Cancer Ward (6 page)

“He didn't have the right to…”

“He was a good man. A human being. I shook him by the hand. You see, I had to know! I'd tormented myself for six months before that. The last month I hadn't been able to lie, sit down or stand without it hurting, and I was only sleeping a few minutes a day. So I must have done plenty of thinking. This autumn I learned from experience that a man can cross the threshold of death even when his body is still not dead. Your blood still circulates and your stomach digests, while you yourself have gone through the whole psychological preparation for death—and lived through death itself. Everything around you, you see as if from the grave. And although you've never counted yourself a Christian, indeed the very opposite sometimes, all of a sudden you find you've forgiven all those who trespassed against you and bear no ill-will toward those who persecuted you. You're simply indifferent to everyone and everything. There's nothing you'd put yourself out to change, you regret nothing. I'd even say it was a state of equilibrium, as natural as that of the trees and the stones. Now I have been taken out of it, but I'm not sure whether I should be pleased or not. It means the return of all my passions, the bad as well as the good.”

“Ha! What cheek! You've got plenty to be pleased about. When you were admitted here … how many days ago was it?”

“Twelve.”

“There you were, writhing about on the couch right here in the hall. You were an appalling sight. You had a face like a corpse, wouldn't eat a thing, and a temperature of over a hundred, morning and evening—and now? You go visiting … It's a miracle … for a man to come to life again like that in twelve days. It hardly ever happens here.”

Indeed, his face had been covered in deep, gray creases, as if hacked out with a chisel, evidence of his constant tension. But now there were fewer of them and they had become lighter.

“I was lucky. It turned out I had a high tolerance to X rays.”

“Yes, it's very rare. It's a stroke of luck,” said Zoya, warmly.

Kostoglotov grinned. “I haven't had all that much luck in my life, so the X-ray business is only fair, isn't it? I've started to dream again—vague, pleasant dreams. I think it's a sign I'm getting better.”

“Very possibly.”

“Well then, all the more reason why I have to understand and investigate. I want to understand exactly how I'm being treated, what the long-term prospects are, what the complications are. I feel so much better, perhaps the treatment should be stopped altogether. Anyway, I want to understand it. Ludmila Afanasyevna and Van Kornilyevna don't tell me anything, they just give me the treatment as if I were a monkey. Please bring me the book, Zoya, please! I won't give you away. Nobody will see me with it, I promise you.”

He was so insistent that he became quite animated.

Zoya hesitated. She took hold of the handle of one of the drawers in her table.

“Is it there?” Kostoglotov guessed at once. “Zoyenka, give it to me.”

His hand was outstretched, ready for it. “When are you next on duty?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

“I'll give it back to you then, all right? Is it a bargain?”

How pleasant and easygoing she was, with that golden hair and those great wide eyes.

If only he could have seen himself, his hair, matted from lying on the pillow, sticking up in pointed tufts all over his head, one corner of a coarse calico issue shirt showing with hospital informality from under his jacket, which was not buttoned up to the neck.

“Ah yes, yes.” He flicked through the book, dipping from time to time into the table of contents. “Yes, good, I can find it all here. Thank you. Otherwise, Christ knows, they might overtreat me. After all, they're only really interested in having something to fill out for their reports. Maybe I'll run away. Even a good doctor shortens your life.”

“There, you see.” Zoya threw up her hands. “Why did I have to let you see it? Give it back!” And she tugged at the book, first with one hand and then with both. But he hung onto it easily.

“You'll tear it! It's a library copy! Give it back!”

Her firm, round shoulders and small firm, round arms looked as if they had been poured into the close-fitting uniform. Her neck was neither too thin nor too fat, too short nor too long, but just right for her figure.

As they tugged at the book they were drawn together and looked straight into each other's eyes. His uncouth face suddenly blossomed into a smile. The scar on it no longer seemed so terrible; it was paler, like an ancient wound. With his free hand, Kostoglotov softly prized her fingers from the book and spoke to her in a whisper: “Zoyenka. You don't believe in ignorance, you believe in education. How can you stop people becoming wiser? I was joking. I won't run away.”

She answered him in an aggressive whisper: “You don't deserve to be allowed to read it. You neglected yourself. Why didn't you come earlier? Why come here when you were practically a corpse?”

“Well,” sighed Kostoglotov, this time half aloud. “There wasn't any transport.”

“No transport! What sort of a place was it? There are always aeroplanes, aren't there? Why did you have to put it off to the last minute? Why didn't you move earlier to a more civilized place? Wasn't there a doctor or a
feldsher
*
or something?”

She let go of the book.

“Oh yes, there was a gynecologist. Two, in fact.”

“Two gynecologists?” Zoya gasped in amazement. “Are there only women there, then?”

“On the contrary, there aren't enough. There are two gynecologists but no other doctors of any kind. There aren't any laboratories either. It's impossible to get a blood test done. I had a blood count. It turned out to be sixty, and no one knew a thing about it.”

“God, what a nightmare! And then you take it upon yourself to decide whether you should be treated or not. If you haven't any pity for yourself at least have some for your family and your children.”

“Children?” It was as if Kostoglotov had suddenly come to, as if the whole gay tug-of-war with the book had been a dream and he was now returning to his normal self, with his hard face and his slow way of speaking. “I haven't any children.”

“And your wife, isn't she a human being?”

His speech was even slower now.

“No wife either.”

“Men always say they've got no wife. Then what about those family affairs that you had to put in order? What was it you told the Korean?”

“I told him a lie.”

“How do I know you're not lying to me now?”

“I'm not, I swear it.” Kostoglotov's face was growing grave. “It's just that I'm a choosy sort of person.”

“I suppose she couldn't stand your personality?” Zoya nodded sympathetically.

Kostoglotov shook his head very slowly. “There never was a wife—ever.”

Zoya tried unsuccessfully to work out his age. She moved her lips once, but decided not to put the question. She moved them again, and again did not ask it.

Zoya was sitting with her back to Sibgatov, and Kostoglotov was facing him. He saw him haul himself gingerly out of the little bath, clasp both hands to the small of his back and stand there to dry. His face was that of a man who had suffered all he could. Acute misery lay behind him now, but there was nothing to lure him on toward happiness.

Kostoglotov breathed in and then out, as if respiration was his whole job in life.

“I'm dying for a smoke! Couldn't I possibly…”

“Certainly not. For you smoking means death.”

“Not in any circumstances?”

“In no circumstances, especially not in front of me.” All the same, she smiled.

“Perhaps I could have just one?”

“The patients are asleep; how can you?”

However, he pulled out a long, empty cigarette holder, hand-made and encrusted with stones, and began to suck it.

“You know what they say: a young man's too young to get married, and an old man's too old.” He leaned both elbows on her table and ran his fingers with the cigarette holder through his hair. “I nearly got married after the war, though. I was a student and so was she. I wouldn't have minded getting married, but everything went wrong.”

Zoya scrutinized Kostoglotov's face. It didn't look very friendly, but it was strong. Those raw-boned arms and shoulders … but that was the disease.

“Didn't it work itself out?”

“She … How does one say it?… She perished.” He closed one eye in a crooked grimace and stared hard with the other. “She perished, although in fact she's still alive. Last year we wrote to each other a couple of times.”

He opened his other eye. He saw the cigarette holder between his fingers and put it back into his pocket.

“And, you know, there were some sentences in those letters that set me thinking: was she really as perfect as she seemed to me then? Perhaps she wasn't. What can we possibly understand when we're twenty-five?” His dark-brown eyes looked steadily at Zoya. “You, for instance, what do you understand now about men? Not a damn thing!”

Zoya burst out laughing. “Maybe I understand them very well!”

“That would be quite impossible,” Kostoglotov decreed. “What you call understanding isn't understanding at all. You'll get married and you'll make a bi-ig mistake.”

“Wet blanket!” Zoya shook her head from side to side. Then she put her hand in the big orange bag and brought out a piece of embroidery, which she unfolded. It was just a small piece, drawn across a frame. A green crane was already stitched in; a fox and tankard were outlined.

Kostoglotov looked at it as if it was something miraculous.

“You do
embroidery
?”

“What's so surprising?”

“I never imagined a modern medical student would do that sort of handwork.”

“You've never watched girls doing embroidery?”

“Only when I was a child perhaps, during the twenties. Even then people thought it was bourgeois. You'd have got such a drubbing at the Young Communists' meeting.”

“It's very popular these days. Haven't you seen it?”

He shook his head.

“You disapprove?”

“No; why should I? It's nice, gives you a comfortable feeling. I admire it.” She stitched away, while he looked on admiringly. She watched her work, he watched her. In the yellow light of the lamp her golden eyelashes glimmered, and the little open corner of her dress shone golden too.

“Teddy bear with the golden hair,” he whispered.

“What's that?” Still bent over her work, she raised her eyebrows.

He repeated it.

“Oh yes?” Zoya seemed to have expected more of a compliment than that. “If nobody embroiders where you come from, I suppose they have masses of
moulinet
in the stores?”

“What's that?”

“
Moulinet.
These threads here—green, blue, red, yellow. They're very hard to come by here.”

“
Moulinet.
I'll remember to ask. If there's any I'll send you some without fail. Or if it turns out we have limited supplies, perhaps it would be simpler for you to move out there?”

“Where's that? Where do you live?”

“I suppose you could say—in the virgin lands.”

“So, you're a virgin-lander?”

“I mean, when I went there, nobody thought they were the virgin lands. But now it seems they are and virgin-landers come out to us. When you graduate, why don't you apply to come out? I shouldn't think they'll refuse. They wouldn't refuse anyone who applied to join us.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Not at all. Only people have distorted ideas about what's good and what's bad. To live in a five-story cage, with people banging about and walking to and fro above your head and the radio blaring on all sides, is considered good. But to live as a hardworking tiller of the soil in a mud hut on the edge of the steppe—that's considered the height of misfortune.”

He wasn't joking at all, his words had the weary conviction of people who have no desire to strengthen their argument even by raising their voice.

“But is it steppe or desert?”

“Steppe. No sand dunes. But there's a bit of grass.
Zhantak
grows there, camel thorn, you know. It's thorn, but in July it produces pinkish flowers and even a very delicate smell. The Kazakhs make a hundred medicines out of it.”

“It's in Kazakhstan, then?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What's it called?”

“Ush-Terek.”

“Is it an
aul?
”
*

“Yes, if you like, an
aul,
or a regional administrative center. There's a hospital. Only there aren't enough doctors. Do come.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Doesn't anything else grow there?”

“Oh yes, there's agriculture, but under irrigation. Beets, maize. In the kitchen gardens there's everything you could wish for. Only you have to work hard, with the bucket. In the bazaar the Greeks always have fresh milk, the Kurds have mutton, and the Germans pork.
**
They're such picturesque bazaars, you should see them! Everyone wears national dress, they come in on camels.”

“Are you an agronomist?”

“No. Land surveyor.”

“Why do you live there, basically?”

Kostoglotov scratched his nose. “I just adore the climate.”

“And there's no transport?”

“Of course there is. Motorcars—all you could want.”

“But why should
I
go there?”

She looked sideways at him. All the time they had been talking Kostoglotov's face had grown kinder and softer.

“Why should
you?
” He furrowed the skin of his forehead, as though searching for words with which to propose a toast. “Zoyenka, how can you tell which part of the world you'd be happy in, and which you'd be unhappy in? Who can say he knows that about himself?”