Cancer Ward (2 page)

“Why do you think that? Everyone gets proper attention.”

(“Everyone”—what is there to say to her if she talks about “everyone”?)

“Do the nurses work in shifts?”

“That's right. They change every twelve hours.”

“This impersonal treatment, it's terrible. My daughter and I would be delighted to take turns sitting up with him. Or I'd be ready to pay for a permanent nurse out of my own pocket. But they tell me that's not allowed either.”

“I'm afraid not. It's never been done before. Anyway, there's nowhere in the ward to put a chair.”

“God, I can imagine what this ward's like! I'd like to have a good look at it! How many beds are there?”

“Nine. Your husband's lucky to go right into a ward. Some new patients have to lie in the corridors or on the stairs!”

“I'm still going to ask you to arrange with a nurse or an orderly for Pavel Nikolayevich to have
private
attention. You know the people here; it would be easier for you to arrange it.” She had already clicked open her big black bag and taken out three fifty-rouble notes.

Her son, who was standing nearby, turned his head away in silence.

Mita put both hands behind her back. “No, no! I have no right.…”

“I'm not giving them to you!” Kapitolina Matveyevna held the fan of notes into the front of the matron's uniform. “But if it can't be done legally and above board.… All I'm doing is paying for services rendered! I'm asking you to be kind enough to pass the money on to the right person!”

“No, no.” The matron felt cold all over. “We don't do that sort of thing here.”

The door creaked and Pavel Nikolayevich came out of the matron's den in his new green and brown pajamas and warm, furtrimmed bedroom slippers. On his almost hairless head he wore a new raspberry-colored Uzbek skullcap. Now that he had removed his winter overcoat, collar and muffler, the tumor on the side of his neck, the size of a clenched fist, looked strikingly ominous. He could not even hold his head straight any longer, he had to tilt it slightly to one side.

His son went in to collect the discarded clothing and put it away in the suitcase. Kapitolina Matveyevna had returned the money to her purse. She looked anxiously at her husband.

“Won't you freeze like that? You should have brought a nice warm dressing gown with you. I'll bring one when I come. Look, here's a scarf.” She took a scarf out of her pocket. “Wrap it round your throat, so you won't catch cold.” In her silver foxes and her fur coat, she looked three times as strong as her husband. “Now go into the ward and get yourself settled. Unpack your food and think what else you need. I'll sit here and wait. Come down and tell me what you want and I'll bring everything this evening.”

She never lost her head, she always knew what to do next. In their life together she had been her husband's true comrade. Pavel Nikolayevich looked at her with a mixture of gratitude and suffering and then glanced at his son.

“Well, are you off then, Yuri?”

“I'll take the evening train, Father.” He came toward them. He always behaved respectfully in his father's presence. He was not by nature an emotional man, and his goodbye to his father now was as unemotional as ever. His reactions to life all ran at low voltage.

“That's right, son. Well, this is your first important official trip. Be sure to set the right tone from the start. And don't be too soft, mind. Your softness could be your downfall. Always remember you're not Yuri Rusanov, you're not a private individual. You're a representative of the law, do you understand?”

Whether or not Yuri understood, it would have been hard at that moment for Pavel Nikolayevich to find more appropriate words. Mita was fussing about and anxious to be going.

“I'll wait here with Mother,” said Yuri, with a smile. “Don't say goodbye, Dad, just go.”

“Will you be all right on your own?” Mita asked.

“Can't you see the man can hardly stand up? Can't you at least take him to his bed, and carry his bag for him?”

Orphan-like, Pavel Nikolayevich looked back at his family, refused the supporting arm Mita offered and, grasping the banister firmly, started to walk upstairs. His heart was beating violently, not at all, so far, because of the climb. He went up the stairs as people mount—what do they call it?—a sort of platform where men have their heads cut off.

The matron ran on upstairs in front of him carrying his bag, shouted something from the top to someone called Maria, and before Pavel Nikolayevich had finished the first flight was already running past him down the other side of the staircase and out of the building, thereby showing Kapitolina Matveyevna what sort of solicitude her husband could expect in this place.

Pavel Nikolayevich slowly climbed up onto the landing—a long, wide one such as is only found in old buildings. On this middle landing, but not obstructing the traffic, were two beds occupied by patients, with two night tables beside them. One of the patients was in a bad way; he was physically wasted and sucking an oxygen balloon.

Trying not to look at the man's hopeless face, Rusanov turned and went on, looking upward as he climbed. But there was no encouragement for him at the end of the second flight either. A nurse—Maria—was standing there, her dark, icon-like face lit by neither smile nor greeting. Tall, thin and flat-chested, she waited for him there like a sentry, and immediately set off across the upstairs hallway to show him where to go. Leading off the hall were several doors, just left clear by more beds with patients in them. In a little windowless alcove, underneath a constantly lit table lamp, stood the nurse's writing table and treatment table, and nearby hung a frosted glass wall closet with a red cross painted on it. They went past the little tables, past a bed too, and then Maria pointed her long, thin hand and said, “Second from the window.”

And already she was rushing off. An unpleasant feature of all public hospitals is that nobody stops for a moment to exchange a few words.

The doors into the ward were always kept wide open, but still as he crossed the threshold Pavel Nikolayevich was conscious of a close, moist, partly medicinal odor. For someone as sensitive to smells as he, it was sheer torment.

The beds stood in serried ranks, with their heads to the wall and narrow spaces between them no wider than a bedside table, while the passageway down the middle of the ward was just wide enough for two people to pass.

In this passageway stood a thickset, broad-shouldered patient in pink-striped pajamas. His neck was completely wrapped in thick, tight bandages which reached almost to the lobes of his ears. The white constricting ring prevented free movement of his heavy block of a head, overgrown with a fox-brown thatch.

He was talking hoarsely to his fellow patients, and they were listening from their beds. On Rusanov's entry he swung his whole body toward him, the head welded to it. He looked at him without sympathy and said, “Well, what have we here? Another nice little cancer!”

Pavel Nikolayevich saw no need to reply to such familiarity. He sensed that the whole room was staring at him, but he had no wish to examine these people whom chance had thrown in his path or even to exchange greetings with them. He merely waved his hand at the fox-haired patient to make him get out of his way. The other allowed Pavel Nikolayevich to pass, and again turned his whole body, head riveted on top, to look after him.

“Hey, friend, what have you got cancer of?” he asked in his throaty voice.

Pavel Nikolayevich had already reached his bed. He felt as if the question had scraped his skin. He raised his eyes toward the impudent lout and tried not to lose his temper. All the same his shoulders twitched as he said with dignity, “I have cancer of nothing. I have no cancer whatsoever.”

The fox-haired patient snorted. Then he passed judgment so that the whole ward could hear:

“Stupid fool! If it's not cancer, what the hell d'you think they put you in here for?”

2. Education Doesn't Make You Smarter

Within a few hours, that first evening in the ward, Pavel Nikolayevich became haunted with fear.

The hard lump of his tumor—unexpected, meaningless and quite without use—had dragged him in like a fish on a hook and flung him onto this iron bed—a narrow, mean bed, with creaking springs and an apology for a mattress. Having once undressed under the stairs, said goodbye to the family and come up to the ward, you felt the door to all your past life had been slammed behind you, and the life here was so vile that it frightened you more than the actual tumor. He could no longer choose something pleasant or soothing to look at; he had to look at the eight abject beings who were now his “equals,” eight sick men in faded, worn, pink and white pajamas, patched and torn here and there and almost all the wrong size. And he could not even choose what to listen to; he had to listen to these uncultured creatures and their wearisome conversations which had nothing to do with him and were of no interest to him. He would have loved to command them all to be quiet, especially the tiresome fox-haired one with the bandage grip round his neck and the constricted head. Everyone called him simply “Yefrem,” even though he was not a young man.
*

It was impossible to restrain Yefrem. He refused to lie down and never went outside the ward, just paced restlessly up and down the central aisle. From time to time he would screw up his face as if he was being injected and clutch his head. Then he would start walking up and down again. After these walks he always stopped at the foot of Rusanov's bed, leaned the rigid top half of his body toward Rusanov over the rails, thrust his broad, pock-marked, sullen face forward and lectured him:

“You've had it, Professor. You'll never go home again, see?”

It was very warm in the ward. Pavel Nikolayevich was lying on top of the blanket in his pajamas and skullcap. He adjusted his gilt-rimmed spectacles, glared severely at Yefrem, as he knew so well how to do, and replied, “I am at a loss, comrade, to know what you require of me, and why you are trying to intimidate me. I don't ask questions, do I?”

Yefrem just snorted maliciously.

“Who cares about your questions, you still won't be going back home. You may as well give back your glasses. And your new pajamas.”

After this crude outburst, he straightened his clumsy body and started pacing up and down the aisle again, like a man possessed.

Of course, Pavel Nikolayevich could have cut him short and put him in his place, but somehow he could not summon his usual will power. It was already low, and it had sunk even lower at the words of this bandaged devil. He needed support, but instead he was being pushed down into a pit. In a matter of hours he had as good as lost all his personal status, reputation and plans for the future—and had turned into one hundred and fifty-four pounds of hot, white flesh that did not know what tomorrow would bring.

His face probably revealed his melancholy state, for on one of his subsequent walks Yefrem stopped opposite him and said quite peaceably, “Even if they
do
let you go home, you'll be back here pretty quick. The Crab loves people. Once he's grabbed you with his pincers, he won't let go till you croak.”

Pavel Nikolayevich did not have the strength to protest, and Yefrem set off again. In fact, there was no one in the room to rein him in. All the others there seemed either apathetic wrecks or non-Russians. Along the other wall there were only four beds because the stove jutted out. The one directly opposite Rusanov's, foot to foot with his across the aisle, was Yefrem's. The other three were occupied by youngsters: a simple, rather swarthy boy next to the stove, a young Uzbek with a crutch, and by the window, thin as a tapeworm and doubled up on his bed, a youth whose skin had turned quite yellow and who lay groaning continuously. In Pavel Nikolayevich's row there were two Asians on his left, then a young Russian lad by the door, tall with short-cropped hair. He was sitting reading. Next to Pavel Nikolayevich in the last bed by the window lay, it seemed, another Russian, but being this man's neighbor was hardly a matter for rejoicing. He had a villainous cutthroat's mug. It was probably the scar that made him look that way: it started by the corner of his mouth and ran along the bottom of his left cheek almost to his neck. Or perhaps it was his black, uncombed hair standing up on end in all directions, or else his coarse, tough expression. The cutthroat had pretensions to culture, however. He was reading a book, and had almost finished it.

The lights were switched on, two bright lamps hanging from the ceiling. It was already dark outside. They were waiting for supper.

“There's an old guy here.” Yefrem would not let up. “He's lying downstairs, he's being operated on tomorrow. Back in '42 they cut a tiny cancer out of him and said, ‘Fine! It's nothing! Off you go!' See?” Yefrem seemed to be rattling on but his voice sounded as though he was the one being cut open. “Thirteen years went by and he forgot about that clinic, drank vodka, screwed women—he's a bit of a lad, wait till you meet him. And he's got a cancer
that
big in him now.” He smacked his lips with pleasure. “I guess it'll be straight from the operating table onto the mortuary slab.”

“Now then, I've had quite enough of your gloomy predictions!” Pavel Nikolayevich brushed him aside and turned away. He hardly recognized his own voice; it sounded so plaintive, so lacking in authority.

No one uttered a sound. The emaciated young man by the window in the other row was also being a nuisance. He kept twisting and turning. He tried sitting up; that was no good. He tried lying down; that was no good either. He doubled up, hugging his knees to his chest. Unable to find anything more comfortable, he laid his head not on the pillow but on the frame of the bed. He was moaning very softly, the grimaces and spasms on his face showing his pain.