‘Good day, comrade doctor.’
‘And who might you be?’ I asked.
‘I’m Yegorich,’ he introduced himself, ‘the watchman here. We’ve been expecting you.’
Without wasting a moment he grabbed the suitcase, swung it over his shoulder and carried it in. I limped after him, trying unsuccessfully to thrust my hand into my trouser pocket to get out my purse.
Man’s basic needs are few. The first of them is fire. Back in Moscow, when I found out that I was to go to remote Muryovo, I had promised myself that I would behave in a dignified manner. My youthful appearance made life intolerable for me in those early days. I always made a point of introducing myself as ‘Doctor So-and-So’, and inevitably people raised their eyebrows and said:
‘Really? I thought you were still a student.’
‘No. I’m qualified,’ I would answer sullenly, thinking: ‘I must start wearing spectacles, that’s what I must do.’ But there was no point in this, as I had perfectly good vision, my eyes as yet unclouded by experience. Unable to wear glasses as a defence against those invariable, affectionately indulgent smiles, I tried to develop a special manner designed to induce respect. I tried to talk evenly and gravely, to repress impulsive movements as far as possible, to walk and not run as twenty-four-year-olds do who have just left university. Looking back, I now realise that the attempt did not come off at all.
At the moment in question I disobeyed my unwritten code of behaviour. I sat hunched up in front of the fire with my shoes off, not in the study but in the kitchen, like a fire-worshipper, fervently and passionately drawn to the birch logs blazing in the stove. On my left stood an upturned tub with my boots lying on top of it, next to them a plucked cockerel with a bloodstained neck, and its many-coloured feathers lying in a heap beside it. While still stiff with the cold, I had somehow managed to perform a whole set of vital actions. I had confirmed Yegorich’s wife, the sharp-nosed Aksinya, in her position as my cook. As a result of this she had slaughtered the cockerel and I was to eat it. I had been introduced to everyone in turn. My feldsher[1] was called Demyan Lukich, the midwives were Pelagea Ivanovna and Anna Nikolaevna. I had been shown round the hospital and was left in no doubt whatever that it was generously equipped. With equal certainty I was forced to admit (inwardly, of course) that I had no idea what very many of these shiny, unsullied instruments were for. Not only had I never held them in my hands, but to tell the truth I had never even seen them.
‘Hm,’ I mumbled significantly, ‘must say you have an excellent set of instruments. Hm …’
‘Oh sir,’ Demyan Lukich remarked sweetly, ‘this is all thanks to your predecessor Leopold Leopoldovich. You see, he used to operate from dawn till dusk.’
I was instantly covered with cold sweat and stared glumly at the gleaming cupboards.
We then went round the empty wards and I satisfied myself that they could easily hold forty patients.
‘Leopold Leopoldovich sometimes had fifty in here,’ Demyan Lukich said consolingly, and Anna Nikolaevna, a woman with a diadem of grey hair, chose to say:
‘Doctor, you look so young, so very young … it’s simply amazing. You look like a student.’
‘Oh, hell,’ I said to myself, ‘really, you’d think they were doing it on purpose!’
Through clenched teeth I grunted:
‘Hm … no, well, I … yes, rather young looking …’
After that we went down to the pharmacy and a glance was enough to tell me that it was supplied with every conceivable medicine. Its two sombre rooms smelled strongly of herbs and its shelves were filled with an endless variety of preparations. There were even foreign patent medicines, which, need I add, I had never heard of.
‘Leopold Leopoldovich ordered these,’ Pelagea Ivanovna reported proudly.
‘This Leopold was nothing short of a genius,’ I thought and was filled with respect for the mysterious Leopold who had left the quiet little village of Muryovo behind him.
Besides fire, man also needs to find his bearings. I had long since eaten the cockerel, Yegorich had stuffed my mattress with straw and covered it with a sheet, and a light was burning in my study. Spellbound, I sat and stared at the legendary Leopold’s third great achievement: the bookcase was crammed with books. I counted roughly thirty volumes of surgery manuals in Russian and German. And the books on therapeutics! The beautiful leather-bound anatomical atlases!
Evening drew on and I started to find my bearings.
‘It’s not my fault,’ I repeated to myself stubbornly and unhappily. ‘I’ve got my degree and a first class one at that. Didn’t I warn them back in town that I wanted to start off as a junior partner in a practice? But no, they just smiled and said, “You’ll get your bearings.” So now I’ve got to find my bearings. Suppose they bring me a hernia? Just tell me how I’ll find my bearings with that? And more to the point, what will a hernia patient feel like when I get my hands on him? Will he find his bearings in the next world?’ The thought made my blood run cold.
‘What about peritonitis? Oh no! Or croup, that country children get? When is tracheotomy indicated? Even if it doesn’t need tracheotomy I shall be pretty much at sea … What about … what about … deliveries! I forgot about deliveries! Incorrect positions. What on earth will I do? What a fool I was! I should have refused this job. I really should. They should have found themselves another Leopold.’
Miserable, I paced up and down the twilit study. When I came up to the lamp I caught sight of the reflection of my pale face and of the light of the lamp in the window set against the boundless darkness of the fields.
‘I’m like Dmitry the Pretender—nothing but a sham,’ I thought stupidly and sat down at the table again.
I spent about two lonely hours of self-torment and only stopped when my nerves could no longer bear the horrors I had summoned up. Then I started to calm down and even to work out a plan of action.
‘Let’s see now … they tell me admissions are almost nil at the moment. They’re braking flax in the villages, the roads are impassable …’
‘That’s just when they will bring you a hernia,’ thundered a harsh voice in my mind, ‘because a man with a cold won’t make the effort over impassable roads but rest assured they’ll bring you a hernia, my dear doctor.’
There was something in what the voice said. I shuddered.
‘Be quiet,’ I said to it. ‘It won’t necessarily be a hernia. Stop being so neurotic. You can’t back out once you’ve begun.’
‘You said it!’ the voice answered spitefully.
‘All right then … I won’t take a step without my reference book … If I have to prescribe something I can think it over while I wash my hands and the reference book will be lying open on top of the patients’ register. I shall make out wholesome but simple prescriptions, say, sodium salicylate, 0.5 grammes in powder form three times a day.’
‘You might as well prescribe baking soda! Why don’t you just prescribe soda?’ the voice was blatantly making fun of me.
‘What’s soda got to do with it? I’ll also prescribe an infusion of ipecacuanha, 180 c.c. Or 200 c.c. if you don’t mind.’
And although no one was asking for ipecacuanha as I sat there alone by the lamp, I sheepishly turned the pages in the pharmacopoeia and checked ipecacuanha; meanwhile I automatically read in passing that there was a certain substance called ‘Insipin’ which is none other than ‘ethereal sulphate of quinine-diglycolic acid.’ Apparently it doesn’t taste of quinine! What is it for? And how is it prescribed? What is it, a powder? To hell with it!