The Abyss and Other Stories (Alma Classics) Page 5

  “That’s your place.” The nurse indicated a high, clean bed and the small table standing beside it. It was a very small space, only a corner of the ward, but for precisely that reason this man, worn out by life, liked it. Hurriedly, as if escaping from pursuit, Lavrenty Petrovich took off his gown and slippers and lay down. And from that moment, everything that even just that morning had enraged and tormented him receded, became foreign and unimportant. Quickly, in one lightning-fast picture, his memory recalled the whole of his life in recent years – the implacable illness, devouring his powers day by day; the loneliness in the midst of masses of grasping relatives in an atmosphere of falsehood, hatred and fear; the flight here, to Moscow – and just as suddenly it extinguished that picture, leaving in his soul just a dull, dying pain. And without thoughts, with a pleasant sensation of clean linen and peace, Lavrenty Petrovich sank into a heavy and deep sleep. The last things to flash before his half-closed eyes were snow-white walls and a ray of sunlight on one of the walls, and then came hours of long and complete oblivion.

  Next day, above Lavrenty Petrovich’s head there appeared an inscription on a little blackboard: “Merchant Lavrenty Kosheverov, 52, admitted 25 February”. The two other patients in ward eight had similar boards and inscriptions: on one it said “Deacon Filipp Speransky, 50”, on the other “Student Konstantin Torbetsky, 23”. The white chalk letters stood out beautifully but gloomily on the black background, and when a patient lay on his back with his eyes closed, the white inscription continued to say something about him, and acquired a resemblance to the notifications on graves that, just here, in this damp or frozen earth, a man is buried. That same day Lavrenty Petrovich was weighed – he turned out to be six poods, twenty-four pounds.* Having uttered this figure, the feldsher gave a faint smile and joked:*

  “You’re the heaviest man in all the clinics.”

  The feldsher was a young man who spoke and acted like a doctor, for it was only by chance that he had not had higher education. He expected the patient to smile in response to the joke, as everyone did, even the most seriously ill, at doctors’ approbatory jokes, but Lavrenty Petrovich did not smile and did not say a word. His deeply sunken eyes looked down, and his massive cheekbones, with their sparse growth of greyish beard, were clenched tight as though made of iron. And the feldsher, who had been expecting a reply, felt awkward and unpleasant: he had, incidentally, already long been studying physiognomy, and on the grounds of the merchant’s extensive, matt bald patch had assigned him to the category of the good-natured; now he was obliged to transfer him to the category of the bad-tempered. Still mistrustful of his observations, the feldsher – his name was Ivan Ivanovich – decided in time to ask the merchant for some kind of note, written in his own hand, in order to define his mental attributes more precisely from the nature of the handwriting.

  Soon after the weighing, Lavrenty Petrovich was examined for the first time by the doctors; they were dressed in loose white robes, and seemed as a result particularly important and serious. And afterwards they examined him daily, once, twice, sometimes alone, but more often accompanied by students. At the doctors’ request, Lavrenty Petrovich would take off his shirt and still just as submissively lie on the bed, towering up on it in an enormous fleshy heap. The doctors tapped a little hammer on his chest, placed a tube on it and listened, tossing remarks to one another and drawing the students’ attention to one peculiarity or another. They would often start to question Lavrenty Petrovich about how he used to live, and he would answer reluctantly but submissively. It emerged from his fragmentary answers that he had eaten a lot, drunk a lot, loved a lot of women and worked a lot; and at every new “a lot” Lavrenty Petrovich recognized himself less and less in the man being drawn on the basis of his words. It was strange to think that it really was him, the merchant Kosheverov, who had acted so badly and harmfully to himself. And all the old words – vodka, life, health – were coming to be filled with a new and profound content.

  He was listened to and tapped by students. They would often appear in the absence of the doctors and ask him to undress, some tersely and directly, others with shy indecisiveness, and again there would begin the attentive examination, full of interest, of his body. Conscious of the importance of the work they were doing, they kept a journal of his illness, and it seemed to Lavrenty Petrovich that he had now been wholly transferred onto the pages of the records. With every day he belonged to himself less and less, and over the course of almost the entire day his body was open for all and subordinate to all. At the nurses’ command, he would carry his body heavily to the bathroom or sit it down at the table where all the patients capable of moving had their dinner and drank their tea. People handled him from all sides, engaged with him like nobody in his former life had; yet for all that, throughout the entire day a vague feeling of profound loneliness never left him. It was as if Lavrenty Petrovich were travelling somewhere very far away, and everything around him were of a temporary nature, ill-suited to lengthy residence. From the white walls, which bore not a single stain, and the high ceilings there came an air of cold alienation; the floors were always too shiny and clean, the air too neutral – even in the cleanest of buildings the air always smells of something particular: of what belongs to this building and these people alone. But here it was undifferentiated and had no smell. The doctors and students were always attentive and courteous: they joked, patted him on the shoulder, soothed him, but, when they left Lavrenty Petrovich, the idea would occur to him that these people alongside him were employees, conductors on this unknown journey. They had already conveyed thousands of people and they were conveying them every day, and their conversation and questioning were just queries about the ticket. And the more they busied themselves with the body, the more profound and terrible became the loneliness of the soul.

  “When are your visiting days?” Lavrenty Petrovich asked a nurse. He spoke briefly, without looking at the person to whom the words were addressed.

  “Sundays and Thursdays. But if you ask the doctor, then other days are possible too,” the nurse replied loquaciously.

  “And can it be arranged for no one to be let in to see me at all?”

  The nurse was surprised, but replied that it could, and this reply evidently gladdened the morose patient. And for the whole of that day he was a little more cheerful, and, although he did not become more talkative, it was now with not so miserable an air that he listened to everything the sick deacon jabbered to him cheerfully, loudly and abundantly.

  The deacon had come from the province of Tambov and entered the clinic a day before Lavrenty Petrovich, but he was already well acquainted with the inmates of all five wards accommodated upstairs. He was short in stature and so thin that, when undressing, every one of his ribs stood out, while his stomach was falling in, and his feeble little body as a whole, white and clean, resembled that of an unformed ten-year-old boy. His hair was long, thick, grey-white, and yellowing and curling at the ends. Looking out from it, as from a large frame that was not right for the drawing, was a small, dark face with regular, but miniature, features. On the grounds of its similarity to the dark and dry faces of ancient icons, the feldsher Ivan Ivanovich had assigned the deacon to the category of severe and intolerant people, but altered his view after their very first conversation and even became disenchanted for a certain time with the significance of the science of physiognomy. Father Deacon, as everybody called him, talked willingly and candidly about himself, about his family and about his acquaintances, and he questioned others about the same things so inquisitively and naively that no one could get angry, and everyone told him just as candidly. Whenever anybody sneezed, Fr. Deacon would cry from afar in a cheerful voice:

  “Your wishes fulfilled! Upon my soul!” and bow.

  Nobody came to see him, and he was seriously ill, but he did not feel lonely, for he had made the acquaintance not only of all the patients, but of their visitors too, and he did not get bored. Several
times a day he would wish the sick a good recovery, and the healthy time spent in merriment and prosperity, and he found something kind and pleasant to say to everyone. Every morning he wished everyone, on Thursday – a happy Thursday, on Friday – a happy Friday, and no matter what was going on in the fresh air, where he had not been, he was forever asserting that the weather that day was uncommonly pleasant. Along with this, he was always joyfully laughing a prolonged, inaudible laugh, pressing his hands to his sunken stomach, slapping his hands on his knees and sometimes even clapping. And he thanked everyone – sometimes it was hard to decide what for. Thus, after tea, he would thank morose Lavrenty Petrovich for his company.

  “We’ve had a nice drop of tea, then, you and I – heavenly! Right, Father, eh?” he would say, although Lavrenty Petrovich drank his tea by himself and could not have constituted company for anyone.

  He was very proud of his office of deacon, which he had received only three years before, having previously been a psalm reader. And he asked everyone – patients and visitors alike – how tall their wives were.

  “Well my wife is very tall,” he would say with pride after one reply or another. “And the children all take after her. Grenadiers,* upon my soul!”

  Everything in the clinics – the cleanliness, the cheapness, the civility of the doctors, the flowers in the corridor – enraptured and moved him. Now laughing, now crossing himself before the icon, he poured out his feelings in front of a silent Lavrenty Petrovich, and when lost for words, exclaimed:

  “Upon my soul! As God sees, upon my soul!”

  The third patient in ward eight was the black-haired student Torbetsky. He barely got out of bed, and was visited every day by a tall young woman with modestly lowered eyes and light, confident movements. Slim and elegant in her black dress, she would walk quickly down the corridor, take a seat by the head of the sick student’s bed and sit from two through until exactly four o’clock, when, according to the rules, visiting time ended and the nurses served tea to the patients. Sometimes they would do a lot of animated talking, smiling and lowering their voices, but the odd loud word would accidentally burst out – the very ones that should have been said in a whisper: “My joy!”, “I love you”; sometimes they were silent for a long time and only gazed at one another with enigmatic, obscure looks. Then Fr. Deacon would cough and leave the ward with a stern, businesslike air, but through screwed-up eyes, pretending to be asleep, Lavrenty Petrovich would see them kissing. And pain would blaze up in his heart, and it would start beating hard and unevenly, while his massive cheekbones would protrude and shift about in bumps. And the white walls watched with that same cold alienation, and in their irreproachable whiteness there was a strange, sad mockery.

  II

  The day in the ward began early, when there was still only a dull greyness from the first rays of dawn, and it was long, bright and empty. At six o’clock the patients were served their morning tea, and they drank it slowly, and then thermometers were inserted to take their temperature. Many, like Fr. Deacon, learnt of the existence of their temperature for the first time, and it seemed something enigmatic, and taking it a very important matter. The small glass tube with its little black and red lines became an indicator of life, and a tenth of a degree up or down made a patient cheerful or sad. Even the eternally cheerful Fr. Deacon fell into momentary despondency and shook his head in puzzlement if the temperature of his body proved lower than what he had been told was normal.

  “There’s a thing, Father. Topsy-turvy,” he said to Lavrenty Petrovich, holding the thermometer in his hand and examining it with disapproval.

  “Keep it in a bit longer, do a bit of haggling,” Lavrenty Petrovich answered mockingly.

  And Fr. Deacon did haggle, and if he succeeded in getting another tenth of a degree, he cheered up and thanked Lavrenty Petrovich fervently for the lesson. The temperature-taking inclined thoughts towards questions of health for the whole day, and everything that was recommended by the doctors was carried out to the letter and with a certain solemnity. Particular solemnity was introduced into his actions by Fr. Deacon and, when holding a thermometer, swallowing medicine or performing some function or other, he made his face important and stern, as when talking about his ordination. For the requirements of tests he was given several glasses, and he set them out in strict order, and asked the student to write the numbers – first, second, third – since he himself did not write neatly enough. He would get angry with those patients who failed to carry out the doctors’ instructions, and was forever severely admonishing fat Minayev, who was in ward ten: the doctors told Minayev not to eat meat, but he surreptitiously swiped it from his neighbours at the dinner table and swallowed it down without chewing.

  From seven o’clock the ward was flooded with bright daylight coming in through the enormous windows, and it became as light as in the fields – and the white walls, beds, polished copper basins and floors, everything shone and sparkled in that light. It was rare for anyone to go right up to the windows: the street and the whole world that was beyond the walls of the clinic had lost their interest. There were people living there: there was a horse-drawn tram running by, full of people, a grey detachment of soldiers passing, shiny firemen driving past, shop doors opening and closing – here there were sick people lying in beds with barely the strength to turn a weakened head to the light; dressed in grey gowns, they wandered listlessly over the smooth floors; here were the sick and dying. The student received a newspaper, but both he himself and the others hardly glanced at it, and some irregularity or other in the function of a neighbour’s stomach was more worrying and affecting than war or the things that are later given the name of world events. At about eleven o’clock the doctors and students came, and the attentive examination, which lasted for hours, began again. Lavrenty Petrovich always lay quietly and looked at the ceiling, answering gloomily in monosyllables; Fr. Deacon was excited and spoke such a lot and so unintelligibly, with such a desire to give everyone pleasure and show everyone respect, that he was sometimes hard to understand. Of himself he said:

  “When I proceeded into the clinic…”

  Of a nurse he reported:

  “She was so good as to give me an enema…”

  He always knew at exactly what hour and what minute he had experienced heartburn or nausea, at what time of night he had woken up and on how many occasions. Upon the doctors’ departure he became more cheerful, said thank you, was touched and very pleased with himself if he had succeeded in making not one general bow to all the doctors in farewell but bows to each one individually.

  “That way it’s dignified,” he rejoiced, “heavenly!”

  And he would demonstrate once more to the silent Lavrenty Petrovich and the smiling student how he had bowed first to Dr Alexander Ivanovich and then to Dr Semyon Nikolayevich.

  He was incurably ill and his days were numbered, but he did not know it, and he spoke with rapture about the journey he was going to make upon his recovery to the Holy Trinity St Sergius Monastery,* and about the apple tree in his garden, which was called a White Transparent, from which he was expecting fruit this summer. And on a good day, when the walls and the parquet floor of the ward were generously flooded with the sun’s rays, quite incomparable in their mighty power and beauty, when the shadows on the snowy bed linen became transparently blue, perfectly summery, Fr. Deacon would loudly sing a touching song:

  “Our Lady of Peace, most high of the heavens, purest brightness of the sun, who delivers us from our curse, we honour thee with song!…”

  His voice, a weak and gentle tenor, would start to quaver, and, in an agitation he tried to conceal from those around him, Fr. Deacon would bring a handkerchief up to his eyes and smile. Then, after walking to and fro across the room, he would go up close to the window and lift his gaze suddenly to the deep, cloudless sky: expansive, far from the earth, serenely beautiful, it seemed itself like a majestic, divine song. And a quav
ering human voice, full of tremulous, passionate supplication, would timidly join in with its solemn sounds:

  “From my many sins my body is ailing, ailing too is my soul; I turn to thee, full of grace, hope of the hopeless, help me!…”

  Dinner was served at a specific hour, tea again and supper, and at nine o’clock the electric light was screened with a blue cloth shade, and the night, just as long and empty, would begin.

  The clinics would fall quiet.

  Only in the lit corridor, into which led the forever open doors of the wards, did the nurses knit stockings, quietly whisper and quarrel, and occasionally one of the attendants would pass, their feet tapping loudly, and each of their steps would stand out distinctly and die away in strict graduality. Towards eleven o’clock these final echoes of the day gone by would die away too, and the quietness – resonant, as though made of glass, lying keenly in wait for every little sound – would pass, from one ward to another, the sleepy breathing of the convalescents, the coughing and faint groans of the seriously ill. Faint and deceptive were these nocturnal sounds, and often lurking within them was a terrible enigma: is that a patient wheezing or is death itself already wandering amidst the white beds and the cold walls?