Cancer Ward (5 page)

3. Teddy Bear

Although Zoya was quick and alert, moving very swiftly about the wards from table to beds and back again, she realized she would not be able to deal with all the prescriptions before lights out. So she hurried to finish and put the lights out in the men's ward and the small women's ward. In the large women's ward—it was huge, with more than thirty beds in it—the women never settled down at the proper time anyway, whether the light was turned off or not. Many of them had been there a long time and were thoroughly tired of the hospital. They slept badly, it was stuffy, and there were always arguments about whether the door to the terrace should be kept open or shut. And there were even a few dedicated enthusiasts who talked across the room from one end to the other, discussing everything from prices, goods, furniture, children, men, neighbors, right down to the most shameless subjects imaginable—until midnight or one in the morning.

On top of it all Nellya, the orderly, was washing the floor there that evening. She was a loud-mouthed, round-bottomed girl with thick eyebrows and lips. She had started the job ages ago but would never get through because she butted in on every single conversation. Meanwhile Sibgatov was waiting for his wash. His bed was in the hall next to the entrance to the men's ward. Because of these nightly washes, and also because he felt ashamed of the foul smell from his back, Sibgatov chose to stay out in the hall, even though he had been in the hospital longer than all the other residents. In fact he was less like a patient than a member of the permanent staff. Dashing around in the women's ward, Zoya gave Nellya a dressing down, and then another, but Nellya just snapped back and carried on slowly: she was no younger than Zoya and thought it beneath her dignity to be under the other girl. Zoya had come to work today in a festive mood, but this defiance on the part of the orderly irritated her. As a rule Zoya felt everyone had a right to his share of freedom and that when one came to work one was under no obligation to work oneself to death. But there was a reasonable limit somewhere, especially when it was sick people you were dealing with.

Finally, when Zoya had taken everything round and was finished and Nellya was through with wiping the floor, they turned off the light in the women's ward and the top light in the hall. It was already after eleven when Nellya had prepared the warm solution on the second floor and brought it from there to Sibgatov in his usual bowl.

“Ooh … ah … ah … ah, I'm dead on my feet.” She yawned loudly. “I feel like forty winks. Listen, patient, I know you'll be sitting here a good hour. I'm not waiting for you to finish. What about taking the bowl down and emptying it yourself?”

(The solid old building, with its spacious halls, had no upstairs drain.)

What Sharaf Sibgatov had once been like was impossible to guess; there was nothing to go by. His suffering had been so prolonged that there was practically nothing left of his former self. Yet after three years of continuous, oppressive illness, this young Tartar was the gentlest and most courteous patient in the whole clinic. Often he would smile very weakly, as if to ask pardon for the trouble he had been causing for so long. After the four- and six-month periods he had spent lying there he knew all the doctors, nurses and orderlies as if they were his own family, and they knew him. But Nellya was brand-new. She had only been there a few weeks.

“It will be too heavy for me,” Sibgatov objected quietly. “If there was something smaller to put it in I should do it myself, bit by bit.”

But Zoya's table was nearby. She heard what was happening and jumped up. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! He's not allowed to strain his back. And you'd make him carry the bowl, would you?”

She said all this as though she were shouting, but in a half-whisper which only the three of them could hear. But Nellya replied quite calmly, her voice resounding over the whole floor, “Why should I be ashamed? I'm worn out myself.”

“You're on duty! You get paid for it!” said Zoya indignantly, even more quietly.

“Huh! Paid! You call that money? I can get more at the textile factory.”

“Sh … sh! Can't you be quieter?”

“Oooh,” Nellya, her mass of hair all over the place, half groaned, half sighed to the whole hall. “My lovely, lovely pillow. I'm so sleepy, I spent last night living it up with the truck drivers. All right, patient, put the bowl under your bed. I'll take it away in the morning.”

Without covering her mouth she gave a deep, long-drawn-out yawn. When she had finished she said to Zoya, “I shall be in session in there on the sofa,” and without waiting for permission walked off to the corner door which led into a room with upholstered furniture used for doctors' meetings and short daily conferences.

She had left quite a lot of work unfinished; the spittoons had not been cleaned and the landing floor could have done with a wash, but Zoya restrained herself, watching her large back disappear. Zoya had not been working there long, but already she was beginning to understand the annoying principle that the one who doesn't pull her weight is not asked to pull, while the one who does, pulls for two. Elizaveta Anatolyevna would be in in the morning. She'd do the cleaning and washing for Nellya and for herself.

Sibgatov, now alone, uncovered his sacrum and lowered himself uncomfortably onto the bowl on the floor beside his bed. He sat there very quietly. Any careless movement jarred his pelvis. The searing sensation caused by anything touching the injured spot, even the constant contact of his underwear, was agonizing. And of course he tried to avoid lying on his back. Exactly what it was he had on his back he had never actually seen, only groped at occasionally with his fingers. Two years ago he had been brought into the clinic on a stretcher, unable to stand or move his legs. Several doctors had examined him then, but it was always Ludmila Afanasyevna who had treated him. And in four months the pain had gone completely! He could walk and bend freely and had nothing to complain of. When they discharged him Ludmila Afanasyevna had warned him as he kissed her hands, “Be careful, Sharaf! Don't leap about or knock yourself.” But he hadn't been able to find the right sort of work and had to become a delivery man again. And as a delivery man could he avoid jumping down from the back of the van on to the ground? Or stand by without helping the loader or driver? Everything had been all right until one day a drum had rolled down off the van and struck Sharaf right on his bad spot. The wound had festered and refused to heal, and from that time on Sibgatov had become chained to the cancer clinic.

It was with a lingering feeling of annoyance that Zoya sat down at her table to check once more that everyone had been given his treatment, and to finish the already blurred lines of her notes with pen strokes that blurred on the poor-quality paper even as she wrote. It would be useless to report her, and against Zoya's nature. She would have to deal with her herself, yet that was just what she could not do with Nellya. There was nothing wrong with having a nap. When she had a good orderly, Zoya would go to sleep for half the night herself. But now she'd have to sit up.

She was sitting looking at her notes when she heard a man come up and stand beside her. She raised her head. It was Kostoglotov, with his gangling frame, his unkempt coal-black hair, and his large hands which hardly fitted into the little side pockets of his hospital jacket.

“You should have been asleep ages ago,” Zoya chided him. “What are you doing, walking around?”

“Good morning, Zoyenka,” said Kostoglotov as gently as he could, almost singing the words.

“Good night.” She gave him a fleeting smile. “It was ‘good evening' when I was running after you with the thermometer.”

“That was when you were on duty, you mustn't blame me. But now I'm your guest.”

“Is that so?” (She didn't consciously flutter her lashes or open her eyes wide. It just happened.) “What gave you the idea I'm receiving guests?”

“Well, every night duty you've always had your nose to the grindstone. But today I can't see any textbooks. Have you passed your last exam?”

“You're observant. Yes, I have.”

“What mark did you get? Not that it matters.”

“I got four out of five. Why doesn't it matter?”

“I thought you might only have got three and not want to talk about it. So now you're on holiday?”

She winked with light gaiety. And as she winked, it suddenly struck her: what was she worrying about? Two weeks' holiday, what bliss! She didn't have to do anything except go to the clinic! Such a lot of free time! When she was on duty she could read something light, or chat to people.

“So I was right to come and visit you?”

“All right, sit down.”

“But, Zoya, as far as I remember in my day the holiday used to start earlier, on January 25.”

“In the fall we were picking cotton. We do it every year.”
*

“How much longer have you got at college?”

“Eighteen months.”

“Then where will you be posted to?”

She shrugged her gently rounded shoulders. “Ours is a big country…”

Her eyes were enormous even when her face was calm. It was as if there was no room for them under her eyelids, as if they were begging to be let out.

“But they won't leave you here?”

“N-no, of course not.”

“How can you leave your family?”

“What family? I've only got a grandmother. I'll take Grandma with me.”

“What about your father and mother?”

Zoya sighed. “My mother died.”

Kostoglotov looked at her and did not ask about her father. “But you come from round here, don't you?”

“No, from Smolensk.”

“Really … when did you leave there?”

“During the evacuation … when else?”

“You were … about nine?”

“Yeah. I was at school for two years there. Then Grandma and I got stuck here.”

Zoya reached toward the large orange shopping bag on the floor by the wall, pulled out a mirror, took off her nurse's cap, lightly fluffed up her hair, which was crammed under it, and started to comb out a slightly curling fine golden strand.

A golden reflection from it appeared on Kostoglotov's hard face. He relaxed a little and followed her movements with pleasure.

“So, where's
your
grandmother?” asked Zoya jokingly, as she finished with the mirror.

“My grandmother”—Kostoglotov was being completely serious—“and my ma” (the word was at odds with his bitter expression) “died in the siege.”

“The siege of Leningrad?”

“Uh-huh. And my sister was killed by a shell. She was a nurse just like you, only more of a child.”

“Ye-es,” sighed Zoya, ignoring the allusion to child, “so many people died in the siege. Damn Hitler!”

Kostoglotov gave a wry grin. “We've had more than enough proof of Hitler being damned. But I wouldn't blame the Leningrad blockade on him alone.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“Well, listen. Hitler came to annihilate us. Were the besieged supposed to wait for him to open the gate and say: ‘Come out one by one, don't crowd together'? He was making war, he was an enemy. But there was someone else responsible for the blockade too.”

“Who?” whispered Zoya, quite astounded. She had never heard or imagined anything like it.

Kostoglotov knit his black brows. “Well, let's say those who would have been prepared to fight even if England, France and America had joined Hitler as allies. Those who drew their salaries for decades without seeing how Leningrad was geographically isolated and that this would affect its defense. Those who failed to foresee how heavy the bombardments would be and never thought of stocking up provisions below ground. They strangled my mother too—they and Hitler.”

It was all so simple—but somehow terribly new.

Sibgatov was sitting quietly on his bowl in the corner behind them.

“But in that case … in that case surely they ought to be put on trial?” ventured Zoya in a whisper.

“I don't know.” Kostoglotov grimaced, his lips an even thinner line than before. “I don't know.”

Zoya did not put her cap back on. The top button of her uniform was undone and the gold-gray collar of her dress peeped out.

“Zoyenka, I did come to see you partly on business.”

“Did you now?” Her eyelashes jerked up. “Well then, it'll have to wait till day duty. Now it's time for sleep. You did say you were just visiting, didn't you?”

“Yes, I … I'm visiting too. But before you get spoiled by it all, before you become a fully qualified doctor, just give me a helping hand as a human being.”

“Don't the doctors do that?”

“Well, theirs is a different sort of hand and they don't stretch it out. Zoya, all my life I've hated being a guinea pig. They're giving me treatment here, but nobody explains anything. I can't stand it. I saw you with a book the other day—
Pathological Anatomy.
Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And it's about tumors, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Do me a favor and bring it to me! I must have a look at it and try to work things out. For myself.”

Zoya pursed her lips and shook her head. “It's strictly against the rules for patients to read medical books. Even when we students study a particular disease we always imagine that…”

“It may be against the rules for others, but not for me!” Kostoglotov slapped his big paw down on the table. “They've tried to scare me out of my wits so many times, I've stopped being scared. In the regional hospital I was diagnosed by a Korean surgeon. It was New Year's Eve. He didn't want to tell me what was wrong. ‘Speak the truth, man!' I said. ‘We're not allowed to do that here.' ‘Speak!' I said. ‘I must put my family affairs in order!' So he blurted out, ‘You'll live another three weeks, I won't guarantee you any longer than that!'”