Cancer Ward (36 page)

“Purely for treatment,” he told her honestly.

“Or are you keeping it … just in case?” She still didn't entirely believe him.

“Well, all right, if you want to know. On my way here I did have that idea in the back of my mind, I didn't want to suffer unnecessarily.… However, the pains went, and I gave up the idea. But I still carried on treating myself with it.”

“In secret? When no one was about?”

“What's a man to do if he can't lead his life as he pleases, if he's surrounded by rules and regulations?”

“What sort of doses did you take?”

“It's a graduated system. From one up to ten drops, then from ten down to one, then ten days' interval. It's the interval at the moment. To be honest, I'm not convinced it was the X rays alone that got rid of my pain. It might have been the root as well.”

They were both speaking in muffled voices.

“What did you infuse it in?”

“Vodka.”

“You did it yourself?”

“That's right.”

“What concentration?”

“Concentration.…? Well, he gave me a handful of root and said, ‘This'll do for three half-liters of vodka.' So I worked it out from that.”

“But how much did it weigh?”

“He didn't weigh it He measured it by eye.”

“By eye? Poison like that and he measured it by eye? It's aconite! Don't you realize that?”

“What was I supposed to realize?” Kostoglotov was beginning to get angry. “You try dying when you're alone in the universe with the
komendatura
not letting you out past the village limits. Would you start thinking, ‘Ah yes, aconite; what does it weigh?' Do you know what the weight of that handful of root could have done to me? Twenty years' hard labor! For absence without leave from my place of exile. I went, though. I traveled a hundred and fifty kilometers, into the mountains. There's an old man living there called Krementsov, with a beard like Academician Pavlov's. He's one of the settlers who went there early in the century. He's an honest-to-goodness medicine man who goes out, collects the roots and works out the doses himself. They laugh at him in his own village—no man's a prophet in his own country—but people come to see him from Moscow and Leningrad. Once a
Pravda
correspondent arrived and was convinced, they say, But there are rumors that they've clapped the old man in jail now. Some damn fools made half a liter of it and kept it openly in the kitchen. They had some guests in for the November celebrations,
*
the vodka ran out, the host and hostess weren't there, so they drank some of the root. Three of them died. In another house some children were poisoned by it too. But why arrest the old man? He warned them…”

But by now Kostoglotov had noticed that he was spoiling his own case, so he stopped.

Gangart was upset. “That's the whole point!” she said. “It's strictly forbidden to keep powerful substances like this in a hospital public ward. It's out of the question, absolutely out of the question. There could easily be an accident. Give me the bottle!”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Give it to me.” She frowned angrily as she reached out toward his tightly clenched fist.

Kostoglotov's strong fingers, which had seen so much work, were closed around the little bottle, completely hiding it.

He smiled. “You won't get it that way.”

She relaxed her brows. “Anyway,” she said, “I know when you go for your walks. I can take the bottle when you're not here.”

“Thank you for warning me. I'll hide it.”

“On a string out of the window? What do you expect me to do now, report you?”

“I don't believe you would. You've just told me you don't approve of denouncing people.”

“But you don't leave me any alternative.”

“Does that mean you have to denounce me? That's not very dignified, is it? Are you afraid Comrade Rusanov here will drink it? I won't let that happen. I'll wrap it in paper and stow it away somewhere. When I leave the clinic I'll want the root extract to treat myself with. I don't suppose you believe it works?”

“No, of course I don't. It's just a lot of dark superstition and playing games with death. I believe in systematic science, practically tested. That's what I was taught and that's the way all oncologists think. Give me the bottle.”

Despite what he'd said, she tried to pry off his top finger.

Looking into her angry, light brown eyes, he felt little inclination to dig his toes in and argue. He'd have been only too pleased to give her the bottle and the whole of his bedside table, for that matter, but it went against the grain to betray his principles.

“Oh, I know about your sacred science,” he sighed. “If it were all so categorical, it wouldn't be disproved every ten years! What is there for me to believe in? Your injections? And by the way, why have they prescribed these new injections for me? What sort of injections are they?”

“They're absolutely necessary; your life depends on them. We're trying to save your
life!
” She spelled it out with particular insistence, her eyes bright with faith. “And don't imagine that you're cured!”

“Can't you be more precise? What effect will they have?”

“Why should I be more precise? They'll cure you. They'll stop secondaries forming. You wouldn't understand if I explained.… Hand over the bottle, and I give you my word of honor I'll return it to you when you leave.”

They looked at each other.

He looked really comic, ready for his walk, in his woman's dressing gown and the belt with the star buckle on it.

She was going on and on about it. Damn the bottle. He wouldn't particularly mind handing it over; he still had ten times that amount of aconite stored back at home. No, the trouble really was, here was this lovely woman with the light brown eyes and radiant face, with whom it was wonderful to be talking—and yet he would never be able to kiss her. When he got home to the backwoods he'd hardly believe that he'd been sitting here, right next to such a radiant woman, and that she had wanted to save his life, whatever the cost.

That, however, was just what she couldn't do.

“I'd better think twice before giving it to
you,
” he said jokingly. “You'll take it home and someone might drink it.”

(Who would?… Who would drink it at home? She lived on her own. But it would be clumsy and inept to say so at this moment.)

“All right, let's call it a tie. Let's just pour it away.”

He started to laugh. It was a pity he couldn't do more for her than that.

“All right. I'll go outside and pour it away.”

(Say what you like, he thought, she's wrong to use lipstick.)

“No, I don't believe you now. I'll have to be there when you do it.”

“I've got an idea! Why pour it away? Wouldn't it be better to give it to some well-deserving fellow you're not going to cure in any case? It might do him some good.”

“Who have you got in mind?”

Kostoglotov nodded toward Vadim Zatsyrko's bed and pitched his voice even lower. “He's got a melanoblastoma, hasn't he?”

“Now I'm really convinced we've got to pour it away, otherwise you're bound to poison someone, bound to! How can you have the heart to suggest giving a bottle of poison to a man who's seriously ill? What if he poisoned himself? Wouldn't your conscience bother you?”

She was avoiding calling him anything. Throughout their long conversation she hadn't once called him anything.

“He won't poison himself. He's a steady sort of guy.”

“No! Absolutely no! Come on, we'll go and pour it away.”

“Well, I'm in a very good mood today. All right, let's go and pour it away.”

They walked down between the beds and out onto the landing.

“Won't you be cold?”

“No, I've got a cardigan on underneath.”

She'd said cardigan underneath! Why had she said it? Now he wanted to see what sort of cardigan, and what color, but he never would.

They went out onto the porch. The day had brightened up, it was almost like spring. No one recently arrived would have believed it was only the seventh of February. The sun was shining. The high poplar branches and the low hedge shrubbery were still bare, but the patches of snow had almost gone, even in the places that didn't get the sun. Between the trees lay last year's gray-brown beaten-down grass. The pathways, the paving, the stone and the asphalt were damp, they hadn't dried off yet. There was the usual lively traffic of people in the gardens, walking toward each other, crossing each other's paths or overtaking—doctors, nurses, orderlies, general staff, outpatients and inpatients' relatives. There were even a couple of benches occupied. Here and in the other wings a few windows were open for the first time that year.

They decided not to pour it out right in front of the porch. It would look odd.

“Come on, we'll go over there.” He pointed to a path that ran between the cancer wing and the ear, nose and throat wing. It was one of the places where he took his strolls.

They walked side by side along a paved pathway. Gangart's doctor's cap was made like a pilot's. It just came up to Kostoglotov's shoulder.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She was walking along with a solemn expression, as if she was engaged in something immensely important. It made him want to laugh.

“Tell me, what did they call you at school?” he asked her suddenly.

She gave him a quick glance. “What's that got to do with it?”

‘“Nothing, of course. I was just interested.”

She took a few more steps in silence, her feet tapping lightly against the paving stones. He had first noticed her slender, gazellelike legs that day when he had been lying on the floor dying and she had come up to him for the first time.

“Vega,” she said.

(Of course, that wasn't really true, or not completely true. She had been called that at school, but only by one man, the educated and intelligent private who never came back from the war. On an impulse, without knowing why, she'd suddenly confided this nickname to someone else.)

They came out of the shadow and onto the walk between the two wings. The sun hit them; a little breeze was blowing there.

“Vega? After the star? But Vega should be dazzlingly white.”

They stopped.

“I'm not dazzling or anything.” She shook her head. “But I am
VE
-ra
GA
-ngart. That's all it is.”

For the first time it wasn't she who was embarrassed at something he'd said, but the other way round.

“What I meant was…” he began, in an attempt to justify himself.

“I quite understand. Pour it away now,” she ordered.

She didn't even permit herself a smile.

Kostoglotov loosened the firmly wedged cork, extracted it with great care, then bent down (he looked absurd with the shirtlike dressing gown over his boots) and pulled up one of the little stones left over from when the path was last paved.

“Watch me! Otherwise you'll say I poured it into my pocket,” he said. He was squatting on the ground, close to her legs.

(Those legs, those gazelle-like legs—he'd noticed them that first time.)

He poured someone's murky-brown liquid death—or recovery—into the small damp hole in the dark soil.

“May I put the stone back?” he asked.

She looked down at him and smiled.

There was something boyish in the way he poured the stuff away and put back the stone. It was boyish, but a bit like making a vow, too, or sharing a secret.

“Well, congratulate me,” he said, getting up from the ground.

“Congratulations.” She smiled, but sadly. “Go for your stroll now.”

And she walked off back to the wing.

He stared at her white back: the two triangles, upper and lower.

Any sign of feminine interest stirred him now. He read more than there was into every word, and after every action he waited for the next.

Ve-Ga. Vera Gangart. There was something that didn't quite fit, but for the moment he couldn't work out what. He stared at her back.

“Vega! Ve-ga!” he said half-aloud, trying to suggest it to her from a distance. “Come back, do you hear? Come back! Please turn round!”

But the suggestion failed. She did not turn.

18. At the Grave's Portals
*

A bicycle, a wheel, once rolling, retains its balance only so long as it moves. Without movement, it collapses. In the same way the game between woman and man, once begun, can exist so long as it develops. If today didn't continue yesterday's progress, the game would no longer exist.

Oleg could hardly wait for Tuesday evening, when Zoya was due to come on night duty. The gay, multicolored wheel of their game had to roll a little further than it had that first night and on Sunday afternoon. He felt within himself an urge to roll it on and foresaw that same urge in her. Nervously, he waited for her.

At first he went outside, in the hope of meeting her in the garden. He knew the slanting path she always came in by. He smoked two shag cigarettes he'd rolled himself before it occurred to him that he'd look silly in his woman's dressing gown, not at all how he wanted to present himself. It was getting dark, too. He went back into the wing, took off his dressing gown and boots, and stood by the bottom of the stairs in his pajamas, looking no less absurd than he had in the dressing gown. His hair, which usually stuck up on end, was as tamed today as it ever could be.

She came out of the doctors' dressing room, late and in a hurry, but she raised her eyebrows when she saw him, not in surprise but as if noting that things were as they should be, that she'd expected him to be there, that his place was there, at the foot of the stairs.