Vladimir Sorokin - The Blizzard

“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…”