uniform was undone and the gold-gray collar of her dress peeped out.
âZoyenka, I did come to see you partly on business.â
âDid you now?â Her eyelashes jerked up. âWell then, itâll have to wait till day duty. Now itâs time for sleep. You did say you were just visiting, didnât you?â
âYes, I ⦠Iâm 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
âDonât the doctors do that?â
âWell, theirs is a different sort of hand and they donât stretch it out. Zoya, all my life Iâve hated being a guinea pig. Theyâre giving me treatment here, but nobody explains anything. I canât stand it. I saw you with a book the other dayâ Pathological Anatomy. Is that right?â
âYes.â
âAnd itâs about tumors, yes?â
âYes.â
âDo me a favor and bring it to me! I must have a look at it and try to work things out. For myself.â
Zoya pursed her lips and shook her head. âItâs strictly against the rules for patients to read medical books. Even when we students study a particular disease we always imagine thatâ¦â
âIt may be against the rules for others, but not for me!â Kostoglotov slapped his big paw down on the table. âTheyâve tried to scare me out of my wits so many times, Iâve stopped being scared. In the regional hospital I was diagnosed by a Korean surgeon. It was New Yearâs Eve. He didnât want to tell me what was wrong. âSpeak the truth, man!â I said. âWeâre not allowed to do that here.â âSpeak!â I said. âI must put my family affairs in order!â So he blurted out, âYouâll live another three weeks, I wonât guarantee you any longer than that!ââ
âHe didnât have the right toâ¦â
âHe was a good man. A human being. I shook him by the hand. You see, I had to know! Iâd tormented myself for six months before that. The last month I hadnât 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 deathâand lived through death itself. Everything around you, you see as if from the grave. And although youâve never counted yourself a Christian, indeed the very opposite sometimes, all of a sudden you find youâve forgiven all those who trespassed against you and bear no ill-will toward those who persecuted you. Youâre simply indifferent to everyone and everything. Thereâs nothing youâd put yourself out to change, you regret nothing. Iâd 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 Iâm 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
âHa! What cheek! Youâve got plenty to be pleased about. When you were admitted here ⦠how many days ago was it?â
âTwelve.â
âThere you were, writhing about on the couch right here in the hall. You were an appalling sight. You had a face like a corpse, wouldnât eat a thing, and a temperature of over a hundred, morning and eveningâand now? You go visiting ⦠Itâs a miracle ⦠for a man to come to life again like that in twelve days. It hardly ever happens here.â
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
Learning to Kill: Stories