'But what does it matter?' Ragin wonders, opening his eyes. 'What does it all matter? There are antiseptics, there is Koch, there's Pasteur— yet the essence of things has not changed a bit, sickness and mortality still remain. People arrange dances and shows for the lunatics, but they still don't let them loose. So it's all a snare and delusion, and between the best Viennese clinic and my hospital there is no real difference at all.'
Yet grief and a feeling akin to envy prevent him from feeling detached: through fatigue, presumably. His heavy head slumps towards his book and he cushions his face in his hand.
'I am serving a bad cause,' thinks he, 'and I get a salary from those whom I swindle, so I'm dishonest. But I am nothing in myself, am I? I'm only part of an inevitable social evil. All the provincial officials are up to no good, they al get paid for doing nothing. So it's not my fault I'm dishonest, it's the fault of the age. If I had been born two hundred years later I'd have been different.'
When three o'clock strikes he puts out his lamp and goes to his bedroom. He doesn't feel sleepy.
In a fit of generosity Rural District had decided two years previously to make a yearly grant of three hundred roubles towards reinforcing the to^n hospital's medical staff until a country hospital should be opened. The to^n invited a local doctor, a Eugene Khobotov, to help Dr. Ragin. This Khobotov is very young, still in his twenties. He is tall and dark with broad cheek-bones and small eyes: his ancestors must have been Asiatic^, He arrived in town penniless with a small suitcase and an ugly young woman whom he calls his cook, and who has a young baby. Dr. Khobotov wears a peaked cap, jack-boots, and a short fur coat in winter. He is very friendly with Dr. Ragin's assistant Sergey Sergeyevich and with the local treasurer, but calls the other officials aristocrats for some reason and shuns them. In his whole flat there is only one book: The Latest Prescriptions of the Vienna Clinic for 1881. He always takes this book with him when visiting a patient. He plays billiards in the club of an evening, but dislikes cards. He is very much given to such expressions as 'rigmarole', 'mumbo-jumbo with trimmings', 'don't cloud the issue' and so on.
He attends hospital twice a week, does his ward rounds, sees his patients. Though dismayed by the cupping-glasses and total lack of antiseptics, he does not introduce improvements lest he offend Dr. Ragin. He considers his colleague Dr. Ragin an old rogue, suspects him of being pretty well off and secretly envies him. He would like Ragin's job.
One spring evening at the end of March, when the snow had all melted and starlings sang in the hospital garden, the doctor came out to see his friend the postmaster to the gate. At that very moment the little Jew Moses was entering the yard on his way back from a foraging expedition. He wore no hat, he had thin galoshes on bare feet and he carried a small bag which contained his takings.
'Give us a copeck,' he asked the doctor, shivering with cold and smiling.
Dr. Ragin, who could never say no, gave him a ten-copeck piece.
'This is quite wrong,' he thought, looking at the hare feet and thin red ankles. 'And in this damp weather too!'
Moved by mingled pity and distaste, he followed the Jew into the hut, glancing now at the bald pate, now at the ankles. As the doctor entered Nikita sprang from his pile ofjunk and stood to attention.
'Good day, Nikita,' said Dr. Ragin softly. 'You might perhaps give this Jew some hoots or something, or else he'll catch cold.'
'Very good, sir. I'll notify the manager, sir.'
'Please do. Ask him in my name, will you? Tell him I said so.'
The door leading from lobby to ward was open. Ivan Gromov was lying on his bed, leaning on one elbow and listening anxiously to the strange voice, when he suddenly recognized the doctor. Vibrating with fury, he leapt up and ran into the centre of the ward, his face crimson with rage, his eyes bulging.
'The doctor's here!' he shouted with a bellow of laughter. 'And about time too! Congratulations, gentlemen! The doctor honours us with his presence!
'You bloody rat!' he shrieked, stamping his foot in a frenzy never witnessed in the ward before. 'Kill the vermin! No, ^^ing's too good for him—drownwn him in the latrine!'
Hearing this, Dr. Ragin peeped into the ward from the lobby.
'What for?' he asked softly.
'What for?' shouted Gromov, approaching with a minatory air and frantically wrapping his smock around him. 'Well may you ask!
'Thief!' he brought out with abhorrence, his lips working as if he wanted to spit. 'Charlatan! Butcher!'
'Calm yourself,' said Dr. Ragin with a guilty smile. 'I have never stolen anything, I do assure you. As for the other things, you are probably much exaggerating. I see you are angry with me. Calm yourself, please, if you can, and tell me quietly what you're so angry about.'
'Well, why do you hold me here?'
'Because you are ill.'
'Yes, I am. But aren't there dozens—hundreds—of other madmen at large because you're too ignorant to distinguish them from the sane? So why should 1—why should these other wretches—be cooped up here as scapegoats for everyone else? You, your assistant, the manager and all the other hospital riff-raff are immeasurably lower on the moral scale than any one of us. So why are we shut up? Why not you? Where's the logic of it?'
'Morality and logic are neither here nor there. It's al due to chance. Whoever has been put in here stays put, and whoever hasn't runs about outside, that's all. There is no morality or logic about my being a doctor and your being a mental patient, it's sheer blind chance.'
'That gibberish means nothing to me,' said Gromov in a hollow voice, and sat on his bed.
Little Moses, whom Nikita hesitated to search in the doctor's presence, had deployed some hunks of bread, pieces ofpaper and little bones on his bed. Still shivering with cold, he intoned something quickly in Yiddish. He probably imagined that he had opened a shop.
'Let me out of here,' said Gromov in quavering tones.
't i, »
'I can't.'
'Why not? Why ever not?'
'It's not in my power, that's why. And just think: what would you gain if I did release you ? If you went off the townspeople or police would only pick you up and bring you back.'
'Yes, yes, quite true,' said Gromov, and wiped his forehead. 'It's awful. But what am I to do? You tell me that.'
Dr. Ragin liked Gromov's voice and intelligent, grimacing young face. Wanting to comfort the young man and soothe him, he sat down on the bed beside him.
'You ask me what to do,' Ragin said after a little thought. 'The best thing in your position would be to run away, but that's no use unfortunately as you'd only be picked up. Society's all-powerful when it protects itself from criminals, mental patients and other awkward customers. There's only one thing you can do: accept the idea that you're a fixture here.'