The Revenge of the Foxes

Chapter 2

Love for Life

In Neskuchny Gardens the glow of the birch and aspen trees was quietly dying. Moskva River, densely filled with yellow leaves, was softly singing its autumn song. All around there reigned a silence, nourished by the rain and the moisture under the earth; it rested on the leaves which were falling from the tall trees of the gardens, on their rises and descents leading away from the noisy avenue, from the endless stream of cars near the river bank, which at this weary pre-evening hour was somehow deliberately deserted. In this silence the conception of the future springtime seemed to be taking place; this was the sunset of the Great Day, which every year begins with the noisy springtime break-up of the ice.

“Will this autumn be my last?” I thought, sitting almost at the very edge of the water. “And will I die suddenly?”

Now, several years from the day when I was completely immersed in one question – life or death, I can see still more clearly how close was the abyss... which, to my great happiness, did not engulf me. And today my spirit aches for those young lives broken off in very take-off, for those friends of mine, for whom the rivers of springtime will no longer start to rumble as they break the ice, for whom everything is stilled for all eternity in a deep winter sleep.

I remember that autumn, I remember the vicissitudes of time and the departing warmth, I remember the feeling of pain. Each leaf of the old oak tree in the hospital courtyard would break off and fall, as if counting the minutes; longing and grief filled my spirit. The doomed autumn leaves would try with their last strength to break out of their predestined circle and save themselves from extinction. They hastened in flocks after chance passers-by, alarmed by the movement of their steps. Caught up from the moist earth by a gust of wind, the leaves would cling to people and tag along with them like stray dogs, ready faithfully to serve anyone not driving them away like noisome flies. But no-one would stop, they all passed by and, deceived in their treasured hopes, the yellow and red leaves would fall into the mud and long continue to flutter in an attempt to rise and rush after new passers-by.

I had plenty of time to observe the metamorphoses of that autumn, so unrepeatable for me; there was nowhere to hurry... a pity, there were few distractions, and all the ones that we had were thought up by me, by us, just slightly to brighten up our miserable hospital life. I remember we terribly enjoyed being strikingly different from the other patients wandering like the ghost of Hamlet's Father in plain, boring, colourless clothes, whom we met during the so-called ‘short walks’. And we others, not wearing official gowns, were allowed to wear our own clothes! We walking wounded heart patients were in principle healthy people. And it was difficult not to strut our home wardrobe, thanks to which, hardly outside the field of vision of the strict nurses, (albeit for a short time, but with relish) we cast off the ‘label’ of invalid, and it was like becoming normal people like those flowing in the endless stream along the pavement of the huge avenue in front of the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. Sometimes we managed to melt in with this crowd, indifferent to everything and ever rushing somewhere, and go on desperate walks. Of course, this was done at great risk: you could not fall under the gaze of the doctors or the medical personnel – no one wanted to be written off before the operation for ‘non-observance of the regimen’. Although our Institute was not one of nuclear, but human research, the regimen operating in it was no slacker, incidentally, than any place where Soviet (strict) rules and daily routine were in force for inter-institutions. Nevertheless we managed not only to cross the avenue and buy ‘Pepsi’ or ‘Fanta’ in the shop, but also go on long walks and travel on the Metro as far as the Lenin Hills and from the heights there cast a glance at the busy transient world which one of us might soon have to leave forever...

Who was to embark on a journey into such a distance depended on many factors, including the boldness of the patient, and on how he found himself in the Institution where at public expense (that is, almost gratis) the person was having his life returned to him. Whether he got into the Institute from a faraway peripheral hospital – a hotbed of flies and insanitary conditions, after a long queue of those waiting to go under the knife, or whether they brought him here without red tape, backstairs by ‘blat’, by the standard bribe. Of great importance also was the status occupied by his patron in the institutional hierarchy and consequently the status of the patient himself.

But enough of that. I am now occupied by something else: the fearlessness of the heart patients who, not of their own will, found themselves facing the choice “to be or not to be”. Trusting the surgeons with their hearts, they firmly decided – TO BE!

When they led me to the doors of the ward, I glanced at the sign – No.6... Immediately there floated into my memory the name of the classic which ‘glorified’ the number of the ward of sad fame, yes... a fine start, it augers nothing joyful for me, but we will hope that the ill-omened number will not be fateful for me; anyway, the writer was telling the world a story about lunatics and not heart cases.

“Vitya... Slava... Akhliman...” I was introduced to my ward neighbours by Olga Nikanorovna, the Ward Sister for children with innate heart defects. “They are good children and great fun!”

“What fun!” I thought as I looked around the ward and met the eternally sad eyes of Vitali. “Just try and laugh it off!”

“I am going now and you take your places!” the Sister said smiling, in a tone which might be appropriate in a café or a bar but not here among people awaiting a risky heart operation. “Here is your linen and everything else,” added the girl handing me the sheets. “Babka Nastya said she would make the beds so wait, maybe...”

“No matter, I'm used to it.”

“Take care...”

With the departure of the young Sister it became even more melancholy in the ward. Having briefly given my name, I somehow bungled the moment of acquaintance and hurried outside, unable to bear the pressure of three pairs of eyes scrutinising me. Perhaps I'll feel better outside the walls of the ward.

The garden was lovely but just as miserable: I wished for nothing, I foresaw nothing good, I dreamed of nothing. All around autumn reigned, leaves were falling, there was the odd passer-by, not far away the avenue hummed, and in the midst of all this was I, but what of that? So melancholy, it was enough to make you sob! My nearest and dearest were so far away that it was better not to think about them. In an attempt to drive away this monstrous thought, I looked helplessly around me: there were people as miserable as I. Under the old oak tree sat a threesome, men in grey overalls. They had probably huddled together to jointly drive out their sadness and longing... I wondered where I should go, to the avenue or to those people as yet totally unknown to me. I had just decided to approach them (I would anyway have to get to know them sooner or later – they were coming down from our floor, as I was going up with Sister Olga) but I was prevented by a middle-aged woman.

“Anatoli Yakovlevich...! Tolya...!” her voice rang out and one of the men quickly jumped up from the bench.

“Manya...! My Masha has come!” his mouth immediately stretched into a smile.

I decided not to make their acquaintance and quietly went away. I wandered a little in solitude, and not being able to think of anything of use, decided to return to the ward.

“What a miserable institution, eh?” I muttered, standing with my back to the Memorial to Bakulev.

My words, not addressed to anyone in particular, were heard, and this is what is strange! An answer followed.

“Here they operate on the heart of the Motherland!” pronounced a sickly thin young girl in a simple dress, standing at the doors of the Institute.

“And has She a defect?”

“Yes,” she replied with a barely noticeable nod.

“Specify,” I said, continuing my ‘interview’. “Is Hers innate as well?”

“Judge for yourself,” she said, looking at me with a frown. “It's obviously not acquired so it needs radical intervention, surgical moreover. In any case that is how it seems to me...” she added.

“Excuse me, young girl, but how old are you?” I looked into her big, slightly bulging, thoughtfully sad eyes, extremely surprised at her sophisticated talk.

“What, is it of such interest?” she made a sickly face.

“Well,” I shrugged. “It is of course interesting for... I have to know what to give you: flowers or sweeties”

“Impudent!” she was offended and left.

This conversation left in my spirit something not very pleasant, unclarified, uncertain. I seemed to have offended this young girl – fine, if she is really still a teenager, then, like a child, she will sulk for a bit and then forgive the unintended insult. I did not have long to wait for clarification. When, after a walk, I went down into the basement to the changing room, the young Sister Olga Nikanorovna met me with a curious look.

“What are you doing, Nazarli, offending our girls?” In her question I could not help hearing a frank challenge. I had no means of objecting, so I restricted myself to a response with an indiscriminate: “Have I really offended someone?”

No doubt the Sister took my question as a veiled attempt to object. Not unsurprisingly, she did not delay with a thorough reply and gave me a direct moral lesson:

“If you consider 18-year-olds to be children and 25-year-olds to be grannies, then, of course, all is in order! Does that not embarrass you?” she elicited, looking at me with either a teaching or a corrupting look from under her thickly painted long eyelashes. Her eyes wavered deceivingly between absolute seriousness and mystery. “Is that not offensive, eh?” she drew out each word theatrically reproaching me, whilst at the same time arranging something in the cupboard. “Or where you come from in the Karakums – is that the practice?”

“No! It is not the practice,” I quickly responded, upholding the right to the high cultural standards of the people of my native desert. “I simply did not recognise the adult in her, and she, as it turns out, has already managed to tell tales on me?”

“That sums it up... you need to be careful when dealing with women,” the Sister advised me quite sincerely, surprisingly mildly and with a certain tenderness.

“I will try,” I replied with a smile, almost at a loss.

“We will be checking...”

And she did check: our relationship began to develop with extraordinary storminess. Only a day later we locked ourselves in that same changing room, hid from everyone, and especially from Babka Nastya, and kissed passionately, like actual lovers.

“The greatest danger here is Babka Nastya!” Olya warned me immediately between kisses. “Kissing here is forbidden, meaning it is not welcomed, and Babka Nastya has taken upon herself the role of voluntary inspector. She is trying to eradicate love in the Institute and considers that it is superfluous here...”

The girl told me this breathlessly, abruptly, descending more and more to a heated whisper, which made our kisses hotter and more desired, because – may Babka Nastya know this! everything forbidden and persecuted is much sweeter than what is permitted. That Olga was right I soon convinced myself. Babka Nastya persecuted loving couples as the Inquisition did heretics. “It's not done here!” she would shout for all the Institute to hear, the louder, the nearer it was to night time. The trouble was, Babka Nastya herself, to all appearances, was no small a sinner in her youth, and could with one glimpse calculate with mathematical precision who was looking especially in whose direction and who was not indifferent to whom. This is how she whipped up our illicit love with swinging blows, not allowing it to burn out within the tedious walls of the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery.