Cancer Ward (18 page)

He didn't know why they had put him back in the hospital. He very much hoped they would discharge him today.

Up came Maria, tall and dried up, with dead-looking eyes. She was carrying a towel. Yevgenia Ustinovna wiped her hands and arms, raised them, still bare to the elbows, and in complete silence massaged Federau's neck for a long time with circular movements of her fingers. Then she told him to undo his jacket and continued the movement around the hollows of his collarbones and under his arms. Finally she said, “Very good, Federau. As far as you're concerned, everything's excellent.”

His face lit up as though he had been given a reward.

“Everything's fine.” She drew the words out with affection and again worked her fingers under his lower jaw. “One more tiny operation, and that'll be it.”

“What?” Federau's face fell. “But why, Yevgenia Ustinovna? If everything's fine…”

“It'll make you even better.” She smiled faintly.

“Here?” He brought his palm down with a cutting movement diagonally across his neck. There was a look of entreaty on his soft face. His eyebrows were fair, almost white.

“Yes, there. But don't worry. Yours isn't one of those neglected cases. We'll get you ready for next Tuesday”—Maria made a note—“and by the end of February you'll be home for good and you'll never have to come back here.”

“Will there be another checkup?” Federau tried to smile but did not succeed.

“Well, perhaps a checkup.” She smiled apologetically. What else could she use to reassure him, if not her tired, weary smile? She left him standing there. Then he sat down and began to think. She moved on across the room. As she passed Ahmadjan she gave him another of her slight smiles. She had operated on his groin three weeks ago. She stopped when she came to Yefrem.

He had already thrown down the blue book he was reading and was waiting for her. With his broad head, his neck bandaged and fattened out of all proportion, his wide shoulders, his legs pulled up and under him, he was sitting up on the bed like some kind of improbable dwarf. He looked at her sullenly, waiting for the blow.

She leaned her elbows against the rail of his bed and held two fingers to her lips, as though she were smoking.

“Well, what sort of a mood are we in today, Podduyev?”

Hadn't she anything better to do than stand around jabbering about moods? All she had to do was say her little piece and go. She just had to do her act.

“I'm fed up with all this cutting,” Yefrem blurted out.

She raised her eyebrows, as if surprised that cutting could make anyone fed up.

She did not say anything.

And he had already said quite enough.

They were both silent, like two lovers after a tiff or before a breakup.

“The same place again?” It wasn't even a question, it was a statement.

(He wanted to shout, “What did you do before? What were you thinking about?” He was never very delicate when it came to dealing with bosses. He always jumped down their throats. But he spared Yevgenia Ustinovna. Let her guess for herself how he felt.)

“Right next door,” she made the slight distinction.

(Poor devil, how could she tell him that cancer of the tongue is not cancer of the lower lip? You take away the nodes under the jaw, and suddenly it turns out that the deep lymphatic ducts are affected too. She could never have operated there earlier on.)

Yefrem grunted, like a man pulling a weight too heavy for him.

“I don't need it. I don't need it at all.”

She did not try to talk him round.

“I don't want any more cutting. I don't want anything any more.”

She looked at him in silence.

“Discharge me!”

She looked into his reddish eyes. They had gone through so much fear that now they were quite fearless. And she too thought, “Why? Why torment him if even the knife can't keep up with his secondaries?”

“We'll unbandage you on Monday, Podduyev. We'll see; all right?”

(He had demanded his discharge, yet he had desperately hoped she'd say, “You're out of your mind, Podduyev. What do you mean, discharge you? We're going to give you treatment. We're going to cure you.”

But she had agreed.

Which meant he was a goner.)

He made a movement of his whole body to indicate a nod. He was unable to do it with his head alone.

She went on to Proshka. He got up to meet her and smiled. She did not examine him at all, she just asked him, “Well, how are you feeling?”

“First-class.” Proshka's smile broadened. “These tablets have really helped.”

He pointed to a bottle of multi-vitamins. If only he knew how to soften her up. If only he could persuade her. She mustn't even think of an operation.

She nodded toward the tablets, then she stretched out a hand toward the left side of his chest.

“Does it hurt here sometimes?”

“Yes, just a bit.”

She nodded again. “We're going to discharge you today.”

Proshka was overjoyed. His black eyebrows shot up to the ceiling.

“What? You mean, there won't be an operation?”

She shook her head and gave him a faint smile.

They had spent a week feeling him, they had pushed him into the X-ray room four times. They had made him sit down, lie down, stand up. They had taken him to see old men in white coats until he reckoned he must be in a pretty bad way. And now suddenly they were turning him loose without even operating!

“So I'm healthy, am I?”

“Not completely.”

“These tablets are good, aren't they?” His black eyes sparkled with understanding and gratitude. He was glad to see how happy she was, too, that his disease had ended so easily.

“You can buy these tablets yourself at the pharmacist's. But I'll prescribe something else for you to take as well.…” She turned to the nurse. “Ascorbic acid.”

Maria bowed her head severely and noted it down in her book.

“Only you'll have to take care of yourself!” Yevgenia Ustinovna impressed upon him. “You mustn't walk quickly, or lift heavy weights. And when you bend down, be careful about it.”

Proshka burst into laughter, happy that there were some things in the world even she didn't understand.

“How can I help lifting things? I'm a tractor driver.”

“You won't be able to work for the moment.”

“Why? Will I get sick leave?”

“No, we'll give you a certificate to say you're an invalid.”

“Invalid?” Proshka's look became almost wild. “Why the hell do I need an invalid's certificate? How can I live on that? I'm still young, I want to work.”

He held out his healthy, coarse-fingered hands. They seemed to be begging for work.

But Yevgenia Ustinovna was not convinced.

“Go down to the surgical dressing room in half an hour. They'll have your certificate ready and I'll explain it to you.”

She left the room. Maria, lean and unbending, went out after her.

Immediately several of the patients began talking all at once. Proshka asked about his invalid's certificate, what was it for? He had to discuss it with the “boys.” But the others were discussing Federau. They were all thunderstruck: here was an unmarked, white, smooth neck, that didn't hurt at all—and an operation!

Podduyev turned over on the bed. He kept his legs pulled up and moved his body with his arms so that he looked like a legless man as he turned. He shouted angrily, his face turning red, “Don't be taken in, Friedrich! Don't be a fool! Once they start cutting, they cut you to death, like they've done to me.”

But Ahmadjan had his opinion too. “They have to operate, Federau. They wouldn't say so without a reason.”

“Why do they have to operate if it doesn't hurt?” said Dyomka indignantly.

“What's the matter with you, brother?” boomed Kostoglotov. “It's crazy, operating on a healthy neck.”

Rusanov screwed up his face as these cries flew round the ward, but he decided not to offer any rebuke. After his injection yesterday he had cheered up considerably because he'd endured it without much difficulty. But all last night and this morning the tumor under his neck had made it just as hard to move his head as before. And today he felt quite miserable since it clearly wasn't going down at all.

True, Dr. Gangart had come to see him. She had questioned him in great detail on every facet of his condition yesterday, during the night, and today. She asked him how weak he felt and explained that the tumor would not necessarily go down after the first injection. Indeed it was quite normal for it not to do so. To some extent she had set his mind at rest. He had taken a good look at Gangart. Her face showed she was no fool (only her last name was open to suspicion). After all, the doctors in this clinic were not the absolute bottom. They must have some experience, you just had to know how to make them do things.

But his mind was not at rest for long. The doctor went away, but the tumor stuck out as before under his jaw, pressing against it. The patients blabbered on. And there was also this talk of operating on a man's neck when it was perfectly healthy. Rusanov's great lump had been so big, yet they weren't operating and didn't mean to. Could it really be as bad as that?

The day before yesterday, when he entered the ward, Pavel Nikolayevich could never have imagined he would so quickly come to feel a sense of unity with all these people. Because it was their
necks
that were at stake. All three of them had their necks at stake.

Friedrich Federau was very upset. He listened to their advice and smiled uneasily. They were all so confident when it came to telling
him
what to do. He was the only one with any doubts about where he stood (just as they had doubts in plenty when it came to their own cases). An operation would be dangerous, but not to operate would be dangerous too. He'd already seen quite a bit and done some investigating last time he was here, when they'd used X-ray treatment on his lower lip, just as they were doing with Egenberdiev now. Since then the scab on his lip had swollen, dried up and fallen off, but he understood why they wanted to operate on his cervical glands: to stop the cancer spreading any further.

But there again, they'd operated twice on Podduyev, and what good had it done? And what if the cancer had no intention of spreading? What if it had gone?

Whatever happened he would have to consult his wife, and especially his daughter Henrietta, who was the most educated and decisive member of the family. But here he was taking up a bed, and the clinic would not hang around waiting for replies to letters. (From the nearest station to the depths of the steppe where they lived the post was still only delivered twice a week, and then only when the road was good.) To get a discharge and go home for advice would be very difficult, more difficult than either the doctors or the patients who were giving him advice so lightly realized. To do this he'd have to get a final stamp on his travel pass from the town
komendatura
here, the pass he'd gone to such trouble getting hold of, he'd have to get himself taken off the temporary register, and then he could go. First he would have to journey to the little railway station, and he'd have to change there into his fur coat and felt boots that were being kept for him there by some kind strangers he'd met, because the weather there was not like it was here: it was still freezing winds and winter. Then he'd have to bump and jolt along the 150 kilometers of track to his M.T.S.,
*
perhaps in the back of a truck, not even in the driver's seat. And as soon as he was home he'd have to write to the district
komendatura
and wait two, three, four weeks for permission to leave the area again. When it came he'd have to ask for leave from work, and that would be just when the snow was beginning to thaw. The road would be sodden and the traffic wouldn't be able to get through. Then at the little station where two trains stopped every twenty-four hours for a minute a time he'd have to rush frantically from car attendant to car attendant to try to get onto the train. And when he got back here he'd have to get on the temporary register again at the local
komendatura
and spend several days waiting his turn for a place in the clinic.

Meanwhile they were discussing Proshka. After what had just happened how could anyone believe in superstition? His was the unlucky bed! They congratulated him and advised him to agree to take the invalid's certificate they were offering. “They're giving it, take it! They're giving it, so it must be necessary. They're giving it now, but they'll take it away again later.” But Proshka protested that he wanted to work. “All right, you'll have plenty of time to work, you fool. Life is long!”

Proshka went to get his certificates. The ward began to calm down. Yefrem opened his book again, but he was reading the lines without understanding what they meant. He soon realized this.

He did not understand what he was reading because he was disturbed and worried by what was happening in the ward and outside in the corridor. In order to understand, he had to remember that he wasn't going to get anywhere any more; that he would never change things or convince anyone of anything, that he had only a few numbered days in which to straighten out his life.

Only then would the book's meaning reveal itself. The lines were printed in the usual small black letters on white paper. But mere literacy was not enough to read them.

Proshka was already coming up the stairs, gleefully clutching his certificates. He met Kostoglotov on the top landing and showed them to him. “Look, great round stamps!” he said.

One certificate was for the railway station, asking them to give such-and-such a person a ticket since he had just undergone an operation. (Unless an operation was mentioned, the patients had to join the general line at the station which meant they could not get away for two or three days.) Another certificate was for the information of the health department in his place of residence. On it was written:
“Tumor cordis, casus inoperabilis.”