Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Read Free Book Online Page A

uniform was undone and the gold-gray collar of her dress peeped out.
    â€œZoyenka, I did come to see you partly on business.”
    â€œDid you now?” Her eyelashes jerked up. “Well then, it’ll have to wait till day duty. Now it’s time for sleep. You did say you were just visiting, didn’t you?”
    â€œYes, I … I’m visiting too. But before you get spoiled by it all, before you become a fully qualified doctor, just give me a helping hand as a human being.”
    â€œDon’t the doctors do that?”
    â€œWell, theirs is a different sort of hand and they don’t stretch it out. Zoya, all my life I’ve hated being a guinea pig. They’re giving me treatment here, but nobody explains anything. I can’t stand it. I saw you with a book the other day— Pathological Anatomy. Is that right?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd it’s about tumors, yes?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDo me a favor and bring it to me! I must have a look at it and try to work things out. For myself.”
    Zoya pursed her lips and shook her head. “It’s strictly against the rules for patients to read medical books. Even when we students study a particular disease we always imagine that…”
    â€œIt may be against the rules for others, but not for me!” Kostoglotov slapped his big paw down on the table. “They’ve tried to scare me out of my wits so many times, I’ve stopped being scared. In the regional hospital I was diagnosed by a Korean surgeon. It was New Year’s Eve. He didn’t want to tell me what was wrong. ‘Speak the truth, man!’ I said. ‘We’re not allowed to do that here.’ ‘Speak!’ I said. ‘I must put my family affairs in order!’ So he blurted out, ‘You’ll live another three weeks, I won’t guarantee you any longer than that!’”
    â€œHe didn’t have the right to…”
    â€œHe was a good man. A human being. I shook him by the hand. You see, I had to know! I’d tormented myself for six months before that. The last month I hadn’t been able to lie, sit down or stand without it hurting, and I was only sleeping a few minutes a day. So I must have done plenty of thinking. This autumn I learned from experience that a man can cross the threshold of death even when his body is still not dead. Your blood still circulates and your stomach digests, while you yourself have gone through the whole psychological preparation for death—and lived through death itself. Everything around you, you see as if from the grave. And although you’ve never counted yourself a Christian, indeed the very opposite sometimes, all of a sudden you find you’ve forgiven all those who trespassed against you and bear no ill-will toward those who persecuted you. You’re simply indifferent to everyone and everything. There’s nothing you’d put yourself out to change, you regret nothing. I’d even say it was a state of equilibrium, as natural as that of the trees and the stones. Now I have been taken out of it, but I’m not sure whether I should be pleased or not. It means the return of all my passions, the bad as well as the good.”
    â€œHa! What cheek! You’ve got plenty to be pleased about. When you were admitted here … how many days ago was it?”
    â€œTwelve.”
    â€œThere you were, writhing about on the couch right here in the hall. You were an appalling sight. You had a face like a corpse, wouldn’t eat a thing, and a temperature of over a hundred, morning and evening—and now? You go visiting … It’s a miracle … for a man to come to life again like that in twelve days. It hardly ever happens here.”
    Indeed, his face had been covered in deep, gray creases, as if hacked out with a chisel, evidence of his constant tension. But now there were fewer of them and they had become