My conscience and reason tell me that the best thing I could do now would be to deliver a valedictory lecture to my boys, to say one last word to them, to give them my blessing and surrender my post to a younger and stronger man than myself. But as God is my judge I lack the courage to act according to my conscience.
Unfortunately I am neither philosopher nor theologian. I know perfectly well that I have no more than six months to live. I think I should really be concerned most of all with the gloom beyond the grave and the ghosts that will haunt my sepulchral slumbers. But for some reason my heart rejects these questions, although my mind fully recognizes their full import. Now that I am on the brink of death only science has any interest for me – it is the same as twenty to thirty years ago. When I draw my last breath I shall still believe that science is the most important, beautiful and vital thing in man’s life, that it always has been and always will be the highest manifestation of love and that only through science will man conquer nature and himself. Although this belief may appear naïve and based on false assumptions, it’s not my fault if this is what I believe and not otherwise. This is my creed and I am powerless to destroy it.
But this is beside the point. All I ask is for people to indulge my weakness and to understand that to tear from his professorial chair and his students a man for whom the fate of the bone medulla is of more interest than the ultimate purpose of the universe would be equivalent to seizing him and nailing him in his coffin without waiting for him to die.
Because of my insomnia and the strain of fighting my increasing weakness strange things are happening to me. In the middle of my lecture tears suddenly choke me, my eyes begin to smart and I feel a passionate, hysterical urge to stretch my hands out and complain out loud. I want to shout out loud that fate has sentenced me, a famous man, to death and that within about six months another person will be holding sway in the lecture-hall. I want to cry out that I’ve been poisoned. New thoughts that I’ve never known before have poisoned the last few days of my life and they continue to sting my brain like mosquitoes. Just now my position seems so terrible that I want my entire audience to leap from their seats in horror and rush panic-stricken for the exit, shrieking in despair.
Such moments are not easy to endure.
II
After the lecture I stay at home and work. I read journals, theses, or prepare my next lecture; sometimes I do some writing. My work is constantly interrupted as I have to receive visitors.
The door bell rings. It’s a colleague who has come to discuss some academic matter. He enters with his hat and walking-stick. Thrusting both at me he says, ‘I’ve just dropped in for a minute… only a minute! Now, don’t get up, my dear colleague! Just a couple of words…’
From the start we try to show each other how exceptionally polite we are and how terribly delighted we are to see each other. I sit him in an armchair and he makes me sit as well – as we do this we carefully stroke each other’s waist, touch each other’s buttons and it seems that we are feeling each other and are afraid of burning our fingers. We both laugh, although we don’t say anything amusing. Seated in our chairs, we lean our heads towards each other and speak in subdued voices. However cordially disposed we might be to each other, we cannot help gilding our conversation with all kinds of pretentious piffle like: ‘As you so justly deigned to observe’, or ‘As I already had the honour of informing you.’ And we cannot help laughing out loud if one of us cracks a joke, however poor. His business completed, my colleague abruptly gets up, waves his hat at my work and begins to say goodbye. Again we paw each other, again we laugh. I see him into the hall. Here I help him on with his fur coat, but he makes every effort to decline so signal an honour. Then, when Yegor opens the front door, my colleague assures me that I will catch cold, but I pretend that I’m prepared to accompany him right out into the street even. Finally, when I’m back in my study, my face is still smiling – from inertia I suppose.
A little later the bell rings again. Someone enters the hall, spends a long time removing his coat and coughing. Yegor announces that a student has arrived. ‘Ask him in,’ I tell Yegor. A minute later in comes a young man of pleasant appearance. For the past year relations between us have been strained: he makes a dreadful hash of his exams and I give him the lowest mark. Every year I have about seven young hopefuls like him whom I fail – or ‘plough’ in student slang. Those who fail their exams, either through inability or sickness, usually bear their cross patiently and don’t try to bargain with me. The only ones who come to my house to bargain are the sanguine, expansive types for whom hard cramming spoils their appetite and prevents them from going to the opera regularly. To the first I am merciful, the latter I keep ‘ploughing’ all year round.
‘Please sit down,’ I tell my visitor. ‘What is it?’
‘Sorry to trouble you, professor,’ he begins, faltering and not looking me in the eye. ‘I wouldn’t have taken the liberty of disturbing you if… I… er… I’ve sat your exam five times and I’ve been… er… ploughed every time. I’m begging you, please be good enough to pass me, because…’
The argument all these idlers defend themselves with is invariably the same: they have passed all their other subjects with distinction, only in mine have they come to grief, which is all the more surprising, since they have always studied my subject so diligently and know it backwards. They have failed because of some mysterious misunderstanding.
‘Forgive me, my friend,’ I tell my visitor, ‘but I cannot pass you. Go and study your lecture notes a bit more and come and see me again. Then we shall see.’
A pause. I have the urge to make my student suffer a little for preferring beer and the opera to learning and I say with a sigh, ‘I think it would be best if you gave up medicine altogether. If someone of your ability can’t pass his exams it’s obvious you have neither the desire nor the vocation to become a doctor.’
The young hopeful’s face lengthens. ‘I’m sorry, professor, but it would be very odd if I did that, to say the least,’ he laughs. ‘Study for five years and then suddenly chuck it all in!’
‘Well, why not? It’s better to lose five years than spend the rest of your life doing something you don’t like.’
But immediately I feel sorry for him and hasten to add, ‘Well, do as you like. Study a bit more and then come and see me again.’
‘When?’ the idler asks in an empty voice.
‘Whenever you like. How about tomorrow?’
And in his good-natured eyes I can read, ‘All right, I’ll come, but you’ll only plough me again, you bastard!’
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘you won’t know any more medicine even if you sit my exam another fifteen times. But it’s all good character training – for that you should be grateful.’
Silence follows. I get up and wait for my visitor to leave, but he stands there looking out of the window, fingering his beard and thinking. The whole thing’s becoming a bore.
The young hopeful’s voice is agreeably mellow, his eyes are intelligent and mocking, his complacent face is somewhat bloated from too much beer-drinking and lying around on his sofa for hours. No doubt he could tell me many interesting things about the opera, his love affairs, his fellow-students of whom he is very fond, but unfortunately it isn’t the done thing to discuss such matters. Yet I would gladly listen.