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No Plagiarism!4sbURmclLLlQ4Hk9JGdEposted on PＥNAＮＡ FLOODS! WATER'S DESOLATION...
And a bittern, booming out its mad call like a pregnant cow mooing into an empty barrel.
Eric's felt boots were rotting apart, but he didn't dare subject his feet to the only alternative. The leather jackboots he had blithely equipped himself with were obviously an instrument of torture designed by the Spanish Inquisition to pinch and amputate one's pins.
Plodging knee-deep, he and the lastest driver Proclus hauled another pair of neurotic, shying horses towards some huts on a little hill above the floodwaters. Eric's throat was hoarse from swearing, but this was the only form of encouragement those beasts understood.
In some places, the swirling water was deep enough to drown a man. With so much mud churned up, though, there was no telling which places these were. Drizzle drifted down like a million gray spiders' silks. Presumably, somewhere there was a proper river crossing. Somewhere.
A tall peasant woman emerged from one of the houses. This was a heavy mud and clay edifice with a thatched timber roof. Two other such huts stood off from it, and together with a row of briars these formed a courtyard with litter and tackle lying about. An upturned sledge rested against a wagon. The place seemed relatively prosperous.
From the porch, the woman hailed them. "Are you the medical assistant?"
"We're lost!" Proclus howled back at her. Opening his mouth wide, the more to magnify their misfortunes, he afforded Eric an eyeful of gums awash with pus due to pyorrhea.
"But I am a doctor!" shouted Eric.
They tramped onto a slope of gluey black muck, which admittedly would grow splendid crops. A few more loud oaths and the horses were out of the water too, dragging the skidding cart which was Proclus's pride and joy.
"I"m on my way to Tomsk," Eric told the woman.
"It's God's will! He guided you here."
"Da! And who will guide our way again?" demanded Proclus.
"Oh, our Arkady will do that. Just as soon as...."
Oh yes. Just as so on as His Honor, the Doctor, cures septic appendicitis, or cancer of the spleen or something else equally daunting. Eric felt heavy chains settle upon him. With as good grace as he could muster he submitted and followed the woman indoors.
Grandpa lay abed on top of the stove. Four or five kids peered out from a deep and putrid shelf slung beneath the ceiling. Three crones, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the Witches in Macbeth, were huddled around a wooden chest---the parental bed. A sick woman lay moaning on it. A hairy bull of a man stood about, twiddling his thumbs and sighing. A spindly youth, who looked as if he had gone for height in the style of an overcrowded seedling, sat slumped on a bench staring morosely at his reflection in the blade of a knife. And there was Grandma, clucking away like an old hen, with Baby swaddled in her lap. The place was disgracefully overcrowded.
On closer inspection, Grandma wasn't really clucking. Her mouthless gums were smacking away at an impromptu dummy: a twist of cloth with a bread crust in it, or if Baby was especially lucky some bacon rind. Baby in its mummy cloth was all open mouth and wide liquid eyes. As Eric approached, Grandma quickly propped the saliva-sodden nib into Baby's mouth. Arms bound by its sides, mouth stoppered, Baby now only had its eyes to talk to the world with.
Eric gave up trying to count the number of people present in this room. What was the use? It was not like he could throw them out into the drizzle. Anyway, they likely wouldn't go. Well, why should they? There was a grand tale unfolding: of sickness and a stranger.
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the chest-bed.
"What's the matter with her?" he asked the tall woman.
"Well, you see, sir, she had her baby. But it died, and a bit of the afterbirth's stuck in her. So Tasha Churkin tried to pull it out."
"She tried to pull it out?! In God's name, with what?"
The tall woman searched around and produced a lamp hook, rusty and sooty, with bloodstains all over it.
Mother of Holy God!
Unbelievable! They may as well have murdered the poor bitch! Da, using the same knife that scarecrow that passed as a young man was holding! He must be the husband....And quite conceivably they had been planning to use that unsanitary blade as their next surgical instrument.
With an effort, Eric controlled his emotions. It was all perfectly understandable. Anything other than this ignorant butchery would be nothing less than a miracle!
"Proclus!" he shouted. "Fetch my doctor's bag!"
While he wanted, he began searching his pockets in a quiet fury, he knew not quite for what. The woman would di---no doubt of it, whatever he did.
His fingers encountered folded paper and he pulled this out. Oh yes, that sheet of ass-wiper from the post station. He hadn't even used it. Unfolding the little scrap of
Siberian Herald, he started glazedly at the contents as if he were consulting a pamphlet on gynecology which he just happened to have on hand.
300Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡApF2Vdp1en300Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIqFQRYAgO7300Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPSg5w78LJ9
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....in the Northwest, the Nenet people observed racing through the sky a shining body in the shape of a cylinder, too bright for their eyes to behold. Moments later a huge cloud of black smoke rose up and a mighty tongue of flame shot up into the heavens. A crashing noise, as of a million gunshots going off, was heard several times. The earth itself shook, throwing many people down, and reindeer even fell to their knees. A hot fierce wind blew up suddenly, tearing the roof from one hut. Many tribesmen cried out in terror that Num, the sky god, was angry with them and was destroying the world to punish them for whatever sin they had committed. 8964 copyright protection296ＰＥＮＡＮＡvb8cRAXJAJ 維尼
Even one hundred years later, there is no doubt whatsoever that a large heavenly body must have crashed to earth somewhere, though where exactly may never be known.....300Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRR5DvuxqiD
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Holy shit! This scrap of the newspaper was dated---2nd of July 1878. A year and ten months ago!
Hysteria, wild exaggeration, ignorance! Eric could have moaned out loud.8964 copyright protection296ＰＥＮＡＮＡ09aIBgisNV 維尼
But the sick woman was already doing that, while she was corrupting internally. Stuffing the paper back into his pocket, he resolved that definitely would wipe his ass with such nonsense as soon as he had the time. Eric stepped over to the victim. He pulled the covers back to inspect the bloody atrocity beneath. The kids stared down from the rafters, goggle-eyed; and the crone crooned softly.8964 copyright protection296ＰＥＮＡＮＡfK5F95UpiK 維尼
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