Булгаков Михаил Афанасьевич - The Embroidered Towel

THE EMBROIDERED TOWEL

By Mikhail Bulgakov

Translated 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

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

̶

̶

– 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:

Notes

1

A two-wheeled cart

2

A vest is slightly more than a kilometer and about equal to 3/5 of a mile