Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,94

stench.

Nikita, who cleans up after him, beats him terribly, with all his might, not sparing his fists; and the terrible thing here is not that he is beaten—that one can get used to—but that this dumb animal does not respond to the beating either by sound or by movement, or by the expression of his eyes, but only rocks slightly like a heavy barrel.

The fifth and last inhabitant of Ward No. 6 is a tradesman who once worked as a sorter in the post office, a small, lean, blond fellow with a kind but somewhat sly face. Judging by his calm, intelligent eyes, which have a bright and cheerful look, he keeps his own counsel and has some very important and pleasant secret. He keeps something under his pillow or mattress that he does not show to anyone, not from fear that it might be taken away or stolen, but from bashfulness. Sometimes he goes to the window and, turning his back to his comrades, puts something on his chest and looks, craning his neck; if anyone approaches him at that moment, he gets embarrassed and tears the something off his chest. But his secret is not hard to guess.

“Congratulate me,” he often says to Ivan Dmitrich, “I’ve been recommended for the Stanislas, second degree, with star.2 The second degree with star is only given to foreigners, but for some reason they want to make an exception in my case,” he smiles, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. “I must confess, I really didn’t expect it!”

“I understand nothing about that,” Ivan Dmitrich says glumly.

“But do you know what I’ll get sooner or later?” the former sorter continues, narrowing his eyes slyly “I’m sure to get the Swedish ‘Polar Star.’3 It’s a decoration worth soliciting for. A white cross and a black ribbon. Very beautiful.”

Probably nowhere else is life so monotonous as in this annex. In the morning the patients, except for the paralytic and the fat peasant, wash themselves from a big tub in the front hall, wiping themselves with the skirts of their robes; after that they have tea in tin mugs, which Nikita brings from the main building. Each of them gets one mug. At noon they eat pickled cabbage soup and kasha, and in the evening they have the kasha left over from dinner. In between they lie down, sleep, look out the windows, or pace up and down. And so it goes every day. Even the former sorter talks about the same decorations.

New people are seldom seen in Ward No. 6. The doctor long ago stopped accepting new madmen, and there are not many in this world who enjoy visiting madhouses. Once every two months the barber, Semyon Lazarich, visits the annex. Of how he gives the madmen haircuts, and how Nikita helps him to do it, and what commotion among the patients each appearance of the drunken, grinning barber causes, we will not speak.

Apart from the barber, no one comes to the annex. The patients are condemned to see only Nikita day after day.

Recently, however, a rather strange rumor spread through the hospital.

The rumor went around that the doctor had started visiting Ward No. 6.

V

Strange rumor!

Dr. Andrei Yefimych Ragin is a remarkable man in his way. They say that he was very pious in his youth, was preparing for a clerical career, and that, on graduating from high school in 1863, he intended to enter a theological academy, but that his father, a doctor of medicine and a surgeon, supposedly mocked him venomously and said categorically that he would not consider him his son if he became a priest. How much truth there is to it I do not know, but Andrei Yefimych himself admitted more than once that he never felt any vocation for medicine or generally for any particular science.

However that may be, having completed his studies in the medical faculty, he did not become a priest. He showed no devoutness, and resembled a clergyman as little at the start of his medical career as he does now.

His appearance is heavy, coarse, peasant-like; with his face, his beard, his lank hair and sturdy, clumsy build, he resembles a highway innkeeper, overfed, intemperate, and tough. His face is stern, covered with little blue veins, his eyes are small, his nose red. Tall and broad-shouldered, he has enormous hands and feet; it looks like one whack of his fist would be lights out. But he walks softly, and his gait is cautious and furtive; meeting you