I
In the hospital yard there stands a small lodge surrounded by a
perfect forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp. Its roof is
rusty, the chimney is tumbling down, the steps at the front-door
are rotting away and overgrown with grass, and there are only traces
left of the stucco. The front of the lodge faces the hospital; at
the back it looks out into the open country, from which it is
separated by the grey hospital fence with nails on it. These nails,
with their points upwards, and the fence, and the lodge itself,
have that peculiar, desolate, God-forsaken look which is only found
in our hospital and prison buildings.
If you are not afraid of being stung by the nettles, come by the
narrow footpath that leads to the lodge, and let us see what is
going on inside. Opening the first door, we walk into the entry.
Here along the walls and by the stove every sort of hospital rubbish
lies littered about. Mattresses, old tattered dressing-gowns,
trousers, blue striped shirts, boots and shoes no good for
anything--all these remnants are piled up in heaps, mixed up and crumpled,
mouldering and giving out a sickly smell.
The porter, Nikita, an old soldier wearing rusty good-conduct
stripes, is always lying on the litter with a pipe between his
teeth. He has a grim, surly, battered-looking face, overhanging
eyebrows which give him the expression of a sheep-dog of the steppes,
and a red nose; he is short and looks thin and scraggy, but he is
of imposing deportment and his fists are vigorous. He belongs to
the class of simple-hearted, practical, and dull-witted people,
prompt in carrying out orders, who like discipline better than
anything in the world, and so are convinced that it is their duty
to beat people. He showers blows on the face, on the chest, on the
back, on whatever comes first, and is convinced that there would
be no order in the place if he did not.
Next you come into a big, spacious room which fills up the whole
lodge except for the entry. Here the walls are painted a dirty blue,
the ceiling is as sooty as in a hut without a chimney--it is
evident that in the winter the stove smokes and the room is full
of fumes. The windows are disfigured by iron gratings on the inside.
The wooden floor is grey and full of splinters. There is a stench
of sour cabbage, of smouldering wicks, of bugs, and of ammonia, and
for the first minute this stench gives you the impression of having
walked into a menagerie.
There are bedsteads screwed to the floor. Men in blue hospital
dressing-gowns, and wearing nightcaps in the old style, are sitting
and lying on them. These are the lunatics.
There are five of them in all here. Only one is of the upper class,
the rest are all artisans. The one nearest the door--a tall, lean
workman with shining red whiskers and tear-stained eyes--sits
with his head propped on his hand, staring at the same point. Day
and night he grieves, shaking his head, sighing and smiling bitterly.
He takes a part in conversation and usually makes no answer to
questions; he eats and drinks mechanically when food is offered
him. From his agonizing, throbbing cough, his thinness, and the
flush on his cheeks, one may judge that he is in the first stage
of consumption. Next to him is a little, alert, very lively old
man, with a pointed beard and curly black hair like a negro's. By
day he walks up and down the ward from window to window, or sits
on his bed, cross-legged like a Turk, and, ceaselessly as a bullfinch
whistles, softly sings and titters. He shows his childish gaiety
and lively character at night also when he gets up to say his
prayers--that is, to beat himself on the chest with his fists, and to
scratch with his fingers at the door. This is the Jew Moiseika, an
imbecile, who went crazy twenty years ago when his hat factory was
burnt down.
And of all the inhabitants of Ward No. 6, he is the only one who
is allowed to go out of the lodge, and even out of the yard into
the street. He has enjoyed this privilege for years, probably because
he is an old inhabitant of the hospital--a quiet, harmless imbecile,
the buffoon of the town, where people are used to seeing him
surrounded by boys and dogs. In his wretched gown, in his absurd
night-cap, and in slippers, sometimes with bare legs and even without
trousers, he walks about the streets, stopping at the gates and
little shops, and begging for a copper. In one place they will give
him some kvass, in another some bread, in another a copper, so that
he generally goes back to the ward feeling rich and well fed.
Everything that he brings back Nikita takes from him for his own
benefit. The soldier does this roughly, angrily turning the Jew's
pockets inside out, and calling God to witness that he will not let
him go into the street again, and that breach of the regulations
is worse to him than anything in the world.
Moiseika likes to make himself useful. He gives his companions
water, and covers them up when they are asleep; he promises each
of them to bring him back a kopeck, and to make him a new cap; he
feeds with a spoon his neighbour on the left, who is paralyzed. He
acts in this way, not from compassion nor from any considerations
of a humane kind, but through imitation, unconsciously dominated
by Gromov, his neighbour on the right hand.
Ivan Dmitritch Gromov, a man of thirty-three, who is a gentleman
by birth, and has been a court usher and provincial secretary,
suffers from the mania of persecution. He either lies curled up in
bed, or walks from corner to corner as though for exercise; he very
rarely sits down. He is always excited, agitated, and overwrought
by a sort of vague, undefined expectation. The faintest rustle in
the entry or shout in the yard is enough to make him raise his head
and begin listening: whether they are coming for him, whether they
are looking for him. And at such times his face expresses the utmost
uneasiness and repulsion.
I like his broad face with its high cheek-bones, always pale and
unhappy, and reflecting, as though in a mirror, a soul tormented
by conflict and long-continued terror. His grimaces are strange and
abnormal, but the delicate lines traced on his face by profound,
genuine suffering show intelligence and sense, and there is a warm
and healthy light in his eyes. I like the man himself, courteous,
anxious to be of use, and extraordinarily gentle to everyone except
Nikita. When anyone drops a button or a spoon, he jumps up from his
bed quickly and picks it up; every day he says good-morning to his
companions, and when he goes to bed he wishes them good-night.
Besides his continually overwrought condition and his grimaces, his
madness shows itself in the following way also. Sometimes in the
evenings he wraps himself in his dressing-gown, and, trembling all
over, with his teeth chattering, begins walking rapidly from corner
to corner and between the bedsteads. It seems as though he is in a
violent fever. From the way he suddenly stops and glances at his
companions, it can be seen that he is longing to say something very
important, but, apparently reflecting that they would not listen,
or would not understand him, he shakes his head impatiently and
goes on pacing up and down. But soon the desire to speak gets the
upper hand of every consideration, and he will let himself go and
speak fervently and passionately. His talk is disordered and feverish
like delirium, disconnected, and not always intelligible, but, on
the other hand, something extremely fine may be felt in it, both
in the words and the voice. When he talks you recognize in him the
lunatic and the man. It is difficult to reproduce on paper his
insane talk. He speaks of the baseness of mankind, of violence
trampling on justice, of the glorious life which will one day be
upon earth, of the window-gratings, which remind him every minute
of the stupidity and cruelty of oppressors. It makes a disorderly,
incoherent potpourri of themes old but not yet out of date.