Cancer Ward (33 page)

Kostoglotov looked at him—not with pity, but with the sympathy one soldier feels for another, as if to say, “That bullet has your name on it, the next may have mine.” He knew nothing of Yefrem's past life, he'd not even made friends with him in the ward, but he liked his bluntness and reckoned he was far from the worst man he'd met in his life.

“All right, Yefrem, let's shake on it.” He held out his hand.

Yefrem took his hand and grinned. “When you're born, you wriggle; when you grow up, you run wild; when you die, that's your lot.”

Oleg turned to go out for a cigarette, but a lab girl appeared in the doorway. She was taking around newspapers, and since he was the nearest she gave it to him. Kostoglotov took it and opened it, but Rusanov spotted him and loudly, in hurt tones, reprimanded the girl, who had not managed to scuttle away in time. “Listen, there, listen! I told you quite distinctly to give me the paper first.”

He sounded really pained, but Kostoglotov had no pity on him. “Why should you have it first?” he barked.

“What do you mean, Why? What do you mean?” Pavel Nikolayevich was suffering aloud, suffering from the indisputable and self-evident nature of his right, which it was impossible, however, to defend in words.

He felt real jealousy if someone else, with unhallowed fingers, opened a fresh newspaper before him. No one here could possibly understand a newspaper as he did. He regarded newspapers as a widely distributed instruction, written in fact in code; nothing in it could be said openly, but a skillful man who knew the ropes could interpret the various small hints, the arrangement of the articles, the things that were played down or omitted, and so get a true picture of the way things were going. This was why Rusanov
had
to read the paper first.

But as none of this could be said aloud, he just complained. “They're going to give me my injection in a minute. I want to see it before I have my injection.”

“Injection?” Bone-chewer softened. “All right.…”

He cast his eye rapidly over the paper, where reports of the Supreme Soviet session had squeezed the other news into the corners of the page. He was on the point of going for his smoke anyway. The paper rustled as he started folding it to hand it over, when something caught his eye. He dived back into the paper, and almost at once began to utter one long word, repeating it guardedly, as if grating it finely between his tongue and his palate. “In-ter-est-ing … In-ter-est-ing…”

Beethoven's four muffled chords of fate were thundering above Kostoglotov's head. Nobody heard them in the ward, perhaps they never would. What else could he say out loud?

“What is it? What is it?” Rusanov was getting quite worked up. “Give me the paper immediately!”

Kostoglotov made no attempt to point anything in the paper out to anyone. He didn't answer Rusanov either. He gathered the pages of the newspaper together, folded it in two and then in four, as it had been originally, except that now the six pages were a bit crumpled and the creases didn't fit. He took a step toward Rusanov, as the other took a step to meet him, and handed him the paper. Without leaving the room he took out his silk tobacco pouch. With trembling hands he began to roll a cigarette out of newspaper and crude, home-grown tobacco.

Pavel Nikolayevich's hands were trembling too as he opened the paper. The way Kostoglotov had said “interesting” had struck him like a knife in the ribs. What could it possibly be that Bone-chewer found “interesting”?

Deftly and efficiently he leaped from heading to heading, through the reports of the Supreme Soviet session until suddenly …

It was set in quite small type and would have had no significance for the uninitiated, but to him it shrieked from the page. It was an unprecedented, impossible decree! The whole membership of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union had been changed.

What's this? Matulevich, Ulrich's deputy? Detistov? Pavlenko? And Klopov! Since it had existed Klopov had been a member of the Supreme Court—and now he was dismissed! Who'd look after the state and Party cadre now? A lot of completely new names. All those who'd administered justice for a quarter of a century—gone, at a single stroke.

It couldn't be coincidence.

It was history on the move.…

Pavel Nikolayevich broke into a sweat. It was only just before daybreak that morning that he had managed to calm himself down, persuade himself that all his fears were groundless. But now.…

“Your injection.”

“What?” He jumped like a madman.

Dr. Gangart was standing in front of him with a hypodermic syringe. “Roll up your sleeve, Rusanov. Here's your injection.”

16. Absurdities

He was crawling. He was crawling along a concrete tube—no, not a tube, a tunnel, perhaps, with uncovered steel bars jutting out from its sides. Sometimes he'd get caught on them, just at the right of his neck where it hurt. He was crawling on his belly, and what he felt most was the heaviness of his body pressing him against the earth, a heaviness much greater than the weight of his body. He wasn't used to it, it was flattening him. He thought at first it was the concrete crushing him from above, but no, it was his body that was so heavy. As he dragged it along it felt like a sack of scrap metal. He was so heavy he thought he'd never be able to get up on his feet again. Only one thing mattered now, to crawl his way out of this passage for a gulp of air and a look at the light. But the passage was never-ending, never-ending.

Then a voice from somewhere—only it wasn't a voice, but a transmitted thought—ordered him to crawl sideways. “How can I if there's a wall in the way?” he thought. Yet the order was incontestable, and weighed on him as heavily as that other weight flattening his body. With a groan he crawled sideways, and indeed he found he could do it as easily as when he'd been crawling forward. He was just getting used to going to the left when he received an order to crawl to the right. He moaned and got moving. He was weighed down by it all, yet there was still no light, no sign of the tunnel's end. The same distinct voice ordered him to turn right, at the double. He worked his way with his elbows and feet, and in spite of the impenetrable wall on his right, he crawled on and it seemed to work. Then he was called to wheel to the left, again at the double. By now his doubts had gone, he didn't need to think. He worked his way left with his elbows and pushed on. His neck kept getting caught, jarring through his head. He'd never been in such a fix in his life; it would be a pity to die there without reaching the end.

But suddenly his legs lightened, as if they had been inflated with air. They began to rise, although his chest and head were still pressed against the ground. He listened, but no order came. And then he realized that perhaps there
was
a way out: he would let his legs float out of the tube, crawl backwards after them and climb out. Sure enough, he began to move backwards. Pushing himself up with his hands (goodness knows where he found the strength), he began to crawl back after his legs through a hole. It was a narrow hole, but it was made really difficult by the blood flowing down to his head, so that he thought he was going to die right there and that his head would burst. He gave another little push with his hands against the walls and, scratched all over, managed to crawl out.

He found himself sitting on a pipe on a construction site. There was nobody there; the working day was obviously over. The earth was muddy and soggy around him. He had sat down on the pipe for a rest—and saw a girl sitting next to him, in dirty overalls, her head uncovered, her strawlike hair hanging loosely without comb or pin. The girl was not looking at him; she just sat there, but she was expecting him to ask her a question, he knew that. At first he was frightened, but then he realized she was even more afraid of him than he of her. He was not in the mood to talk, but she was so intense, waiting for his question, that he asked her, “Where is your mother, young lady?”

“I don't know,” she answered, looking down at her feet and biting her fingernails.

“What do you mean, you don't know?” He began to grow angry. “You must know, and you must tell me truthfully. And write down everything as it is … Why don't you say something? For the second time, where is your mother?”

“That's what I'd like to ask you.” She looked at him.

She looked at him—and her eyes were all water. It struck right through him and came to him several times, not piecemeal, but all at once: she must be the daughter of Grusha, the press operator who had been run in for gossiping against the Leader of the Peoples, she must have brought him a form that wasn't properly filled out because she'd hidden this fact about her mother. So he'd summoned her and threatened to have her charged with not filling out her form properly. And then she had poisoned herself. She had poisoned herself, but looking at her hair and her eyes now, it struck him that she must have drowned herself. It struck him too that she had guessed who he was. And it also struck him that if she had drowned herself and he was sitting next to her, then he must be dead too. He broke out in a sweat. He wiped the sweat away and said to her, “Whew, it's hot out here. Where can I get a drink of water, do you know?”

“There.” The girl nodded.

She pointed to a box or a trough full of stale rainwater mixed with greenish clay. It struck him again that this was the water that she had swallowed, and now she wanted him to choke on it too. If she wanted that, then surely he must still be alive?

“I tell you what.” He tried a trick to get rid of her. “Would you run over there and call the foreman? Tell him to bring my boots. How can I walk like this?”

The girl nodded, jumped off the pipe and splashed through the puddles, bareheaded, untidy, in the overalls and high boots girls wear on construction sites.

He was so thirsty he decided to take a drink, even if it was out of the trough. Nothing would happen to him if he drank a little. He climbed down and noticed with amazement that he wasn't slipping on the mud. The soil under his feet was nondescript. Everything around him was nondescript, and in the distance there was nothing to be seen. He could have walked on and on like this, but suddenly he was afraid that he had lost an important document. He went through his pockets, all of them at once, more quickly than his hands could do the job, and he realized—yes, he had lost it.

At once he became frightened, terribly frightened; outsiders must not read documents like that nowadays. He could get into deep trouble. Instantly he realized he'd lost it as he was climbing out of the tube. He walked quickly back, but was unable to find the place; he could not even recognize it, and there was no tube there. Instead there were workers wandering all over the place, and—worst of all—they might find it.

The workers were all young men and he didn't know any of them. One fellow in a welder's canvas jacket with shoulder flaps stopped and looked at him. Why was he staring at him like that? Had he found it?

“Hey, young man, do you have a match?” asked Rusanov.

“But you don't smoke,” answered the welder

(They knew everything! How did they know that?)

“I need matches for something else.”

“What else?” The welder scrutinized him.

Really, what a stupid answer! A typical saboteur's reply! They might detain him and in the meantime the document would be found. That's what the matches were for, of course: to burn it.

The young man came closer and closer. Rusanov was very frightened. He knew what was going to happen. The young man looked him straight in the eye and said clearly and distinctly, “Since Yelchanskaya has, so to speak, entrusted her daughter to me, I conclude that she regards herself as guilty and that she is awaiting arrest.”

Rusanov started to shiver. “How do you know that?”

(It was rather a pointless question because it was clear that the young man had just read his report: his last remark came from it word for word.)

But the welder said nothing and went on his way. Rusanov started rushing about. Obviously his report was lying somewhere nearby. He must find it soon, he must.

Dashing between walls, turning corners, his heart leaped ahead, but his legs couldn't keep up; his legs were moving so slowly. He was desperate, desperate. At last he spotted his paper. He knew at once it must be the right one. He wanted to run and pick it up, but his legs would not carry him. He went down on all fours and, pushing himself mainly with his hands, moved toward the paper. If only no one else grabbed it first! If only no one got there before him and tore it out of his hands! Closer, closer.… At last he'd grabbed it! It
was
the paper! But he had no strength left in his fingers, not even to tear it up. He lay face down on the ground, covering it with his body.

Somebody touched him on the shoulder. He resolved not to turn around, not to let the paper escape from under him. But the touch was soft: a woman's hand. It struck Rusanov it must be Yelchanskaya herself.

“My friend,” she said softly, bending right down to his ear. “Well, my friend, tell me, where's my daughter? Where did you take her?”

“She is in a good place, Yelena Fedorovna, don't worry,” Rusanov replied, without turning his head toward her.

“Where?”

“In a children's home.”

“What children's home?” She wasn't interrogating him; her voice was sad.

“I don't know what to tell you, really.” He'd have liked to tell her the truth, but he didn't know what it was. He hadn't sent the daughter away himself, and they might easily have transferred her from the original place.

“Is she living under my name?” The questioning voice behind his back was almost tender.

“No,” Rusanov told her sympathetically. “They have a rule there: names have to be changed. I can't do anything about it. It's a rule.”

Lying there, he remembered how he'd rather liked the Yelchanski couple. He had borne them no ill-will. And if he had had to denounce the old man, it was only because Chukhnenko had asked him to. Yelchanski had been in his way professionally. After the husband was arrested, Rusanov had helped the wife and daughter quite sincerely. And later on, when she was expecting to be arrested herself, she had entrusted her daughter to him. How he had come to denounce the wife as well he couldn't remember.