Cancer Ward (49 page)

And they all started to grin, they were all but openly crowing in triumph, those coarse, sharp-boned, swarthy prisoners' mugs. The major saw them as they started to smile. Beside himself, he ordered, “Caps off!”

Hundreds of men hesitated on the verge of obeying. To refuse to take them off was still out of the question, but to take them off was too painfully ignominious. One man showed them the way—the camp joker, the popular humorist. He tore off his cap—it was a
Stalinka
made of artificial fur—and hurled it up into the air. He had carried out the order!

Hundreds of prisoners saw him. They too threw their caps in the air!

The major choked.

And now after all this Kostoglotov was finding out that old men had shed tears, young girls had wept, and the whole world had seemed orphaned …

Chaly came back looking even merrier than before, once again with a bag full of provisions, but a different one this time. Someone grinned, but Chaly himself was the first one to laugh openly. “Well?” he said. “What can you do with these women? Why not, if it gives them pleasure? Why not comfort them? What harm does it do?

“Kitchen maid or Lady Muck,

They're all the same, they like a fuck.”

He burst into loud laughter, in which his listeners joined. With a gesture, Chaly waved away the surfeit of laughter. Rusanov too joined in the good, honest laughter. It sounded so clever the way Maxim Petrovich had said it.

“So your wife…? Which one's she?” asked Ahmadjan, choking with mirth.

“Don't ask me that, brother,” sighed Maxim Petrovich. He was transferring the food into the bedside table. “We need a reform in the law. The Moslem arrangement's much more humane. And as from last August they're allowing abortions again—that'll make life much more simple! Why should a woman live on her own? Someone ought to visit her, even if it is only once or twice a year. It's useful for people traveling on business, too. It's nice to have a room in every town, where you can get chicken and noodles.”

Once again a dark bottle of something flashed into the closet of provisions. Chaly closed the door and took away the empty bag. Obviously he wasn't going to pamper this one with his attention. He came straight back. He stopped in the aisle where Yefrem had once stood, looked at Rusanov and scratched the curls at the back of his neck. (His hair grew quite wild, its color a cross between flax and straw.) “How about a bite to eat, neighbor?”

Pavel Nikolayevich smiled sympathetically. The ordinary lunch was a bit late, and he didn't really want to eat it after seeing Maxim Petrovich laughingly handling each piece of food he'd been brought. There was something agreeable, something of the flesheater about Maxim Petrovich and the way his fat lips smiled. It made one feel drawn toward sitting down with him at a dinner table.

“All right.” Rusanov invited him to come to his table. “I've got a few things in here too…”

“What about glasses?” Chaly leaned across and his agile hands carried the jugs and parcels across to Rusanov's table.

“But we're not allowed to…” said Pavel Nikolayevich, shaking his head. “With our disease it's strictly forbidden to…”

During the past month no one in the ward had even dared to think of doing this but with Chaly it seemed natural and unavoidable.

“What's your name?” He was already across in Rusanov's bed-space, sitting opposite him, knee to knee.

“Pavel Nikolayevich.”

“Pasha.” Chaly laid a friendly hand on Rusanov's shoulder. “You mustn't listen to the doctors. They'll cure you, but they'll lead you to the grave. What we want is to live, and to keep our tails up!”

Chaly's artless face, with its big, ruddy nose and fat, juicy lips, shone with friendliness and firm conviction.

It was Saturday in the clinic and all treatments were held over until Monday. Outside the graying windows the rain poured down, cutting Rusanov off from friends and family. The newspaper had no mourning portrait, and a murky resentment congealed in his soul. The bright lamps were shining, switched on well before the start of the long, long evening. He could now sit with this agreeable man, have a drink, have a bite to eat, and then play some poker. (Poker! What a piece of gossip for Pavel Nikolayevich's friends!)

Chaly, the artful dodger, already had his bottle under the pillow. With one finger he knocked off the stopper and poured out half a glass each, holding the bottle down by their knees. They held the glasses down there and clinked them together.

Like a true Russian, Pavel Nikolayevich now scorned his former fears, reservations and vows. All he wanted was to swill the despair out of his soul and to feel a little warmth.

“We'll have a good time! We'll have a good time, Pasha!” Chaly impressed it on him. His funny old face became filled with sternness, ferocity even. “Let the others croak if they want to. You and I'll have a good time!”

They drank to that.

Rusanov had grown much weaker over the past month, he had drunk nothing but weak red wine, so now he was on fire at once. As each minute passed the heat dissolved and floated through his body, convincing him that it was no use hanging your head, that people managed to live even in the cancer ward, and then leave it behind them.

“Do they hurt a lot then, these … polyps?” he asked.

“Yes, a bit. But I don't give in! Pasha, vodka can't make it any worse, you've got to realize that. Vodka's a cure for all illnesses. I'll drink some pure spirit before the operation, what do you think? Here, I've got it in a little bottle. Why spirit? Because it gets absorbed right away, it doesn't leave any surplus water. When the surgeon turns out my stomach, there'll be nothing there. Clean as a whistle! And I'll be drunk! You fought at the front yourself, didn't you? You know how it is: before an attack they give you vodka, Were you wounded?”

“No.”

“Bad luck. I was, twice. Look, here and here…” Another hundred grams of liquid had appeared in each glass.

“We shouldn't have any more,” said Pavel Nikolayevich, resisting mildly. “It's dangerous.”

‘What's so dangerous? What's put the idea into your head that it's dangerous? Have some tomatoes. Ah, tomatoes!”

And indeed what difference was there—a hundred or two hundred grams—once you'd gone over the edge anyway? Two hundred or two hundred and fifty grams, what did it matter if the Great Man had died and they were now going to ignore him? Pavel Nikolayevich downed another glass in memory of the Leader. He drank as though drinking at a wake, and his lips twisted sadly. Then he stuffed little tomatoes between them. The two men leaned forward, foreheads almost touching, and he listened to Maxim Petrovich sympathetically.

“Yes, lovely and red!” Maxim declared. “Here they're a rouble a kilo, but take them up to Karaganda and you can get thirty. They tear them out of your hands! You aren't allowed to take them, though. The baggage car won't accept them. Why won't they, eh? You tell me, why won't they?”

Maxim Petrovich grew quite excited. His eyes widened. Where's the sense of it? they seemed to imply. The sense of existence.

“A little man in an old jacket comes into the stationmaster's office. ‘You want to live, do you, chief?' The stationmaster grabs the telephone, he thinks they've come to kill him. But the man slaps three hundred-rouble notes down on the table. ‘Why won't you let me do it?' he asks. ‘Why all this “not allowed”? You want to live … I want to live too. Tell them to take my basket into the baggage car.' Life will conquer, you see, Pasha. Off goes the train, they call it a ‘passenger' train, and it's full of tomatoes, baskets of them, on the racks and under the racks too. The guard gets his cut, the ticket collector gets his cut. When we cross the railway boundaries they put on new ticket collectors, and they get their cut too.”

Rusanov's head was beginning to spin. He was glowing with warmth and felt he was stronger than his illness now. Maxim seemed to be saying something that didn't tie up with … that didn't tie up with … that went right against …

“That's against the rules!” objected Pavel Nikolayevich. “What do you do it for? It's not right…”

“Not right?” Chaly was quite amazed. “Try the dill pickle, then. And some caviar … In Karaganda there's an inscription, stone inlaid on stone: ‘Coal is bread.' Bread for industry, that is. But when it comes to tomatoes for the people, they're just aren't any, and there won't be any unless businessmen bring them. People snap them up at twenty-five a kilo,
and
give you a thank you into the bargain. At least they get a few tomatoes that way. Otherwise they would get nothing. They're real morons out there in Karaganda, you can't imagine! They get squads of guards and musclemen together and instead of sending them out to get apples and bring them in by the wagonload they post them on every road in the steppe to catch the men who are trying to bring apples to Karaganda, to stop them getting through. And they just stand there and guard, stupid fools!”

“And … you do that … you do it, do you?” Pavel Nikolayevich was distressed.

“Why me? I don't carry baskets around, Pasha. I've got my briefcase. And my suitcase. Train tickets are always sold out, always! I don't knock on the glass window, I can always get on the train. I know who to go to at every station, how to find where the right tea-brewer or baggage man is. Life will always conquer, Pasha, remember that.”

“But what do you do exactly? What's your job?”

“Me? I'm a technician, Pasha, even though I didn't finish technical school. I do a bit of middleman work on the side. I do it so I can always have a bit left in my pocket. And when they stop paying the right money I leave and go somewhere else. See?”

Pavel Nikolayevich was beginning to realize that things weren't turning out quite as they ought to be. It wasn't proper, in fact it was wrong. But Maxim was such a pleasant, merry fellow you felt at home with him. The first one he'd met in a whole month. He didn't have the heart to hurt him.

“But is it right, what you're doing?” Pavel Nikolayevich pressed him.

“It's all right, it's fine!” said Maxim reassuringly. “Now have a bit of this delicious veal. We'll guzzle some of your compote in a minute. You see, Pasha, we only live once, so why not live well? What we want to do is live well!”

Pavel Nikolayevich could not help agreeing with this. Maxim was quite right. We only live once, so why not live well? It was just that …

“You see, Maxim, people don't approve of…” he reminded him gently.

“Well, Pasha,” he answered as amiably as ever, gripping him by the shoulder, “that depends on how you look at it. It's one thing here, another thing somewhere else.

“A mote in the eye

Makes everyone cry,

But no woman's hurt

By a yard up her skirt.”

Chaly was roaring with laughter and slapping Rusanov on the knee. Rusanov could not contain himself. He shook with laughter too. “Hey, you know a few funny lines, don't you? You know what you are, Maxim, you're a poet!”

“What are you, then? What's your job?” asked his new friend inquisitively.

They were almost embracing each other by now, but at this point Pavel Nikolayevich unwittingly became rather dignified. His position imposed certain obligations.

“Well, I'm in personnel.” He was being modest. Of course he was higher up than that really.

“Where's that?”

Pavel Nikolayevich told him.

“Listen,” said Maxim delightedly. “I know a good man we ought to try and arrange something for! As for the entrance fee, that will come through as usual, don't you worry about that.”

“What do you mean? How can you think that?” Pavel Nikolayevich took offense.

“What is there to think?” said Chaly in surprise. And again that search for the meaning of life could be seen trembling in his eyes, only this time slightly blurred with drink. “If the personnel boys didn't take entrance fees, what do you think they would live on? What would they bring their children up on? How many children have you got?”

“Have you finished with the paper?” came a hollow, unpleasant voice from above their heads.

Eagle Owl had dragged himself out of his corner, his eyes harsh and swollen and his dressing gown wide open.

It turned out that Pavel Nikolayevich was sitting on the paper. It was all crumpled.

“Certainly, by all means,” said Chaly at once, pulling the paper out from under Rusanov. “Move over there, Pasha. Here you are, Dad. I don't know about anything else, but we won't begrudge you this, will we, Pasha?”

Gloomily Shulubin took the paper and made as if to go, but Kostoglotov restrained him. He began to stare at Shulubin in just the same way as Shulubin had been staring at them all, silently and persistently. He examined him and now saw him particularly clearly and closely.

Who could this man be? And with such an extraordinary face? He looked like an exhausted actor who had just taken off his makeup. Kostoglotov had picked up a trick of familiarity in the transit prisons, where the first minute you met a man you could ask him anything you liked. Lying there in his half-upside-down position, he asked Shulubin, “Hey, Dad, what was your job, eh?”

It wasn't only Shulubin's eyes but his whole head that turned to look at Kostoglotov. For some moments he looked at him unblinkingly, meanwhile twisting his neck in a strange circular movement, as though his collar were too tight. But his collar couldn't have been getting in his way: his nightshirt was quite roomy. This time he didn't ignore the question. “A librarian,” he answered abruptly.

“Where?” Kostoglotov grabbed the chance to slip in another question.

“In an agricultural technical college.”

For some unknown reason, the heaviness of his gaze or his owl-like silence as he sat in his corner, Rusanov felt the urge to humiliate him, to put him in his place. Or perhaps it was the vodka speaking inside him. His voice was louder and more frivolous than it need have been as he said, “You're not a Party member, are you?”