Cancer Ward (78 page)

In the next-door cell its mate was sitting with her cubs.

In the one after that a grizzly lived in misery. It kept stamping the ground restlessly, longing to walk up and down its cell, but there was only room for it to turn round and round, because the length from wall to wall was no more than three times its own.

So, according to a bear's measuring scale, it was a punishment cell.

The children were amused by the spectacle, saying to each other. “Hey, let's throw him some stones, he'll think they're candies.”

Oleg did not notice the children looking at him. For them he was an animal too, an extra one free of charge. He couldn't see himself.

The path led down to the river where they kept the polar bear. At least they kept a couple there together. Several irrigation ditches flowed into their pit to form an icy basin into which they jumped every few minutes to refresh themselves, then climbed out again onto the cement terrace, squeezed the water out of their muzzles with their paws, and paced to and fro along the edge of the terrace above the water.

What must the summer down here be like for polar bears? It's forty degrees Centigrade. Oh well, the same as it was for us in the Arctic Circle.

The most confusing thing about the imprisoned animals was that even supposing Oleg took their side and had the power, he would still not want to break into the cages and liberate them. This was because, deprived of their home surroundings, they had lost the idea of rational freedom. It would only make things harder for them, suddenly to set them free.

This was the odd way Kostoglotov reasoned. His brain was so twisted that he could no longer see things simply and dispassionately. Whatever he experienced from now on, there would always be this shadow, this gray specter, this subterranean rumbling from the past.

Past the miserable elephant, the animal most deprived of space, past the sacred Indian zebu and the golden aguti hare, Oleg walked on up the hill, this time toward the monkeys.

Children and grownups were amusing themselves round the cages, feeding the monkeys. Kostoglotov walked past them without smiling. Quite hairless, as if clipped bare, sitting sadly on their plank beds, wrapped in their primitive sorrows and delights, they reminded him of many of his former acquaintances. In fact, he could even recognize individuals who must still be in prison somewhere.

One lonely, thoughtful chimpanzee with swollen eyes, hands dangling between his knees, reminded Oleg of Shulubin. It was exactly how he often used to sit.

On this bright, hot day Shulubin would be writhing in his bed between life and death.

Kostoglotov didn't think he would find anything interesting in the monkeyhouse. He moved quickly on and had begun to pass it when he noticed an announcement fixed to one of the further cages, and several people reading it.

He went there. The cage was empty but it bad the usual notice reading “Macaque Rhesus.” It had been hurriedly scrawled and nailed to the plywood. It said: “The little monkey that used to live here was blinded because of the senseless cruelty of one of the visitors. An evil man threw tobacco into the Macaque Rhesus's eyes.”

Oleg was struck dumb. Up to then he had been strolling along, smiling with knowing condescension, but now he felt like yelling and roaring across the whole zoo, as though the tobacco had been thrown into his own eyes, “Why?” Thrown just like that! “Why? It's senseless! Why?”

What went straight to his heart was the childish simplicity with which it was written. This unknown man, who had already made a safe getaway, was not described as “anti-humanist,” or “an agent of American imperialism”; all it said was that he was evil. This was what was so striking: how could this man be simply “evil”? Children, do not grow up to be evil! Children, do not destroy defenseless creatures!

The notice had been read and read again, but still the grownups and little children stood looking into the empty cage.

Oleg moved on, drawing his greasy, scorched, shrapnel-riddled duffel bag with the iron inside into the kingdom of reptiles, vipers and beasts of prey.

Lizards were lying in the sand like scaly pebbles, leaning against each other. What had they lost in the way of freedom of movement?

A huge Chinese alligator with a flat snout, black as cast iron, was lying there. Its paws seemed twisted in the wrong direction. A notice announced that during hot weather it did not eat meat every day. It probably quite liked the well-organized zoo world with its ever-ready food.

There was a powerful python attached to a tree, like a thick dead branch. It was completely motionless except for its little sharp, flickering tongue. A poisonous ethis was coiled under a bell glass. There were ordinary vipers too, several of them.

But he had no wish to inspect all these. He was obsessed with picturing the face of that blinded macaque monkey.

He was already in the alley where they kept the beasts of prey. They were magnificent, vying with each other for the richest pelt: a lynx, a snow leopard, an ash-brown puma and a tawny jaguar with black spots. They were prisoners, of course, they were suffering from lack of freedom, but Oleg felt toward them as he had toward the camp gangsters. After all, one can work out who are the guilty ones of this world. A notice said that the jaguar ate one hundred and forty kilograms of meat every twenty-four hours. Really, it was past all imagining! Their camp did not get as much meat in a week, and the jaguar had it every twenty-four hours. Oleg remembered the “trusties” in the camp who worked in the stables. They robbed their horses, ate their oats and so survived.

A little further on he spotted “Mr. Tiger.” His whiskers—yes, it was the whiskers that were most expressive of his rapacious nature. But his eyes were yellow … Strange thoughts came to Oleg's mind. He stood there looking at the tiger with hatred.

In the camps, Oleg had met an old political prisoner who had once been in exile in Turukhansk.
*
He had told Oleg about those eyes—they were not velvet black, they were yellow.

Welded to the ground with hatred, Oleg stood in front of the tiger's cage.

Just like that, just like that … but why?

He felt sick. He didn't want to stay in the zoo any longer. He wanted to run away from it. He didn't go to see the lions. He began to look for the exit—where was it?

A zebra raced past. Oleg glanced at it and walked on.

Then suddenly … he stopped dead in front of a miracle.

After all that carnivorous coarseness it was a miracle of spirituality: the Nilgai antelope, light brown, on fine, light legs, her head keen and alert but not in the least afraid. It stood close to the wire netting and looked at Oleg with its big, trustful and … gentle, yes, gentle eyes.

The likeness was so true it was unbearable. She kept her gentle, reproachful eyes fixed on him. She was asking him, “Why aren't you coming to see me? Half the day's gone. Why aren't you coming?”

It was witchcraft, it was a transmigration of souls, she was so obviously waiting for Oleg standing there. Scarcely had he walked up to her than she began asking him with those reproachful but forgiving eyes, “Aren't you coming? Aren't you coming? I've been waiting…”

Yes, why wasn't he coming? Why wasn't he coming?

Oleg shook himself and made for the exit.

He might still find her at home.

36. … and the Last Day

He could not think of her either with greed or with the fury of passion. His one joy would be to go and lie at her feet like a dog, like a miserable beaten cur, to lie on the floor and breathe on her feet like a cur. That would be a happiness greater than anything he could imagine.

But such kind animal simplicity—arriving and prostrating himself at her feet—was of course something he could not allow himself. He would have to utter polite, apologetic words, then she'd have to do the same, and she would, because this was the complicated way things had been arranged for many thousands of years.

Even now he could see her as she was yesterday, with that glow, that flush on her cheeks as she said, “You know, you could quite easily come and stay with me—quite easily!” That blush would have to be redeemed. He couldn't let it touch her cheeks again, he would have to get round it with laughter. He couldn't let her make herself embarrassed again, and that was why he had to think up a few first sentences, sufficiently polite and humorous to soften the strangeness of the situation: his calling to see his doctor, a young woman living on her own, with the intention of staying the night—goodness knows why. But he'd rather not think up sentences, he'd rather open the door, stand there and look at her, and call her Vega from the start, that was essential—“Vega! I've come!”

But whatever happened it would be an uncontainable joy being with her, not in the ward or the doctor's consulting room but in an ordinary room, talking about something or other, he didn't know what. He would probably blunder, say the wrong things. After all he was no longer used to living among the human race. But his eyes would let him express what he wanted to say: “Have pity on me! Please, have pity on me, I am so unhappy without you!”

How could he have wasted so much time? Why ever hadn't he gone to Vega? He should have gone long ago. He was walking along briskly now, unhesitatingly, afraid only that he might miss her. After strolling round the town for half the day, he had grasped the layout of the streets and knew the way.

If they got on well together, if it was pleasant being with each other and talking, if there was a chance that at some point he might even take her by the hands, put his arms round her shoulders and look closely, tenderly into her eyes—wouldn't that be enough? And if there was to be even more, much more than that—wouldn't that be enough?

Of course with Zoya it wouldn't have been enough. But with Vega? The Nilgai antelope?

The very thought of taking her hands in his gave him a tense feeling inside his chest. He began to be quite excited about how it was going to happen.

Surely this would be enough?

He grew more and more excited the closer he came to her house. It was really fear, but a happy fear, a fainting delight. This fear was in itself enough to make him happy.

He kept walking, noticing only the street names, ignoring the shops, shopwindows, trolley cars, people, when suddenly he came to a street corner. There was an old woman standing there; he couldn't get past her at first because of the crush. He saw she was selling bunches of little blue flowers.

In no remote corner of his drained, plowed-over, adjusted memory was there a shadow of a notion that when calling on a woman one should bring her flowers. He had forgotten the convention as profoundly and finally as though it had never existed. He had been walking calmly along with his threadbare, patched, heavy duffel bag, not one doubt causing his step to hesitate, and now he had seen some flowers. For some reason these flowers were being sold to people. He frowned, and a vague recollection began to swim up in his mind like a drowned corpse out of a pool of murky water. That's right, that's right! In the long-past, almost nonexistent world of his youth, it had been the custom to give women flowers!

“These … What are they?” he asked the flowerseller shyly.

“They're violets, that's what,” she said in an insulted tone. “One rouble a bunch.”

Violets? Could they be those same violets, the ones in the poem? For some reason he remembered them differently. Their stems should be more graceful, taller, and the blooms more bell-shaped. But perhaps his memory was at fault. Or maybe it was some local variety. In any case there were no others to choose. Now he'd remembered, he realized it would be impossible to go without flowers, shameful too.

How could he possibly have walked along so calmly without flowers?

But how many should he buy? One? One didn't seem enough.

Two? Even two would be on the mean side. Three? Four? Appallingly expensive. A flash of labor camp cunning darted through his mind, like an adding machine ticking over. He could probably knock her down to one and a half roubles for two bunches or four for five bunches. But this sharp streak was apparently not the true Oleg. He held out two roubles and handed them over quietly.

He took the two bunches. They had a scent, but there again it wasn't the way the violets of his youth should have smelled, the violets of the poets. He could carry them along sniffing them like this, but it would look odd if he just carried them in his hands: a sick, demobilized, bareheaded soldier, carrying a duffel bag and some violets! There was no proper way of arranging them, so the best thing was to pull his hand up his sleeve and carry them inside, out of sight.

Vega's house—yes, this was the one!

Straight into the courtyard, she had said. He went into the courtyard, then turned left.

(Something in his chest seemed to be lurching from side to side.)

There was a long concrete veranda used by the whole house, open, but with an awning of slanting, interlaced ironwork under the railings. Things were thrown over the railings to air: blankets, mattresses, pillows, and some linen hanging on lines strung from pillar to pillar.

All in all, it was a very unsuitable place for Vega. The approaches were cluttered and untidy. Anyway, that wasn't her responsibility. A little further on, behind all that washing hanging out to dry, would be the door to her apartment, and behind that door the private world of Vega.

He ducked under some sheets and looked for the door. It was a door like any other, painted bright brown and peeling in places. It had a green box for mail.

Oleg produced the violets from the sleeve of his overcoat. He tried to tidy his hair. He was anxious and excited, and very glad to be so. He tried to imagine her without her doctor's white coat and in her home surroundings.

It wasn't just those few blocks from the zoo that his heavy boots had tramped. He had walked the far-flung roads of his country for twice seven years. And now here he was, demobilized at last, at the very door where for those past fourteen years a woman had been silently waiting for him.