“Maybe we oughta stay, doctor, sir?” Crouper asked timidly.
“You jess get th’ell outta! Ya lost a horse at the market! You loser loafer!!” the miller shouted, kicking his feet against his wife’s bosom.
“Stay now, don’t be silly.” The miller’s wife poured strong brew from a Chinese teapot. “The storm will die down, and you’ll fly along.”
“And if it doesn’t?” The doctor looked at Crouper as though the weather depended on him.
“If’n it don’t, it’s a sight calmer in the light,” Crouper answered. Something stuck in his throat and he had a coughing fit.
“He lost the horse to passs-churs, lost traaa-ck-o-vvvit!” The miller refused to quiet down. “They oughta lock ye up fer horse-thieving!”
“Stay.” The miller’s wife set the glass of tea down in front of the doctor and began to pour some for Crouper.
“And the horses c’n rest a piece.”
“No snoozin’, not a wink … They’ll rest in peace, not rest a piece, thass whachur horses’ll do!” cackled the miller.
The miller’s wife laughed, her chest rose, and her husband rocked on it as though on a wave.
“Maybe we really should stay?” thought the doctor.
He looked around for a clock on the well-chinked wall, but didn’t see one; he was about to take his pocket watch out but suddenly saw small, glowing numbers hovering in the air over a metal circle lying on the sewing machine: 19:42.
“We could try to get there by midnight … But if we get lost, as she pointed out…,” the doctor thought.
He took a sip of tea.
“We could stay and leave at first light. If the blizzard has stopped, we’ll get there in an hour and a half. If I give them vaccine-2 eight hours later, nothing terrible will happen. That’s acceptable. I’ll write an explanatory note…”
“Nothing terrible will happen if you get there tomorrow,” said the miller’s wife, as though she’d read his mind. “Have some more vodka.”
Deep in thought, the doctor bit his lower lip and glanced at the numbers glowing in the air.
“So we’re staying?” Crouper asked, no longer chewing.
“Very well.” Platon Ilich sighed with disappointment. “We’re staying.”
“Thank God!” Crouper nodded.
“Yes, thank God,” the miller’s wife almost sang, as she filled the glasses.
“What about me? What about me?” The miller tottered and swayed on her chest.
She dripped a few drops from the bottle into the thimble and handed it to the miller.
“May you be healthy!” She raised her glass.
The doctor, Crouper, and the miller all drank.
Taking a bite of ham, the doctor now looked at the room not just as a stopping place but as the night’s lodging: “Where will she put us? In another izba? We had to end up here for the night. Damn this blizzard…”
Crouper took a deep breath and relaxed. He warmed up right away and was glad that he wouldn’t have to go out into the dark now, glad not to get lost looking for the road, torturing himself and his horses; glad that his horses would spend the night in the warmth of the miller’s stable, that he would give them some oats—he always had a bag of oats stored under the seat—and that he himself would sleep here, most likely on top of the stove, in the warmth, and that the nasty miller couldn’t touch him; glad that they’d leave early the next morning, and that when he’d delivered the doctor to Dolgoye, he’d get five rubles and drive back home.
“Oh well, perhaps it’s for the best,” said the doctor, reassuring himself.
“It’s for the best.” The miller’s wife smiled at him. “I’ll put you upstairs, and Kozma—on the stove. It’s quiet and warm upstairs.”
“Ow, what the … Got a leg cramp…,” the miller squeaked, grabbing his right leg, his drunken face grimacing.
“Time for bed.” The miller’s wife picked him up to take him off her chest, but at that moment the miller dropped the thimble. It rolled down his wife’s large body and fell under the table.
“Now look what you’ve done, Semyon Markich, gone and lost your cup.” Lovingly, as though he were a child, the miller’s wife placed him in front of her on the edge of the table.
“Huh? Whass, how’s … the … what?” muttered the thoroughly drunk miller.
“That’s what,” she replied. Standing, she lifted her husband with two hands, carried him over to the bed, set him down on it, and drew the curtains.
“Lie down, time to go night-night.” She rustled the pillows and blanket, tucking her husband in.
“Wake me up early tomorrow,” the doctor told Crouper.
“The crack of dawn, first light,” the driver replied, nodding his reddish magpie-shaped head.
It was obvious that the vodka, warmth, and food had made Crouper tipsy, and that he was ready to sleep.
“Let ’em all … all o’ them…’em all…” The miller’s drunken squeak could be heard behind the curtain.
“Sorta like a cricket … chirp chirp,” Crouper thought, smiling his birdlike smile.
“Taa-iiii-sssia … Taiss … Let’s cuddle and have a roll in the hay,” the miller peeped.
“We will, we will. Sleep tight.”
Taisia Markovna emerged from behind the curtains, walked over to the guests, squatted, and looked under the table.
“It’s somewhere…”
“A handsome woman,” the doctor thought all of a sudden.
Squatting and looking under the table with her marvelous, cloudy eyes, she awoke his desire. She wasn’t pretty, that was particularly noticeable now, when the doctor saw her face from above. Her brow was a bit low; her chin heavy and tilted downward; all in all her face adhered to the typically crude peasant model. But her carriage, her white skin, her buxom bosom, rising and falling, aroused the doctor.
“There it is.” She reached under the table and bent over.
Her hair was woven into a black braid, and the braid wound round her head.
“A delicious woman the miller has…,” the doctor thought, and suddenly, ashamed of his thoughts, he gave a tired sigh and laughed.
The miller’s wife stood up; smiling, she showed him her little finger with the thimble on it.
“There you go!”
She sat down at the table:
“He likes to drink out of my thimble, though we have glasses.”
And indeed—on the miller’s table, amid the little plates, there was a little glass.
“I c’d go to sleep now,” Crouper said with a hint of complaint in his voice as he turned his tea glass upside down.
“Go on, love.” The miller’s wife took the thimble off her finger and placed it upside down on the overturned glass. “There’s a pillow and a blanket atop the stove.”
“Mighty grateful, Tais’ Markovna.” Crouper bowed to her and climbed up on top of the tile stove.
The doctor and the miller’s wife remained alone at the table.
“So then, you do your doctoring in Repishnaya?” she inquired.
“Yes, in Repishnaya.” The doctor took a gulp of tea.
“Is it hard?”
“Sometimes. When people are sick frequently—it can be difficult.”
“And when is the sickness greater? In winter?”
“Epidemics happen in the summer, too.”
“Epidemics,” she repeated, shaking her head. “We had one about two years back.”
“Dysentery?”
“That’s it. Something got into the river. The kids swimming took sick.”
The doctor nodded. There was clearly something about the woman sitting opposite him that excited him. He looked her over furtively, a bit at a time. She sat calmly, a little smile on her face, and regarded the doctor as if he were a distant relation who’d stopped by when he saw the lights on. She didn’t seem particularly interested in the doctor and spoke with him the same way she did with Crouper and Avdotia.
“Is it boring for you here in winter?” asked Platon Ilich.
“A bit.”
“Summer’s probably fun, no?”
“Oh, summer…” She raised her hands. “Summer is bustling, something every which way you turn.”