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.”
“You talk about compromise,” said Bobrov gloomily, “but today you extracted the splinters from that Masalsk stone-mason’s skull, didn’t you?”
“Ah, my friend, what difference does one repaired skull make? Think how many bellies you keep full and how many people you give work to. Ilovaisky says in his History that ‘Tsar Boris, being desirous of winning the favour of the people, undertook the construction of public buildings in the years of famine,’ or something like that. Now try to work out what tremendous good you – ”
The doctor’s last words seemed to jolt Bobrov, who sat up quickly in bed and swung his bare feet over the side.
“Good?” he shouted frenziedly. “Are you talking to me about good? In that case, if you really want to sum up what’s good or bad, allow me to give you some statistics.” And he began in sharp, measured tones, as if speaking from a platform: “It has long been known that work in a mine, metal works, or large factory shortens the workman’s life by roughly a quarter, to say nothing of accidents or back-breaking toil. As a physician you know better than I do how many workmen suffer from syphilis or drink, or live in appalling conditions in those accursed barracks and mud-huts. Wait, doctor – before you object, try to remember how many workmen over forty or forty-five you’ve seen in factories. I haven’t met any. That means the workman gives his employer three months of his life a year, one week a month, or, in short, six hours a day. Now listen to this. Our six blast-furnaces will require some thirty thousand men – I suppose Tsar Boris never dreamt of such a figure. Thirty thousand men who burn up, so to speak, altogether a hundred and eighty thousand hours of their own lives every day, that is, seven thousand five hundred days, or – how many years does that add up to?”
“About twenty years,” the
