Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

Ward No. 6

I

In the hospital yard there is a small outbuilding surrounded by a dense jungle of burdock, nettles and wild hemp. The roof is rusty, half of the chimney has collapsed, the steps to the door are rotten and overgrown with grass; only traces of plaster remain. The front faces the main hospital and the rear looks out on to open country, from which it is cut off by the grey hospital fence topped with nails. These nails, with their points sticking upwards, the fence and the outbuilding itself have that mournful, god-forsaken look that you find only in our hospitals and prisons.

If you are not afraid of being stung by the nettles let us go down the narrow path leading to this outbuilding and see what is going on inside. We open the first door and enter the lobby. Here, against the walls and by the stove, are piled great mountains of hospital rubbish. Mattresses, old tattered smocks, trousers, blue-striped shirts, useless, worn-out footwear – all this junk lies jumbled up in crumpled heaps, rotting and giving off a suffocating stench.

On top of all this rubbish, his pipe perpetually clenched between his teeth, lies Nikita the warder, an old soldier with faded reddish-brown chevrons. He has a red nose, a grim, haggard face and beetling eyebrows that give him the expression of a steppe sheepdog. Although short, thin and wiry, he has an intimidating air and powerful fists. He is one of those simple, efficient, thoroughly dependable, thickheaded men who worship discipline above all else in this world and who are therefore convinced that patients are there to be beaten. He showers blows on face, chest, back – on whatever comes first – in the firm belief that this is the only way to maintain discipline.

Next you enter a large and spacious room which occupies the rest of the building, apart from the lobby. Here the walls are painted dirty blue, the ceiling is black with soot, as in a chimneyless peasant hut – obviously the stoves smoke in winter and fill the place with fumes. On the inside the windows are disfigured with iron bars. The floor is grey and splintery; there is a stench of sour cabbage, burnt candlewicks, bed-bugs and ammonia – a stench that immediately makes you think you are entering a zoo.

Around the room there are beds screwed to the floor. On these beds men in dark blue hospital smocks and old-fashioned nightcaps are lying or sitting: these are the lunatics.

There are five in all. Only one is of the gentry, the others are all from the lower classes. Nearest the door is a tall, thin, working-class man with a sleek ginger moustache and tear-filled eyes. There he sits, head propped on hands, staring at one fixed point. Day and night he grieves, shakes his head, sighs and smiles bitterly. Rarely does he join in conversation and usually he doesn’t reply to questions. When they bring him his food he eats and drinks like an automaton. Judging from his agonizing, hacking cough, his emaciated look and flushed cheeks, he is in the early stages of consumption.

Next is a small, lively, very active old man with a little pointed beard and the black fuzzy hair of a Negro. He spends all day sauntering from window to window, or squatting on his bed Turkish style; tirelessly, like a bullfinch, he chirrups, softly sings and titters. He shows his childish gaiety and liveliness of character at night as well, when he rises to pray – that is, to beat his breast with his fists and pick at the door. This is Moses the Jew, an imbecile who lost his reason about twenty years ago when his hat workshop burnt down.

He alone among the inmates of Ward No. 6 has permission to leave the outbuilding and he is even allowed to go out from the yard into the street. He has long enjoyed this privilege, probably because he is the hospital’s oldest resident and a gentle, harmless idiot, the town buffoon, a long-familiar sight in the street with his retinue of urchins and dogs. In his smock, comical night-cap and slippers – sometimes barefoot and even trouserless – he walks the streets, stopping in doorways and going into shops to beg for money. At one place they give him kvass, at another some bread and somewhere else a copeck, so that he usually returns to the ward rich and well-fed. Everything he brings back is confiscated by Nikita for his own use. The old soldier does this roughly and angrily, turning out his pockets and calling upon God to witness that he will never let the Jew out into the street again and that for him the worst thing in this world is lack of discipline.

Moses loves doing everyone a good turn. He fetches water for his fellow inmates, tucks them up in bed, promises to bring each of them a copeck when he comes back from the streets, and to make them all new caps. He spoonfeeds his paralytic left-hand neighbour. This he does not out of compassion or for humanitarian reasons, but because he wants to imitate his right-hand neighbour Gromov and he involuntarily bows to his authority.

Ivan Dmitrich Gromov, about thirty-three years old, a gentleman by birth, former court usher and low-ranking civil servant, suffers from persecution mania. He tends to lie curled up on his bed or pace from corner to corner, as if taking a constitutional; only very rarely does he sit still. He is always in a state of great agitation and excitement, and some vague, indeterminate feeling of apprehension makes him perpetually tense. The slightest rustle in the lobby or shout from outside is enough to make him raise his head and listen intently. Are they coming for him? Is it he they are looking for? And then his face takes on an expression of extreme anxiety and revulsion.

I like his broad, high-cheekboned face, always pale and miserable, seemingly mirroring a soul tormented by inner turmoil and constant dread. His grimaces are weird and troubled, but the delicate lines etched on his face by profound, genuine suffering, express intelligence and reason, and his eyes have a healthy, warm glow. And I like the character of the man himself – so polite and obliging, so exceptionally sensitive in his attitude to everyone except Nikita. If someone happens to drop a button or spoon he immediately leaps from his bed to pick it up. Every morning he wishes his companions good morning and bids them good night every time he goes to bed.

But madness is apparent in other things besides his grimaces and persistent nervous tension. Some evenings he wraps himself tightly in his smock and dashes from corner to corner and in between the beds, trembling all over, his teeth chattering. It is as if he has a high fever. From his sudden stops to look at the other inmates he clearly has something very important to say. However, no doubt realizing that they won’t listen to him or understand, he shakes his head impatiently and continues marching up and down. But soon the desire to speak outweighs all other considerations and he gives full vent to his feelings with a fervent, passionate tirade. His speech is disjointed, feverish, as if he is delirious, jerky and not always intelligible. But at the same time, in the way he talks, in his words and his voice, you can hear something that is extraordinarily fine. When he speaks you recognize both the lunatic and the human being in him. It is difficult to convey that mad gibberish on paper. He talks of human baseness, of violence trampling over truth, of the beautiful life that will eventually come to be on earth and of the barred windows – a constant reminder for him of the folly and cruelty of his oppressors. The result is a chaotic, incoherent medley of songs that are old but still fresh.

II

About twelve or fifteen years ago, in the town’s main street, there lived in his own house a civil servant called Gromov, respectable and well-to-do. He had two sons, Sergey and Ivan. While in his fourth year at university Sergey contracted galloping consumption and died. This death was the first of a whole series of misfortunes that suddenly overtook the Gromovs. A week after Sergey’s funeral the old man was prosecuted for forgery and embezzlement and died soon afterwards of typhus in the prison hospital. His house and all his property were sold off at auction and Ivan Dmitrich and his mother were left completely destitute.

When his father was alive Ivan Dmitrich had lived in St Petersburg, studied at the university, received an allowance of sixty to seventy roubles a month and had no idea of the meaning of poverty. But now he was forced to change his way of life drastically. From morning to night he had to do coaching for a mere pittance, copy out documents – yet still he went hungry, for all he earned went to support his mother. This kind of life was too much for him. He lost heart, became ill, abandoned his studies and went home. Here, in this little town, he obtained a teaching appointment in the district school through someone pulling strings for him, but he failed to get on with his colleagues, was disliked by the pupils and he soon gave it up. His mother died. For about six months he was unemployed, had to live on bread and water, and then he became a court usher. This post he held until he was discharged for reasons of ill health.

Never, even as a young student, had he looked like a healthy person. He was always pale and thin, and subject to colds, eating little and sleeping badly. One glass of wine went to his head and made him hysterical. He had always liked company, but thanks to his irritability and suspiciousness he was never able to make close friends with anyone. He always spoke with contempt about the townspeople, whose gross ignorance and torpid, brutish existence he found vile and disgusting. He talked in a high-pitched voice, loudly and excitedly, invariably indignant and exasperated, or with delight and surprise – and always sincerely.

Whatever you happened to be discussing with him he would always lead on to one and the same topic: life in that town was stifling and boring, society lacked any higher interests and led a lacklustre, aimless existence, varying it only with violence, crude debauchery and hypocrisy; the scoundrels were well-fed and well-dressed, while honest men ate crusts. There was a crying need for schools, an honest local newspaper, a theatre, public lectures, intellectual solidarity. It was time for society to wake up to its shortcomings and be duly shocked. When judging people he laid on the colours thickly, using only black and white and no intermediate shades. For him humanity was divided into the rogues and the honest: there was nothing in between. He always spoke passionately and rapturously of love and women, but he had never been in love.

Despite his harsh judgements and nervous character he was liked in the town and in his absence was affectionately called ‘dear old Vanya’. His innate tact, helpfulness, decency, moral integrity, along with his shabby frock-coat, sickly appearance and family misfortunes, inspired sympathy, kindness – and sadness. Besides, he was an educated man and very well read – according to the townspeople he knew everything and was considered a kind of walking encyclopedia.

He read a great deal and would sit for hours in the club, nervously plucking his beard and leafing through magazines and books: from his expression he was obviously not simply reading, but devouring, barely giving himself time to digest the contents. Evidently, reading was a function of his illness, since he swooped on whatever came to hand with equal avidity, even old newspapers and almanacs. At home he always read lying down.

III

One autumn morning, his coat collar turned up, Ivan was tramping through the muddy side-streets and back alleys to collect a fine from some tradesman. As always in the mornings he was in a sombre mood. In a certain alley he passed two convicts in foot-irons, escorted by four guards armed with rifles. Gromov had often passed convicts before and they always made him feel awkward and compassionate, but this time the encounter produced a particularly odd impression. Suddenly it occurred to him that he too might be clapped in irons like them and taken through the mud to prison. When he had seen the tradesman and was on his way home he ran into a police inspector friend near the post office who greeted him and walked a few steps down the street with him. For some reason this struck him as suspicious. At home visions of convicts and armed guards haunted him all day and some inexplicable, deep feeling of unease prevented him from reading and concentrating. In the evenings he did not light his lamp and he lay awake all night in constant fear he might be arrested, clapped in irons and thrown into prison. He was not aware of having committed any crime and could solemnly guarantee that he would never commit murder, arson or robbery. But then, it was so easy to commit a crime accidentally or unintentionally. And how about false accusations and a miscarriage of justice? All that was highly possible, nothing odd about it at all. Indeed, hadn’t the folk wisdom of old taught that one is never safe from poverty or prison? Given the present state of the law a miscarriage of justice was very much on the cards – and no wonder. People who adopt a professional, bureaucratic attitude to the suffering of others – judges, policemen and doctors, for example – become hardened to such a degree, from sheer force of habit, that even if they want to they cannot help treating their clients strictly by the book. In this respect they are no different from peasants who slaughter sheep and calves in their back yards without even noticing the blood. Having adopted this formal, soulless attitude to the individual, all a judge needs to deprive an innocent man of his civil rights and to sentence him to hard labour is time. Just give a judge time to observe the various formalities (for which he receives a salary) and then it’s all over. Fat chance, then, of finding any justice and protection in this filthy little town a hundred and twenty-five miles from the nearest station! And how ludicrous even to think of justice when society considers every act of violence as rational, expedient and necessary, when every act of mercy – an acquittal, for instance – provokes a whole explosion of unsatisfied vindictiveness!

Next morning Gromov awoke in terror, with a cold sweat on his forehead. Now he was absolutely convinced that he might be arrested any moment. The very fact that yesterday’s oppressive thoughts were still plaguing him meant that there must be a grain of truth in them. After all, those thoughts couldn’t have entered his head for no reason, could they?

A policeman strolled leisurely past his window: there must be a reason for that! And now two men came and stood near the house and did not say one word. Why were they silent?

And for Gromov there began whole days and nights of agony. Every person who passed the window or entered the yard was a spy or detective. Every day at noon a police inspector usually drove down the street in his carriage and pair, on his way from his out-of-town estate to police headquarters, but on each occasion Gromov had the feeling that he was driving faster than was warranted and that there was a peculiar expression on his face: obviously he was in a hurry to report that a very dangerous criminal was at large in the town. With every ring of the doorbell or knock at the gate Gromov shuddered; he went through agonies every time a stranger visited his landlady. If he met a policeman or gendarme he would start smiling and whistling in an effort to appear unconcerned. He lay awake for nights on end expecting arrest, snoring and sighing loudly so that his landlady would think he was asleep. After all, if a man didn’t sleep at night it could only mean that he was suffering pangs of conscience – and what evidence that would be! The actual facts of the matter and common sense convinced him that all these fears were absurd and neurotic, and that if one took a broader view there was nothing really so terrible in them as long as you had a clear conscience. But the more logically and consistently he reasoned, the more severe and excruciating his mental anguish became. He resembled the hermit who wanted to clear a plot for himself in virgin forest: the harder he wielded his axe the thicker and stronger grew the trees around him. Finally realizing how futile his efforts were, Gromov gave up the struggle and surrendered completely to despair and terror.

He became more solitary in his habits and avoided company. His job had always been disagreeable, now it was downright unbearable. He was afraid someone might trick him by slipping some money into his pocket and he would be accused of bribery. Or that he might accidentally make a mistake in an official document – that would be tantamount to forgery – or that he might lose money that had been entrusted to him. Strangely, never before had his mind been so supple and inventive as now, when every day he was busy thinking up a thousand different reasons for being seriously worried about his freedom and honour. On the other hand, his interest in the outside world had weakened significantly, particularly his interest in books – and his memory was failing badly.

In the spring, when the snow had melted, the semi-decomposed bodies of an old woman and a boy, showing signs of a violent death, were found in a gully near the cemetery. The townspeople talked of nothing but these corpses and the unidentified murderers. To make it quite clear to everyone that he wasn’t the murderer, Gromov would walk down the street smiling and whenever he met a friend he would turn pale, blush, and then declare that there was no crime more detestable than killing the weak and defenceless. But he soon tired of this pretence and after reflection decided that the best thing he could do would be to hide in the landlady’s cellar. He remained there for a whole day, then the next night and the day after that – and he was chilled to the bone. After that he waited until dark and sneaked back to his room like a thief. He stood in the middle of the room until daylight, stock-still, listening for every sound. Early in the morning, before sunrise, some stove-makers called on his landlady. Gromov knew very well that they had come to rebuild the kitchen stove, but his fear led him to believe that they were really policemen in disguise. He stole out of the flat and fled down the street in panic, hatless and coatless. Barking dogs ran after him, somewhere behind him a man shouted, the wind whistled in his ears and Gromov felt that all the violence in the world had joined forces behind his back and was pursuing him.

He was stopped and brought home. His landlady sent for the doctor. Dr Andrey Yefimych Ragin (of whom more later) prescribed cold compresses and laurel water drops. Then he shook his head sadly and left, telling the landlady that he wouldn’t be calling any more since it was wrong to prevent people going out of their minds. As he could not afford to have treatment at home Gromov was soon sent to hospital and put in the ward for venereal patients. He did not sleep at night, made trouble and disturbed the other patients, so he was quickly transferred to Ward No. 6 on Dr Ragin’s orders.

Within a year the townspeople had completely forgotten about Gromov and his books were dumped in a sledge in the landlady’s shed, from which they were pilfered by boys from the street.

IV

As I have already pointed out, Gromov’s left-hand neighbour is Moses the Jew, while his neighbour on the right is a bloated, almost globular peasant with a vacant, completely senseless expression. This torpid, gluttonous, filthy animal has long lost all capacity for thought or feeling. He constantly gives off an acrid, suffocating stench.

Nikita, who has to clear up after him, beats him mercilessly, taking huge swings and not pulling his punches. But it isn’t the beatings that are so horrifying – one can get used to beatings – but the fact that this supine animal makes no response to them, either by sound, movement or the look in his eyes, but merely rocks slightly, like a heavy barrel.

The fifth and last inmate of Ward No. 6 is a working-class man from the town, once a post office sorter. He is small, thin and fair, with a kind but somewhat cunning face. Judging from his clever, calm eyes that view everything brightly and cheerfully, he seems to have his wits about him and possesses some important and pleasant secret. Under his pillow and mattress he keeps something hidden that he refuses to show to anyone – not for fear that it might be stolen or confiscated, but out of sheer modesty. Sometimes he goes to the window, turns his back to the others, pins something to his chest and inspects it with lowered head. But if anyone happens to approach him he becomes flustered and tears it off his chest: his secret is easily guessed.

‘Congratulate me’, he often tells Gromov. ‘I’ve been awarded the Order of St Stanislas,¹ second class with star. Normally the second class with star is only awarded to foreigners, but for some reason they want to make an exception in my case’, he says smiling and shrugging his shoulders in astonishment. ‘Really, that’s the last thing I expected, I must say!’

‘I don’t know anything about these things’, Gromov gloomily replies.

‘Do you know what I shall get, sooner or later?’ the ex-sorter continues, slyly winking. ‘I’m going to be awarded the Swedish Polar Star. An order like that is definitely worth trying hard for. A white cross and black ribbon. Very handsome!’

Probably nowhere else in the world is life so boring as in this building. Every morning the patients – with the exception of the paralytic and the fat peasant – go into the lobby, where they wash themselves from a large tub and dry themselves on the skirts of their smocks. Then they drink tea from tin mugs which Nikita brings from the main block. Each patient gets one mugful. At noon they have sour cabbage soup and porridge; in the evening they have the porridge left over from lunch. Between meals they lie down, sleep, look out of the window and pace from corner to corner. And so it goes on day after day. Even the ex-sorter can talk of nothing but those decorations.

Fresh faces are seldom seen in Ward No. 6. The doctor has long stopped admitting new patients and in this world there are few people who are fond of visiting lunatic asylums. Once every two months Semyon Lazarich, the barber, appears. I had better not describe how he shears the patients – with Nikita’s assistance – and the panic on the patients’ faces every time they see his drunken, grinning face.

Besides the barber no one ever looks into the ward. Day after day the patients are condemned to see only Nikita.

However, a rather strange rumour has recently been spreading through the hospital: that a doctor has started paying visits to Ward No. 6.

V

A strange rumour indeed!

Dr Andrey Yefimych Ragin is a remarkable person in his own way. As a young man he was said to be extremely pious and intended to go into the church. After leaving school in 1863 he prepared to enter a theological college, but his father – a surgeon and doctor of medicine – had apparently poured scorn over these plans and declared categorically that he would disown him if he became a priest. How much truth there was in this I do not know, but Andrey Yefimych admitted more than once that he had never felt any vocation for medicine or, come to that, for any specialized science.

Nevertheless, he took a degree in medicine and never became a priest: he showed no signs of godliness and at the start of his medical career bore as little resemblance to a priest as he does now.

He has a heavy, coarse, rough-hewn look. His face, flat hair and strong, clumsy build are reminiscent of some pot-bellied, intemperate, cantankerous highway innkeeper. His face is stern and a mass of blue veins, his eyes are small, his nose red. Tall and broad-shouldered, he has enormous hands and feet. With one grasp of a fist he could squeeze the life out of you. Yet his tread is slow and he walks cautiously, stealthily. If he meets someone in a narrow corridor he is always first to give way and say ‘Sorry’ – not in a bass voice as you might expect, but in a soft, reedy tenor. He has a small growth on his neck which prevents him from wearing starched collars and therefore he always wears soft linen or cotton shirts. In no way does he dress like a doctor. He’ll wear the same shirt for ten years and when he does put on new clothes – usually from a cheap Jewish shop – they look just as worn and crumpled as the old ones. He sees patients, dines and goes visiting in one and the same frock-coat. But this isn’t from meanness, but simply because he couldn’t care less about his appearance.

When Dr Ragin first came to the town to take up his appointment, the so-called ‘charitable institution’ was in a dire state. In the wards, corridors and hospital yard one could hardly breathe for the stench. The male orderlies, the nurses and their children slept in the wards with the patients. They complained that the cockroaches, bed-bugs and mice made their lives a misery. Erysipelas was rampant in the surgical department. There were only two scalpels and not one thermometer in the whole hospital, and the baths were used for storing potatoes. The superintendent, matron, the assistant doctor robbed the patients, and the previous doctor, Ragin’s predecessor, was said to have sold surgical spirits on the quiet and to have set up an entire harem recruited from nurses and female patients. These goings-on were all too well known in the town and even exaggerated, but the people were not concerned in the least. Some excused them on the ground that only lower-class people and peasants went into hospital – and they had no reason to complain since they were far worse off at home. Surely they didn’t expect to be fed on roast pheasant, did they? Others argued that the town on its own could not be expected to maintain a good hospital without the help of the district council. They should thank God that they had a hospital at all, however bad it was. But the newly elected council refused to open a clinic either in town or in the neighbourhood, on the grounds that the town already had its own hospital.

After inspecting the hospital Ragin concluded that it was an immoral institution, highly injurious to the health of its patients. In his opinion it would be best to discharge the patients and close the hospital. But, he reasoned, will-power alone was not sufficient to achieve this – and it would have been useless anyway. Banish physical and moral filth from one place and it will turn up somewhere else. Therefore one should wait until it disappeared of its own accord. Besides, if people opened a hospital and tolerated it, that could only mean they needed it. All these prejudices, abominations and foul living conditions were necessary, since in the course of time they would be converted into something useful, like manure into fertile soil. There was nothing good in this world that did not contain some abomination in its earliest beginnings.

After taking up his appointment Ragin adopted a rather indifferent attitude to all these abuses, it seemed. All he did was ask the orderlies and nurses not to sleep in the wards and installed two instrument cupboards. But the superintendent, matron, the doctor’s assistant and the surgical erysipelas stayed put.

Ragin has great admiration for intelligence and honesty but he has neither the character nor the confidence in his own authority to establish a decent and reasonable environment. To give orders, to prohibit or to insist is quite beyond him. It is as if he has solemnly vowed never to raise his voice or use the imperative mood. He even finds it difficult to say ‘Give’ or ‘Bring’. When he is hungry he coughs irresolutely and tells his cook: ‘I wouldn’t say no to some tea…’; or: ‘I rather fancy some lunch.’ But he hasn’t the gumption to tell the superintendent to stop pilfering, or to sack him, or to do away completely with his unnecessary, parasitical position there. When Ragin is tricked or flattered, when he is handed some patently falsified accounts for signature, he turns red as beetroot and feels guilty – but still he signs. When patients complain of hunger or about rude nurses he becomes flustered.

‘All right, all right’, he mutters guiltily. ‘I’ll see to it later. Probably some sort of misunderstanding…’

At first Ragin worked very diligently. He received patients from morning to night, performed operations and even did midwifery. The ladies said that he was very attentive and an excellent diagnostician, especially of children’s ailments. But as time passed he became visibly weary of the monotony and obvious futility of his work. One day he might see thirty patients, the next the number would rise to thirty-five, the day after that to forty, and so on, day in day out, year in year out. Yet the death-rate in the town didn’t drop, nor did the number of patients who came for treatment. To provide forty patients with any real help in the few hours between breakfast and lunch was physically impossible and the result was deception, whether he liked it or not. In the current year he had seen twelve thousand patients – in plain language twelve thousand people had been duped. But to put seriously ill patients in wards and treat them according to the rules of medical science was impossible, since the rules they followed were in no way scientific. However, if one were to give up theorizing and follow the rules slavishly, like the other doctors, then the most urgent need was for proper hygiene and ventilation instead of filth, wholesome food instead of soup made from sour, stinking cabbage, and honest assistants, not thieves.

And why stop people dying if death was the normal, rightful end of everyone? What does it matter if some huckster or bureaucrat lives an extra five or ten years? If one views the aim of medicine as the mitigation of suffering, the question naturally arises: why mitigate it? In the first place, we are told that suffering leads mankind to perfection; in the second place, if man could teach himself how to alleviate suffering with pills and drops he would completely jettison religion and philosophy in which, up to now, he has found not only a defence against all kinds of ills, but even happiness. On his deathbed Pushkin² suffered terrible agonies. Heine,³ poor man, lay paralysed for years. So why prevent the illness of a mere Andrey Yefimych Ragin or Matryona Savishna, whose lives are empty and would be utterly vacuous and amoeba-like were it not for suffering?

Deflated by such arguments, Ragin lost heart and ended his daily visits to the hospital.

VI

This is his daily routine. Usually he rises at eight, dresses and has breakfast. Then he either sits in his study and reads or goes to the hospital where, in the narrow, dark little corridor, sit the out-patients, waiting for surgery to begin. Orderlies and nurses rush past, their boots clattering on the brick floor, emaciated patients pass through in their smocks, corpses and bedpans are carried out, children cry; there’s a terrible draught. Ragin knows what torment such an environment must be for the feverish and consumptive – and for all sensitive patients – but what can one do? In the surgery he is met by his assistant, Sergey Sergeich, a fat little man with a beardless, well-washed chubby face. With those gentle, relaxed manners and his new, loose-fitting suit he looks more like a senator than a doctor’s assistant. He has a huge private practice in town, wears a white tie⁴ and thinks he knows more than the doctor, who has no practice at all. In one corner of the surgery is a large icon in a case, with a large lamp, and next to it a candleholder in a white cover. On the walls are portraits of bishops, a view of Svyatogorsk Monastery⁵ and garlands of dried cornflowers. Sergey Sergeich is religious and loves magnificence. The icon was put there at his expense. On Sundays, at his command, a patient reads the Psalms aloud in the surgery and after the reading Sergey Sergeich goes in person around all the wards with his censer and burns incense in them.

There are many patients and little time, so the examinations are limited to a few questions and the distribution of remedies such as ammoniated liniment or castor oil. Dr Ragin sits there, his cheek resting on his fist, lost in thought and mechanically asking questions. Sergey Sergeich sits there too, rubbing his hands and putting in a word now and then.

‘We become ill and suffer hardship’, he says, ‘because we don’t pray enough to all-merciful God. Oh yes!’

During surgery hours Dr Ragin doesn’t perform any operations. He has long been out of practice and the sight of blood has an unpleasant effect on him. When he has to open a child’s mouth to examine its throat and the child cries and defends itself with its tiny hands, his head spins and his eyes fill with tears. He hastily writes out a prescription and gestures to the mother to take her child away as quickly as possible.

He soon tires of his patients’ timidity, of their silly talk and stupidity, of the proximity of the grandiose Sergey Sergeich, of the portraits on the walls and of his own questions that he has been asking over and over for more than twenty years. And he leaves after having seen five or six patients. The rest are seen by his assistant.

Buoyed by the pleasant thought that he has given up private practice long ago – thank God! – and that there is no one to disturb him, the moment he is home he sits at his study table and begins to read. He reads voraciously and always with great pleasure. Half his salary is spent on books and of the six rooms in his flat three are crammed with books and old magazines. Most of all he likes history and philosophy. The only medical journal he subscribes to is The Physician,⁶ which he always begins to read from the back. At each sitting he reads for several hours without break and this never tires him. He does not read as quickly and impulsively as Gromov used to do, but incisively, often pausing at passages that please him or which he does not understand. He always keeps a carafe of vodka on a table next to his books, with a gherkin or pickled apple lying on the table cloth, without a plate. Every half hour he pours himself a glass of vodka and drinks it without taking his eyes off his book. Then, again without looking up, he feels for the gherkin and takes a small bite.

At three o’clock he gingerly approaches the kitchen door and coughs. ‘Daryushka’, he says, ‘I wouldn’t mind some dinner.’ After a poor, badly served meal Dr Ragin wanders around his rooms, his arms crossed on his chest: he is thinking. Four o’clock strikes, then five, and still he is pacing and thinking. The kitchen door occasionally creaks and Daryushka’s sleepy red face appears.

‘Andrey Yefimych, isn’t it time for your beer?’⁷ she asks solicitously.

‘No, not yet’, he replies. ‘I’ll wait a bit…’

Towards evening Mikhail Averyanych, the postmaster, usually arrives. He is the one person in the entire town whose company doesn’t weary Ragin. Once Mikhail Averyanych had been a very wealthy landowner and cavalry officer, but he lost everything and straitened circumstances obliged him to take a job in late middle age at the post office. He has a lively, healthy look, magnificent grey sideburns, refined manners and a loud but pleasant voice. He is kind and sensitive, but hot-tempered. When a post office customer complains, voices dissent or simply starts arguing, Mikhail Averyanych turns purple, shakes all over and shouts thunderously: ‘Silence!’ Consequently the post office has long acquired the reputation of a fearsome place to be. Mikhail Averyanych likes and respects Ragin for his erudition and lofty principles, but he treats the other townspeople condescendingly, as if they were his subordinates.

‘Well, here I am!’ he says as he comes in. ‘How are you, my dear chap? I suppose you’re bored with me by now, eh?’

‘On the contrary, I’m delighted’, the doctor replies. ‘I’m always glad to see you!’

The friends sit on the study sofa and smoke for a while in silence.

‘Daryushka! I wonder if we might have a little beer?’ Ragin asks.

The first bottle is drunk – also in silence: the doctor is deep in thought and Mikhail Averyanych has the gay, animated expression of someone with fascinating things to relate. It is always the doctor who begins the conversation.

‘What a pity’, he slowly says, quietly shaking his head without looking at his friend (he never looks people in the eye). ‘What a great pity, my dear Mikhail Averyanych, there’s simply no one in this town who can or who would like to conduct an intelligent conversation. That’s a great drawback as far as we’re concerned. Even the educated classes don’t rise above mediocrity – the level of their development, I assure you, is in no way higher than that of the lower classes.’

‘Perfectly true! I do agree.’

‘And as you yourself know very well’, the doctor softly continues, with quiet deliberation, ‘in this world everything is insignificant and boring except the higher spiritual manifestations of the human intellect. The intellect draws a sharp distinction between animals and men, it indicates the divinity of man and to some extent even compensates him for the fact that he’s not immortal. Consequently, the mind is our only possible source of pleasure. But we don’t see or hear any evidence of intellect around us – that means we are deprived of genuine pleasure. True, we do have our books, but all that’s poles apart from living conversation and personal contact. If I may use a rather infelicitous simile, books are the accompaniment whilst conversation is the singing.’

‘Perfectly true!’

Silence follows. Daryushka emerges from the kitchen and with an expression of mute anguish and with her head propped on her fist she stops in the doorway to listen.

‘Oh dear!’ sighs Mikhail Averyanych. ‘It’s no good looking for intellect among the people of today!’

And he starts telling how healthy, cheerful and interesting life was in the old days, how enlightened the Russian intelligentsia was, how highly concepts of honour and friendship were valued. They would lend money without IOUs and to refuse a friend in need a helping hand was considered shameful. And what crusades there were, what adventures, skirmishes, what comrades-in-arms, what women! As for the Caucasus – such an amazing part of the world! There was that battalion commander’s wife, a really odd woman, who would dress as an officer and ride out at night into the mountains, alone, without any escort. She was said to be having an affair in a village up there with some petty prince.

‘Mother of God!’ sighs Daryushka.

‘And how we drank! And what fanatical liberals we were!’

Ragin listens but hears nothing: he is pondering something else as he sips his beer.

‘I often dream of clever people and having conversations with them’, he says unexpectedly, interrupting Mikhail Averyanych. ‘My father gave me an excellent education, but he was influenced by the ideas of the sixties and forced me to become a doctor. I think that had I disobeyed him I might now be at the very hub of current intellectual activity. Probably I’d be a member of some faculty. Of course, the intellect isn’t eternal either, it’s transitory, but you know very well the great liking I have for it. Life is a vicious trap. When a thinking person reaches manhood and his consciousness has matured, he cannot help thinking that he’s caught in a snare, as it were, from which there’s no escape. In fact he’s been called into life from non-existence against his will, by some sort of accident… Why? If he wants to know the meaning and purpose of his existence, either he meets with silence or is palmed off with some nonsense. He knocks, but the door isn’t opened. Death creeps up on him – also against his will. It’s the same with people in prison: united in common misfortune they find things easier if they all join together. And similarly in life – you don’t notice these pitfalls when men inclined towards analysis and generalization come together and spend their time exchanging proud, unfettered ideas. In this sense the intellect is an indispensable source of enjoyment.’

‘Perfectly true!’

With his eyes still averted from his friend, in a quiet voice and constantly pausing, Ragin continues to discuss clever people and conversations with them, while Mikhail Averyanych is all ears.

‘Perfectly true!’ he agrees.

‘So you don’t believe in the immortality of the soul?’ the postmaster suddenly asks.

‘No, my dear Mikhail Averyanych, I do not. Nor do I have any reason to believe.’

‘I must say, I have my doubts too. Even so, I still have the feeling that I shall never die. “Heavens!” I think to myself, “you old fogey! It’s time for you to die!” But deep down some little voice keeps telling me: “Don’t you believe it, you’ll never die!” ’

Soon after nine o’clock Mikhail Averyanych leaves. As he puts on his fur coat in the hall he says with a sigh:

‘What a godforsaken hole fate has landed us in! And what’s most annoying – this is where we’ll have to die. Oh dear!’

VII

After seeing his friend out Ragin sits at his table and starts reading again. The evening hush, and then the stillness of night, are not broken by a single sound. Time seems to be standing still, becomes transfixed, like the doctor over his book, so that nothing seems to exist except the book and the lamp with its green shade. The doctor’s coarse, rough face gradually lights up with a smile of deep emotion and delight at the achievements of the mind of man. ‘Oh, why isn’t man immortal?’ he asks himself. ‘Why these cerebral cortices and convolutions, why vision, speech, sensation, genius, if all are doomed to pass into the soil and finally grow cold with the earth’s crust and then to be borne for millions of years with the earth around the sun, without rhyme or reason? Merely for him to grow cold and be whirled around there was absolutely no need to draw man – with his sublime, almost divine intellect – out of nothingness and then to turn him into clay, as if in mockery.

‘Transmutation of matter! But how cowardly to console oneself with this substitute for immortality! The unconscious processes at work in nature are even lower than human folly, for in folly there is at least consciousness and volition, but in these processes there is nothing! Only a coward who displays more fear than dignity in the face of death can comfort himself with the thought that in the course of time his body will be reborn, to exist as grass, as a stone, as a toad. It is just as strange to seek immortality in the transmutation of matter as predicting a brilliant future for the case after a valuable violin has been smashed and rendered useless.’

When the clock strikes Ragin leans back in his chair and closes his eyes to reflect for a while. Moved by the fine thoughts he has gleaned from his book, he happens to review his past and present. The past is loathsome and best forgotten. And his present is no different from the past. He knows that at the very moment his thoughts are whirling around the sun with the frozen earth, men are lying tormented by illness and physical filth in the huge block next to his lodgings. Perhaps one of them cannot sleep for the insects, is contracting erysipelas and groaning because his bandages are too tight.

Perhaps patients are playing cards with the nurses and drinking vodka. In the current year twelve thousand people had been duped; the whole hospital regime was based on pilfering, squabbles, slander, favouritism and gross quackery, just as it had been twenty years before – and it still was an immoral institution, extremely damaging to the patients’ health. He knows that behind the barred windows in Ward No. 6 Nikita beats the patients with his fists and that every day Moses goes begging in the streets.

For all that he is well aware that over the past twenty-five years a fantastic change had taken place in medicine. In his university days he used to think that medicine would soon suffer the fate of alchemy or metaphysics but now, when he reads at night, the advances in medicine move him deeply, fill him with astonishment and even with delight. And in fact, what unexpected brilliance! What a revolution! Thanks to antiseptics, operations are being performed that the great Pirogov⁸ did not think possible, even in his wildest dreams. Ordinary district doctors do not think twice about operating on the knee joint, out of one hundred stomach operations there had been only one fatality, whilst gallstones are so trivial they are not even written about. Syphilis is being treated with radically new methods. And what about the theory of heredity, hypnotism, the discoveries of Pasteur⁹ and Koch,¹⁰ hygiene and statistics and our own Russian rural medicine? Compared with the past, psychiatry with its current classification¹¹ of diseases, its diagnostic procedures and methods of treatment, had taken an enormous leap forward. No longer are the insane doused with cold water. Nor are they put in straitjackets: they are treated as human beings and according to newspaper reports they even have their own dramatic entertainments and dances. Ragin knows very well that with modern views and tastes as they are such abominations as Ward No. 6 are possible only in a small town a hundred and twenty-five miles from the nearest railway, where the mayor and councillors are semi-literate barbarians who look upon doctors as high priests who must be trusted blindly, even if they pour molten lead down patients’ throats. Anywhere else the public and the press would have smashed this little Bastille to pieces long ago.

‘Well, what’s the upshot of all this?’ Ragin asks himself, opening his eyes. ‘What does it prove? Antiseptics, Koch, Pasteur are all very well, but nothing has basically changed. Sickness and mortality still exist. They put on shows and organize dances for the lunatics, but still they don’t let them go out when they want to. Therefore it’s all nonsense and vanity, and there’s really no difference between the best clinic in Vienna and my hospital.’

But vexation and a feeling akin to envy do not allow him to remain indifferent. Exhaustion is probably to blame. His weary head nods towards his book, he cushions his face on his hands to make himself more comfortable.

‘I’m serving a harmful cause’, he thinks, ‘and I receive a salary from those I deceive. So I’m dishonest. But then I’m nothing by myself, just a mere particle in a necessary social evil. All the district officials are crooks and they get paid for doing nothing… That means it’s not myself who is guilty of dishonesty, but the times we live in… If I were to be born two hundred years from now I’d be a different person.’

When the clock strikes three he puts the lamp out and goes to his bedroom. But he doesn’t feel sleepy.

VIII

Two years before, in a fit of generosity, the Rural District Council decided to allocate three hundred roubles annually to reinforce the personnel at the town hospital until the district hospital was opened. So they invited a local doctor, Yevgeny Fyodorych Khobotov to help out. This Khobotov is a very young man, not yet thirty, tall and dark, with broad cheekbones and tiny eyes: most likely his ancestors were of Asiatic descent. He arrived without a copeck to his name, with only a small suitcase and accompanied by a young, most unattractive woman whom he called his cook. This woman had a young baby. Yevgeny Fyodorych wears a peaked cap, top boots and a sheepskin jacket in winter. He soon became great friends with Ragin’s assistant Sergey Sergeich and also with the hospital bursar, but for some reason he refers to the rest of the officials as aristocrats and avoids them. In his entire flat there is only one book – Latest Prescriptions of the Vienna Clinic 1881. This little book he invariably takes with him when visiting patients. In the evenings he plays billiards at the club, but he doesn’t care for cards. In conversations he simply loves using such expressions as: ‘What a palaver!,’ ‘Hocus-pocus with icing on top,’ ‘Don’t confuse the issue,’ and so on.

He visits the hospital about twice a week, inspects the wards and sees out-patients. The total lack of antiseptics and cupping-glasses worries him, but he doesn’t introduce any changes for fear of upsetting Ragin, whom he considers an old rogue, suspects of being a man of means and secretly envies. He would love to have Ragin’s job.

IX

One spring-like evening at the end of March, when the snow had melted and starlings sang in the hospital garden, the doctor came out to see his friend the postmaster to the gate. At that moment the Jew Moses happened to come into the yard, bearing booty from the town. He was hatless, wore thin galoshes over his sockless feet and held a small bag of coins he had collected.

‘Give us a copeck!’ he asked the doctor, shivering from the cold and grinning.

Ragin, who could never refuse, gave him a ten copeck piece.

‘That’s very bad’, he thought as he glanced at the Jew’s bare legs and thin red ankles. ‘It’s wet outside.’

Prompted by a feeling close to both compassion and squeamishness, he followed the Jew into the building, glancing in turn at his bald head and then at his ankles. When the doctor entered Nikita leapt up from his rubbish heap and stood to attention.

‘Good evening, Nikita’, Ragin said softly. ‘Perhaps you could let this Jew have a pair of boots, he might catch cold.’

‘Yes, sir, I’ll tell the superintendent.’

‘Please do that. Ask him in my name. Tell him I requested it.’

The door from the lobby into the ward was open. Gromov, who was lying on his bed, leaning on one elbow and listening anxiously to the strange voice, suddenly ran into the middle of the ward with a flushed, malicious face and his eyes bulging.

‘The doctor’s arrived!’ he shouted and burst out laughing. ‘He’s finally made it! Gentlemen, I offer my congratulations, the doctor’s honouring us with his presence. Bloody vermin!’ he screeched and stamped his foot in a fit of rage never before seen in the ward. ‘Exterminate the vermin! No, killing’s not good enough! Drown him in the latrines!’

Hearing this Ragin peeped into the ward.

‘For what?’ he softly asked.

‘For what!?’ shouted Gromov, approaching him menacingly and frenetically wrapping his smock around himself. ‘For what? Thief!’ he said disgustedly and twisted his lips as if about to spit. ‘Charlatan! Hangman!’

‘Calm yourself’, Ragin said, smiling guiltily. ‘I assure you I’ve never stolen anything and you’re probably greatly exaggerating the other things. I see you’re angry with me. Calm yourself if you can, I beg you, and tell me why you’re so angry.’

‘Why are you keeping me here?’

‘Because you’re ill.’

‘Yes, I’m ill. But tens, hundreds of madmen roam around at will, because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish them from the sane. Why do I and all these other poor devils have to be cooped up here like scapegoats? You, your assistant, the superintendent and all you hospital scum are, as far as morals go, infinitely lower than each one of us, so why are we cooped up and you aren’t? Where’s the logic?’

‘Morals and logic have nothing to do with it. It all depends on chance. Those who are put here stay here, and those who aren’t are free. That’s all there is to it. There’s no morality or logic in the fact that I’m a doctor and you’re mentally ill – it’s pure chance.’

‘I don’t understand this rubbish’, Gromov said in a hollow voice and sat on his bed.

Moses, whom Nikita did not dare search in the doctor’s presence, spread out his booty on the bed – bits of bread, paper and small bones. Still shivering from the cold he rapidly muttered something in Yiddish, in a singsong voice. Probably he imagined he had opened a shop.

‘Set me free!’ Gromov said – and his voice trembled.

‘I cannot.’

‘Why not? Why ever not?’

‘Because it’s not in my power. Just think for yourself: what good would it do you if I released you? All right, go. The townspeople or the police will only arrest you and send you back here.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s true’, Gromov murmured, rubbing his forehead. ‘It’s terrible! But what can I do? What? ’

Ragin took a liking to Gromov’s voice and his youthful, clever, grimacing face. He wanted to be kind to the young man and calm him down, so he sat beside him on the bed and thought for a moment.

‘You asked me what you can do’, he said. ‘The best thing in your position would be to run away from here. But unfortunately that’s useless. You would be arrested. When society decides to protect itself from criminals, the mentally ill and undesirables in general, it is invincible. There’s only one thing left: console yourself with the thought that your stay here is necessary.’

‘It’s not necessary to anyone.’

‘Once prisons and lunatic asylums exist someone has to live in them. If it isn’t you it will be me; if not me, then someone else. But you wait. In the distant future, when prisons and asylums are no longer, there will be neither barred windows nor hospital smocks. Such a time is bound to come – sooner or later, of course.’

Gromov smiled sarcastically.

‘You’re joking’, he said, screwing up his eyes. ‘People like yourself and your assistant Nikita couldn’t care less about the future, but you can rest assured, my dear sir, better times will come! What if I do express myself tritely – yes, you may laugh! – but one day the dawn of a new life will begin to glow, truth will triumph and our day will come! I shan’t live to see it – I’ll have pegged out by then – but someone’s great grandchildren will. I salute them with all my heart and soul. I rejoice for them! Forward! May God help you, my friends!’

Gromov’s eyes gleamed. He stood up and stretched his arms towards the window.

‘I bless you from behind these bars!’ he continued, his voice quivering with emotion. ‘Long live truth! I rejoice!’

‘I can see no particular reason for rejoicing’, Ragin said, finding Gromov’s gesticulations rather theatrical, but at the same time very pleasing. ‘There will be no more prisons or asylums and truth, as you chose to put it, will triumph. But the essence of things will not change, the law of nature will remain the same. People will fall ill, grow old and die, just as now. However magnificent the dawn that will illumine your life, in the end you’ll still be nailed down in your coffin and thrown into a pit.’

‘What about immortality?’

‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

‘You may not believe, but I do. Someone in Voltaire or Dostoyevsky¹² says that if there were no God man would have invented Him. But I strongly believe that, if there’s no immortality, man’s powerful intellect will invent it sooner or later.’

‘Well said’, replied Ragin, smiling with pleasure. ‘It’s good that you believe. With faith such as yours you would be living in clover even if you were bricked up in a wall. Did you have a good education?’

‘Yes, I went to university, but I never graduated.’

‘You’re a thoughtful, serious-minded man. You’re the kind who would find peace of mind in any surroundings. Unfettered, profound reflection that aspires to unravel the meaning of life, utter contempt for the vain bustle of this world – these are two blessings higher than which man has known nothing. And these you can possess, even if you lived behind three rows of bars. Diogenes¹³ lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the monarchs of this world.’

‘Your Diogenes was a blockhead’, Gromov gloomily intoned. ‘Why do you keep telling me about Diogenes and some sort of comprehension of life?’ he said, suddenly flaring up and leaping to his feet. ‘I love life! I love it passionately! I suffer from persecution mania, from a constant, agonizing dread, but there are moments when I’m seized by a lust for life and then I’m afraid I might go out of my mind. I long to live. Oh, so much!’

In great excitement he walked up and down the ward.

‘When I daydream I have visions!’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Certain people come and visit me, I hear voices and music and it seems as if I’m walking through some woods, or along the seashore and I have a terrible yearning for all the hustle and bustle. Tell me, what’s the latest news?’ Gromov asked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Do you mean in town or in general?’

‘First tell me about the town, then things in general.’

‘Well, what shall I tell you? It’s excruciatingly boring in the town… No one to talk to, no one to listen. There are no new faces. But not so long ago a young doctor by the name of Khobotov arrived.’

‘He arrived when I was still around. What’s he like – a complete oaf?’

‘Yes, a bit of a philistine. Do you know, it’s a strange thing… by all accounts, in Moscow and St Petersburg there’s no intellectual stagnation, things are buzzing, so there must be real people there. But for some reason they persist in sending us people who are pretty useless. It’s an unlucky town!’

‘Yes, an unlucky town’, Gromov sighed and then burst out laughing. ‘But how are things in general? What do the papers and magazines say?’

In the ward it was already dark. The doctor rose and, still standing, began to describe what was being written abroad and in Russia, and what the latest intellectual trends were. Gromov listened attentively and asked questions. But suddenly, as if he had remembered something awful, he clutched his head and threw himself on his bed with his back to the doctor.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ragin asked.

‘That’s all you’re going to hear from me today!’ Gromov snapped. ‘Leave me alone!’

‘But why?’

‘I’m telling you to leave me alone. To hell with it!’

Ragin shrugged his shoulders, sighed and went out. As he passed through the lobby he said:

‘I wonder if you wouldn’t mind cleaning up a bit here, Nikita. There’s a terrible smell!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What a pleasant young man!’ thought Ragin as he returned to his lodgings. ‘All the time I’ve been here he’s the first person I can really talk to. He can argue and he takes an interest in what really matters.’

After reading and going to bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about Gromov and when he awoke next morning he remembered that he had got to know an intelligent, interesting man – and so he decided to pay him another visit at the first opportunity.

X

Gromov was lying in the same position as on the day before, clutching his head and with his legs tucked underneath him. His face was hidden.

‘Good morning, my friend’, said Ragin. ‘You’re not sleeping?’

‘Firstly, I’m not your friend’, Gromov replied into his pillow, ‘and secondly you’re wasting your time. You won’t get one word out of me.’

‘That’s odd’, Ragin muttered. ‘Yesterday we were having such a nice friendly chat, but suddenly you got the needle and broke off. Probably it’s because I expressed myself awkwardly, or perhaps because I expressed an opinion that conflicted with your own convictions.’

‘You won’t catch me out!’ Gromov said, raising himself a little and looking at the doctor ironically and anxiously. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘You can go and do your spying and interrogating somewhere else, you’re wasting your time here. I saw very well what you were up to yesterday.’

‘What a crazy idea!’ laughed the doctor. ‘So you suppose I’m a spy?’

‘Yes, I do suppose! Whether you’re a spy or a doctor sent to test me… it makes no difference…’

‘Well, I’m sorry to say this, but you really are a strange person!’

The doctor sat on a stool beside the bed and shook his head reproachfully.

‘Let’s suppose you’re right’, he said. ‘Let’s suppose I’m acting treacherously and trying to catch you out, so that I can hand you over to the police. They’d arrest you and put you on trial. But will you be any worse off in court or in prison than here? And would deportation or hard labour in Siberia be any worse than staying cooped up here in this building? I don’t think so… So what are you afraid of?’

These words visibly affected Gromov… he calmly sat down.

It was about half past four, the time when Ragin usually paced his rooms and Daryushka asked if it was time for his beer. The weather was calm and bright.

‘I went for a stroll after dinner and I thought I’d drop in, as you can see’, said the doctor. ‘Spring is here.’

‘What month is it? March?’ Gromov asked.

‘Yes, the end of March.’

‘Is it very muddy outside?’

‘Not very. The garden paths are clear.’

‘It would be nice to go for a carriage drive somewhere out of town now’, Gromov said, rubbing his bloodshot eyes as if he were sleepy. ‘And then come back to a warm, cosy study… and let a decent doctor cure my headache… For years now I haven’t lived like a human being. It’s so foul here! Unbearably disgusting!’

After yesterday evening’s excitement he was tired and sluggish, and he spoke reluctantly. His fingers twitched and clearly he was suffering from a severe headache.

‘Between a warm comfortable study and this ward there’s absolutely no difference’, Ragin said. ‘Man finds peace and contentment

within himself, not outside.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The ordinary man finds good or evil outside himself, that is, in carriage rides or in warm studies. But the thinking man finds them within himself.’

‘Go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it’s warm and where it smells of orange blossom. But it doesn’t suit our climate. To whom was I talking about Diogenes yesterday? Was it you?’

‘Yes, it was yesterday, to me.’

‘Diogenes didn’t need a study or a warm house. He was warm enough without them. It’s all very well, lying in his little tub and eating oranges and olives! But just let him come and live in Russia – he’ll be longing for a warm room in May, let alone December! He’d be doubled up with the cold.’

‘No. Cold, like any other kind of pain, can be ignored. Marcus Aurelius¹⁴ said: “Pain is the living concept of pain. Will yourself to change this concept, shrug it off, stop complaining and the pain will go.” It’s true. Sages or any thinking, reflective men are distinguished by this very contempt for suffering. They are always contented and they are surprised by nothing.’

‘So, I’m an idiot, because I suffer, because I’m discontented and because I marvel at man’s baseness.’

‘You are wrong. If you stopped to think you’d begin to understand how trifling these external things that disturb us really are. You must strive to find the meaning of life, for there lies true bliss.’

‘Understand?’ Gromov said, frowning. ‘External? Internal? I’m sorry, but I don’t follow. I know only one thing’, he added, rising and glaring at the doctor. ‘I do know that God created me from warm blood and nerves. Oh yes, sir! And organic tissue, if it bears the spark of life, reacts to all sorts of stimuli. And I do react! I react to pain by weeping or shouting, to baseness with indignation, to vileness with revulsion. In my opinion that’s a fact, that’s what’s called life. The lower the organism the less sensitive it is and the more feebly it reacts to stimuli. The higher it is, the more sensitively and energetically it responds to the external world. How is it you don’t know that? Fancy a doctor not knowing such plain facts! To despise suffering, to be ever contented and never marvel at anything you must sink to his level!’ – and Gromov pointed to the fat, bloated peasant – ‘or you must so harden yourself by suffering that you lose all sensitivity. In other words, you must stop living. I’m sorry, I’m no sage or philosopher’, Gromov continued irritably, ‘and that kind of stuff is beyond me. I’m not much good at arguing.’

‘But you argue very well.’

‘The Stoics, whom you are travestying, were remarkable men, but their teaching came to a dead end two thousand years ago and hasn’t advanced one inch since. Nor will it ever advance, since it’s not practical or applicable to real life. It has only succeeded with the minority, which spends its time studying and sampling all sorts of creeds, but the majority never understood it. A doctrine that preaches indifference to wealth and creature comforts, contempt for suffering and death, is beyond the comprehension of the vast majority, since this majority never had any knowledge of wealth or creature comforts. And for that majority contempt for suffering would amount to contempt for life itself, since man’s whole being consists of the sensations of cold, hunger, insults, loss and a Hamlet-like fear of death. These sensations are the quintessence of life, which might strike you as tiresome or hateful, but is never to be despised. And so I repeat, the teaching of the Stoics can never have a future. On the other hand, as you can see, from the beginning of the century to the present day, the struggle for survival, sensitivity to pain, responsiveness to stimuli, are all moving forward…’

Gromov suddenly lost the thread, paused and rubbed his forehead in annoyance.

‘I had something important to say, but I’m all muddled up…’ he said. ‘What was I saying? Oh yes! What I wanted to say is this: one of the Stoics sold himself into slavery as a ransom for a friend. So, as you can see for yourself, the Stoic reacted to a stimulus, since so magnanimous a deed as self-annihilation on behalf of one’s neighbour calls for an outraged, feeling heart. Here in prison I’ve forgotten all I ever learned, otherwise I would have remembered something else to illustrate my point. Now, shall we consider Christ? He reacted to reality with weeping, smiling, grieving, being angry, with yearning even. He didn’t go forth to meet suffering with a smile, nor did He despise death, but prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that He might not drain the cup of woe.’¹⁵

Gromov laughed and sat down.

‘Let’s suppose peace and contentment are not outside a man, but within him’, he said. ‘Let’s suppose we should despise suffering and marvel at nothing. But what grounds do you have for preaching this? Are you a sage? A philosopher?’

‘No, I’m not a philosopher, but everyone should preach this creed because it’s rational.’

‘But I’d like to know why you consider yourself competent to pass judgement on the meaning of life, on contempt for suffering and the rest of it? Have you ever suffered? Do you have any conception of suffering? Tell me, were you beaten as a child?’

‘No, my parents were averse to corporal punishment.’

‘But I was cruelly beaten by my father. He was a harsh, haemor-rhoidal bureaucrat with a long nose and yellow neck. But let’s talk about you. In your whole life no one so much as laid a finger on you, no one frightened you, no one beat you. You’re as strong as an ox. You grew up under your father’s wing and studied at his expense. You immediately found yourself a nice cushy job. For more than twenty years you lived rent-free, with heating, lighting, servants. At the same time you had the right to work how and as much as you pleased – even to do nothing. By nature you’re idle and feeble, you’ve tried to arrange your life so that nothing disturbs you or forces you to budge from where you are. You delegated your work to your assistant and other scum, while you yourself basked in the warmth and quiet. You piled up money, read the occasional book, sweetened your life with reflections on all kinds of elevated rubbish and became a hard drinker.’ (Gromov glanced at the doctor’s red nose.) ‘In other words, you’ve never seen life, you know nothing about it and are acquainted with reality only in theory. But you despise suffering and are surprised at nothing for one very simple reason: your philosophy of vanity of vanities, the external and internal, contempt for life, suffering and death, understanding the meaning of life, the True Good – that kind of philosophy’s best suited to a Russian layabout. For instance, you see a peasant beating his wife. Why interfere? Let him beat her! They’ll both die sooner or later anyway. Besides, it’s the person who does the beating who injures himself, not his victim. Getting drunk is stupid and indecent, but you’ll die whether you drink or not. A peasant woman comes to you with toothache. What of it? Pain is only our idea of pain and besides, in this world you can’t expect to get away without illness, all of us must die. So, away with you woman and don’t interfere with my thoughts or my vodka! A young man comes for advice: what should he do, how should he live? Someone else would have stopped to think before replying, but you’re always ready with an answer: aspire to discover the meaning of life or the True Good. But what is this fantastic “True Good”? There’s no answer, of course. Here we are imprisoned behind bars, left to rot, tortured, but all that’s beautiful and rational, because there’s absolutely no difference between this ward and a warm comfortable study! A very convenient philosophy – just do nothing, your conscience is clear and you can consider yourself a very wise man… No, my dear sir, that’s not philosophy or reflection or breadth of vision, but idleness, mortification of the flesh and stupefaction…

‘Yes!’ Gromov declared, losing his temper again. ‘You despise suffering, but just catch your finger in the door and you’ll bawl your head off!’

‘But perhaps I wouldn’t bawl my head off’, Ragin said with a gentle smile.

‘Oh yes you would! Suppose you were suddenly paralysed or some bumptious moron used his position and rank to insult you in public and you knew he’d get away with it – then you’d know what it means to tell others to aspire to understanding and the True Good!’

‘Highly original!’ Ragin exclaimed, beaming with pleasure and rubbing his hands. ‘I’m agreeably impressed by your love of generalization and the character sketch you’ve just been good enough to draw of me is simply brilliant. Talking to you gives me immense pleasure, I must confess. Well now, you’ve had your say so please be good enough to listen to what I have to say…’

XI

This conversation lasted about another hour and clearly made a deep impression on Ragin. He took to visiting the ward every day. He went there in the morning and afternoon, and often darkness would find him in discussion with Gromov. At first Gromov was wary of him, suspected him of evil motives and openly voiced his hostility. But then he grew used to him and his brusque manner became one of indulgent irony.

A rumour soon spread through the hospital that Dr Ragin was paying daily visits to Ward No. 6. No one – neither the medical assistant, nor Nikita, nor the nurses – could understand why he went there. Why did he sit there for hours on end? What did he talk about? Why didn’t he write any prescriptions? His behaviour struck everyone as most odd. Mikhail Averyanych often failed to find him at home – something that had never happened before – and Daryushka was most anxious, since the doctor did not drink his beer at the usual time and sometimes was even late for dinner.

One day – it was the end of June – Dr Khobotov went to see Dr Ragin on business. Not finding him at home he went to look for him in the yard, where he was told that the old doctor had gone to see the mental patients. When he entered the building and paused in the lobby, he heard the following conversation:

‘We’ll never see eye to eye and you’ll never succeed in converting me to your faith’, Gromov was saying irritably. ‘You know nothing of reality, you’ve never suffered, you’ve only fed on the sufferings of others, like a leech. But I’ve suffered constantly from the day I was born. Therefore I’m telling you bluntly that I consider myself superior to you, more competent in every way. It’s not for you to teach me!’

‘I certainly would not presume to convert you to my faith’, Ragin said softly, regretting the other’s reluctance to understand him. ‘But that’s not the point, my friend. The point isn’t that you have suffered, whereas I haven’t. Suffering and joy are transitory; let’s forget them – and good luck to them! The point is, you and I are thinking men; we see ourselves as people who are capable of thinking and arguing, and this creates a bond between us, however much our views may differ. If you only knew, my friend, how weary I am of this universal idiocy, this mediocrity, this obtuseness. If you only knew the joy it gives me every time I have a talk with you! You’re an intelligent man and I thoroughly enjoy your company.’

Khobotov opened the door an inch or so and peered into the ward: Gromov in his night-cap and Dr Ragin were sitting side by side on the bed. The lunatic was pulling faces, shuddering and convulsively clutching his smock. The doctor sat quite still, his head bowed, and his face was flushed, helpless and sad. Khobotov shrugged his shoulders, grinned and exchanged glances with Nikita, who also shrugged his shoulders.

Next day Khobotov and the medical assistant went to the building. Both of them stood in the lobby and listened.

‘Seems like the old boy’s gone off his rocker!’ Khobotov remarked as he left.

‘Lord have mercy on us sinners!’ sighed the grandiose Sergey Sergeich, carefully skirting the puddles to avoid soiling his brightly polished boots. ‘I must confess, my dear Khobotov, I’ve been expecting this for some time!’

XII

From now on Ragin began to notice a strange atmosphere of mystery around him. Whenever he met orderlies, nurses and patients they would give him quizzical looks and whisper among themselves. Whenever he smilingly went up to Masha, the superintendent’s little daughter (whom he loved meeting in the hospital garden), to stroke her head, she would run away from him. Instead of his usual ‘perfectly true!’ when listening to him, Mikhail Averyanych the postmaster would become strangely embarrassed, mutter ‘Oh, yes… yes’ and look sadly and pensively at him. For some reason he now advised his friend to give up vodka and beer, but he never told him this straight out, but by dropping gentle hints – he was a tactful man – and by telling him stories, of the battalion commander (an excellent fellow), or of the regimental chaplain (a first-class chap), who drank too much and became ill. But once they stopped they became quite well again. Once or twice Ragin’s colleague Khobotov called. He too advised him to give up alcohol and without giving any reason recommended that he take potassium bromide.

In August Ragin received a letter from the mayor, asking him to come and see him on a very important matter. Arriving at the town hall at the appointed time, Ragin found there the district military commander, the superintendent of the county high school, a member of the town council, Khobotov, and a corpulent, fair-haired gentleman who was introduced as a doctor. This doctor, who had an unpronounceable Polish name, lived on a stud farm about twenty miles away and just happened to be passing through.

‘Here’s a little memo that’s your cup of tea’, the town councillor said, turning to Ragin after all the others had greeted each other and sat down at the table. ‘You see, Dr Khobotov says there ain’t much room for a dispensary in the main block and that it ought to be moved to one of the outbuildings. Of course, it ain’t no problem moving it, but the main reason is that the place needs repairing.’

‘Yes, it certainly will have to be repaired’, Ragin said, after a pause for thought. ‘Now, if the corner building is fitted out as a dispensary, then at least five hundred roubles will have to be spent, I suppose. Now, that’s unproductive expenditure.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Ten years ago’, Ragin said quietly, ‘I had the honour to report that this hospital, in its present state, was a luxury the town could ill afford. It was built in the forties, but then more funds were available. This town spends too much on unnecessary buildings and superfluous staff. I think that two model hospitals could be maintained on the same money – if the system were different.’

‘Oh, so let’s have a new system then’, the councillor said briskly.

‘I have already had the honour of submitting my report that the medical department should be under the supervision of the Rural District Council.’

‘Yes, transfer the money to the RDC and they’ll put it in their pockets!’ laughed the fair-haired doctor.

‘That’s the way things are’, agreed the councillor and he too laughed.

‘We must be fair’, Ragin said, giving the fair doctor a feeble, vacant look.

Again a silence. Tea was served. The military commander, highly embarrassed for some reason, touched Ragin’s hand across the table and said:

‘You’ve completely forgotten us, doctor! Then you always were like a monk. You don’t play cards and you don’t care for women. I’m afraid we must bore you here.’

Everyone began to speak of how boring it was for any decent, self-respecting man to live in that town. No theatre, no concerts and at the last club dance there were about twenty ladies and only two men. The young men never danced, but crowded around the bar the whole time or played cards. Without directly looking at anyone, slowly and quietly, Ragin told them what a dreadful pity it was that the townspeople wasted their vital energy, their hearts and minds on cards and idle gossip, that they neither cared nor knew how to pass the time in interesting conversation, in reading, or in enjoying the pleasures that only the mind provides. Intellect alone was interesting and worthy of note, all the rest was petty and squalid. Khobotov listened to his colleague attentively and suddenly asked:

‘What’s today’s date?’

Receiving no reply, he and the fair doctor then began to ask Ragin – in the tone of examiners aware of their own incompetence – what day of the week it was, how many days in a year and was it true that there was a remarkable prophet in Ward No. 6.

In reply to the last question Ragin flushed and said:

‘Yes, he’s a mental patient, but he’s an interesting young man.’

He was asked no further questions.

As he was putting on his coat in the lobby, the military commander put his hand on his shoulder and sighed.

‘It’s time for us oldies to call it a day!’ he said.

When he left the town hall Ragin realized that he had been before a committee appointed to test his mental faculties. Remembering the questions they had asked he went red in the face and for the first time in his life he felt bitterly sorry for medicine.

‘My God!’ he thought, remembering how those doctors had just examined him. ‘Surely it wasn’t so long ago that they were going to their psychiatry lectures and sitting their exams? So how come such abysmal ignorance? They don’t have a clue about psychiatry!’ And for the first time in his life he felt outraged and infuriated.

That evening Mikhail Averyanych called. Without a word of greeting the postmaster went up to him and took him by both hands.

‘My dear, dear friend’, he said in a highly emotional voice. ‘Please show me that you trust in my sincere affection for you and consider me your friend.’ Without allowing Ragin to say one word he continued excitedly:

‘My dear friend! I admire you for your education and nobility of soul. Now, listen to me, my dear chap. I know medical etiquette obliged those doctors to hide the truth from you, but I’m going to give it you straight from the shoulder, like an old trooper! You’re not well. I’m very sorry, old chap, but it’s the truth. It’s been noticed by everyone around here for some time now. Dr Khobotov has just told me that you need rest and recreation for the sake of your health. Perfectly true! A splendid idea! In a few days’ time I’m taking some leave and going off somewhere for a whiff of fresh air. Now then, prove that you’re my friend and come with me! Let’s go – it will be like old times again!’

‘I feel perfectly well’, Ragin said after a moment’s thought. ‘But I cannot go. Allow me to prove my friendship in some other way.’

The idea of travelling to some unknown destination, for no good reason, without his books, without Daryushka, rudely breaking a twenty-year-old routine, at first struck him as wild and preposterous. But when he recalled that conversation in the town hall and how terribly depressed he had felt on the way home, the idea of a short break away from that town where stupid people thought him insane appeared most attractive.

‘And where precisely are you thinking of going?’ he asked.

‘To Moscow, St Petersburg, Warsaw. I spent the five happiest years of my life in Warsaw. An amazing city! Let’s go, my dear chap!’

XIII

A week later Dr Ragin received a formal request to take a rest – in other words, to resign. He was quite unconcerned at this and a week later he and Mikhail Averyanych were sitting in a mail coach on their way to the nearest station. The weather was cool and bright, the sky blue and the distant prospect crystal clear. They travelled the hundred and twenty-five miles to the station in forty-eight hours, with two overnight stops. Whenever they were given tea in dirty glasses at coaching inns or had to wait ages while they harnessed the horses, Mikhail Averyanych would shake all over and roar: ‘Shut up! Don’t you argue with me!’ As they sat in the coach he told of his travels in the Caucasus and Poland without relenting for one minute. So many adventures, so many encounters! He spoke so loudly and there was such astonishment in his eyes that one could only assume he was lying. Worse still, he breathed right into Ragin’s face as he told his tales and laughed into his ear. This irritated the doctor so much that he was unable to think or concentrate.

To economize they travelled third class on the train, in a non-smoker. Half the passengers were respectable people. Mikhail Averyanych soon got to know everyone, going from seat to seat and loudly asserting that it was a big mistake to travel on these disgraceful railways. It was all a huge swindle! What a difference if you travelled on horseback! In one day you could clock up seventy miles and at the end of it feel thoroughly in the pink and fresh as a daisy. And yes, we had crop failures because they went and drained the Pripet marshes.¹⁶ There was the most dreadful shambles everywhere. He grew excited, spoke very loudly and did not let anyone else get a word in edgeways. His endless chatter was broken by loud guffaws and his dramatic gesticulations wearied Ragin to the point of exhaustion.

‘Which one of us is insane?’ he thought in vexation. ‘Is it I, who am trying my best not to disturb my fellow-passengers in any way, or that egoist who thinks that he’s more clever and interesting than everyone else and consequently doesn’t give anyone a moment’s peace?’

In Moscow Mikhail Averyanych donned his military tunic without epaulettes and his trousers with red piping. He walked down the street in an officer’s peaked cap and greatcoat – and soldiers saluted him. Ragin felt that here was a man who had dissipated all the fine, gentlemanly qualities he had ever possessed and retained only the bad ones. He loved people dancing attendance on him, even when it was quite unnecessary. If a box of matches was lying on the table before him and he saw them, he would still roar to a waiter to bring him a light. He had no qualms about appearing in his underclothes in front of the chambermaid. He did not stand on ceremony with any servants, whoever they were, even elderly ones, and when he was angry called the lot of them blockheads and idiots. All this struck Ragin as behaving like a lord – but it was so cheap and nasty.

Mikhail Averyanych first took his friend to see the Iverian Madonna.¹⁷ He prayed fervently, bowing to the ground and weeping, and when he had finished he sighed deeply. ‘Even if you’re not a believer you somehow feel more at peace with yourself after praying. Kiss the icon, old chap.’

Ragin was embarrassed as he kissed the icon, but Mikhail Averyanych puffed his lips out, shook his head and whispered some prayers – and once again the tears came to his eyes. Then they visited the Kremlin and saw the Tsar-Cannon and the Tsar-Bell¹⁸ – and they even touched them with their fingers. They admired the view across the Moscow River and spent some time in St Saviour’s Temple and the Rumyantsev Museum.¹⁹

They dined at Testov’s.²⁰ Mikhail Averyanych gazed long at the menu, stroking his side-whiskers and then pronouncing in the voice of a gourmet, of one completely at home in restaurants:

‘Well now, what are you going to feed us on today, old chum?’

XIV

The doctor walked, looked, ate and drank, but his feelings were still the same: of annoyance with Mikhail Averyanych. He longed for some respite from his friend, to escape from him, to go somewhere and hide, but his friend felt duty bound not to let him out of his sight and to ensure he enjoyed every possible form of diversion. When they had run out of sights he entertained him with conversation. For two days Ragin endured it, but on the third he declared that he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to stay all day in the hotel. ‘In that case,’ his friend replied, ‘I won’t go out either.’ And in fact they needed to rest as their feet couldn’t have taken any more punishment. Ragin lay on the sofa facing the back and with clenched teeth listened to his friend eagerly assuring him that sooner or later France was bound to destroy Germany, that Moscow was swarming with crooks, that one shouldn’t judge a horse from its appearance. The doctor had ringing in the ears and palpitations, but he was too polite to ask his friend to leave him alone or be quiet. Fortunately though, Mikhail Averyanych grew bored with staying in the room and after dinner went out for a stroll.

Left to himself Ragin was able to relax. How pleasant to lie quite still on a sofa in the knowledge there’s only yourself in the room! True happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel most probably betrayed God because he longed for solitude, of which angels have no inkling. Ragin wanted to ponder all he had seen and heard in the past few days, but he could not get Mikhail Averyanych out of his mind.

‘But then he did go on leave and come on this trip out of friendship and goodness of heart’, the doctor thought with vexation. ‘But there’s nothing worse than being under a friend’s wing. He’s kind enough, it seems, a good-hearted, jolly companion, yet he’s a bore. A crashing bore. He’s one of those people who say only fine and clever things but all the same you feel that they’re stupid.’

During the days that followed Ragin pretended that he was not feeling well and stayed in the room. He lay facing the back of the sofa and fretted when his friend tried to distract him with conversation, but when he went out he was able to relax. He was annoyed with himself for having made the trip, he was annoyed with his friend who was becoming more talkative and perky every day. He failed dismally to pitch his thoughts on a serious, elevated plane.

‘That reality of which Gromov spoke is really putting me to the test’, he thought, furious at his own pettiness. ‘Anyway, it’s all so stupid… Once I’m home everything will be as it was before.’

But things were no different in St Petersburg. For days on end he didn’t leave his room, but lay on the sofa and got up only for a glass of beer.

Mikhail Averyanych was constantly pressing him to go to Warsaw.

‘Why should I go there, my friend?’ pleaded Ragin. ‘Go on your own, but please let me go home! I beg you!’

‘Not under any circumstances!’ Mikhail Averyanych protested. ‘It’s an amazing city! I spent the five happiest years of my life there!’

Ragin lacked the strength of character to persist. Reluctantly he went to Warsaw. After arriving there he never left the room, but lay on the sofa, incensed with his friend and with the waiters, who stubbornly refused to understand Russian. Healthy, sprightly, jolly as ever, Mikhail Averyanych roamed around the city from dawn to dusk, seeking out old friends. Several times he stayed out all night. After one of these nights, spent God knows where, he returned in the early hours in an extremely agitated state, red-faced and dishevelled. He paced up and down for a long time, muttering to himself and then stopped.

‘Honour above all else!’ he exclaimed.

After a little more pacing he clutched his head and declaimed in tragic accents:

‘Yes, honour above all else! Cursed be the moment when first I thought of coming to this Babylon! My dear friend’, he added, turning to the doctor, ‘despise me! I’ve lost everything at cards. Lend me five hundred roubles!’

Ragin counted out five hundred roubles and silently handed them to his friend who, still purple with shame and anger, uttered some incoherent and quite uncalled-for imprecation, donned his cap and left. Two hours later he returned, slumped into an armchair and gave a loud sigh.

‘My honour’s saved! Let’s go, my friend! I don’t want to stay in this city a moment longer. They’re all crooks… Austrian spies!’

When the friends returned home it was already November and snow lay deep in the streets. Ragin’s job had now been taken by Dr Khobotov – he was still living in his old rooms, waiting for Ragin to return and move out of his hospital lodgings. The ugly woman he called his cook was already living in one of the hospital outbuildings.

Fresh rumours about the hospital were circulating in town. It was said that the ugly woman had quarrelled with the superintendent, who had apparently gone crawling on his knees and begged forgiveness.

The first day after his return Ragin had to find new lodgings.

‘My dear chap’, the postmaster asked timorously, ‘please forgive this indelicate question, but how much money have you got?’

Ragin silently counted his money.

‘Eighty-six roubles’, he replied.

‘I didn’t mean that’, Mikhail Averyanych said, misunderstanding the doctor and feeling embarrassed. ‘I’m asking how much money you have altogether.’

‘I’ve already told you: eighty-six roubles… that’s all I have.’

Mikhail Averyanych knew that the doctor was honest and decent, but had suspected that he was worth at least twenty thousand. But now that he discovered that Ragin was destitute, with nothing at all to live on, for some reason he suddenly started to cry and he embraced his friend.

XV

Ragin was now living in a small, three-windowed house belonging to a Mrs Belov, a townswoman from the lower classes. In this house there were only three rooms, plus a kitchen. Two of them, whose windows overlooked the street, were occupied by the doctor, whilst Daryushka, the landlady and her three children lived in the third. Now and then the landlady’s lover – a drunken workman who went berserk at night and terrified the children and Daryushka – came to spend the night. As soon as he arrived he settled himself in the kitchen and demanded vodka – and everyone felt crowded out. Feeling sorry for the weeping children, the doctor would take them to his room and put them to sleep on the floor, which gave him great satisfaction.

He still rose at eight and after breakfast would sit down and read his old books and magazines. He had no money for new books. Whether it was because the books were old or perhaps because his surroundings were different, reading had lost its hold on him and made him feel tired. In order not to spend the time unprofitably, he compiled a detailed catalogue of his books, gluing little labels on the spines, and this mechanical, laborious work struck him as more interesting than reading. For some mysterious reason that monotonous painstaking labour relaxed him, his mind would go blank and time passed swiftly. Even sitting in the kitchen and peeling potatoes with Daryushka, or picking dirt out of buckwheat meal was interesting. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to church. He would stand by the wall, screw up his eyes and listen to the choir, thinking of his father, his mother, the university, religion. He would feel calm and sad, and when he left the church he regretted that the service had not lasted longer.

Twice he went to the hospital to talk to Gromov, but on both occasions Gromov was unusually agitated and angry: he asked to be left in peace, since he had long become sick and tired of idle chatter and maintained that the only compensation he wanted from those damned bastards for all his sufferings was to be kept in solitary confinement. Surely they wouldn’t deny him that? On the two occasions Ragin took leave of him and wished him good night he snapped: ‘Go to hell!’

And now Ragin was unable to decide whether to go a third time or not. But he wanted to go.

Ragin had previously been in the habit of wandering around his room between lunch and tea and thinking. But now he would lie on the sofa, face the back and abandon himself to trivial thoughts that he was unable to suppress. He felt insulted that he had been awarded neither pension nor golden handshake after twenty years of service. True, he hadn’t worked honestly, but then, weren’t all old employees given pensions irrespective of whether they were honest or otherwise? That just about summed up modern justice – it wasn’t moral integrity and ability that were rewarded by promotions, medals, pensions, but simply getting on with the job, whatever it was. So why should he be an exception? He had no money whatsoever. He was ashamed of passing the shop he used in town and seeing the lady proprietor: he already owed her thirty-two roubles for beer. He also owed Mrs Belov money. Daryushka secretly sold his old clothes and books, lying to the landlady that soon he would be coming into a lot of money.

He was angry with himself for wasting on that trip the one thousand roubles he had saved. How handy that thousand would come in now! He was annoyed that people would not leave him in peace. Khobotov felt obliged to visit his sick colleague from time to time. Everything about that man repelled Ragin: his sated face, his nasty, condescending manner, the way he called him ‘colleague’, and his topboots. But most repellent of all was that he considered it his duty to cure Ragin – and he was convinced that he was doing just that. With every visit he brought a phial of potassium bromide and rhubarb pills.

Mikhail Averyanych also considered it his duty to visit his friend and amuse him. On each occasion he entered his lodgings with an air of feigned abandon, laughed unnaturally, assured him that today he looked marvellous and that things were on the mend, thank God. From which it was easy to conclude that he considered his friend’s position hopeless. He still had not repaid the Warsaw debt and was weighed down by a strong feeling of guilt; he felt tense and this made him try to laugh louder and tell funnier stories. Now his anecdotes and tales seemed endless and were sheer agony, both for Ragin and himself.

When his friend was there Ragin would usually lie on the sofa, facing the wall and listening with clenched teeth. Layers of sediment seemed to be forming around his heart and after every visit he felt that the sediment was reaching ever higher, towards his throat.

To suppress these petty feelings he quickly turned his thoughts to the fact that sooner or later he, Khobotov and Mikhail Averyanych would perish, without leaving even a trace of their existence in this world behind. He imagined that in a million years’ time a spirit, flying through space past the earth, would see only clay and bare rocks. Everything – including culture and the moral law – would have vanished and would not even have become overgrown with burdock. As for his guilty feelings towards the shopkeeper, that insignificant Khobotov, Mikhail Averyanych’s oppressive friendship – what did they matter? It was all trivial nonsense.

But such reflections were no longer of any help. No sooner had he visualized the earth’s globe a million years hence than Khobotov appeared from behind a rock in his topboots, or Mikhail Averyanych with his forced laughter – and he could even hear his guilty whisper: ‘Now, about that Warsaw debt, old man. I’ll pay you back any day now… Without fail!’

XVI

One day Mikhail Averyanych arrived after dinner, when Ragin was lying on the sofa. At the same time Dr Khobotov happened to turn up with his potassium bromide. Ragin rose wearily and sat down again, supporting himself with his hands on the sofa.

‘You’re a much better colour today, old man’, Mikhail Averyanych began. ‘You look really great. Oh yes, fantastic!’

‘It’s high time you were on the mend, colleague’, yawned Khobotov. ‘You must be tired of all this palaver.’

‘Oh yes, we’ll get better!’ Mikhail Averyranych gaily declared. ‘We’ll live another hundred years – you bet we will!’

‘I’m not sure about a hundred, but I think we’re good for another twenty’, Khobotov said comfortingly. ‘It’s all right, colleague. Don’t despair… Now, don’t confuse the issue…’

‘We’ll show them what we’re made of!’ Mikhail Averyanych chortled, slapping his friend on the knee. ‘We’ll show them all right. Next summer, God willing, we’ll dash off to the Caucasus and gallop all over it on horseback – clip-clop, clip-clop! And when we get back – you’ll see – we’ll probably dance at your wedding!’ Here Mikhail Averyanych winked slyly. ‘Yes, we’ll marry you off, old man, we’ll marry you off… !’

Ragin suddenly felt that the sediment was rising to his throat. His heart beat violently.

‘That’s so cheap’, he said, quickly standing up and going over to the window. ‘Don’t you realize what cheap nonsense you’re talking!’

He wanted to speak gently and politely, but in spite of himself he suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head.

‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted in a voice that sounded most peculiar, turning purple and shaking all over. ‘Clear out! Both of you! Clear out!’

Mikhail Averyanych and Khobotov rose to their feet and stared at him – first in bewilderment and then in terror.

‘Clear off – both of you!’ he shouted again. ‘You stupid people! Morons! I don’t need your friendship or your medicines. It’s so cheap! It’s disgusting!’

Khobotov and Mikhail Averyanych looked at each other in dismay, backed towards the door and went out into the lobby. Ragin seized the phial of potassium bromide and hurled it after them. It made a ringing noise as it smashed to smithereens on the threshold.

‘Go to hell!’ he shouted in a tearful voice as he ran out into the lobby. ‘Go to hell!’

When his visitors had left Ragin lay down on the sofa, feverishly trembling. For some time he kept repeating: ‘Morons! Stupid people!’

After he had calmed down his first thought was how dreadfully ashamed and wretched that poor Mikhail Averyanych must be feeling now, how terrible the whole thing had been. Nothing like it had ever happened before. What had become of his intelligence and tact? Where were his understanding of life and his philosophic detachment?

Feelings of shame and annoyance with himself kept the doctor awake all night. Towards ten o’clock next morning he went to the post office and apologized to the postmaster.

‘Let’s forget all about it’, sighed Mikhail Averyanych, deeply moved and warmly shaking his hand. ‘Let bygones be bygones! Lyubavkin!’ he suddenly roared, so loudly that all the clerks and customers shook in their shoes. ‘Bring us a chair! And you can wait!’ he yelled at a peasant woman who was handing him a registered letter through the grille. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy? Let’s forget it ever happened’, he said gently, turning to Ragin. ‘Now, please sit down old man, I beg you.’

For a minute he stroked his knees in silence.

‘It never occurred to me to take offence’, he continued. ‘One must make allowances for illness – that I do realize. That attack of yours yesterday scared the wits out of the doctor and myself, and afterwards we had a long talk about you. My dear chap, why don’t you take your illness more seriously? You can’t go on like this. Excuse the frankness of a friend’, (he began to whisper) ‘but you’re living in the worst possible surroundings. You’re cooped up, it’s filthy, there’s no one to look after you, no money for treatment… My dear friend, the doctor and I beg you, from the bottom of our hearts – listen to our advice! Go into hospital! You’ll get good wholesome food there and proper care and treatment. Between ourselves, Khobotov may be a bit of a boor, but he’s an experienced doctor and you can rely on him completely. He gave me his word that he’d take care of you.’

Ragin was touched by this genuine concern and by the tears that suddenly glistened on the postmaster’s cheeks.

‘Don’t you believe them, my friend!’ he whispered, putting his hand to his heart. ‘Don’t you believe them! It’s all a nasty trick. All that’s wrong with me is that in twenty years I’ve managed to find only one intelligent man in the whole town – and he’s a lunatic. I’m not ill at all. I’ve simply been caught in a vicious circle from which there’s no escape. But it doesn’t matter, I’m ready for anything.’

‘Go into hospital, my dear chap.’

‘I couldn’t care less if it’s a hole in the ground.’

‘Give me your word, old man, that you’ll do everything Khobotov says.’

‘All right, I give you my word. But I repeat, my dear sir, that I’ve fallen into a vicious circle. Everything – even the genuine concern of my friend – points the same way – to my eventual destruction. I’m done for and I have the courage to admit it.’

‘You’ll get better, old man!’

‘Why do you say that?’ Ragin said irritably. ‘There are very few men in their twilight years who don’t go through what I’m going through now. When people tell you that you have diseased kidneys or an enlarged heart and you go and have treatment, or if you’re told you’re insane or a criminal – in a word, when people start taking notice of you – then you can be certain you’ve fallen into a vicious circle from which there’s no escape. And the more you try to escape, the more you get caught up in it. One might as well give in, since no human effort can save you. That’s how it strikes me!’

Meanwhile a crowd had gathered at the grille. Ragin did not want to be in the way, so he got up to say goodbye. Mikhail Averyanych once again made him promise and escorted him to the outer door.

That same day, towards evening, Dr Khobotov unexpectedly turned up in his sheepskin jacket and topboots.

‘I’ve come to see you about something, colleague. I have an invitation for you: would you care to come to a consultation with me, eh?’

Thinking that Khobotov wanted to distract him by having him go for a walk or by actually giving him the chance to earn some money, Ragin put on his coat and went out into the street with him. He was glad of the opportunity to make amends for yesterday’s lapse, to make peace, and in his heart of hearts he was grateful to Khobotov for not even so much as hinting at the incident – clearly he wanted to spare his feelings. One would hardly have expected such delicacy from that uncultured boor.

‘And where’s your patient?’ asked Ragin.

‘At the hospital. I’ve been meaning to show you him for ages… A most interesting case.’

They entered the hospital yard and after rounding the main block headed for the outbuilding where the insane were housed. For some reason all this took place in silence. When they entered the outbuilding Nikita leapt up as usual and stood to attention.

‘One of them has lung complications’, Khobotov said in an undertone as he entered the ward with Ragin. ‘Now, you wait here and I’ll be back immediately. I must get my stethoscope.’

And he left.

XVII

Twilight was falling. Gromov was lying on his bed, his face buried in the pillow. The paralytic sat motionless, softly weeping and twitching his lips. The fat peasant and the ex-sorter were asleep. All was quiet.

Ragin sat on Gromov’s bed and waited. Half an hour passed and instead of Khobotov in came Nikita clasping a smock, some kind of underclothes and a pair of slippers.

‘Please put these on, sir’, he said softly. ‘That’s your bed – this way, please’, he added, pointing to a vacant bed that obviously had only just been set up. ‘Now don’t you worry, you’ll soon get better, God willing.’

And now Ragin understood everything. Without a word he went over to the bed indicated by Nikita and sat down. When he saw that Nikita was standing there waiting he stripped naked – and he felt ashamed. Then he put on the hospital clothing. The pants were terribly short, the shirt too long and the smock reeked of smoked fish.

‘You’ll soon be all right, God willing’, Nikita repeated. He gathered Ragin’s clothes in an armful and went out, closing the door behind him.

‘I couldn’t care less’, thought Ragin, bashfully wrapping himself in the smock and feeling like a convict in his new garments. ‘I just don’t care… Whether it’s a dress coat, uniform, or this smock… it’s all the same…’

But what about his watch? And the notebook in his side pocket? And his cigarettes? And what had Nikita done with his clothes? From now on, perhaps, until his dying day, he would have no need of trousers, waistcoat or shoes. All this seemed rather strange, even incomprehensible at first. Now Ragin was firmly convinced that there was absolutely no difference between Mrs Belov’s house and Ward No. 6, and that everything in this world is vanity and folly. But his hands were trembling, his legs were cold and he was terrified at the thought that Gromov might soon get up and see that he was wearing a smock. He rose, walked up and down and sat down again.

And so he sat for another half hour, then an hour – and he suffered agonies of boredom. Could he live here a day, a week, years even, like these people? Well, he might sit down, walk up and down and sit down again; he might go and look out of the window and then pace from corner to corner again. And then what? Just sit there all day like a dummy and brood? No, that was hardly possible.

Ragin lay on his bed, but he immediately rose to his feet and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. And he felt that his whole face was reeking of smoked fish. Again he paced up and down.

‘It must be some sort of misunderstanding’, he muttered, spreading out his arms in bewilderment. ‘I must have it out with them… there’s some misunderstanding.’

Just then Gromov awoke. He sat up, rested his cheeks on his fists and spat. Then he idly glanced at the doctor and clearly did not realize at first what was going on. But soon his sleepy face grew evil and mocking.

‘Aha! So they’ve dumped you here too, old chap!’ he said in a voice hoarse from sleep and narrowing one eye. ‘I’m absolutely delighted. Once you used to drink people’s blood, now they’ll be drinking yours. Splendid!’

‘It’s some kind of misunderstanding…’, Ragin murmured, alarmed at what Gromov had said. ‘Some sort of misunderstanding…’

Gromov spat again and lay down.

‘What a wretched life!’ he growled. ‘But the most galling, insulting thing is that this life doesn’t end with you being rewarded for suffering or with an operatic apotheosis, but in death. The male nurses will come and carry the corpse by its hands and feet into a cellar. Ugh! But never mind… we’ll have a ball in the next world… I’ll keep returning from the other world as a ghost to haunt this vermin – I’ll frighten the daylights out of them, turn their hair white!’

Moses came in and held his hand out when he saw the doctor. ‘Give us a copeck!’ he said.

XVIII

Ragin went to the window and looked out on to the open country. It was getting dark now and on the horizon a cold crimson moon was rising. Near the hospital fence, no more than eight yards away, stood a tall white building surrounded by a stone wall. This was the prison.

‘So this is reality!’ Ragin thought – and he felt terrified.

Everything was terrifying – the moon, the prison, the nails on the fence and the distant flames in the glue factory. A sigh came from behind. Ragin turned around and saw a man with glittering stars and medals on his chest, smiling and slyly winking. And this too was terrifying.

Ragin tried to reassure himself that there was nothing strange about the moon and the prison, that even sane men wore medals and that in time all this would turn to clay. But suddenly he was gripped by despair, seized the bars with both hands and shook them with all his might. The strong bars stood firm. And then, to ease his fears, he went over to Gromov’s bed and sat down.

‘I feel really low, dear chap’, he muttered, trembling and wiping away the cold sweat. ‘Really low…’

‘Then go and do some philosophizing’, scoffed Gromov.

‘Good God! Yes… yes… you once said that there’s no philosophy in Russia, but in fact everyone philosophizes, even perfect nobodies. But then, the philosophizing of nobodies does no one any harm’, Ragin said, as if he wanted to cry and gain sympathy. ‘But why, my dear chap, this malicious laughter? And why shouldn’t these nobodies philosophize if they’re dissatisfied? For any intelligent, educated, proud, freedom-loving man, made in God’s image, the only course is to become a doctor in a filthy, stupid little town, where one’s whole life is nothing but cupping-glasses, leeches, mustard poultices! My God, such charlatanry, parochialism, vulgarity! Oh God!’

‘Absolute nonsense. If you hated becoming a doctor so much you should have been a government minister.’

‘But nothing’s any good, nothing. We’re weak, my friend. I used to be indifferent, I argued forcefully and sensibly, but it only needed some hard knocks from life for me to lose heart… and I buckled. We’re a feeble load of trash. And you included, my dear chap. You’re clever, high-minded, you imbibed lofty principles with your mother’s milk, but hardly had you stepped out in life than you grew weary and ill… Feeble! Oh, so feeble!’

Besides fear and indignation, some other craving had been gnawing away at Ragin ever since nightfall. Finally he concluded that he wanted some beer and a smoke.

‘I’m going out, my friend’, he said. ‘I’ll tell them to give me a light… I can’t take this… I’m in no state…’

Ragin went to the door and opened it, but Nikita leapt up like a shot and barred his way.

‘Where d’yer think you’re going, eh? It ain’t allowed’, he said. ‘It’s time for bed!’

‘But I only want to go for a little walk in the yard’, Ragin replied, dumbfounded.

‘You can’t. It ain’t allowed. You know that!’

Nikita slammed the door and set his back against it.

‘What harm will it do if I just go out?’ Ragin asked, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I don’t understand. Nikita! I must go out’, he said in a trembling voice. ‘I’ve got to!’

‘Now don’t you start causing trouble, can’t ’ave that’, Nikita said in an edifying tone.

‘What the hell is this!’ Gromov suddenly shouted and leapt up. ‘What right does he have to refuse to let us go out? How dare they keep us here! The law clearly states that no man can be deprived of his freedom without a trial! It’s an outrage! Tyranny!’

‘Of course it’s tyranny!’ said Ragin, encouraged by Gromov’s shouting. ‘I must go out, I have to! Let me out, I’m telling you!’

‘Do you hear, you stupid bastard?’ shouted Gromov and banged his fist on the door. ‘Open up or I’ll break the door down. You filthy brute!’

‘Open up!’ shouted Ragin, trembling all over. ‘I demand it!’

‘One more squeak out of you!’ Nikita replied from behind the door. ‘Just one more squeak!’

‘At least go and fetch Dr Khobotov. Tell him I want him to come… just for a moment.’

‘The doctor’s coming tomorrow anyway.’

‘They’ll never let us out’, Gromov continued meanwhile. ‘They’ll leave us here to rot. Oh God, can there be no hell in the next world and will these bastards be forgiven? Where’s the justice? Open up, you swine, I’m choking!’ he shouted hoarsely and threw himself against the door. ‘I’ll beat my brains out! Murderers!’

Nikita flung open the door and roughly shoved Ragin back with both hands and a knee. Then he took a mighty swing and smashed his fist into his face. Ragin felt that a huge salt wave had suddenly washed over his head and dragged him back towards his bed. And in fact his mouth did taste salty – probably it was from the blood pouring from his gums. Just as if he were trying to swim away he made a wild flourish with his arms and grabbed hold of someone’s bed. At that moment he felt Nikita hitting him twice on the back.

Gromov gave a loud scream: they must be beating him too.

Then all was silent. The thin moonlight filtered through the bars and a network of shadows lay on the floor. It was terrifying. Ragin lay down and held his breath in terror, waiting for the next blow. It was as if someone had thrust a sickle into him and twisted it several times in his chest and guts. The pain made him bite the pillow and grind his teeth. Suddenly, amidst all the chaos, a terrifying, unbearable thought flashed through his mind: it must be precisely this kind of pain that was suffered every day, year in year out, by those people who now appeared like black shadows in the moonlight. How could it be that for more than twenty years he had not known and had not wanted to know this? He had never known pain, he had no conception of it, so he was not to blame. But his conscience, as intractable and crude as Nikita, sent a bitter chill through him from head to foot. He leapt up and felt like shouting at the top of his voice, rushing to kill Nikita, then Khobotov, then the superintendent and the doctor’s assistant and then himself, but no sound came from his throat and his legs would not obey him. Gasping for breath he tugged at his smock and shirt on his chest, ripped them and fell unconscious onto the bed.

XIX

Next morning his head ached, his ears hummed and he felt weak all over. He did not feel ashamed when he recalled his weakness of the day before. Then he had been faint-hearted, had even feared the moon, had given frank expression to thoughts and feelings he never suspected he possessed. For example, those thoughts about the discontents of philosophizing nobodies. But now he could not care less.

He neither ate nor drank, but lay motionless and silent.

‘I really don’t care’, he thought when they questioned him. ‘I’m not going to answer… It’s all the same…’

Towards evening Mikhail Averyanych brought him a quarter pound of tea and a pound of marmalade. Daryushka came too, and for a whole hour she stood by the bed with a vacant expression of uncomprehending sorrow. And Dr Khobotov came to visit him too. He brought a phial of potassium bromide and instructed Nikita to fumigate the ward.

Towards evening Ragin died of a stroke. At first he felt an overwhelming chill and nausea. Something repulsive seemed to be permeating his whole body, even his fingers, spreading from stomach to head and flooding his eyes and ears. Green lights flashed in his eyes. Ragin realized that his hour had come and he remembered that Gromov, Mikhail Averyanych and millions of others believed in immortality. And what if it really did exist? But he had no desire for immortality and he thought about it for only one fleeting moment. A herd of exceptionally beautiful and graceful deer, of which he had been reading the day before, darted past him; then a peasant woman held out a registered letter to him. Mikhail Averyanych said something. Then everything disappeared and Ragin sank into everlasting oblivion.

The male nurses came in, grabbed his feet and hands and carried him to the chapel. There he lay on the table with his eyes open, and at night the moon shone on him. In the morning Sergey Sergeich came, prayed devoutly before the crucifix and closed the eyes of his former superior.

Next day they buried Ragin. Only Mikhail Averyanych and Daryushka attended the funeral.