A Country Doctor's Notebook (10 page)

‘The children have suddenly come out in a rash,' the pink-cheeked woman said gravely.

Cautiously I touched the forehead of the little girl who was holding on to the skirt. She hid herself in its folds and vanished without trace. I fished out the fat-faced little boy
from behind the other side of the skirt and felt him too. Both their foreheads felt quite normal.

‘Would you undress the baby, my dear?'

She unwrapped the baby girl. Her naked little body was spattered with a starry rash like the sky on a frosty night. It was covered from head to foot in roseola and oozing papules. Vanka, the little boy, suddenly struggled out of my grip and started to howl. Demyan Lukich came to help me.

‘It's a chill, isn't it?' said the mother, looking at me with a serene expression.

‘A chill!' Lukich growled and made a grimace of pity and disgust. ‘The whole damn district of Korobovo has caught this sort of chill.'

‘What's it from?' the mother asked while I inspected her mottled sides and chest.

‘Get dressed,' I said.

Then I sat down at the desk, laid my head on my hand and yawned (she was one of the last that day; she was number ninety-eight). Then I said:

‘Both you, my dear, and your children are very, very ill. This is a dreadful, dangerous disease. You must start a very long course of treatment at once.'

What a pity that words are so inadequate to describe the incredulity in the woman's bulging eyes. She turned the baby over like a log in her arms, stared dully at its legs and asked:

‘Where does it come from?'

And she gave a crooked grin.

‘That's not the point,' I replied, lighting my fiftieth cigarette that day. ‘You should be asking what will happen to your children if you don't have them treated.'

‘Nothin' at all, that's what,' she answered and started wrapping the baby in its swaddling clothes.

My watch lay on the table in front of me. As far as I remember, by the time I had been speaking for three minutes the woman burst into sobs. I was very glad of these tears, brought on by my intentionally cruel and frightening words, because it was only thanks to them that I was able to say what I said next:

‘So they're staying. Demyan Lukich, put them in the annexe, please. I shall go to town tomorrow and get permission to open an in-patient section for syphilitics.'

The
feldsher
showed a lively interest:

‘But doctor—(he was a great sceptic)—how shall we manage on our own? What about the medicines? We can't spare any nurses … and who's going to do the cooking? Have you thought about the crockery, the syringes?'

But I shook my head obstinately and answered:

‘I'll see to all that.'

A month passed.

The three rooms of the snow-covered annexe were lit by lamps with tin shades. The beds were made up with torn old sheets. There were only two syringes—a small one-gramme syringe and a five-gramme venereal one. In other words, it was pitiful, snowbound poverty. But one syringe was proudly kept separate—the instrument with which, inwardly dying of fear, I had already administered several difficult and unfamiliar injections of the new Salvarsan.

More than that: I was feeling much relieved, as seven men and five women were lying in the annexe, and each day their speckled rashes were melting before my eyes.

It was evening. Demyan Lukich was holding a small lamp and casting its light on the shy little boy, Vanka, whose mouth was smeared with semolina. But the boy no longer had a rash. It was balm to my conscience as all four of them passed under the lamp.

‘I think I'll get myself discharged tomorrow,' said the mother, tucking in her blouse.

‘No, you mustn't go yet,' I replied. ‘You must still have another course of injections.'

‘I won't agree to it,' she retorted. ‘I've got too much to do at home. Thank you for your help, but please discharge me tomorrow. We're better now.'

Our conversation gradually became so heated that we both lost our tempers. It ended like this:

‘Do you know what you are?' I said, feeling my face redden. ‘You're a … fool!'

‘What sort of language is that? Do you always swear at your patients?'

‘You're much worse than a fool! You're not that, you're a …! Take a look at your Vanka! Are you trying to kill him? Well, I'm not going to let you!'

She stayed another ten days.

Ten days! Wild horses could not have kept her longer. But believe me, my conscience was clear and I was not even worried about calling her a fool. I'm not sorry. What is swearing in comparison with the speckled rash!

Many years have passed since then. Fate and the turbulent years have put a long distance between me and the snow-covered annexe. What is happening there and who is there now? I am certain it has been improved. The building has
probably been whitewashed and there are new sheets. There is no electricity, of course. It is just possible that as I write these lines a young head is bending over a patient's chest. The yellow light from a kerosene lamp is shining on a yellow leg.

Greetings, dear colleague!

ACCORDING TO THE OMNISCIENT AKSINYA, THE whole story began when a clerk called Palchikov, who lived in Shalometyevo, fell in love with the daughter of an agronomist. His was a flaming passion, which consumed the poor wretch's heart. He drove into the nearby town of Grachyovka and ordered himself a suit. The effect was dazzling, and it may well be that the grey stripes of that clerk's new trousers sealed the luckless man's fate. The agronomist's daughter agreed to become his wife.

I had acquired such fame after amputating the leg of the girl who fell into a flax-brake that I almost expired under the burden of my reputation. Every day a hundred peasants would drive up the sleigh track to attend my surgery. I stopped having lunch. Arithmetic is a cruel science: assuming that I spent no more than five minutes on each patient … five!… then five hundred minutes equals eight hours and twenty minutes—without a break, please note. Apart from that I had a ward for forty inpatients. And I also did operations.

In short, when I left the hospital at nine o'clock in the evening I had no desire to eat, drink or sleep. My only
wish was for no one to call me out to a confinement. And in two weeks I was dragged out at night along that sleigh track five times.

A film of liquid clouded my eyes and a vertical fold, like a worm, appeared above the bridge of my nose. At night through a dim haze I dreamed of failed operations and exposed ribs, of my hands covered in human blood, and I would wake up in a cold sweat despite the heat from my tiled stove.

On my rounds I would march urgently round the ward, followed by a male and two female assistants. As I stopped at the bedside of a sick man, dripping with fever and wheezing miserably, I would force my brain to disgorge everything that was in it. My fingers would feel the hot, dry skin, I would examine his pupils, tap his ribs, listen to the deep-down, mysterious beat of the heart, all the while obsessed by one thought—how can I save him? And how can I save the next patient—and the next …?

All of them!

It was like a battle, which began every morning by the pale light reflected from the snow and ended by the fitful yellow gleam of a pressure-lamp.

‘How will all this end, I'd like to know?' I said to myself one night. ‘The sleighs will keep on coming all through January, February and March.'

I wrote to Grachyovka politely reminding them that my practice was supposed to be manned by a second doctor.

The letter set off on its twenty-five-mile journey by wood-sledge across an ocean of snow. Three days later came the reply: they said yes, of course, of course, definitely, only not at present … no one would be coming for the time being …

The letter ended with a few flattering comments on my work and good wishes for my continued success.

Inspired by those remarks I returned to swabbing, injecting diphtheria serum, lancing abscesses of monstrous proportions, applying plastercasts.

On Tuesday there were not a hundred but a hundred and eleven out-patients. I finished my surgery at nine o'clock in the evening and fell asleep trying to guess how many there would be on Wednesday. I dreamed that nine hundred people came.

There was something unusually white about the morning light as it shone through my window. I opened my eyes, unaware of what had woken me up. Then I realised what it was: someone was knocking.

‘Doctor …' I recognised the voice of Pelagea Ivanovna. ‘Are you awake?'

‘Mm-hmm,' I mumbled, still half asleep.

‘I've come to say you needn't hurry over to surgery this morning. Only two people have come.'

‘What? You're joking.'

‘No, honestly. There's a blizzard, doctor, a blizzard,' she repeated joyfully through the keyhole. ‘And the two who are here have only got decayed teeth. Demyan Lukich will pull them out.'

‘Yes, but …' Without knowing why, I had already jumped out of bed.

The day turned out splendidly. After doing my round, I spent the rest of the time lounging around my quarters, whistling snatches of opera, smoking, drumming my fingers on the windowpanes. Outside was a sight I had never seen before. There was no sky and no earth—only twisting, swirling whiteness, sideways and aslant, up and
down, as though the devil had gone mad with a packet of tooth-powder.

At noon I issued an instruction to Aksinya to boil three buckets and a kettle of water. I had not had a proper wash for a month.

Between us Aksinya and I dragged from the storeroom a wash-tub of unbelievable dimensions and put it on the kitchen floor. (No question, naturally, of there being any proper bathtubs in our remote spot; the only ones were in the hospital itself—and they were broken.)

By about two o'clock in the afternoon the whirling mesh of snow outside had noticeably thinned out, and I was sitting naked in the washtub with a lathered head.

‘Ah, this is more like it …' I muttered deliciously as I poured scalding water down my back. ‘This is the life! We'll have lunch afterwards and then—bed. And provided I'm allowed a full night's sleep, I don't care if a hundred and fifty people come tomorrow. What's the news, Aksinya?'

Aksinya was in the scullery, waiting till my ablutions were completed.

‘The clerk at the Shalometyevo estate is getting married,' Aksinya replied.

‘Is he now! So she's accepted him, has she?'

‘Of course. He's madly in love …' crooned Aksinya, clattering the dishes.

‘Is she pretty?'

‘Prettiest girl for miles around. Slim, blonde …'

‘You don't say!'

At that moment there was a hammering at the door. Frowning, I started to rinse myself and listened.

‘The doctor's having a bath,' Aksinya sang out, to be answered by a rumbling bass voice.

‘A note for you, doctor,' Aksinya squeaked through the keyhole.

‘Pass it round the door.'

I clambered out of the bath, shivering and cursing my luck as I took the damp envelope from Aksinya's hand.

‘I'm not leaving this tub, that's for sure. After all, I'm only human,' I said without much confidence as I sat down again in the washtub and opened the letter.

‘Born unlucky,' I thought miserably as I looked at the firewood glowing in the stove.

‘Was it a man who brought this?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ask him to come in here.'

He entered and for a moment I thought he was an ancient Roman from his gleaming helmet planted on top of a fur hat with enormous earflaps. He was enveloped in a wolfskin coat, and I felt the gust of cold as he came in.

‘Why are you wearing a helmet?' I enquired, shielding my partly washed body with a towel.

‘I'm a fireman from Shalometyevo. We have a fire brigade there …' the Roman explained.

‘Who is the doctor who wrote this?'

‘He came on a visit to the agronomist. Young doctor, he is. It's a terrible business, terrible …'

‘Who is the woman?'

‘The clerk's bride-to-be.'

Aksinya groaned from behind the door.

‘What happened?' (I could hear Aksinya sidle up and glue her ear to the door.)

‘Yesterday they had an engagement party, and afterwards the clerk wanted to take her for a sleigh-ride. He harnessed up a fast horse, sat her in the sleigh and started off towards the gate. But then the horse broke into a gallop with such a jerk that the girl fell out and hit her forehead on the gatepost. She just sort of flew out. It was the most terrible accident, I can't tell you … They had to hold the clerk down to stop him killing himself. He's gone crazy.'

‘Look,' I said miserably, ‘I'm having a bath. Why couldn't you have brought her here?' So saying I doused my head with water and rinsed the soap into the tub.

‘Couldn't be done, sir,' the fireman said in an agonised voice and clasped his hands in entreaty. ‘Not a chance, sir. The girl would have died.'

‘But how can
we
go? There's a blizzard outside!'

‘It's letting up—in fact, sir, it's died down completely. I've a couple of fast horses, harnessed in tandem. We'll be there inside an hour.'

I gave a faint groan, clambered out of the tub, and sluiced myself furiously with two buckets of water. Then, squatting on my haunches in front of the mouth of the stove I made an attempt to dry my hair a little by sticking my head right in.