Cancer Ward (80 page)

“Ye-es, now, let's have a look … Kalifotides … Konstantinides … Yes, do please sit down … Kulayev … Karamuriev. Oh dear, I've torn off the corner … Kazmagomayev … Kostoglotov!”

And again in blatant disregard of N.K.V.D. rules, he did not ask Oleg his first name and patronymic, but gave them himself. “Oleg Filimonovich?”

“Yes.”

“I see. You've been under treatment in the cancer clinic since January 23.…” And he lifted his keen, kindly eyes from the paper. “Well, how did it go? Are you better?”

Oleg was genuinely moved; there was even a tightness in his throat. How little was needed. But a few humane men behind these vile desks and life became completely different. He no longer felt constrained. He answered simply, “Well, how shall I put it … in one way better, in another way worse…” (Worse? What an ungrateful creature man is! How could he be worse off than he had been lying on the clinic floor, longing to die?) “I mean, better on the whole.”

“Well, that's good,” said the
komendant
happily. “Why don't you sit down?”

Even filling out theater ticket orders takes a bit of time. You have to stamp them and write in the date in ink, then copy it into a thick book, and of course cross it out of another. All this the Armenian did happily and without fuss. He took Oleg's certificate with the travel permit from the file and held it out to him. His glance was expressive, his voice unofficial and a little quieter as he said, “Please … don't let it depress you. It'll all be over soon.”

“What will?” asked Oleg in surprise.

“What do you mean? These registrations, of course. Your exile.
Komendant's
too!” he said with a carefree smile.

Obviously he had some more congenial job up his sleeve.

“What? Is there already … an instruction?” Oleg hastened to extract the information.

“Not an instruction.” The
komendant
sighed. “But there are certain signs. I'll tell you straight out, it's going to happen. Get better, and you will soon be going up in the world.”

Oleg gave him a crooked smile. “I'm almost out of this world,” he said.

“What's your profession?”

“I haven't one.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“That's good,” said the
komendant
with conviction. “Those who marry in exile almost always get divorced afterwards and it's a terrible business. But you can get released, go back to where you came from and get married.”

“Well, in that case, thank you very much.” Oleg got up to go.

The
komendant
nodded amiably but still didn't offer Oleg his hand.

As he walked out through the two rooms, Oleg wondered about the
komendant.
Had he always been like that or was it the changing times? Was he a permanent or a temporary? Or had they started specially appointing ones like him? It was very important to find out, but he couldn't go back now.

Back past the barracks again, past the railway lines, past the coal, Oleg set off along the long streetful of factories at a brisk pace, his step quicker and more even. He soon had to take off his overcoat because of the heat, and slowly the bucket of joy which the
komendant
had poured into him began to flood his whole being. Only gradually did he realize the full meaning of it all.

Only gradually because Oleg had lost the habit of believing the men who sat behind those desks. How could he forget the lies deliberately spread by officials, captains and majors in the years after the war, about how a sweeping amnesty for political prisoners was in preparation? Prisoners had believed them implicitly: “The captain told me so himself!” But the officials had simply been ordered to raise the prisoners' morale, to get them to carry on as before and fulfill their norms, to give them something to aim at and live for.

But as for this Armenian, if there was anything to suspect it was that he knew too much, more than his post warranted. Still, hadn't Oleg himself expected something of the sort from the scraps of information he had read in the newspapers?

For heaven's sake, it was about time! It was long overdue. How could it be otherwise? A man dies from a tumor, so how can a country survive with growths like labor camps and exiles?

Oleg felt happy again. After all, he hadn't died. And here he was, soon he'd be able to buy himself a ticket to Leningrad. Leningrad! Would be really be able to go up and touch one of the columns of St. Isaac's? His heart would burst!

But what did St. Isaac's matter? Everything was changing now between him and Vega. It was enough to make Ms head spin. If he could really … if he could seriously … No, it wasn't mere fantasy any longer. He'd be able to live here, with her.

To live with Vega! Together! Just imagining it was enough to burst his ribcase.

How glad she'd be if he went to her now and told her this. Why shouldn't he tell her? Why shouldn't he go? Who in the world was he to tell if not her? Who else was there interested in his freedom?

He had already reached the trolley-car stop. He'd have to choose which trolley to take—the one to the station, or the one to Vega's? And he'd have to hurry because she'd be going out. The sun was already quite low in the sky.

Again he began to feel agitated, and again he felt drawn toward Vega. Nothing remained of the convincing arguments he had amassed on his way to the
komendant's.

He was not guilty, he was not covered in dirt, why should
he
avoid
her?
She'd known what she was doing, hadn't she, when she'd given him that treatment? Hadn't she become all silent, hadn't she left the stage when he was arguing with her and begging her to stop the treatment?

Why shouldn't he go? Why shouldn't they try to rise above the common level? Why shouldn't they aim higher? Weren't they human beings after all? At least, Vega was.

He was already pushing through the crowd to get to the trolley. There were a lot of people waiting at the stop, all surging forward to get to the one he wanted, all traveling his way. Oleg had his overcoat in one hand and his duffel bag in the other, so he couldn't grab hold of the handrail. He was squashed, spun round and finally shoved onto the platform and into the car.

People were leaning on him savagely from all sides. He found himself behind two girls who looked like students. One fair, the other darkish, they were so close to him they must be able to feel him breathing. His arms were pulled apart and separately pinioned so that he could not pay the irate lady conductor, in fact he could not even move. His left arm, the one with the coat in it, seemed to be embracing the dark girl, while his whole body was pressed against the blonde. He could feel her all over, from knee to chin, and she couldn't possibly avoid feeling him in the same way. The greatest passion in the world could not have joined them as intimately as that crowd. Her neck, her ears and her little curls were thrust closer to him than he would ever have thought possible. Through her worn old clothes he was absorbing her warmth, her softness and her youth. The dark girl was still chatting to her friend about something going on at college. The blond girl had stopped answering her.

In Ush-Terek they had no trolley cars. Only in the shell holes had he ever been as close to people as this. But there hadn't always been women there. This sensation—he hadn't felt it, he hadn't had it confirmed for decades. It was all the more primeval for that, all the stronger

It was a happiness, and it was a sorrow. There was in the sensation a threshold he could not cross whatever his powers of self-suggestion.

They had warned him, hadn't they? The libido remains, the libido but nothing else …

They went past a couple of stops. After that it was still a crush, but there were not so many people pressing from behind. Oleg could have moved away from them a bit, but he didn't. He had no will left to put an end to this blissful torture. At this moment he wanted no more than to stay as he was for just a little longer, even if the trolley took him right back to the Old Town, even if it went out of its mind and took him clattering and circling nonstop until nightfall. Even if it ventured on a voyage round the world, Oleg had no will left to be the first to break away. As he prolonged this happiness, the greatest joy to which he could now aspire, he remembered gratefully the little curls of hair on the back of the blond girl's neck. Her face he hadn't even glimpsed.

She broke away from him and began to move forward.

And as he straightened his bent, weakened knees Oleg realized his journey to see Vega would end as a torture and a deceit.

It would mean his demanding more from her than he could ask from himself.

They had come to a high-minded agreement that spiritual communion was more valuable than anything else; yet, having built this tall bridge by hand together, he saw now that his own hands were weakening. He was on his way to her to persuade her boldly of one thing while thinking agonizingly of something else. And when she went away and he was left in her room alone, there he'd be, whimpering over her clothes, over every little thing of hers, over her perfumed handkerchief.

No, he should be more sensible than some teen-age girl. He should go to the railway station.

He fought his way through to the rear platform—not forward, not past the student girls—and jumped off. Someone swore at him.

Not far from the trolley stop someone else was selling violets …

The sun was already going down. Oleg put on his overcoat and took another trolley to the station. This time it wasn't so crowded.

He pushed his way all over the station, asking questions and getting the wrong answers. Finally he reached a sort of pavilion like a covered market, where they were selling tickets for the long-distance trains.

There were four booking-office windows, at each a line of a hundred and fifty to two hundred people. And there must be others in the line who were away for the moment.

The picture of railway station lines going on for days was one Oleg recognized at once, as though he'd always been familiar with it. Much had changed in the world: fashions, street lamps, the habits of young people, but this had remained constant for as long as he could remember. It had been like this in 1946, it had been the same in 1939, and in 1934 and in 1930. Shopwindows bursting with food he could even remember from the N.E.P.
*
period, but he couldn't imagine station booking offices that were easy to get to. The difficulties of travel were unknown only to those who had special cards or official vouchers.

As it happened, he had a voucher—not a very impressive one perhaps, but it would suit the occasion.

It was stuffy and he was sweating, but he pulled from his duffel bag a tight fur hat and squeezed it over his head as a hatmaker would over a stretching block. He slung his bag over one shoulder and assumed the expression of a man who less than two weeks earlier had lain on the operating table under Lev Leonidovich's knife. In this assumed condition of exhaustion, a dull stare in his eyes, he dragged himself between the lines right up to the booking-office window. There were no fights going on solely because a policeman was standing nearby.

In full view of everyone, Oleg made a feeble gesture to pull the voucher out of the slanting pocket under his greatcoat. Trustfully he handed it over to the “comrade militiaman.”

The policeman was a fine upstanding Uzbek with a mustache, who looked like a young general. He ceremoniously read it through and announced to the people at the head of the line, “Let this man through. He's had an operation.”

He made a sign to Oleg to take third place in the line.

Oleg glanced exhaustedly at his new neighbors in the line. He didn't even try to squeeze in, he just stood on one side, head bowed. A fat, elderly Uzbek, his face bronzed in the shadow of a brown velvet hat with a saucer-like brim, took him and pushed him into line.

He felt cheerful standing there near the window. He could see the girl's fingers as she pushed out the tickets. Clutched in the passengers' hands, he could see the sweat-drenched money, as much as was needed or more, that had been extracted from their sewn-up pockets or belts. He could hear the passengers making timid requests, all of which the girl refused mercilessly. It was clear that things were moving, and quickly.

Now it was Oleg's turn to bend down to the window.

“Please may I have one ordinary ticket to Khan-Tau,” he said.

“Where?” the girl asked.

“Khan-Tau.”

“Never heard of it.” She shrugged her shoulders and started looking through a huge directory.

“Why do you want an ordinary ticket, dear?” a woman behind him asked sympathetically. “An ordinary ticket after you've had an operation? You'll split your stitches climbing up to your bunk. You should have got a reservation.”

“I haven't any money,” Oleg sighed.

It was the truth.

“There's no such station!” shouted the girl behind the window, slamming the directory shut. “Take a ticket to some other station.”

“There must be.” Oleg smiled weakly. “It's been working a whole year. I came from there myself. If I'd known, I'd have kept my ticket to show you.”

“I don't know anything about that. If it's not in the directory it means there's no such station.”

“The trains stop there. They do!” Oleg was beginning to argue more heatedly than someone who had just had an operation ought to. “It's even got a booking office.”

“Move on, then, if you don't want a ticket, citizen. Next!”

“That's right, why should he hold us up?” came a disapproving murmur from behind. “Take a ticket to the station they give you … He's just had an operation, all right, but why should he be so choosy?”

My God, Oleg could've given them an argument! How he longed to go the whole hog, demand to see the passenger-service director and the stationmaster. How he would have loved to get through to these thick skulls and sec his bit of justice, a tiny, miserable bit but nevertheless justice. So long as he was fighting for it, he would feel like a human being.