Fifty-Two Stories

Silence ensued. Kirilov turned his back to Abogin, stood for a moment, and slowly went from the front hall to the drawing room. Judging by his uncertain, mechanical gait, by the attention with which, on coming to the drawing room, he straightened the fringed lampshade on an unlit lamp and glanced into a fat book lying on the table, in those moments he had neither intentions nor wishes, was not thinking about anything, and probably no longer remembered that a stranger was standing in his front hall. The darkness and quietness of the room apparently intensified his derangement. Going from the drawing room to his study, he raised his right foot higher than necessary, feeling with his hands for the door frames, and all the while there was a sense of some sort of perplexity in his whole figure, as if he found himself in unfamiliar quarters or had gotten drunk for the first time in his life and now yielded with perplexity to this new sensation. A wide strip of light stretched across the bookcases on one wall of the study; along with the heavy, stale smell of carbolic acid and ether, this light came from the slightly ajar door that led from the study to the bedroom…The doctor sank into the armchair in front of the desk; for a moment he gazed sleepily at the lighted books, then got up and went to the bedroom.

Here, in the bedroom, a dead silence reigned. Everything to the smallest detail spoke of the recently endured storm, of fatigue, and everything was resting. A candle, which stood on a stool amid a dense crowd of vials, boxes, and jars, and a big lamp on a chest of drawers brightly lit the whole room. On the bed just by the window lay a boy with open eyes and an astonished look on his face. He did not move, but his open eyes seemed to be growing darker and sinking into his skull with every moment. His mother was kneeling beside the bed, her arms lying on his body, her face hidden in the folds of the sheets. Like the boy, she was motionless, but how much living movement could be felt in the curves of her body and in her arms! She pressed herself to the bed with all her being, with force and greed, as if fearing to disturb the calm and comfortable pose she had finally found for her weary body. Blankets, rags, basins, puddles on the floor, brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle with lime water, the very air, stifling and heavy—it was all still and seemed immersed in calm.

The doctor stopped beside his wife, put his hands into his trouser pockets, and, inclining his head to the side, turned his gaze to his son. His face expressed indifference, and only by the drops glistening on his beard could one tell that he had recently wept.

That repulsive horror which people think about when speaking of death was absent from the room. In the general stupor, the mother’s pose, the indifference of the doctor’s face, lay something attractive, touching the heart, precisely that fine, barely perceptible beauty of human grief, which people will not soon learn to understand and describe, and which only music seems able to convey. Beauty could also be felt in the somber silence; Kirilov and his wife were quiet, they did not weep, as if, besides the heaviness of the loss, they were also conscious of the lyrical side of their situation: as once, in its time, their youth had gone, so now, together with this boy, their right to have children had gone forever into eternity! The doctor was forty-four, he was already gray-haired and looked like an old man; his faded and ailing wife was thirty-five. Andrei had been not just their only one, but also their last.

In contrast to his wife, the doctor belonged by nature to those who, at a time of inner pain, feel the need to move. Having stood by his wife for some five minutes, he walked, raising his right foot high, from the bedroom to a small room, half of which was taken up by a big, wide couch; from there he went on to the kitchen. After lingering briefly around the stove and the cook’s bed, he bent down and passed through a small door into the front hall.

Here he again saw the white scarf and the pale face.

“At last!” Abogin sighed, taking hold of the door handle. “Let’s go, please!”

The doctor gave a start, looked at him, and remembered…

“Listen, I already told you that I can’t go!” he said, rousing himself. “How strange!”

“Doctor, I’m not a block of wood, I understand your situation very well…I feel for you!” Abogin said in a pleading voice, putting his hand to his scarf. “But I’m not asking for myself…My wife is dying! If you had heard that scream, seen her face, you’d understand my insistence! My God, I was already thinking you went to get dressed! Doctor, time is precious! Let’s go, I beg you!”

“I cannot go!” Kirilov said in a measured tone and stepped into the drawing room.

Abogin followed him and grabbed him by the sleeve.