THE POST

In the dark, chilly hours of the night, amidst the sleepy town setting, a postman, clad in his official uniform and wielding a rusted sword, prepares for his journey, accompanied by a university student traveling to the station, an arrangement borne out of necessity rather than protocol. Amidst the nocturnal silence and the preparations of the driver, Semyon Glazov, to embark upon the journey with the mail cart and its three horses, the postmaster implores the postman to deliver a parcel and extend familial greetings to his destination.

As the journey commences, the student clumsily settles beside the postman, initiating a polite but strained dialogue in the enveloping darkness that is intermittently pierced by the glow of the driver’s pipe. The hushed anticipation of departure crescendos into the steady advance of the cart, punctuated by the postmaster’s repeated messages of affection, signaling a departure that carries the weight of routine and the novelty of an unexpected passenger.

The conversation between the student and the postman veers towards the observational and the mundane, wrapped in the darkness before dawn, highlighting the contrasts between the familiar and the uncharted. As the initial serenity of the journey gives way to unforeseen peril when the horses, spooked, dash uncontrollably through a forest, both passengers confront the immediate physical dangers and the unexpected camaraderie of shared vulnerability.

Surviving the ordeal, the journey persists with a new day inching closer, bringing revelations of the postman’s long tenure and the routine dangers that lace such nocturnal journeys. However, the postman’s reticence and eventual irritation underscore a divide between daily toil and the novelty sought by the student, each bearing their solitude in the emerging daylight.

As the journey draws to a close with their arrival at the station, the separation of the two travelers is marked by an unspoken acknowledgment of their brief intersection through the night. The student, left with reflections on the transient warmth of human connections against the backdrop of relentless routines and the cold dawn, experiences a moment of introspective solitude as he awaits the next phase of his journey, leaving the postman to his solitary vigils and uninterrupted paths through the recurring nights and mornings.

This tale encapsulates a glimpse into the convergence of lives momentarily intertwined by necessity, journeying through the darkness towards the inevitability of dawn, each carrying forward their solitude amidst shared bouts of camaraderie, duty, and the relentless march of time.