The Big Green Tent (56 page)

“You can look over the records here in the doctor's lounge. Then I'll show you the patient.”

Dulin opened the file and began studying the papers. Patient: Nichiporuk, Peter Petrovich, sixty-two years old. Wounded twice, one concussion, physical disorders. Who doesn't have those? Record of a conversation with the psychiatrist … protocol. Dmitry Stepanovich couldn't believe his eyes: even reading what the general had said was terrifying! Some sort of craziness! “What was your goal in creating an underground organization?” An anti-Soviet—he was a true anti-Soviet! And further: “The organization is called UTL—the Union of True Leninists.” Oh, so it turns out he's not anti-Soviet, but the opposite … The opposite? What could that be? “What was your salary, Peter Petrovich?” A strange question for a psychiatrist. Oh, I see … I see. Seven hundred a month. Dulin didn't even know that it was possible for someone to earn that much … And further: “So what was it you were lacking, Peter Petrovich, with a salary like that? The authorities provided you with everything you needed.” Yes, he's absolutely right. It doesn't make sense. Really, with money like that, why would you bite the hand that feeds you? Ah, that's what it was … Czechoslovakia. He didn't like the Soviet troops marching into Czechoslovakia … He denounced it publicly … slander against the state … now it all makes sense. But why would he tell a psychiatrist things like that? Of what interest would they be to a doctor?

The terms “spiritual brotherhood,” “moral perfection,” “anti-populist power of the Party-ocracy,” and, finally, “the sacred task of socialism,” underlined in red pencil, flickered in front of him.
He's a strange old geezer; not crazy, just eccentric.
This was Dulin's preliminary conclusion. He spent forty minutes poring over the records.

Then they brought in the patient—a tall, thin man in hospital pajamas and felt slippers. He stood close to the door, holding one hand behind his back and hanging his head slightly. Another man, shorter than the patient, came in with him; he sat down on a chair by the door.

“Good day, Peter Petrovich. I'm a psychiatrist, Candidate of Medical Sciences Dmitry Stepanovich Dulin. I would like to examine you and have a chat. Come over here and sit down, please.” Dulin indicated the chair next to him. “How do you feel? What symptoms do you have?”

The former general smiled and looked at Dulin. His gaze was too long, and too attentive.

“Only those corresponding to my age. Nothing in particular to complain about.” He gripped his knees with his large hands, which were covered with red spots.

Dulin asked, “How long have you had psoriasis?”

“From a young age. It began after the war. During the war, people didn't suffer from ordinary human illnesses. It wasn't the time or place for that. After the war it all started: heart, stomach, liver.”

He pronounced “liver” with a mocking drawl. Dulin examined Nichiporuk as they had learned to do at the institute: the sclera, the condition of his skin, mucous membranes … poor nutrition, most likely anemia … blood samples … it was anemia, of course …

“What day is it today, Peter Petrovich?” Dulin said quietly.

“A lousy one,” he replied briefly.

“Can you remember the date?” Dulin said.

“Ah,” the patient said, laughing. “You mean like Marchember? Today is July 22, 1972. Exactly thirty-two years and one month after the invasion of the German Fascist troops into the territory of the USSR.”

He seemed to be making fun of him, this former general. No, he was no doubt just trying to be funny—alcoholic wit! Actually, Dulin quite liked him. Dulin placed him on the examining table, palpated his stomach. His liver was enlarged.
Let's assume it's alcohol-induced fatty degeneration. With significant malnutrition.

“What is your height? Your weight?”

“I am exactly six feet tall. I don't know my weight.”

Margarita Glebovna and the one by the door didn't budge. They were planted there like stone statues.

“Good! Now, close your eyes and place the forefinger of your right hand on the tip of your nose. Now your left … What is the year of your birth? Your birthday?”

The patient smiled.

“September tenth, one thousand, nine hundred, and ten years after the birth of Christ. According to the Julian calendar, naturally.”

“Very good,” Dulin said with alacrity. “And do you always live by this calendar?”

“No, of course not. The USSR shifted to the Gregorian calendar in February 1918, and all dates after February fourteenth were most reasonably calculated according to the Gregorian calendar; before that, according to the Julian. Quite logical, isn't it?”

“Yes. Perhaps,” Dulin said. He would have to look up in the encyclopedia what they said about calendars. The old geezer was, of course, highly educated, and there were always additional complications with well-educated people. He had, naturally, a dilation of the reflexogenic zones; this could be interpreted variously as alcoholization, right up to the possible onset of alcoholic paranoia. It depended on how one looked at it.

“Your place of birth, Peter Petrovich?”

“The village of Velikie Topoli, in the Gadyachsky Uyezd, Poltava Gubernia. My father belonged to the local intelligentsia. He was a teacher in a public school.”

“I see, I see. What about heredity, Peter Petrovich? Did your father drink?” Dulin said, introducing the subject at hand.

“I see what you mean, Doctor. That is, it is impossible not to see. Yes, he drank. My father drank. And my grandfather drank. And my great-grandfather. And I drank, when they let me.” He smiled, and his smile was simply radiant. He had a good smile—absolutely devoid of mockery or hidden malice.

“And when did you begin to indulge, Peter Petrovich?” Dulin said politely.

“Now that's something I don't quite remember. Everyone drank on holidays, children, too. My father always drank with dinner, that was a sacred ritual—a glass of vodka with the meal. I still honor this custom, I admit.”

“And do you drink alcohol now?”

Peter Petrovich suddenly let all his defenses down.

“Dear Doctor! They don't offer you any here! I have to admit that since the beginning of the war, there hasn't been a single day that I didn't imbibe spirits of some sort—vodka, or whatever else God provided. I miss it badly!”

Dulin suddenly felt quite awkward: Peter Petrovich was so very trusting and confiding.

“Do you have a need for it? A dependency, I mean.” Dulin probed deeper.

“A dependency—not in the least. But a need—certainly. A reasonable need.”

“‘In the words of the patient, he has abused alcohol regularly for many years, without excess,'” Dulin noted down in good conscience.

Margarita Glebovna, who continued to stand by the door in silence, was clearly dissatisfied. She whispered something to the person sitting in the chair.

“A Russian man, Doctor, can't do without it. Vodka quiets the soul. It softens the edges of life. Don't tell me you don't know that?”

And then Dulin understood: Peter Petrovich himself wanted to be sent into treatment. Dulin looked through his file again. The doctor's notes indicated that Peter Petrovich had spent four years, from 1968 to 1972, in prison, and his physical condition at the time had been poor. Dulin also came across an old outpatient record from Riga, in which it was written, in black and white: “Mind clear, correct orientation, comports himself well in conversation, speech coherent and to the point.” He was declared fit and mentally sound. And the most recent record, as yet inconclusive, which he himself was expected to sign, ascertaining alcohol-induced paranoia. Followed by a fat question mark.

This was something Dulin was unable to do in good conscience. He exerted himself like a schoolboy at an exam. Finally, groping beyond the limitations of his own mind, he came up with the right answer. He inserted a single word in front of “alcohol-induced paranoia”:
atypical
. And this set everything to rights! It was an atypical case. This Peter Petrovich was not insane, he was merely eccentric. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to send him in for treatment.

In any case, the hospital would feed him. Now Dulin understood why the patient had confided to him so candidly and happily about his use of alcohol. This was his way of hinting that he wouldn't mind undergoing treatment. And Vinberg had just told him about some Rilke or other who wanted more than anything to be declared mentally unsound and to be hospitalized.

They chatted a little longer, and Dulin, with a light heart, wrote down his diagnosis: “Alcohol-induced deterioration of the internal organs. Changes in the central nervous system: the presence of alcohol-related encephalopathy and retrograde amnesia. Diagnosis: atypical alcohol-induced paranoia.”

Dulin graced it with his beautiful signature.

And he looked at the clock—half past two.

*   *   *

Half past two
, Peter Petrovich thought.
I missed lunch because of that quack. Maybe the nurse left it there for me?
thought the hungry general, with perfunctory agitation.

*   *   *

Dulin went back to his department, took the sandwiches Nina had made him out of his briefcase, and drank a glass of milk. The cook at the institute always left him a pint. He ate and glanced through two journals that had been lying on his desk for a long time and needed to be returned to the library. Then he went to see Vinberg, in the former linen storeroom, which was now a cross between an office and a pantry, piled high with books, most of them foreign publications.

This is how Vinberg acquires his erudition. He has an advantage, since he knows other languages
, the ingenuous Dulin thought.

It was already getting on toward evening. The working day for the doctors was over. On Vinberg's desk, on top of a sheaf of journals and letters in gray envelopes covered with handwriting that had a Gothic cast, lay a vinyl record in a white paper sleeve.

“Someone brought me a Daniil Shafran. A unique piece—Shostakovich's 1946 cello sonata. The first performance of it. Shostakovich himself plays on it.” The professor stroked the record gently with his dark hand. His fingernails were long and well tended. “And Daniil Shafran was only twenty-two years old at the time. Brilliant. An absolutely brilliant cellist…”

They're always like that. Jews always prefer their own
, Dulin thought disapprovingly, then caught himself:
What's wrong with that? That's what all people are like. Everyone prefers their own kind.

“I held my consultation,” Dulin reported to Vinberg.

But Vinberg didn't seem to remember about their earlier conversation. The expression on his face was vacant.

“I diagnosed him with alcoholism. They'll most likely send him in for treatment now.”

“What?”
Vinberg said. “What did you say? You sent him to a treatment facility?”

“Well, what does it matter, Edwin Yakovlevich? He's emaciated, I thought that if he were admitted for treatment they'd at least feed him. Anything's better than the camps.” Dulin's spirits, boosted by doing a good deed, suddenly started to sag.

“Are you just playing the fool, Dulin? Or are you a bona fide idiot?” the well-mannered professor said.

At this Dulin became distraught. He had always considered it an honor that Vinberg wanted to spend time with him, to discuss things with him—and here he was, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, calling him an idiot. Dulin felt deeply injured.

“What do you mean, Edwin Yakovlevich? You yourself told me about Rilke, that he dreamed only of being declared insane so he wouldn't be sent to the camps … you said it yourself…” Dulin pleaded in his own defense.

“Me, myself, and I what? In the thirties they didn't have any haloperidol! Aminazin! Stelazine! It didn't exist yet! You've consigned him to the torture chamber, Dmitry Stepanovich! You can go and denounce me, now, if you like.”

He lowered his head and stared at the record.
Daniil Shafran Performs …

He said nothing, his mouth twisted into a grimace. What baseness … what baseness everywhere one looks …

“What should I have done, then? Tell me,” Dulin asked in a quiet voice. “He really was … well, not completely, but … what was I supposed to do?”

Vinberg, spinning the record absently, then put both his hands on the desk.

Leave this place, leave this place. As soon as possible, leave this place
, he thought. And also:
What a people! How can they hate themselves so?

Then he smiled a bitter smile, and said something incomprehensible:

“I don't know. A Chinese sage once said that for every question there are seven answers. Everyone has to answer this question for himself. Please forgive my rudeness, Dmitry Stepanovich.”

*   *   *

Vera Samuilovna understood immediately that her husband was agitated and dejected: by the brusque way he took off his coat, by the gloomy expression on his face, and the nod and a wooden “
Danke
,” when she put his soup in front of him. A tactful, clever woman, she kept silent and didn't ask him any questions. He was always grateful to her afterward for her aristocratic silence and self-possession.

Edwin Yakovlevich felt his own failure keenly, and experienced a belated remorse: How could he have let himself humiliate this sweet, dim-witted, and diligent person? Had not he, Vinberg, taken part in a psychiatric expert consultation several years back, in the same Special Division? Had he not offered his conclusion about the mental unsoundness of a prisoner whose political beliefs about the nature of this regime he completely shared? But from a clinical point of view, his illness was undeniable. It was a clear and detailed picture of manic-depressive psychosis. Vinberg, the former prisoner, could do nothing about it. Almost all the freethinkers, the petition signers, the homegrown rebels were mad in both the everyday and, partly, the medical sense of the word.
This is the nature of Russian radicalism, of course. It is never grounded in common sense
, Vinberg mused, feeling gradually more calm.