The Complete Plays

AT THE SICKBED¹

Y пocтeли ·oльнoҐo

At the sickbed stand DOCTORS POPOV and MILLER, arguing:

POPOV. I confess I don’t hold much with conservative methods.

MILLER. Colleague, this has got nothing to do with being conservative. You go on about professions of faith and having no faith, orthodoxies or heterodoxies . . . I’m talking about diet, which ought to be changed in concreto . . .²

PATIENT. Ugh! (Gets out of bed with effort, goes to the door, and timidly peers into the next room). These days even walls have ears, after all.

POPOV. He’s complaining that his chest is constricted . . . it’s suffocating him . . . stifling him . . . Don’t treat him without a powerful stimulant . . .

The PATIENT groans and timidly peers out the window.

MILLER. But before you give him a stimulant, I would ask you to pay some attention to his general state of health . . .

PATIENT (turning pale). Ah, gentlemen, don’t talk so loudly! I’m a family man . . . a civil servant . . . There are people walking outside the windows . . . I have a maid-servant . . . Ah! (Waves his hand hopelessly.)

The Man without a Spleen

NOTES

1 Published in Splinters (Oskolki) 48 (December 1, 1884), p. 6.

2 Latin, definitively.