Cancer Ward (66 page)

“But the patient's organism isn't aware that our knowledge is divided into separate branches. You see, the organism isn't divided. As Voltaire said, ‘Doctors prescribe medicines about which they know little for an organism about which they know less.' How can we understand the patient as a single subject? After all, the anatomist who draws the charts operates on corpses; the living aren't his province, are they? A radiologist makes a name for himself on bone fractures; the gastrointestinal tract is outside his field, isn't it? The patient gets tossed from ‘specialist' to ‘specialist' like a basketball. That's why a doctor can remain a passionate beekeeper, all through his career. If you wanted to understand the patient as a single subject, there'd be no room left in you for any other passion. That's the way it is. The doctor should be a single subject as well. The doctor ought to be an all-rounder.”

“The doctor as well?” It was almost a plaintive groan. If she'd been able to keep her spirits up and a clear head no doubt she would have found this exhaustive discussion interesting. But as things were they merely broke her morale even further. She found it so hard to concentrate.

“Yes, Ludochko, and you're just such a doctor. You shouldn't undersell yourself. There's nothing new about this, you know. Before the Revolution we municipal doctors all had to do it. We were clinical specialists, not administrators. Nowadays the senior doctor of a district hospital insists on having ten specialists on his staff, otherwise he won't work.”

He could see it was time to finish. Ludmila Afanasyevna's exhausted face and blinking eyes showed that the conversation designed to distract her had done her no good at all. Just then the door from the veranda opened and in came … it looked like a dog but it was such a big, warm, unbelievable creature that it resembled even more a man who had for some reason gone down on all fours. Ludmila Afanasyevna's first impulse was to be afraid he might bite her, but one could no more be afraid of him than of an intelligent, sad-eyed human being.

He moved across the room softly, almost as though he were deep in thought, without the faintest inkling that anyone in the house might be surprised at his entrance. He raised his luxuriant white brush of a tail, waved it once to say hello and lowered it. Apart from two black drooping ears he was ginger-white, two colors alternating in his fur in a complicated pattern. On his back he was wearing what looked like a white horse blanket, but his sides were bright ginger and his rear almost orange. True, he did come up to Ludmila Afanasyevna and sniff her knees, but he did it quite unobtrusively. He did not sit down on his orange hindquarters next to the table as one would expect a dog to do. He expressed no interest in the food on the table just above the top of his head. All he did was stand there on all fours, his great liquid-brown eyes peering up over the edge of the table in transcendental detachment.

“Good heavens, what breed's that?” Ludmila Afanasyevna was so amazed that for the first time that evening she had completely forgotten herself and her pain.

“He's a Saint Bernard,” replied Oreshchenkov, looking at the dog encouragingly “He'd be all right except that his ears are too long. Manya gets furious when she feeds him. ‘Shall I tie them up with string for you?' she says. ‘They keep slopping into the dish!'”

Ludmila Afanasyevna inspected the dog and was struck with admiration. There was no place for such a dog in the bustle of the streets. They'd never allow a dog like that onto public transport. If the Himalayas were the only place left where an abominable snowman could live, the only place for this dog was the garden of a one-story house.

Oreshchenkov cut a slice of cake and offered it to the dog. But he didn't throw it to him as one throws things for fun or out of pity to other sorts of dogs, to see them stand on their hind legs or jump up, teeth chattering. If this one stood on his hind legs it would not be to beg, but to put his paws on human shoulders as a sign of friendship. Oreshchenkov offered him the cake as an equal, and he took it as an equal, his teeth calmly and unhurriedly removing it from the doctor's palm as though from a plate. He might not even have been hungry; he might have taken it out of politeness.

The arrival of this tranquil, thoughtful dog somehow refreshed Ludmila Afanasyevna and cheered her up. She rose from the table thinking that maybe she wasn't in such a bad state after all, even if she did have to undergo an operation. She hadn't been paying Dormidont Tikhonovich enough attention, though.

“I've become absolutely unscrupulous,” she said. “I've come here bringing you all my aches and pains and I haven't even asked how
you
are. How are you?”

He stood facing her, straightbacked, on the portly side; his eyes had not yet begun to water; his ears could hear every sound. It was impossible to believe he was twenty-five years older than she was.

“All right so far,” he said, smiling. It was an amiable smile but not a very warm one. “I've decided I'm never going to be ill before I die. I'll just give up the ghost, as they say.”

He saw her out, came back into the dining room and sank into a rocking chair of black bentwood and yellow wickerwork, its back worn by the years he had spent in it. He gave it a pushoff as he sat and let the movement die down. He did not rock it any more. He was sitting in the odd position peculiar to rocking chairs. It was almost off balance but free. He froze like that for a long time, completely motionless.

He had to take frequent Tests nowadays. His body demanded this chance to recoup its strength and with the same urgency his inner self demanded silent contemplation free of external sounds, conversations, thoughts of work, free of everything that made him a doctor. Particularly after the death of his wife, his inner consciousness had seemed to crave a pure transparency. It was just this sort of silent immobility, without planned or even floating thoughts, which gave him a sense of purity and fulfillment.

At such moments an image of the whole meaning of existence—his own during the long past and the short future ahead, that of his late wife, of his young granddaughter and of everyone in the world—came to his mind. The image he saw did not seem to be embodied in the work or activity which occupied them, which they believed was central to their lives, and by which they were known to others. The meaning of existence was to preserve unspoiled, undisturbed and undistorted the image of eternity with which each person is born.

Like a silver moon in a calm, still pond.

31. Idols of the Market Place

An inner tension had built up inside him—not an exhausting tension but a joyful one. He could even feel the exact place where it was: in the front of his chest, under the bones. The tension was pressing lightly on him like warm air in a balloon, producing a sort of pleasant ache. It was somehow even audible too, except that its sound was not of this earth, not the sort of sound that is heard by ears.

It was a different feeling from the one which had sent him chasing after Zoya during those evenings of recent weeks. That feeling had not been in his chest; it was in a different part of his body altogether.

He carried this tension inside him, nursed it and listened to it constantly. He now remembered he'd known it as a young man as well, but then completely forgotten it. What sort of feeling was it? How lasting? Might it not be deceptive? Did it depend entirely on the women who had aroused it, or did it depend also on the mystery inherent in not yet being accustomed to the woman or intimate with her? Mightn't it completely disappear lately?

But the expression “To become intimate with” had no meaning for him now.

Or did it? This feeling in his chest was the only hope he had left, which was why he preserved it so carefully. It had become the chief fulfillment, the chief adornment of his life. He was amazed at what had happened—Vega's presence endowed the whole cancer wing with interest and color; the only thing that stopped the cancer wing withering on the stem was the fact that they were … friends. Still, Oleg saw her quite seldom, and then only for a short while. A few days ago she'd given him another blood transfusion. They'd had another good talk, although not as free as the last one because this time there was a nurse present.

He had done everything he could to get out of this place, but now the moment of discharge was approaching he felt sad about leaving. In Ush-Terek he would no longer see Vega. What would happen then?

Today was Sunday, the one day on which he had no hope of seeing her. It was warm and sunny, the air was still, ready to be warmed up and overheated. Oleg went out for a walk in the hospital grounds, He breathed in the thickening warmth which seemed to knead his body. He tried to imagine how
she
would be spending this Sunday. What would she be doing?

His movements were sluggish nowadays, not as they once were. He no longer strode firmly along a straight line that he had marked out for himself, turning sharply whenever it came to an end. His steps were weak and cautious. Every now and then he stopped and sat down on a bench, and if no one else was there he stretched himself out along it.

This was how it was today. He dragged himself along, his dressing gown unbuttoned and hanging open, his back sagging. Often he would stop, throw back his head and look up at the trees. Some of them were already half in leaf, others a quarter of the way out, while the oak trees hadn't broken into foliage at all. It was all so … good!

Unheard and unnoticed, a mass of bright green grass had pushed its way up. In places it was so tall that it might have been taken for last year's if only it hadn't been so green.

On one of the pathways open to the sun's glare Oleg spotted Shulubin. He was sitting on a wretched-looking, backless narrow-plank bench. Perched on his thighs, he was so twisted that he seemed to be bent backward and forward at the same time, his arms stretched out and his interlocked fingers clasped between his knees. Sitting there, head bowed, on the lonely bench in the sharp lights and shadows, he looked like a monument to uncertainty.

Oleg wouldn't have minded joining Shulubin on the bench. He hadn't yet managed to have a proper talk with him, but he wanted to because the camps had taught him that people who say nothing carry something within themselves. Besides, Oleg's sympathy and interest were aroused by the way Shulubin had supported him in the argument.

However, he decided to walk past him. The camps had also taught him that each man had a sacred right to be left on his own. He recognized this right and would not violate it.

He was walking past, but slowly, raking his boots through the gravel. Stopping him would be no problem. Shulubin saw the boots and his eyes followed them up to see whose they were. He gave Oleg a look of indifference, implying no more than the recognition “We're from the same ward, aren't we?” Oleg had taken two more measured steps before Shulubin suggested to him in a half-question, “Will you sit down?”

Shulubin was wearing a pair of high-sided house shoes, not the ordinary hospital slippers that just hung on your toes. It meant he could go outside for walks and sit outside. His head was uncovered; on it a few tufts of gray hair were sticking up.

Oleg turned toward the bench and sat down, giving the impression that it was all the same to him whether he sat or walked on, but, come to think of it, sitting down would be better.

However their conversation began he knew he could ask Shulubin one crucial question, and the answer would provide the key to the whole man. But instead he simply asked, “So, it's the day after tomorrow, is it, Aleksei Filippovich?”

He didn't need an answer to know that it was the day after tomorrow. The whole ward knew that Shulubin's operation was scheduled for then. The important thing, though, was that he had called him “Aleksei Filippovich.” No one in the ward had yet addressed the silent Shulubin in this way. It was spoken as though by one old soldier to another.

Shulubin nodded. “It's my last chance to get a bit of sunshine.”

“Oh no, not the last,” boomed Kostoglotov.

But looking at Shulubin out of the corner of his eyes he thought it might well be the last. Shulubin ate very little, less than his appetite demanded. He was preserving himself so as to diminish the pain he would feel after eating. But this undermined his strength. Kostoglotov already knew what Shulubin's disease was. “So it's decided, is it? They're diverting the excreta through one side?” he asked him.

Shulubin compressed his lips as though about to smack them, then nodded again. They were silent for a while.

“Whatever you say there's cancer and cancer,” Shulubin declared, looking straight ahead of him instead of at Oleg. “There's one kind of cancer beats all the others. However miserable one is, there's always someone worse off. Mine's the sort of case you can't even discuss with other people, you can't ask their advice about it.”

“Mine's the same, I think.”

“No, mine's worse, whichever way you look at it. My disease is something specially humiliating, specially offensive. The consequences are terrible. If I live—and it's a very big if—simply standing or sitting near me, like you are now, for instance, will be unpleasant. Everyone will do their best to keep two steps away. Even if anyone comes closer I'll still be thinking to myself, ‘You see, he can hardly stand it, he's cursing me.' It means I'll lose the company of human beings.”

Kostoglotov thought about it for a while, whistling slightly, not with his lips but through his clenched teeth, absentmindedly letting air out through them. “Well, it's hard to work out which of us is worse off,” he said; “it's even harder than competing over achievement or success. One's own troubles are always the worst. For instance, I might conclude that I've led an extraordinarily unlucky life, but how do I know? Maybe yours has been even harder. How can I judge from the outside?”