On the day after his transfer, Merzlakov was taken to the doctor. The head doctor asked briefly about the origin of the illness and shook his head in sympathy. He remarked in passing that even healthy muscles forced into an unnatural position for many months could become accustomed to the position and a man could make himself an invalid. Then Peter Ivanovich took over the examination. Merzlakov responded at random to needle pricks, pressures, and taps with a rubber hammer.
Peter Ivanovich spent more than half of his time exposing fakers. He, of course, understood the reasons for their conduct. Peter Ivanovich had himself recently been a prisoner, and he was not surprised by the childish stubbornness of the fakers or the primitiveness of their tricks. Peter Ivanovich, a former associate professor at a Siberian medical institute, had laid his own scientific career to rest in those same snows in which the convicts were saving their lives by deceiving him. It was not that he lacked pity for people, but he was more of a doctor than a human being; first and foremost he was a specialist. He was proud that a year of hard labor had not beaten the doctor, the specialist out of him. He understood his task of exposing cheaters – not from any lofty, socio-governmental point of view and not from the viewpoint of morality. Rather, he saw in this activity a worthy application of his knowledge, his psychological ability to set traps, into which hungry, half-insane people were to fall for the greater glory of science. In this battle of doctor and faker, the doctor had all the advantages – thousands of clever drugs, hundreds of textbooks, a wealth of equipment, aid from the guards, and the enormous experience of a specialist. The patient could count only on his own horror before that world from which he had come and to which he feared to return. It was precisely this horror that lent him the strength for the struggle. In exposing any faker, Peter Ivanovich experienced a deep satisfaction. He regarded it as testimony from life that he was a good doctor who had not yet lost his qualifications but, on the contrary, had sharpened them, who could still ‘do it’.
‘These surgeons are fools,’ he thought, lighting up a cigarette after Merzlakov had left. ‘They either don’t know or have forgotten topographic anatomy, and they never did know reflexes. They get along with X-rays alone, and without X-rays they can’t even diagnose a simple fracture. And the bullshit they throw around!’ It was crystal clear to Peter Ivanovich that Merzlakov was a faker. ‘Let him stay for a week. We’ll get all the tests worked up to make sure the formalities have been observed and glue all those scraps of paper into the history of the illness.’ Peter Ivanovich smiled in anticipation of the theatrical effect of the new exposé. In a week a new group of patients would be shipped back to the mainland. The reports were compiled right here in the ward, and the chairman of the board of medical commissioners would arrive to examine personally the patients prepared by the hospital for departure. His role amounted to examining the documents and checking that the formalities had been observed; an individual examination of the patient took thirty seconds.
‘My lists,’ said the surgeon, ‘contain a certain Merzlakov. The guards broke his back a year ago. I want to send him home. He was recently transferred to Neuropathology. The papers for his departure are ready.’
The chairman of the commission turned to the neuropathologist.
‘Bring in Merzlakov,’ said Peter Ivanovich.
The bent-over Merzlakov was led in; the chairman glanced at him.
‘What a gorilla,’ he said. ‘But I guess there’s no reason to keep that kind around.’ Pen in hand, he reached for the lists.
‘I won’t give my signature,’ said Peter Ivanovich in a clear, loud voice. ‘He’s a faker, and tomorrow I will have the honor to prove that to both you and the surgeon.’
‘Let’s set him aside then,’ said the chairman indifferently, putting his pen down. ‘And, in general, let’s wrap things up. It’s already getting late.’
‘He’s a faker, Seryozha,’ said Peter Ivanovich, taking the surgeon by the arm as they were leaving the ward.
The surgeon withdrew his arm.
‘Maybe,’ he said with a disgusted frown. ‘Good luck in exposing him. I hope you get your kicks out of it.’
The next day Peter Ivanovich gave a detailed report on Merzlakov to the head of the hospital at a meeting.
‘I think,’ he said in conclusion, ‘we’ll expose Merzlakov in two stages. The first will be the Rausch narcosis that you forgot, Seryozha.’ Triumphantly, he turned to the surgeon. ‘That should have been done right away. And if the Rausch doesn’t produce any results, then…’ Peter Ivanovich spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘Then we’ll have to try shock therapy. I assure you, that can be very interesting.’
‘Isn’t that going too far?’ Alexandra Sergeevna asked. She was a heavy woman who had recently arrived from the mainland. Here she ran the tubercular ward – the largest ward in the hospital.
‘Not for that son of a bitch,’ the head of the hospital answered.
‘Let’s wait and see what kind of results we get from the Rausch,’ Peter Ivanovich inserted in a conciliatory fashion.
Rausch narcosis consisted of a stunning dose of ether for a short-term effect. The patient would be knocked out for fifteen or twenty minutes, giving the surgeon time to set a dislocation, amputate a finger, or open a painful abscess.
The hospital bigwigs, dressed in white gowns, surrounded the operating table at the dressing station where the obedient, stooped-over Merzlakov was brought. The attendants reached for the cotton strips normally used to tie patients to the operating table.
‘No, no,’ shouted Peter Ivanovich. ‘That’s totally unnecessary.’
Merzlakov’s face turned upward, and the surgeon placed the anesthetic mask over it, holding a bottle of ether in his other hand.
‘Let’s begin, Seryozha!’
The ether began to drip.
‘Deeper, breathe deeper, Merzlakov. Count out loud.’
‘Twenty-six, twenty-seven,’ Merzlakov counted in a lazy voice, and, suddenly breaking off his count, started to mutter something fragmented, incomprehensible, and sprinkled with obscenities.
Peter Ivanovich held in his hand the left hand of Merzlakov. In a few minutes the hand fell limp. Peter Ivanovich dropped it, and the hand fell softly on to the edge of the table, as if dead. Peter Ivanovich slowly and triumphantly straightened out the body of Merzlakov. Everyone gasped with amazement.
‘Now tie him down,’ said Peter Ivanovich to the attendants.
Merzlakov opened his eyes and saw the hairy fist of the hospital director.
‘You slime,’ he hissed. ‘Now you’ll get a new trial.’
‘Good going, Peter Ivanovich, good going!’ the chairman of the commission kept repeating, all the while slapping the neuropathologist on the shoulder. ‘And to think that just yesterday I was going to let him go!’
‘Untie him,’ Peter Ivanovich commanded. ‘Get down from that table.’
Still not completely aware of his surroundings, Merzlakov felt a throbbing in his temples and the sickeningly sweet taste of ether in his mouth. He still didn’t understand if he was asleep or awake, but perhaps he had frequently had such dreams in the past.
‘To hell with all of you!’ he shouted unexpectedly and bent over as before. Broad-shouldered, bony, almost touching the floor with his long, meaty fingers, Merzlakov really looked like a gorilla as he left the dressing station. The orderlies reported to Peter Ivanovich that patient Merzlakov was lying on his bed in his usual pose. The doctor ordered him to be brought to his office.
‘You’ve been exposed, Merzlakov,’ the neuropathologist said. ‘But I put in a good word for you to the head of the hospital. You won’t be retried or sent to a penal mine. You’ll just have to check out of the hospital and return to your previous mine – to your old job. You’re a real hero, brother. Made us look like idiots for a whole year.’