Everything blended together until the insides of Shukshin’s clothes were drenched in sweat and the outside layer was soaked with snow that had caked on and subsequently melted with his expended body heat. He stopped and yelled into the night, then slumped and knelt in the snow.
Dusha cocked her head and howled with him until Shukshin fell into the snow beside her. He began to cry, water welling up into his stinging eyes as the wind egged the tears on. Shukshin dug a hole in the snow for some semblance of shelter and Dusha curled up against him. He shivered and buried his face into Dusha’s fur. He could not feel his nose and his ears stung when he applied any pressure to them. Dusha shook under his head and she tried to ball herself up further, wrapping her tail around her face, pulling herself closer to Shukshin.
The storm covered them with a fresh, soft blanket, lulling them to sleep. Unsure if he was succumbing to exhaustion or death, Shukshin let his eyes close and his consciousness fade.
Shukshin woke up to a clear and dry sky. The sun poured down on him as intensely as the snow had. Trees donned white-capped branches and daggers of ice pointed to the ground. Heat from the falling sunrays built up in icicles and caused them to drip, hit the snow, and refreeze around him. The soft patter of these drops accompanied a gentle breeze that whistled an almost cheerful tune through the pine needles.
Still, Shukshin shivered. He could no longer feel his ears. He had long since given up on his nose, accepting the sensation of a stranger’s bulbous tumor growing in the middle of his face. Dusha opened her eyelids, but her normal inquisitiveness was masked, dull and tired. Shukshin patted her head, but she only responded with a single raise of her tail. She struggled to keep her eyes open and Shukshin examined her with intense worry.
“What’s wrong, girl? What’s wrong?”
He reasoned she was tired or the cold was affecting her. But, something else nagged at him. Her yelp from off in the distance that past night haunted him. An ephemeral ghost, a memory that Shukshin thought he may have made up.
But, besides her swollen paw and the ice frozen between each of her padded toes, he could find nothing wrong with her. He sat for a moment against the tree, petting her and trying to coax her to alertness.
She refused and settled into his lap again, content to lie with her eyes closed and her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth.
“Dusha? Wake up.” Shukshin’s voice quivered.
Dusha’s heaving chest slowed and she choked and gasped for air. A sickening sound escaped from her throat like two wet pieces of rubber flapping against each other.
“Dusha! Dusha!”
Her ribcage stopped rising and falling. Steam escaped in a final plume from her nostrils and broke against Shukshin’s face.
For the second time in a matter of hours, Shukshin sobbed and heaved uncontrollably. He stroked Dusha’s limp body and stared up through the pine needles and snow, pleading into the clear blue sky.
He picked her up in his arms and trudged on. A vague, dull thought reminded him that he should search for the road. In Belskiy’s truck, he would find food, a gun, shelter. And, his own truck would take him to Boguchany, other people. It was not that he desired to see other people, but other people meant safety and a warm bed. He might be able to feel his nose again, his ears, his fingers, his toes. It would mean dry clothes, a bed for him and Dusha.
Dusha.
He stopped and began to sob into his chest like a distraught child. Dusha’s body rocked as his chest heaved. Her legs were folded up over her skinny ribcage as though she were caught in prayer. The fur on her stomach was matted and wet, revealing her soft underbelly. The skin was mottled with purple and blue bruises from the blood that had poured from the ruptured vessels between her innards.
When Shukshin recomposed himself, he trudged on again. The sun beat down, teasing his skin with a promise of warmth and escape, but the dry air and gusts of wind served as a harbinger of cold, reminding him that the ephemeral rays of the sun could not save him now.
Shukshin changed directions when panic began to set in. Waves of worry and self-doubt crashed in his mind, drowning out any hope of a rational course of action. His arms burned under Dusha’s weight. The tendons and muscles screamed at him to let her go, bury her in the snow and move on. But he refused, unrelenting.
His tongue stuck against the roof of his mouth, dry and swollen. Hunger called to him with a rumble. A gurgling stomach, a pang of desire. Ak Ana did not need her can of beans, but he could use them now.
With a groan, Shukshin knelt to the ground. He laid Dusha down gingerly beside him and shoveled snow into his mouth. At first, the cold made his tongue freeze and his lips stick together. But, his body burned precious calories warming itself and melting the snow inside him, providing him with water and fulfilling a thirst that had hid behind the hunger pains.
The snow assuaged both his thirst and, temporarily, his hunger. His stomach, filled with water, told his mind he would be fine for now. With his arms still aflame and cramped, he cleared a pit in the snow beside Dusha and sat. He could feel the cold snow beneath him that would soon melt and make his seat uncomfortable. His feet were numb, his legs were tired, and his present desire to rest the labored calf and thigh muscles outweighed the ominous promise of the cold wetness that would soak into him. He closed his eyes and, once again, fell into a darkness that teetered between sleep and death.
Night and day blended into a foggy memory as Shukshin tried to count the days that accompanied his winding path in the wooded taiga. He thought he had spent three, four, maybe five days carrying Dusha’s body. With the cold temperatures, her body did not immediately rot and flies did not desecrate her with their offspring. His face, after a long period of numbness, began to burn, as though fresh red skin was being exposed to the biting wind. His body constantly shivered and it became harder and harder to carry Dusha. Shukshin’s clothes seemed bigger, inflated, saggy. The snow could trick him into satiation for only so long and soon he began to curse Ak Ana for taking his food, curse Belskiy for hoarding the food. Precious aluminum cans filled with real food. The frozen pine needles and pine cones were entirely inedible and, after eating the roots and stem of a long-dead plant, his stomach upheaved acid and water. A clear yellowish liquid burned at his throat and tongue as he vomited into the snow. Over and over he expelled the contents of his stomach, until a darker greenish liquid was regurgitated.
His muscles were worn weaker with the incessant vomiting and he had to lie down next to Dusha. Shukshin curled up into a ball and refused to sample the foliage again. An old memory of a tale that his grandfather told him about shipwrecked sailors resurfaced. The memory flapped in his mind like a tattered old sail, full of holes and tears. However, he remembered that the sailors resorted to eating their dead, their comrades, when starvation tore at them and no rescuers presented themselves on the small island or rocky shore or frozen landscape or wherever the sailors were lost.
Shukshin stared at Dusha’s body, eyeing her swollen stomach. He sat up, his stomach still weak, and he scratched at the fur on one of her hind legs, looking for a soft spot. His hunger urged him on and goaded him to devour the dog. He stopped pulling at her fur, stopped tearing at her skin, and stared at his gloved hands. Even now, how could he eat her? She had given her life for him. But, then, she had given her life for him. He could not let himself die after her sacrifice. What need did she have for a body anymore? Dusha’s soul had been set free into the taiga, to howl with her ancestral relatives in packs of roving memories and haunting winds. She wanted him alive.