The Blizzard Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Ha-a-a-rness!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “And off we go! Heigh-yup!”

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

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

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

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

  “Off we go!”

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

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

  “Let ’em breathe a bit, there’ll be time to cover up,” Crouper replied.

  The doctor noticed that the driver was almost always smiling.

  “A good-hearted fellow…,” he thought, and asked:

  “So, then, is it profitable to keep little horses?”

  “Well, how’s to put it.” Crouper’s smile widened, exposing his crooked teeth. “So far it’s enough for bread and kvass.”

  “You deliver bread?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Live alone?”

  “Alone.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “My fly got stuck.”

  “Hmm … impotence,” the doctor realized.

  “But were you married before?”

  “I was.” Crouper smiled. “For two years. Afterward, when I buttoned up, I come to see that I ain’t got the knack for a woman’s body. Who’s gonna wanna live with me?”

  “She left you?” asked the doctor, straightening his pince-nez.

  “Left. And thank God.”

  They rode on silently for a verst or so. The horses didn’t run very fast on the drive belt, but they weren’t slow either; you could te
ll that they were well tended to and well fed.

  “Doesn’t it get lonely by yourself out there on the farmstead?” asked the doctor.

  “No time for bein’ lonely. In the summer I haul hay.”

  “And in the winter?”

  “In the winter I haul … you!” Crouper laughed.

  Platon Ilich chuckled.

  Crouper somehow made him feel good, and calm; his usual sense of irritation left him and he stopped rushing himself and others. It was clear that Crouper would get him there no matter what happened, that he’d make it in time to save people from that terrible illness.

  There was something birdlike in the driver’s face, the doctor thought, something that seemed a bit mocking, but at the same time was helpless, kind, and good-natured. This sharp-nosed, smiling face with its sparse reddish beard and swollen squinting eyes, swimming in a large old fur hat with earflaps, swayed next to him in time with the movement of the sled, perfectly happy with everything: the sled, the cold, his well-kept, smooth-gaited little horses, and this fox-fur-hatted doctor in a pince-nez who had appeared out of nowhere with his important travel bags—and even with the endless white plain that stretched far ahead until it drowned in a blur of swirling snow.

  “Do you hire out for wagon trains?” the doctor asked.

  “Naw, why shud I … The job pays enough. I used to work in Soloukhi for some folks, then I figured out that another’s bread goes down like lead. So I just stick to haulin’ my own bread. And thank God…”

  “Why do they call you ‘Crouper’?”

  “Ah…” The driver grinned. “From when I was young and I worked at the border. We was cuttin’ a road through the forest. Lived in barracks. I caught the croup, was up all the night long. Everbody’s sleepin’ and here I am coughin’ up a storm, they cain’t get a wink all night. They got good and mad at me and piled on the work: ‘You’s coughin’ all night, don’t give us no peace, so you go chop all the wood, light the fire, draw the water!’ They gave it to me good for that croup, they sure did. That’s what they’d say: ‘Crouper, do this! Crouper, do that!’ I was the young’un in the crew. It just stuck: ‘Crouper! Hey, Crouper!’”

  “Your name is Kozma?”

  “Kozma.”

  “Well, then, Kozma—you don’t cough at night anymore?”

  “Nope! The Lord looked out for me. Got a bit of ague in the back when the weather’s bad. But I’m healthy.”

  “And you deliver bread?”

  “That I do.”

  “Isn’t it a bit unnerving to make the deliveries all alone?”

  “Naw. By your lonesome is just fine, yur ’onor. The old-timers had a saying: Drive by your lonesome, you got an angel on each shoulder; drive in a pair, one angel to share; but drive in a troika, and the devil’ll grab the reins.”

  “Wisely put!” The doctor laughed.

  “And that’s the livin’ truth, yur ’onor. When the wagon train’s comin’ back—the whole string of ’em’ll turn off somewheres to drink up their pay.”

  “And you don’t drink?”

  “I drink. But I knows my limit.”

  “Now that’s surprising!” The doctor chuckled as he wriggled around under the rug, trying to take out his cigarette case.

  “What’s the surprise in it?”

  “Bachelors usually drink.”

  “If’n someone brings smoked fish by—I’ll drink. But I don’t keep none at home. What for? No time fer drink, yur ’onor—I got fifty horses to watch over, after all.”

  “I see, I see.” The doctor tried to light his cigarette, but the match blew out.

  The second blew out as well. The wind had risen noticeably, and the snow fell in large flakes on the horses’ backs, wedged itself into the corners of the hood, tickled the doctor’s face, and made a slight shushing sound on his pince-nez.

  He lit up, and peered ahead:

  “How many versts to Dolgoye?”

  “’Bout seventeen.”

  The doctor remembered that the stationmaster had said it was fifteen.

  “Can we make it in a couple of hours in this weather?” Platon Ilich asked.

  “Who knows? Hard to say.” Crouper grinned, pulling his hat down to his eyes.

  “The road is smooth.”

  “Right hereabouts it’s a good’un.” Crouper nodded.

  The road ran along a field lined with bushes, so it could be seen even without the rare mileposts that stuck up out of the snow. The field soon gave way to a sparse forest, and the mileposts ended, but sleigh tracks merged into the road, marking the path ahead of them, and encouraging the doctor: someone had just recently traveled along this road.

  The sled moved along the sleigh tracks; Crouper held the reins loosely, and the doctor smoked.

  Soon the forest grew taller and thicker, the road began to descend, and the sled entered a birch grove. Crouper yanked the reins:

  “Whoooaa!”

  The horses stopped.

  Crouper got down and fussed about under the hood.

  “What happened?” asked the doctor.

  “Gonna cover the horses,” the driver explained, unfurling a burlap tarp.

  “Good idea,” the doctor agreed, squinting in the windstorm. “It’s snowing.”

  “It’s snowing.” Crouper covered the hood with the canvas tarp, fastening it at the corners. He sat back down and smacked his lips: “Heigh-yup!”

  The horses set off again.

  “It’s calmer in the forest—there’s just one road, you can see it, no way to get lost…,” thought the doctor. He brushed the snow from his collar.

  “How long ago did you decide to use the little horses?” the doctor asked Crouper.

  “’Bout four years ago.”

  “Why was that?”

  “My little brother as lived in Khoprov, Grisha, he died. He left twenty-four horses. And his wife, stands to reason, didn’t wanna take care of ’em. She says: ‘I’m gonna sell ’em.’ Then God’s angel up and made me ask her: ‘How much?’ ‘Three apiece.’ And I had sixty rubles right then. I says: ‘I’ll buy ’em for sixty.’ So we made a deal. I put ’em in a basket and brought ’em back with me to Dolbeshino. Then I got lucky: our bread man, Porfiry, he went off to live in town with his son. I bought his sled fer a good price, and traded a radio fer more horses. And took his place delivering bread. Thirty rubles. That’s what we got to live on.”

  “Why didn’t you buy an ordinary horse?”

  “Oooorrrrdinaar-y!” Crouper puckered his lips and stretched them forward, which made him look just like a jackdaw in profile. “Cain’t cut enough hay fer an ordinary one. I’m on my lonesome, yur ’onor, like a heron standin’ in a swamp, wher’m I gonna sow that hay! Even fer a cow you cain’t never cut enough hay. I don’t even keep a cow no more, got rid of it. But fer the little ones—nothin’ to it: I plant a row of clover, cut it down, dry it—and it’ll last ’em the whole winter. Grind some oats fer ’em, give ’em a little water—quick as a wink and that’s the end of it.”

  “But these days people keep big horses, too,” the doctor pointed out. “In Repishnaya we have a family that keeps a big horse.”

  “But that’s a family, yur ’onor!” said Crouper, shaking his head so hard that his hat slipped down even further over his eyes.

  Adjusting his hat, he asked the doctor:

  “What kinda horse is it?”

  “Twice the size of regular ones.”

  “Twice? That ain’t much. I seen bigger’uns at the station. You see the new stable there?”

  “No.”

  “In the fall they builded a ginormous one. I heard tell on the radio how at the Nizhny market there was a cart horse tall as a four-story building.”

  “Yes, there are horses that size.” The doctor nodded seriously. “They’re used for extra-heavy work.”

  “You seen ’em?”

  “I’ve seen them from a distance, in Tver. A draught horse that size was pulling a coal train.”

  “Wha
ddye know!” exclaimed Crouper with a click of the tongue. “How much oats do a horse like that eat in a day?”

  “Well,” said the doctor, squinting ahead and wrinkling his nose, “I think that…”

  Suddenly the sled jerked and twisted, and a crack was heard; the doctor nearly flew headlong into the snow. Underneath the tarp the horses snorted.

  “What…” Crouper only had time to exhale, as his hat fell off and he tumbled chest-first onto the steering rod.

  The doctor’s pince-nez sailed off his nose and got tangled in the lace attached to it. He caught it and put it back on. The sled stood at the side of the road, listing to the right.

  “Darn you…” Crouper slid down, rubbing his chest. He walked around the sled, squatted, and looked underneath it.

  “What’s the problem?” asked the doctor without getting up.

  “We banged into somethin’…” Crouper moved to the right side of the road and immediately plunged into deep snow; he turned over, grunting, and squeezed under the sled.

  The doctor waited in the listing sled. Finally Crouper’s head appeared:

  “Just a sec…”

  He threw back the tarpaulin, which the falling snow had already covered, and pulled back on the reins, without returning to his seat:

  “C’mon now, c’mon…”

  The horses, snorting and huffing, began to prance backward. But the sled simply sputtered in place.

  “Why don’t I get off…” The doctor unfastened the bearskin and stepped down.

  “C’mon now, c’mon!” Crouper pushed against the sled, helping the horses backstep.

  The sled jerked backward, once, twice, and moved off of the unfortunate spot. It came to a halt crosswise on the road. Crouper ran around to the front and squatted. The doctor came over in his long, hooded coat. The tip of the right runner was split.