His pipe, left on the table, smelled strongly of stale tobacco, and Burkin lay awake for a long time and still could not figure out where that heavy odor was coming from.
Rain beat on the windows all night.
AUGUST 1898
A MEDICAL CASE
A professor received a telegram from the Lialikovs’ factory asking him to come quickly. The daughter of a certain Mrs. Lialikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was sick—nothing more could be understood from the long, witlessly composed telegram. The professor did not go himself, but sent his intern Korolev in his place.
He had to go two stations away from Moscow and then some three miles by carriage. A troika was sent to the station to pick Korolev up; the driver wore a hat with a peacock feather, and to all questions responded with a loud military “No, sir!” or “Yes, sir!” It was Saturday evening, the sun was setting. Crowds of workers came walking from the factory to the station and bowed to the horses that were bringing Korolev. And he was enchanted by the evening, and the country houses and dachas along the way, and the birches, and that quiet mood all around, when it seemed that, together with the workers, the fields, the woods, and the sun were preparing to rest on the eve of the holy day—to rest and perhaps to pray …
He was born and grew up in Moscow, did not know the countryside and had never been interested in factories or visited them. But he had chanced to read about factories and to visit factory owners and talk with them; and when he saw some factory in the distance or up close, he thought each time of how quiet and peaceful everything was outside, and how inside there must be the impenetrable ignorance and obtuse egoism of the owners, the tedious, unhealthy labor of the workers, squabbles, vodka, vermin. And now, as the workers deferentially and timorously stepped aside before the carriage, in their faces, caps, and gait he could discern physical uncleanness, drunkenness, nervousness, perplexity
They drove through the factory gates. On both sides flashed workers’ cottages, women’s faces, linen and blankets on the porches. “Watch out!” cried the driver, not reining in the horses. Then came a wide yard with no grass, and in it five huge buildings with smokestacks, standing separate from each other, warehouses, barracks, and over everything lay some sort of gray coating, as of dust. Here and there, like oases in the desert, were pathetic little gardens and the green or red roofs of the houses where the management lived. The driver suddenly reined in the horses, and the carriage stopped at a house newly painted gray; there was a front garden with dust- covered lilacs, and a strong smell of paint on the yellow porch.
“Come in, doctor,” women’s voices said from the hall and the front room, followed by sighs and whispers. “Come in, we’ve been waiting … it’s very bad. Come in here.”
Mrs. Lialikov, a stout, elderly lady in a black silk dress with fashionable sleeves, but, judging by her face, a simple and illiterate one, looked at the doctor with anxiety and hesitated, not daring to offer him her hand. Beside her stood a person with short hair and a pince-nez, in a bright multicolored blouse, skinny and no longer young. The servants called her Christina Dmitrievna, and Korolev figured that she was a governess. It was probably she, as the most educated person in the house, who had been charged with meeting and receiving the doctor, because she at once began hastily explaining the causes of the illness in minute, nagging detail, but without saying who was ill or what was the matter.
The doctor and the governess sat and talked, while the mistress stood motionless by the door, waiting. Korolev understood from the conversation that the ill person was Liza, a girl of twenty, Mrs. Lialikov’s only daughter, the heiress; she had long been ill and had been treated by various doctors, and during the past night, from evening till morning, she had had such a pounding of the heart that no one in the house had slept for fear she might die.
“She’s been sickly, you might say, from childhood,” Christina Dmitrievna went on recounting in a sing-song voice, wiping her lips with her hand now and then. “The doctors say it’s nerves, but when she was little, the doctors drove her scrofula inside, so I think it might come from that.”
They went to see the patient. Quite grown-up, big, tall, but not pretty, resembling her mother, with the same small eyes and broad, overly developed lower face, her hair undone, the blanket drawn up to her chin, she gave Korolev the impression at first of a wretched, woebegone creature who had been taken in and given shelter here out of pity, and it was hard to believe that she was the heiress to five huge buildings.
“And so,” Korolev began, “we’ve come to take care of you. How do you do.”
He introduced himself and shook her hand—a big, cold, uncomely hand. She sat up and, obviously long accustomed to doctors, not caring that her shoulders and breast were uncovered, allowed herself to be auscultated.
“My heart pounds,” she said. “All last night, it was so terrible … I nearly died of fright! Give me something for it!”
“I will, I will! Calm down.”
Korolev examined her and shrugged his shoulders.
“Nothing’s wrong with your heart,” he said, “everything’s well, everything’s in order. Your nerves are probably acting up a bit, but that’s not unusual. I assume the attack is over now. Lie down and sleep.”
Just then a lamp was brought into the bedroom. The sick girl squinted at the light and suddenly clutched her head with her hands and burst into tears. And the impression of a woebegone and uncomely creature suddenly vanished, and Korolev no longer noticed either the small eyes or the coarsely developed lower face; he saw a soft, suffering look, which was both reasonable and touching, and the whole of her seemed shapely to him, feminine, simple, and he would have liked to comfort her now, not with medications, not with advice, but with a simple, tender word. Her mother embraced her head and pressed it to her. There was so much despair, so much grief in the old woman’s face! She, the mother, had nourished and raised her daughter, sparing nothing, had given her whole life to teaching her French, dancing, music, had invited dozens of tutors, the best doctors, had kept a governess, and now she could not understand where these tears came from, why so much torment, could not understand and was at a loss, had a guilty, anxious, despairing look, as if she had missed something else very important, had failed to do something else, to invite someone else, but whom—she did not know.
“Lizanka, again … again,” she said, pressing her daughter to her. “My dear, my darling, my child, what’s wrong? Have pity on me, tell me.”
They both wept bitterly. Korolev sat on the edge of the bed and took Liza’s hand.
