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A dead man lies asleep,

Upon a bed of white,

Swirling at the window

Is a blizzard calm and light.

—ALEXANDER BLOK

“You have to understand, I simply must keep going!” Platon Ilich exclaimed angrily. “There are people waiting for me! They are sick. There’s an epidemic! Don’t you understand?!”

The stationmaster clenched his fists against his badger-fur vest, and leaned forward:

“Well now, whaddya mean, we don’t understand? ’Course we do. You don’t wanna stop, ’course I understand. But I don’t got horses and ain’t gonna get none till tomorrow!”

“What do you mean you don’t have horses?!” Platon Ilich cried out in a livid voice.

“That’s what for, but all of ’em are out, and there ain’t a one to be found nowheres!” the stationmaster shouted, as though speaking to a deaf man. “Not ’less some miracle brings the mail horses in tonight. But who knows when they’ll get here?”

Platon Ilich removed his pince-nez and stared at the stationmaster as though seeing him for the first time:

“My good fellow, do you comprehend that people are dying?”

The stationmaster unclenched his fists and stretched his hands toward the doctor like a beggar.

“Who don’t understand dying? A’course we does. Good Russian Orthodox people dying, it’s a terrible business. But look out the window!”

Platon Ilich put his pince-nez back on and automatically turned his puffy eyes toward the frost-covered windows through which nothing could be seen. Outside, the winter day was still overcast.

The doctor glanced at the clock, which was shaped like Baba Yaga’s hut on chicken legs; it ticked loudly and showed a quarter past two.

“It’s already past two!” He indignantly shook his strong, close-cropped head, tinged with gray at the temples. “Past two o’clock! And it will get dark, don’t you get it?”

“A’course, why wouldn’t I be getting it—” the stationmaster began, but the doctor interrupted:

“I’ll tell you what, old man! You get me some horses if you have to dig them up out of the ground! If I don’t make it there today, I’ll take you to court. For sabotage. ”

That familiar government word had a soporific effect on the stationmaster. He seemed to fall asleep, all his muttering and explaining coming to an abrupt halt. He wore a short vest, velour pants, and high white felt boots with yellow leather soles sewn on. His body was slightly bent at the waist; he seemed to freeze, remaining immobile in the dim light of the spacious, overheated chamber. On the other hand, his wife, who until now had been sitting quietly and knitting behind a calico curtain in the far corner, turned and peered out, showing her broad, expressionless face, which the doctor had already grown sick of over these last two hours of waiting, drinking tea with raspberry and plum jam and leafing through year-old copies of the magazine Niva: