Михаил Булгаков - A Country Doctor's Notebook

‘It’s the tracheotomy that has brought you all these patients. Do you know what they’re saying in the villages? The story goes that when Lidka was ill a steel throat was put into her instead of her own and then sewn up. People go to her village especially to look at her. There’s fame for you, doctor. Congratulations.’

‘So they think she’s living with a steel one now, do they?’ I enquired.

‘That’s right. But you were wonderful, doctor. You did it so coolly, it was marvellous to watch.’

‘Hm, well, I never allow myself to worry, you know,’ I said, not knowing why. I was too tired even to feel ashamed, so I just looked away. I said goodnight and went home. Snow was falling in large flakes, covering everything, the lantern was lit and my house looked silent, solitary and imposing. As I walked I had only one desire—sleep.

WHERE HAS THE WORLD DISAPPEARED TO TODAY, my birthday? Where, oh where are the electric lights of Moscow? Where are the people, where is the sky? I look out of my windows at nothing but darkness …

We are cut off; the nearest kerosene lanterns are seven miles away at the railway station, and even their flickering light has probably been blown out by the snowstorm. The midnight express to Moscow rushes moaning past and does not even stop; it has no need of this forlorn little halt, buried in snow—except perhaps when the line is blocked by drifts.

The nearest street lamps are thirty-two miles away in the district town. Life there is sweet: it has a cinema, shops. While the snow is whirling and howling out here in the open country, there on the screen, no doubt, the cane-brake is bending to the breeze and palm trees sway as a tropical island comes into view …

Meanwhile we are alone.

‘Black as Egypt’s night,’ observed Demyan Lukich, as he raised the blind.

His remarks are somewhat solemn but apt. Egyptian is the word for it.

‘Have another glass,’ I invited him. (Don’t be too hard on us; after all, we—a doctor, a feldsher and two midwives—are human too. For months on end we see no one apart from hundreds of sick peasants. We work away, entombed in snow. Surely we may be allowed to drink a couple of glasses of suitably diluted spirit and relish a few of the local sprats on the doctor’s birthday?)

‘Your health, doctor!’ said Demyan Lukich with heartfelt sincerity.

‘Here’s hoping you survive your stay with us!’ said Anna Nikolaevna as she clinked her glass and smoothed her flowered party dress.

Raising her glass, Pelagea Ivanovna took a sip and then squatted down on her haunches to poke the stove. The hot gleam lit up our faces and the vodka generated a warm inner glow.

‘I simply cannot imagine,’ I said indignantly as I watched the shower of sparks raised by the poker, ‘what that woman did with so much belladonna. The whole story sounds insane!’

Feldsher and midwives smiled as they remembered what had happened. At morning surgery that day a red-faced peasant woman of about thirty had elbowed her way into my consulting room. She had bowed to the gynaecological chair which stood behind me, then produced from the front of her dress a wide-necked medicine bottle and crooned ingratiatingly:

‘Thanks very much for the medicine, doctor. It did me so much good. Please may I have another bottle?’

I took the bottle from her, and as I glanced at the label a green film passed across my vision. On the label was written in Demyan Lukich’s sprawling hand: ‘Tinct. Belladonnae … etc. 16th December 1916’.

In other words, yesterday I had prescribed for this woman a hefty measure of belladonna and today, my birthday, 17 December, the woman had come back with an empty bottle and a request for more.

‘You … you … you mean to say you drank all this yesterday?’ I asked, appalled.

‘All of it, sir, all of it,’ said the woman in her comfortable, sing-song voice. ‘And God bless you for it … half the bottle when I got home and the other half when I went to bed. The pain just vanished …’

I steadied myself against the gynaecological chair.

‘What dose did I tell you?’ I croaked. ‘I told you five drops at a time … What have you done, woman? You’ve … you’ve …’

‘I took it, I swear I did!’ the woman insisted, thinking I did not believe she had taken my belladonna.

I seized both her ruddy cheeks and stared at her pupils. There as nothing wrong with them. They were rather beautiful and completely normal. Her pulse, too, was excellent. The woman exhibited no signs whatsoever of belladonna poisoning.

‘It’s impossible!’ I said, then shouted: ‘Demyan Lukich!’

Demyan Lukich in his white overall appeared from the passage leading to the dispensary.

‘Just look what this beauty has done, Demyan Lukich! I don’t understand it.’

The peasant woman looked round anxiously, realising that she had done something wrong. Demyan Lukich took the bottle, sniffed it, turned it round in his hands and said sternly:

‘You, my dear, are lying. You didn’t take this medicine!’

‘I swear …’ she began.

‘Don’t try and fool us, woman,’ Demyan Lukich scolded, pursing his lips. ‘We can see through all your little tricks. Own up now—who did you give this medicine to?’

The woman raised her thoroughly normal pupils towards the immaculately whitewashed ceiling and crossed herself.

‘May I be …’

‘Stop it,’ growled Demyan Lukich and turned to me: ‘This is what they do, doctor. A clever actress like this one here goes to the clinic, we prescribe her some medicine and she goes back home and shares it out among all the women in the village.’

‘Oh, sir, how could you …’

‘Shut up!’ the feldsher cut her off. ‘I’ve been here eight years and I know. Of course she’s been going round every farm and emptying the bottle a few drops at a time,’ he went on.

‘Give me some more of those drops,’ the woman begged in a wheedling tone.

‘No, we won’t,’ I replied as I wiped the sweat from my brow. ‘I’m not letting you have any more of this medicine. Is your stomach-ache better?’

‘Like I said—just vanished!’

‘Well, that’s good, anyway. I shall give you something else, which will also do you good.’ I prescribed the woman some valerian and she left, much disappointed.

This was the incident we discussed sitting in the doctor’s quarters on my birthday, while outside the windows were draped with the black curtain of the snowstorm.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Demyan Lukich, elegantly munching a sardine, ‘ah, yes: we’re used to that sort of thing here. And you, dear doctor, after all the time you’ve spent at university and in Moscow, are going to have to get used to a lot of things. We’re living at the back of beyond.’

‘Yes, the back of beyond,’ came the response like an echo from Anna Nikolaevna.

The snowstorm roared in the chimneys and brushed past the walls. The dark cast-iron of the stove gave off a purple glow. A blessing on the fire which warms medical folk stranded in the depths of the countryside!

‘Have you heard about your predecessor Leopold Leopoldovich?’ enquired the feldsher , as he lit a cigarette, having first politely offered one to Anna Nikolaevna.

‘He was a marvellous doctor!’ said Pelagea Ivanovna enthusiastically, her eyes gleaming as she stared into the life-giving fire. The imitation brilliants of her Sunday-best comb glinted in her black hair.

‘Yes, he was a remarkable personality,’ the feldsher agreed. ‘The peasants literally worshipped him. He had the right approach to them. They were always ready to lie down and be operated on by Liponty. They called him “Liponty Lipontyevich” instead of Leopold Leopoldovich. They had faith in him. And he knew how to talk to them. For instance, his friend Fyodor Kosoi from Dultsevo might come to his surgery. It’s like this Liponty Lipontych, he would say, my chest’s blocked up so it’s hard to draw breath. And besides that, there’s a sort of rasping in my throat …’