Read Online Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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leg folded up kitten-style, just reading, not noticing a thing. In fact, he read the whole time he was not sleeping or undergoing treatment. In the laboratory where they did all the analyses the senior lab assistant had a cupboard full of books. Dyomka was allowed to go there and change his books for himself without waiting for them to be changed for the whole ward. Now he was reading a thick magazine with a bluish cover, * not a new one but a tattered, faded copy. There were no new ones in the lab. girlâs cupboard.
Proshka too had made his bed properly without hollows or wrinkles and was sitting quietly and patiently with his feet on the floor like a man in the best of health. In fact he was quite healthy. He had nothing to complain about in the ward. He had no external sign of disease, and there was a healthy tan on his cheeks. A smooth lock of hair lay across his forehead. He was a fit young man, fit enough even to go dancing.
Next to him Ahmadjan had found no one to play with, so he had placed a chessboard diagonally across his blanket and was playing checkers against himself.
Yefrem, his bandage encasing him like a suit of armor, his head immobilized, was no longer stomping along the corridor spreading gloom. Instead, he had propped himself up with two pillows and was completely absorbed in the book which Kostoglotov had forced upon him the day before. He was turning over its pages so slowly one might have thought he was dozing over it.
Azovkin was suffering exactly as he had been the day before. Quite probably he had not slept at all. His things were scattered over the window sill and the bedside table, and his bed was all rumpled. His forehead and temples were covered in perspiration, and his yellow face reflected the pain writhing inside him. Sometimes he stood on the floor, bent double, leaning his elbows against the bed. At other times he would seize his stomach in both hands and fold his whole body around them. For many days he had not even answered the questions people asked him. He said nothing about himself. He used his powers of speech only for begging extra medicine from the nurses and doctors. When people came from home to visit him, he would send them out to buy more of the medicines he had seen in the hospital.
Outside it was a gloomy, still, colorless day. Kostoglotov came back from his morning X ray and without asking Pavel Nikolayevich opened a small window above his head. The air he let in was damp but not cold.
Pavel Nikolayevich was afraid of his tumor catching cold. He wrapped up his neck and sat down by the wall. How dumb they all were, how submissive, wooden almost! Except for Azovkin, nobody really looked as if he was suffering. They were not really worthy of recovery. It must have been Gorky who said the only people worthy of freedom are those prepared to go out and fight for it every day. As for Pavel Nikolayevich, already that morning he had taken certain resolute steps. As soon as the registrarâs office was open he had telephoned home and told his wife what he had decided during the night: applications were to made through all possible channels; he must be transferred to Moscow; he would not risk staying and dying in this place. Kapa knew how to get things done, she must already have set to work. Of course, it was sheer weaknessâhe shouldnât have been afraid of a tumor and stooped to taking a bed in a place like this. Nobody would ever believe it, but it was a fact that since three oâclock yesterday afternoon no one had even come to feel whether the tumor had grown bigger. Nobody had given him any medicine. Assassins in white coatsâthat was well said. * Theyâd just hung up a temperature chart for idiots to look at. The orderly hadnât even come in to make his bed. He had had to do it himself! My word, our medical institutions still need a great deal of smartening up!
At last the doctors appeared, but they still wouldnât enter the room. They
Proshka too had made his bed properly without hollows or wrinkles and was sitting quietly and patiently with his feet on the floor like a man in the best of health. In fact he was quite healthy. He had nothing to complain about in the ward. He had no external sign of disease, and there was a healthy tan on his cheeks. A smooth lock of hair lay across his forehead. He was a fit young man, fit enough even to go dancing.
Next to him Ahmadjan had found no one to play with, so he had placed a chessboard diagonally across his blanket and was playing checkers against himself.
Yefrem, his bandage encasing him like a suit of armor, his head immobilized, was no longer stomping along the corridor spreading gloom. Instead, he had propped himself up with two pillows and was completely absorbed in the book which Kostoglotov had forced upon him the day before. He was turning over its pages so slowly one might have thought he was dozing over it.
Azovkin was suffering exactly as he had been the day before. Quite probably he had not slept at all. His things were scattered over the window sill and the bedside table, and his bed was all rumpled. His forehead and temples were covered in perspiration, and his yellow face reflected the pain writhing inside him. Sometimes he stood on the floor, bent double, leaning his elbows against the bed. At other times he would seize his stomach in both hands and fold his whole body around them. For many days he had not even answered the questions people asked him. He said nothing about himself. He used his powers of speech only for begging extra medicine from the nurses and doctors. When people came from home to visit him, he would send them out to buy more of the medicines he had seen in the hospital.
Outside it was a gloomy, still, colorless day. Kostoglotov came back from his morning X ray and without asking Pavel Nikolayevich opened a small window above his head. The air he let in was damp but not cold.
Pavel Nikolayevich was afraid of his tumor catching cold. He wrapped up his neck and sat down by the wall. How dumb they all were, how submissive, wooden almost! Except for Azovkin, nobody really looked as if he was suffering. They were not really worthy of recovery. It must have been Gorky who said the only people worthy of freedom are those prepared to go out and fight for it every day. As for Pavel Nikolayevich, already that morning he had taken certain resolute steps. As soon as the registrarâs office was open he had telephoned home and told his wife what he had decided during the night: applications were to made through all possible channels; he must be transferred to Moscow; he would not risk staying and dying in this place. Kapa knew how to get things done, she must already have set to work. Of course, it was sheer weaknessâhe shouldnât have been afraid of a tumor and stooped to taking a bed in a place like this. Nobody would ever believe it, but it was a fact that since three oâclock yesterday afternoon no one had even come to feel whether the tumor had grown bigger. Nobody had given him any medicine. Assassins in white coatsâthat was well said. * Theyâd just hung up a temperature chart for idiots to look at. The orderly hadnât even come in to make his bed. He had had to do it himself! My word, our medical institutions still need a great deal of smartening up!
At last the doctors appeared, but they still wouldnât enter the room. They
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