Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics)

by Chandler, Robert

  THE EMBROIDERED TOWEL

  If you have never driven over country roads it is useless for me to tell you about it; you wouldn’t understand anyway. But if you have, I would rather not remind you of it.

  To cut a long story short, my driver and I spent exactly twenty-four hours covering the thirty-two miles which separate the district town of Grachyovka from Muryovo hospital. Indeed so nearly exactly twenty-four hours that it was uncanny: at 2 p.m. on 16 September 1917 we were at the last corn-chandler’s store on the outskirts of the remarkable town of Grachyovka, and at five past two on 17 September of that same unforgettable year 1917, I was in the Muryovo hospital yard, standing on trampled, withered grass, flattened by the September rain. My legs were ossified with cold, so much so that, as I stood there bemused, I mentally leafed through the textbook pages in an inane attempt to remember whether there was such a complaint as ossification of the muscles or whether it was an illness I had dreamed up while asleep the night before in the village of Grabilovka. What the devil was it in Latin? Every single muscle ached unbearably, like toothache. There is nothing I can say about my toes – they lay immobile in my boots, as rigid as wooden stumps. I confess that in a burst of cowardice I pronounced a whispered curse on the medical profession and on the application form I had handed in five years earlier to the rector of the university. All the time a fine rain was drizzling down as through a sieve. My coat had swelled like a sponge. I vainly tried to grasp my suitcase with the fingers of my right hand, but in the end spat on the wet grass in disgust. My fingers were incapable of gripping anything. It was then, stuffed as I was with all sorts of knowledge from fascinating medical books, that I suddenly remembered the name of the illness – palsy. ‘Paralysis,’ I said to myself in despair, God knows why.

  ‘Your roads take some getting used to,’ I muttered through stony, blue lips, staring resentfully at the driver, although the state of the road was hardly his fault.

  ‘Ah, comrade doctor,’ he answered, with lips equally stiff under their fair moustache, ‘I’ve been driving fifteen years and I still can’t get used to them.’

  I shuddered and glanced round miserably at the peeling, white, two-storey hospital building, at the bare log walls of my assistant’s house, and at my own future residence, a neat, two-storey house with mysterious windows blank as gravestones. I gave a long sigh. Suddenly instead of Latin words a faraway memory flashed through my head, a sweet phrase which a lusty tenor in blue stockings sang in my numbed and shaken head: Salut, demeure chaste et pure… Farewell, farewell, it will be a long time before I see you again, oh golden-red Bolshoy Theatre, Moscow, shop windows… ah, farewell.

  ‘Next time, I’ll wear a sheepskin coat,’ I said to myself in angry desperation, tugging at the suitcase by its straps with my inflexible hands. ‘I’ll… though next time it’ll be mid-October, I’ll have to wear two sheepskin coats. I certainly shan’t be going to Grachyovka for a month yet. Just think… I actually had to put up for the night en route! When we had only driven fifteen miles and it was as black as the tomb… it was night… we had to stop in Grabilovka, a school teacher put us up. This morning we set off at seven, and here we are… God, it’s been slower driving here than if we’d come on foot. One wheel got stuck in a ditch, the other swung up into the air, my case fell on to my feet with a crash, we slithered from side to side, lurching forward one moment, backward the next. And all the time a fine rain drizzling down and my bones turning to ice. Who’d believe you can freeze as easily in the middle of a grey, miserable September as in the depth of winter? Ah well, it seems you can. And as you die a slow death there’s nothing to look at except the same endless monotony. On the right the bare, undulating fields and on the left a stunted copse, flanked by five or six grey, dilapidated shacks. Not a living soul in them, it seems, and not a sound to be heard.’

  In the end the suitcase yielded. The driver lay on his stomach and shoved it down on top of me. I tried to catch it by the strap, but my hand refused to perform and the beastly thing, crammed with books and all sorts of rubbish, flopped down on to the grass, crashing against my legs.

  ‘Oh Lor…’ the driver began fearfully, but I did not complain. My legs were no more sensitive than two sticks of wood.

  ‘Hey, anybody at home? Hey!’ the driver cried out and flapped his arms like a rooster flapping its wings. ‘Hey, I’ve brought the doctor!’

  At once faces appeared, pressed against the dark windows of the assistant’s house. A door banged and I saw a man hobbling towards me in a ragged coat and worn old boots. He hurriedly and respectfully doffed his cap, ran up and stopped two paces short of me, then smiling somewhat bashfully he welcomed me in a hoarse voice, ‘Good day, comrade doctor.’

  ‘And who might you be?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m Yegorich,’ he introduced himself, ‘the watchman here. We’ve been expecting you.’

  Without wasting a moment he grabbed the suitcase, swung it over his shoulder and carried it in. I limped after him, trying unsuccessfully to thrust my hand into my trouser pocket to get out my purse.

  Man’s basic needs are few. The first of them is fire. Back in Moscow, when I found out that I was to go to remote Muryovo, I had promised myself that I would behave in a dignified manner. My youthful appearance made life intolerable for me in those early days. I always made a point of introducing myself as ‘Doctor So-and-So’, and inevitably people raised their eyebrows and said, ‘Really? I thought you were still a student.’

  ‘No. I’m qualified,’ I would answer sullenly, thinking, ‘I must start wearing spectacles, that’s what I must do.’ But there was no point in this, as I had perfectly good vision, my eyes as yet unclouded by experience. Unable to wear glasses as a defence against those invariable, affectionately indulgent smiles, I tried to develop a special manner designed to induce respect. I tried to talk evenly and gravely, to repress impulsive movements as far as possible, to walk and not run as twenty-four-year-olds do who have just left university. Looking back, I now realize that the attempt did not come off at all.

  At the moment in question I disobeyed my unwritten code of behaviour. I sat hunched up in front of the fire with my shoes off, not in the study but in the kitchen, like a fire-worshipper, fervently and passionately drawn to the birch logs blazing in the stove. On my left stood an upturned tub with my boots lying on top of it, next to them a plucked cockerel with a bloodstained neck, and its many-coloured feathers lying in a heap beside it. While still stiff with the cold, I had somehow managed to perform a whole set of vital actions. I had confirmed Yegorich’s wife, the sharp-nosed Aksinya, in her position as my cook. As a result of this she had slaughtered the cockerel and I was to eat it. I had been introduced to everyone in turn. My feldsher1 was called Demyan Lukich, the midwives were Pelageya Ivanovna and Anna Nikolayevna. I had been shown round the hospital and was left in no doubt whatever that it was generously equipped. With equal certainty I was forced to admit (inwardly, of course) that I had no idea what very many of these shiny, unsullied instruments were for. Not only had I never held them in my hands, but to tell the truth I had never even seen them.

  ‘Hm,’ I mumbled significantly, ‘must say you have an excellent set of instruments. Hm…’

  ‘Oh sir,’ Demyan Lukich remarked sweetly, ‘this is all thanks to your predecessor Leopold Leopoldovich. You see, he used to operate from dawn till dusk.’

  I was instantly covered with cold sweat and stared glumly at the gleaming cupboards.

  We then went round the empty wards and I satisfied myself that they could easily hold forty patients.

  ‘Leopold Leopoldovich sometimes had fifty in here,’ Demyan Lukich said consolingly, and Anna Nikolayevna, a woman with a diadem of grey hair, chose to say, ‘Doctor, you look so young, so very young… it’s simply amazing. You look like a student.’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ I said to myself, ‘really, you’d think they were doing it on purpose!’

  Through clenched teeth I grunted, ‘Hm… no, well, I… yes
, rather young looking…’

  After that we went down to the pharmacy and a glance was enough to tell me that it was supplied with every conceivable medicine. Its two sombre rooms smelled strongly of herbs and its shelves were filled with an endless variety of preparations. There were even foreign patent medicines, which, need I add, I had never heard of.

  ‘Leopold Leopoldovich ordered these,’ Pelageya Ivanovna reported proudly.

  ‘This Leopold was nothing short of a genius,’ I thought and was filled with respect for the mysterious Leopold who had left the quiet little village of Muryovo behind him.

  Besides fire, man also needs to find his bearings. I had long since eaten the cockerel, Yegorich had stuffed my mattress with straw and covered it with a sheet, and a light was burning in my study. Spellbound, I sat and stared at the legendary Leopold’s third great achievement: the bookcase was crammed with books. I counted roughly thirty volumes of surgery manuals in Russian and German. And the books on therapeutics! The beautiful leather-bound anatomical atlases!

  Evening drew on and 1 started to find my bearings.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ I repeated to myself stubbornly and unhappily. ‘I’ve got my degree and a first-class one at that. Didn’t I warn them back in town that I wanted to start off as a junior partner in a practice? But no, they just smiled and said, “You’ll get your bearings.” So now I’ve got to find my bearings. Suppose they bring me a hernia? Just tell me how I’ll find my bearings with that? And more to the point, what will a hernia patient feel like when I get my hands on him? Will he find his bearings in the next world?’ The thought made my blood run cold.

  ‘What about peritonitis? Oh no! Or croup, that country children get? When is tracheotomy indicated? Even if it doesn’t need tracheotomy I shall be pretty much at sea… What about… what about… deliveries! I forgot about deliveries! Incorrect positions. What on earth will I do? What a fool I was! I should have refused this job. I really should. They should have found themselves another Leopold.’

  Miserable, I paced up and down the twilit study. When I came up to the lamp I caught sight of the reflection of my pale face and of the light of the lamp in the window set against the boundless darkness of the fields.

  ‘I’m like Dmitry the Pretender2 – nothing but a sham,’ I thought stupidly and sat down at the table again.

  I spent about two lonely hours of self-torment and only stopped when my nerves could no longer bear the horrors I had summoned up. Then I started to calm down and even to work out a plan of action.

  ‘Let’s see now… they tell me admissions are almost nil at the moment. They’re braking flax in the villages, the roads are impassable…’

  ‘That’s just when they will bring you a hernia,’ thundered a harsh voice in my mind, ‘because a man with a cold won’t make the effort over impassable roads, but rest assured they’ll bring you a hernia, my dear doctor.’

  There was something in what the voice said. I shuddered.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I said to it. ‘It won’t necessarily be a hernia. Stop being so neurotic. You can’t back out once you’ve begun.’

  ‘You said it!’ the voice answered spitefully.

  ‘All right then… I won’t take a step without my reference book… If I have to prescribe something I can think it over while I wash my hands and the reference book will be lying open on top of the patients’ register. I shall make out wholesome but simple prescriptions, say, sodium salicylate, 0.5 grammes in powder form three times a day.’

  ‘You might as well prescribe baking soda! Why don’t you just prescribe soda?’ the voice was blatantly making fun of me. ‘What’s soda got to do with it? I’ll also prescribe an infusion of ipecacuanha, 180 c.c. Or 200 c.c. if you don’t mind.’

  And although no one was asking for ipecacuanha as I sat there alone by the lamp, I sheepishly turned the pages in the pharmacopoeia and checked ipecacuanha: meanwhile I automatically read in passing that there was a certain substance called ‘Insipin’ which is none other than ‘ethereal sulphate of quinine-diglycolic acid’. Apparently it doesn’t taste of quinine! What is it for? And how is it prescribed? What is it, a powder? To hell with it!

  ‘That’s all very well, but what are you going to do about a hernia?’ The voice of Fear continued to pester me.

  ‘I’ll put them into a bath,’ I defended myself in exasperation, ‘and try to reduce it.’

  ‘What if it’s a strangulated one, old boy? Baths won’t be much use then, will they! A strangulated hernia!’ Fear chanted in a demoniac voice. ‘You’ll have to cut it out… !’

  I gave in and all but burst into tears. I sent out a prayer to the darkness outside the window: please, anything but not a strangulated hernia.

  Weariness then crooned, ‘Go to bed, unhappy physician. Sleep on it. Calm down and stop being neurotic. Look how still the dark is outside the window, the fields are cold and sleeping, there is no hernia. You can think about it in the morning. You’ll settle down… Sleep… drop that book of diagrams, you won’t make head or tail of it anyway… hernial orifice…’

  I don’t remember him arriving. I only remember the bolt grating in the door, a shriek from Aksinya and a cart creaking out in the yard.

  He was hatless, his sheepskin coat unbuttoned, his beard was dishevelled and there was a mad look in his eyes.

  He crossed himself, fell on his knees and banged his forehead against the floor. This to me!

  ‘I’m a lost man,’ I thought wretchedly.

  ‘Now, now – what’s the matter?’ I muttered and pulled at his grey sleeve.

  His face twisted and he started mumbling a breathless and incoherent answer, ‘Oh doctor, sir… sir… she’s all I’ve got, she’s all I’ve got, she’s all I’ve got,’ he burst out suddenly in a voice so young-sounding and powerful that the lampshade trembled. ‘Oh, sir, oh…’ He wrung his hands in misery and started knocking his forehead against the floorboards as if trying to smash them. ‘Why? Why am I being punished? What have I done to deserve God’s anger?’

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ I cried out, feeling the blood draining from my face.

  He jumped to his feet, rushed towards me and whispered, ‘Anything you want, doctor, sir… I’ll give you money, take as much money as you want. As much as you want. We’ll pay you in food if you like. Only don’t let her die. Don’t let her die. Even if she’s to be a cripple, I don’t mind. I don’t mind!’ He shouted to the ceiling. ‘I’ve got enough to feed her, I can manage.’ I could see Aksinya’s pale face in the black rectangle of the door. I was overcome with anguish.

  ‘Well, what is it? Speak!’ I cried irritably.

  He stopped. His eyes went blank and he whispered, as if telling me a secret, ‘She fell into the brake.’

  ‘Brake… brake? What’s that?’

  ‘Flax, they were braking flax, doctor,’ Aksinya whispered in explanation, ‘you know, brake, flax braking…’

  ‘Here’s a fine beginning. This is it. Oh why did I ever come?’ I said to myself in horror.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My daughter,’ he answered in a whisper, and then shouted, ‘Help me!’ Once again he threw himself to the floor and his hair, cut like a mop in peasant fashion, fell into his eyes.

  The pressure-lamp with its lopsided tin shade burned with hot beams of light. She lay on the operating table, on white, fresh-smelling oilcloth and when I saw her all thoughts of hernia vanished from my mind.

  Her fair, almost reddish hair hung down from the table in a matted clump. She had a gigantic plait which reached to the floor.

  Her calico skirt was torn and stained with blood in various shades from brown to oily scarlet. The light of the kerosene lamp was a lively yellow in comparison with her paper-white face, and her nose was beginning to sharpen. On her white face, motionless as a plaster cast, a truly rare beauty was fading away before my eyes. Seldom in life does one see such a face.

  The operating theatre was completely silent for about ten seconds, but
from behind the closed doors came the muffled sounds of someone shouting and banging his head over and over again.

  ‘Gone out of his mind,’ I thought. ‘The nurses must be seeing to him. Why is she so beautiful? Though he does have good bone structure; the mother must have been a beautiful woman. He’s a widower…’

  ‘Is he a widower?’ I whispered automatically. ‘Yes, he is,’ Pelageya Ivanovna answered quietly.

  Then Demyan Lukich, almost as if in anger, ripped the skirt from hem to waist, baring her instantly. I looked, and what I saw was even worse than I had expected. Strictly speaking there was no left leg. From the smashed knee down there were just bloody shreds, battered red flesh and splinters of white bone protruding in all directions. The right leg was fractured at the shin so that the tips of both bones had punctured the skin and her foot lay lifelessly on its side, as though disconnected.

  ‘Yes…’ the feldsher pronounced softly and that was all he said.

  Thereupon I regained my wits and started feeling her pulse. Her cold wrist registered nothing. Only after a few seconds did I detect a barely perceptible, irregular ripple. It passed and was followed by a pause during which I had time to glance at her white lips and nostrils, which were turning blue. I already felt like saying ‘It’s all over’, but fortunately controlled myself… there was another hint of a beat.

  ‘The end of a mangled human being,’ I said to myself. ‘There’s really nothing more to be done.’

  But suddenly I said sternly, in a voice that I did not recognize, ‘Camphor.’

  Anna Nikolayevna bent over to my ear and whispered, ‘What for, doctor? Don’t torture her. What’s the point of smashing her up any more? She’ll die any minute now… you won’t save her.’

  I gave her an angry look and said, ‘I asked for camphor…’ in such a way that she flushed, marched resentfully to the little table and broke an ampoule. The feldsher obviously did not approve of the camphor either. Nonetheless he deftly and swiftly took hold of a syringe and the yellow oil went under the skin of her shoulder.