Михаил Булгаков - A Country Doctor's Notebook

‘Thank you very much, sir!’ the miller replied most politely. ‘Heard a lot about you. They’re all very satisfied. They say you do them all so much good. I’ll gladly have the injections—anything to be cured.’

‘Ah, this man is a true ray of light in the darkness!’ I thought as I sat down at the desk to write. So doing, my feeling was of such pleasure that it might not have been just any miller but my own brother come for a stay in my hospital.

On one prescription form I wrote:

‘Chinini mur. 0.5

D.T. dos. N10

S: Miller Khudov

1 dose in powder form at midnight.’

And signed it with a flourish. On another form I wrote:

‘Pelagea Ivanovna, please admit the miller and put him in Ward 2. He has malaria. Quinine in powder form as prescribed to be administered approx. 4 hours before the attack, i.e. at midnight. Here is an exception for you—a literate, intelligent miller!’

When I was already in bed I received a note in reply from the hand of the grumpy, yawning Aksinya:

‘Dear doctor, All done. Pel. Ivanovna L.’

I went to sleep … and woke up.

‘What is it? What? What is it, Aksinya?’ I mumbled. Aksinya was standing there, modestly covering herself with her dark-coloured skirt with white polka dots. A flickering wax candle lit up her sleepy, worried features.

‘Marya has just come running over—Pelagea Ivanovna has given orders for you to be called at once.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘She says the miller in Ward 2 is dying.’

‘Wha-at? Dying? How can he be dying ?’ For an instant, until I found my slippers, my bare feet felt the chill of the floor. I broke several matches and spent a long time poking them at the wick until it lit with a blue flame. The clock showed exactly six o’clock.

‘What’s happened? Surely it is malaria and not something else? What on earth can be the matter with him? His pulse was excellent …’

No more than five minutes later, with my socks inside out, unkempt, my jacket unbuttoned and wearing felt boots, I bounded across the courtyard, still pitch-dark, and ran to Ward 2.

There on an unmade bed, beside a crumpled heap of bed-clothes, in the light of a small kerosene lamp sat the miller, wearing a hospital nightshirt. His red beard was dishevelled, and his eyes looked to me black and huge. He was swaying like a drunkard, staring about him in terror, breathing heavily …

Marya, the nurse, gaped at his purpling face.

Pelagea Ivanovna, her hair down and with her overall only half on, flew towards me.

‘Doctor!’ she exclaimed in a hoarse voice. ‘I swear to you it wasn’t my fault! How was anyone to know? You made a point of telling me the man was intelligent.’

‘What’s happened?’

Pelagea Ivanovna wrung her hands as she said:

‘Just imagine, doctor—he swallowed all ten doses of quinine at once! At midnight.’

A murky winter dawn. Demyan Lukich removed the stomach-pump. There was a smell of camphor; on the floor stood a bowl full of reddish-brown liquid. Pale and exhausted, the miller lay wrapped in a white sheet up to his chin, his red beard jutting upwards. I bent over him and felt his pulse to make sure that he would survive the emergency.

‘Well, how do you feel?’ I enquired.

‘Can’t see a thing … oh … ooh …’ groaned the miller in a faint bass.

‘Nor can I,’ I answered in some irritation.

‘Wassat?’ the miller asked (his hearing was still poor).

‘Just tell me one thing, old man: why the hell did you do it?’ I shouted into his ear.

Glumly and reluctantly came the mumbling answer:

‘Well, it seemed a waste of time taking all them powders one at a time. So I thought I’d swallow ’em all at once and be done with it.’

‘Incredible!’ I exclaimed.

‘He must have made it up!’ said the feldsher in a malicious aside.

‘No, I will fight it … I will … I …’ After a hard night, sweet sleep overtook me. Darkness, black as Egypt’s night, descended and in it I was standing alone, armed with something that might have been a sword or might have been a stethoscope. I was moving forward and fighting … somewhere at the back of beyond. But I was not alone. With me was my warrior band: Demyan Lukich, Anna Nikolaevna, Pelagea Ivanovna, all dressed in white overalls, all pressing forward.

Sleep … what a boon …

AS TIME PASSED IN MY COUNTRY HOSPITAL, I gradually got used to the new way of life.

They were braking flax in the villages as they had always done, the roads were still impassable, and no more than five patients came to my daily surgery. My evenings were entirely free, and I spent them sorting out the library, reading surgical manuals and spending long hours drinking tea alone with the gently humming samovar.

For whole days and nights it poured with rain, the drops pounded unceasingly on the roof and the water cascaded past my window, swirling along the gutter and into a tub. Outside was slush, darkness and fog, through which the windows of the feldsher ’s house and the kerosene lantern over the gateway were no more than faint, blurred patches of light.

On one such evening I was sitting in my study with an atlas of topographical anatomy. The absolute silence was only disturbed by the occasional gnawing of mice behind the sideboard in the dining-room.

I read until my eyelids grew so heavy that they began to stick together. Finally I yawned, put the atlas aside and decided to go to bed. I stretched in pleasant anticipation of sleeping soundly to the accompaniment of the noisy pounding of the rain, then went across to my bedroom, undressed and lay down.

No sooner had my head touched the pillow than there swam hazily before me the face of Anna Prokhorova, a girl of seventeen from the village of Toropovo. She had needed a tooth extracting. Demyan Lukich, the feldsher , floated silently past holding a gleaming pair of pincers. Remembering how he always said ‘suchlike’ instead of ‘such’ because he was fond of a high-falutin’ style, I smiled and fell asleep.

About half an hour later, however, I suddenly woke up as though I had been pinched, sat up, stared fearfully into the darkness and listened.

Someone was drumming loudly and insistently on the outer door and I immediately sensed that those knocks boded no good.

Then came a knock on the door of my quarters.

The noise stopped, there was a grating of bolts, the sound of the cook talking, an indistinct voice in reply, then someone came creaking up the stairs, passed quietly through the study and knocked on my bedroom door.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ came the reply in a respectful whisper. ‘Me, Aksinya, the nurse.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Anna Nikolaevna has sent for you. They want you to come to the hospital as quickly as possible.’

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, feeling my heart literally miss a beat.

‘A woman has been brought in from Dultsevo. She’s having a difficult labour.’

‘Here we go!’ I thought to myself, quite unable to get my feet into my slippers. ‘Hell, the matches won’t light. Ah well, it had to happen sooner or later. You can’t expect to get nothing but cases of laryngitis or abdominal catarrh all your life.’

‘All right, go and tell them I’m coming at once!’ I shouted as I got out of bed. Aksinya’s footsteps shuffled away from the door and the bolt grated again. Sleep vanished in a moment. Hurriedly, with shaking fingers, I lit the lamp and began dressing. Half past eleven … What could be wrong with this woman who was having a difficult birth? Malpresentation? Narrow pelvis? Or perhaps something worse. I might even have to use forceps. Should I send her straight into town? Out of the question! A fine doctor he is, they’ll all say. In any case, I have no right to do that. No, I really must do it myself. But do what? God alone knows. It would be disastrous if I lost my head—I might disgrace myself in front of the midwives. Anyway, I must have a look first; no point in getting worried prematurely …