The Embroidered Towel. Михаил Булгаков

from the Russian by S.E. Torrens

      If a person has never ridden on a tipcart over [1]wild, backcountry roads, then telling him about it is pointless: all the same he won’t understand. And for the person who has done it, well, I don’t want to remind him of it.

      I’ll say briefly: It took a full 24 hours for the cart driver and I to travel the 40 versts [2] that separate the district town of Grachevka from Murya Hospital. It was uncanny how we arrived almost to the minute: At two pm on September 16, 1917 we were at the last silo on the edge of that most wonderful town of Grachevka and on September 17^th of that same, unforgettable year at five minutes past two o’clock in the afternoon, I stood on dying grass, beaten down and sodden with September rains, in the courtyard of Murya Hospital. I stood in the courtyard, legs ossified, dazed, I mentally flipped through the pages of my text books, stupidly trying to recall, if such an ailment did indeed exist or if I had dreamt of it last night in the village of Grabilovka – that illness where a man’s limbs go rigid? What is its damned name in Latin? Each of my muscles ached with an intolerable pain, like that of a toothache. I won’t even mention my toes. They no longer moved in my boots, instead they lay peacefully, like wooden stumps. I confess, in a burst of disheartened passion I whispered curses on the medical profession and the entrance application I submitted to the University Rector five years ago. During this entire time, it drizzled from above as if through a sieve. My coat welled up like a sponge. With the fingers of my right hand, I futilely tried to grasp the handle of the suitcase and finally I spat on the wet grass in frustration. My fingers unable to grip anything, my mind, filled with all sorts of facts from interesting medical textbooks, I finally remembered the illness – palsy…

      ”Paralysis,” I desperately, the devil knows why, said to myself.

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      – T..t… travelling on your roads, – I said with blue, wooden lips, – takes a lot of g… getting used to…

      I said spitefully, for some reason, to the cart driver, even though the state of the road wasn’t his fault.

      – Ah, comrade Doctor, – retorted the coachman, his lips barely moving beneath a pale mustache, – I’ve been traveling this road for 15 years and I still can’t get used to it.

      I shuddered, dismally gazing back at the white, peeling paint of the two-story building; at the unbleached log walls of the feldsher’s cottage; at my own future residence: a two-story, straight-lined house, with mysterious, coffin-like windows. I slowly sighed. And then, dully, there came to me not Latin words, but a sweet phrase sung, in my dazed-from-the-journey-and-cold mind, by a plump tenor wearing blue tights: