Cancer Ward (68 page)

He could still laugh, that mad raven!

“… Why set up bonfires in the streets? Superfluous histrionics! Let's do it in some quiet corner, let's shove the books into the stove, the stove will keep us warm! The stove's what I've been pushed up against—I've been pushed back against a stove … And yet I managed to raise a family and my daughter edits a provincial newspaper. She wrote a little lyrical poem:

“No, I don't wish to retreat!

To ask pardon I'm unable.

If we must fight, then we fight!

As for my father—under the table!”

His dressing gown hung on him like a pair of helpless wings.

“Ye-e-e-s, I agree,” was all Kostoglotov could say. “Your life hasn't been any easier than mine.”

“That's right,” said Shulubin, catching his breath. He relaxed his posture and began to speak more calmly. “I wonder, what is the riddle of these changing periods of history? In no more than ten years a whole people loses its social drive and courageous impulse. Or rather, the impulse changes the sign from plus to minus, from bravery to cowardice. You know, I have been a Bolshevik since 1917. I remember how we charged in and dispersed the local council of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in Tambov, even though all the weapons we had were a couple of fingers to put in our mouths and whistle with. I fought in the Civil War. You know, we did nothing to protect our lives, we were happy to give them for world revolution. What happened to us? How could we have given in? What was the chief thing that got us down? Fear? The idols of the market place? The idols of the theater? All right, I'm a ‘little man,' but what about Nadyezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya?
*
Didn't she understand, didn't she realize what was happening? Why didn't she raise her voice? How much a single statement from her would have meant to us all, even if it did cost her her life! Who knows, we might have changed, might have dug our heels in and stopped it from going any farther. Then what about Ordzhonikidze?
**
He was a real eagle of a man, wasn't he? They couldn't break him by locking him up in the Shlisselburg fortress or by sending him to hard labor in Siberia. What kept him from speaking up once, just once, against Stalin? But no, they preferred to die in mysterious circumstances or to commit suicide. Is that courage? Will you tell me, please?”

“How can I be the one to tell you, Aleksei Filippovich? How can I? You explain it to me.”

Shulubin sighed and tried to change his position on the bench, but it hurt no matter how he sat.

“There's something else that interests me. Here you are, you were born after the Revolution, but they put you in prison. Well, have you lost your faith in socialism, or haven't you?”

Kostoglotov smiled vaguely.

“I don't know. Things got so tough out there, you sometimes went further than you wanted to, out of sheer fury.”

Shulubin freed the hand he had been using to prop himself up with on the bench. With this hand, now enfeebled by disease, he clung to Oleg's shoulder. “Young man,” he said, “don't ever make this mistake. Don't ever blame socialism for the sufferings and the cruel years you've lived through. However you think about it, history has rejected capitalism once and for all!”

“Well, out there, out there in the camps, we used to argue that there was a lot of good in private enterprise. It makes life easier, you see. You can always get everything. You know where to find things.”

“You know, that's a philistine's way of reasoning. It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, but it's good only within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites completely beyond restraint. Capitalism was doomed ethically before it was doomed economically, a long time ago.”

“Well, to be quite honest,” replied Oleg, twitching his forehead, “I've found people whose greedy appetites are beyond restraint in our society as well. And I don't mean state-licensed craftsmen or repairmen. Take Yemelyan-Sashik, for example…”

“That's true!” said Shulubin, his hand weighing more and more heavily on Oleg's shoulder. “But is socialism to blame? We made a very quick turnaround, we thought it was enough to change the mode of production and people would immediately change with it. But did they? The hell they did! They didn't change a bit. Man is a biological type. It takes thousands of years to change him.”

“Can there be socialism, then?”

“Can there indeed? It's an enigma, isn't it? They talk about ‘democratic' socialism, but that's just superficial, it doesn't get to the essence of socialism. It only refers to the form in which socialism is introduced, the structure of the state that applies it. It's merely a declaration that heads will not roll, but it doesn't say a word about what this socialism will be built on. You can't build socialism on an abundance of material goods, because people sometimes behave like buffaloes, they stampede and trample the goods into the ground. Nor can you have a socialism that's always drumming on about hatred, because social life cannot be built on hatred. After a man has burned with hatred year in, year out, he can't simply announce one fine day, ‘That's enough! As from today I'm finished with hatred, from now on I'm only going to love!' No, if he's used to hating he'll go on hating. He'll find someone closer to him whom he can hate. Do you know the poem by Herwegh?
*

“Bis unsre Hand in Asche stiebt,

Soll sie vom Schwert nicht lassen?”

Oleg took up the lines:

“Wir haben long genug geliebt

Und wollen endlich hassen!

“Of course I know it, we learned it at school.”

“That's right, you learned it at school, that's what's so terrifying. They taught you that poem at school when they should've taught you the opposite:
To hell with your hatred; now, finally, we wish to love!
That's what socialism ought to be like.”

“You mean Christian socialism, is that right?” asked Oleg, trying to guess.

“It's going too far to call it ‘Christian.' There are political parties that called themselves Christian Socialists in societies that emerged from under Hitler and Mussolini, but I can't imagine with what kind of people they undertook to build this kind of socialism. At the end of the last century Tolstoy decided to spread practical Christianity through society, but his ideals turned out to be impossible for his contemporaries to live with, his preaching had no link with reality. I should say that for Russia in particular, with our repentances, confessions and revolts, our Dostoyevski, Tolstoy and Kropotkin, there's only one true socialism, and that's ethical socialism. That is something completely realistic.”

Kostoglotov screwed up his eyes. “But this ‘ethical socialism,' how should we envisage it? What would it be like?”

“It's not very difficult to imagine,” said Shulubin. His voice had become lively again and he had lost his startled expression of the “miller-raven.” It was a cheerful liveliness; clearly he was eager to persuade Kostoglotov. He spoke very distinctly, like a master giving a lesson. “We have to show the world a society in which all relationships, fundamental principles and laws flow directly from ethics, and from them
alone.
Ethical demands must determine all considerations: how to bring up children, what to train them for, to what end the work of grownups should be directed, and how their leisure should be occupied. As for scientific research, it should only be conducted where it doesn't damage morality, in the first instance where it doesn't damage the researchers themselves. The same should apply to foreign policy. Whenever the question of frontiers arises, we should think not of how much richer or stronger this or that course of action will make us, or of how it will raise our prestige. We should consider one criterion only: how far is it ethical?”

“Yes, but that's hardly possible, is it—not for another two hundred years?” Kostoglotov frowned. “But wait a moment. I'm not with you on one point. Where is the material basis for your scheme? There has to be an economy, after all, doesn't there? That comes before everything else.”

“Does it? That depends. For example, Vladimir Soloviëv
*
argues rather convincingly that an economy could and should be built on an ethical basis.”

“What's that? Ethics first and economics afterwards?” Kostoglotov looked bewildered.

“Exactly! Listen, you're a Russian, hut I bet you haven't read a single line of Vladimir Soloviëv, have you?”

Kostoglotov twisted his lips to indicate “No.”

“Well, you've at least heard of his name?”

“Yes, when I was inside.”

“But at least you've read a page or two of Kropotkin, haven't you? His
Mutual Aid Among Men
?”

Kostoglotov made the same movement with his lips.

“Yes, of course, his views are incorrect, so why read him? What about Mikhaylovski?
*
No, of course you haven't. He was refuted, wasn't he, banned and withdrawn from the libraries?”

“When could I have read them? What books could I have read?” asked Kostoglotov indignantly. “All my life I've sweated blood and still people keep asking me, ‘Have you read this? Have you read that?' When I was in the army the shovel was never out of my hand. It was the same in the camps. And now I'm an exile it's exactly the same, only now it's a hoe. When have I had time to read?”

But Shulubin's face, with its round eyes and furry eyebrows, shone with the excitement of an animal about to overtake its quarry. “So you see,” he said, “that's what ethical socialism is. One should never direct people toward happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market place. One should direct them toward mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.”

“Oh no, I want happiness, you'd better leave me with happiness,” Oleg insisted vigorously. “Just give me happiness for the few months I have before I die. Otherwise to hell with the whole…”

“… Happiness is a mirage.” Shulubin was emphatic, straining his strength to the utmost. He had turned quite pale. “I was happy bringing up my children, but they spat on my soul. To preserve this happiness I took books which were full of truth and burned them in the stove. As for the so-called ‘happiness of future generations,' it's even more of a mirage. Who knows anything about it? Who has spoken with these future generations? Who knows what idols they will worship? Ideas of what happiness is have changed too much through the ages. No one should have the effrontery to try to plan it in advance. When we have enough loaves of white bread to crush them under our heels, when we have enough milk to choke us, we still won't be in the least happy. But if we share things we don't have enough of, we can be happy today! If we care only about ‘happiness' and about reproducing our species, we shall merely crowd the earth senselessly and create a terrifying society … You know, I don't feel very well … I'd better go and lie down…”

All this time Shulubin's face had looked exhausted. Oleg hadn't noticed how pale, how deathly it had become.

“Come on then, Aleksei Filippovich, come on, I'll take your arm.”

It wasn't easy for Shulubin to get up from the position he was in. They dragged themselves along very slowly. All around them was the lightness of spring, but gravity weighed heavily on both men. Their bones, the flesh that remained to them, their clothes, their shoes, even the stream of sunlight pressed upon them heavily and burdened them.

They walked in silence. They were tired of talking.

Only when they had reached the porch steps and were standing in the shadow of the cancer wing did Shulubin speak again. Still leaning on Oleg, he lifted his head to look up at the poplar trees and the patch of merry sky. He said, “The only thing is, I don't want to die under the knife. I'm frightened … No matter how long you live or what a dog's life it's been, you still want to live…”

They walked into the lobby. It was hot and stuffy. Very slowly, one step after the other, they began to climb the long staircase.

Then Oleg asked him, “Tell me, did you think of this during those twenty-five years, while you were bowing low and renouncing your beliefs?”

Shulubin replied, his voice empty and flat, growing weaker and weaker, “Yes, I did. I renounced everything, and I went on thinking. I stuffed the old books into the stove and I turned things over in my mind. Why not? Haven't I earned the right to a few thoughts through my suffering, through my betrayal?”

32. The Other Side of the Coin

Dontsova had never imagined that something she knew inside and out and so thoroughly could change to the point where it became entirely new and unfamiliar. For thirty years she had been dealing with other people's illnesses, and for a good twenty she had sat in front of the X-ray screen. She had read the screen, read the film, read the distorted, imploring eyes of her patients. She had compared what she saw with books and analyses, written articles and argued with colleagues and patients. During this time what she had worked out empirically for herself had become more and more indisputable, while in her mind medical theory grew increasingly coherent. Etiology, pathogenesis, symptoms, diagnosis, the course of the disease, treatment, prevention, prognosis—all these were real enough. The doctor might have sympathy with the patient's resistance, doubts and fears; these were understandable human weaknesses, but they didn't count for anything when it came to deciding which method should be used. There was no place left for such feelings in the squares of logic.

Until now all human bodies had been built identically, as described in the standard anatomy text. The physiology of the vital processes and the physiology of sensations were uniform as well. Everything that was normal or deviated from the norm was explained in logical terms by authoritative manuals.