A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov Read Free Book Online Page A

and taking the woman back to her mother; how one day, when a woman had a breech presentation, they had hung her upside down from the ceiling to make the baby turn round; how a woman from Korobovo, hearing that it was the practice for doctors to rupture the birth-sac, had cut her baby’s head with a table knife so badly that even a man so renowned for his skill asLiponty was unable to save the child and only just managed to save the mother; how …
    The stove door was long since closed; my guests had departed to their quarters. I noticed that the light shone dully for a while in Anna Nikolaevna’s window, then went out. Everything vanished. To the snowstorm was added the impenetrable dark of a December evening, and a black veil shut me off from earth and sky.
    I paced up and down my study and the floor creaked under my feet; the room was warmed by a Dutch stove and I could hear a mouse gnawing busily away.
    â€˜No,’ I reflected, ‘I will fight against this Egyptian darkness for as long as fate keeps me here in the wilderness. Granulated sugar … ye gods!’
    In my reverie by the light of the green-shaded lamp there arose before my mind’s eye a great university city, in it a teaching hospital, in the hospital a vast chamber with tiled floor, gleaming taps, sterile white sheets, and a lecturer with a sharp-pointed, greying, very wise-looking beard …
    A knock heard at such a moment can be alarming, terrifying. I started.
    â€˜Who’s there, Aksinya?’ I asked, leaning over the banisters of the staircase (the doctor’s quarters were on two floors: upstairs my study and bedroom, downstairs the dining-room, another room of unknown function and the kitchen, the abode of Aksinya and her husband, the invaluable hospital watchman).
    The heavy bolt rumbled, a lighted lamp appeared and bobbed down below, a cold draught blew. Then Aksinya announced:
    â€˜It’s a patient, a man.’
    I was, to tell the truth, delighted. I was not yet ready forsleep and was feeling a little lonely and depressed from the gnawing of the mouse and my own memories. And since it was a man it could not be the worst of all—childbirth.
    â€˜Is he walking?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Aksinya answered, yawning.
    â€˜All right, send him into my study.’
    The staircase creaked for a long time. The person coming up was a large, heavily-built man. Meanwhile I sat down at my desk trying hard to ensure that my eager twenty-four years did not peep too obviously from behind my professional Aesculapian
persona
. My right hand lay ready on a stethoscope, as though on a revolver.
    Through the door sidled a figure, cap in hand, wearing a sheepskin coat and felt boots.
    â€˜Why have you come so late in the day?’ I asked weightily, to appease my conscience.
    â€˜Sorry, doctor,’ replied the figure in a gentle, pleasant bass voice. ‘The snowstorm’s a terror. Held me up, I’m afraid. Couldn’t help it, begging your pardon, sir.’
    â€˜A polite man,’ I thought to myself with pleasure. I liked the figure very much, and even his thick red beard made a favourable impression on me. His beard was clearly the object of considerable care and attention. Its possessor not only combed it but even anointed it with a substance which a doctor, even after such a short spell in the country, could identify without difficulty as clarified butter.
    â€˜What’s the trouble? Take off your coat. Where are you from?’
    The sheepskin coat fell in a mountainous heap on to a chair.
    â€˜I’ve been suffering from a terrible fever,’ the patient replied with a doleful look.
    â€˜Fever? Aha! Are you from Dultsevo?’
    â€˜Yes, sir. I’m the miller.’
    â€˜Tell me how it troubles you.’
    â€˜Every day at twelve o’clock my head starts to ache, then I seem to get hot all over … It makes me shiver for a couple of hours or so and then it