“I’m looking for my wife. She must be here.”
“What does she look like?” one of the boys asked in a cautious voice. “We’ve only got one woman—with curly hair. Mama says she is dying.”
Klim started forward and bumped straight into a wooden pillar supporting a canopy.
The boys laughed. “Look where you’re going!”
“Please, lads,” Klim said, “take me to see this woman.”
Nina could barely remember how she had gotten to the hospital. Somebody must have helped her. She was dizzy, and her head swarmed with a mixture of real impressions and delirious visions.
A terrible pain in her abdomen, a white ceiling above her, a bright lamp. A doctor in a surgical mask bending over her. “It’s peritonitis. My dear lady, you must be operated on immediately.”
Then exploding shells and panic. Somebody running by had said, “If we leave this one behind, she’ll die. Let’s try to take her to Sviyazhsk.”
Then a bumpy journey along the road in a shaking wagon and a dreadful pain that had made Nina want to throw herself out and dash her head against the cobblestones. After that, a strange, numb weakness.
She had watched the spruce branches arching over the road like the vaults of a temple, wreathed with sparkling raindrops. Stream rose from the drying rain, and rays of sun slanted through the treetops.
The Cheka arrested Zhora and Elena. Nina was certain of it.
The voice of a doctor again, “In no circumstances should she be given anything to eat or drink.”
Now, Nina saw Klim silhouetted against the dark blue sky outside the window. He pressed his unshaven cheek to her hand. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered.
Then he began to speak in Spanish so quietly she could barely hear him, repeating the same words again and again like a prayer.
15. SVIYAZHSK
Sablin took a hip flask of diluted medical spirit out of his pocket and took a sip. His eyes widened. That’s some strong stuff! He had been drunk every day now for more days than he could count.
Lubochka had seen him off to war in the time-honored fashion: she had shed a few tears, hung an amulet around his neck, and made the sign of the cross over him. “Take care!”
Sablin had no intention of taking care. He was determined not to offer any help to the Bolsheviks. Let them shoot him—he wasn’t afraid to die. The medical spirit was effective not only against infection but also, thank God, against his instinct for self-preservation.
The Bolsheviks had not taken Sablin to Kazan; instead, they had put him ashore on the peninsula of Sviyazhsk, home to a number of ancient monasteries and their suburbs. The monks had all been driven out, and the buildings were now being put to use as hospitals and soldiers’ barracks.
“Choose any unoccupied house,” the commandant told Sablin. “You’ll have to set everything up from scratch. They’ll be bringing in the wounded soon, so get ready. You’ll need to go to the railroad station for supplies and find some assistants as well.”
Sablin wandered aimlessly around the empty streets for a while, occasionally shading his eyes to look up at the golden crosses of the churches and the St. Nicholas bell tower with its ancient clock. The watchman—an old man in bast shoes—showed him the convent, prison, and school building. The whole place had been completely devastated and was utterly filthy.
Rounding the mayor’s house, Sablin went up onto the cliff and looked out over the river. Dozens of boats were heading toward Sviyazhsk.
“God almighty—” Sablin muttered.
He reached for his flask again, took a sip, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
One by one, the tugs, ferries, and rowboats reached land, and soon, the area around the pier was flooded with servicemen and refugees who began streaming up the wooden stairway. The air was full of shouts, the clatter of weapons, and the whinnying of horses.
A little nun wearing spectacles darted around the crowd asking, “Is there a doctor here? Where can I find a doctor?”
“This man’s a doctor,” the watchman said, pointing at Sablin.
The nun came running up to Sablin, grasped him by the shoulders, and then recoiled in shock. “But the man’s blind drunk!”
The soldiers had begun bringing up the stretchers with the wounded. Mechanically, Sablin counted the bodies wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Ten, twenty, thirty—
“Are you a doctor?” a breathless nurse asked him. “Where can we take people?”
Sablin looked at her vaguely. “Go to the school building. It’s not far from here. Hey, old man,” he called to the watchman. “Show them the way.”
I’ve no medicine, no staff, and no equipment, Sablin thought.
All around, people were shouting, “Morphine! Water! Where’s the doctor?”
The nun approached a young man holding a dead woman in his arms. “I’ll just get my Matrona from the ferry, and we can get going,” the nun told him and ran downstairs.
The man laid the woman on the grass near the fence, took off his long overcoat, and spread it over her.
“Klim, is that you?” Sablin asked in amazement, staggering toward him. “What are you doing here? And who’s this?”
He bent down over the woman, studied her sallow, drawn face, and gasped as he recognized Nina Odintzova.
“The doctor in Kazan said she has peritonitis,” Klim said, his voice shaking. “He promised to operate on her, but then he ran away.”
Sablin slapped at his cheeks, trying to shake himself out of his drunken stupor. He took Nina by the wrist. She barely had a pulse.
Peritonitis, damn it! Sablin thought. What am I supposed to do about that with nothing but a penknife?
“If you have a horse,” he said, turning to Klim, “you must take Nina to the railroad station. Apparently, there’s a hospital there, and they might have what you need for an operation. Otherwise—God help us, man, you can see for yourself.”
Klim grasped Sablin’s hand. “We do have a horse. Doctor, come with me! You’re a surgeon—you—” He fell silent, his shoulders drooped, and his eyes were desperate.
Sablin surveyed the wounded.
Call yourself a doctor? he thought. You’re nothing but a rotten swine. You haven’t lifted a finger for days; you were drunk all yesterday and the day before that. By this evening, there will be more than a dozen dead, and it’ll all be your fault.
The medics kept bringing more and more stretchers, and boats scurried to and fro across the slate gray river. The crossing was only just beginning.
The nurse ran up to Sablin again. “Doctor, there are no mattresses in the school. Who’s in charge here? Is there anyone responsible?”
Sablin pulled himself together. “You’ll have to be in charge for now,” he told the nurse. “I’m going to the station to get everything we need for the hospital.”
All the way to the station, Sablin exasperated Klim with his nonstop chatter. “Let’s pray they have an operating room there. Good God! What am I supposed to do without a surgical nurse and assistants? My hands are shaking from the drink.”
Sister Photinia urged the horse with her whip, and the wagon moved swiftly on, bouncing over the potholes. Klim held Nina’s head on his lap. Her temples were cold, and her forehead beaded with sweat. He kept his fingers under her ear where he could feel her pulse, but every now and then, it seemed to him that everything was over.
What if Nina dies? Klim kept asking himself. What am I going to do?
Should he find the wretch who had killed Nina and pay him back in kind?