Cancer Ward (62 page)

“Think of that!” said Pavel Nikolayevich. He grunted and threw up his hands. “Just think of all the loopholes there are for stealing from the state. You wouldn't think of that one straight off, would you?”

Yuri had conducted his investigation quietly, without breathing a word to anyone. He had made up his mind to get to the bottom of it, to find out which of the two girls was the embezzler. He formed a plan. He made dates with them both, first Katya, then Nina. He would take each girl to the cinema and then to her home. The one who had expensive furniture and carpets would be the thief.

“Well done!” said Pavel Nikolayevich, clapping his hands and smiling. “Very clever! Combining business with pleasure, you might say. Good boy!”

But Yuri had discovered that neither girl seemed to have much to spare. One lived with her parents, the other with her younger sister. They didn't even have many of the things Yuri regarded as necessities, let alone carpets. It made him wonder how they lived at all. He thought it over, then went and told the story to the judge they worked for. He asked the judge not to bring the matter to a court of law, simply to reprimand the girls and have done with it. The judge was very grateful to Yuri for preferring the matter to be handled privately. The publicity would have harmed him too. They called both girls in, separately, and scolded them angrily for several hours. First one confessed, then the other. Both had been making a hundred roubles a month out of the business.

“Oh dear, it should have been done officially, it really should,” said Pavel Nikolayevich. He was as distressed as though he had missed the chance himself. But then, on the other hand, it was right not to have embarrassed the judge; Yuri had been very tactful in that respect. “At least they should have been made to pay back what they took,” he said.

Yuri could hardly bring himself to mention how the story ended. He simply couldn't grasp the meaning of what had happened. When he had gone to the judge and suggested dealing with the matter privately, he had been conscious of acting with great magnanimity. He was proud of his decision. He imagined the joy every girl would feel after the horror of being made to confess. They would be expecting punishment, then suddenly they would be offered forgiveness. He would vie with the judge in telling them how shamefully they had behaved. He would cite examples, from his own twenty-three years of experience, of honest men who had every opportunity to steal but who didn't. Yuri lashed the girls with hard words, knowing the effect would be softened by forgiveness afterwards. The girls were forgiven and they left, but in the days that followed they did not beam with delight every time they met Yuri. Not only did they not come up to thank him for his noble act, they even did their best to ignore him. He was astounded, he simply couldn't understand it. Perhaps they didn't realize what they had been spared—but no, working in a lawyer's office they must have known perfectly well. Unable to restrain himself, he went up to Nina and asked her point-blank whether she was happy about the way things had gone. “Why should I be happy?” Nina replied. “I'll have to change my job now. I'll never live on my wages alone.” Then he asked Katya, who was the prettier of the two, to come to the cinema with him again. Katya replied, “No, I like to be honest when I go out with men. I can't do it the way you do.”

So this was the puzzle he had brought back from his assignment, and it still exercised his mind. He had been deeply hurt by the girls' ingratitude. He knew life was more complicated than it seemed to his father, who was straightforward and had a one-track mind, but apparently life was even more complicated still. What should Yuri have done? Refused to spare them? Or said nothing and overlooked the fact that the stamps were being reused? But in that case was there any point in his work at all?

His father asked no more questions, and Yuri was only too pleased to hold his tongue.

In Pavel Nikolayevich's eyes it was just another disaster brought about by his son's clumsy touch. He was finally convinced that if one doesn't develop a backbone as a child, one never will. It was hard being angry with one's own son, but he was very annoyed and very upset for him.

They had probably stayed too long outside. Pavel Nikolayevich's feet began to feel cold and he had a terrible urge to lie down. He let Yuri kiss him, then sent him on his way and went back to the ward.

A lively discussion was going on there in which everyone had joined, except that the main speaker had no voice. It was the imposing-looking philosopher, that assistant professor who used to visit them in the ward. He had since undergone an operation on his larynx. A few days before, he'd been transferred from the surgical to the X-ray ward on the second floor. A metal gadget like a toggle from a Young Pioneer's scarf had been inserted conspicuously into the front of his throat. The professor was an educated, likable man and Pavel Nikolayevich made every effort not to hurt his feelings, not to wince visibly at the clasp in his larynx. Every time he spoke, the philosopher placed one finger on it. It made his voice at least semi-audible. He was fond of speaking, indeed accustomed to it, and now, after the operation, was delighted to make use of the ability which had been restored to him.

He was standing in the middle of the ward telling a story. His voice was hollow but louder than a whisper. “The amount of stuff he's got piled up!” he was saying. “You can't imagine! In one room there's a suite of furniture made of pale-gilded wood with backs, seats, and arms upholstered in lilac velvet plush. He thinks he's a serious collector! He's got four armchairs like that, and a small sofa. Where did he pinch them from, I'd like to know? From the Louvre, I suppose!” The philosopher laughed. He was greatly amused. “In the same room he's got another set with hard seats and high black backs. The piano he brought from Vienna. He has a table inlaid with ivory—it's like something out of Goethe's Weimar—and yet he covers it with a blue and gold tablecloth that hangs down to the floor. On another table he's got a bronze statue, a curvaceous, naked girl with a ring of torches in her hand, but the lamps don't work. The statue's too large for the room, it almost reaches the ceiling. It was probably meant for a park. Then he's got clocks—wall clocks, watches, grandfathers, some coffee-table size, some as high as the ceiling. Most of them don't go. There's a huge bowl that came from a museum, with one single orange in it. I only went into two rooms, but I counted five mirrors, some in carved oak frames, some with marble stands. Then there were pictures—seascapes, views of mountains, views of Italian streets…” The philosopher was laughing.

“Where does he get it all from?” wondered Sibgatov, both hands as usual propping the small of his back.

“Some of it's war booty, some of it he bought in second-hand shops. He met a girl who worked in one of them; originally he came in to ask her to value some of his furniture, but he ended up marrying her. After that they joined forces, and everything valuable that came along they reserved for themselves.”

“But where does he work himself?” Ahmadjan insisted.

“Nowhere. He got his pension when he was forty-two, but he's still a great ox of a man, he'd be a good fellow for cutting down trees. He has his stepdaughter and granddaughter living with him, and you should see the way he talks to them. ‘I order you!' he says. ‘I'm in charge here! This is my house, I built it!' He sticks his hands under the lapels of his overcoat and walks about the house like a field marshal. His name's Yemelyan according to his passport, but for some reason he makes everyone at home call him Sashik. But can one say he's happy with his lot? No, he's not. What gets him on the raw is that the general commanding the army he was in has a house in Kislovodsk,
*
with ten rooms, two cars and his own man to stoke the boiler. Sashik hasn't got as far as that!”

They laughed.

Pavel Nikolayevich found the story out of place and thoroughly unamusing.

Shulubin didn't laugh either. He looked at the others as if he wished they'd let him get some sleep.

“All right, maybe it's funny,” said Kostoglotov from his prostrate position. “But how is it that…?”

“There was a feature in the local paper. When was it? A few days ago,” someone in the ward remembered. “It was about a man who built himself a villa with government funds. Then it all came out. And you know what happened? He confessed he'd made a ‘mistake,' handed the place over to a children's home, and all he got was an official reprimand. He wasn't even expelled from the Party.”

“Yes, that's right!” Sibgatov remembered the case as well. “Why only a reprimand? Why wasn't he put on trial?”

The philosopher hadn't read the article and was not ready to undertake to explain why the man hadn't been tried. It was left to Rusanov. “Comrades,” he said, “if he repented, realized his error and turned the place over to be a children's home, why take extreme measures? We must be humane, it's a fundamental feature of our…”

“All right, maybe it's funny,” Kostoglotov continued in his drawl, “but how do you explain it all from the philosophical point of view—I mean Sashik and the villa?”

The professor made a spreading gesture with one hand, the other he held to his larynx. “Unfortunately,” he said, “these are survivals of bourgeois mentality.”

“Why bourgeois?” grumbled Kostoglotov.

“Why, what else do you think it is?” said Vadim, switching on his attention. He was in the mood for reading, but now obviously the whole ward was about to be embroiled in a brawl.

Kostoglotov raised himself from his prone position, hauling himself up to his pillow to get a better view of Vadim and the others.

“What else? Why, it's human greed, that's what it is, not bourgeois mentality. There were greedy people
before
the bourgeoisie and there'll be greedy people
after
the bourgeoisie.”

Rusanov was not yet lying down. He surveyed Kostoglotov across his bed and declared didactically, “If you dig deep into such cases you'll always find a bourgeois social origin.”

Kostoglotov jerked his head as if he was spitting. “That's a lot of nonsense, all that about social origin.”

“What do you mean, ‘nonsense'?” There was a stabbing pain in Rusanov's side, and he clutched it. He had never expected a brazen assault like this, even from Bone-chewer.

“Yes, what
do
you mean, ‘nonsense'?” asked Vadim, lifting his dark eyebrows in puzzlement.

“I mean what I say,” growled Kostoglotov. He hauled himself up a bit further so that he was now sitting upright. “It's a lot of nonsense that's been stuffed into your head.”

“What do you mean, ‘stuffed'? Are you responsible for what you're saying?” Rusanov brought the words out shrilly, his strength unexpectedly returning.

“Whose heads have been stuffed?” asked Vadim, straightening his back but keeping his book balanced on one leg.

“Yours.”

“We aren't robots,” said Vadim, shaking his head. “We don't take anything on trust.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we'?” Kostoglotov scowled. His forelock was hanging over his face.

“I mean us, our generation.”

“Well, why do you swallow all this talk about social origin then? That's not Marxism. It's racism.”

“What did you say?” shouted Rusanov, almost roaring with pain.

“Exactly what you heard.” Kostoglotov threw the reply back at him.

“Listen to this! Listen to this!” shouted Rusanov, staggering and waving his arms as if calling everyone in the ward to gather round him. “I call you as witnesses, I call you as witnesses! This is ideological sabotage!”

Quickly Kostoglotov lowered his legs off the bed. Swinging both elbows, he made a highly indecent gesture at Rusanov, at the same time exploding with one of the filthiest words written up on walls:

“Go and——— yourself, you and your ideological sabotage! A fine habit you've developed, you mother.… Every time someone disagrees with you, you call it ideological sabotage!”

Hurt and insulted by this impudent hoodlum with his obscene gesture and foul language, Rusanov choked, making an attempt to straighten his slipping spectacles. Now Kostoglotov was yelling so loudly his words could be heard by the whole ward, even in the corridor (Zoya looked in round the door): “Why do you keep cackling on about social origins like a witch doctor? You know what they used to say in the twenties? ‘Show us your calluses! Why are your hands so white and puffy?' Now that
was
Marxism!”

“I've been a worker, I've worked!” cried Rusanov, but he could hardly see his assailant since he couldn't get his spectacles on right.

“I believe you!” Kostoglotov bellowed unpleasantly. “I believe you! You even started to lift a log during Saturday Work,
*
only you stopped halfway. All right, maybe I
am
the son of a merchant, third class, but I've sweated blood all my life. Here, look at the calluses on my hands! So what am I? Am I bourgeois? Did my father give me a different sort of red or white corpuscles in my blood? That's why I tell you yours isn't a class attitude but a racial attitude. You're a racist!”

“What! What am I?”

“You're a racist!” Kostoglotov spelled the word out for him, leaping to his feet and drawing himself up to his full height.

The thin voice of the unjustly insulted Rusanov had reached a shriek. Vadim was also speaking, rapidly and indignantly, but he didn't get up from his bed and no one caught what he was saying. The philosopher was reproachfully shaking his big, well-shaped head with its cap of well-groomed hair, but who could hear his diseased voice?

The philosopher now came up close to Kostoglotov, waited for him to draw breath, and just had time to whisper to him, “Have you heard of the expression, ‘a hereditary proletarian'?”