Two years ago, in a fit of liberality, the Zemstvo determined to
appropriate three hundred roubles a year to the increase of the
personnel of the hospital, until such time as they should open one of
their own. They sent, therefore, as assistant to Andréi Yéfimitch,
the district physician Yevgéniï Feódoritch Khobótoff. Khobótoff was
a very young man, under thirty, bill and dark, with small eyes and
high cheek-bones; evidently of Asiatic origin. He arrived in the town
without a kopeck, with a small portmanteau as his only luggage, and was
accompanied by a young, unattractive woman, whom he called his cook.
This woman's child completed the party. Khobótoff wore a peaked cap and
high boots, and--in winter--a short fur coat. He was soon on intimate
terms with the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, and with the bursar, but
the rest of the officials he avoided and denounced as aristocrats.
He possessed only one book, "Prescriptions of the Vienna Hospital in
1881," and when he visited the hospital he always brought it with him.
He did not care for cards, and in the evenings spent his time playing
billiards at the club.
Khobótoff visited the hospital twice a week, inspected the wards,
and received out-patients. The strange absence of antiseptics,
cupping-glasses, and other necessaries seemed to trouble him, but he
made no attempt to introduce a new order, fearing to offend Andréi
Yéfimitch, whom he regarded as all old rogue, suspected of having
large means, and secretly envied. He would willingly have occupied his
position.