Cancer Ward (34 page)

He turned his head to look at her, but she wasn't there, she wasn't there at all. (How could she be? She was dead.) Something stabbed inside his neck, on the right-hand side. He straightened his head, still lying on the ground. He needed a rest. He was tired, more tired than he'd ever been before. His whole body ached.

He was lying in a mineshaft, in a gallery. His eyes had already got used to the dark, and beside him on the ground, which was littered with small pieces of coal, he noticed a telephone. He was very surprised. How could a telephone have got here? Could it be connected? If so, he could ring and ask someone to bring him a drink. In fact, he'd ask to be taken to hospital.

He lifted the receiver. Instead of a dial tone he heard a vigorous businesslike voice.

“Comrade Rusanov?”

“Yes, yes.” Rusanov quickly pulled himself together. (He knew at once that the voice came from above, not below.)

“Please come to the Supreme Court.”

“Supreme Court? Yes, of course! Right away! Very good!” He was about to put down the receiver when he remembered. “Er, excuse me, which Supreme Court? The old or the new?”

“The new one,” the voice answered coldly, “Kindly hurry.” And the receiver was put down.

He recalled what he knew about the changes in the Supreme Court and he cursed himself for being the first to pick up the receiver. Matulevich was gone … Klopov was gone … Yes, even Beria was gone. What times these were.

But he had to obey. He was too weak to get up, but now he'd been summoned he knew that he had to. He strained all his limbs, hauled himself up and fell down like a calf that still hasn't learned how to walk. True, they hadn't told him the exact time, but they had said, “Hurry!” At last, supporting himself against a wall, he got to his feet, dragged himself along on weak, unsteady feet, all the time clinging to the wall. He didn't know why, but there was a pain in his neck on the right-hand side.

He walked along wondering, would they really put him on trial? Could they possibly be so cruel as to try him after all these years? What a thing to do, changing the membership of the Court! It wouldn't be a change for the better.

What could he do? With all his respect for the highest court in the land, the only course left to him was to defend himself. He would find the courage to do so.

This is what he would tell them: “I have not been the one to pronounce sentence. Nor have I conducted investigations. I have only signaled my suspicions. If I found a scrap of newspaper in a public lavatory with a torn-up photograph of the Leader, it was my duty to pick it up and signal it. It's the investigator's job to check it out. It may have been a coincidence or it may not. The investigating organs are there to discover the truth. All I did was carry out my simple duty as a citizen.”

This is what he would tell them: “All these years it has been vital to make society healthy, morally healthy. This can't be done without purging society, and a purge can't be conducted without men who aren't squeamish about using a dung shovel!”

As these arguments developed in his brain, he got more and more flustered about how he would put them over.

Now he was eager to get there and be summoned to the court as soon as possible; then he would simply shout at them, “I wasn't the only one! Why put
me
on trial? Name one man who didn't do what I did. How could he hang onto his post if he didn't ‘help'? You mention Guzun? He went to prison, didn't he?”

He was as tense as if he was already shouting his speech. But then he noticed that he wasn't really shouting, it was just that his throat was swollen and hurting.

He seemed to be walking along an ordinary corridor now, not a mine gallery. Someone behind him called, “Pashka! What's wrong with you? Are you ill? Why are you dragging yourself along like that?”

He felt more cheerful, and he walked on, it seemed, as if he were quite all right. He turned around to see who it was. It was Zveinek, in a tunic with a shoulder belt.

“Where are you off to, Jan?” asked Pavel, wondering why the other was so young. That is, he was young, of course, but hadn't that been a long time ago?

“Where am I going? Same place as you, of course. To the commission.”

“What commission?” Pavel tried to work it out. He knew he'd been summoned somewhere else, but he couldn't quite remember where.

He fell into step with Zveinek and they walked along, cheerfully and briskly, like young men. He felt he was under twenty, not yet married.

Now they were walking through a big office; there sat the intelligentsia behind their desks: old accountants wearing ties and beards that made them look like priests; engineers with little crossed hammers on the lapels of their jackets; elderly, aristocratic-looking ladies; young typists, heavily made up, with skirts above their knees. As soon as he and Zveinek marched in, their four boots thumping in perfect time, all thirty people in the room turned toward them. Some of them stood up, others bowed in their seats. All followed their progress with their eyes, and on every face was a look of terror which Pavel and Jan found flattering.

They entered the next room, greeted the other members of the commission and sat down at a table with a red tablecloth.

“All right, let's get started!” Venka, the president, commanded.

They began. The first to come in was Aunt Grusha, a press operator.

“And what are you doing here, Aunt Grusha?” asked Venka in amazement. “We're purging the administration. How does that concern you? How have you wormed your way into administration?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

“No, nothing like that, you see,” Aunt Grusha was not in the least put out, “it's my daughter, she's getting bigger now and I must find a kindergarten for her, you see.”

“All right, Aunt Grusha,” called Pavel. “Write out your application and we'll arrange things. We'll fix it up for your daughter. Now don't interrupt us any more, we're going to purge the intelligentsia!”

He stretched out a hand to pour himself some water out of a carafe, but the carafe turned out to be empty. He nodded to his neighbor to ask him to pass a carafe from the other end of the table. It was passed to him, but that one was empty too.

He was so thirsty that it felt as if his throat was on fire.

“Give me a drink!” he called out. “I must have a drink!”

“In a moment,” said Dr. Gangart. “We'll bring you some water in a moment.”

Rusanov opened his eyes. She was sitting beside him on the bed.

“There's some stewed fruit juice in my bedside table,” he said weakly. He felt feverish and was aching all over. His head was beating like a drum.

“All right, we'll give you some juice.” Gangart's thin lips broke into a smile. She opened the bedside table and took out the bottle and a glass.

To judge from the windows it was a sunny evening.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Pavel Nikolayevich watched Gangart pouring out the juice to make sure she didn't slip anything into it.

The bitter-sweet juice was piercingly delicious. Pavel Nikolayevich lay back on his pillow and emptied the glass Gangart was holding for him.

“I felt awful today,” he complained.

“Oh, you came through all right,” said Gangart, disagreeing. “It's just that today we increased your dose.”

Rusanov was stabbed by another suspicion. “What did you say? You mean you're going to increase it every time?”

“From now on it'll be the same dose as you had today. You'll get used to it. It won't be so bad in future.”

“What about the Supreme…?” he began, but cut himself short.

He was already confused between delirium and the real world.

17. The Root from Issyk Kul

Vera Kornilyevna was worried about how Rusanov would take the full dose. She visited the ward several times that day and stayed late after work. She wouldn't have had to come so often if Olympiada Vladislavovna had been on duty, as she should have been according to the schedule. But she'd been taken off after all to attend a course for trade-union treasurers. Turgun was on duty instead, and he was a bit too happy-go-lucky.

Rusanov took the injection rather badly, although the effect did not exceed the permissible limits. After it he was given a sleeping draft, so he didn't wake up but kept restlessly tossing and turning, twitching and groaning. Each time Vera Kornilyevna came she stayed, watching over him and taking his pulse. He kept writhing and stretching his legs out.

His face was reddish and damp with sweat. Without his glasses, his head no longer looked like that of an overbearing official, specially lying on the pillow. The few fair hairs that had survived his baldness were slicked down pathetically over the top of his head.

Since she had to come into the ward so often anyway, Vera Kornilyevna took the chance of getting some other things done as well. Podduyev, who had been the ward's “senior patient,” was now discharged, and although the duties were practically nonexistent, there was supposed to be one. She walked from Rusanov's bed to the next one along and announced, “Kostoglotov, you are the ‘senior patient' as from today.”

Kostoglotov was lying fully dressed on top of the blankets reading a newspaper. It was the second time Gangart had come in while he was reading it. She was by now used to his verbal sallies and expected them, so she smiled at him lightly as she spoke, as if to imply that she knew quite well the appointment was meaningless. Kostoglotov raised a cheerful face from the newspaper and, not knowing how best to show his respect for the doctor, drew up his long legs which had been stretched out along the bed. He looked quite friendly as he replied, “Vera Kornilyevna, are you trying to deal me an irreparable moral blow? Administrators always make mistakes. Some of them even succumb to the temptations of power. After years of thought, I've made myself a vow never again to act as an administrator.”

“You've been an administrator? An important one?” She was ready to talk and enter into the game.

“My most important position was deputy platoon commander, but I really got further than that. You see, my platoon commander was so stupid and incompetent that they had to send him on a refresher course, after which they'd make him a battery commander, no less, only not in our battalion. The officer they sent instead of him was immediately transferred to the political department as a supernumerary. My battalion commander had no objection to my appointment because I was a good topographer and the boys obeyed me. So I spent two years as acting platoon commander with the rank of senior sergeant, from Yelets to Frankfurt-on-Oder. They were the best years of my life, by the way. I know it sounds funny, but it's true.”

He realized it didn't look very polite, sitting there with his legs pulled up, so he transferred them to the floor.

“There, you see.” Listening or speaking to him, the friendly smile never left Gangart's face. “Why refuse the job? You might have a few more happy years.”

“What wonderful logic! Happy years? What about democracy? You're ignoring the whole principle of democracy. The ward never elected me. The voters don't even know my life history.… And you don't know it, either, for that matter.”

“Well, tell me then.”

As always she spoke softly, and this time he too lowered his voice so that only she could hear. Rusanov was asleep, Zatsyrko was reading, Podduyev's bed was empty now. Their conversation was almost inaudible.

“It'll take a long time. Look, I feel embarrassed to be sitting while you're standing. It's not the proper way to talk to a woman. But it'll look even stupider if I rise to my feet and stand in the passageway like a soldier. Sit down on my bed. Please!”

“I ought to be going really,” she said. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

“You see, Vera Kornilyevna, everything that's gone wrong in my life has been because I was too devoted to democracy. I tried to spread democracy in the army, that is, I answered my superiors back. That's why I wasn't sent on an officers' course in 1939, but stayed in the ranks. In 1940 I got as far as the officers' training college, but I was so rude to my superior officers that they threw me out. It was only in 1941 that I somehow managed to complete a course for noncommissioned officers in the Far East. Quite frankly, I regretted it a lot, not being an officer. All my friends were commissioned. When you're young you take things like that to heart. Still, even then I thought justice was more important.”

“I had a friend. He was very close to me,” said Gangart, looking down at the blanket on the bed. “He went through the same sort of thing. He was an intelligent and educated man, but he was never more than a private.” There was a half-pause, a moment of silence that passed between them. She raised her eyes. “But you're just the same now as you were then.”

“What do you mean? A private or intelligent?”

“Independent. For instance, look at the way you talk to the doctors, especially me.”

She spoke severely, but it was a strange sort of severity, touched with softness, like all her words and movements. It was not a dim, diffused softness, but somehow melodic and based on harmony.

“The way I talk to you? I talk to you with the greatest respect. This is the highest form of conversation I know, but you don't realize that yet. But if you're thinking about that first day, well, you can't imagine what a tight spot I was in then. I was a dying man, and they only just let me leave the district where I'm exiled. I came down here, and instead of winter snow it was pouring with rain. I had to take off my felt boots and carry them under my arm. Where I'd come from the frost was really something. My overcoat got so soaked I could have wrung it out. I checked my boots in the baggage place and took the tram to the old town. I had an address there—one of my soldiers from the front—but it was dark by then and everyone in the trolley kept telling me, ‘Don't go, you'll get your throat cut!' After the 1953 amnesty they let all the criminal scum out of prison, and they can't catch them now however much they try. I didn't even know for sure if my soldier friend was there, and no one in the trolley knew where the street was. So I decided to go round the hotels. They had such beautiful lobbies, I felt quite ashamed to walk into them the way my feet were, and one or two of them even had room. But when I showed them an exile's document instead of an ordinary passport, they all said, ‘No, we're not allowed to.' Well, what was I to do? I was quite ready to lie down and die, but why die in the open under a fence? I went straight to the police. I said, ‘Listen, I'm one of your boys, find me a place to stay for the night.' They hemmed and hawed and finally told me, ‘Go to a teahouse and spend the night there. We don't check papers there.” I couldn't find a teahouse, so I went back to the railway station, but they weren't letting anyone sleep there, there was a policeman walking up and down, chasing people away. Then in the morning I came to you, to the outpatients' department. There was a line. They examined me and said I ought to be hospitalized immediately. So I had to go right across the city again, changing street-cars on the way, to get to the
komendatura.
Although working hours are the same everywhere in the Soviet Union, the
komendant
wasn't there. ‘Damn the working day,' he'd said. He wouldn't stoop so low as to leave a message for exiles: he might be back in the office or he might not. Then it dawned on me: if I handed in my document I wouldn't be able to get my felt boots back from the station. So I had to take two trolleys again—back to the station. Each trip took an hour and a half.”