'All right, all right,' he mutters guiltily. Til go into it later, it's probably a misunderstanding.'
At first Dr. Ragin worked very hard, seeing his patients daily from early morning until lunch, performing operations—attending confim."- mcnts, even. The ladies used to say how considerate he was, and what a first-class diagnostician, especially of children's and women's ailments. But in due course he has become obviously bored with the monotony and palpable futility of his job. He will sec thirty patients today, and tomorrow, like as not, thirty-five will roll up, then forty on the next day—and so on, day in day out, year in year out. But the town's mortality rate does not decline, the patients don't stop coming. To give serious help to forty out-patients between breakfast and lunch is a physical impossibility, and the upshot can only be total fraudulence. In the current year twelve thousand out-patients have been seen, and so twelve thousand people have been cheated, not to put too fme a point on it. But it was also out of the question to install seriously Ш patients in the wards and treat them on scientific principles since such principles as they possessed had nothing scientiftc about them. Moreover, if one left theory out of it and stuck blindly to the rules like other doctors, then the crying need was for hygiene and ventilation instead ofdirt, for healthy food instead of stinking sour cabbage stew, and for decent subordinates instead of crooks.
And then, why stop people dying if death is every man's normal, regular end ? Who cares if some huckster or bureaucrat survives an extra five or ten years? And then again, if one sees medicine's function as relieving pain with drugs the question naturally arises why pain should be relieved. Firstly, suffering is said to bring man nearer to perfection. And, secondly, if mankind should really learn to relieve its sufferings with pills and drops it would completely turn its back on religion and philosophy which have hitherto furnished a bulwark against all manner of ills, and have even brought happiness too. Pushkin suffere"d terribly before he died, and poor Heine lay paralysed for several years. So why should an Andrew Yefimovich or Matryona Savishna be spared pain when they lead such blank lives: lives that would be utterly void and amoeba-like but for these sufferings ?
Depressed by such considerations, Dr. Ragin let things slide and ceased to attend hospital every day.
VI
His routine is as follows. He usually rises at about eight a.m., dresses and has breakfast. Then he sits in his study reading or attends hospital. Here in the' narrow, dark, little hospital corridor sit out-patients waiting to see him. Orderlies and nurses dash past them clattering their boots on the brick floor, scrawny in-patients go through in smocks, corpses and slop-pails are hauled past, children cry, there is a piercing draught. Dr. Ragin knows what sufferings such an ambience causes to those Stricken with fever and tuberculosis, as also to impressionable patients in general, but it can't be helped. He is met in the surgery by his assistant Sergey Sergeyevich. This little fat man with his clean-shaven, freshly washed, plump face and soft, fluid manners resembles a senator more than a doctor's aide in his ample new suit. He has a vast practice in townwn, wears a white tie and thinks limself better qualified than the doctor, who has no practice at all. In a corner of the surgery stands a large icon in a case with a heavy icon-lamp and near that a big candle-holder with a white cover. On the walls are archbishops' portraits, a view of Svyatogorsk Monastery and wreaths of dry cornflowers. Sergey Sergeyevich is religious, he likes pomp and ceremony. That icon was put here at his expense. On Sundays a patient reads the hy^fls of praise aloud in the surgery on his orders and after the reading Sergey Sergeyevich tours the wards in person, wafting incense from a censer.
The patients are many and time is short, so transactions are confined to brief questions and the issue of some nostrum such as ammoniated liniment or castor oil. Dr. Ragin sits plunged in thought, his cheek propped on his fist, and asks his questions like an automaton. Sergey Sergeyevich also sits there, rubbing his hands and occasionally intervening.
'The reason why we fall ill and suffer privation,' says he, 'is that we pray badly to All-Merciful God. Yes, indeed.'
Dr. Ragin does not perform operations during surgery hours. He has been out of practice for so long and the sight of blood upsets him. When he has to open a child's mouth to look in its throat, lis head spins from the din in his ears and tears appear in his eyes if the child shouts and tries to ward him off with its little hands. Hurriedly prescribing something, he gestures for the mother to remove her child quickly.
At surgery he soon wearies of his patients' timidity, of their muddled talk, of the proximity of the grandiose Sergey Sergeyevich, of the portraits on the wall and of his own questions which he has been asking for over twenty years without variation. So he leaves after seeing half a dozen people and his assistant receives the rest after he has gone.
With the pleasant thought that he has not practised privately for ages, thank God, and that he won't be interrupted, Dr. Ragin sits down at the desk in his study and starts reading the moment he arrives home. He reads a lot and always much enjoys it. He spends half his salary on books, and three of the six rooms in his apartment are crammed with books and old magazines. His preference is for historical and philosophical works, and in the medical field he subscribes only to The
Physician, which he invariably starts reading from the back. He always reads non-stop for several hours on end, without tiring. He does not read rapidly and jerkily, as Ivan Gromov once did, but slowly, penetratingly, often pausing at passages which he likes or cannot understand. Near his book he always keeps a carafe of vodka, while a salted gherkin or pickled apple lies directly on the tablecloth, not on a plate. Every half hour he pours himself a glass ofvodka and drinks it without taking his eyes offhis book, then gropes for the gherkin and takes a small bite.
At three o'clock he cautiously approaches the kitchen door and coughs. 'Daryushka, how about a spot to eat?'
After a rather poor and messy meal Dr. Ragin paces his quarters, his arms folded on his chest. He is thinking. Four o'clock strikes, then five, and still he paces about, deep in thought. From time to time the kitchen door creaks and Daryushka's red, sleepy face appears.
'Isn't it time for your beer, Doctor?' she aiks anxiously.
'No, not yet,' he answers. 'I'll just, er, wait a little '
Towards evening Michael Averyanovich, the postmaster, usually arrives: the one person in townwn whose company does not depress Dr. Ragin. Once a very wealthy landowner and cavalry officer, he lost all his possessions and was driven to take a job with the post office in late middle age. He has a sound, healthy look, prolific grey side-whiskers, cultivated m^rners and a loud, agreeable voice. He is kind and sensitive, but irascible. When a post-office customer protests, expresses disagreement or simply starts an argument, Michael Averyanovich turns crimson and trembles from head to foot.
'Silence!' he thunders.
His post office has, accordingly, long rated as an institution terrifying to its visitors. Michael Averyanovich respects and likes Dr. Ragin for his erudition and high-mindedness, but he looks downwn on the other to^refolk, regarding them as subordinates.
'Well, here I am,' says he, entering Ragin's quarters. 'Hello there, my good fellow. You must be tired of me by now, what?'
'Far from it, I'm delighted to see you,' answers the doctor. 'You're always welcome.'
The friends sit on the study sofa, smoking in silence for a while.