder, into his pocket, and turned to Crouper: “The path is clear!”

“The path is clear…,” said Crouper, fussing about, and opening the sled hood. “But the horses, now…”

“What about the horses?”

“They’re afraid of the wolf smell.”

The doctor looked over in the direction the wolves had gone. They had disappeared from the field.

“But their tracks are cold!” he said, shaking his hat. “What smell?”

Paying him no mind, Crouper threw back the matting. The horses stood silently inside the hood. Turning their heads, they looked at Crouper.

“Don’t ye be scared none, I won’t let ’em getcha,” he told them.

They stood, staring, moving their tiny ears. Their eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

“What’s wrong with them?” The doctor leaned over the hood.

“Let ’em stand a spell.” Crouper scratched his head under his hat. “And then we’ll be off.”

“What do you mean, ‘Let them stand’?”

“They had a fright.”

The doctor peered at Crouper.

“I’ll tell you what: don’t play games with me. Had a fright! Am I supposed to dawdle about here all night with you?! Sit down right now! You get them going, damn it! Make it quick! Had a fright! I’ll give you a fright! They’ve been standing long enough! Come on now, make it quick!”

The doctor’s loud voice carried over the field.

Crouper obediently began to cover the horses.

The doctor sat down, placing his traveling bag at his feet; he touched the package with the pyramids—it was still there.

Crouper sat next to him, took hold of the rudder, gave the reins a jerk, and made a clucking noise with his tongue: “C’mon now, my lovelies.”

It was quiet under the hood, as though it were empty. Turning to look at the doctor, Crouper clucked again:

“C’mon!”

Utter silence reigned under the hood.

“Are you mocking me?” asked the doctor impatiently. “All right, give me the whip! Open it up!”

He pulled the little whip out of the case.

“They won’t go, yur ’onor, sir.”

“Open it up, I told you!”

“Don’t, sir. The wolves gets ’em all nervous-like. They won’t move till they comes out of it. One time I hadda stand with ’em near Khliupin fer near on two hours…”

“O-pen up! Open it up!” the doctor shouted, and shoved Crouper.

Crouper fell off the coachman’s seat, lost his hat, and floundered in the snow. The doctor jumped down awkwardly and began pulling the matting off the hood:

“Stand around and wait, will you! I’ll teach you to stand around! People are dying, and he says we should wait!”

Holding his hat in hand, Crouper approached the doctor:

“Yur ’onor, don’t do it.”

“I’ll show you—huh—stand and wait…,” the doctor muttered, pulling the frozen loops of the matting from the hooks.

He suddenly realized that it was Crouper, this aimless man, lacking all ambition, with his disorganized slowness and centuries-old peasant reliance on “somehow or another” and “with luck, everything will turn out,” who was preventing them from moving directly toward the doctor’s goal.

“You stinking asshole!” the doctor thought angrily.

Having pulled off half of the matting, he threw it back.

The little horses stood bathed in moonlight, looking like porcelain figurines. They stared at the doctor.

“Now I’ll show you—get a mooooove on!” The doctor waved the little whip, but Crouper grabbed his hand:

“Yur ’onor…”

“How dare you?” The doctor jerked his hand away. “What do you think you’re…? Are you trying to sabotage…?”

“Yur ’onor…” Crouper wriggled in between the doctor and the sled. “Don’t hit ’em.”

“You just … I’ll sue you, you scoundrel!”

“Yur ’onor, don’t hit ’em, they ain’t ever bin hit…”

“You just—out of the way!”

“I ain’t gonna move, yur ’onor, sir.”

“Get back, asshole!”

“I ain’t gonna.”

The doctor threw the whip aside, drew back his fist, and punched Crouper in the face. Crouper fell helplessly into the snow.

“Beat me, but I ain’t gonna let no one tetch ’em!” he shouted in such a downtrodden and desperate voice that the doctor froze, his fist raised in readiness for another blow.

“What am I doing?” The doctor stepped back, surprised by his own fury.

Crouper floundered in the snow, then he managed to sit up, leaning against the sled, and silently picked up his hat. His birdlike face was still smiling, the doctor thought. Crouper put on his hat and remained sitting.

It was surprising that there hadn’t been a peep out of the horses.

The doctor sighed heavily, walked off a bit, retrieved a cigarette, and lit up.

Far, far off, a wolf howled.

“How stupid…,” the doctor thought. “I lost my temper. Why? Everything seemed to be working out, and the blizzard has stopped. But he doesn’t want to move. Ridiculous!”

He remembered that the last time he had punched a man in the face was at home in Repishnaya, when they’d had to tie up three guys who’d eaten poison mushrooms. He’d had to hit one of them twice.

“And now here I am, back at it,” the doctor thought, annoyed at himself. He threw down his unfinished cigarette.

The doctor walked over to Crouper and squatted. He put his hand on Crouper’s shoulder:

“Kozma, don’t … don’t be mad.”

“Why shud I…” Crouper grinned.

The doctor noticed that Crouper’s split lip was bleeding. He pulled his handkerchief out and pressed it against Crouper’s mouth.

“It weren’t nothin’, yur ’onor…” Crouper pushed his arm away and spat.

The doctor grabbed him under the arm to help him up: “Come on now.”

Crouper stood up, leaning against the sled. He pressed his lip to his mitten.

“Don’t be mad.” The doctor clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m just tired.”

Crouper grinned.

“We have to go,” said the doctor, rocking Crouper’s light body.

“That’s sure enough.”

“Well, then, why are we standing around? Let’s be off.”

“They won’t move, yur ’onor. They gotta get over the willies.”

The doctor was about to say something harsh and weighty, but changed his mind and tramped off in a fit of pique. Crouper stood there, spitting and touching his mitten to his lip; then he covered the horses and fastened the matting.

“They needs an hour to come out of it. And then we’ll be off.”

“Do whatever you need to.”

The doctor sat down on his seat, wrapped the rug around tight, and shivered; only his nose and the sparkle of his pince-nez could be seen from under his hat. He was suddenly chilled and uncomfortable, and not simply from the cold. The optimism and energy he’d had when he left the Vitaminders had vanished. The doctor felt cold and disgusted.

“A pile of shit…,” he thought, thrusting his gloved hands into the deep pockets of his fur coat and feeling the cold revolver in his right pocket. “Our life is nothing but a pile of shit…”

“Schweinerei!” He spoke the German word aloud.

Crouper climbed up onto the seat and sat next to the doctor. He showed no bitterness or offense. There was just his swollen upper lip, which made his birdlike mouth look even funnier.

They sat that way for about ten minutes. The moon was still shining in the cleared sky, and the wind had died down. A frosty silence reigned. The only sound was that of the horses’ hooves stepping about cautiously inside the hood.

“Maybe a drink?” the doctor asked himself out loud.

Crouper just sighed.

“Just a swig apiece?” asked the doctor, turning toward him.

Crouper sniffed:

“We ain’t agin’ it, yur ’onor. It’s shiverin’ cold, so why not?”

“That’s true.” The doctor nodded. Leaning over, he opened his travel bag, rummaged around in it, grunting, and pulled out a round bottle that contained rubbing alcohol.

He pulled the rubber cork out, inhaled, and raised his arm, looking at the moon through the thick glass: “To our health.”

He took a large swig, placed his left hand to his lips, and slowly exhaled into the cold glove, which smelled of smoke from the fire. The alcohol burned as it moved down his throat, causing him to remember the copper kettle filled with boiling oil.

“Va, pensiero…,” he muttered, exhausted, as he drew the freezing air in through his nose. Then he burst out laughing.

Crouper looked over at him.

“Here, drink.” The doctor handed him the bottle.

Crouper took it with both hands, leaned over, and slowly leaned back as he took a gulp. He held his breath for a moment, and sat stock-still. Then he grunted like a peasant, shook his head, and handed the bottle to the doctor.

“Good?” asked the doctor.

“Good,” Crouper replied, breathing through his nose noisily.

The doctor closed the bottle and put it away in his travel bag. He squeezed Crouper by the wrist.

“Don’t be mad.”

“It’s all right.”

“I’m just tired … Sick of everything.”

Crouper nodded. The doctor looked around glumly.

“You hurry up those horses of yours somehow, hear?”

“They’ll go on their own soon. It’s in the little ones’ blood, yur ’onor. They’re scared of dogs and wolves. And weasels.”

“But the wolf tracks are cold!” the doctor exclaimed with a hurt expression.

“That’s right, but the fright’s still there.”

“Not that much farther to go, anyway.”

“We’ll get there.”

“There are very sick patients waiting for me,” the doctor said without any hint of reproach. He retrieved his cigarettes.

Crouper raised the collar of his sheepskin coat, shivered, and grew quiet.

The doctor, on the contrary, felt a surge of energy and warmth after drinking the alcohol. It felt like a tropical flower had blossomed in his belly.

“Down to the last two!” He grinned as he showed Crouper his cigarette case.

Crouper didn’t move.

The doctor lit up. The irritability and impatience had left him. He smoked and squinted into the snowy plain. His eyes teared up, but he didn’t feel like moving and wiping them. He blinked, but the tears stayed in his eyes, making everything around him swim, and the corners of his eyes felt pleasantly cool.

“Why are we always hurrying somewhere?” he thought, inhaling the cigarette smoke and blowing it out again with pleasure. “I was in a hurry to get to Dolgoye. What would happen if I arrived tomorrow? Or the day after? Nothing at all. The people who’ve been infected and bitten will never be people again anyway. They’re doomed to be shot. And the ones who’ve barricaded themselves inside their izbas will wait for me one way or the other. They’ll be vaccinated. And they’ll no longer fear the Bolivian plague. Zilberstein won’t be happy, of course. He’s waiting for me, cursing me up and down. But it’s not in my power to overcome this cold, snowy expanse with a wave of my hand. I can’t fly over the snowdrifts…”

Finishing his papirosa slowly, he tossed the butt into the snow.

A cloud crawled over the moon, plunging the field into the dark of night.

“Sleeping?” The doctor poked the driver.

“Naw,” Crouper answered.

“Don’t sleep.”

“I ain’t sleepin’.”

The cloud moved past the moon. The field brightened again.

Crouper felt warm and calm after drinking the liquor. He sat with his knees pulled to his chest, holding on to his sides, his hat practically down to his nose. He peeped out at the expanse of moonlit field. He no longer thought about his unheated house, he just sat there and looked. The doctor was on the verge of asking him about the horses, when and why they first became scared of wolves, how soon they’d come out of it and be ready to pull the sled, but he changed his mind. He, too, sat motionless, giving himself over to the absolute calm stretching all around him.

The wind had completely died down.

They sat like this for a while longer. Neither the doctor nor Crouper wanted to move. Tufts of cloud crawled across the moon and moved on, crawled across the moon and moved on. Crawled across the moon and moved on.

The doctor remembered that there was still a bit of alcohol left in the bottle. He took it out and took two large gulps with a pause between. He caught his breath and handed the bottle to Crouper:

“Drink up the rest.”

Crouper came out of his trance, took the bottle, drank the remainder obediently, and put his mitten to his mouth. Stashing the empty bottle in the travel bag, the doctor scooped some snow from the matting, put it into his mouth, and chewed on it. Warmth spread throughout his insides once again. He cheered up and felt a surge of energy. He wanted to move and do something.

“What do you say, my good fellow, let’s be off!” The doctor clapped Crouper on the shoulder. “Can’t stay here forever.”

Crouper got down, turned back the matting, and looked inside the hood. The horses looked at him.

“Let’s go,” Crouper said to them.

Hearing these familiar human words, the horses neighed discordantly. Nodding in approval, Crouper covered them, sat down, and tugged on the reins:

“Heigh-yup!”

The horses’ hooves clattered timidly on the drive belt, as though they’d forgotten how to do the work humans needed them to do.

“Heigh-yup!”

The sled jerked, and the runners squeaked.

“Heigh-yup!” the doctor shouted, laughing.

The sled took off.

“Now that’s more like it! And not a wolf in sight!” The doctor poked Crouper in the ribs.

“They got ’customed.” Crouper smiled with his swollen lip.

They slid smoothly across the field. The snowy road could be seen quite well: it protruded slightly, stretching like a ribbon toward the dark horizon.

“That’s more like it. And not a wolf in sight!” the doctor repeated, patting himself on the knees.

He was in a good mood.

The horses slowly gathered speed.

“There we go, there we go…” The doctor kept patting his knees happily.

They passed through a bit of forest and came out into a large, clear field again. The moon shone bright.

“Why are they so weak?” the doctor asked, elbowing Crouper. “Don’t you feed them well?”

“I feed ’em enough, yur ’onor.”

“Give them a taste of the lash, make them run like the wind!”

“They ain’t got over their fright as yet.”

“What are they—foals?”

“Naw, they ain’t foals no more.”

“Then why are they so slow? Come now, use the lash!”

“Heigh-yup, c’mon!” Crouper slapped the reins.

The horses sped up a bit. But it wasn’t enough for the doctor.

“Why are they crawling along like slugs?! Heigh! Get going!” he said, knocking on the top of the hood.

The horses sped up some more.

“Now that’s more like it…,” said the doctor happily. “Not much farther to go now. Yup yup! Get going!”

“Heigh-yup, yup!” Crouper shouted and clucked.

He suddenly wanted to show off his horses, although he realized that they were tired.

“Aw, let ’em run for it at the end, maybe as they’ll warm ’emselves!” he thought. He himself felt a jolly warmth throughout after polishing off the alcohol.

“Come on now—give them a taste of the whip!” the doctor demanded. “Why are they hiding in there like mice in a pantry? Take that sackcloth off!”

“Well, that’s right now, it c’n come off … Ain’t snowin’, and it ain’t too cold…,” Crouper thought, and deftly unfastened the matting as they went, rolling it up.

The doctor saw the horses’ moonlit backs. They looked just like toys.

“Come on, let me…” The doctor pulled the whip out of the case.

“Aw, why not let ’im crack it,” Crouper thought.

The doctor stood, drew back, and cracked the whip over the horses’ backs. “Yip-yip!”

They ran faster. The doctor cracked the whip again:

“Heigh-yuuup!”

The horses snorted and picked up speed. Their legs gleamed and their backs undulated, reminding the doctor of the rough, surging sea that he and Nadine had seen in October in Yalta, the sea he hadn’t wanted to enter at all at the time; he’d stood on the shore, staring at the waves, and Nadine, in her striped bathing suit, kept pulling him into the water, teasing him for being overly cautious.

“Heigh-yup!” He lashed the horses so hard that a shiver went down their spines.

They rushed ahead. The sled flew across the field.

“See, that’s the way to do it!” the doctor shouted in Crouper’s ear.

The frosty air slapped them in the face. Crouper whistled.

The horses ran, and the snow swooshed under the runners.

“That’s the ticket! There you go!” The doctor plopped down on the seat, waving the whip. “That’s the way to go!”

Crouper whistled as he drove along skillfully. He felt good, too; he realized that it was only another three versts to Dolgoye. The field ended, and fir trees began to appear along the sides of the road. Pretty fir trees, cleared of snow, lined the way.

“Let’s goooo!” the doctor shouted, whirling the whip over the horses and knocking the pince-nez off of his nose.

The sled sped through the fir trees. Crouper could make out the contours of a firmly packed bump or hill ahead on the road, but he didn’t slow the horses:

“We’ll skip on by!”

The sled flew up and hit the hill hard; a crack resounded. The travelers flew off their seats and landed in the snow. The sled stopped on the hill, leaning heavily to one side. The horses snorted and stomped under the hood.

“Damn it…,” the doctor muttered. He’d lost his hat, and grabbed his knee, wincing with pain.

“Shit…” Crouper pulled his head out of a snowdrift and rubbed the snow off his face.

He floundered about in the drift, looking for his hat, but, on hearing the horses’ frightened snorts, he hurried to them and checked under the hood. The horses whickered, looking for help from their master.

“Now, now…” Pulling off his mittens, he began petting them gently. “It’s all right, all right … Not hurt, are ye?”

None of the horses appeared to be injured. The collars and the strong straps had held them.

“Y’er all right, all right … Coulda been worse…” He stroked their backs, which were damp and steaming from running.

Holding his knee, the doctor moaned. He had whacked it hard against the sled.

Once the horses were calm, Crouper went looking for his hat. Fortunately, the moon was bright and still free of clouds. Crouper soon found the hat, shook the snow off, and stuck it on his head. Then he went over to the doctor. The doctor was sitting in the snow, moaning, shaking his uncovered head, and cursing. Crouper picked up the doctor’s hat and put it on him.

“Ain’t broke nothing, did ye?” Crouper asked.

“Damn…” The doctor felt his knee. “I don’t think so. Damn … It hurts…”

Crouper grabbed him under the arms. Cautiously, the doctor tried to stand but immediately moaned and fell back in the snow:

‘Wait a minute…”

Crouper squatted nearby and only then realized that he’d broken his lower front tooth against the rudder.

“Ay, darn it…” He touched the broken tooth in his mouth, shook his head, and grinned: “How d’ye like that!”

The doctor scooped up snow and held it to his knee:

“Just a minute…”

Holding the snow, he turned unseeing eyes on Crouper:

“What was it?”

“Cain’t say, yur ’onor…” Crouper touched his tooth. “We’ll take a look.”

“Why didn’t you hold the horses back?”

“You was the one floggin’ ’em on!”

“I was flogging!” The doctor shook his head indignantly. “I flogged, but you were steering, you damned idiot … Damn … Hmmm … Ouch!”

He winced, leaning over his knee, his fat lips puffing.

“I thought: it’s just a little bump, we’ll skip right over.”

“We sure skipped over it!” the doctor laughed bitterly. “I almost broke my neck…”

“And the bump is smooth,” said Crouper, standing up and walking over to the sled.

He walked around to the front, looked closely, and froze. He crossed himself:

“God a’mighty. Yur ’onor, take a look at what we runned into.”

“Wait, you fool…,” the doctor moaned.

“Lord a’mighty, tarnation! Yur ’onor!”

“Shut up, you fool.”

“It’s a … Ain’t no one’ll believe it…”

“Ow…” The doctor rubbed his knee. “Give me your hand.”

“Lordy, why such a misfortune, what did I do…?” Crouper sat down and anxiously slapped his mittens on his felt boots.

“I said, give me a hand!”

Crouper returned to the doctor and helped him stand:

“God must be mad at me, yur ’onor. Looky what’s come ’bout.”

He appeared totally lost, and the smile on his birdlike mouth was pitiful, like a beggar’s.

The doctor finally managed to stand and straighten up. Leaning on Crouper, he stepped on the hurt leg. He moaned. He stood a bit, panting. He took another step:

“Ow, damn it…”

He stood, frowning. Then he hit Crouper upside the head.

“Where have you taken me, you idiot?!”

Crouper didn’t even flinch.

“Where’ve you taken me?!” the doctor screamed into his hat.

A strong, pleasant smell of alcohol came from the doctor.

“Yur ’onor, there’s a … over there…” Crouper shook his head. “Prob’ly better ye don’t look.”

“You idiot!” The doctor put on his pince-nez, took a step, frowning, glanced at the listing sled, and threw up his hands. “What kind of bastard are you?!”

Crouper said nothing.

“Bastard!”

The doctor’s voice thundered through the snow-covered fir trees.

Crouper stepped away toward the tip of the sled and stood there, sniffling.

“Were you just born an idiot or what?” Limping, the doctor hobbled over to him, stopped, and looked.

And froze, his eyebrows raised.

Right in front of the sled, something was sticking out from under the snow. At first the doctor thought it was the twisted stump of an old tree. But when he looked closer, he could make out the head of a dead giant. The sled’s right runner had run straight into his left nostril.

The doctor couldn’t believe his eyes; he blinked and moved closer: the hill they’d flown up was nothing other than the corpse of one of the big ones, covered in snow.

Forgetting all about the pain in his knee, Platon Ilich approached the sled and leaned over. The huge, frozen head had tangled hair, a wrinkled brow, and thick eyebrows; the force of the blow had knocked some of the snow off of it. The runner had disappeared into the nostril of the fleshy nose. The snowflakes on the giant’s eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair shimmered silver in the moonlight. One dead eye was full of snow; the other, half closed, stared threateningly at the night sky.

“Oh my God in heaven,” muttered the doctor.

“Well, that’s the thing of it…,” Crouper said with a doomed nod.

The doctor squatted next to the head and brushed the snow off the covered eye. It, too, was half closed. The mouth was hidden in a snowy beard, and the tip of the sled hung above it. Attached to the giant’s protruding ear was a heavy copper earring in the form and size of a sixty-pound weight. It sparkled in the snow.

The doctor touched the earring cautiously. He touched the enormous, frozen nose with its rough, greasy, pimply skin. He turned around. Crouper stood there, and from the sorrowful expression on his face one might have thought that the sled had driven into the nostril of his long-lost brother.

The doctor began laughing and fell back into the snow. His laughter rang out amid the firs. The horses replied with uneasy whinnies from inside the sled. This elicited a new fit of laughter from the doctor. He writhed on his back in the snow, laughing, his pince-nez sparkling and his fleshy mouth open wide.

Crouper stood still, like a wet jackdaw. Then he began to cluck his tongue. He smiled and shook his absurdly large hat.

“You’re a real master, Kozma!” The doctor wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes.

“Well now, how on earth?… No one’d believe it, if’n we told ’em, yur ’onor.”

“They certainly wouldn’t!” exclaimed the doctor, shaking his hat.

He stood up and brushed off the snow. Limping, he stepped back and looked:

“That lug must be about six meters tall … Had to go and kick the bucket here…”

Crouper noticed a large, round object under the snow next to the giant’s corpse. He pushed the object with his foot, knocking the snow off. A basket of woven twigs appeared. Crouper brushed off the snow with his mitten: glass sparkled. He cleaned the snow off the object. It turned out to be a large, three-bucket, green glass bottle set in a basket holder.

“So that’s it, yur ’onor…” Crouper cleared the snow from the enormous bottleneck, and sniffed it. “Vodka!”

He kicked the crust of ice on the bottle, knocked it off, and turned it over. Not a drop came out.

“Drunk up the whole thing, he did,” Crouper concluded reproachfully.

“He drank it,” the doctor agreed, “and gave up the ghost right on the road. There you have it, good old Russian stupidity.”

“Coulda least leaned up against a tree,” said Crouper, scratching his rear end. He realized he’d said something silly: this giant could only have leaned against a hundred-year-old fir, not one of the young saplings all around.

“Get drunk and collapse on the road … Utter idiocy! Russian stupidity!” The red-faced doctor smiled wryly; he took out his cigarette case and lit up the last papirosa.

“The worst part is—it’s the same runner crashed again, yur ’onor.” Crouper sniffed and scratched himself. “If only it hadn’t of…”

“What?” The doctor didn’t follow. He puffed on his cigarette.

“It’s the same runner what cracked back apiece.”

“You’re kidding! The same one? Damn it! So what are you standing around for?! Pull it out of that lout!”

“Just a minute, yur ’onor…”

Crouper looked in at the horses, leaned hard against the sled, and clucked:

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

Snorting, the horses began to step backward. But the sled didn’t budge. Crouper realized what the problem was; he looked under the sled and clucked sorrowfully:

“We’re just hanging in air, yur ’onor. The drive belt ain’t even touchin’ the snow.”

“Come on, then…” Reeking of alcohol and having forgotten about his knee, the doctor clenched the cigarette in his teeth and put his shoulder to the sled. “Come on, nooowww!”

Crouper leaned in, too. The sled shook, but the giant’s head didn’t release the runner.

“Stuck…,” Crouper exhaled.

“Right in the nose!” the doctor exclaimed, and laughed again.

“Have to chop it off.” Crouper reached into the coachman’s seat for the axe.

“The runner?!” The doctor raised an indignant eyebrow.

“The nose.”

“Chop away, my man, chop away.” The doctor took one last drag and tossed his cigarette butt aside.

The moon shone brightly. The fir trees stood around like part of a living Christmas card.

The doctor unfastened his coat; he was hot. Crouper approached the head, holding the axe in hand. He eyed the head and began to chop at the nostril that the runner had entered. Panting heavily, the doctor leaned his elbow against the sled and watched Crouper’s work.

Pieces of frozen flesh flew out from under the axe. Then came a dull thud as the axe struck bone.

“Just don’t chop up the runner,” the doctor commanded.

“A’course not…,” Crouper muttered.

As he hacked away at the enormous frozen nose, Kozma remembered the first time he’d ever seen one of the big people. He was ten at the time. He wasn’t living in Dolbeshino but in his father’s home in the prosperous village of Pokrovskoye. That summer the autumn fair was moved from Dolgoye to Pokrovskoye. The local merchants decided to cut down Rotten Grove and build stands for the fair. The ancient oak grove had been in Pokrovskoye since the olden days, when there was a landowner’s estate house, which had been burned down during the Red Troubles. The oaks in the grove were enormous, dried out, and some of them were decaying and rotting. Boys played war or werewolves in the huge hollows of these oaks. And now they’d decided to cut the grove down. The merchants of Pokrovskoye had hired three giants for this: Avdot, Borka, and Viakhir. On a warm summer evening, they entered Pokrovskoye, each carrying a knapsack, a saw, and a cleaver on his shoulders. Like the frozen creature on the road, these giants were five to six meters tall. Boys greeted them with hoots and whistles. But the big ones treated the little boys like sparrows and paid them no mind. They set up in the old threshing barn of the merchant Baksheev, and in the morning began clearing the oaks. Little Kozma was both frightened and excited as he watched them work: when the big ones went about their task, everything cracked and collapsed. They not only toppled all the oaks, sawed them into logs, and chopped them into pieces, but also pulled the huge oak stumps out by the roots and split them into firewood. In the evenings, they drank about three buckets of milk apiece and ate mashed potatoes with lard; they sat on oak stumps and sang in rough, thundering voices. Kozma remembered one song, which lop-eared, red-faced Avdot had sung in a slow, deep, scary voice:

You carried me, Mátushka,

In your womb,

You wailed, Kasátushka,

Over my tomb.

Then Avdot and Viakhir fought over money. Viakhir beat Avdot, who got mad and left Pokrovskoye without waiting until the work was finished. As the womenfolk told it, he spit blood all along the road from Pokrovskoye to Borovki. Since Avdot left, the Pokrovskoye merchants paid the giants a third less. So they had their revenge the last night and took a dump in merchant Baksheev’s well. It took him three days to clean his well after that; they hauled out buckets and buckets of giant shit …

Crouper had trouble chopping through the nose cartilage. The runner that had caught in the nostril was visible now. Crouper and the doctor rocked the sled, but the runner wouldn’t come loose.

“The runner pierced the maxillary sinus and got stuck there,” said the doctor, examining the situation. “Chop right here, from the top!”

Crouper tore off his mittens, spit on his hands, and began to chop at the frontal bone. The bone proved hard and thick. Crouper rested twice as he chopped deeper into it. Pieces of white bone flew out from under the axe, sparkling in the moonlight.

“When you fell trees, chips will fly,” said the doctor, remembering his great-grandfather’s favorite saying.

Garin’s great-grandfather, an accountant, often reminisced about the distant Stalin era, when that saying was popular with the authorities and the people.

Crouper made it through the bone and then, instead of white chips, greenish ones flew from under the axe.

“Aha! He had sinusitis…,” thought the doctor, squinting at the giant professionally. “Probably a vagrant. He was walking, drinking. Got drunk, stumbled, fell asleep. Froze …

“Russia…,” he muttered, and recalled how he’d once treated a giant who’d developed a hernia. The big one had been hired in Repishnaya for earthwork. He’d dug a foundation pit with his huge shovel, and then moved a barn and overexerted himself. When Garin, along with three volunteers, fixed the hernia, the big one howled, chomped on the chains that had been used to hold him fast to the floor, and roared:

“Don’t! Don’t!”

They fixed the hernia successfully that time …

“Chopped right through, tarnation.” Exhausted, Crouper straightened up, took off his hat, and wiped his face.

“Hmm…” A cloud had crossed the moon, and in the dim light the doctor examined the light stripe of the runner in the pit of the head. The giant’s face, disfigured by the axe, looked ominous.

“Shud we push it back?” Throwing down the axe, Crouper leaned against the nose of the sled.

“Let’s push!” The doctor leaned against the other side.

Crouper clicked, clucked, and cooed; the horses began stepping backward, and the runner slid out.

“Thank God!” the doctor sighed in relief.

Crouper dropped to his knees and felt the runner:

“Ay, damnation…”

“What is it?” The doctor leaned over and, as the moonlight returned, he could clearly see the broken runner, the point of which had remained forever in the maxillary sinus of the corpse. “Damn…”

“Broke off, that’s what it did.” Panting, Crouper blew his nose loudly.

The doctor instantly felt a chill.

“And what will we do now?” he asked with growing irritation.

Crouper said nothing, he just stood there breathing hard and sniffing. Then he picked up the axe:

“Gots to cut a runner and fix it to this one.”

“What, we won’t make it?”

“Won’t make it this aways.”

“We won’t make it on the second runner?”

“No, yur ’onor.”

“Why not?”

“The other one’ll get stuck in the snow—and that’ll be the end of it.”

The doctor understood.

“It broked off on account of it was cracked already.” Crouper sighed. “If it’d been in one piece it wouldn’t of broked off. But it was gonna break for sure.”

The doctor spat angrily, reached for his cigarettes, and remembered that they were all gone. He spat again.

“Alrighty, I’ll go look fer a crooked tree branch,” said Crouper, and headed off across the snow into the fir trees.

“Don’t be long!” the doctor demanded irritably.

“Depends on how it goes…”

He disappeared into the trees.

“Idiot,” muttered the doctor after him.

He stood near the ill-starred head awhile, then climbed onto the sled seat, wrapped himself in the rug, pulled his hat down all the way to his eyes, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and sat motionless. The doctor could still feel the effect of the liquor, but it was beginning to pass, and he felt chilled.

“How absurd!” he thought.

And he quickly dozed off.

He began dreaming of a huge feast in an enormous, brightly lit hall, something like the banquet hall at the House of Scientists in Moscow. It was filled with acquaintances and strangers who had something to do with him, his profession, and his private life; people were congratulating him. They were happy for him, lifted their glasses high for toasts, spoke solemn grandiloquent words, and he, understanding neither the reason for this feast nor the meaning of the congratulations and excitement, forced himself to nod and respond to the congratulations, attempted to carry himself grandly with an air of certainty and joy, although he recognized the problematic nature of the whole affair. Suddenly one of the guests clambered onto the table, and everyone stopped and stared at him. Platon Ilich recognized the man as Professor Amlinsky, who had lectured on suppurative surgery in medical school. Amlinsky, wearing a tuxedo and an attentively tired expression on his beardless face, stood up straight, crossed his hands on his chest theatrically, and without a word began to dance a strange dance, striking the heels of his laced boots hard on the table; there was something ceremonial, sinister, and significant in the dance, which everyone there understood, and which Platon Ilich immediately guessed. He realized that the dance was called “Rogud” and that it was a commemorative medical dance, dedicated personally to him, Doctor Platon Ilich Garin, and that all these people gathered at the table had come to Garin’s wake. Terror seized Platon Ilich. In a trance, he watched Amlinsky dance with abandon, marking an ominous beat on the table with such force that the dishes jumped and clinked; he danced, making strange circular movements with his rear end and head, first crouching, then straightening up, nodding and winking at everyone. The miller’s wife sat near Platon Ilich. She was beautifully dressed; a spray of diamonds shone around her plump, well-groomed face. She was Amlinsky’s wife, and had been for a long time, as it happened. The air was fragrant with perfume and the smells of her smooth, well-tended body. Her vivid face drew close to Garin’s, and she whispered to him with a lewd smile:

“A meaty, pompous hint!”

The doctor woke up.

As soon as he moved, a ferocious shudder shook his body. Trembling, he lifted the hat from his eyes. It was dark and cold all around. Crouper was chopping something in the darkness. The moon had hidden behind clouds.

The doctor moved some more, but the shivers went through him so profoundly that he bellowed, and his teeth began to chatter. He was suddenly frightened. He had never experienced such terrifying, penetrating cold in his life. He realized that he would never get out of this accursed, endless winter night.

“L-lor-d-d h-h-have m-m-mer-cy…,” he began to pray, his teeth chattering so hard and fast it was as though someone had attached them to a motor made by the Klacker company.

Crouper continued to chop in the darkness.

“Lo-lo-lor-d-d … p-pro-t-tec-t m-me and lead-d m-me…,” the doctor moaned, trembling, as though in pain.

“There now…,” he heard Crouper mutter, and the chopping stopped.

While the doctor dozed, Crouper had found a small fir tree with a bent trunk in the forest; he had cut it down, chopped off the branches, attached it to the sled, and whittled it into a semblance of a runner. It wasn’t much to look at, was even ridiculous looking, but was quite capable of getting them to Dolgoye. It had to be nailed to the broken runner. And there was even the means: when Crouper had repaired the runner at the miller’s, he’d grabbed three nails.

“Shuda taken at least four,” he thought.

But he reassured himself aloud: “Three’ll do it.”

Noticing that the doctor was agitated and mumbling, Crouper went up to him:

“Yur ’onor, help me out.”

“L-lord … Lor-d-d…” The doctor shook.

“Cold?” Crouper realized.

After working, he wasn’t cold.

“St-st-start a f-fire…,” the doctor chattered.

“A fire?” Crouper scratched under his hat and looked up at the hidden moon. “That’s right, now … Cain’t see a darn thing … Won’t hit the nail…”

“St-st-start … st-st-st-start…” The doctor kept shaking as though he were feverish.

“Just give me a minute.”

Grabbing the axe, Crouper went into the fir grove to look for a dry tree. He had to look for some time: as if to thwart him, the moon stayed behind clouds, and he had to feel about. The dry fir turned out to be larger than the others, and its hard, withered trunk wouldn’t take the axe blade. Crouper hacked for a long time. When he’d cut it down, he dragged it toward the sled but got stuck between two other fir trees and fussed about, chopping off branches in the darkness, almost whacking himself in the leg in the process.

Panting, he dragged the tree to the sled.

The doctor was still sitting on his seat, bent over, with his hands in his pockets.

“Oy, the doctor’s gone and froze plain through…,” thought Crouper. Taking a deep breath, he began to chop branches off the tree.

When he had a fair number, he gathered bunches of thin twigs, broke them in half, took out a lighter, and aimed the blue stream of gas. The fire caught quickly. Crouper dug out the snow with his boot, stuck the burning twigs in the hole, and piled on more branches.

Soon the fire was blazing.

“Doctor, come, get warm!” Crouper shouted.

The doctor pried open his eyelids: tongues of flame danced in the reflection of his pince-nez. He began the painful process of standing up. He had to move his stiff, shivering body to the fire. He shook; from sitting so long, his legs wouldn’t obey him. He moved like a zombie just arisen from the dead. Approaching the fire, he walked straight into the flames, like a drunken fireman.

“Where ye goin’? You’ll burn up!” exclaimed Crouper, pushing him away.

The doctor sat down on the snow and crawled to the fire; he thrust his gloved hands into it.

“Well, go on and burn, then, if you wanna,” Crouper muttered, breaking off a branch.

Soon the doctor cried out and jerked his hands out of the fire; his gloves were smoking.

“Open up yur coat, yur ’onor, so the heat c’n get inside,” Crouper recommended.

Squinting from the smoke, the doctor unfastened his coat with shaking hands.

“There ye go.” Crouper smiled tiredly.

His face was haggard, but his birdlike smile hadn’t dimmed.

They warmed themselves until they’d burned the whole tree. The doctor came round and had stopped shaking. But he was still frightened.

“Why am I afraid?” he thought, gazing at the scattering of small orange embers from the twigs. “It’s dark. It’s cold. So what? Dolgoye is nearby … He’s not scared. And I shouldn’t…”

“Yur ’onor, help me out with the runner?” Crouper asked, picking up the axe from the melting snow.

“What?” The doctor didn’t understand.

“I cut a tip. You hold it, and I’ll nail it. I got three nails.”

The doctor rose silently and fastened his coat. Crouper lit the last fir branch and stuck it in the snow next to the giant’s head. Fire shone in the corpse’s frozen eyes, and the doctor noticed that they were green.

“Let’s go, while it’s still burning!” Crouper ordered, falling to his knees and placing the tip under the broken runner.

The doctor also kneeled, grabbed the pieces of wood, and held them together. Crouper took the three precious nails out of his pocket, put two of them between his teeth, set one in place, and pounded it with three strikes of the axe head. He placed the second nail and knocked it in just as skillfully, but on the fourth strike the axe missed and hit his left hand hard. “Darn!” he exclaimed, and the third nail fell out of his mouth.

The branch burned out, scattering amber ashes.

“Ay…” Shaking his large hand, Crouper dropped the axe and fumbled in the snow. “Where d’ye go…”

The doctor felt about in the snow, too. But they couldn’t find the nail.

“You need light,” the doctor ordered.

“Hold on now…” Crouper felt around, collected the remaining twigs, and lit them.

But the brief flame didn’t help: the nail appeared to have melted into the snow.

“What a fix…,” Crouper said sorrowfully, crawling about the snow.

“What the … How’d you…,” the doctor mumbled, groping around.

“An idiot, that’s how come I dropped it,” Crouper explained.

They searched a bit longer in the faint, bluish light of two lighters, but didn’t find the nail.

“All my fault…” Covered in snow, Crouper kept looking around the runner.

He was very upset about losing the nail. He began to regret that he’d taken only three, out of stupidity and timidity—that he’d been afraid to take at least four nails from the tin.

“Idiot. I’m an idiot.”

He blew his nose, and then used the axe to bend the end of the two nails, which had come out the underside of the freshly hewn boards. He touched them:

“Will we make it on two nails?”

“Strap it with a bandage.” Leaning over, the doctor stared at the repaired runner.

“We c’n do that,” Crouper nodded indifferently. He stood up and opened the hood.

The horses whinnied. Crouper could feel that they were cold.

“C’mon, c’mon, talk to me…” Pulling off his mittens, he started petting and stroking them.

Faint neighs came from under the hood along with steam from the horses. Heated by the horses’ bodies, the space under the hood was the only warm place. The doctor was jealous, and it irritated him that people were freezing but horses were capable of warming themselves. He found the remainder of the bandages, and they wrapped the ill-fated runner. The doctor had hardly finished tying his traditional knot when he heard a faint noise at his back. He lifted his head: it was snowing.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed, looking at the sky.

The sky was thick with clouds. There was no longer any bright moon, nor any sparkling splatter of stars. Snow fell straight down in heaps; it was falling so thickly that everything around disappeared. As though mocking the travelers, taking revenge for an hour or so of brightness and calm, the snow fell heavy, fast, and dense.

“Just what we was waitin’ fer…” Crouper grinned wryly and covered the horses.

“How will we go on?” the doctor asked, looking around.

“We’ll just go on, like God wills,” Crouper answered. He moved the rudder to the left and shouted at the horses.

The sled jerked, and slid off the corpse. Crouper directed it onto what should have been the road, and walked alongside it. The doctor followed.

“Have a seat, yur ’onor. I’ll walk!” Crouper shouted.

The doctor climbed onto the seat.

“How much farther is it?”

“I dunno. ’Bout three versts…”

“We have to get there!”

“We’ll get there, God willing…”

“Three versts. You can walk that far?”

“Yep…”

The doctor desperately wanted to get out of this snowy eternity, out of the cold, which hadn’t abandoned him for a moment, out of the night, which was like a bad dream; he wanted to forget all of it forever, along with the snow, this ridiculous sled, this cretin Crouper, and the broken runner.

“Lord, lead me, protect and guide me…,” he prayed to himself, and counted every meter of road as it passed.

Crouper walked along, steering, raking through the snow with his felt boots, sinking into it, and getting up again. Ahead and all around them was a wall of silently falling snow. The silence and total absence of wind scared the doctor even more.

Crouper wasn’t scared. He was simply tired of it all, so tired that he was on his last legs, trying not to collapse and fall asleep. The fire had sapped his strength, he’d inhaled a lot of smoke, and now he wanted but one thing—to sleep.

“Three versts … We’ll get there if’n we don’t lose the road…,” he thought, fighting to keep his eyes open as they stuck together from the snow and exhaustion.

About half a verst on, when the fir forest ended and a clear field began, they strayed off track. Crouper wandered around and found the road. They set off but lost the road again. And, again, Crouper found the road. The doctor no longer bothered to get off the sled; he just sat, covered with snow, praying and stiffening with fear. They rode on successfully for another half a verst, but suddenly there was a crack, and the sled listed treacherously to the right: they had run off the road into a gully, and the repaired runner broke.

“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 …

Crouper felt that the doctor had fallen asleep; he turned slightly and rearranged the horses on him and in empty spaces.

“Everbody’s in one piece … They fits … And me and the doctor fits…,” he thought. “Well, that’s that.”

Everything was fine under the hood: the doctor, Crouper, and the horses all had enough room. Only one thing was worrisome: the crack. The wood had split along the seam, just behind Crouper’s back, and as bad luck would have it, his sheepskin coat had an old hole right near the left shoulder—last winter he’d caught it on a latch in the Khliupin bakery when he was carrying out a tray of bread. He’d sewn it up with a coarse thread and gotten through that winter, but now the thread had apparently frayed, and a draft from the crack was blowing right onto his left shoulder blade, and he couldn’t turn over because the doctor was asleep.

“Bad luck…,” Crouper thought, turning slightly to protect the horses, shifting his left shoulder away from the crack, trying to put his back against it.

One of the horses got its head tangled in his beard.

“Who’s that tickling me there?” Crouper grinned.

The horse whinnied.

“Sivka, what is it?” Crouper recognized the voice of one of his four gray geldings.

The gelding whickered on hearing its name. Then it urinated on Crouper’s chest.

“Don’t get all worked up now.” Crouper pushed the horse’s head gently with his chin.

The gray drew back and poked his muzzle into Crouper’s neck, where two other horses were already nuzzling him. Hearing the gray’s voice, the lively roan, who had been about to doze off inside his master’s sleeve, grew jealous and neighed aggressively.

“What’s got into ye?” Crouper flicked him on the withers, which protruded from his sleeve.

The roan quieted down and nibbled his master’s arm with playful gratitude.

“There’s my gadfly…,” Crouper thought about the roan; smiling in the darkness, he remembered how he had brought him home last summer under his shirt.

Previously, Crouper only had a black roan in the herd. He traded a canister of gasoline to a visiting tailor in Khliupin for the six-month-old red roan colt. He had bought the canister from his brother-in-law, and had already loaded it on the cart of the late land surveyor Romych, when a drunken tailor showed up and began boasting that he’d been paid for two women’s dresses and two velour jackets with a little colt. He pulled the roan out of his pocket and showed it to Crouper. The roan’s coloring was unusual; he was red with streaks of gray, a fiery mane, and he was vigorous, though not very broad-chested. He neighed continually. Crouper liked him from the start. Perhaps because he’d recently lost two colts to some unknown disease and there were two empty collars in the third row. Or maybe because the roan was a redhead, like Crouper himself. The tailor kept on babbling, saying he would raise the colt and rent it out to coachmen. But when Crouper offered him the canister of 92-grade gasoline, he quickly agreed. On the way home the roan neighed uneasily under Crouper’s shirt. Nor did he calm down in the herd. His lively, brash temperament distinguished him from the others, but he wasn’t lead material. The lead horse was always the calm bay, a broad-chested gelding.

Crouper twisted around, trying to protect the tear at his shoulder from the gap. Cold rose from the frozen plank floor of the hood. The only warmth came from the horses. Even in the darkness, Crouper could feel where each and every animal was. He knew that the eight chestnuts, who always gathered in their own herd, had managed even now to huddle together in the spaces between the doctor’s legs and Crouper’s. The doctor was sleeping, breathing hoarsely onto Crouper’s forehead. He was a large man, and his arms and legs filled almost the entire space under the hood.

“A big fellow…,” Crouper thought, and suddenly remembered the giant’s corpse and its hard forehead, which he had hacked to pieces.

“Chopped and chopped, I did … and barely managed to chop it open…,” he thought, yawning with a shiver.

He shivered every now and then. He hadn’t been this tired for ages. The exhaustion of the endless road was so intense that he no longer noticed the cold. He didn’t want to move, even though a draft was blowing on his shoulder. The shivering and exhaustion felt sweet, much like when he was a child.

“Thank God it isn’t too freezing…,” he thought as he dozed off.

Sleep carried him into its own expanses. As he fell asleep, Crouper remembered the cleaver the giants had in Pokrovskoye when he was little. That enormous, massively heavy cleaver didn’t look like the ordinary axes the peasants used to split firewood: there was a hole that ran through the side, with an iron grommet in it that passed through the handle. The men were surprised: in normal cleavers and axes, the cleat wedges were lodged in the butt end of the axe handle, but in this case they were on the side.

That grommet, the grommet from the giants’ cleaver, was big. Very big. Heavy. Weighty. It weighed many poods, hundreds, thousands of poods, and stretched, stretched, stretched from merchant Baksheev’s house to the house of Crouper’s father, a sturdy house with a weathervane, a super-antenna, and pink gingerbread-house-style decorative window frames, the very house that Crouper burned down when he was a little boy, burned down when he and Funtik found some Chinese firecrackers, and his parents and Uncle Misha and his sister Polina were in the fields, and Funtik placed a cartridge of firecrackers on a Three Warriors beer box, and they lit them, and the firecrackers went off, the box fell over for some reason, the cartridge flew in the air and popped in all directions, and the firecrackers landed on the drying barn, the straw roof, and the house, right up top, shooting straight into the open attic, where Father had laid out beeswax on paper; the roof of the drying barn caught fire, the inside of the attic caught fire, and Funtik got scared and ran off, but Kozma, who was also scared, didn’t run away and didn’t cry out, he just stood there and watched the drying barn burn, he stood and watched, stood and watched, he kept on standing and watching the fire while the roof burned and flames jumped to the hayloft and the hayloft caught fire; he was still standing and watching when the neighbors ran over; the attic room under the roof was blazing, there were flames coming from the window, the house could no longer be saved, and the neighbors were dragging things out; but he, Kozma, was supposed to save something important in the house, something that burned back then but wouldn’t burn now, something his father couldn’t forgive him for at the time, though he forgave him the burned house, the drying barn, and the hayloft, but for the fact that this thing had burned he could never forgive him, which was why Kozma left his father’s house so early, but now he would be able to save the thing, he’d know how to drag it out of the house, he only has to force himself to do it, to move from that spot, and he grabs hold of his leg and lifts it with his hands, he moves it, then grabs the other one and moves it; his legs don’t want to walk, but he grabs them, digs into them, tears the flesh with his nails until he bleeds, moves them, moves the flesh of his legs, his hands walk his legs, his hands, his hands make his legs walk; bending over his legs and forcing himself to walk, he enters the house, the house is already hot, the upstairs is burning, burning fast, the neighbors have taken everything out, they’ve saved the icons and both trunks, but only he knows where the most important thing is hidden, his father’s greatest treasure. He grabs the ring of the cellar trapdoor, pulls, lifts the wood trap, and climbs down into the cellar; there are barrels of marinated cabbage and pickles, a ham wrapped in cheesecloth hangs from a beam, and next to the ham, also wrapped in cheesecloth, disguised as meat, hangs the cocoon of a large butterfly, it’s the size of a leg of meat, but the wingspan of the butterfly that will hatch from this cocoon is more than two meters, his father and uncle stole it from the royal incubator near Podolsk, his uncle was working in the greenhouses for the season, they took the cocoon out and hid it in a wheelbarrow full of peat, took it to Pokrovskoye, his father hid it in the cellar, disguised as a leg of salted beef, wrapped it in cheesecloth, rubbed it with lard, the cocoon of a huge blue Death’s Head; it was very expensive, very beautiful, it cost three times more than Father’s house, Father had already arranged to sell it to the Romanians, the main thing was to keep it in a cool place so that the butterfly didn’t hatch too early or everything would be ruined. Kozma must take it out of the house and quickly hide it in the old cellar in the garden, where it is also cold, and Father would return, and the cocoon would be safe; he gropes for it in the cellar and holds it in his arms, it’s like an infant, he crawls out of the cellar with it, and everything around is burning, everything has caught fire so fast, everything is in flames, it’s so hot, so bright, he heads for the door carrying the cocoon, but suddenly it cracks, he keeps going, but it cracks, and a dark-blue, unbelievably beautiful butterfly begins to burst out of the cocoon, bursts out of the membrane, bursts out of his hands, it is so lovely, so smooth, silky, incredibly beautiful, so beautiful that he forgets about his father, it’s pretty, like an angel, it has a beautiful, light-blue shining skull on its back, but it isn’t really a skull, it’s an angelic face, a sublime angelic visage, shining in every tint of blue and violet, it sings in a delicate, quivering voice, and it tears away, tears out of his hands, its huge wings flap, it tears away so forcefully, so charmingly, that Kozma’s heart begins to quiver like its wings, he can’t let it go, he mustn’t let it go, he’ll do anything to hold on to it, he grabs it by its thick, silky legs, it sings, flaps its wings, and flies through the burning window, it carries Kozma through the fiery window, and Kozma’s arms join with the butterfly’s legs, his bones fuse with its bones, his bones sing along with the butterfly, a song of new life, a song of ultimate happiness, a song of great joy; they sing, and the butterfly carries him into the infinite fiery window, into the narrow fiery window, into the swift window of fire, into the long window of fire, into the window of fire, into the window of fire, into the window of fire.

* * *

The sun sparkled on the gray horizon. It illuminated the snowy field and the clear pale-blue sky with its fading stars and moon. A ray of sun, stretching across the field, touched the snow-covered sled, hit the crack in the hood and the eye of one of the four horses sleeping on the doctor’s fur hat. The dark bay stallion opened one eye.

The crunch of snow could be heard next to the hood. Something outside was scratching at the plywood. The bright red muzzle of a fox poked under the matting. The dark bay neighed in terror. The other horses turned over and woke up. They saw the fox and whinnied, bolting back. The fox grabbed the first horse it could, and took off. The horses neighed and reared.

The neighing rang painfully in the doctor’s left ear. He thought that neurosurgeons were drilling into his ear. He just managed to open his eyes. And saw nothing but darkness. The darkness was whickering. The doctor wanted to move his right arm. But he couldn’t. He moved the fingers of his left hand. His left hand was under the flap of his fur coat. He pulled the numb, disobedient hand out from under the coat and felt for his face with his stiff, frozen fingers. His hat was on his face. With tremendous difficulty, the doctor managed to move the hat off his face with those disobedient fingers. The ray of sun immediately hit his left eye. The horses neighed, and their hooves trampled the doctor’s body and head.

The doctor opened his eyes wide but couldn’t see anything and didn’t understand where or who he was.

He tried to move. Nothing worked. His body wouldn’t obey, as though he weren’t even there. He unstuck his lips and sucked freezing air into his lungs. He exhaled it. His breath billowed in the ray of sun. The little horses stomped on the doctor. He made a huge effort to raise his head. His chin ran up against something smooth and cold. The horses jumped off the hat. The doctor moved slightly. Pain shot through his back and shoulders: his entire body had grown numb and stiff with cold.

The doctor’s mouth opened, but instead of a moan a weak rasp emerged. He tried to raise himself a tiny bit. But something was hindering his body and legs, which he couldn’t feel at all.

The sunlight beat painfully in his eyes. The doctor remembered his pince-nez and patted his chest to find it. But his fingers wouldn’t work right, and something cold and strong was preventing him from finding the pince-nez. Finally he located it and pulled it to his face.

Suddenly, he heard loud human voices outside. The matting was torn abruptly from the hood. Two human silhouettes hung over the doctor’s head, blocking out the sun.

“Ni hai huozhe ma?” one of the silhouettes asked, not sure whether the doctor was still alive.

“Wo kao!” The other man laughed.

Frowning, the doctor put the pince-nez to his eyes. Two Chinese men were leaning over him. The horses whinnied and snorted. The doctor tried to turn, holding the pince-nez to his eyes, but the cord of the pince-nez caught on something. It was Crouper’s nose. His face was close, and it seemed to the doctor that it filled the entire hood. The huge face was lifeless and wax-white; only the sharp nose was blue. The sun shone on Crouper’s frost-covered eyelashes and his icy beard. His pale lips had frozen in a half smile. The expression on his face was now even more birdlike, mockingly self-assured, surprised by nothing and afraid of nothing.

A live hand stretched out, touched Crouper’s cold face, and quickly withdrew.

“Gua le!” Then the warm, rough fingers of another hand touched the doctor’s cheeks.

“You alive?” a voice asked in Russian.

The doctor suddenly remembered everything.

“Who are you?” the voice asked him.

He opened his mouth to answer, but instead of words only a raspy noise and steam came out.

“Wo shi yisheng,” the doctor croaked in horrible Chinese. “Bangzhu … bangzhu … qing ban wo…”

“You’re a doctor? Don’t worry, we’ll help you.”

“Wo yisheng, wo shi yisheng…,” Platon Ilich rasped, his hand with the pince-nez trembling.

The older Chinese began speaking Mandarin on his cell phone:

“Shen, get a bag of some kind over here, there’s a bunch of little horses, and bring Ma, one of them’s alive, but he’s heavy.”

“Where were you coming from?” he asked the doctor in Russian.

“Wo shi yisheng … wo shi yisheng…,” the doctor repeated.

“He’s totally out of it,” said the other Chinese man. “Looks like his brains got frostbit.”

Two more Chinese soon appeared. One of them held a sack of zoogenous canvas. He began to grab the nervous, neighing horses and put them in the bag.

“No mare?” asked the older man.

“No,” the other answered him, and grinned as he pointed at the roan’s croup sticking out of Crouper’s coatsleeve. “Look where he crawled up!”

He grabbed the roan by his back legs and pulled him out of the sleeve. The roan neighed frantically.

“Talkative!” laughed the older man.

When all the horses were in the sack, the older Chinese nodded at the doctor:

“Pull him out.”

Two of the others began to pull the doctor out of the hood. It wasn’t easy: Platon Ilich’s legs were wound around the corpse’s legs, and his fur coat had frozen to the planks in the corner. The doctor realized that he was being saved.

“Xie xie ni, xie xie ni,” he thanked the men in a hoarse croak, trying to help them with awkward movements.

It took the four of them to pull the doctor out of the sled. They set him down in the snow. The doctor tried to stand, leaning on the Chinese. But he immediately crumpled in the snow: his legs wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t feel them at all.

“Xie xie ni, xie xie ni…,” he kept on thanking them in a rasp as he wriggled in the deep snow.

The older Chinese man scratched his nose:

“Carry him to the train.”

“Are we taking this one?” the young man asked, with a nod at Crouper.

“Xun, you know my stallion doesn’t like dead people.” The older one grinned, turning to look back with a half smile.

The man automatically looked in the direction the older man had indicated. There, about a hundred meters from the sled, stood a huge stallion, the height of a three-story building. A dappled gray, he was hitched up to a sleigh train carrying four wide cars: one green passenger car and three blue freight cars. The stallion was covered with a red blanket and stood with vapor snorting noisily from his incredibly wide nostrils. Crows circled above him and sat on his red back. The stallion’s white mane was beautifully braided, and the steel rings on his harness sparkled in the sun.

Two more Chinese, wearing green uniforms, walked over from the train. Together, the four of them picked the doctor up and carried him.

“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.