Cancer Ward (57 page)

Today the row consisted entirely of radiotherapy cases. Progress was slow. Vera Kornilyevna was sitting down beside every patient, examining him and talking to him.

Vera Kornilyevna looked at Ahmadjan's skin, checked on his case history and his latest blood test, then said, “All right, we'll soon be finishing the X-ray treatment. You'll be going home.”

Ahmadjan flashed his teeth.

“Where do you live?”

“Karabaїr.”

“Well, that's where you'll be going.”

“Have I recovered?” Ahmadjan was literally shining.

“Yes, you've recovered.”

“Completely?”

“So far, yes, completely.”

“You mean I won't be coming back here any more?”

“You'll be coming back in six months' time.”

“Why? If I'm cured, why?”

“We'll want to see you again.”

And so she covered the whole row without turning toward Oleg once, keeping her back to him all the time. Zoya threw just one brief glance into his corner.

Vera Kornilyevna stayed some time with Vadim. She looked at his leg and felt his groin on one side and the other. Then she felt his belly and diaphragm, inquiring all the time how it felt. She also asked a question that was new to him: what sensations did he have after eating various types of food?

Vadim was concentrating. She talked to him quietly and he answered quietly. He hadn't expected her to feel in the right-hand side of his diaphragm or to ask him about eating. “Are you examining my liver?” he asked.

He remembered how, as if by chance, his mother had felt him there before she left the hospital.

“He has to know everything, doesn't he?” said Vera Kornilyevna, shaking her head from side to side. “These days our patients are so educated, we'll be handing them over our white coats soon.”

Vadim was watching the doctor with a stern, prophetic air, like a young boy on an icon. His head, with its pitch-black hair and yellowish, swarthy features, lay straight across the white pillow.

“I do understand,” he said quietly. “I've read about it, I know what it's like.” He said it without pressing her in any way, without insisting that she agree and explain everything straightaway. But his attitude made her feel awkward. Unable to think of anything to say, she just sat there on the bed as if she was guilty of doing him some injury. He was handsome, young and probably very talented. He reminded her of a young man in a family they knew well who had spent a long time dying, completely conscious the whole time, while no doctor was able to do a thing to help him. Vera had only been in her eighth year at school at the time; it was this young man who had made her change her mind and decide to become a doctor instead of an engineer.

She was a doctor now, but there was still nothing she could do to help.

On Vadim's window sill stood a jug containing a dark-brown infusion of
chaga.
The other patients used to come up and look at it enviously.

“Are you drinking it?”

“Yes, I am.”

Gangart herself didn't believe in
chaga.
She had simply never heard of it, never been told about it before. In any case it was harmless, not like the mandrake root from Issyk Kul. And if a patient believed in it, it had its uses.

“How are things with the radioactive gold?” she asked.

“They're making promises still. Perhaps they'll give it to us in the next few days.” He was speaking in his usual intense, somber manner. “But it seems they don't give it to you directly, they have to send it through official channels. Listen…” he gazed demandingly into Gangart's eyes, “if they bring it in two weeks' time, there'll be secondaries in my liver by then, won't there?”

“Good heavens no, why should there? Of course not!” Gangart lied very persuasively and animatedly. She seemed to have convinced him. “Secondaries take months to form, if you must know.”

(Why was she feeling his diaphragm, then? Why did she ask him how he responded to food?)

Vadim was inclined to believe her.

It made it easier if he did …

While Gangart was sitting on Vadim's bed Zoya, having nothing to do, turned her head toward Oleg since he was so near, glanced sideways at his book lying on the window sill, then at Oleg himself. She was asking him something with her eyes, but it was impossible to tell what. Her inquiring eyes with their little raised brows looked very pretty indeed, but Oleg looked back without expression or reply. She always found a moment during rounds when he was the only one who could see her eyes, and then they would send him short, cheerful flashes like Morse signals, flashes of welcome. But just lately the dot flashes had become much fewer, while the dash flashes had ceased altogether.

Oleg was angry with Zoya because of those few days when he had reached out for her and begged her to yield, but she hadn't. The next nights when she was on duty he had gone through the same motions as before with his lips and hands, but without feeling the same emotion. It had become forced. After that, whenever she was on duty he hadn't even gone to see her, he'd gone to sleep instead. Now it was all in the past he couldn't see the point of all these eye games. His calm gaze was meant to show her that he didn't understand. He considered himself a bit too old for that sort of game.

He had prepared himself for the thorough examination usual on such days. He had taken off his pajama jacket and was ready to pull off his undershirt as well.

Vera Kornilyevna had finished with Zatsyrko. Wiping her hands, she turned her face toward Kostoglotov, but she didn't smile at him, nor did she invite him to tell her the details, nor did she sit down on his bed. She merely glanced at him briefly, just enough to let him know he was next on the list. But in the moment it took her to shift her gaze, Kostoglotov saw how alienated it had become. The special brightness and joy her eyes had radiated on the day he'd had his blood transfusion, their affectionate friendliness before that day, the attentive sympathy they had shown earlier still—all had disappeared at once. The eyes had become empty.

“Kostoglotov,” Gangart noted, looking not so much at him as at Rusanov. “Same treatment. But here's an odd thing…” She turned and looked at Zoya. “Reaction to hormone therapy's a bit weak.”

Zoya shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps it's a peculiarity of his organism,” she said.

Zoya, who was only a year away from being qualified, probably thought Dr. Gangart was asking her advice as a colleague. But Gangart ignored her suggestion. “How regularly does he receive the injections?” she asked, in a tone that showed this was clearly no consultation.

Zoya was quick to grasp what was in the air. She threw back her head slightly and looked straight at the doctor, widening her eyes a little. They were yellow-hazel and bulging. They showed honest surprise.

“What possible doubt can there be?” she asked. “All the required treatments are invariably…” One more step and she would consider herself literally insulted. “At least when I'm on duty.”

Obviously they couldn't ask her about when others were on duty. She pronounced the words “at least” in one whistling breath, and the blurred, hasty sound somehow convinced Gangart that Zoya was lying. If the injections weren't having their full effect, someone must be failing to give them. It couldn't possibly be Maria. It couldn't possibly be Olympiada Vladislavovna. And she knew that during night duty Zoya …

Zoya's stare, ready to rebuff her, was so bold that Vera Kornilyevna realized that it would be impossible for her to prove anything and Zoya had already decided as much. Zoya's rebuff and her determination were so strong that Vera Kornilyevna couldn't understand them. She lowered her eyes.

She always lowered her eyes when she was thinking unpleasant thoughts about someone.

She lowered her eyes guiltily while Zoya, having won the battle, continued to test her with her straightforward gaze.

Zoya had won the battle, but she realized at once she shouldn't have taken a risk like that. Dontsova might begin her own inquiries and if one of the patients, Rusanov, for example, confirmed that she wasn't giving Kostoglotov any injections she could easily lose her job in the clinic and have a bad report sent to her college.

It was a risk, but what had been the point of it? It was a game which had in fact exhausted itself; no new moves could be played, there was no more room for the wheel to roll. It would be quite ridiculous to go outside the limits of the game, take a job in that stupid Ush-Terek and tie her life to a man who … No, it was out of the question, it didn't even exist in her mind as a possibility. Zoya looked Oleg up and down, and by this look she cancelled their agreement not to give him the injections.

Oleg saw clearly that Vera didn't even want to look at him, but he was quite unable to understand why, or how it could happen so suddenly. As far as he knew, nothing had taken place which could explain the change. It was true she'd turned away from him in the lobby yesterday, but he'd thought that was accidental.

These women's tempers, he'd forgotten what they were like! They were all the same: one whiff and off they flew. Only with men could a man have long-standing, even normal relationships.

Now Zoya too was getting at him, fluttering her eyelids in reproach. She had taken fright. If they began the injections what would be left between them, what secret would they have?

What did Gangart want, then? Did she want him to have every single injection without fail? Why were they so important to her? Her sympathy was all very well, but wasn't this too high a price to pay for it? To hell with her!

But meanwhile Vera Kornilyevna was talking to Rusanov. Her tone was warm and solicitous, in sharp contrast to the abrupt way she had spoken to Oleg. “We've got you used to the injections now,” she was saying. “You take them so well you probably won't want to stop them,” she said jokingly.

(All right, lick the bastard's boots, see if I care!)

While waiting for the doctor to reach him, Rusanov had seen and heard the clash between Gangart and Zoya. Being Oleg's neighbor, he knew perfectly well that the young lady was lying for the sake of her lover-boy. He knew she had a pact with Bone-chewer. If it had concerned Bone-chewer and no one else, Pavel Nikolayevich would probably have whispered a few words to the doctors—well, perhaps not during the rounds in front of everyone, the doctors' room would be a better place. But he simply didn't dare do the dirty on Zoya. It was strange, but during the past month he had come to realize that even the most insignificant nurse could get her revenge by causing him a great deal of inconvenience. Here in hospital they had their own system of command, and while he was inside he oughtn't to start trouble even with a nurse over some trifle that didn't concern him.

If Bone-chewer was fool enough to refuse injections, well, let him get worse. Let him drop dead, it was all right by him.

As for himself, Rusanov now knew for certain he wasn't going to die. His tumor was rapidly going down, and every day he looked forward to the rounds, when he could hear the doctors confirming it. Today Vera Kornilyevna had confirmed that the tumor was going well, and as for the headaches and the general weakness, he would get over them in time. She would give him another blood transfusion too.

Pavel Nikolayevich now set a high value on the testimony of those patients who had known his tumor from the start. Ahmadjan had been the only one of these left, if you didn't count Bone-chewer, but then a few days ago Federau had returned from the surgical ward. His neck, unlike Podduyev's a few weeks ago, was making good progress, and they were reducing the bandages round it layer by layer. Federau had taken Chaly's bed, which made Pavel Nikolayevich's other neighbor.

Of course, for Rusanov to have to lie between two exiles was in itself a humiliation and a mockery on the part of fate. If things had been as they were before he entered hospital, he'd have gone straight to the authorities and taken it up as a matter of principle—should leading officials be thrown together with dubious, socially harmful elements? But for five weeks the tumor had dragged him along like a fish on a hook, and he had become kinder, or perhaps simpler. He could always turn his back on Bone-chewer, especially since he didn't make much noise now, just lay there hardly moving. As for Federau, looking at it from the charitable point of view one could say he was a tolerable neighbor. First and foremost, he was delighted at the way Pavel Nikolayevich's tumor had gone down, right down to one third of its former size. At Pavel Nikolayevich's request he would inspect it again and again, appraise and reappraise it. He was patient, never insolent and always ready to listen to what Pavel Nikolayevich told him. He never contradicted. For obvious reasons, Pavel Nikolayevich couldn't talk in detail about his work in a place like this, but was there any reason why he shouldn't intimately describe his apartment, which he loved so earnestly and to which he was about to return? There was no secret about it, and of course Federau found it agreeable listening to disquisitions on the fine way people could live (one day everyone would be able to live like that). After the age of forty, a man's apartment gives a good indication of what he is and what he has deserved. So Pavel Nikolayevich had told him, in various stages, how the first room had been arranged and furnished, then the second, and then the third, what sort of terrace it had and how the terrace was fitted out.

Pavel Nikolayevich, who had a good memory, clearly recollected every sofa and cupboard—where and when he'd bought it, how much he'd paid for it and what its particular advantages were. As for his bathroom, he described it in even greater detail. He told Federau what sort of tiles he had put on the floor and on the walls, he described the ceramic baseboard, the little shelf in the bathtub for the soap, the rounded headrest, the hot-water tap, the shower control and the towel rail. These weren't mere trifles, they were part of one's daily life and being, and “Being determines consciousness.”
*
A man's life had to be good and pleasant to give him the right kind of consciousness. To quote the words of Gorky, “A healthy mind in a healthy body.”