Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Maxim Osipov

  No, he didn’t need a cassock, he didn’t want to make an impression.

  Somehow Father Sergius knew what was going to happen: Marina would take him to the hospital and they would say their goodbyes. It was a bit soon for this; he wasn’t even fifty yet . . . Of course, part of him was afraid. A feeling like you’re about to go under in a cold river. He had to hope he would acquire a new body after the soul parted from the one he had. The Lord would give him another form of existence. He might even give it to him today.

  •

  The hospital. They had arrived. Only the upstairs windows were lit, on the third floor; without their light the empty forecourt would have been in complete darkness. Around the door stood a number of grim-looking men.

  Inside, he was put in a wheelchair, as if he hadn’t just arrived on his own two feet, and without any warning a heavy woman began wheeling him in the semidarkness from one room to another. Father Sergius no longer belonged entirely to himself.

  He had only ever stayed in a hospital once before—when he was seventeen, on the instructions of the military commissariat. He was there with two men who told him he was a deserter and kept sending for vodka. At night the men snored so loudly they seemed not to snore but to roar, like a couple of saber-toothed tigers. He couldn’t remember anything of a medical nature from that hospitalization.

  Everything must follow its course. Marina calls a friend who knows about everything here: The main thing, the friend says, is to get up to the third floor as soon as you can—that’s where everything medical happens. Soon Maya Pavlovna will be down. Maya Pavlovna is the department head, she’s on duty today; the friend says they’re in luck.

  Back to waiting: Maya Pavlovna is engaged, go up to her yourselves. On the way up, to the kingdom of light, there’s a small incident.

  “Go on! What are you waiting for?” Marina yells at some middle-aged women.

  The elevator isn’t working. How can that be? It was working just a moment ago!

  Marina has an effect on people. The nurses, aides, and—what are they called?—the paramedics, they’re scared: some fellows will be along shortly. They’ll help out, pick him up. He can’t go up there on his own: Maya Pavlovna would kill them. Any pain above the navel requires a cardiogram.

  “Then do it!”

  Marina ought to keep quiet, thinks Father Sergius. It would be better if she went home. Of course she’s worried, in her fashion, but it’s obvious: nothing works in this place.

  He says: “I’m quite capable of going up the stairs. I’m not as bad off as that.”

  “But you are, you are.” Marina won’t let him get a word in. “He’s never complained about anything before.” This is directed at the people around them.

  What’s the matter with the damned elevator? It turns out there’s a dead woman in it. The dead aren’t to be sent to the morgue until two hours after death, which is why they are put in the elevator.

  Dead bodies don’t frighten Father Sergius. He gets up, takes the bag from Marina, and opens the steel door a little. “You stay here.” He doesn’t even kiss her goodbye.

  He bangs the door shut and presses button three. There is indeed a body, wrapped in a sheet.

  •

  Father Sergius will learn the deceased’s story later. The ninety-nine-year-old woman had been frozen to death by her children and grandchildren, their husbands and wives: they didn’t attach any significance to a round number, didn’t wait for their relative to reach one hundred. They laid her out on an oil cloth and undressed her—in recent years the old woman had been utterly helpless—then opened up the window—the May nights are cold—and waited for her to stop breathing. Then they called for an ambulance. “Come confirm she’s dead,” they said.

  “What are the windows open for?”

  “To air the room. Is that a problem?”

  The radiators in the room had been switched off. Anyhow, they came and confirmed not that she was dead but that she had acute hypothermia. Down to twenty-eight degrees. She still had a pulse. The police were informed, and now the old woman’s relatives were awaiting investigation and trial. She lived a couple of hours longer thanks to the intervention of humane medicine, Father Sergius will be told by his writer neighbor—what didn’t Maya Pavlovna do to try to warm her up.

  These details he has yet to hear. For now he’s standing in the corridor by the elevator door, across from the intensive-care unit (a small one, with two beds), waiting for the aide to change the sheets. Although you can’t see anything because of the screen, there is someone moving in the bed on the other side.

  A few steps from where Father Sergius stands is the staff room, and beyond that is Maya Pavlovna, cornered by three men—the ones they had seen when they were getting out of the taxi. Maya Pavlovna is a dark-haired woman, on the short side, and about the same age as him.

  “Convey your thoughts,” Maya Pavlovna is saying, “to the investigator. As for the cause of hypothermia we have no comment. We can only confirm that this is what caused your relative’s death.”

  Maya Pavlovna goes to the stairwell and pushes the door. The door is locked.

  “How did you get up here?”

  One of the men indicates the other end of the corridor: they had come in through the kitchen. He’s the oldest and has a hangdog look. A son or a son-in-law. When he raises his arm, you can see a tattoo on the inside that reads: “Life is hell and then you die.” Father Sergius thinks: The stairs are locked. Marina can’t get up here. Let’s hope she’s already on her way home.

  “She was ninety-nine!” exclaims the youngest, turning his back to the doctor and gesturing grotesquely. “What did they bother bringing her here for?’’

  “In normal countries they have this thing called euthanasia,” utters the third—in the middle, agewise, and obviously the most articulate of the three.

  Maya Pavlovna gives him a hopeless look.

  “The investigators will look into all of your concerns.”

  “Now you listen here, Madam Doctor!” The young man smacks his side for some reason. “Ninety-nine! You got that? Ninety-nine!”

  This is no longer speech but the howl of a beast. And he’ll likely howl this way throughout his term in the prison camp for murdering his own grandmother.

  “Leave right now. I’m calling the police.” Maya Pavlovna closes the staff-room door and locks it behind her.

  Why, Father Sergius wonders, can’t he speak so firmly with people who are in a state of clear, grievous, recurrent sin?

  “Lie down now, my dear,” an older woman is saying to him, a woman affectionately referred to here as Miss Masha, the angel aide.

  •

  They’re doing his cardiogram. While observing what the nurse is up to, Father Sergius looks at his own bare chest and its sparse fair hair as if it belonged to somebody else. The way you look at your home when you have visitors whom you don’t know very well. Make your body a temple of the Holy Spirit . . . The nurse dribbles cold gel on his chest, attaches rubber bulbs. Everything around him is alien; even his body seems not to be his own. Bright and clean, the dark blue bulbs, the rhythmic beep of the monitors: you can’t tell which is for your neighbor’s heart and which is for your own—there’s a coldness on your chest and inside it. The pain is gone, there’s nothing but emptiness, and even that only if you listen very carefully. In a state like this he wouldn’t have sought any help.

  “Is it a heart attack?”

  He knows what she’s going to say: Maya Pavlovna must examine him.

  What’s the nurse giving him now? No, not giving, taking—she’s taking his blood.

  There’s a noise from behind the screen.

  “Oh Lord, oh Lord,” moans his neighbor.

  Something overturns and a yellow liquid spreads across the floor.

  “Miss Masha, see to him!” the nurse shouts.

  “What have you done now, eh?” the angel aide asks as she tucks the man back into bed.

  “My legs are atremb
le,” he replies.

  Atremble? Oh my!

  “I’ll show you how to cause a stir,” says Miss Masha, although there’s no menace in her voice.

  Somehow or other everything settles down behind the screen. The floor has been wiped and both of their monitors are beeping again. The nurse and Miss Masha have gone. Father Sergius realizes he’s forgotten to bring a book. All he has is a notebook that he carries around and writes all manner of things in. He’ll just lie there and think. But then a sigh comes from behind the screen.

  “Oh Lord, oh Lord!”

  “Are you unwell?” asks Father Sergius.

  “Better now,” the neighbor replies. “Reality is so empty, so meaningless and superficial!”

  So that’s why he’s sighing. Clearly he’s someone out of the ordinary: he belongs to the intelligentsia.

  “Have you been here long?”

  Since yesterday evening, his neighbor believes. He’s not quite sure. He was in a very bad state, he nearly died, almost spoiled their statistics—not a bad euphemism for dying, eh? They say he’s got pulmonary edema. Twaddle! What do they know? He has weak bronchial tubes—they diagnosed him in Moscow, at the LitFund clinic.

  Does he have a dacha here too?

  No, it’s just an occasional visit. That is, on occasion of his daughter living here. With her mother. And young man. She’s grown up already, twenty-two. And now his wife’s come rushing into town. Younger than his daughter. She was enrolled in his seminar. If he loses her he can’t live. To someone who hasn’t been in his position . . .

  “Has anything like that ever happened to you?” his neighbor asks.

  No, answers Father Sergius, he’s only had one love in his life—and realizes that he isn’t lying exactly, but also is not being entirely forthright about his situation.

  What kind of seminar was his neighbor teaching?

  It turns out he’s a writer.

  “And what do you do?”

  Father Sergius wants to say, “I’m a bad priest,” but instead he says, “I’m a geologist.”

  “I see,” the neighbor replies, not at all interested.

  So, he’s a writer.

  “But my last name won’t mean anything to you. It’s Puryzhensky.” He pauses.

  If they ever get out of here, the neighbor promises, he’ll give him a copy of his book, the latest one. He has to find it. He’s run out of author’s copies.

  “Do you know how hard it is asking for your own work in a bookshop? ‘Have you got anything by. . . Puryzhensky?’ It’s like buying condoms. Remember? When you were young?” The man has cheered up a little. “ ‘Item number two,’ remember?”

  Father Sergius would prefer not to reply.

  Once again despair takes hold of Puryzhensky. He can’t even sign a book, his handwriting has gotten so bad, so wretched. It’s a few years since he’s written anything new anyway; he’s just looked after his earlier works: second editions, dramatizations, screenplays…

  “You know what they said about my last novel? That it bore the stamp of a losing battle between author and alcohol. Can you imagine?”

  The best—or most flattering, rather—estimate he ever received from the critics was: Puryzhensky is a minor yet nonetheless enjoyable writer.

  All right then, but Father Sergius still doesn’t want to form an opinion about his neighbor’s work before he’s read it.

  Last winter some crackpot started coming regularly to Father Sergius at the church: he maintained that he could resurrect the dead. On one occasion, while turning him out onto the street, Father Sergius thought: If it were true that this madman could resurrect the dead, then by depriving him of the opportunity, he was committing blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. In that case the risk had obviously been nonexistent, and in this case it was minimal, yet he still couldn’t deny Puryzhensky his talent without first reading his work.

  The writer had gone back to his complicated life situation. Olya was pregnant. Olya? His daughter? No, his wife. That is, he and his first wife hadn’t yet divorced, but that’s nothing but a stamp in your passport. If Olya were to leave him . . .

  “Why would she do that?”

  What would she stay for? To have on her hands both a child and a physical wreck like himself? He can’t offer her health or wealth. And Olya herself is little more than a child. The writer sighs.

  “What’s the matter? They’ll take care of your bronchial tubes.”

  The light is getting brighter. Maya Pavlovna comes into the ward. She addresses Father Sergius.

  “Let me put your mind at rest right away—you haven’t had a heart attack, Sergey. . .”

  “Petrovich,” prompts the priest.

  “Can you tell me when the pain began?”

  Suddenly he feels warm. They always ask: When did it begin? How long is it ago that this came unto him? After all that has happened today, now, Maya Pavlovna, a very pleasant person, has brought him the news that he is going to live, that it wasn’t a heart attack. Everything is becoming simple and good.

  “Why are you upset?” She has misread his mood. “And please, when did the pain begin?”

  “Today, in the afternoon. My wife and I had words.” He’s trying to remember: What was the time? “I’m . . . I’m afraid I was in the wrong.”

  “Sergey Petrovich, is this something I should know as your doctor?” True, he wasn’t at confession. “What is your job?”

  He doesn’t want to deceive her, but what can he do?

  “I’m a geologist.”

  She’s examines him, listens. Nothing unusual. His right hand is trembling. This is common among priests; they hold the chalice with their right hand. How is he going to explain this now?

  “Sergey Petrovich, are you with me?” Her eyes are smiling at him ever so slightly.

  Here’s the plan: he’ll remain until morning, have a few things checked, and then they’ll decide. For now they’ll keep him hooked up, and if nature calls, the nurse can unhook him. He’ll need to take a few pills. And get a shot in the abdomen.

  “No,” she laughs, “not for rabies!”

  For now they’ll regard his condition as unstable, although most likely there’s nothing wrong. A healthy person can feel rotten too.

  She’s crossed over to his neighbor. He can hear every word: there are no secrets in an intensive-care ward.

  “You mustn’t remove that from your nose!”

  “Nothing’s coming out of it!”

  “There’s oxygen coming out of it. And please drop that complaining tone of voice.”

  The conversation goes on along the lines that if he, Puryzhensky, stops receiving treatment, his situation will be bad, and even if he doesn’t, it’s still not good. That the tube delivering the medicine is working, and if the writer can’t see the piston moving, that doesn’t mean the piston is still: We don’t notice the hands of a clock moving, do we?

  As for what Puryzhensky has to say about the LitFund clinic, Maya Pavlovna states that she doesn’t know of a Susanna Yurevna—or a Zhanna Yurevna either—and that it was very good of Zhanna/ Susanna to listen to his lungs, but if she had also occasionally listened to his heart, she might not have missed the problem there, which is why he’s here. Tomorrow she’ll try to make arrangements with the surgeons—no, Moscow surgeons—but Puryzhensky won’t make it to the operating table unless he lets them treat him.

  At first she seems to have broken through his resistance, but then he says, well, the hospital isn’t a prison, and he, Puryzhensky, demands to be discharged and released immediately. And, despite it being three in the morning, Maya Pavlovna repeats all of her arguments in support of continuing his treatment, and they agree that Puryzhensky will think it over, but as soon as she leaves the ward, he says he’s leaving.

  “Forgive me for interfering,” Father Sergius says. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Puryzhensky replies. “Your situation is different.”

  What he wants to
say is, you haven’t had a heart attack. And it’s true, we’re all different from one other. He especially. As a priest, he’s different from everyone, always.

  “A man has to have a full range of emotions,” continues Puryzhensky. “I can’t live in a world where there’s just one sorry necessity.”

  Father Sergius has finally gathered his thoughts: “It’s obvious that Maya Pavlovna is an absolutely exceptional physician.”

  “I don’t think so. She’s too pretty.”

  Puryzhensky presses the button. The nurse was clearly sleeping but she responds quickly to the call and sets to the matter with alacrity: they’re very weary of this patient.

  Puryzhensky’s monitor goes silent, the writer’s tubes are removed and dropped to the floor—Miss Masha, take these! We can’t keep you against your will. Write that you refuse treatment and that’s it, goodbye—to be treated at your place of residence.

  “What should I write? Oh dear me, the pen’s run out of ink!” Puryzhensky is in complete despair.

  Father Sergius gets up from his bed to hand the writer his own pen. Pushing the screen aside, he sees him.

  He’s half-naked and prematurely aged, his neck short and thick, his hair long and matted; fat lips, chest, and abdomen; an abundance of gray hair on his body. Bandages on both arms. Stubble. Tongue protruding from exertion.

  “I, so and so,” the nurse dictates, “refuse inpatient treatment. I have been warned of the possible consequences. I have no claims on the staff. If you do, indicate what kind of claims these are. Your signature and the date.”

  Puryzhensky can barely keep up.

  “What claims could I have?” He waves his free arm.

  The priest watches this unattractive, confused person and suddenly thinks: But that’s me. Not my brother or my fellow human being, not the “other I” of philosophers and writers, but simply me. Our circumstances and stories are different, but it’s still me. Me. Barefoot, almost naked, sitting on a cot and waiting for something. Staring into space with unfocused eyes.

  “Get dressed,” the nurse says, “and out the door with you. As for your sick-leave certificate and the sick list, we’ll deal with all that tomorrow. Well, what are you waiting for?”