| The warehouse loader of the packages, John Golt, who had been known for years past as a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless man in the DuPage County, was taking his old woman to the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A cab driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an incompetent driver like John. A cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the lighting posts, and the forest, even a road could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on John car, it was impossible to see the road. The windshield fluid was
exhausted and plus windshield brushes did not work. The blue color worker was in a hurry. He kept restlessly hopping up and down on the front seat and pushing on the gas pedal. "Don't cry, Sarah, . . ." he muttered. "Have a little patience. Please God we shall reach the hospital, and in a moment it will be the right thing for you. . . . Dr. Abram Levin will give you some little drops, or tell them to bleed you; or maybe the doctor will be pleased to rub you with some sort of spirit -- it'll . . . draw it out of your side. Doctor will do his best.. . . He is a nice gentleman, God give him health! As soon as we get there receptionist start asking questions. Do you have health insurance? Which one? 'How? Why so?' they will yell. 'Why did you not come at the right time? Your insurance does not cover 100% and we need to check about the emergencies fees. Why did you not come in the morning? Go away! Get out of my sight. Come again to-morrow.' And I shall say: 'Mr. Doctor! Abram! It is an emergency. The loader pushed on a gas pedal and without looking at the old woman who was sitting on the back of the car. The secular man began talking to God and his life." I ask you to save my wife. . . . ..The Mother of God . . . is wroth, and has sent such a snowstorm? Kindly look for yourself. . . . Even a first-rate car could not do it, while mine -- you can see for yourself -- is not a car but a disgrace.' God replies, 'We know you! You always find some excuse! Especially you, John; I know you of old! I'll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I shall say: 'You Almighty! Am I a criminal or a what? My old woman is giving up her soul, she is dying, and am I going to run from tavern to tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take them, the taverns!' Only God grant we don't get off the road. Oh, how it is blowing! One's eyes are full of snow." And the man went on muttering endlessly. He hoped to get a little relief from his depressing feelings. He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts and questions in his brain were even more numerous. Sorrow had come upon the John unawares, unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now he could not get over it, could not recover himself. He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as though in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart. The careless idler and drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position of a busy man, weighed down by anxieties and haste, and even struggling with nature. The Illinois resident remembered that his trouble had begun the evening before. When he had come home yesterday evening, a little drunk as usual, and from long-established habit had begun swearing and shaking his fists, his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse as she had never looked at him before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes was that of a martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly fed; this time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, as saints in the holy pictures or dying people look. From that strange, evil look in her eyes the trouble had begun. The husband, scared with amazement, borrowed a car from a neighbor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital in the hope that, by means of powders and ointments, physicians would bring back his old woman's habitual expression. "I say, Sarah, . . ." the John muttered, "if doctors asks you whether I beat you, say, 'Never!' and I never will beat you again. I swear it. And did I ever beat you out of spite? I just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for you. Some men wouldn't trouble, but here I am taking you. . . . I am doing my best. And the way it snows, the way it snows! Thy Will be done, O Lord! God grant we don't get off the road. . . . Does your side ache, Sarah that you don't speak? I ask you, does your side ache?" It struck him as strange that the snow on his old woman's face was not melting; it was queer that the face itself looked somehow drawn, and had turned a pale gray, dingy waxen hue and had grown grave and solemn. The man let the reins go and began thinking. He could not bring himself to look round at his old woman: he was frightened. He was afraid, too, of asking her a question and not getting an answer. At last, to make an end of uncertainty, without looking round he felt his old woman's cold hand. The lifted hand fell like an ice. "She is dead, then! What a business!" And the husband cried. He was not so much sorry as annoyed. He thought how quickly everything passes in this world! His trouble had hardly begun when the final catastrophe had happened. He had not had time to live with his old woman, to show her he was sorry for her before she died. He had lived with her for forty years, but those forty years had passed by as it were in a fog. What with drunkenness, quarreling, and poverty, there had been no feeling of life. And, as though to spite him, his old woman died at the very time when he felt he was sorry for her, that he could not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully badly to her. "Why, she used to go the round of the Chicago land," he remembered. "I sent her out myself to beg for bread in churches. What a business! She ought to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is I'll be bound she thinks I really was that sort of man. . . . Holy Mother! but where the devil am I driving? There's no need for a doctor now, but a burial. Turn back!" John turned back and push on a gas pedal with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour. The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to turn gray. It was getting dusk. And the snow kept turning darker and darker, the wind grew colder and more cutting. Now he could not see the yoke at all. He would have got out of the road and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep. The car went out oit of the ramp of the highway into a ditch and John lost his conscience. He start dreaming. All "To live over again," thought the man. He remembered that forty years ago Sarah had been young, handsome, merry, that she had come of a well-to-do family. She to him because she had been attracted by his education. All the essentials for a happy life had been there, but the trouble was that, just as he had got drunk after the wedding without waking up till now. His wedding he remembered, but of what happened after the wedding -- for the life of him he could remember nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, watched TV, and quarreled. Forty years had been wasted like that. He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows. The loader saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew how things should be done. "A requiem, brothers, for my old woman," he said. "The priest should be told. . . ." "Oh, all right, all right; lie down," a voice cut him short. "Dr. Abram Levin!" the patient cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before him. "You saved my life! " He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him. "Doctor, where are my legs, where are my arms!" "Say good-by to your arms and legs. . . . They've been frozen off. Come, come! . . . What are you crying for ? You've lived your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it -- that's enough for you! . . ." "I am grieving. . . . Graciously forgive me! If I could have another five or six years! . . ." "What for?" "The car isn't mine, I must give it back. . . . I must bury my old woman. . . . How quickly it is all ended in this world! Doctor do you have cigarettes for me please?" The doctor went out of with a wave of his hand. It was all over with the warehouse worker. Modified from the classical literature. |
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