Михаил Булгаков - A Country Doctor's Notebook

All of them!

It was like a battle, which began every morning by the pale light reflected from the snow and ended by the fitful yellow gleam of a pressure-lamp.

‘How will all this end, I’d like to know?’ I said to myself one night. ‘The sleighs will keep on coming all through January, February and March.’

I wrote to Grachyovka politely reminding them that my practice was supposed to be manned by a second doctor.

The letter set off on its twenty-five-mile journey by wood-sledge across an ocean of snow. Three days later came the reply: they said yes, of course, of course, definitely, only not at present … no one would be coming for the time being …

The letter ended with a few flattering comments on my work and good wishes for my continued success.

Inspired by those remarks I returned to swabbing, injecting diphtheria serum, lancing abscesses of monstrous proportions, applying plastercasts.

On Tuesday there were not a hundred but a hundred and eleven out-patients. I finished my surgery at nine o’clock in the evening and fell asleep trying to guess how many there would be on Wednesday. I dreamed that nine hundred people came.

There was something unusually white about the morning light as it shone through my window. I opened my eyes, unaware of what had woken me up. Then I realised what it was: someone was knocking.

‘Doctor …’ I recognised the voice of Pelagea Ivanovna. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Mm-hmm,’ I mumbled, still half asleep.

‘I’ve come to say you needn’t hurry over to surgery this morning. Only two people have come.’

‘What? You’re joking.’

‘No, honestly. There’s a blizzard, doctor, a blizzard,’ she repeated joyfully through the keyhole. ‘And the two who are here have only got decayed teeth. Demyan Lukich will pull them out.’

‘Yes, but …’ Without knowing why, I had already jumped out of bed.

The day turned out splendidly. After doing my round, I spent the rest of the time lounging around my quarters, whistling snatches of opera, smoking, drumming my fingers on the windowpanes. Outside was a sight I had never seen before. There was no sky and no earth—only twisting, swirling whiteness, sideways and aslant, up and down, as though the devil had gone mad with a packet of tooth-powder.

At noon I issued an instruction to Aksinya to boil three buckets and a kettle of water. I had not had a proper wash for a month.

Between us Aksinya and I dragged from the storeroom a wash-tub of unbelievable dimensions and put it on the kitchen floor. (No question, naturally, of there being any proper bathtubs in our remote spot; the only ones were in the hospital itself—and they were broken.)

By about two o’clock in the afternoon the whirling mesh of snow outside had noticeably thinned out, and I was sitting naked in the washtub with a lathered head.

‘Ah, this is more like it …’ I muttered deliciously as I poured scalding water down my back. ‘This is the life! We’ll have lunch afterwards and then—bed. And provided I’m allowed a full night’s sleep, I don’t care if a hundred and fifty people come tomorrow. What’s the news, Aksinya?’

Aksinya was in the scullery, waiting till my ablutions were completed.

‘The clerk at the Shalometyevo estate is getting married,’ Aksinya replied.

‘Is he now! So she’s accepted him, has she?’

‘Of course. He’s madly in love …’ crooned Aksinya, clattering the dishes.

‘Is she pretty?’

‘Prettiest girl for miles around. Slim, blonde …’

‘You don’t say!’

At that moment there was a hammering at the door. Frowning, I started to rinse myself and listened.

‘The doctor’s having a bath,’ Aksinya sang out, to be answered by a rumbling bass voice.

‘A note for you, doctor,’ Aksinya squeaked through the keyhole.

‘Pass it round the door.’

I clambered out of the bath, shivering and cursing my luck as I took the damp envelope from Aksinya’s hand.

‘I’m not leaving this tub, that’s for sure. After all, I’m only human,’ I said without much confidence as I sat down again in the washtub and opened the letter.

Dear Colleague (large exclamation mark). I impl (crossed out) beg you earnestly to come at once. A woman has suffered a blow on the head and is bleeding from the orific … (crossed out) from her nose and mouth. She is unconscious. I cannot cope. I earnestly beg you to come. The driver’s horses are excellent. Her pulse is poor. Have administered camphor. (Signed) Doctor (illegible).

‘Born unlucky,’ I thought miserably as I looked at the firewood glowing in the stove.

‘Was it a man who brought this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ask him to come in here.’

He entered and for a moment I thought he was an ancient Roman from his gleaming helmet planted on top of a fur hat with enormous earflaps. He was enveloped in a wolfskin coat, and I felt the gust of cold as he came in.

‘Why are you wearing a helmet?’ I enquired, shielding my partly washed body with a towel.

‘I’m a fireman from Shalometyevo. We have a fire brigade there …’ the Roman explained.

‘Who is the doctor who wrote this?’

‘He came on a visit to the agronomist. Young doctor, he is. It’s a terrible business, terrible …’

‘Who is the woman?’

‘The clerk’s bride-to-be.’

Aksinya groaned from behind the door.

‘What happened?’ (I could hear Aksinya sidle up and glue her ear to the door.)

‘Yesterday they had an engagement party, and afterwards the clerk wanted to take her for a sleigh-ride. He harnessed up a fast horse, sat her in the sleigh and started off towards the gate. But then the horse broke into a gallop with such a jerk that the girl fell out and hit her forehead on the gatepost. She just sort of flew out. It was the most terrible accident, I can’t tell you … They had to hold the clerk down to stop him killing himself. He’s gone crazy.’

‘Look,’ I said miserably, ‘I’m having a bath. Why couldn’t you have brought her here?’ So saying I doused my head with water and rinsed the soap into the tub.

‘Couldn’t be done, sir,’ the fireman said in an agonised voice and clasped his hands in entreaty. ‘Not a chance, sir. The girl would have died.’

‘But how can we go? There’s a blizzard outside!’

‘It’s letting up—in fact, sir, it’s died down completely. I’ve a couple of fast horses, harnessed in tandem. We’ll be there inside an hour.’

I gave a faint groan, clambered out of the tub, and sluiced myself furiously with two buckets of water. Then, squatting on my haunches in front of the mouth of the stove I made an attempt to dry my hair a little by sticking my head right in.

‘I’m bound to end up with pneumonia after a trip like this. In any case, what am I going to do with her? I can tell from his note that this doctor is even less experienced than I am. I know absolutely nothing except the few tips I’ve managed to pick up in six months’ practice, and he knows even less. He’s obviously only just qualified. And he thinks I’m an experienced man …’

Preoccupied with these thoughts, I was not even aware of getting dressed, which was no simple matter: trousers and shirt, felt boots, over my shirt a leather jerkin, then an overcoat topped by a sheepskin, fur hat, and my bag containing caffeine, camphor, morphine, adrenalin, clamps, sterile dressings, hypodermic, probe, a Browning automatic, cigarettes, matches, watch, stethoscope.

The weather was no longer so alarming, although the daylight was fading and darkness drawing in as we drove through the outskirts of the village. The snowfall seemed to have eased, and was falling diagonally in only one direction against my right cheek. The fireman’s bulk completely hid the rear horse’s rump from my view. The animals set off at a cracking pace, got into their stride, and the sleigh began flying over the bumpy track. I sank down into the seat and at once started to warm up; I thought of pneumonia and wondered whether a fragment of bone had broken off from inside the girl’s skull and penetrated the brain.