Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin­

explosions, at the end of which he was almost screaming that “science won’t allow fools to joke around.” Kulik made fun of him maliciously. Two students continually argued until they were nearly hoarse about who would lead which horse and what to carry on it. They were nicknamed “the Gracchi brothers.” The hunters Petrenko and Molik flushed ducks from the swamps four times in one day, but only killed one. Something had broken in Chistiakov’s movie camera; he was continually repairing it and swearing up a storm. Trifonov kept criticizing him.
    Soon my unwillingness to talk was noticed. People also noticed that I had practically stopped eating. They looked at one another and whispered behind my back. Kulik and Trifonov tried to get me to talk; they asked how I was feeling. I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled. During the camp dinner, when everyone greedily devoured wheat kasha with lard and smoked fish, I ate berries and drank tea. At mealtimes a large oilcloth was usually spread out and the food placed on it; no one would sit there. Crackers, smoked fish, lard, onions, and lumps of sugar lay on the cloth. In the center, on a board, they placed the cauldron with the wheat kasha, flavored with lard and dried carrots. Everyone dug it out with wooden spoons. There were no bowls on the expedition; Kulik said that they would just make a racket on the way and washing up would take time. After the kasha, a thick tea was poured into tin cups. It was drunk holding lumps of sugar between the teeth; Kulik had forbidden drinking tea with sugar dissolved in it. Sitting in the circle, I drank tea from a cup and looked at the people eating. Their food seem abnormal to me. For the first time in my not very long life I suddenly paid attention to
what
people were eating. What they ate was either dead or processed, chopped up, ground, or dried. The smoked wrinkled fish and dried crackers were equally distasteful to me. Of everything that was put out on the oilcloth during dinner, only the onion and berries did not disgust me. They were normal food. Sometimes I would take an onion and eat it, washing it down with tea. Everyone looked askance at me. Anikin, with whom I slept in the tent, became terse and almost stopped talking to me. He no longer theorized about meteorites and comets. Lying in the tent one night, I heard a conversation between Kulik and Trifonov.
    “It appears that Snegirev has gone crackers. We have to do something about him.”
    “What? Isolate him from the group? And how?”
    “Hmm, you’re right. There’s nowhere. Keep an eye on him. After all, he’s our talisman.”
    “Have you become superstitious?”
    “While the expedition is going on. Do you disapprove?”
    “Not a bit. I’m a dialectician, you know.”
    “Well, old man, I’m no metaphysician, either!”
    They laughed in the darkness.
    The second night I spent in a half sleep. I was in wonderful form. Good spirits and energy filled me to the brim. And I was living only in the present: the past was forgotten. I wanted one thing alone: for the
joy
my body felt to go on forever. For that I was ready to do anythin g...
    The morning meeting was anxious. Grumbling began among the members of the expedition: they were thirty kilometers into the felled-forest zone, and there were no traces of the meteorite’s fall. Ikhilevich and Potresov tried to convince everyone that the meteorite exploded in the air. Kulik tore them apart rudely, calling them “craven renegades.” The geologists proposed going a bit farther and beginning the construction of the barracks. The drillers, who tired more easily than anyone else for some reason, advised that we begin building right in this spot. The students, mesmerized by the strange place and exhausted by the trip, were ready for anything. But Kulik and Trifonov insisted on moving ahead. I listened to the quarrels and arguments, happy that I wasn’t like the others, that I had been given something that made my body