entrance, I had taken off my jacket and put my overcoat on over my
shirt. I had decided to flog the jacket—I figured that it would fetch
round about fifteen million.
For the same reason—my temperature and headache—I have no clear
memory of what I did at the Sukharevka black market, though I spent
practically the whole day there. All I remember was standing in front of
a stall from which came a smell of fried onions, holding up my jacket
and saying in a weak voice: 'Anybody want a jacket?'
I remember being surprised at having such a weak voice. I remember
noticing in the crowd a huge man wearing two shipskin coats. He was
wearing one with his arms in the sleeves, while the other—the one he
was selling-was thrown over his shoulders. I found it very odd that
wherever I went, hawking my merchandise, I kept running into this
man. He stood motionless, huge, bearded, clad in two coats, gloomily
naming his price without looking at the customers, who turned back the
skirts and fingered the collar.
I stood about, trying to warm myself, and noticed that though I no
longer felt cold, my fingers were blue. I was very thirsty, and several
times I decided-no more: if I don't sell the thing in half an hour, I'll go
to the teashop and swap it for a glass of hot tea. But the next moment I
had a sort of hunch that a buyer would turn up in a minute, and so I
decided to stick it for another half hour.
I remember it was a sort of consolation to see that the tall man had
not been able to sell his coat either.
I felt like eating a little snow, but the snow at Sukharevka was very
dirty and the boulevard was a long way off. In the end I did go to the
boulevard and ate some snow, which, strange to say, seemed warm to
me. I think I was sick, or maybe I wasn't. All I knew was that I was
sitting in the snow and somebody was holding me up by the shoulders
because I had gone limp. At last the support was removed and I lay
down and stretched my legs out luxuriously. Somebody was saying
something over me, it sounded like: 'He's had a fit. He's an epileptic.'
Then they tried to take my pillow-slip bundle and I heard them coaxing
me: 'Don't be silly, we're putting it under your head!', but I clung to it
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and wouldn't let go. The man in the two coats passed by slowly, then
suddenly threw one of the coats over me. But that was already delirium
and I understood that perfectly well. They were still tugging at the
pillow-slip. I heard a woman's voice saying: 'He won't let go of his
bundle.' Then a man's: 'Never mind, lay him down with his bundle.'
And again: 'Looks like the Spanish 'flu.'
Then the world went dark.
I was at death's door, and twice they screened me off from the other
patients in the ward. Cyanosis is always a sign of approaching death,
and I had it so bad that all the doctors except one, gave me up as a bad
job and only exclaimed every morning with surprise: 'What, still alive?'
All this I learned when I came round.
Be that as it may, I did not die. On the contrary, I got better.
One day I opened my eyes and was about to jump out of bed, thinking
I was in the Children's Home. Someone's hand arrested me. Somebody's
face, half-forgotten yet so familiar, drew close to mine. Believe it or not,
it was doctor Ivan Ivanovich.
'Doctor,' I said to him, and what with joy and weakness I started
crying. 'Doctor, ear!'
He looked at me closely, probably thinking that I was still delirious.
'Hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham,' I said, feeling the tears
pouring right down into my mouth. 'It's me, Doctor. I'm Sanya. Don't
you remember, that village, Doctor? We hid you. You taught me.'
He looked at me closely again, then blew out his cheeks and let the air
out noisily.
'Oho!' he said, and laughed. 'Do I remember! Where's your sister?
Fancy that! All you could say then was 'ear' and that sounded like a
bark. So you've learnt to speak, eh? And moved to Moscow too? Took it
into your head to die?'
I wanted to tell him that I wasn't thinking of dying at all, just the
opposite, when he suddenly put his hand over my mouth, whipped out a
handkerchief with the other and wiped my face and nose.
'Lie still, old chap,' he said. 'You mustn't talk yet. Who knows what
you'll be up to next—you've been dying so many times. One word too
many and you may pop off.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A SERIOUS TALK
If you think that, having come round, I was on the road to recovery,
you are mistaken. Hardly had I pulled through the Spanish 'flu than I
went down with meningitis. And again it was Ivan Ivanovich who
refused to acknowledge that my game was up.
He sat for hours at my bedside, studying the strange movements
which I made with my eyes and hands. In the end I came to again, and
though I lay for a long time with my eyes rolled up to the sky, I was no
longer in.
'No longer in danger of dying,' as Ivan Ivanovich put it, 'but in
danger of remaining an idiot for the rest of your life.'
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I was lucky. I did not remain an idiot, and after my illness I even felt
somehow more sensible than I was before. It was a fact, though the
illness had nothing to do with it.
Be that as it may, I spent all of six months in hospital. During that
time Ivan Ivanovich and I saw each other almost every other day. We
talked together about old times. It appears that he had been in exile. In
1914, for being a member of the Bolshevik Party, he had been sentenced
to penal servitude and then to exile for life. I don't know where he
served his sentence, but his place of exile was somewhere far away, by
the Barents Sea.
'I escaped from there,' he said laughing, 'and came running straight
