The Tatar couldn’t help staring at the bonfire with his eyes red with tears. He looked confused and frightened as if he hadn’t understood anything yet. He was left here in the dark and damp to stay with strangers instead of sneering and humming a song at the white people lying on fire in Simbilsk.
What makes a daughter happy with her father? After a while, Xie Miao said that he loved her and he was comforted. That’s true, but you have to be careful with him, man. The old man is strict and stubborn, but the young girl doesn’t need to be strict. They need tenderness and perfume. That’s what happened. Xie Miao got up with a sigh and drank all the wine. It’s time to go to bed. How about I go, man?
The Tatar was left alone, and he added some dead branches and lay sideways looking at the bonfire, thinking of his hometown wife. It would be great if she could come to live for a month, even for a day. After she wants to go back, it is better to let her go and live for a month, even for a day, but if her wife means what she says, how can he support her? Where can she live in a place like this?
How can she live without eating or drinking? asked the Tatar
He is now helping to row a boat day and night and getting ten kopecks. Passers-by will give some tea money and wine money, but a few guys will share all the money with the Tatar. It’s a joke to make fun of him. He is so poor that he is hungry and cold all day. He should go into the house and lie down and sleep, but it’s colder than the shore. Although there is nothing to cover here, at least there can be a fire.
In another week, when the water recedes here, they will arrange flat-bottomed ferry boatmen to do everything except Xie Miao. By then, Tatars will be easy to go from village to village to beg and find jobs. His wife is only seventeen years old. She is beautiful and coy. Can she be asked to show her face and beg in villages? No, it’s terrible to think of it.
At dawn, the ripples of willows in the barge water have been clearly revealed, but when I look back, there is a piece of clay at the bottom of a high slope. A farmhouse roof is covered with brown hay and squeezed into some rural wooden houses. The cock is crowing in the village.
Brown high-slope barge river is hostile, strangers are hungry, cold and sick. All this may not actually be there. Maybe it is a dream. The Tatar thought that he felt that he was asleep and could hear his snoring. Of course, he was at home in Simbilsk and asked him to call his wife’s name. She would definitely promise her mother in the next room, but it was such a terrible dream. Why do you dream this dream? What river is this, the Volga River?
Snowflake fluttering
Hey, the people on the other side are shouting the ferry.
When the Tatars woke up, they hurriedly ran to call their companions to row the boat to the other side. As they walked, several boatmen wore worn fur coats and cursed the street in a hoarse voice. One by one, their necks shrank with cold and they came to the shore. They just woke up from their sleep, and the biting cold coming from the river obviously made them feel hateful and terrible. They jumped into the barge unhurriedly. Three boatmen picked up long paddles with wide leaves. These paddles looked like shrimp in the dark, and Xie Miao was holding up a long rudder.
Come on, what’s the hurry? Why does the white man say that as if he believes in it? There’s no need to worry about this world, because it doesn’t help him to worry.
The heavy barge left the shore, floating among the willows, and the willows slowly receded, so that it could be seen that the barge was moving without stopping at the old place. Several boatmen paddled in unison, and Xie Miao’s belly pressed the rudder from time to time to draw an arc in the middle, flying from one side of the boathouse to the other in the darkness. These people seemed to be sitting in a wild age with monsters with many long claws. It was going to send them to a cold and desolate country, which was rare even in nightmares.
After crossing the willow bush, the barge entered the wide area, and the rhythm of the wooden paddle creaking could already be heard on the other side. The splash man was shouting, hurry up, hurry up. Ten minutes later, the barge hit the dock heavily.
Xie Miao muttered and wiped his face. Where did the snow come from? God knows.
Waiting for the boat to be a tall and thin old man, wearing a fox fur jacket and a white lamb fur hat, he didn’t move near the horse. He looked melancholy and focused as if he were trying to remember something and was very angry with his memory. When Xie Miao came up to him and took off his hat with a smile, the man said
I’m in a hurry to go to Anastasiyev. My daughter is getting sicker. I heard that a new doctor has been sent there.
They towed the carriage to the barge and rowed it back to Xie Miao. They called him Vasily Sergey Ikey. The man kept motionless while everyone was rowing, clenched his thick lips and stared at a place. The coachman begged him to allow him to smoke in front of him. He didn’t answer anything, as if he didn’t hear it. Xie Miao looked at him sarcastically with his stomach pressed against the rudder.
People can still live in Siberia.
The white man’s face looked triumphant, as if his statement had been confirmed, as if he was happy that things were over. He didn’t expect that the unfortunate and acceptable attitude of the man wearing a fox fur jacket made him very upset.
At this time, Vasily Sergey Yiqi Road is full of mud. When he saw the coachman saddling his horse on the shore, he said, you’d better wait for two weeks, and then the road will do something. Otherwise, it’s all right if you don’t do anything else. But you already know that people run around day and night and get nothing in the end. This is the truth.
Vassili Sergei Ikey silently rewarded the wine and went on his way in a remote carriage.
Look, he’s gone to the doctor. Xie Miao said that he was so cold that he could shrink his neck so that he could go to the real doctor. Go chasing the wind in the wild and catch the devil’s tail. Go to hell with these freaks. Lord, forgive me, a sinner.
Tatars came up to Xie Miao and looked at him with disgust and disgust. He was trembling and said in broken Russian with Tatar.
He’s good, you’re bad, your bad master is a good man, he’s good, you’re an animal, your bad master is alive, you’re a Promethean, you made man alive, you’re happy, you’re worried and you’re miserable, but you don’t want anything. You’re a stone, you’re mud, you don’t want anything. You’re a stone emperor, no, your master.
Everyone laughed, and the Tatar frowned in disgust. With a wave of his hand, he wrapped up his rags and walked towards the bonfire. Several boatmen, Xie Miao, trudged into the cabin.
It’s so cold. A boatman said hoarsely that he was lying on the wet mud covered with hay to straighten himself out.
Yeah, it doesn’t warm the life of another attached convict
Everyone is lying on the door, letting the wind blow and the snow float into the house. No one wants to get up and go to the door. They are too cold to move.
I feel fine. I’m going to sleep. Xie Miao said vaguely, God bless me. I hope everyone can live like this
You, of course, a generation of hard labor can’t even endure you.
Dogs barking outside are like whining.
What’s this sound? Who’s there?
The Tatar is crying.
Look at him, weirdo.
He would spoil Xie Miao’s speech and fall asleep immediately.
The rest of the people soon fell asleep, and the door has never been.
In 189
Ward Six
one
A small wing in the backyard of the hospital is surrounded by dense burdock nettles. The iron roof of the wild cannabis room has been rusted. The chimney has collapsed. Half of the front steps have decayed. The long grass has come to the wall, and the mortar has peeled off, leaving mottled remnants. The wing faces the hospital. Behind it is a field. A gray fence is poked and nailed to separate the wing field from these pointed nails. The wing body does not give people a unique and lifeless charm. It feels like this.
You’re not afraid of being stung by nettles. Just walk along a narrow path leading to the wing, and you’ll see a scene like this. You hit the first door and come to the outer room. Here, next to the wall and stove, there are piles of broken mattresses, worn-out patients’ trousers, blue and white striped shirts and a worn-out shoe. These wrinkles and rags are mixed together, and they are moldy and give off a suffocating breath.
Nikita, the watchman, is always lying in this pile of rubbish with a pipe in his mouth. He is a veteran. His red collar of the old army has faded. His expression is harsh and gaunt. Two eyebrows drop to add a pair of grass sheepdogs to his face. He looks thin and red-nosed, and his figure is not tall, but he looks dignified and his fists are thick. He belongs to the kind of people who are simple-minded, obedient, stupid and stubborn. He regards it above all else in the most orderly way, so he is convinced that they will have to beat him on their faces and chests.