Cancer Ward (3 page)

Pavel Nikolayevich turned away from him too, lowered his feet into his bedroom slippers and began idly inspecting his bedside table, opening and shutting first the little door of the closet where his food was tightly packed, and then the little top drawer which contained his toilet requisites and his electric razor.

Yefrem still kept pacing up and down, arms folded tightly across his chest. Sometimes he winced with stabbing internal pains, and droned a refrain like a funeral dirge:

“Ye … es, it's a ter'ble situation we're in, a ter'ble situation.”

Pavel Nikolayevich heard a smacking sound behind his back. He turned round carefully—even the slightest movement of his neck was painful—and saw it was his neighbor, the cutthroat, who had snapped shut the book he had now finished and was turning it over and over in his large rough hands. Diagonally across the dark-blue binding and also down the spine, stamped in gold and already dulled, was the signature of the author. Pavel Nikolayevich could not make out whose signature it was, but he didn't care to address a question to a type like that. He had thought up a nickname for his neighbor—“Bone-chewer.” It suited him very well.

Bone-chewer gazed at the book with big sullen eyes and addressed the whole room in a shamelessly loud voice:

“If Dyomka hadn't picked this book out of the cupboard, I would have sworn it was specially sent our way.”

“What about Dyomka? What book?” responded the lad by the door, looking up from his own.

“You wouldn't find one like it, not if you turned the whole town upside down.” Bone-crusher looked at the broad, flat back of Yefrem's head. His hair had not been cut for months—it would have been too uncomfortable—so it stuck out of the top of his bandage. Then he looked at Yefrem's strained face. “Yefrem! That's enough of your whining! Here, read this book!”

Yefrem stopped dead like a thwarted bull and looked at him dazedly.

“Read? Why should I read? We'll all kick the bucket soon.”

Bone-chewer's scar twitched. “That's the point! If you don't hurry you'll have kicked the bucket before you've read it. Here you are, quick!”

He held out the book, but Yefrem did not move.

“There's too much reading here. I don't want to read.”

“Are you illiterate or something?” said Bone-chewer, trying halfheartedly to talk him into it.

“What do you mean? I'm very literate. When I've got to be, I'm very literate.”

Bone-chewer fumbled for his pencil on the window sill, opened the book at the back, looked through it and made some marks here and there.

“Don't be afraid,” he murmured, “they're nice, short little stories. Here, just these few here—try them. I'm fed up with your whining, do you hear? Read a book.”

“I'm not afraid of nothing!” Yefrem took the book and tossed it on the bed.

Ahmadjan, the young Uzbek, came limping through the door on one crutch. He was the only cheerful one in the room. “Spoons at the ready!” he shouted.

The swarthy boy by the stove came to life.

“They're bringing the grub, boys!”

In came the food orderly in a while coat, carrying a tray above her shoulder. She shifted it in front of her and started going round the beds. Except for the tortured young man by the window they all stirred themselves and took the plates off the tray. Everyone in the ward had a bedside table. Only Dyomka, the young lad, did not have his own but shared one with the big-boned Kazakh, whose upper lip was swollen with a hideous uncovered, reddish-brown scab.

Quite apart from the fact that Pavel Nikolayevich did not feel like eating at all, even the sort of food he had brought from home, one glance at the supper—a rectangular, rubbery suet pudding with yellow jelly on the top—and that filthy gray aluminum spoon with a double twist in the handle, served as another bitter reminder of where he had landed, and of what a mistake he had probably made in agreeing to come to the clinic.

Except for the moaning lad, they set about their food like one man. Pavel Nikolayevich did not take the plate in his hands, but tapped the edge of it with his nail, looking round to see who he could pass it on to. Some of them were sitting sideways to him, others had their backs to him. The young man by the door was the only one facing him.

“What is your name?” asked Pavel Nikolayevich, without raising his voice. It was the young fellow's job to hear what he said.

There was a clatter of spoons, but the boy understood it was himself being addressed and answered readily enough, “Proshka … er … er … I mean, Prokofiy Semyonich.”

“Take it.”

“Yeah, all right…” Proshka came over, took the plate and nodded gratefully.

Pavel Nikolayevich felt the hard lump under his jaw and suddenly realized he was not one of the milder cases here. Only one out of the nine of them was bandaged up—Yefrem—just in the place where they might cut Pavel Nikolayevich open too. And only one of them was in great pain. And only that healthy-looking Kazakh in the next bed but one had that deep-red scab. And as for the young Uzbek's crutch, he hardly leaned on it at all. And there was no sign of any tumor or deformity on any of the others. They all looked like healthy people. Especially Proshka. His face glowed all over, as if he were on vacation, not in a hospital; he had a fine appetite, judging by the way he was licking that plate clean.

There was a gray tinge about Bone-chewer's face, it was true, but he moved freely, talked without restraint, and was attacking his dessert with such relish that the idea flashed through Pavel Nikolayevich's mind that he might be a malingerer who had attached himself to a state feeding place, because in our country the sick are fed free of charge.

But Pavel Nikolayevich was different. The lump of his tumor was pressing his head to one side, made it difficult for him to turn over, and was increasing in size every hour. Only here the doctors did not count the hours. All the time from lunch to supper no one had examined Rusanov and he had had no treatment. And it was with this very bait that Dr. Dontsova had lured him here—immediate treatment. Well, in that case she must be a thoroughly irresponsible and criminally negligent woman. Rusanov had trusted her, and had lost valuable time in this cramped, musty, dirty ward when he might have been telephoning and flying to Moscow.

Resentment at the delay and the realization of having made a mistake, on top of the misery of his tumor, so stabbed at Pavel Nikolayevich's heart that he could not bear
anything,
from the noise of dishes scraped by spoons, to the iron bedsteads, the rough blankets, the walls, the lights, the people. He felt that he was in a trap, and that until the next morning any decisive step was impossible.

Deeply miserable, he lay there covering his eyes from the light and from the whole scene with the towel he had brought from home. To take his mind off things he began thinking about his home and his family, and what they would be doing now. Yuri would already be on the train. It was his first practical inspection. It was very important he should look well. But Yuri was not assertive and he was a bungler; he might make a fool of himself. Aviette was spending her vacation in Moscow. She would be amusing herself a bit going to theaters. But her main aim was business, finding out the lay of the land, perhaps making a few contacts. After all, it was her last year at university; she had to take her bearings on life. Aviette would make a clever journalist. She was very businesslike, and of course she would have to move to Moscow. Out here wouldn't be big enough for her. She was so intelligent and talented; there was no one else in the family to touch her. Pavel Nikolayevich was unresentfully glad that his daughter had grown up far more educated than himself. She hadn't had much experience yet, but she was so quick to catch on! Lavrik was something of a dropout, indifferent to his studies, but his talent lay in sports. He'd already been to a sports tournament in Riga where he'd stayed in a hotel like a grownup. And he was already racing their car about. He was taking driving lessons with the Cadet Force and hoped to get his license. In his second semester he'd failed in two subjects; he'd have to work a lot harder. Then there was Maika—she was most likely already at home playing the piano (she was the first one in the family to play). And Julebarse would be lying on the mat in the corridor. Last year Pavel Nikolayevich himself had taken him for his morning walk, since he felt it was good for his own health. Now Lavrik would take him instead. He liked to let the dog chase passers-by a little and then say, “It's all right, don't be frightened, I've got him.”

But the harmonious, exemplary Rusanov family, their well-adjusted way of life and their immaculate apartment—in the space of a few days all this had been cut off from him. It was now on the
other
side of his tumor. They were alive and would go on living, whatever happened to their father. However much they might worry, fuss or weep, the tumor was growing like a wall behind him, and on his side of it he was alone.

Thinking about home did not help him, so Pavel Nikolayevich tried to distract himself with affairs of state. A session of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet was due to open on Saturday. Nothing important was expected to happen; the budget would be approved. There had been shooting in the Taiwan Strait.… When he left home for the hospital that morning, the radio had just begun broadcasting a long report on heavy industry. But here in the ward there wasn't even a radio, and there wasn't one in the corridor either—a fine state of affairs! At the very least he'd have to see he got
Pravda
every day. Today heavy industry had come up, and yesterday there had been a decree on the increase in output of meat and dairy products. Yes, the economy was advancing by leaps and bounds; and this would mean, of course, major changes in a number of state and economic organizations.

Pavel Nikolayevich had already begun to imagine how the reorganization would be implemented on republic and province level. These reorganizations were always rather exciting; they served as a temporary diversion from everyday work; the officials would be telephoning each other, holding meetings and discussing the possibilities. And whichever direction the reorganizations took—whether this way or that—no one, including Pavel Nikolayevich, ever suffered a drop in rank. There were only promotions.

But affairs of state did not succeed in diverting him or cheering him up either. There was a stabbing pain under his neck—his tumor, deaf and indifferent, had moved in to shut off the whole world. There again: the budget, heavy industry, cattle and dairy farming and reorganization—they were all on the
other
side of the tumor. On
this
side was Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov. Alone.

A pleasing female voice sounded through the ward. Although nothing could possibly seem pleasant to Pavel Nikolayevich today, this voice was, frankly, delicious.

“Now, let's take your temperature.” It was as if she was promising to hand out candy.

Rusanov removed the towel from his face, raised himself slightly and put on his spectacles. Oh, what joy! It wasn't dark, doleful Maria but a trim, firmly built girl, wearing not a folded kerchief but a little cap over her golden hair, like the doctors.

Standing over his bed, she said cheerily to the young man by the window, “Azovkin! Hey, Azovkin!” He lay in an even more awkward position than before—diagonally across the bed, face downward, a pillow under his stomach, resting his chin on the mattress like a dog, and peering through the rails of the bed as if he were in a cage. Shadows of the pain inside him passed across his drawn face. One hand hung down to the floor.

“Now come along, pull yourself together,” said the nurse, trying to shame him. “Take the thermometer yourself.”

He just managed to raise his hand from the floor—it was like drawing a bucket out of a well—and took the thermometer. He was so exhausted, so taken up with his pain, that it was impossible to believe he was no more than seventeen years old.

“Zoya!” he groaned beseechingly. “Give me a hot-water bottle.”

“You're your own worst enemy,” she said severely. “We gave you a hot-water bottle but you didn't put it on your injection, you put it on your stomach.”

“But it helps me so much,” he persisted, in a tone of great suffering.

“It makes your tumor grow, you've been told that already. Hot-water bottles aren't allowed in the oncology department. We had to get one specially for you.”

“Well, I won't take my injection, then.”

But Zoya was no longer listening. She was tapping her dainty little finger on the rail of Bone-chewer's bed. “Where's Kostoglotov?” she asked.

(Well, well, well! Pavel Nikolayevich had hit the nail on the head! The nickname was perfect!
*
)

“He's gone for a smoke,” Dyomka called over from the door. He was still reading.

“I'll give him ‘smoke,'” grumbled Zoya.

Weren't some girls lovely! Pavel Nikolayevich gazed with pleasure at her generous, tightly laced figure and her wide, almost staring eyes. He gazed at her with detached admiration, and fell himself soften. She had held the thermometer out to him with a smile. She was standing right next to the tumor but gave no sign, not even by a raised eyebrow, that she was horrified by the thing or that she had never seen one like it before.

“Hasn't any treatment been prescribed for me?” asked Rusanov.

“Not yet.” She smiled apologetically.

“But why not? Where are the doctors?”

“They've finished work for the day.”

There was no point in being angry with Zoya, but it must be someone's fault that he was not being treated! He had to do something! Rusanov despised inactivity and ineffectual characters. When Zoya came back to read his temperature he asked her, “Where's your outside telephone? How can I find it?”

After all, he could make up his mind right now and telephone Comrade Ostapenko! The very idea of a telephone brought Pavel Nikolayevich back into his normal world, and restored his courage. He felt like a fighter again.