Cancer Ward (23 page)

“You mean brown cap?” Podduyev interrupted him. In spite of the despair he'd resigned himself to and shut himself up in for the last few days, the idea of such a simple, easily accessible remedy burst upon him like a ray of light.

The people around him were all southerners, and had never in their lives seen a birch tree, let alone the brown-cap mushroom that grows under it, so they couldn't possibly know what Kostoglotov was talking about.

“No, Yefrem, not a brown cap. Anyway, it's not really a birch fungus, it's a birch cancer. You remember, on old birch trees there are these … peculiar growths, like spines, black on top and dark brown inside.”

“Tree fungus, then?” Yefrem persisted. “They used to use it for kindling fires.”

“Well, perhaps. Anyway, Sergei Nikitich Maslennikov had an idea. Mightn't it be that same
chaga
that had cured the Russian peasants of cancer for centuries without their even knowing it?”

“You mean they used it as a prophylactic?” The young geologist nodded his head. He hadn't been able to read a line all evening, but the conversation had been worth it.

“But it wasn't enough just to make a guess, you see? Everything had to be checked. He had to spend many, many years watching the people who were drinking the homemade tea and the ones who weren't. Then he had to give it to people who developed tumors and take the responsibility for not treating them with other medicines. And he had to guess what temperature the tea ought to be at, and what sort of dose, and whether it should be boiled or not, how many glasses they ought to drink, whether there'd be any harmful aftereffects, and which tumors it helped most and which least. And all this took…”

“Yes, but what about now? What happens now?” said Sibgatov excitedly.

And Dyomka thought, could it really help his leg? Could it possibly save it?

“What happens now? Well, here's his answer to my letter. He tells me how to treat myself.”

“Have you got his address?” asked the voiceless man eagerly, keeping one hand over his wheezing throat. He was already taking a notebook and a fountain pen from his jacket pocket. “Does he say how to take it? Does he say it's any good for throat tumors?”

Pavel Nikolayevich would have liked to maintain his strength of will and punish his neighbor by a show of utter contempt, but he found he couldn't let such a story and such an opportunity slip. He could no longer go on working out the meaning of the figures of the 1955 draft state budget which had been presented to a session of the Supreme Soviet. By now he had frankly lowered his newspaper and was slowly turning his face toward Bone-chewer, making no attempt to conceal his hope that he, a son of the Russian people, might also be cured by this simple Russian folk remedy. He spoke with no trace of hostility—he didn't want to irritate Bone-chewer—yet there was a reminder in his voice. “But is this method officially recognized?” he asked. “Has it been approved by a government department?”

High up on his window sill, Kostoglotov grinned. “I don't know about government departments. This letter”—he waved in the air a small, yellowish piece of paper with green-ink writing on it—“is a business letter: how to make the powder, how to dissolve it. But I suppose if it had been passed by the government, the nurses would already be bringing it to us to drink. There'd be a barrel of the stuff on the landing. And we wouldn't have to write to Alexandrov.”

“Alexandrov.” The voiceless man had already written it down. “What postal district? What street?” He was quick to catch on.

Ahmadjan was also listening with interest and managing to translate the most important bits quietly to Mursalimov and Egenberdiev. Ahmadjan did not need the birch fungus himself because he was getting better, but there was one thing he didn't understand.

“If the mushroom's that good, why don't the doctors indent for it? Why don't they put it in their standing orders?”

“It's a long business, Ahmadjan. Some people don't believe in it, some don't like learning new things and so are obstructive, some try to stop it to promote their own remedies, but we don't have any choice.”

Kostoglotov answered Rusanov and answered Ahmadjan, but he didn't answer the voiceless man or give him the address. So that no one would notice this, he pretended he hadn't quite heard him or didn't have time to answer, but in fact he didn't want to give him the address. He didn't want to because there was something insinuating about the voiceless man's attitude, respectable though he looked. He had the figure and face of a bank manager, or even of the premier of a small South American country. Oleg felt sorry for honest old Maslennikov, who was ready to give up his sleep to write to people he didn't know. The voiceless man would shower him with questions. On the other hand, it was impossible not to feel sorry for this wheezing throat which had lost the ring of a human voice, unvalued when we have it. But there again, Kostoglotov had learned how to be ill, he was a specialist in being ill, he was devoted to his illness. He had already read bits of
Pathological Anatomy
and managed to get explanations out of Gangart and Dontsova,
and
he'd got an answer from Maslennikov. Why should he, the one who for years had been deprived of all rights, be expected to teach these free men how to wriggle out from underneath the boulder that was crushing them? His character had been formed in a place where the law dictated: “Found it? Keep your trap shut. Grabbed it? Keep it under the mattress,” If everyone started writing to Maslennikov, Kostoglotov would never get another reply to his own letters.

It was not a deeply thought-out decision. It was all done through a movement of his scarred chin from Rusanov to Ahmadjan, past the man without a voice.

“But does he say how to use it?” asked the geologist. He had pencil and paper in front of him. He always had when he was reading a book.

“How to use it? All right, get your pencils and I'll dictate,” said Kostoglotov.

Everyone rushed about asking each other for pencil and paper. Pavel Nikolayevich didn't have anything (he'd left his fountain pen at home, the one with the enclosed nib, the new kind). Dyomka gave him a pencil. Sibgatov, Federau, Yefrem and Ni all wanted to write. When they were ready Kostoglotov began to dictate slowly from the letter, explaining how
chaga
should be dried, but not dried out, how to grate it, what sort of water to boil it in, how to steep it, strain it, and what quantity to drink.

Some of them wrote quickly, some clumsily. They asked him to repeat it, and warmth and friendliness spread through the ward. Sometimes they used to answer each other with such antipathy—but what did they have to quarrel over? They all had the same enemy, death. What can divide human beings on earth once they are all faced with death?

Dyomka finished writing. In his usual rough, slow voice, older than his years, he said, “Yes, but where can we get birch from? There isn't any.”

They sighed. All of them, those who had left Central Russia long ago, some even voluntarily, as well as the ones who had never even been there, all now had a vision of that country, unassuming, temperate, unscorched by the sun, seen through a haze of thin sunlit rain, or in the spring floods with the muddy fields and forest roads, a quiet land where the simple forest tree is so useful and necessary to man. The people who live in those parts do not always appreciate their home; they yearn for bright blue seas and banana groves. But no, this is what man really needs: the hideous black growth on the bright birch tree, its sickness, its tumor.

Only Mursalimov and Egenberdiev thought to themselves that here too, in the plains and on the hills, there was bound to be just what they needed; because man is provided with all he needs in every corner of the earth, he only has to know where to look.

“We'll have to ask someone to collect it and send it,” the geologist said to Dyomka. He seemed attracted by the idea of the
chaga.

Kostoglotov himself, the discoverer and expounder of it all, had no one in Russia he could ask to look for the fungus. The people he knew were either already dead or scattered about the country, or he'd have felt awkward about approaching them, others were complete cityites who'd never be able to find the right birch tree, let alone the
chaga
on it. He could not imagine any greater joy than to go away into the woods for months on end, to break off this
chaga,
crumble it, boil it up on a campfire, drink it and get well like an animal. To walk through the forest for months, to know no other care than to get better! Just as a dog goes to search for some mysterious grass that will save him.

But the way to Russia was forbidden to him.

The other people there, to whom it was open, had not learned the wisdom of making sacrifices, the skill of shaking off inessentials. They saw obstacles where there were none. How could they get sick leave or a holiday, to go off on a search? How could they suddenly disrupt their lives and leave their families? Where were they to get the money from? What clothes should they wear for such a journey, and what should they take with them? What station should they get off at, and where should they go then to find out more about it?

Kostoglotov tapped his letter and went on, “He says here there are people who call themselves suppliers, ordinary enterprising people who gather the
chaga,
dry it and send it to you cash on delivery. But they charge a lot, fifteen roubles a kilogram, and you need six kilograms a month.”

“What right do they have to do that?” said Pavel Nikolayevich indignantly. His face became sternly authoritative, enough to scare any “supplier” who came before him or even make him mess his pants. “What sort of a conscience do they have, fleecing people for something that nature provides free?”

“Don't shouth!” Yefrem hissed at him. (His way of distorting words was particularly unpleasant. It was impossible to tell whether he did it on purpose or because his tongue could not cope with them.) “D'you think you can just go into the woods and get it? You have to walk about in the forest with a sack and an ax. And in the winter you need skis.”

“But not fifteen roubles a kilogram, black marketeers, damn them!” Rusanov simply could not compromise on such a matter. Again the red patches began to appear on his face.

It was wholly a question of principle. Over the years Rusanov had become more and more unshakably convinced that all our mistakes, shortcomings, imperfections and inadequacies were the result of speculation. Scallions, radishes and flowers were sold on the street by dubious types, milk and eggs were sold by peasant women in the market, and yoghurt, woolen socks, even fried fish at the railway stations. There was large-scale speculation too. Trucks were being driven off “on the side” from state warehouses. If these two kinds of speculation could be torn up by the roots, everything in our country could be put right quickly and our successes would be even more striking. There was nothing wrong in a man strengthening his material position with the help of a good salary from the state and a good pension (Pavel Nikolayevich's dream was to be awarded a special, personal pension). Such a man had earned his car, his cottage in the country, and a small house in town to himself. But a car of the same make from the same factory, or a country cottage of the same standard type, acquired a completely different, criminal character if they had been bought through speculation. Pavel Nikolayevich dreamed, literally
dreamed,
of introducing public executions for speculators. Public executions would speedily bring complete health to our society.

“All right, then.” Yefrem was angry too. “Stop shouthing and go and organize the supply yourself. A state supply if you like. Or through a coop. If fifteen roubles is too much for you, don't buy it.”

Rusanov realized this was his weak spot. He hated speculators, but his tumor would not wait for the new medicine to be approved by the Academy of Medical Science or for the Central Russian cooperatives to organize a constant supply of it.

The voiceless newcomer, who with his notebook looked like a reporter from an influential newspaper, almost climbed onto Kostoglotov's bed. He spoke insistently and hoarsely, “The address of the suppliers? Is the address of the suppliers in the letter?”

Pavel Nikolayevich too got ready to write down the address.

But for some reason Kostoglotov didn't reply. Whether there was an address in the letter or not, he just didn't answer. Instead he got down from the window sill and began to rummage under the bed for his boots. In defiance of all hospital rules he kept them hidden there for taking walks.

Dyomka hid the prescription in his bedside table. Without trying to learn more, he began to lay his leg very carefully on the bed. He didn't and couldn't have that sort of money.

Yes, the birch tree helped, but it didn't help everyone.

Rusanov was really quite embarrassed. He had just had a skirmish with Bone-chewer, not for the first time in the three days, either, and was now patently interested in his story and dependent on him for the address. Thinking he ought to butter Bone-chewer up a bit, he started, unintentionally and involuntarily, as it were, on something that united them, and said with a good deal of sincerity, “Yes, what on earth can one imagine worse than this…” (this cancer? He hadn't got cancer!) “… than this … oncological … in fact, cancer?”

But Kostoglotov wasn't in the least touched by this mark of trust coming from someone so much older, senior in rank and more experienced than he was. Wrapping round his leg a rust-colored puttee that he'd just been drying, and pulling on a disgusting, dilapidated rubber-cloth kneeboot with coarse patches on the creases, he barked, “What's worse than cancer? Leprosy.”

The loud, heavy, threatening word resounded through the room like a salvo.

Pavel Nikolayevich grimaced, peaceably enough. “Well, it depends. Is it really worse? Leprosy is a much slower process.”