Vladimir Sorokin - The Blizzard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’ll ask the way now!”

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

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

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

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

“Wonderful, my good fellow! Just wonderful!”

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

“Let’s be off, then! Let’s be off!”

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

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

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

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

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

“What does that mean—‘all right’?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Is there really nothing else that interests you?”

“Don’t know, yur ’onor.”

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

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

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

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

“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!”