Cancer Ward (47 page)

“Uh-huh!” Dyomka grunted. His face was brightening all the time. He looked as if his operation was already half over. “He's a champ, that boy! Are you for an operation too? What have you got?”

“Yes, I'm for one too,” was all the “new boy” replied. It was as if he had not heard the whole of Dyomka's question. His face in no way mirrored Dyomka's relief, there was no change in his great, round, fixed eyes. Either they gazed much too intently or else they were completely unseeing.

Dyomka went away. They made up the bed for the “new boy,” who sat down on it and leaned against the wall. Once more his enlarged eyes gazed in silence. He did not move them about, but would focus them on some man in the ward and gaze at him for ages. Then he would turn his head and gaze at someone else, or else perhaps look straight past him. He did not move or react to the sounds and stir in the ward. He did not speak, did not ask or answer questions. An hour went by and all they could get out of him was that he came from Fergana. Then one of the nurses called him, revealing that his name was Shulubin.

He was an eagle owl, that's what he was. Rusanov at once recognized those fixed, round, completely immobile eyes. The ward was not a particularly merry place as it was, so the last thing they needed was this eagle owl. Gloomily Shulubin fixed his gaze on Rusanov and stared at him for so long that it became quite unpleasant. He gazed at everyone like this, as though each man in the ward had done him a bad turn. Life in the ward could no longer continue in its normal unconstrained way.

The day before, Pavel Nikolayevich had had his twelfth injection. He was now used to these injections and could take them without going into delirium, but he kept getting headaches and felt generally weaker. The main thing that had emerged was that there was no danger of his dying. Of course, the whole thing had been no more than a family panic. Half his tumor had already disappeared, while the part that remained straddling his neck had softened so that, although it still got in his way, it was not as bad as before. His head had recovered its freedom of movement. The only thing left was the weakness, and one can put up with weakness, there's even something agreeable about it—just lying there and reading, reading
Ogonyok
and
Krokodil,
*
taking tonics and choosing some tasty thing he felt like eating. If only he could talk to some agreeable people and listen to the radio—but he'd have that when he went home. The weakness would have been the only thing if it hadn't been for Dontsova's painful probing into his armpits, the hard pressure of her fingers poking as though with a stick. She was looking for something, and having been there a month he could guess what it was—another tumor. She would also call him down to her surgery, lay him out on the couch and probe his groin, again pressing him painfully and sharply.

“Might it really start up somewhere else?” Pavel Nikolayevich would ask her in alarm, his joy over the collapse of his tumor quite dimmed.

“That's why we're treating you, to stop that happening,” Dontsova would shake her head. “But we'll have to give you a lot more injections.”

“How many?” Rusanov would ask in terror.

“We'll see.”

(Doctors never tell you anything straight out.)

He was so weak from the twelve he had had—already they were shaking their heads over his blood count—might he really have to endure the same number again? By hook or by crook the disease was overpowering him. The tumor had abated, but this was no real cause for joy. Pavel Nikolayevich passed his days listlessly, mostly lying down. Incidentally, even Bone-chewer had become quite tame. He had stopped roaring and snarling and it was obvious now he wasn't pretending; the disease had laid him low too. More and more often he would let his head hang dangling over the end of the bed and lie there like that for hours, screwing up his eyes. Pavel Nikolayevich would be taking powders for his headaches, slapping a wet rag over his forehead and covering up his eyes against the light. And so they would lie side by side for hours on end, quite peaceably, without joining battle.

They had hung a banner across the wide staircase landing. (The little fellow who had spent his time sucking oxygen balloons had been taken away from there to the morgue.) The message was written in the usual way in white letters on a long piece of red calico: “Patients, do not discuss each other's illnesses!”

Of course with such a grand piece of calico hanging in such a prominent spot, some slogan to celebrate the October Revolution or First of May anniversaries would have been more suitable. But this was an important appeal for the people who lived here. Pavel Nikolayevich had mentioned the matter several times, to stop patients upsetting himself and each other.

(Generally speaking, it would have been more statesmanlike, more correct, not to keep the tumor patients all in one place, but to spread them out among ordinary hospitals. They wouldn't frighten one another then and one would be able to hide the truth from them, which would be much more humane.)

The people in the ward came and went, but no one ever seemed to be happy. They were always so dejected and withered. Only Ahmadjan, who had already abandoned his crutch and was soon to be discharged, showed his white teeth in a grin. But this did not cheer anyone else except himself. Probably the only effect it had was to make people jealous.

Then suddenly, a couple of hours after the gloomy “new boy's” arrival, on this gray, depressing day when everyone was lying on their beds, when the windowpanes washed by the rain let in so little light that one felt like turning on the electric lights even before the midday meal and longed for the evening to come more quickly—suddenly a shortish, energetic-looking man walked briskly and healthily into the ward, straight past the nurse who was showing him in. He didn't really enter the ward, he burst into it as hurriedly as if there was a guard of honor drawn up in ranks to greet him, men who had been waiting for him and getting tired. When he saw how listlessly everyone was lying on their beds, he stopped dead. He even whistled. Then, in a voice of energetic reproach, he announced proudly, “Hey, boys, you're a lot of dopes, aren't you? Have your feet shriveled up or something?”

Even though the men were not exactly a welcoming guard of honor, he greeted them with a semi-military gesture, like a salute. “Chaly, Maxim Petrovich! It's a pleasure! Stand at ease!”

There was nothing of the exhaustion of cancer on his face. His smile twinkled with confidence and
joie de vivre,
and some of the men smiled back at him. Pavel Nikolayevich was one of these. A month with all these nincompoops, and now it looks as if we have got a man at last.

“Well then…” He did not ask anyone, but his quick eyes spotted his bed and he strode boldly across to it. It was the bed next to Pavel Nikolayevich, the one that had been Mursalimov's. The new man went in on the side he shared with Pavel Nikolayevich. He sat down on the bed, bounced it up and down, and it creaked.

“Sixty per cent worn out,” he quipped. “The senior doctor's no rat catcher, you can see that.”

He started to unload his belongings, but it turned out there was nothing to unload. He carried nothing in his hands. He had a razor in one pocket and a pack in another pocket, not a cigarette pack but a pack of playing cards, almost new ones. He took out the pack, flipped through it with his fingers and turned his clever-looking eyes toward Pavel Nikolayevich. “Do you indulge?” he asked him.

“Yes, sometimes,” Pavel Nikolayevich admitted amiably.

“Do you play Preference
*
?”

“Not really. I like Casino best.”

“That's not a game,” said Chaly sternly. “What about whist? Or twenty-one? Or poker?”

“Well, not really.” Rusanov waved one arm in embarrassment. “There was no place to learn.”

“We'll teach you here, where else?” Chaly said enthusiastically. “It's like they say: If you can't we'll teach you, if you won't we'll make you!”

He was laughing. His nose was too big for his face. It was a great, soft, reddened nose. But it was this that gave his face its simple-hearted, attractive and open quality.

“Poker's the best game in the world!” he declared authoritatively. “You bet blind in poker.”

He had already counted Pavel Nikolayevich in and was looking around for more players. But there was no one nearby to inspire him with hope.

“Me! I'll learn!” Ahmadjan shouted from behind him.

“Fine,” said Chaly encouragingly. “Try and find something we can put between the beds for a table.”

He looked around the ward once more, saw the frozen gaze of Shulubin, then spotted a Uzbek in a pink turban with a drooping mustache as fine as though made of silver thread. It was then that Nellya came in with a bucket and cloth. She had been told to give the floors an extra wash.

“Aha!” said Chaly appreciatively straightaway. “What a girl we've run across here! Hey, where were you before? We'd have had a ride on the swings together, wouldn't we?”

Nellya stuck out her thick lips, which was her way of smiling. “Well, it's not too late, is it?” she said. “Only you're sick, aren't you? What use are you to a girl?”

“A woman a day keeps the doctor away,” Chaly retorted. “Why, are you afraid of me?”

“Why should I be afraid of you? You're not much of a man!” said Nellya, getting him in her sights.

“I'm man enough to get through you, don't you worry!” Chaly exclaimed. “Come on, hurry up then, get down and wash the floor, we want to inspect the façade!”

“Look as much as you like, we don't charge for that,” said Nellya. She was enjoying herself. She slapped the wet cloth under the first bed, bent down and started washing.

Maybe the man wasn't ill at all. There were no visible sores on him, and judging by his face there was no internal pain either. Or was he controlling himself with a great effort of will, showing an example unprecedented in the ward, but one which a Soviet man really ought to set? Pavel Nikolayevich looked at Chaly enviously.

“But … what's wrong with you?” he asked Chaly quietly, so that only he could hear.

“Me?” Chaly shook himself. “I've got polyps!”

None of the patients knew exactly what polyps were, even though they came across them quite often in one another.

“Does it hurt?”

“Well, as soon as it started to hurt I came along here. You want to cut it out? All right, go ahead. Why stall?”

“Where is it, then?” Rusanov asked him with increasing respect.

“In my stomach, I think,” Chaly remarked casually. He even smiled. “I reckon they'll cut out my beautiful old stomach. They'll hack away three quarters of it.”

With the edge of his hand he sawed away at his stomach and squinted.

“What will you do then?” asked Rusanov in amazement.

“Not a thing. Ill just have to get used to it. As long as it still soaks up the vodka!”

“But you have such wonderful self-control.”

“Listen to me, neighbor.” Chaly nodded his head up and down. His face with its big reddish nose was kindness itself. Simplicity shone in his eyes. “If you don't want to croak, you shouldn't get yourself upset. Less talk, less pain. That's my advice to you!”

At that moment Ahmadjan appeared with a board made of plywood. They set it up between Rusanov and Chaly's beds. It was quite firm.

“That's more civilized,” said Ahmadjan happily.

“Turn on the light,” Chaly ordered.

They turned on a light. The room brightened up.

“Well, what about a fourth?”

But there was no fourth to be found.

“Never mind, explain it to us,” said Rusanov. He was becoming quite cheerful. There he sat, legs on the floor, just like a healthy man. When he turned his head the pain in his neck was much less than before. Maybe it was only a piece of board, but he imagined himself sitting at a nice little card table with a cheerful, bright lamp shining from the ceiling. The signs of the gaily inscribed red and black suits stood out sharp and precise on the polished white surfaces of the cards. Maybe Chaly was right, maybe if you tackled your illness the way he did it would slip away of its own accord, Why mope? Why go around with gloomy thoughts all the time?

“We wait longer, yes?” Ahmadjan was as eager as the rest now.

“Look at this!” Chaly let the whole pack slip through his sure fingers with the speed of a film strip. The unnecessary ones he discarded to one side, the others he stacked in front of him.

“The cards we use are from the ace down to the nine. Here's the order of suits: clubs, then diamonds, then hearts, then spades.” He pointed the suits out to Ahmadjan. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. I understand!” Ahmadjan answered with great satisfaction.

Maxim Petrovich bent the chosen part of the pack between his fingers, flipped through it, shuffled it lightly and went on explaining. “Each man gets five cards, the rest are for drawing. Now you must learn the order of the hands. These are the combinations: one pair…” he showed them, “… two pairs. A straight—that's five cards in a sequence. Like this or like that. Then threes. Full house…”

“Which one's Chaly?” someone asked, appearing in the doorway. “Get on parade, your wife's here!”

“Did she bring a bag by any chance?… All right, boys, take a break.” He walked boldly and nonchalantly toward the door.

It became quite quiet in the ward. The lights were burning as though it was evening. Ahmadjan went off to his own bunk. Nellya carried on slopping water quickly across the floor, so everyone had to pull their feet up onto their beds.

Pavel Nikolayevich lay down. He could physically feel that eagle owl staring at him from the corner, like a stubborn, reproachful pressure on the side of his head. To relieve the pressure he asked him, “What's the matter with you then, comrade?”