by A J Allen
Chevanin grimaced.
“Please,” he urged her, “tell me what it was.”
“She thinks that it is high time you were considering settling down.”
The full import of the remark did not immediately dawn upon him.
“But I am settled, as much as I can be. As much as my circumstances permit. I have my room, my work…”
“I rather think,” interrupted Yeliena gently, “she meant you ought to be considering the question of marriage.”
“Marriage?” he exclaimed in surprise. “But how could I afford that, even if…”
“Even if what, Anton Ivanovich?”
“Even if there was someone for whom I held a special regard,” he finished lamely.
“By which,” said Yeliena, laying aside her notepaper, “I take it that at the moment there is no one to whom you have a special attachment?”
He could only answer with a pathetic shake of his head.
“I see. Well, we shall have to remedy that, won’t we?” Yeliena told him in a business-like manner. “Now, tell me, what kind of young woman appeals to you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about the matter.”
“Well, you should have, Anton Ivanovich! You should have!”
The animated tone of her voice made him want to curl up with shame. Unheeding to his discomfort, Yeliena started to fire names at him.
“How about Nadnikov’s daughter, Vera Rafaelovna?”
He shook his head.
“Natalya Izminsky?”
Another shake and a frown.
“Katya Kuprin, perhaps?”
“Heavens, no!”
A look of mock desperation clouded Yeliena’s face.
“There must be some type of woman that appeals to you. How about Irena Kuibysheva? She’s popular with the gentlemen, I believe.”
The notion was so outre that, despite his discomfort at the inquisition, Chevanin laughed out loud.
“Madame Kuibysheva? But she’s already married.”
“That does not appear to bother her over much.”
“Besides,” Chevanin added, “she is too old, and too fat.”
“Too old?” cried Yeliena indignantly. “I will have you know that Irena Kuibysheva is… well, a few years younger than myself. Do you consider me too old?”
“Oh no, Yeliena Mihailovna,” he replied hurriedly. “I did not mean that. Anyway, there is a world of difference between you and her. I never meant to imply anything to your detriment.”
Yeliena remained unconvinced.
“Hmm. There is a world of difference between us, and not all in my favour, I suspect.”
“But she is still too fat,” he insisted hopefully. “You must admit that.”
“She is, perhaps, a trifle obvious,” the doctor’s wife conceded uncharitably. “All the same, Kuibyshev does have a weak heart.”
“I’m not surprised,” muttered Chevanin.
It was a daring remark which he was pleased to see met with approval. Pursing her lips quickly as she fought to hide her smile, Yeliena said, “Should he die, she would be left with a substantial fortune. That would come in great use to you as a doctor.”
“I could never marry for money,” he protested.
“Don’t be so hasty, Anton Ivanovich,” she advised him. “People marry for all sorts of reasons. Some marry in order to escape from their family home; others to find one. Some marry out of a sense of duty or even pity; others out of an unreasonable expectation of eternal joy and happiness. Some even get wed in the same way that a gambler shakes the dice: hoping that it will change their luck. Marrying for money is one of the saner reasons. Don’t reject it out of hand.”
“No, never for money,” he repeated stubbornly. “I could only marry if I met somebody I loved.”
“Hah!” cried Yeliena mockingly. “And then what? You’ll find that you have to spend hours, days, even weeks apart, lancing boils and attending difficult labours in the middle of the night hundreds of versts away from your precious beloved.”
Unnerved by her reply, Chevanin shook his head.
“It takes a very special kind of woman to be a doctor’s wife today, Anton Ivanovich,” Yeliena continued. “You must find a woman who is uncomplaining, prepared to endure hardship and loneliness and, yes, even disappointment because she believes in you and the importance of your work. A woman who accepts from the very beginning that she must take second place to the needs of her husband’s patients. Above all, you must find a woman you can trust.”
The seriousness of her tone and the emphasis she had placed upon those last words had moved Chevanin deeply. Drawing himself to the edge of his seat he replied with equal candour:
“Then, Lenochka, I could do no better than to search for another just as you.”
Yeliena gasped, momentarily taken aback by his uninvited familiarity. Quickly recovering herself, she rose and began gathering up her writing things.
Chevanin rose and mumbled his apology.
“I’m sorry, Madame Tortsova! What I said was impertinent, but I meant it as only the deepest compliment…”
“A compliment?” she replied with a sharp laugh. “Why yes, I suppose it could be considered as a sort of compliment. Just.”
Without a further word she swept from the room, leaving him to curse his stupidity.
Pacing up and down the sitting room, he had anxiously debated what he should do to try and rectify his situation. He had just come to the decision that the only honourable course was to leave the house when the sound of the front door being thrown back on its hinges told him it was already too late; Dr. Tortsov had returned. Unwilling to blunder past his employer in the hallway he gritted his teeth and prepared himself to face the punishment he felt he rightly deserved.
Madame Tortsova reappeared and the three of them trooped in silence into the dining room. It soon became abundantly clear that his employer had no interest whatsoever in what might have passed between his wife and his assistant in his absence. His visit to Pirogov’s seemed to have filled him with a consuming rage. As the meal progressed, the Doctor’s mood worsened, and he did not hesitate to give the full force of his tongue to anyone who looked as if they were about to engage him in conversation. The food was filthy, he exclaimed. How could Yeliena bring herself to offer such muck for human consumption? What did she do with the housekeeping money? His assistant ate like a pig. His maid smelt like one. Was there ever anyone so surrounded by such thieves and time wasters?
Torn between leaving the scene of his crime and staying in the forlorn hope that he could apologise to his hostess more fully, Chevanin had weathered the storm of abuse, gallantly deflecting as much as he could onto his own head in order that Madame Tortsova might be spared further insults. But if anything, his presence seemed to make matters worse. The Doctor had twice come close to ordering him from the house before the luncheon was finished. When the meal was over Yeliena had left them with as much dignity as she possessed, informing her husband in a manner clearly intended to include Chevanin that she was retiring upstairs for the remainder of the afternoon and did not wish to be disturbed. Given that the Doctor himself had to go out again to see Ovseenko and Averbuch, Chevanin felt he had little choice but also to take his leave. Descending the steps outside the Doctor’s house, he had grave doubts as to whether he would ever be received there again.
In the eighteen hours that had passed between Chevanin’s leaving the Tortsov household and his rounding the corner of the hospital on his way to work, those doubts had hardened into certainties. He had been rude, he told himself. Worse: he had been gauche. Although Yeliena Mihailovna had waived his apologies, the rebuke had remained in her eyes. However she had regarded him in the past, she must now think him a boor. There would be little reason to keep her from informing her husband of the fact that his assistant had addressed her in such terms of gross familiarity. At the very best he could expect not to be invited back into their house if there was the slightest ris
k that she might find herself alone with him. At the worst, his employer might tell him to pack his bags and send him home in disgrace or even take a horsewhip to him as Chevanin’s father had once done to an insolent groom. In the young man’s fearful imaginings, there seemed no doubt that he would – indeed, should – suffer punishment at the hands of Madame Tortsova’s outraged husband for his discourtesy. Recalling how the Doctor had often damned the bestiality of the Ostyaks, he wondered how much worse he would consider his own assistant’s unbecoming conduct.
He had lain awake for most of the night haunted by Madame Tortsova’s words. She had spoken of trust and with his next breath he had, in all likelihood, destroyed her trust in him forever. At any moment he had expected to hear his employer’s fists hammering on his door and the Doctor’s voice angrily demanding that he should come out and face him. Now trudging wearily through the snow, he felt each step taking him nearer the inevitable confrontation. Hot with anxiety despite the coldness of the morning air, he made his unwilling way along Hospital Street. All around him there was movement. Shop doors were opening and people hurried past him on their way to the morning market in the Square. The town was coming alive but, in the depths of his despair, he felt alone.
Reaching the outer door of the surgery he pulled the keys out of his pocket, fumbling with them, his hands made clumsy by the bulk of his gloves. Against his better judgement he removed one glove and instantly the cold metal of the key bonded itself to his skin, so that he had to constantly move his fingers as he inserted the key into the keyhole. Quickly putting the glove back on, he tried to turn the key, but it would not move. Removing it, he breathed heavily on it and then tried again. The lock seemed frozen solid. Stamping his feet in an effort to keep his toes warm, he jerked the key rapidly in and out of the hole for about ten seconds then tried a third time. This time he felt the lock give slightly. Inserting the small spike that acted as a key-fob into the head of the key, he used it to add extra leverage to the lock’s cylinders. The lock gave with a rasping click and he pushed the door open with his shoulder and entered.
The surgery consisted of three modestly sized rooms, of which he was now standing in the waiting room. Beyond, connected by a door and a hatchway, lay the Doctor’s consulting room where Chevanin also had his desk and, beyond that, a small dispensary which also doubled as Dr. Tortsov’s private office. (It was to this third room which Chevanin was expected to remove himself when bashful patients refused to be examined in his presence.) These three rooms were the sole medical facility for the treatment of outpatients in the District of Berezovo. To ensure their efficient running the Doctor had drilled into his assistant a systematic procedure so well regulated that the young man was able to complete it almost without thought.
After unlocking the consulting room door and lighting a lamp, Anton Ivanovich’s first task was to clear out the ashes in the small stove that heated the surgery and lay a new fire. A network of pipes ran from behind the stove and warmed, in order of importance and heat, the consulting room, the dispensary and the waiting room; the last being by far the coldest of the three. It was an old joke amongst the Doctor’s patients that a visit to the surgery was never wasted: if you didn’t have something the matter with you when first you entered the waiting room then you would have by the time you saw the Doctor. Dr. Tortsov regarded such complaints as mere kibbitsching, claiming that if the waiting room was any warmer it would become a shelter for malingerers, a petri dish for germs and too crowded for deserving patients. Furthermore, if the flow of warmth were reversed to heat the waiting room first, the patients would be even worse off, having to be examined half naked in temperatures only marginally higher than the street outside.
Having tended the stove, Chevanin passed into the third room that served as an office-cum-dispensary. Moving an ancient armchair from one corner of the office to reveal a small green strong box embedded in the wall, he knelt down and fitted the last two mortice keys that remained unused on his key ring. From this crude safe, he extracted a bunch of keys and three ledgers, each of which bore a label in the Doctor’s neat hand: “Account Book”; “Medical Register” and “Dispensary Log”. Closing and locking the safe, he left the accounts book on top of the desk that identified this part of the room as the Doctor’s private office and took the other two books through to the dispensary area.
Despite the dispensary’s basic appurtenances its purpose would have been recognisable to a medical practitioner in any of the larger cities of western Europe. Around the room at waist height, and extending about an arm’s length into the room, ran an acid stained worktop upon which the drugs and medicines were prepared. Into this had been set a heavy stone sink with a single water tap. Leaving the logbook on one side, Chevanin used the keys from the safe to unlock the four glass-fronted cabinets that hung from the walls above the worktop. Having done this, he reached below the worktop and pulled out a large heavy-bottomed iron boiling pan.
As he filled the pan two thirds with water, his ears strained to catch the sound of the Doctor’s footsteps in the waiting room, for it was usually at this point in his preparations that the Doctor arrived at the surgery. Peering through the hatch that linked the dispensary with the consulting room (and which could in fact be said to extend right through to the waiting room if the hatch between the consulting room and the waiting room was open) he saw the hand of the surgery clock move stiffly to ten minutes to nine. He felt his heart miss a beat as he heard the sound of the outer door open and the clatter of footsteps on the bare boards of the waiting room floor. But instead of the customary jangle of keys as the Doctor let himself into the consulting room, he heard the creak of the bench and a hawking sound as his first patient of the day spat at (and missed) the wooden cuspidor that his employer had provided in a vain attempt to halt the spread of disease. Relieved, Chevanin continued his chores, carrying the pan, heavy now with water, into the consulting room and placing it on top of the stove. Slipping off his overcoat he donned a light cotton overall and, sitting down behind his desk, began to remove his boots.
It was not until he had laid out all the instruments that the Doctor might be likely to require for a routine morning’s clinic and had arranged the medical register, note pad and two sharpened pencils on his own desk that Chevanin admitted to himself that the Doctor was late. There seemed only one explanation for such an unheard-of occurrence and as each minute passed his sense of doom deepened. Vivid scenes of melodrama such as those depicted in the pages of the illustrated magazines in Maslov’s library now sprang horribly to life in his mind. A tearful Madame Tortsova on her knees in front of her husband, her hands clasped in supplication before her upturned face, protesting that she had done nothing that might have given his assistant encouragement in pressing his attentions. The Doctor casting her to one side and reaching for his sleigh whip and rushing headlong out into the street, determined to avenge the insult… Was there nothing that could be done to deflect her husband’s righteous anger?
The noise of the creaking bench in the waiting room provided an answer. Let his employer find him as he should be: quietly and methodically attending to the needs of his patients. More eloquently than any words he had, that might persuade the Doctor to show clemency. Hoping that his patient was suffering from something that would show his medical knowledge in a good light, he opened the door out into the waiting room and beamed expectantly.
A small boy of about eight years of age sat swinging his legs on the bench. Dressed from head to foot in an assortment of handed down clothes, he had the grave mien of a tattered clown. Beneath the crinkled brim of a shapeless felt hat, two bright eyes stared unblinking at Chevanin. The boy’s face – what was visible of it beneath the dirt – was of a sallow hue and boasted a button nose, up one nostril of which a grubby finger was vigorously exploring. Between the lapels of the working man’s jacket that hung from the boy’s slender shoulders a band of discoloured woollen cloth was visible, wrapped once around his neck and folded crosswise acro
ss his chest for warmth. A strap of dark leather tied around his waist held the ensemble together. From beneath the hem of the jacket peeped a pair of trouser legs, the cuffs of which ended a good three inches short of his boots. As the boy swung his legs backwards and forwards under the seat Anton Ivanovich could see dark weals on his lower shin where, since the boy had no stockings, the edges of his sturdy boots had chafed the skin.
The Doctor’s assistant had been on the point of inviting his visitor to enter the consulting room. Now, seeing who it was, he changed his mind. The boy was almost certainly verminous; it was best to keep him as far away as from the consulting room as possible.
“Hello, Osip,” he greeted him bluntly. “What do you want?”
Staring past him into the consulting room, the boy said nothing.
“Well, what do you want?” he repeated.
The boy shrugged and began picking at a closely bitten fingernail.
“Osip Noisevitch Pyatkonov, are you sick?”
Without looking up the boy shook his head.
“Is it your father then, or your mother? Has there been some kind of an accident?”
Looking quickly up, the boy began to nod vigorously but in answer to which question still remained unclear to Chevanin.
“If it is a serious accident,” explained Chevanin slowly, “then they must attend the hospital. I can do nothing for them here unless you tell me what it is.”
The boy stared up at him blankly. With a gesture of despair, Chevanin turned on his heel and walked back into the consulting room. At once, the boy stood up and began following him. Wheeling round, the young doctor shooed him away from the door.
“Osip!” he said in exasperation. “You must either tell me what the matter is or you must leave. Do you understand?”
The young boy stood his ground, his grubby chin thrust out stubbornly.
“Farver sent me,” he said at last. “He told me to get the Doctor. Not you, though.”
“Not me?”
“No. He says I’m to get the Old Man.”
