Cancer Ward (61 page)

“Who in the world will w-w-want me n-n-now?” She stumbled the words out inconsolably. “Who in the world…?”

She buried her face in his pillow once again. Dyomka's cheek was by now quite wet.

“Well, you know.” He was still trying to soothe her, still clasping her hand. “You know how people get married … They have the same sort of opinions … the same sort of characters…”

“What sort of fool loves a girl for her character?” She started up angrily, like a horse rearing. She pulled her hand away, and Dyomka saw her face for the first time—wet, flushed, blotched, miserable and angry. “Who wants a girl with one breast? Who wants a girl like that? When she's seventeen!” She shouted the words at him. It was all his fault.

He didn't know how to console her.

“How will I be able to go to the beach?” she shrieked, as a new thought pierced her. “The beach! How can I go swimming?” Her body corkscrewed, then crumpled. Her head clutched between her hands, she slumped down from Dyomka toward the floor.

Unbearably, she began to imagine bathing suits in different styles—with or without shoulder straps, one-piece or two-piece, every contemporary and future fashion, bathing suits in orange and blue, crimson and the hue of the sea, in one color or striped with scalloped edges, bathing suits she hadn't yet tried on but had examined in front of a mirror—all the ones she would never buy and never wear.

She could never show herself on the beach again. It had suddenly struck her as the most excruciating, the most mortifying fact of her existence. Living had lost all meaning, and this was the reason why.

Dyomka mumbled something clumsy and inept from his pile of pillows. “Of course, you know, if no one will have you … Well, of course, I realize what sort of a man I am now … But I'll always be happy to marry you, you know that…”

“Listen to me, Dyomka!” A new thought had stung Asya. She stood up, faced him and looked straight at him. Her eyes were wide open and tearless. “Listen to me, you'll be the last one! You're the last one who can see it and kiss it. No one but you will ever kiss it! Dyomka,
you
at least must kiss it, if nobody else!”

She pulled her dressing gown apart (it wasn't holding together anyway). It seemed to him that she was weeping and groaning again as she pulled down the loose collar of her nightdress to reveal her doomed right breast.

It shone as though the sun had stepped straight into the room, The whole ward seemed on fire. The nipple glowed. It was larger than he had ever imagined. It stood before him. His eyes could not resist its sunny rosiness.

Asya brought it close to his face and held it for him.

“Kiss it! Kiss it!” she demanded. She stood there, waiting.

And breathing in the warmth her body was offering him, he nuzzled it with his lips like a suckling pig, gratefully, admiringly. Nothing more beautiful than this gentle curve could ever be painted or sculptured. Its beauty flooded him. Hurriedly his lips took in its even, shapely contour.

“You'll remember?… You'll remember, won't you? You'll remember it was there, and what it was like?” Asya's tears kept dropping onto his close-cropped head.

When she did not take it away, he returned to its rosy glow again and again, softly kissing the breast. He did what her future child would never be able to do. No one came in, and so he kissed and kissed the marvel hanging over him.

Today it was a marvel. Tomorrow it would be in the trash bin.

29. Hard Words, Soft Words

The first thing Yuri did after returning from his official trip was to visit his father and spend two hours with him. Before Yuri set off, Pavel Nikolayevich telephoned him and asked him to bring his warm shoes, overcoat and hat. He was sick and tired of this vile ward, the blockheads that inhabited its beds and their idiotic conversations. The hospital lobby he found no less repulsive. Although he was very weak he had a longing to go out into the fresh air.

So this is what they did. They wrapped a scarf lightly round his tumor, which he could still feel when he moved his head, but much less than before. He was unlikely to run into anyone he knew in the paths of the Medical Center grounds. Even if he did, they would never recognize him in these motley clothes. So Pavel Nikolayevich felt no embarrassment or uneasiness as he strolled along. Yuri took his arm and Pavel Nikolayevich leaned on him heavily. He enjoyed taking step after step across the clean, dry asphalt, particularly as it presaged a speedy return first to his beautiful apartment where he would rest, and later to the work and activity he enjoyed so keenly. It was not only the treatment that had worn Pavel Nikolayevich down, but the dull inactivity. He was no longer a vital cog in a large, important mechanism. In fact, he felt he had lost all power and significance. He wanted to get back as soon as possible to the place where he was loved and where people couldn't do without him.

During the week there had been some cold and rainy spells, but today the warm weather had begun to reassert itself. It was still cool in the shade of the buildings, and the earth there was damp. But it was so warm in the sun that Pavel Nikolayevich could scarcely bear even the weight of the autumn coat he was wearing. He began to undo it button by button.

It was a specially good opportunity for him to have a sober, serious talk with his son. Today, Saturday, was considered the last day of Yuri's official trip. Yuri was in no hurry to get to work, which was all the more reason for Pavel Nikolayevich to take his time too. His son's affairs had taken a turn which might become dangerous. His paternal heart realized this; he acknowledged that he had neglected them. Clearly, his son had not returned from his assignment with a clear conscience. He kept averting his gaze instead of looking his father in the eye. As a child, Yuri had been quite different, a straightforward boy; he had only developed this shy, evasive manner toward his father during his years as a student. It irritated Pavel Nikolayevich tremendously, and sometimes he would shout at him, “Hey, you, hold your head up straight!”

But today he decided he would refrain from such sharpness. He would speak to him tactfully. He asked Yuri to describe in detail how he had acquitted and distinguished himself as a representative of the republic's legal inspection team in the remote towns it had been his duty to visit.

Yuri began to tell him, but without much enthusiasm. He related one case, then another, but he kept turning his eyes aside.

“Come on, tell me more, tell me more!”

They sat down in the sun for a while on a bench which had dried off. Yuri was wearing a leather jacket and a warm woolen cap. He looked serious and manly enough, but there was that streak of weakness inside him which was ruining him.

“Yes, well, there was a case involving a truck-driver…” he said, staring at the ground.

“What about the truck-driver?”

“It was winter and he was driving a truckload of cooperative foodstuffs. He was supposed to drive seventy kilometers but he was stopped halfway by a snowstorm. Everything was covered in snow, the wheels wouldn't grip, it was freezing cold and not a soul in sight. The snowstorm whirled round him for more than twenty-four hours. He couldn't stand it any longer in the cab, so he abandoned the truck as it was, with a full load, and went to find somewhere to spend the night. The next morning the storm had died down and he came back with a tractor to pull the truck out. But there was one case of macaroni missing.”

“What about the delivery man?”

“As it happened, he was doubling up for him. He was on his own.”

“Disgraceful negligence!”

“Yes, of course.”

“So he grabbed his chance and made a quick profit.”

“Father, it was too high a price to pay for a case of macaroni,” said Yuri, and he raised his eyes at last. A stubborn, unpleasant expression had appeared on his face. “It got him five years, that case of macaroni. There were cases of vodka in the truck too, and they weren't touched.”

“You shouldn't be so gullible, Yuri, so naïve. Who else could've taken it during a snowstorm?”

“Someone might have come along on a horse, who knows? There'd be no tracks left by the morning.”

“Well, even supposing he didn't take it himself, he did leave his post, didn't he? What sort of behavior is that, abandoning state property and just walking away?”

Guilt was beyond doubt, the sentence was transparently correct, perhaps even a little on the lenient side. But what infuriated Pavel Nikolayevich was that his son didn't see it that way. He had to ram the point down his throat. Yuri was weak and flabby in most things, but when it came to arguing some stupid point he was as stubborn as a mule.

“Try to imagine, Father: a snowstorm, ten degrees below—how could he spend the night in the cab? He'd have died, wouldn't he?”

“What do you mean, ‘died'? What about sentries in the army?”

“Sentries are relieved every two hours.”

“Well, what if a sentry isn't relieved? What about at the front? It doesn't matter about the weather, sentries just have to stand there, die if necessary, but abandon their post, never!” Pavel Nikolayevich even pointed a finger to show where they stood and died rather than desert. “Think what you're saying. If this one gets off, all the truck-drivers will start leaving their posts, they'll pinch things till there's nothing left of the state. Don't you understand?”

No, Yuri didn't understand. It was apparent from his duncelike silence that he didn't understand.

“All right, I know you have these childish opinions, it's because you're young. You may even have mentioned them to someone else, but I hope at least you had the sense not to put your views down in the official report?”

Yuri's chapped lips moved, then moved again. “I … I made out an official objection. I suspended execution of the sentence.”

“You suspended it! And now they're going to review it? Oh no! No!” Pavel Nikolayevich covered his face, half hiding it with his hands. It was just what he'd dreaded. Yuri was making a mess of his job, ruining himself and casting a shadow over his father's reputation. Pavel Nikolayevich felt positively sick with fury, the helpless fury of a father who knows he can never pass his own intelligence or efficiency on to a lout of a son.

He got up and Yuri rose as well. They started walking and once again Yuri tried to support his father by the elbow. Pavel Nikolayevich knew that even if he used both hands he would never be able to beat into his son's head any understanding of the blunder he had committed.

He began by explaining to him about the law, about legal observance, about the unshakeable foundation on which it was based, a foundation not lightly to be questioned, especially if one was considering working as a legal inspector in a state prosecutor's office. All truth was specific; the law is the law, but one should also take into account the specific moment and the specific situation—the course of action required at any given time. He particularly tried to make Yuri understand the organic interrelationship of all levels and all branches of the state's machinery. Consequently, it would be wrong for him to assume an attitude of arrogance even when arriving in an out-of-the-way corner of the world with the mandate from the republic's authorities. On the contrary, he should be sensitive to the local context and try not to cross the paths of local officials who knew the situation and its requirements better than he did. If they gave the truck-driver five years, it meant that this must be the sentence deemed necessary in this particular area.

And so they walked into the shadow of the buildings and out of it, along pathways straight and crooked, then beside the river. Yuri listened, but all he said was, “Aren't you getting tired, Father? Perhaps we should sit down again.”

He was a pigheaded boy and no mistake! The whole business had not taught him a thing. All he had retained were those ten degrees of frost in the driver's cab!

Pavel Nikolayevich was naturally getting tired and it was dreadfully hot in his overcoat. They sat down again on a bench among some thick bushes. They weren't in leaf yet, just twigs; you could see right through them, but the first tiny ear-shaped leaves were beginning to twist themselves out of their buds. The sun was very warm.

Pavel Nikolayevich was not wearing his spectacles on the walk. His face was relaxing and his eyes were resting. He screwed up his eyes as he sat there silently in the sunlight.

Not far away, below the steep bank, the river was roaring along like a mountain stream. Pavel Nikolayevich listened to it, warmed himself and thought how pleasant it was to be getting back to life, to know for sure he'd still be alive while all this was turning green, and next spring as well.

But he had to complete the picture of Yuri's situation. He had to pull himself together and restrain his anger, otherwise he would frighten him off. He sighed, then asked his son to carry on and tell him about a few more cases.

However slow he was on the uptake, Yuri knew perfectly well what would provoke his father's praise or abuse. The next case he described, Pavel Nikolayevich could not but approve. All the same, Yuri kept averting his eyes. He hadn't learned to lie, and his father sensed there was yet another bad case in store for him. “Tell me everything,” he said. “I want to know everything. You know, all I want to do is give you sensible, reasonable advice. I'm only doing it for your own good, you know. I don't like to see you make mistakes.”

Yuri sighed and told his story. In the course of his inspection he had to go through a good many old court records and documents, some of them as much as five years old. He had begun to notice that some of the one-rouble or three-rouble duty stamps were missing from the documents, or, to be more exact, traces of them remained but the stamps themselves were gone. Where had they got to? Yuri thought it over and began to dig around. He discovered that some of the stamps stuck on recent documents looked defective and slightly torn in places. He then guessed that one of the girls who had access to the court archives, Katya or Nina, must be pasting on old stamps instead of new stamps, and pocketing the clients' money.