Vladimir Sorokin - The Blizzard

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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.