Cancer Ward (4 page)

“Ninety-eight point six.” Zoya smiled and made the first mark on the graph of the new temperature chart hanging at the foot of the bed. “There's a telephone in the registrar's office. But you can't go there now, it's the other entrance.”

“Forgive me, young lady”—Pavel Nikolayevich raised himself a little and his voice became slightly severe—“but how can the clinic be without a telephone? Suppose something happened now? To me, for instance?”

“We'd run over there and telephone for you.” Zoya stood her ground.

“Well, suppose there was a storm, or heavy rain?”

Zoya had already moved on to his neighbor, the old Uzbek, and was filling in his chart.

“In the daytime we go over there straightway, but it's locked now.”

All right, she was a sweet girl, but she could also be fresh. She'd refused to hear him out, and even now was moving on to the Kazakh. Raising his voice involuntarily, Pavel Nikolayevich called out after her, “There must be another telephone! It's impossible for there not to be!”

“There is,” answered Zoya. She was already squatting by the Kazakh's bed. “But it's in the head doctor's office.”

“Well, what's the problem?”

“Dyomka … ninety-eight point four.… The office is locked. Nizamutdin Bahramovich doesn't like…”

And she walked out of the room.

It was logical. Of course, it's not very pleasant to have people going into your office when you're not there. All the same, in a hospital proper arrangements should be made.

For an instant a tiny wire linking him with the outside world had dangled before him—and it had snapped. Once again the tumor under his jaw, the size of a fist, had shut off the entire world.

Pavel Nikolayevich reached out for his little mirror and looked at himself. How the tumor was spreading! Seen through the eyes of a complete stranger it would be frightening enough, but seen through his own…! No, this thing could not be real. No one else around him had anything like it. In all his forty-five years Pavel Nikolayevich had never seen such a deformity …

He did not try to work out whether it had grown any more or not. He just put the mirror away, took some food from his bedside table and started chewing.

The two roughest types, Yefrem and Bone-chewer, were not in the ward. They had gone out. By the window Azovkin had twisted himself into a new position, but he was not groaning. The rest were quiet. He could hear the sound of pages being turned. And some of them had gone off to sleep. All Rusanov, too, had to do was get to sleep, while away the night, think of nothing, and then tomorrow give the doctors a dressing down.

So he took off his pajamas, lay down under the blankets in his underclothes, covered his head with the towel he had brought from home and tried to sleep.

But through the silence there came a particularly audible and irritating sound of somebody whispering somewhere. It seemed to be going straight into Pavel Nikolayevich's ear. He could not bear it, tore the towel away from his face, raised himself slightly, trying to avoid hurting his neck, and discovered it was his neighbor, the Uzbek. He was all shriveled up and thin, an old man, almost brown skinned, with a little black pointed beard, and wearing a shabby skullcap as brown as himself.

He lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling and whispering—prayers or something, probably, the old fool.

“Hey you!
Aksakal!
”
*
Rusanov wagged his finger at him. “Stop it. You're disturbing me.”

The
aksakal
fell silent. Rusanov lay down again and covered his face with the towel. But still he could not get to sleep. Now he realized that the reason he could not settle down was the penetrating light from the two ceiling lamps. The shades were not made of frosted glass and did not cover the bulbs properly. He could sense the light even through the towel. Pavel Nikolayevich grunted and again raised himself from the pillow with his elbows, carefully, to avoid the stabbing pains from his tumor.

Proshka was standing beside his bed near the light switch and beginning to undress.

“Young man! Turn off the light!” Pavel Nikolayevich commanded.

“Eh?… er … Nurse hasn't come with the medicines yet,” faltered Proshka, but he reached up one hand toward the switch.

“Turn off the light—what do you mean?” growled Bone-chewer's voice behind Rusanov. “Who d'you think you are, you're not the only person here.”

Pavel Nikolayevich sat up straight and put on his spectacles. Carefully nursing his tumor, he turned, making the bedsprings creak, and said, “You might be a bit more
polite.
”

The rude fellow pulled a face and answered in a low voice, “Don't change the subject. You're not my boss.”

Pavel Nikolayevich threw him a withering glare, but this had no effect whatever on Bone-chewer.

“OK, but what do you need the light for?” Rusanov went over to peaceful negotiation.

“So I can pick my asshole,” said Kostoglotov coarsely.

Pavel Nikolayevich began to have difficulty with his breathing, although by now he was pretty well acclimatized to the air in the ward. The impudent fellow ought to be discharged from hospital at twenty minutes' notice and sent back to work. But at the moment he had no concrete means of action. (He would of course mention him to the hospital administration later on.)

“If you want to read or something, you can go out into the corridor,” Pavel Nikolayevich pointed out, trying to be fair. “Why should you take it upon yourself to decide for everyone? There are different sorts of patients here and distinctions have to be made…”

“There'll be distinctions.” Bone-chewer showed his fangs. “They'll write you an obituary: Party member since the year zero. As for us, they'll just carry us out feet first.”

Pavel Nikolayevich had never come across such unrestrained insubordination, such unbridled wilfulness. He could not recall anything like it. He found himself at a loss—how could be counter this sort of thing? He couldn't complain to that girl. The conversation would have to be cut short for the present in the most dignified manner possible. Pavel Nikolayevich took off his spectacles, lay down carefully and covered his head with the towel.

He was exploding with indignation and anguish at the thought of how he had weakly agreed to enter this clinic. But it would not be too late to get a discharge tomorrow.

It was shortly after eight o'clock by his watch. Oh well, for the moment he would put up with it all. Sooner or later they'd quiet down.

But the floor started shaking again as someone paced up and down between the beds. Of course it was Yefrem coming back. The old floorboards vibrated with his footsteps and Rusanov could feel the vibrations through the bedrails and the pillow. However, Pavel Nikolayevich decided not to rebuke him, but to endure it.

There's such bad manners and impudence among our people. We still haven't got rid of it. How can we lead them to a new society carrying this burden?

The evening dragged endlessly. The nurse began her rounds—once, twice, a third and fourth time—a mixture for one, a powder for another, injections for two more. Azovkin uttered a shriek when he was given his injection, and again begged for a hot-water bottle to help the serum disperse more quickly. Yefrem kept tramping up and down, unable to find peace. Ahmadjan and Proshka were talking from their beds. It was as if they were only now coming properly to life, as if they hadn't a care in the world or anything that needed curing. Even Dyomka was not ready to sleep. He came up and sat on Kostoglotov's bed and they began muttering, right by Pavel Nikolayevich's ear.

“I'm going to try to read a bit more,” Dyomka was saying, “while there's time. I'd like to go to university.”

“That's a good thing. But remember, education doesn't make you smarter.”

(What's the point of talking like that? To a child!)

“What do you mean, doesn't make you smarter?”

“It's just one of those things.”

“So what does make you smarter?”

“Life, that's what.”

Dyomka was silent for a moment, then replied, “I don't agree.”

“In our unit there was a commissar, Pashkin. He used to say, ‘Education doesn't make you smarter. Nor does rank. They give you another star on your shoulder and you think you're smarter. Well you're not.'”

“So what do you mean, there's no need to study? I don't agree.”

“Of course you should study. Study! Only remember, for your own sake, it's not the same as intelligence.”

“What is intelligence, then?”

“Intelligence? Trusting your eyes but not your ears. Which subject are you interested in?”

“I haven't decided yet. I am interested in history and literature.”

“What about engineering?”

“No … o.”

“Strange. It was like that in our day. But now boys prefer engineering. Don't you?”

“No … I think … I've a passion for social problems.”

Social problems?… Oh, Dyomka, you'd better learn to assemble radio sets. Life's more peaceful if you're an engineer.”

“What do I care about peace? If I lie here a month or two, I shall have to catch up with the ninth class, for the second half-year.”

“What about textbooks?”

“I've got two here. Stereometry's very difficult.”

“Stereometry? Bring it here!”

Rusanov heard the lad walk off and get his book.

“Let me see … yes … yes … my old friend, Kiselyov's
Stereometry.
The very same. Straight lines and planes … parallel with each other … If a straight line is parallel to another straight line in the same plane, then it is parallel to the plane itself … Hell, what a book, Dyomka! Wouldn't it be fine if everyone wrote like that? Not fat at all, is it? But what a lot it contains!”

“They teach an eighteen-month course out of this book.”

“They taught me too. I used to know it backwards!”

“When?”

“I'll tell you. I was in the ninth class too, the second half-year … that would be in '37 and '38. It feels strange to have it in my hands again. Geometry was my favorite subject.”

“And then?”

“Then what?”

“After school?”

“After school I read a splendid subject—geophysics.”

“Where was that?”

“The same place, Leningrad.”

“And what happened?”

“I finished my first year, and then in September '39 there was an order to call up all nineteen-year-olds into the army, and I was hauled in.”

“Then what?”

“I was on active service.”

“And after that?”

“After that—don't you know what happened? The war.”

“You—were you an officer?”

“No, sergeant.”

“Why?”

“Because if everyone was made a general there'd be no one to win the war … If a plane passes through a straight line parallel to a second plane and intersects that plane, then the line of intersection … Listen, Dyomka! You and I will do some stereometry every day. We'll really push ahead! Would you like to?”

“Yes, I would.”

(Isn't that the limit? Right under my ear!)

“I'll give you lessons.”

“Fine.”

“Otherwise you'll really waste time. We'll begin right now. Let's take these three axioms. You see, these axioms are simple in form, but they'll come into every theorem, and you have to spot where. Here's the first one: if two points in a straight line are in a plane, then every point along that line is also in the plane. What's the idea of that? Look, supposing this book is a plane and the pencil a straight line, all right? Now try to arrange them…”

They plunged into the subject and droned on about axioms and deductions. But Pavel Nikolayevich resolved to bear it, his back turned on them pointedly. At last they stopped talking and broke up. After his double sleeping draft Azovkin dropped off too and was quiet. Then the
aksakal
started coughing. Pavel Nikolayevich was lying with his face toward him. The light was off by now, but there he was, curse him, coughing away, in such a disgusting manner too, with that whistling noise, on and on, so that it seemed he was going to choke.

Pavel Nikolayevich turned his back on him. He removed the towel from his head, but it still wasn't properly dark; light was coming in from the corridor, and noises, too, people walking about and clanking spittoons and buckets.

He could not get to sleep. His tumor weighed him down. His whole happy life, so well thought out, so harmonious and useful, was now about to crack. He felt very sorry for himself. One little push would be enough to bring tears to his eyes.

It was Yefrem who did not fail to provide the push. Unrestrained even in the dark, he was telling Ahmadjan next to him some idiotic fairy tale:

“Why should man live a hundred years? This is how it happened. Allah gave all the animals fifty years each, and that was enough. But man came last, and Allah had only twenty-five left.”

“You mean a twenty-fiver?”
*
asked Ahmadjan.

“That's right. And man started complaining it wasn't enough. Allah said, ‘It's enough!' And man said, ‘No, it isn't.' So Allah said, ‘All right, go out and ask, maybe someone has some over and will give you some.' Man went off and met a horse. ‘Listen,' he said, ‘my life's too short. Give me some of yours.' ‘All right,' said the horse, ‘take twenty-five years.' Man went a bit further and met a dog. ‘Listen, dog, let me have some of your life.' ‘All right, have twenty-five years.' On he went. He met a monkey, and he got twenty-five years out of him, too. Then he went back to Allah, and Allah said, ‘As you wish, it's up to you. The first twenty-five years you will live like a man. The second twenty-five you'll work like a horse. The third you'll yap like a dog. And for the last twenty-five, people will laugh at you like they laugh at a monkey…'”