Cancer Ward (48 page)

But the gloomy old man would not make even the merest polite gesture in answer to the question. It was as if it had never been asked. His huge round eyes, red and tobacco-brownish, seemed to stare straight past Pavel Nikolayevich's head. After waiting for an answer but not getting one, Pavel Nikolayevich had started flipping the glossy cards through his hands when he heard the man's hollow voice. “The usual!” he said.

What was “the usual”? Boorish fellow! This time Pavel Nikolayevich did not even look at him. He lay down on his back and just stayed like that, lying there and thinking.

The arrival of Chaly and the cards had distracted him, but of course the newspapers were what he was really waiting for. Today was a memorable day,
*
a very significant day for the future, and there was a lot he ought to be working out and deducing from the newspapers. Because your country's future is, after all, your own future as well. Would the whole paper carry a black mourning edge? Or just the first page? Would there be a full-page portrait or only a quarter-page one? And what would be the wording of the headlines of the leading article? After the February dismissals this was particularly important. If he'd been at work Pavel Nikolayevich could have gathered the news from someone, but here all he had was the newspaper.

Nellya was fussing and pushing between the beds. None of the spaces between them was wide enough for her, but she did the washing quite quickly. In no time she was finished and rolling out the strip of carpet.

Then in walked Vadim along the strip on his way back from the X-ray room. He was carefully nursing his bad leg, his lips twitching with the pain.

He had the newspaper.

Pavel Nikolayevich beckoned him over. “Vadim,” he said, “come over here. Sit down.”

Vadim hesitated, thought for a minute, turned and walked into Rusanov's bed-space. He sat down, holding his trouser leg to stop it chafing.

It was obvious that Vadim had already opened the paper, because it wasn't folded as a fresh paper would be. Even while he was taking hold of the paper, Pavel Nikolayevich could see at once that there were no borders around the edges and no portrait in the first column. He looked more closely, rustling hurriedly through the pages, on and on, but however far he looked he could not find a portrait, a black border or a big headline anywhere. In fact, it looked as though there wasn't even an article!

“There's nothing in it, is there?” he asked Vadim. He was frightened and neglected to say exactly what there was nothing of.

He scarcely knew Vadim. Although the man was a Party member he was still too young, not a leading official but a narrow specialist, and what might be tucked away inside his head it was impossible to guess. But on one occasion he had given Pavel Nikolayevich excellent grounds for hope. The men in the ward were talking about the exiled nationalities. Vadim had raised his head from his geology, looked at Rusanov, shrugged his shoulders and said so quietly that only Rusanov could hear, “There must have been something in it. They wouldn't exile people for nothing in our country.”

By making such a correct observation Vadim had shown himself a thoroughly intelligent man of unshakeable principles.

It seemed that Pavel Nikolayevich had not been mistaken. He did not have to explain what he was talking about. Vadim had already looked for it himself. He indicated the special feature which Pavel Nikolayevich, overcome by emotion, had not spotted.

It was an ordinary feature, quite undistinguished from the others. No picture, just an article by a member of the Academy of Sciences. And the article itself was not about the second anniversary or about the whole nation's grief. Nor did it say he was “alive and will live forever!” It merely said, “Stalin and Some Problems of Communist Construction.”
*

Was that all? Just “Some Problems”? Just those few problems? Problems of Construction? Why Construction? They might as well be writing about protective forest belts.
**
What about the military victories? What about the philosophical genius? What about the giant of the sciences? What about the entire people's love for him?

Knitting his brow, Pavel Nikolayevich gazed sufferingly through his spectacles at the swarthy face of Vadim.

“How could it happen? Eh?…” He peered cautiously over his shoulder at Kostoglotov, who seemed to be asleep. His eyes were shut and his head was hanging down from the bed as usual.

“Two months ago, just two months, isn't that right? You remember, his seventy-fifth birthday! Everything the way it's always been. A huge picture and a huge headline, ‘The Great Successor.' Isn't that right? Isn't that right?”

It wasn't the danger, no, it wasn't the danger that now threatened those who were left after his death—it was the ingratitude. It was this ingratitude that wounded Rusanov most of all, as though his own great services, his own irreproachable record were what they were spitting on and trampling underfoot. If the Glory that resounds in Eternity could be muffled and cut short after only two years, if the Most Beloved, the Most Wise, the One whom all your superiors and superiors' superiors obeyed, could be overturned and hushed up within twenty-four months—then what remained? What could one rely on? How could a man recover his health in such circumstances?

“You see,” Vadim said very softly, “officially there was an order issued recently to commemorate only the anniversaries of births, not those of deaths. But of course, to judge from the article…”

He shook his head sadly from side to side.

He too felt somehow insulted, most of all because of his late father. He remembered how his father loved Stalin. He'd loved him much more than he'd loved himself (his father never tried to get anything for himself), more even than he loved Lenin, and probably more than he'd loved his wife and his sons. He could speak calmly or jokingly about his family, but about Stalin—never! His voice would shake at the mention of him. He had one portrait of Stalin hanging in his study, one in the dining room and yet another in the nursery. As the boys grew up they always saw hanging over them those thick eyebrows, that thick mustache, that firm, steadfast face seemingly incapable either of fear or of frivolous joy, all emotions seeming concentrated in those glittering velvety-black eyes.

Every time Stalin made a speech his father would first read it right through, then read pieces aloud to the boys, explaining how profound their thought was, how subtly it was expressed and how fine the Russian was. Only later, when his father was no longer alive and Vadim was grown up, did he begin to find the language of the speeches a trifle insipid. He began to feel the thought was not concentrated at all, that it could have been set out much more concisely and that judging by the volume of words there should have been more of it. Despite his discovery, he would never have spoken of it aloud, he still felt himself a more complete person when professing the admiration instilled in him as a child.

It was still quite fresh in his memory—the day of Stalin's death. They had wept—old people, young people and children. Girls burst into sobs and young men were wiping their eyes. To judge from the widespread tears, you would think that a crack had appeared in the universe rather than that one man had died. He felt that if humanity was able to survive this day, it would for centuries be carved in man's memory as the blackest day of the year.

And now, on its second anniversary, they wouldn't even spend a drop of printer's ink on giving him a black border. They couldn't find the simple words of warmth: “Two years ago there passed away…” the man whose name was the last earthly word uttered by countless soldiers as they stumbled and fell in the Great War.

But it was not merely a question of Vadim's upbringing—he might have outgrown that. No, the fact was that all reasonable considerations demanded that one honor the great man who had passed away. He had been clarity itself, radiating confidence in the fact that tomorrow would not depart from the path of the preceding day. He had exalted science, exalted scientists and freed them from petty thoughts of salary or accommodations. Science itself required his stability and his permanence to prevent any catastrophe happening that might distract scientists or take them away from their work, which was of supreme interest and use—for settling squabbles about the structure of society, for educating the underdeveloped or for convincing the stupid.

Vadim walked miserably back to his bed, nursing his bad leg.

Then Chaly reappeared, very pleased with himself, carrying a bag full of provisions. He put them into his bedside table, on the side away from Rusanov's bed-space, and smiled at him sheepishly. “The last time I'll have something to eat with! Goodness knows what it will be like when I've nothing left but guts!”

Rusanov couldn't have admired Chaly more. What an optimist he was! What an excellent fellow!

“Pickled tomatoes…” Chaly carried on unpacking. He pulled one straight out of the jar with his fingers, swallowed it and screwed up his eyes. “Ah, they're delicious!” he said. “And a piece of veal, all juicy and fried, not dried up.” He felt it and licked his fingers. “The golden hands of a woman!”

Silently he slid a half-liter bottle of spirit into his bedside table. Rusanov saw him, although Chaly's body screened what he was doing from the rest of the room. He winked at Rusanov.

“So, you're a local boy, are you?” said Pavel Nikolayevich.

“No-o. I'm not local. I just pass through here sometimes, on business.”

“But your wife lives here, does she?”

But Chaly was already out of earshot, taking away the empty bag.

He came back, opened the bedside table, screwed up his eyes, had a look, swallowed one more tomato and closed the door. He shook his head from side to side with pleasure.

“Well, what did we stop for? Let's get on with it.”

By this time Ahmadjan had found a fourth, a young Kazakh from out on the staircase. He had spent the time sitting on his bed heatedly gesticulating and telling the Kazakh in Russian the story of how “our Russian boys” beat the Turks. (He had gone to another wing the previous evening and seen a movie there called
The Capture of Plevna.
*
)

Both men now came over and set the board up again between the beds. Chaly, even merrier than before, dealt out some cards with his quick, clever hands to show his friends some examples.

“Now, that's a full house, do you see? That's when you get three of one kind and two of another. Do you see,
chechmek?
”
*

“I'm no
chechmek,
” said Ahmadjan, shaking his head but not taking offense. “I was a
chechmek
before I joined the army.”

“All right, fine. Now, the next one's a flush. That's when all five are the same suit. Then we have fours: four of the same kind, with an odd one out as fifth. Then straight flush. That's a straight of the same suit from nine to the king. Here, look, like this … or like this … Then higher still is the royal straight flush…”

Of course it wasn't all clear at once, but Maxim Petrovich promised them it would be when they actually started. The main thing was that he talked so amiably, in such a straightforward, sincere tone of voice that it made Pavel Nikolayevich's heart warm to hear him. He had never counted on meeting such a pleasant, obliging fellow in a public hospital. Here they were sitting together, a nice, friendly little “cell,” and so it would go on hour after hour, perhaps every day. Why bother about illness? Why think about unpleasant facts? Maxim Petrovich was right.

Rusanov was just about to stipulate that they wouldn't play for money until they had properly mastered the game when suddenly someone appeared in the doorway. “Which of you is Chaly?” he asked.

“I'm Chaly.”

“Get on parade, your wife's here!”

“Ah, silly bitch!” Maxim Petrovich spat without malice. “I told her, don't come on Saturday, come on Sunday. She nearly bumped into the other one, didn't she? Oh well, friends, you'll have to excuse me.”

So the game was disrupted again. Maxim Petrovich went off and Ahmadjan and the Kazakh took the cards across to their corner to go through them and practice.

And once more Pavel Nikolayevich thought about his tumor and about March the fifth. Again he could feel the eagle owl staring at him disapprovingly from the corner. He turned round and was hit by the open eyes of Bone-chewer. Bone-chewer had not been asleep at all.

Kostoglotov had been awake all the time. Rusanov and Vadim had been rustling through the paper and whispering to each other, and he had heard every word. He had deliberately not opened his eyes. He wanted to hear what they would say about it, what Vadim would say about it. He didn't need to fight for the paper, open it and read it, because everything was already explained.

More knocking. His heart was knocking. His heart was banging against an iron door which ought never to open, but which was now for some reason emitting faint creaks. It was beginning to shake slightly, and rust was beginning to flake off the hinges.

Kostoglotov found it impossible to comprehend what he had heard from men in the outside world: that on this day two years ago old men had shed tears, young girls had wept, and the whole world had seemed orphaned. He found this preposterous to imagine because he remembered what the day had been like for them. Suddenly they were not taken out to their daily work. Barracks blocks were not unlocked and the prisoners were kept shut up. The loudspeaker just outside the camp grounds, which they could always hear, had been turned off. Altogether it showed that the bosses had lost their heads, that they had some great trouble on their hands. And the bosses' troubles meant the prisoners' delight! No need to go to work, just lie on your bunk, all rations delivered to the door! First they had a good sleep, then they wondered what was happening, then played their guitars and bandores for a bit, then went from bunk to bunk trying to guess what had happened. You can dump prisoners in any out-of-the-way place you like, but somehow the truth will get through to them every time—via the bread-cutting room or the water-boiling room or the kitchen. So the news spread and spread. Not very decisively at first. People were moving along the bunks, sitting down on them and saying, “Hey, kids, it looks like the old cannibal has kicked the bucket…”—“What did you say?”—“I'll never believe it!”—“About time!” and a chorus of laughter. Bring out your guitars, strum your balalaikas! They didn't open the barracks blocks for twenty-four hours, but the next morning (it was still frosty in Siberia) the whole camp was formed up in ranks on parade. The major, both captains and the lieutenants—everyone was there. The major, somber with grief, began to announce, “It is with deep sorrow … that I must tell you … that yesterday in Moscow…”