One evening, when she was standing in front of her pier-glass before going to the theatre, Dymov entered the bedroom in tails and white tie. He smiled gently and joyfully looked his wife in the eye, just as he used to do. His face was radiant.
‘I’ve just defended my thesis’, he said, sitting down and stroking his knee.
‘Defended?’ asked Olga.
‘Oho!’ he laughed and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his wife’s face in the mirror, as she was still doing her hair with her back to him. ‘Oho!’ he laughed again. ‘Do you know, it’s very much on the cards that I’m going to be offered a lectureship in general pathology. It certainly looks that way.’
It was plain from his blissful, radiant face that if Olga would only share in his joy and triumph he would forgive her everything, both present and future, and would forget the whole thing. But she had no idea what a lectureship or general pathology were – and besides, she was worried she might be late for the theatre. So she said nothing.
He sat there for another two minutes and then went out with a guilty smile on his face.
VII
It was a very disturbed day.
Dymov had a severe headache. He went without breakfast, did not go to the hospital and lay the whole time on the study sofa. As usual, after twelve, Olga set off for Ryabovsky’s to show him her still-life and to ask why he had not come yesterday. She thought her sketch was rubbish – she had only painted it as an excuse to visit the artist.
She entered his flat without ringing and when she was removing her galoshes in the hall she thought she heard someone quietly running through the studio and the rustle of a woman’s dress. When she hurried to take a look into the studio she caught a brief glimpse of a brown petticoat flashing past and vanishing behind the large painting that was draped – together with the easel – down to the ground with black calico. A woman was hiding there – no doubt about that! How often had Olga herself taken refuge behind that painting! Evidently embarrassed in the extreme and startled at her appearance, Ryabovsky stretched both hands towards her.
‘A-a-a! How very nice to see you’, he said with a forced smile. ‘And what’s the latest news?’
Olga’s eyes filled with tears. She felt ashamed and bitter – not for a million roubles would she have agreed to speak her mind in the presence of a strange woman, her rival, that liar who was now hiding behind the painting and probably enjoying a malicious giggle.
‘I’ve brought you a sketch’, she said timidly, in a thin wispy voice, her lips trembling. ‘A nature morte.’
‘A-a-a! A sketch?’
The artist took the sketch and, still inspecting it, proceeded automaton-like into the next room.
Olga obediently followed him.
‘Nature morte… the best sort’, he muttered, looking for rhymes. ‘Resort, port, ought…’
The sound of footsteps and the rustle of a skirt came from the studio: that meant she had gone. Olga felt like shouting out loud, hitting the artist on the head with a heavy object and making her exit, but she was blinded by tears, overwhelmed with shame and no longer did she feel that she was Olga Ivanovna, no longer an artist, but a small insect.
‘I’m tired’, the artist said languidly, examining the sketch and shaking his head to ward off sleepiness. ‘It’s very charming, of course, but today it’s only a sketch, last year it was a sketch and in a month there’ll be another sketch. How is it you don’t get bored with it all? If I were you I’d give up painting and take up music seriously, or something. You see, you’re not an artist, but a musician. But really, I’m so tired, you know! I’ll order some tea right away… Eh?’
He left the room and Olga could hear him giving his manservant some orders. To avoid farewells and explanations, but mainly to stop herself sobbing, she rushed into the hall before Ryabovsky returned, put on her galoshes and went into the street. There she breathed easily and felt free once and for all from Ryabovsky, from painting, from that tiresome feeling of guilt that had so overwhelmed her in the studio. It was all over!
She drove to her dressmaker, then to Barnay,5 who had arrived only yesterday, and from Barnay she went to a music shop, thinking the whole time of the cold, harsh letter, so full of injured pride, she would write to Ryabovsky – and of going with Dymov to the Crimea in the spring or summer, of finally breaking with the past and starting a new life.
When she returned home late that evening she sat down in the drawing-room without changing to write her letter. Ryabovsky had told her that she was no artist and to avenge herself she would tell him that year in year out he painted the same old picture, that every single day he repeated the same thing, that he was in a rut, that he would never be any better than he was now. She also wanted to tell him how much he owed her for her good influence and that if he was acting badly this was only because her influence was being undermined by various personages such as the one who had hidden herself behind the painting earlier that day.
‘Mother!’ Dymov called from his study without opening the door. ‘Mother!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Mother, don’t come into the study, just come to the door… Well, the day before yesterday I must have caught diphtheria at the hospital and now… I’m feeling rotten. Send for Korostelev right away.’
Olga had always called her husband – like all the men she knew – by his surname instead of his Christian name. She did not like the name Osip, because it reminded her of Gogol’s Osip6 and that play upon words: ‘Osip lost his voice from too much gossip.’ But now she cried out:
‘Osip! It’s not possible!’
‘Send for him! I’m not well…’ Dymov said from behind the door and she could hear him going back to the sofa and lying down. ‘Send for him’ – and his voice had a hollow sound.
‘What’s happening?’ Olga thought, turning cold with fright. ‘It’s really dangerous, isn’t it?’
Although she had no need for one, she took a candle and went to her bedroom and there, as she wondered what to do, she happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the pier-glass. Her pale, frightened face, her long-sleeved jacket with those yellow flounces at the breast, her skirt with those bizarrely sloping stripes – all this made her look ghastly and repulsive in her own eyes. Suddenly she felt a sharp twinge of pity for Dymov, for his boundless love for her, for his young life and even for that orphaned bed in which he had not slept for so long. And she remembered his customary smile, so meek and mild. She shed bitter tears and wrote Korostelev an imploring letter. It was two o’clock in the morning.
VIII
At about half past eight next morning, when Olga came out of her bedroom, her head heavy from lack of sleep, her hair uncombed, unappealing and with a guilty expression, a certain black-bearded gentleman – apparently a doctor – entered the hall.
There was a smell of medicine. Korostelev was standing by the study door, tweaking the left side of his moustache with his right hand.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go in’, he told Olga gloomily. ‘It’s infectious. In fact, there’s no point at all in your going in, he’s delirious.’
‘Is it really diphtheria?’ Olga whispered.
‘Those who play with fire must face the consequences…’ Korostelev muttered, ignoring the question. ‘Do you know how he caught it? On Tuesday he sucked some diphtheria membrane from a little boy through a tube. What for? It was so stupid, he just didn’t think…’
‘Is it dangerous? Very?’ asked Olga.
‘Yes, it’s the serious type. We really ought to send for Shrek.’
There arrived a little red-haired man with a long nose and Jewish accent, then a tall, stooping shaggy gentleman resembling an archdeacon, then a very stout, young, red-faced man with spectacles. These were the doctors who had come to sit at their colleague’s bedside. When Korostelev had done his stint, he stayed on instead of going home, wandering wraith-like through every room. The maid served tea to the doctors at the bedside and was constantly runnin
g to the chemist’s. As a result there was no one to tidy the rooms. It was quiet and depressing.
Olga sat in her bedroom and thought that God was punishing her for deceiving her husband. That silent, uncomplaining, mysterious being, deprived of any personality as a result of his own gentleness, so characterless and feeble because of his excessive kindness, was suffering acutely somewhere in his study, on his sofa, without a word of complaint. And were he to complain, even though delirious, the bedside doctors would know that diphtheria alone was not to blame. They only had to ask Korostelev: he knew everything about it – and it was not without reason that he looked at his friend’s wife as if she were the real villain of the piece and as if the diphtheria were merely her accomplice. She had completely forgotten that moonlit night on the Volga, those declarations of love, that romantic life in the peasant’s hut – all she remembered now was that because of some idle whim, from sheer self-gratification, she had soiled herself from head to foot with some sticky filth which she could never wash off…
‘Oh, what two-faced lies I told!’ she thought, recalling her stormy affair with Ryabovsky. ‘Damn all of that!’
At four o’clock she sat at the dinner table with Korostelev. He ate nothing, drank only red wine and kept frowning. She too ate nothing. At times she would offer a silent prayer, vowing to God that if Dymov did recover she would love him again and be a faithful wife. Her thoughts momentarily wandered as she looked at Korostelev and reflected: ‘How terribly boring to be such an ordinary, totally unremarkable, obscure nobody, with a wrinkled face too and such appalling manners!’ And then she felt that God would strike her dead that very moment for never once having gone into her husband’s study for fear of infection. And in general there was that dull feeling of dejection and the conviction that her life was already in ruins and that her situation was beyond redemption.
After dinner it grew dark. When Olga came into the dining-room Korostelev was sleeping on the sofa with a gold-embroidered silk cushion under his head. He was snoring regularly and hoarsely.
And the doctors who came to keep vigil at the bedside went away again without noticing the disorder everywhere. That snoring stranger asleep in the drawing-room, those sketches on the walls, the quaint décor, the uncombed, sloppily dressed mistress of the house – none of this aroused the slightest interest now. One of the doctors happened to laugh at something and his laughter had a strange, restrained ring to it – and this was frightening, even.
When Olga came into the drawing-room again Korostelev was not sleeping, but sitting up and smoking.
‘He has diphtheria of the nasal cavity’, he said in an undertone. ‘And his heart’s not too good. It looks really grim.’
‘You’d better send for Shrek’, Olga said.
‘He’s been. It was he who noticed that the diphtheria had spread to the nose. But what is Shrek, all said and done? He’s an absolute nobody, really. He’s Shrek and I’m Korostelev – that’s all there is to say about it.’
Time dragged on painfully slowly. Olga lay fully dressed, dozing on her bed that had been unmade since early morning. She fancied that the whole flat was filled from floor to ceiling with an enormous lump of iron and that it only had to be removed for everyone to feel cheerful and relaxed. When she woke up she realized that it was not the iron that was weighing down on her but Dymov’s illness.
‘Nature morte… port’, she thought, slipping into semi-consciousness again. ‘Sport… resort… And what about Shrek? Shrek, peck, speck, deck. And where are my friends now? Do they know of our troubles? God help us… save us… Shrek, peck…’
And once again that lump of iron. Time dragged wearily and the ground-floor clock kept striking. The doorbell rang constantly as the doctors arrived. The maid entered with an empty glass on a tray.
‘Shall I make the bed, madam?’ she asked. Receiving no reply, she went out. The clock struck downstairs, Olga dreamt of that rain on the Volga and again someone entered the bedroom – a stranger, it seemed. Olga jumped up and recognized Korostelev.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked.
‘About three.’
‘Well, how is it?’
‘How is it!? I’ve come to tell you he’s dying…’
He began to sob, sat down on the bed beside her and wiped the tears with his sleeve. At first she did not take it in, but then she went cold all over and started slowly crossing herself.
‘He’s dying’, he repeated in a thin little voice and sobbed once more. ‘He’s dying because he sacrificed himself… What a loss for science!’ he said bitterly. ‘Compared with all of us he was a great man, absolutely outstanding! What talent! What hopes all of us had for him!’ Korostelev continued, wringing his hands. ‘God in heaven… he was a true scientist – you won’t find another like him in a month of Sundays! Dear Osip Dymov, Osip Dymov! What have you done? Oh, my God!’
Despairingly, Korostelev covered his face with both hands and shook his head. ‘And what a moral force!’ he continued, growing increasingly angry with someone. ‘A kind, pure, loving soul – no ordinary mortal but a saint! He served science and he died for science. He worked like a horse, day in day out, no one spared him and a young scholar like him, a professor in the making, had to tout for private patients and spend his nights doing translations to pay for these… loathsome rags!’
Korostelev looked hatefully at Olga, seized the sheet in both hands and angrily ripped it, as if it were to blame.
‘He didn’t spare himself and no one spared him! Well, what’s the use of talking?’
‘Yes, he was one in a million!’ someone said in the drawing-room, in a deep voice.
Olga recalled their whole life together, from beginning to end, in every single detail and suddenly she realized that he really had been a truly remarkable and unusual man – a great man compared with every single person she knew. And when she recalled what her late father and all his medical colleagues thought of him she realized that every one of them had seen in him a celebrity of the future. The walls, the ceiling, the lamp and the carpet winked at her mockingly, as if they wished to tell her: ‘You’re too late! You’ve missed your chance!’ She rushed weeping from the bedroom and ran into her husband’s study. He lay motionless on the sofa, covered with a blanket up to his waist. His face had become dreadfully thin and pinched, with that greyish, yellow colour you never find with the living. Only his forehead, his black eyebrows and familiar smile told her that it was Dymov. Olga quickly felt his chest, forehead and hands. His chest was still warm, but his forehead and hands were horribly cold. And his half-open eyes gazed at the blanket – not at Olga Ivanovna.
‘Dymov!’ she called out loud. ‘Dymov!’
She wanted to explain that there had been a mistake, that all was not lost, that life could still be beautiful and happy, that he was a rare, a remarkable, a great man and that she would revere, idolize and go in awe of him all her life…
‘Dymov!’ she called, tugging at his shoulder, unable to believe that he would never wake again. ‘Dymov! Say something!’
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, Korostelev was telling the maid:
‘Why do you have to ask? Just go to the church lodge and ask where the almswomen live. They’ll wash the body and lay it out, they’ll do all that has to be done.’
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.