Cancer Ward (20 page)

“Well, if it's from God it's even worse. If he can see everything, why does he load it all on one person? I think he ought to try to spread it about a bit.…”

But there were no two ways about it—he had to submit. What else was there for him to do?

Aunt Styofa lived locally. Her daughters, sons and daughters-in-law often used to come and visit her and bring her things to eat. She didn't keep them for long. She shared them with her neighbors and the orderlies. She would call Dyomka out of his ward and slip an egg or a pastry into his hand.

Dyomka's appetite was never satisfied. All his life he had never had enough to eat. His constant, anxious thoughts of food had made his hunger seem greater than it really was. Still, he felt embarrassed at taking so much from Aunt Styofa. If he accepted the egg, he would try to refuse the pastry.

“Take it, take it!” she would say, waving it at him. “It's got meat in it. You can eat it now, while it's still Meat Week.”

“Why, can't I eat it afterwards?”

“'Course you can't. Don't you know that?”

“So what comes after Meat Week?”

“Shrovetide, of course.”

“That's even better, Aunt Styofa. Shrovetide's even better.”

“Better in some ways, worse in others. But no meat!”

“Well, Shrovetide doesn't end then, does it?”

“What do you mean, doesn't end? It's gone in a week.”

“So what do we do next?” asked Dyomka cheerfully, as he gobbled up the fragrant homemade meat pie, the like of which had never been baked in
his
home.

“Good heavens, doesn't anybody grow up Christian these days? No one knows anything. After that comes the Great Fast.”

“But what's that for—the Great Fast? Why a fast—and why a Great Fast?”

“Because, Dyomusha, if you stuff your belly full it will pull you right down to the ground. You can't go on stuffing like that, you have to have a break sometimes.”

“What's a break for?” Dyomka couldn't understand. He'd never known anything else but breaks.

“Breaks are to clear your head. You feel fresher on an empty stomach, haven't you noticed?”

“No, Aunt Styofa, I haven't.”

Ever since he had been in the first class, before he could read or write, Dyomka had been taught, knew for certain and fully understood that religion is a drug, a three-time reactionary dogma, of benefit only to swindlers. Because of it the working people in some places had been unable to free themselves from exploitation. But as soon as they got rid of religion, they would take up arms and free themselves. And Aunt Styofa with her funny calendar, with the word “God” always on her lips, with her carefree smile even in that gloomy clinic, and her pastry, was obviously a thoroughly reactionary figure.

Nevertheless on Saturday after lunch, when the doctors had gone and each patient was left alone with his thoughts, when the cloudy day still lent a little touch of light to the wards, while on the landings and in the corridors the lamps were already on, Dyomka would walk about, limping and searching everywhere for none other than the reactionary Aunt Styofa, who could give him no sensible advice except to submit.

He was afraid they'd take it away, amputate it. He'd have to give it up.

To give it up, not to give it up. To give it up, not to give it up.…

With the gnawing pain he felt, perhaps to give it up would be easier.

But Aunt Styofa was in none of her usual places. So he went down to the lower corridor, where it broadened out into the little lobby that was regarded as the clinic's “red corner”
*
(the main-floor duty nurse's table stood there with her medicine cupboard), and then he saw a girl, almost a child, wearing the same kind of faded gray dressing gown. But she was like a film star: yellow hair, the sort you never saw anywhere, with something light and rustling built up from it.

Dyomka had glimpsed her for the first time the day before and her hair, yellow like a bed of flowers, had made him blink. She seemed so beautiful that he had not dared to let his eyes rest on her. He had turned them away and walked past. Although there was no one closer to him in age in the whole clinic (except for Surhan, the boy whose leg had been amputated), he knew that girls like that were beyond his reach.

This morning he caught sight of her again, from behind. Even in her hospital dressing gown she had a waist like a wasp, you could recognize her at once. And her little sheaf of yellow hair quivered.

Dyomka had certainly not been looking for her. He knew he'd never be able to make up his mind to approach her. He knew that his mouth would stick like paste and he'd bellow something unintelligible and stupid. But he saw her and his heart missed a beat. Trying not to limp, trying to walk as evenly as possible, he made his way to the red corner, where he began to flip through the pile of the local
Pravda,
already thinned out by patients for packing and other uses.

Half the table, which was covered by a red cloth, was taken up by a bronze bust of Stalin with larger-than-lifesize head and shoulders. Opposite, at the corner of the table, stood an orderly, also heavily built and with a large mouth. She seemed to make a pair with Stalin. It was Saturday and she did not expect any rush, so she had spread a newspaper on the table in front of her and poured some sunflower seeds on to it. She was shelling them with relish, spitting out the husks onto the newspaper without any help from her hands. She'd probably only come in for a minute but been unable to tear herself away from the sunflower seeds.

A loudspeaker on the wall was hoarsely blaring dance music. At a small table two patients were sitting playing checkers.

The girl Dyomka was watching out of the corner of his eye was sitting on a chair by the wall, doing nothing, just sitting straight-backed holding together the neck of her dressing gown. They never had any hooks unless the women sewed them on themselves.

She sat there, a delicate yellow-haired angel, untouchable, who looked as though she might melt and vanish. But how good it would be to
talk
to her about something … even about his bad leg.

Dyomka was angry with himself. He kept turning the pages of the newspaper. He suddenly realized that when he had had his hair cut he had not asked them to leave the curl on his forehead. Not wanting to waste time, he'd let them clip his head all over with the clippers. Now she must think he looked like an idiot.

Then suddenly the angel spoke. “Why are you so shy? This is the second day you've been around. You haven't come up to me.”

Dyomka jumped. He looked round. Well, who else could she be talking to? Yes, she must be, she was talking to
him!
The tuft or plume on her head trembled like the spikes of a flower.

“What's the matter? Are you the scared type? Go on, get a chair, pull it up, let's get to know each other.”

“I'm … not scared.” But something broke in his voice and stopped it ringing out in the normal way.

“Then get a chair. Park it next to me.”

Dyomka took the chair. Making an extra effort not to limp, he carried it with one hand and put it next to her by the wall. He gave her his hand.

“Dyomka.”

“Asya.” She put her soft palm into his and then drew it away.

He sat down, and it struck him as funny: there they were sitting next to each other like bride and groom. He couldn't even see her properly. He got up and moved the chair into an easier position.

“Why do you sit here not doing anything?” Dyomka asked.

“Why should I do anything? Anyway I am doing something.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm listening to music. I'm dancing in the mind. Can't you?”

“In the mind?”

“All right then, on the feet?”

Dyomka sucked his teeth, which meant “no.”

“I saw you were rather green. We could have a turn round the floor now.” Asya looked around. “Only there's nowhere to do it, and what kind of a dance is this anyway? So I just listen; silence always gets me down.”

“Which is a good dance?” Dyomka was enjoying this conversation. “The tango?”

Asya sighed. “The tango! That's what our grandmothers used to dance. The thing today is rock-'n-roll. We don't dance it here yet, but in Moscow they do. Only professionals, of course.”

Dyomka did not really take in all she was saying. It was nice just to talk to her and to be allowed to look straight at her. She had strange eyes with a touch of green. But you can't paint eyes, they stay the way they are. Even so they were pretty.

“That really is a dance!” Asya clicked her fingers. “Only I can't give you a demonstration. I've never seen it. How do you spend your time, then? Do you sing songs?”

“No-o, I can't sing.”

“Why not? We always sing when silence gets us down. So what
do
you do? Do you play the accordion?”

“No-o,” said Dyomka, covered with shame. He wasn't much compared to her, was he? He couldn't just blurt out to her that his passion was for social problems.

Asya was quite at a loss. What a funny type, she thought.

“Are you an athlete, then? I'm not bad at the pentathlon myself, by the way. I can do a hundred and forty centimeters and I can do thirteen point two seconds.…”

“No-o, I'm not.” Dyomka realized bitterly how worthless he must seem to her. Some people could fix up their lives so easily. Dyomka would never be able to. He played a little football.…

And where had it got him?

“You do at least smoke? And drink?” Asya asked, still hoping. “Or is it only beer?”

“Beer…” sighed Dyomka. (He had never tasted beer in his life, but he couldn't let himself be completely disgraced.)

“Oh,” groaned Asya, as though someone had knocked all the breath out of her. “What a lot of momma's boys you all are! No sporting spirit. The people at school are like you. Last September they moved us to a boys' school,
*
but the headmaster kept on just a few teachers' pets and bookworms and miserable types. All the best boys he stuck in the girls' school.”

She did not mean to humiliate him, in fact she was sorry for him, but all the same he was hurt that she should think him a “miserable type.”

“Which class are you in?” he asked.

“The tenth.”

“So who lets you wear your hair like that?”

“Who lets us? They fight us! And we fight them!”

It was open-hearted, the way she spoke. But let her tease him, let her even pummel him, the only thing that mattered was that they were talking.

The dance music stopped and the announcer began to speak of the people's struggle against the shameful Paris treaties, which were dangerous for France because they put her at the mercy of Germany, and intolerable for Germany because they put her at the mercy of France.

“So what do you do?” Asya was still trying to find out.

“I'm a turner,” Dyomka said casually but with dignity.

Even the turner did not impress Asya. “How much do you earn?”

Dyomka was very proud of his pay, for it was his own and the first he had ever earned, But now he felt he couldn't let on how much.

“Oh, it's nothing. Nothing at all,” he forced himself to say.

“It's a complete waste of time,” declared Asya quite categorically. “You'd do much better to become a sportsman. You've got what it takes.”

“But you have to know how…”

“What do you have to know? Anyone can be a sportsman. You've only got to train a lot. And it pays! You travel for nothing. You get thirty roubles a day for food,
and
free hotels, and bonuses thrown in! And think of the places you see!”

“Where have you been?”

“I've been to Leningrad, Voronezh.…”

“Did you like Leningrad?”

“You bet! The shops in the Passage and the Gostiny Dvor! They've got separate stores for everything: stores for stockings, stores for handbags.…”

Dyomka could not imagine such things and he envied her. Perhaps it was true, perhaps the things this little girl was talking about so freely
were
the good things of life, and everything
he
depended on was musty and provincial.

The orderly was still standing by the table like a statue, spitting out husks without so much as bending her head.

“You're a sportswoman, but you're here?”

He would not have dared ask what part of her body actually hurt. The question might have been embarrassing.

“I'm only here for three days' examination.” Asya waved her hand. The collar of her dressing gown kept falling open, and she had to keep holding it together or adjusting it with one hand. “This stupid dressing gown they make you wear here. I'm ashamed to put it on. A week here's enough to make you go crazy. And what have they picked you up for?”

“Me?” Dyomka sucked his teeth. He wanted to tell her about his leg, but he wanted to do it sensibly. Her lightning attack threw him off balance. “It's my leg.”

Up to then the words “It's my leg” had been full of deep and bitter meaning for him, but faced with Asya's lightness of heart he was beginning to doubt whether it was really so grave. He spoke of his leg almost as he had of his pay, with embarrassment.

“What do they say about it?”

“Well, they don't really say anything, but they want to … to cut it off.”

His face darkened as he said these words and he looked at Asya's bright face.

“Nonsense!” Asya slapped him on the back like an old friend. “Cut off your leg? They must be crazy. It's just that they don't want to treat it. Don't let them do it. It's better to die than live without a leg. What sort of life is it for a cripple, do you think? Life is for happiness.”

Yes, of course. She was right again. What kind of life was it on crutches? He would be sitting next to her now, but where would he put the crutches? Where would he put the stump? He wouldn't even be able to bring up a chair by himself, she'd have to bring one for him. No, without legs it wouldn't be any sort of a life.