Cancer Ward (58 page)

Colorless, tow-haired Federau listened to Rusanov's stories, his mouth open in admiration, never contradicting him. Sometimes he even nodded his head, as far as his bandaged neck would allow.

Though a German and an exile, he was a quiet chap, one might say quite a decent fellow. There was no harm in being in the next bed to him, one could get along with him. He was even a Communist, technically speaking. Pavel Nikolayevich explained it all in his usual blunt way. “Federau,” he said, “you realize it was necessary for the state to send you into exile? You understand that?”

“I understand, I understand,” said Federau, bowing his inflexible neck.

“There was no other way of dealing with the situation.”

“Of course, of course.”

“One must have a clear idea of the reasons behind all official measures, including exile. One thing you should appreciate: you were allowed, one might say, to remain inside the Party.”

“Certainly! Of course I…”

“And as for your Party appointments, you never held any before you were exiled, did you?”

“No, I didn't.”

“You were an ordinary worker the whole time, weren't you?”

“I was a maintenance mechanic. The whole time.”

“I was an ordinary worker myself once. Look at the way I got on.”

They talked in detail about their children, too. It turned out that Federau's daughter Henrietta was in her second year at regional teachers' college.

“Just think of it!” Pavel Nikolayevich exclaimed. He was really quite touched. “You must appreciate that. Here you are, an exile, and your daughter is about to graduate from college! Who could've dreamed of such a thing in Russia under the Tsars? You have no restrictions at all.”

At this point Friedrich Jakobovich contradicted him for the first time. “The restrictions were only lifted this year,” he said. “Before that we had to get permits from the
komendatura.
And the colleges kept returning her application forms, saying she hadn't passed the entrance exam. How could we check whether it was true?”

“But you said your daughter's in her second year?”

“Ah well, you see, she's good at basketball. That's why they took her.”

“Whatever they took her for, one must be fair in one's judgment, Federau. As from this year there are absolutely no restrictions.”

After all, Federau had been an agricultural worker and it seemed natural for Rusanov, a worker in industry, to take him under his protection.

“Things will be much better for you now after the January Plenum decisions,” Pavel Nikolayevich explained benevolently.

“Oh yes, of course.”

“The main link is the establishment of groups of instructors in each tractor station zone.
*
Everything depends on that.”

“Yes, yes.”

But saying “Yes, yes” wasn't enough, he had to understand as well. So Pavel Nikolayevich explained to his tractable neighbor in greater detail how it was that tractor stations, after the groups of instructors had been set up, would become veritable fortresses. He also discussed the appeal issued by the Central Committee of the Young Communist League about the cultivation of maize, how this year the young people were expected to come to grips with the problem of maize and how this would completely change the agricultural picture.
**
They had also read in yesterday's paper about changes in the basic practice of agricultural planning. They could look forward to many conversations on the subject.

In general, Federau turned out to be a positive sort of neighbor. Sometimes Pavel Nikolayevich would simply read aloud to him newspaper items he would never have got through himself but for the leisure of being in hospital. There was a statement about why an Austrian peace treaty couldn't be concluded without a German peace treaty, Rakosi's speech in Budapest, a fresh stage in the struggle against the infamous Paris Agreements, and an article about the inadequacy and lenience of the West German trials of those who had helped to run concentration camps. Sometimes he would offer Federau some of his private food, when there was too much for him, or give him part of his hospital meal.

But however quietly they talked, there was still a certain atmosphere of strain because Shulubin was obviously listening in to their conversation all the time. There he sat, that eagle owl, silent and motionless on the bed next to Federau's. Ever since the man had appeared in the ward, his presence had been impossible to forget—the way he looked at you with his great, drooping eyes, clearly hearing every word. And when he blinked it seemed like a mark of disapproval. Pavel Nikolayevich found his presence a constant pressure. He tried to draw him out and discover what was in his mind or at least what was wrong with him physically, but Shulubin would utter no more than a few gloomy words. He saw no reason to discuss even his tumor.

And when he sat he didn't relax like everyone else, he adopted a strained, wound-up pose, as though sitting was hard labor. He seemed constantly on the alert, and his tense way of sitting was his means of showing this. Sometimes he would grow tired of sitting and rise to his feet, but he found walking painful. He would hobble about for a while and then stand erect, motionless, for half an hour or so at a time. Rusanov found this equally strange and depressing. Furthermore, Shulubin couldn't stand beside his own bed because he would have blocked the doorway, nor could he stand in the aisle because he would have blocked that too, so he chose the space between Kostoglotov's and Zatsyrko's windows. This became his favorite place. He would tower there like an enemy sentry watching everything Pavel Nikolayevich ate, did, or said, standing there for ages, his back barely touching the wall.

He had taken up his position today after the rounds and stayed there in the crossfire of Oleg and Vadim's glances, sticking out from the wall like an
alto-rilievo.

Oleg and Vadim's beds were so placed that their glances often met, even though they didn't talk to each other much. In the first place they were both in low spirits and they had little energy left for idle chat. In the second place, some weeks ago Vadim had cut everyone short by declaring, “Comrades, to warm one single glass of water requires the energy of two thousand years of quiet talking or seventy-five years of loud shouting, and then only if heat is retained in the glass. So you see, gossiping is not particularly useful, is it?”

Moreover, each man had made a remark that had annoyed the other, though possibly unintentionally. Vadim had said to Oleg, “You should've
fought!
I can't understand why people like you didn't fight.” (He was right, but Oleg didn't yet dare open his mouth and come out with the story of how they had fought.) Oleg had said to Vadim, “Who are they saving the gold for, anyway? Your father gave his life for his country. Why won't they give it to you?”

And he was right, too. The thought had occurred to Vadim himself, and he was beginning to ask himself the same question. But it was annoying to have it asked by a complete stranger. Only a month ago he'd felt that his mother had been wrong to try to pull strings like that, he'd felt awkward about her making use of his father's memory. But now that the trap had snapped round his leg he was beginning to cast about wildly while he waited for his mother's good-news telegram. “If only Mama can get it,” he thought to himself. It was true it didn't seem fair for him to be saved merely because of what his father had achieved, but it would be more than fair if he were to be saved because of his own talent—unfortunately, however, the men who distributed the gold knew nothing of this. It was a torment and a responsibility to carry within himself a talent which filled him to the brim but which could not yet be poured out into the world. For him to die before his talent had burst forth and found expression would be a much greater tragedy than an ordinary man's death, in fact more tragic than the death of any other man in the ward.

Vadim felt a throbbing, fluttering sense of loneliness. It wasn't because no one visited him or because he didn't have his mother or Galka with him, it was because neither the patients, nor those who were treating him, nor the officials who held his salvation in their hands, had any idea how much more important it was for him to survive than for the others.

These hopes and despairs beat so insistently in his head that he found he was no longer fully grasping what he read. He would read a whole page and then realize he hadn't understood it. He'd grown heavy, he could no longer scale other people's thoughts as a goat scales a mountain. He was sitting stock-still over a book. From the outside it might look as though he were reading, but in fact he wasn't.

His leg was in a trap, and with it his whole life.

So he sat there, while over him, in his space between the windows, stood Shulubin absorbed in his own pain and his own silence. Kostoglotov was lying on his bed, also in silence, his head dangling over one side.

Like the three storks in the fairy tale, they could maintain their silence forever.

Shulubin was usually the most persistently silent of the three, yet strangely enough it was he who suddenly asked Vadim, “Are you sure you're not kidding yourself? Do you really need all that stuff? Why that? Why not something else?”

Vadim raised his head. His dark, almost black eyes stared at the old man as if unable to believe he could have uttered such a long question. Or perhaps they were surprised at the question itself.

There was nothing to indicate that the preposterous question hadn't been asked, or that the old man was not the one who'd asked it. The old man's baggy, reddened eyes were squinting at Vadim in curiosity.

He had to answer him. He knew how to answer, of course, but for some reason he didn't feel the usual spring-coiled impulse to make the required reply. He answered quietly, in the same meaningful tone the old man had used, “It's … it's interesting. It's the most interesting thing I know in the world.”

Despite the pain inside him, however agonizingly his leg throbbed, however fast those eight fatal months seemed to be melting away, Vadim still took pleasure in the way he kept himself under control, behaving as though there were not the least danger in the air, as though it was a rest home that they were all in, not a cancer hospital.

Shulubin stood there gazing dismally at the floor. His body still motionless, he made an odd circular movement of the head and a spiral movement of the neck as though he wanted to make someone let go of his head, but couldn't. “‘Interesting'—that's no argument,” said Shulubin. “Business is interesting too: making money, counting it, acquiring property, building things and surrounding yourself with comforts. It's all very interesting. If that's your explanation science becomes no different from the ordinary run of selfish, thoroughly unethical occupations.”

It was a strange point of view. Vadim shrugged his shoulders. “But what if it really
is
interesting?” he asked. “What if it's the most interesting thing there is?”

“Here in hospital? Or in general?”

“In general.”

Shulubin straightened the fingers of one hand. They made a cracking noise. “If that is the premise you start from,” he said, “you'll never create anything that's ethically good.”

This was a really cranky argument. “It's not the duty of science to create ethical values,” explained Vadim. “Science creates material values, that's how it earns its keep. Anyway, what values do you call ethical?”

Shulubin closed his eyes for a space, opened them, and closed them once again. Then he spoke, quite slowly. “Values directed toward the mutual illumination of human souls,” he said.

“Well, science illuminates, doesn't it?” Vadim smiled.

“Not souls!” said Shulubin, wagging his finger. “Now you used the word ‘interesting.' Have you ever spent five minutes inside a collective farm chickenhouse?”

“No.”

“Well, just imagine—a long, low barn, dark because the windows are only slits, and covered with netting to stop the hens flying out. There are two thousand five hundred hens per poultry maid. The floor's made of earth, the hens scratch it all the time, and the air's so full of dust you need a gas mask. And all the time the girl's steaming stale sprats in an open vat—you can imagine the stink. She works without a break. In summer her working day lasts from three in the morning till twilight. When she's thirty she looks like fifty. What do you think? Do you think this girl finds her work
interesting?
”

Vadim was taken aback. He moved his eyebrows. “Why should I ask myself the question?” he said.

Shulubin pointed his finger at Vadim. “That's a businessman's answer,” he said.

“What she suffers from is an underdevelopment of science,” said Vadim. He had found himself a strong argument. “When science advances, all chickenhouses will be clean and decent.”

“But until science advances you'll go on cracking three eggs into your frying pan every morning, will you?” said Shulubin. He closed one eye, making the other one's stare even more baleful. “Wouldn't you like to work in a chickenhouse for a bit, while science advances?”

“He's not
interested
in that!” came the gruff voice of Kostoglotov, his head still hanging down over the side of the bed.

Rusanov had already noticed Shulubin's arrogant opinion on matters of agriculture. He had been explaining something about cereals when Shulubin had interrupted the conversation and corrected him. He now saw his chance to needle Shulubin. “Did you graduate from Timiryazev Academy,
*
by any chance?”

Shulubin started. He turned his head toward Rusanov. “That's right, Timiryazev,” he confirmed in a surprised voice.

Suddenly he stopped, puffed himself up and looked all sulky. Like a bird with clipped wings trying to take off, he hobbled, hobbled his way back to his bed. His movements were as awkward as ever.