His life was passed like this. As a rule he got up at eight o'clock
in the morning, dressed, and drank his tea. Then he sat down in his
study to read, or went to the hospital. At the hospital the
out-patients were sitting in the dark, narrow little corridor waiting
to be seen by the doctor. The nurses and the attendants, tramping
with their boots over the brick floors, ran by them; gaunt-looking
patients in dressing-gowns passed; dead bodies and vessels full of
filth were carried by; the children were crying, and there was a
cold draught. Andrey Yefimitch knew that such surroundings were
torture to feverish, consumptive, and impressionable patients; but
what could be done? In the consulting-room he was met by his
assistant, Sergey Sergeyitch--a fat little man with a plump,
well-washed shaven face, with soft, smooth manners, wearing a new
loosely cut suit, and looking more like a senator than a medical
assistant. He had an immense practice in the town, wore a white
tie, and considered himself more proficient than the doctor, who
had no practice. In the corner of the consulting-room there stood
a large ikon in a shrine with a heavy lamp in front of it, and near
it a candle-stand with a white cover on it. On the walls hung
portraits of bishops, a view of the Svyatogorsky Monastery, and
wreaths of dried cornflowers. Sergey Sergeyitch was religious, and
liked solemnity and decorum. The ikon had been put up at his expense;
at his instructions some one of the patients read the hymns of
praise in the consulting-room on Sundays, and after the reading
Sergey Sergeyitch himself went through the wards with a censer and
burned incense.
There were a great many patients, but the time was short, and so
the work was confined to the asking of a few brief questions and
the administration of some drugs, such as castor-oil or volatile
ointment. Andrey Yefimitch would sit with his cheek resting in his
hand, lost in thought and asking questions mechanically. Sergey
Sergeyitch sat down too, rubbing his hands, and from time to time
putting in his word.
"We suffer pain and poverty," he would say, "because we do not pray
to the merciful God as we should. Yes!"
Andrey Yefimitch never performed any operation when he was seeing
patients; he had long ago given up doing so, and the sight of blood
upset him. When he had to open a child's mouth in order to look at
its throat, and the child cried and tried to defend itself with its
little hands, the noise in his ears made his head go round and
brought tears to his eyes. He would make haste to prescribe a drug,
and motion to the woman to take the child away.
He was soon wearied by the timidity of the patients and their
incoherence, by the proximity of the pious Sergey Sergeyitch, by
the portraits on the walls, and by his own questions which he had
asked over and over again for twenty years. And he would go away
after seeing five or six patients. The rest would be seen by his
assistant in his absence.
With the agreeable thought that, thank God, he had no private
practice now, and that no one would interrupt him, Andrey Yefimitch
sat down to the table immediately on reaching home and took up a
book. He read a great deal and always with enjoyment. Half his
salary went on buying books, and of the six rooms that made up his
abode three were heaped up with books and old magazines. He liked
best of all works on history and philosophy; the only medical
publication to which he subscribed was _The Doctor_, of which he
always read the last pages first. He would always go on reading for
several hours without a break and without being weary. He did not
read as rapidly and impulsively as Ivan Dmitritch had done in the
past, but slowly and with concentration, often pausing over a passage
which he liked or did not find intelligible. Near the books there
always stood a decanter of vodka, and a salted cucumber or a pickled
apple lay beside it, not on a plate, but on the baize table-cloth.
Every half-hour he would pour himself out a glass of vodka and drink
it without taking his eyes off the book. Then without looking at
it he would feel for the cucumber and bite off a bit.
At three o'clock he would go cautiously to the kitchen door; cough,
and say, "Daryushka, what about dinner? . ."
After his dinner--a rather poor and untidily served one--Andrey
Yefimitch would walk up and down his rooms with his arms folded,
thinking. The clock would strike four, then five, and still he would
be walking up and down thinking. Occasionally the kitchen door would
creak, and the red and sleepy face of Daryushka would appear.
"Andrey Yefimitch, isn't it time for you to have your beer?" she
would ask anxiously.
"No, it's not time yet . . ." he would answer. "I'll wait a little
. . . . I'll wait a little. . ."
Towards the evening the postmaster, Mihail Averyanitch, the only
man in town whose society did not bore Andrey Yefimitch, would come
in. Mihail Averyanitch had once been a very rich landowner, and had
served in the calvary, but had come to ruin, and was forced by
poverty to take a job in the post office late in life. He had a
hale and hearty appearance, luxuriant grey whiskers, the manners
of a well-bred man, and a loud, pleasant voice. He was good-natured
and emotional, but hot-tempered. When anyone in the post office
made a protest, expressed disagreement, or even began to argue,
Mihail Averyanitch would turn crimson, shake all over, and shout
in a voice of thunder, "Hold your tongue!" so that the post office
had long enjoyed the reputation of an institution which it was
terrible to visit. Mihail Averyanitch liked and respected Andrey
Yefimitch for his culture and the loftiness of his soul; he treated
the other inhabitants of the town superciliously, as though they
were his subordinates.
"Here I am," he would say, going in to Andrey Yefimitch. "Good
evening, my dear fellow! I'll be bound, you are getting sick of me,
aren't you?"
"On the contrary, I am delighted," said the doctor. "I am always
glad to see you."
The friends would sit on the sofa in the study and for some time
would smoke in silence.
"Daryushka, what about the beer?" Andrey Yefimitch would say.
They would drink their first bottle still in silence, the doctor
brooding and Mihail Averyanitch with a gay and animated face, like
a man who has something very interesting to tell. The doctor was
always the one to begin the conversation.
"What a pity," he would say quietly and slowly, not looking his
friend in the face (he never looked anyone in the face)--"what a
great pity it is that there are no people in our town who are capable
of carrying on intelligent and interesting conversation, or care
to do so. It is an immense privation for us. Even the educated class
do not rise above vulgarity; the level of their development, I
assure you, is not a bit higher than that of the lower orders."
"Perfectly true. I agree."
"You know, of course," the doctor went on quietly and deliberately,
"that everything in this world is insignificant and uninteresting
except the higher spiritual manifestations of the human mind.
Intellect draws a sharp line between the animals and man, suggests
the divinity of the latter, and to some extent even takes the place
of the immortality which does not exist. Consequently the intellect
is the only possible source of enjoyment. We see and hear of no
trace of intellect about us, so we are deprived of enjoyment. We
have books, it is true, but that is not at all the same as living
talk and converse. If you will allow me to make a not quite apt
comparison: books are the printed score, while talk is the singing."
"Perfectly true."
A silence would follow. Daryushka would come out of the kitchen and
with an expression of blank dejection would stand in the doorway
to listen, with her face propped on her fist.
"Eh!" Mihail Averyanitch would sigh. "To expect intelligence of
this generation!"
And he would describe how wholesome, entertaining, and interesting
life had been in the past. How intelligent the educated class in
Russia used to be, and what lofty ideas it had of honour and
friendship; how they used to lend money without an IOU, and it was
thought a disgrace not to give a helping hand to a comrade in need;
and what campaigns, what adventures, what skirmishes, what comrades,
what women! And the Caucasus, what a marvellous country! The wife
of a battalion commander, a queer woman, used to put on an officer's
uniform and drive off into the mountains in the evening, alone,
without a guide. It was said that she had a love affair with some
princeling in the native village.
"Queen of Heaven, Holy Mother..." Daryushka would sigh.
"And how we drank! And how we ate! And what desperate liberals we
were!"
Andrey Yefimitch would listen without hearing; he was musing as he
sipped his beer.
"I often dream of intellectual people and conversation with them,"
he said suddenly, interrupting Mihail Averyanitch. "My father gave
me an excellent education, but under the influence of the ideas of
the sixties made me become a doctor. I believe if I had not obeyed
him then, by now I should have been in the very centre of the
intellectual movement. Most likely I should have become a member
of some university. Of course, intellect, too, is transient and not
eternal, but you know why I cherish a partiality for it. Life is a
vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains
to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap
from which there is no escape. Indeed, he is summoned without his
choice by fortuitous circumstances from non-existence into life
. . . what for? He tries to find out the meaning and object of his
existence; he is told nothing, or he is told absurdities; he knocks
and it is not opened to him; death comes to him--also without his
choice. And so, just as in prison men held together by common
misfortune feel more at ease when they are together, so one does
not notice the trap in life when people with a bent for analysis
and generalization meet together and pass their time in the interchange
of proud and free ideas. In that sense the intellect is the source
of an enjoyment nothing can replace."
"Perfectly true."
Not looking his friend in the face, Andrey Yefimitch would go on,
quietly and with pauses, talking about intellectual people and
conversation with them, and Mihail Averyanitch would listen attentively
and agree: "Perfectly true."
"And you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" he would
ask suddenly.
"No, honoured Mihail Averyanitch; I do not believe it, and have no
grounds for believing it."
"I must own I doubt it too. And yet I have a feeling as though I
should never die. Oh, I think to myself: 'Old fogey, it is time you
were dead!' But there is a little voice in my soul says: 'Don't
believe it; you won't die.'"
Soon after nine o'clock Mihail Averyanitch would go away. As he put
on his fur coat in the entry he would say with a sigh:
"What a wilderness fate has carried us to, though, really! What's
most vexatious of all is to have to die here. Ech! . ."