Cancer Ward (72 page)

Or, more likely, she still counted on finding a husband in her own part of the world.

Oleg set off to find Vera Kornilyevna. At first he did not succeed. They told him she was in the X-ray room, then that she was with the surgeons. In the end he spotted her walking down the corridor with Lev Leonidovich. He hurried to catch them up.

“Vera Kornilyevna, have you a spare moment?”

It was nice being able to address her, and her alone. He noticed that the voice he used for her wasn't the voice he used for others.

She turned round. One could tell what a busy day it had been from the posture of her hands, the preoccupied look on her face and the droop of her body.

But she was always attentive toward everyone. She stopped. “Yes?”

She didn't add “Kostoglotov.” She only called him this when speaking in the third person, to the doctors or the nurses, never when addressing him directly.

“Vera Kornilyevna, I've something very important to ask you. Can you tell Mita I'm definitely being discharged tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“It's essential. You see, I have to leave town tomorrow evening and that means…”

“All right. Lev, you go on ahead. I'll be with you in a minute.”

Lev Leonidovich went on, his body stooping and rocking from side to side, his hands jammed into the front pockets of his white coat, his back straining at the tapes. “Come into my office,” Vera Kornilyevna said to Oleg.

She went ahead of him. She was light, light in her joints.

She led him into the X-ray room, the one where he had had that long argument with Dontsova. She sat down at the same badly planed table and mentioned him to sit too. But he remained standing.

There was no one else in the room. The sunlight flowed in, a slanting golden column of dancing specks, reflecting off the nickel-plated parts of the apparatus. It was so cheerful and bright you felt like shutting your eyes.

“But what if I don't have time to discharge you tomorrow? The epicrisis has to be written, you know.”

He couldn't tell whether she was being official or just teasing him. “Epi-what, did you say?”

“The epicrisis—that's a resumé of the whole treatment. You can't be discharged until the epicrisis is ready.”

What a mass of work there was piled on those frail shoulders! Everywhere there were people calling her and waiting for her. Once again he had disturbed her; she still had the epicrisis to write.

But there she sat, literally glowing. It wasn't just her, it wasn't just the kind, tender look she gave him, there was a sort of bright reflected light surrounding her and radiating from her figure. “What about you? Do you want to leave immediately then?”

“It's not what I want to do that counts, I'd be happy to stay on. But there's nowhere for me to spend the night. I don't want to spend another at the railway station.”

“Yes, of course, they won't let you into the hotel,” she said, nodding her head. She frowned. “What a nuisance, that old orderly who puts patients up at her apartment is absent from work at the moment on sick leave. What can we do about it?” She drew the words out, running her upper lip along her lower teeth and doodling what looked like two overlapping little rings on the paper in front of her. “You know … there's no reason at all why you shouldn't stay … at my place.”

What was that? Had she really said that? He couldn't have heard properly. Should he ask her to repeat it?

Her cheeks were noticeably blushing, and she was avoiding his eyes just as she had before. She had said it quite simply, as though it were an everyday occurrence for a patient to spend the night at his doctor's apartment. “Tomorrow's rather an unusual day for me,” she went on. “I'll only be two hours in the clinic, during the morning, and the rest of the day I'll be at home. Then after four o'clock I'm going out again … I can quite easily spend the night with friends…”

Then she did look at him. Her cheeks were aglow, but her eyes were bright and innocent. Had he understood her properly? Was he worthy of what was being offered?

Oleg simply couldn't understand. How could one possibly understand a woman when she said something like that?… It might be earth-shaking or it might be much less than that. But he didn't think, there was no time for thinking.

There was an aura of nobility about her as she waited.

“Thank you very much,” he blurted out. “Of course … that's wonderful.” He had completely forgotten what he'd been told a hundred years ago as a child about how to behave properly and answer politely. “That's splendid. But I don't want to deprive you of your … I wouldn't want to do that.”

“Don't let that worry you,” said Vega with a reassuring smile. “And if you have to stay two or three days, we'll think of some way of arranging it. Are you sorry to be leaving town?”

“Yes, of course I'm sorry … But there's one other thing. If I stay, you'll have to date my discharge certificate the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow, otherwise the
komendatura
will want to know why I didn't leave. They might put me back in prison.”

“That's all right, we'll do shady things all round. So I'm to tell Mita today to discharge you tomorrow and to write the day after tomorrow on your certificate? What a complicated man you are!”

But her eyes weren't in the least troubled by the complications, they were laughing.

“It's not me that's complicated, Vera Kornilyevna, it's the system!
And
I have to have two certificates, not one like everyone else.”

“Why?”

“The
komendatura
will take one to justify my travel authorization. I'll keep the other one.” (He'd do his best not to give the
komendatura
their copy. He'd shout and swear it was the only one he had. A spare copy would do him no harm. After all, he had suffered from so long at the hospital for the sake of the certificate, hadn't he?)

“Then you'll need a third copy for the railway station,” she said. She jotted a few words down on a slip of paper. “This is my address. Shall I tell you how to get there?”

“I'll find it, Vera Kornilyevna.” (Was she being serious? Was she truly inviting him?)

“And…” —she took a few rectangular slips of paper and attached them to the one with her address—”… here are the prescriptions Ludmila Afanasyevna mentioned. There are three copies, so you can draw the supply little by little.”

The
prescriptions.
Those
prescriptions!

She mentioned them as if they were some small insignificant supplement to her address. In two months of treatment she had contrived not to mention the subject once.

That's what we call tact.

She stood up, she was on her way to the door.

She had to get to work, Lyova was waiting for her …

And suddenly in the scattered fan of light which filled the whole room he saw her as if for the first time. She was radiant and slender at the waist. She was so understanding, she was a friend, he needed her so badly. It was as if he had never seen her before.

It made him feel cheerful. He wanted to be frank. He asked, “Vera Kornilyevna, why were you angry with me for such a long time?”

She looked at him from the light that surrounded her. She smiled, somehow a wise sort of smile. “You mean you can't think of anything you've done wrong?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not a thing.”

“Try to remember.”

“I can't think of anything. At least give me a hint.”

“I have to go…”

She had the key in her hand. She'd have to lock the door and leave. It had been so wonderful being with her! If only it could have gone on all day.

She looked very small as she walked down the corridor. He stood there and watched her go.

Immediately he went out for another stroll. Spring had broken through and he couldn't get enough fresh air. He walked about aimlessly for two hours, breathing his fill of air and warmth. Already he felt sorry at the thought of leaving this garden where he'd been a prisoner. It was sad he wouldn't be here when the Japanese acacias bloomed and the first, late leaves of the oak unfolded.

For some reason he felt no nausea today, no weakness either. He would have liked to do some digging in his garden. There was something he wanted, something, but he couldn't think what. He noticed his thumb moving of its own accord toward his index finger, craving for a cigarette. But no, however often he dreamed of smoking, he had given it up and that was that.

He'd had enough of walking, so he went to see Mita. Mita was a splendid woman. His knapsack had already been removed from the store and hidden in the bathroom. The key to the bathroom would be held by the old orderly who came on duty in the evening. Before the working day ended, he would have to go to the outpatients' clinic to get all his certificates.

His discharge from hospital seemed to be gradually becoming irreversible.

He climbed the staircase. It wasn't the last time, but nearly the last time he would do so.

At the top of the stairs he met Zoya.

“Well, how are things, Oleg?” Zoya asked unaffectedly.

Her manner was amazingly unforced, quite natural in fact. It was as though nothing had ever happened between them—no tender nicknames, no dance from
The Tramp,
no oxygen balloon.

And she could be right. Why should they keep coming back to it the whole time? Why remember? Why sulk?

One night when she'd been on duty he'd gone to sleep instead of going out and hanging around her. Another evening she'd come up to his bed with the syringe, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He'd turned round and let her inject him. Everything that had grown up between them, taut and strained like the oxygen balloon they had once carried together, had suddenly subsided little by little, until there was nothing. All that remained was her friendly greeting, “Well, how are things, Oleg?”

He leaned forward over a chair, bracing himself with his long arms. His black forelock hung down. “White corpuscle count—two thousand eight hundred,” he said, “no X rays since yesterday. Tomorrow I'm being discharged.”

“Tomorrow?” she said, fluttering her golden eyelashes. “Well, good luck! Congratulations!”

“What is there for you to congratulate me on?”

“You ungrateful thing!” said Zoya, shaking her head. “Try and remember your first day here, out on the landing. You didn't think you were going to last more than a week, did you?”

That was also true.

No, really, she was a fine girl, Zoya—cheerful, hardworking, sincere. She said what she thought. Once they had got rid of the awkwardness between them, this feeling that they had deceived each other, and begun again with a clean slate, was there any reason why they shouldn't be friends?

“There, you see.” He smiled.

“There, you see.” She smiled.

She didn't remind him about the
moulinet.

So there it was. Four times a week she would come to the clinic on duty. She would stick her nose in her textbooks, occasionally she'd do embroidery. Back in town, she'd go to dances, and afterwards stand in the shadows with some man …

One couldn't be angry with her for being twenty-two years old and healthy, healthy to the last cell, to the last drop of blood.

“Good luck!” he said, without resentment.

He'd already moved on when suddenly in her old simple and easy manner she called after him, “Hey, Oleg!”

He turned round.

“Do you have anywhere to spend the night? Write down my address.” (What? Her too?)

Oleg looked at her in bafflement. It was beyond his powers of comprehension.

“It's very convenient, just by the trolley-car stop. It's just the two of us, Grandma and me, but we have two rooms.”

“Thank you very much,” he said in confusion, taking the little piece of paper. “But I hardly think … Well, we'll see how things go…”

“Who knows?” She smiled.

It's easier to find your way in the
taiga
forest than to know where you are with women. He went on a couple of steps and saw Sibgatov lying miserably on his back on the hard plank bed in his musty corner of the landing. Even today's raging sun only reached him as a feeble reflection of a reflection. He was gazing upward, up at the ceiling. He'd grown thin these last two months.

Kostoglotov sat down beside him on the edge of the plank bed.

“Sharaf, there are rumors going about that all exiles are to be released. Both groups—'specials' and ‘administratives.'”

Sharaf didn't turn his head toward Oleg, only his eyes. It was as if he had taken in nothing except the sound of Oleg's voice.

“Did you hear? It means both you and me. They're absolutely definite.”

Sibgatov didn't seem to understand.

“Don't you believe it? Will you be going home?”

Sibgatov turned his eyes back to the ceiling. His lips parted indifferently. “It's not much good to me; it ought to have happened earlier.”

Oleg placed a hand on one of his. The hand he took was laid across Sibgatov's chest as though he were a corpse.

Nellya rushed briskly past them into the ward. “Any dishes left in here?” she shouted. Then she turned round to him. “Hey, you, hairy-top, why aren't you eating your lunch? Hurry up, I have to collect the dishes. Why should I wait for you?”

Incredible! Kostoglotov had missed his lunch and hadn't even noticed. His head must be in a whirl. There was only one thing he didn't understand. “Why, what have the dishes got to do with you?” he asked Nellya.

“What do you mean? I'm food orderly now, I hand round the meals!” Nellya announced proudly. “Look at my coat, isn't it clean?”

Oleg got up and went off to eat his last hospital lunch. Insidiously, invisibly, soundlessly, the X ray had burned out his appetite. But the prisoner's code made it impossible for him to leave anything on the plate.