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ERIC HUDDLED in his sheepskin jacket and military-style leather raincoat. As the carriage jolted him along through the Siberian night, numbly he watched last year's grass burning off the frosted fields.
Tongues of flame laced the earth while flickering red and gold, which faintly illuminated occasional groves of birch trees. Yet the night immediately stole any warmth away. The Road was frozen and hard as iron. Driving along was more like lurching over an endless series of suits of armor laid side by side.
How long had they been traveling? Five hours? Eight hours? The horses were trampling like brainless machines, and his driver, Sergei, had long since gone into a trance. But Eric hadn't yet learned how to sleep through punishment like this.
Had Sergei died a few hours ago? Imagine being driven for tens of versts by a corpse without even knowing it!
The sun would rise soon. By the afternoon the Road would become a churned-up swamp. where it broadened, on its way through tiny villages, it would be a river of mud with houses on either bank...
Abruptly, thunder drummed from the darkness ahead. Hooves! Wheels!
Within seconds a troika of the Imperial Postal Service came dashing out of the night---3 horses abreast, and they had no intention of yielding to anything on the road.
Even as Eric cried a warning, Sergei was jerking on the reins. The old codger wasn't dead after all. He hauled the team and buggy over to the right, just as the troika thundered past, missing them by a hand's span.
As Sergei and Eric swung around to curse the troika on its way, they sped---bearing down from the darkness behind---a second juggernaut---returning full tilt towards Tomsk. This second troika careened past the first, heading directly towards them. To make matters worse, behind it a third troika charged in hot pursuit.
Sergei lashed his team with the reins. "God help us!" he howled.
With their usual nervy stupidity, the horses swung the buggy the wrong way, thus blocking the road outright.
What had been until a moment earlier an empty void was suddenly filled with a chaos of crashing wood and whinnying, rearing horseflesh. Briefly, their own buggy stood up on end. One moment later Sergei found that he wasn't sitting in it at all, but lying spread-eagled on the ground, bombarded by his luggage.
Scrambling up, he raced aside. "Stop, damn you!" he screamed down the road.
But the third troika hurtled towards them, pell-mell. Its driver was a dark lump, maybe fast asleep. A few seconds later it too crashed into the tangle. Again, horses reared, shafts cracked, and harnesses snapped. Yokes tumbled to the ground over trampled baggage.
Then, for a few moments, everything was so still that Eric thought he'd lost his hearing. In the east, ever so faintly, dawn was starting to glow.
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At least two of the drivers must've tumbled out of their pleasant dreams into this real-life nightmare of bruises and cold. Although the happening could hardly be unique, it took them a short while to work out what had happened. But then they and Sergei squared up to each other in the gloom---and the driver of the first troika ran up to add his contribution.
"You were asleep, you bloody idiot!"
"You lying ass, I was awake. The other two shit-sacks weren't."
"You couldn't drive a team of hares, old man!"
Crazed by the invested being bellowed on all sides, the horses milled and collided hysterically. Stupid creatures that they were, they reared and kicked and tried to bite holes in each other's necks. Their hooves pummeled broken shafts and jumbled luggage. And nobody made the slightest effort to calm the beasts down or separate the ruined vehicles, or even to clear their spilled contents aside. Obsessed with abuse, the four drivers merely swore at one another endlessly, blaming, blaspheming, and accusing each other of being Jews, sodomists, and lunatics.
Eric stood in fear and fury; he wondered if he should pull out his revolver and discharge it over their heads to restore order. And cold flames crackled in the fields, weak daylight spilled slowly from the horizon....
Only when the drivers were quite hoarse did they decide to back off and start cleaning up. Sergei had to commander the straps from Eric's trunk to tie up their shafts and harness. Eventually, after what seemed like two hours, their carriage crept on its way...
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The next post station was versts away, and half a dozen times they had to stop to refasten the shafts and harnesses, only to see them break loose again with appalling ease. The Road was already becoming slightly soggy in the mocking sunshine, though ice still crusted the puddles.
Flights of ducks beat their way overhead, provoking Eric's stomach to a rage of hunger. To stoop his tripes from self-consumption, he nibbled off a chunk of the sausage that he'd been foolish enough to buy a hundred versts back; and instantly regretted the purchase. The meat smelled like peasant feet unwrapped after six months and tasted like a dog's tail dipped in tar and (human) shit. Hastily he spat out the vile mouthful and flushed his tastebuds with vodka, which was pretty foul itself---sharp and oily. Thousands of crumbs had worked their way down into his underpants, but he couldn't find a single whole crust of bread in any of his pockets.
Yes, a bottle of fine brandy reposed in his baggage. Yefim, that complaisant cuckold, had presented this to him with a fine flourish, to be quaffed on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. He wouldn't have been shocked if the bottle had been smashed during the collision. Well, at least his gun hadn't gone off and shot him in the stomach----yet.
Longing for the barren oasis of the next scummy village, Eric stared ahead.752Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLqyx1fbdKa
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No, Eric didn't feel at all unwell despite what had happened. Yet he was still starving and exhausted to the point of hallucination. But his head no longer ached with migraines, and high piles of detritus had been cleared up since Ekaterinburg. Even his cough was better. As for his earlier gastritis, do svidaniya.
An ultra-devout Christian might have said that all his routine ailments were God's punishments for his sins----but lately the going had got too rough; so God had to forgive him, circumstances being what they are.
Forgiven his sins indeed; salvation was in sight at last!
Wooden cabins, straggling along both sides of the Road far ahead. An onion dome sitting on a little wooden church. It all added up to...a village!
His spirits lifting, Eric became aware of the jingle of their harness bells. Was it a merry, Christmaslike note? No, it was just another noise, one that led him to a most lustful daydream: sturgeon bouillabaisse, flavored with sorrel and mushrooms......
Fat chance of that!
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