Михаил Булгаков - A Country Doctor's Notebook

‘Are you on duty in Casualty Reception?’ I asked, yawning.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Anyone there?’

‘No, it’s empty.’

‘If any cashesh come in …’ (I was yawning so hard my pronunciation was sloppy) ‘come and let me know. I’m going to sleep …’

‘Yes, doctor. Can I go now?’

‘Yes, yes. Off you go.’

She went out. The door squeaked, and I shuffled into the bedroom in my slippers, clumsily tearing open the envelope as I went. It contained a crumpled oblong prescription form stamped with the address of my old country practice … that unforgettable letterhead.

I smiled.

‘That’s interesting … I’ve been thinking about the place all evening and now this turns up … must have had a premonition …’

Beneath the letterhead a prescription was written in indelible pencil. Some of the Latin words were illegible, others crossed out.

‘What’s this? Some prescription gone astray?’ I muttered, then stared at the word ‘morphini’. ‘Well, what’s so unusual about this prescription? Ah, yes … a four-percent solution! Who’s been prescribing a four-per-cent solution of morphine? And what for?’

I turned the sheet over. On the reverse side was a letter, written in small spidery handwriting:

11th February 1918.

Dear Colleague,

Forgive me for writing on this old scrap. There’s no proper paper at hand. I have fallen seriously ill with something unpleasant. There’s no one to help me, and in any case I don’t want to ask help of anyone except you.

This is my second month in your old practice, and I know that you are in town and not too far away from me.

On the strength of our friendship at university, I implore you to come and see me as soon as you can—if only for a day, or even an hour. And if you tell me I’m a hopeless case, then I’ll believe you. Or perhaps I can still be saved? Perhaps there’s still a ray of hope? I beg you to tell no one about the contents of this letter.

Ever yours,

Sergei Polyakov.

‘Maria! Go down to casualty at once and fetch me the nurse on duty. What’s her name? I forget … I mean the one who gave me this letter just now. Hurry.’

‘Very good, doctor.’

A few minutes later the nurse was standing in front of me, wet snow on the moulting cat fur that had been used for the collar of her coat.

‘Who brought this letter?’

‘I don’t know who he was. A man with a beard. Said he worked for the co-op and was in town on business.’

‘Hmm … all right, you can go now. No, wait. I’ll just write a note to the Medical Superintendent. Would you take it to him, please, and bring his answer back?’

‘All right.’

This is what I wrote to the Medical Superintendent:

13th February 1918.

Dear Pavel Illarionovich,

I have just received a letter from my university friend, Doctor Polyakov. He is working in my previous country practice at Gorelovo, where he is completely alone. He appears to be seriously ill. I think it is my duty to go and see him. With your permission I should like to hand over the dept. to Doctor Rodovich for the day tomorrow and drive out to Polyakov. He has no one else to turn to.

Yours,

Dr Bomgard.

The Medical Superintendent replied:

Dear Vladimir Mikhailovich,

Go.

Petrov.

I spent that evening poring over the railway timetable. The way to reach Gorelovo was as follows: to catch the Moscow mail train at 2 p.m. the following afternoon, travel twenty miles by rail, get off at N. station, and then cover the remaining sixteen miles to Gorelovo hospital by sleigh.

‘With luck I should be in Gorelovo tomorrow night,’ I reflected as I lay in bed. ‘What’s the matter with him, I wonder? Typhus? Pneumonia? Neither, I should think … because if so, he would simply have written: “I have caught pneumonia”. His letter was too vague, even faintly evasive. “Seriously ill … something unpleasant …”

‘What could that mean? Syphilis? Yes, no doubt about it, syphilis. He’s appalled, he’s concealing it, and he’s afraid. But who, I’d like to know, am I going to find to drive me to Gorelovo? It would be just my luck to get to the station at nightfall and find there’s no one to take me. No, no, I’ll find a way. I’ll find someone at the station who has some horses. Should I send him a telegram asking to be met at the station? No use. The telegram won’t reach him until the day after I get there. It can’t fly to Gorelovo. It would sit at the station until someone was driving out that way. I know that place. What a godforsaken hole!’

The letter on the prescription form lay on my bedside table in the circle of light shed by the lamp, beside it an ashtray bristling with cigarette ends, the outward sign of nagging insomnia. As I tossed about on the crumpled sheet, irritation began to get the better of me, and I started to resent the letter.

After all, if it was nothing worse than, say, syphilis, why didn’t he come here himself? Why must I dash through a blizzard to go and see him? Was I supposed to cure him of syphilis or cancer of the aesophagus in one evening? Anyway how could he have cancer? He was two years younger than myself. He was 24 … ‘Seriously ill’. Sarcoma? It was an absurd, hysterical letter, enough to give the recipient migraine. There, it was starting: the nerve on my temple was starting to twitch; I would wake up in the morning to find that the tension in that nerve had moved to the crown of my head, half my head would feel as if it were clamped in a vice, and I would have to take pyramidon and caffeine. And where would I find pyramidon on a sleigh journey? I should have to borrow one of the hospital’s travelling fur coats; I would freeze to death in my own overcoat. What can be the matter with him? ‘… still a ray of hope’, indeed! People write that sort of thing in novels, not in sober doctors’ letters! Must get to sleep … stop thinking about it. It will all be clear tomorrow … tomorrow.

I turned the switch and darkness instantly engulfed my room. Sleep … that nerve was twitching. But I had no right to be angry with the man for his stupid letter without knowing what the matter was. The man was suffering and he had written to someone else in the way he thought best. And it was unkind to slander him, even mentally, simply because one was worried or suffering from migraine. Perhaps his letter wasn’t dishonest or overdramatic at all. I had not seen Sergei Polyakov for two years, but I remembered him perfectly. He was always a very reasonable man. Yes, obviously some disaster had befallen him … And that nerve of mine was giving less trouble. Clearly I would be asleep soon. What was the mechanism of sleep? I had read about it once during my physiology course, but I had found it obscure. I didn’t really know what sleep was. How did the brain cells fall asleep? To be honest, I had no idea. And I was almost certain that the man who wrote that textbook wasn’t really very sure either. One theory is as good as another. There was Sergei Polyakov standing in his green medical student’s uniform tunic with brass buttons, bending over a zinc-topped table, and there was a corpse on the table.

Hmm, I must be dreaming …

TAP, TAP … BANG, BANG, BANG … AHA … Who’s that? What is it? … Someone’s knocking—hell … Where am I? What’s going on? Ah, yes, I’m lying in my bed … Why are they waking me up? They’re allowed to because I’m on call tonight. Wake up, Doctor Bomgard. Maria has just shuffled across the lobby to open the door. What’s the time? Half past midnight. That means I’ve only been asleep for an hour. How’s the migraine? Yes, it’s there all right.

A gentle knock at the door.

‘What is it?’