Cancer Ward (24 page)

Kostoglotov stared with a dark and unfriendly expression into Pavel Nikolayevich's bright glasses and the bright eyes beyond them.

“It's worse because they banish you from the world while you are still alive. They tear you from your family and put you behind barbed wire. You think that's any easier to take than a tumor?”

Pavel Nikolayevich felt quite uneasy: the dark, burning glance of this rough, indecent man was so close to him, and he was quite defenseless.

“Well, what I mean is, all these damn diseases…”

Any educated man would have seen at this point that it was time to make a conciliatory gesture, but Bone-chewer couldn't understand this. He couldn't appreciate Pavel Nikolayevich's tact. He rose to his full, lanky height and put on a roomy, dirty gray fustian woman's dressing gown that reached down almost to his boots (it served him as an overcoat when he went for walks). Then he announced in his self-satisfied way, thinking how learned he sounded, “A certain philosopher once said, if a man never became ill he would never get to know his own limitations.”

Taking a rolled-up army belt, four fingers wide with a five-pointed star on the buckle, from the pocket of the woman's dressing gown he'd wrapped himself in, he put it round himself, only taking care not to tie it too tight in the place where his tumor was. Chewing a wretched, cheap little cigarette end, the sort that goes out before it's all smoked, he walked to the door.

The interviewer with the wheezing throat retreated before Kostoglotov along the passageway between the beds. Still looking like some sort of banker or minister, he nevertheless kept begging Kostoglotov to answer him, deferring to him as if he were some bright star of oncological science who was about to leave the building forever. “Tell me, roughly, in what percentage of cases does a tumor of the throat turn out to be cancer?”

It is disgraceful to make fun of illness or grief, but even illness and grief must be borne without lapsing into the ridiculous. Kostoglotov looked at the lost, terrified face of the man who had been flitting round the ward so absurdly. He had probably been rather domineering before he got his tumor. Even the understandable habit of holding the throat with the fingers while speaking seemed somehow funny when he did it.

“Thirty-four,” said Kostoglotov. He smiled at him and stood aside.

Hadn't he done too much cackling himself today? Hadn't he perhaps said too much, said something he shouldn't have?

But the restless interviewer would not leave him. He hurried down the stairs after him, bending his portly frame forward, still talking and wheezing over Kostoglotov's shoulder: “What do you think, comrade? If any tumor doesn't hurt, is it a good or a bad sign? What does it show?”

Tiresome, defenseless people.

“What do you do?” Kostoglotov stopped and asked him.

“I'm a lecturer.” A big-eared man with gray, sleek hair, he looked at Kostoglotov hopefully, as at a doctor.

“Lecturer in what? What subject?”

“Philosophy,” replied the bank manager, remembering his former self and regaining some of his bearing. Although he had shown a wry face all day, he had forgiven Kostoglotov his misplaced and clumsy quotations from the philosophers of the past. He wouldn't reproach him, he needed the suppliers' addresses.

“A lecturer, and it's your throat!” Kostoglotov shook his head from side to side. He had no regrets about not giving the suppliers' addresses out loud in the ward. By the standards of the community that for seven years had dragged him along like a slab of metal through a wire-drawing machine, only a stupid sucker would do a thing like that. Everyone would rush off and write to these suppliers, the prices would be inflated, and he wouldn't get his
chaga.
It was his duty, though, to tell a few decent people one by one. He'd already made up his mind to tell the geologist, even though they'd exchanged no more than ten words, because he liked the look of him and the way he'd spoken up in defense of cemeteries. And he'd tell Dyomka, except that Dyomka didn't have any money. (In fact Oleg didn't have any either, there was nothing for him to buy the
chaga
with.) And he would give it to Federau, Ni, Sibgatov, his friends in distress.
*
They would all have to ask him one by one, though, and anyone who didn't ask would be left out. But this philosophy lecturer struck Oleg as a foolish fellow. What did he churn out in his lectures anyway? Perhaps he was just clouding people's brains? And what was the point of all his philosophy if he was so completely helpless in the face of his illness?… But what a coincidence—in the throat, of all places!

“Write down the suppliers' addresses,” Kostoglotov commanded. “But it's only for you!” The philosopher, in grateful haste, bent down to write.

After he had dictated it, Oleg managed to tear himself away. He hurried to fit in his walk before they locked the outer door.

There was no one outside on the porch.

Oleg breathed in the cold, damp, still air happily, then, before it had time to cleanse him, he lit up a cigarette. Whatever happened, his happiness could never be complete without a cigarette (though Dontsova was not the only one now to have warned him to stop smoking; Maslennikov too had found room to mention it in his letter).

There was no wind or frost. Reflected in a windowpane he could see a nearby puddle. There was no ice on its black water. It was only the fifth of February and already it was spring. He wasn't used to it. The fog wasn't fog: more a light prickly mist that hung in the air, so light that it did not cloud but merely softened and blurred the distant lights of street lamps and windows.

On Oleg's left, four pyramidal poplars towered high above the roof like four brothers. On the other side a poplar stood on its own, but bushy and the same height as the other four. Behind it there was a thick group of trees in a wedge of parkland.

From the unfenced stone porch of Wing 13 a few steps led down to a sloping asphalt pathway lined on both sides by an impenetrable hedge. It was leafless for the moment, but its thickness announced that it was alive.

Oleg had come out for a stroll along the pathways in the park, his leg, with each step and stretch, rejoicing at being able to walk firmly, at being the living leg of a man who had not died. But the view from the porch held him back, and he finished his cigarette there.

There was a soft light from the occasional lamps and windows of the wings opposite. By now there was hardly anyone walking along the paths. And when there was no rumble from the railway close by at the back, you could just hear the faint, even sound of the river, a fast-foaming mountain stream which rushed down behind the nearby wings, under the side of the hill.

Further on, beyond the hill and across the river, there was another park, the municipal one, and perhaps it was from there (except that it was cold) or from the open windows of a club that he could hear dance music being played by a brass band. It was Saturday and there they were dancing. Couples were dancing together …

Oleg was excited by all his talking and the way they'd listened to him. He was seized and enveloped by a feeling that life had suddenly returned, the life with which just two weeks ago he had closed all accounts. Though this life promised him nothing that the people of this great town called good and struggled to acquire: neither apartment, property, social success nor money, there were other joys, sufficient in themselves, which he had not forgotten how to value: the right to move about without waiting for an order; the right to be alone; the right to gaze at stars that were not blinded by prison-camp searchlights; the right to put the light out at night and sleep in the dark; the right to put letters in a letterbox; the right to rest on Sunday; the right to bathe in the river. Yes, there were many, many more rights like these.

And among them was the right to talk to women.

His recovery was giving him back all these countless, wonderful rights.

The music from the park just reached him. Oleg heard it—not the actual tune they were playing, but as if it were Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, its restless strained beginning ringing inside him, one incomparable melody. It was the melody (Oleg interpreted it in his own way, although perhaps it ought to be understood differently) in which the hero is returned to life or perhaps regaining his vision after being blind. He gropes with his fingers, as it were, slides his hand over things or over a face that is dear to him, touching them, still afraid to believe his good fortune: that these things really exist, that his eyes are beginning to see.

12. Passions Return …

As she dressed hurriedly for work on Sunday morning, Zoya remembered that Kostoglotov had asked her to be sure to wear her gray-and-gold dress next time she was on duty. He'd seen the collar peeping out from underneath her white coat that evening, and he wanted to see it in the daylight. It is always pleasant to fulfill unselfish requests. The dress suited her very well today. It was almost a party dress. In the afternoon she hoped she wouldn't have much to do, and expected Kostoglotov to come and entertain her.

She did a quick change and put on the dress he had asked for. She rubbed it a few times with the palms of her hands to perfume it and combed out her bangs. Time was pressing. She pulled on her overcoat in the doorway, and her grandmother only just had time to slip some lunch into her pocket before she left.

It was a dampish, chilly morning, but not wintry. People would be wearing raincoats on a day like that back in Central Russia, but here in the south people have different ideas of hot and cold. They wear woolen suits in the heat and like to put on their overcoats at the first possible moment and take them off at the last. Those with fur coats spend the winter pining for the few days of frost.

Zoya spotted her trolley as soon as she was out of the gate. She chased it the whole length of the block and was the last to jump in. Rushed and panting, she stood on the rear platform to get some fresh air. The municipal trolleys were all slow and noisy. They screeched hysterically against the rails at every bend. None of them had automatic doors.

The breathlessness, tightness even, that she felt in her chest were pleasant sensations for a young body, because they disappeared almost immediately, thus increasing her feeling of well-being and her holiday mood.

While her medical school was closed for the holidays she found working at the clinic only—three and a half duty sessions a week—very easy, like a rest. Naturally it would have been even easier without the duty sessions, but Zoya had already grown used to the double burden. This was the second year she'd spent working and studying at the same time. Her work in the clinic gave her very little medical experience, but it was the money she was working for, not the experience; her grandmother's pension wasn't enough to buy bread with, her own grant was spent as soon as it came, her father never sent her anything at all, and Zoya never asked him to. She had no wish to be under an obligation to a father like that.

The first two days of the holidays, following her last night duty, Zoya had not spent lolling in bed. She hadn't done that sort of thing since her childhood. First of all she'd sat down to make herself a spring blouse out of some crepe she had bought in December after she had been paid. (Her grandmother always said to her, “Get the sleigh ready in summer and the cart ready in winter,” and the proverb was quite right. The best summer things were only in the shops during winter.) She was making it on her grandmother's old Singer (they'd lugged it with them all the way from Smolensk). It was her grandmother, too, who had first taught her to sew, but her methods were old-fashioned, and Zoya's alert eye was quick to pick things up from neighbors, friends and girls who'd done courses in dressmaking. Zoya had no spare time for them. Two days had not been enough for her to finish the blouse, but she had managed to go round several dry-cleaning shops and had found one that would do her old summer coat. She'd also gone to the market to get potatoes and vegetables, and bargained there like a fishwife, finally bringing back two heavy bags, one in each hand. (Her grandmother could cope with the lines in shops, but she couldn't carry anything heavy.) Then she'd gone to the public bath. In fact there hadn't been a moment to lie down and read a book. Yesterday evening she'd gone with Rita, who was in her year at medical school, to a dance at the House of Culture.

Zoya would have preferred something a bit fresher and more wholesome than these clubs, but there were no houses or parties where you could meet young men, only the clubs. In their year and in their faculty there were plenty of Russian girls, but hardly any boys. This was why she didn't like going to the medical school parties.

The House of Culture, where she and Rita had gone, was spacious, clean and well-heated. It had marble columns, a marble staircase and very tall mirrors with bronze frames. You could see yourself in them from a long way off on the dance floor. There were some very expensive, comfortable armchairs too, only they were kept under covers and you weren't allowed to sit in them. Zoya had not been there since New Year's Eve, when she'd suffered a very humiliating experience. It had been a fancy-dress ball with prizes for the best costumes, and Zoya had made herself a monkey costume with a gorgeous tail. Every detail had been carefully thought out—her hair-do, her light make-up, her color combinations. The result was both attractive and amusing, and the first prize was almost in the bag, even though there was a lot of competition. But just before the prizes were awarded, some toughs cut off her tail with a knife, passed it from hand to hand and hid it. Zoya burst into tears, not because of the boys' stupidity but because everyone round her laughed and said what a clever prank it was. The costume wasn't nearly so effective without the tail. Zoya's face became blotchy with tears, and she didn't win a prize at all.

Yesterday evening she'd gone in there still feeling angry with the club. Her pride had been hurt. But nothing and no one reminded her of the episode of the monkey. There were all kinds of people, students from different colleges and boys from the factories. Zoya and Rita did not have time to dance a single dance together. They were separated from the start, and for three glorious hours they whirled, swung and stamped nonstop to the music of the brass band. Her body reveled in the relaxing twists and turns of the dance, and in the uncensured, public squeezing and cuddling that was its main pleasure. Her partners didn't speak much, and when they did crack jokes Zoya found them a bit silly. Finally Kolya, a technical designer, took her home. On the way they talked about Indian movies and swimming: they'd have thought it ridiculous to talk about anything serious. When they reached the front door of her home, where it was quite dark, they started kissing. It was Zoya's breasts that suffered most. They had never failed to excite young men. And how he mauled them! He tried to find other ways to get at her too. Zoya enjoyed it, but at the same time a detached feeling grew on her that it was a bit of a waste of time. She had to get up early on Sundays too. So she packed him off and scampered up the old stairs.