Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

by Anton Chekhov

  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 atte
ntion.

  ‘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, a
nd 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.’