Александр Куприн – The Garnet Bracelet and other Stories / Гранатовый браслет и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 5)

“This one’s just as capable of selling herself,” he whispered, clenching his teeth and furiously laying his whip on Fairway’s neck.

V

As he rode up to his flat Bobrov saw a light in the windows. “The doctor must have arrived while I was away, and now he’s probably lolling on my sofa, waiting for me,” he thought, pulling up his lathered horse. Just then Dr. Goldberg was the only person whose presence he could bear without painful irritation.

He was sincerely fond of the light-hearted, gentle Jew for his versatile wit, his youthful liveliness, and his good-natured passion for abstract argument. No matter what topic Bobrov brought up, Dr. Goldberg would dispute his point with equal interest and unvarying ardour. And though so far they had done nothing but clash in their interminable arguments, they missed each other, and met almost daily.

The doctor was actually lying on the sofa, his feet on its back, reading a book which he held close to his shortsighted eyes. Bobrov recognized Mevius’ Handbook of Metallurgy at a glance, and smiled. He was familiar with the doctor’s habit of reading with equal absorption whatever he came upon, always starting from the middle.

“You know, I had some tea while you were out,” said the doctor, throwing away the book and looking at Bobrov over his spectacles, “Well, how’s my lord Andrei Ilyich hopping along? My, how angry you look! What is it? A fresh spell of delightful misery?”

“Life is so sickening, doctor,” Bobrov said wearily.

“Why, my friend?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that way. Well, how’s your hospital?”

“The hospital’s all right. I had a most interesting case of surgery today. Really, it was both laughable and touching. A Masalsk stone-mason came to me this morning. Those Masalsk lads are all athletes, without a single exception. ‘What d’you want?’ I asked him. ‘You see, doctor, I was cutting bread for the whole team and scratched my finger a bit, and can’t stop the blood nohow.’ I examined his finger; it was a mere scratch, nothing to worry about, but festering a little. I told my assistant to bandage it. But the lad wouldn’t go. ‘Well, what else do you want? You’ve got your hand bandaged, you can go now.’ ‘That’s right,’ he says, ‘thank you. Only, you see, my head’s kind of splitting, so I thought perhaps you’d give me some medicine for that too.’ ‘What’s the matter with your head? Got a sock on it, I suppose?’ He fairly jumped with delight, and started laughing. ‘Can’t say no,’ he says. ‘We went on a bust the other day, on Saviour’s Day it was’ – that would be about three days ago – ’and drank a good bucketful of vodka. Well, we started fooling among ourselves. Then – you know how it is in a fight, don’t you? – I got a reg’lar crack on my nob with a chisel – had it repaired, sort of. It wasn’t so bad at first – it didn’t hurt, but now my head’s splitting.’ I examined his ‘nob’ and was downright horrified. His skull was smashed right in, there was a hole in it the size of a five-kopek piece, and bone splinters stuck in his brain. Now he’s lying unconscious in hospital. I must say they are marvellous people: babies and heroes all in one. I’m quite certain that only the patient Russian muzhik can stand having his skull ‘repaired’ like that. Anyone else would have given up the ghost on the spot. Besides, what simple good humour! ‘You know how it is in a fight, don’t you?’ he says, God!”

Bobrov was pacing the room, cracking his whip across the tops of his high boots and listening absent-mindedly to the doctor. He still could not shake off the bitterness that had settled on his soul at Zinenko’s.

The doctor paused for a moment, and then said sympathetically, seeing that Bobrov did not feel like talking, “I tell you what, Andrei Ilyich. Try to get some sleep, and take one or two spoonfuls of bromide for the night. It’ll do you good in your present frame of mind – at least it won’t harm you.”

They both lay down in the same room, Bobrov taking the bed and the doctor staying on the sofa. But neither could sleep. For a long time Goldberg listened to Bobrov tossing and sighing in bed, and at last he spoke.

“What is it, friend? What’s worrying you? Hadn’t you better tell me frankly what’s on your mind? After all, I’m not a stranger asking questions out of idle curiosity.”

These simple words moved Bobrov. Although he and the doctor were on friendly terms, neither had ever confirmed it by a single word: both were keenly sensitive and shrank from the embarrassment of mutual confessions. The doctor had opened his heart first, helped by the darkness and his compassion for Bobrov.

“Everything weighs heavily on me and disgusts me so, Osip Osipovich,” Bobrov said softly. “First of all, I’m disgusted because I’m working at the mill and getting a lot of money for it, when I loathe the whole business. I consider myself honest and so I ask myself frankly, ‘What are you doing? Who benefits by your work?’ I’m beginning to see things clearly, and I realize that, thanks to my efforts, a hundred French rentiers and a dozen Russian sharks will eventually pocket millions. And there’s no other aim or sense in the work which I’ve wasted the better half of my life preparing for!”

“But that is simply ridiculous, Andrei Ilyich,” the doctor protested, turning to Bobrov in the darkness. “You want a bunch of money-bags to go soft. My friend, ever since the world came into being things have been governed by the law of the belly. It has never been otherwise, nor ever will be. But the point is that you don’t give a damn for the money-bags, because you’re far above them. Aren’t you satisfied with the proud manly consciousness that you’re pushing forward ‘the chariot of progress,’ as they say in leading articles? Damn it, shipping-company shares bring huge dividends, but does that prevent Fulton from being considered mankind’s benefactor?”

“My dear doctor!” Bobrov made a grimace of annoyance, “You didn’t go to the Zinenkos’ today, did you, but somehow you’re voicing their philosophy of life. Luckily I shan’t have to search far for an argument to refute yours, because I’m going to beat you with your own pet theory.”

“What theory do you mean? I’m afraid I can’t remember any theory. I really can’t, my friend – it’s slipped my mind.”

“It has, has it? Then who shouted, sitting on this sofa here and foaming at the mouth, that by our discoveries we engineers and inventors quicken the heartbeat of society to a feverish speed? Who compared this life with the condition of an animal sealed up in an oxygen jar? I remember perfectly, believe me, what a terrible list of children of the twentieth century – neurasthenics, madmen, overworked men, suicides – you hurled in the face of those same benefactors of mankind. You said the telegraph, the telephone, trains racing at eighty miles an hour, had reduced distance to a minimum, had in fact done away with it. Time has become so valuable, you said, that they’ll soon begin to turn night into day to make day twice as long. Negotiations which used to take months are now finished in five minutes. But even this hellish speed is no longer enough for us. Soon we’ll be able to see each other by wire hundreds and thousands of miles away! And yet, only fifty years ago, whenever our ancestors had to make a trip from the country to the provincial centre, they’d hold a service in church and set out with enough time to spare for a polar expedition. And we keep rushing on headlong, stunned by the rumbling and clanking of monstrous machines, dazed by the furious race, with irritated nerves, perverse tastes, and thousands of new diseases. Do you remember, doctor? It was you, a champion of beneficial progress, who said all that.”

The doctor, who had been making futile attempts to protest, profited by Bobrov’s momentary pause.

“Yes, my friend, I did say all that,” he cut in, a little doubtfully. “I will say that again. But then we must adapt ourselves, so to speak. How else are we to live? There are these tricky little points in every profession. Take us doctors. Do you imagine we have no doubts or difficulties at all? Why, we’re sure of nothing whatsoever beyond surgery. We think up new remedies and systems, but we completely forget that, among a thousand living beings, no two are alike in blood composition, heart activity, heredity, and God knows what else! We’ve moved away from real therapeutics – the medicine of wild creatures and quacks – and flooded the chemists’ shops with cocaine, atropine, phenacetin, and all that sort of stuff; but we’ve forgotten that if you give a sick man a glass of pure water and earnestly assure him it’s a strong medicine he’ll recover from his illness. Nevertheless, in ninety cases out of a hundred, what helps us in our practice is the confidence inspired by our professional sacerdotal self-assurance. Believe it or not, but a fine physician, who was also a clever, honest man, once confessed to me that sportsmen treat their sick dogs more rationally than we do people. Their only medicine is flower of brimstone – it can’t do much harm, and sometimes it even helps. A lovely picture, isn’t it, my friend? But we, too, do what we can. It’s the only way, for in this life we all must compromise. Sometimes you can relieve the suffering of a fellow-man by behaving like an omniscient augur if by nothing else. Thank God for even that much.”