“Send for Schreck,” said Olga Ivanovna.
“He’s already been here. It was he who noticed that the diphtheria had passed into the nose. Eh, and what of Schreck! In fact, Schreck’s nothing. He’s Schreck, I’m Korostelev—nothing more.”
The time dragged on terribly long. Olga Ivanovna lay on the bed, unmade since morning, and dozed. She imagined that the whole apartment, from floor to ceiling, was taken up by a huge piece of iron, and if only the iron could be taken away, everybody would be cheerful and light. Coming to herself, she remembered that this was not iron, but Dymov’s illness.
And again the iron … The time dragged on long, and the clock on the ground floor struck frequently. And the doorbell kept ringing all the time; doctors came … The maid came in with an empty cup on a tray and asked:
“Shall I make the bed, ma’am?”
And, receiving no answer, she left. The clock struck downstairs, she had been dreaming of rain on the Volga, and again someone came into the bedroom, a stranger, she thought. Olga Ivanovna jumped up and recognized Korostelev.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Around three.”
“Well, so?”
“So, I’ve come to tell you: he’s going …”
He sobbed, sat down on the bed beside her, and wiped the tears with his sleeve. She did not understand at once, but turned all cold and slowly began to cross herself.
“He’s going …” he repeated in a thin little voice and sobbed again. “He’s dying, because he sacrificed himself… What a loss for science!” he said bitterly. “Compared to us all, he was a great, extraordinary man! So gifted! What hopes we all had in him!” Korostelev went on, wringing his hands. “Lord God, he’d have been a scientist such as you won’t find anywhere now. Oska Dymov, Oska Dymov, what have you done! Ai, ai, my God!”
Korostelev covered his face with both hands in despair and shook his head.
“And what moral strength!” he went on, growing more and more angry with someone. “A kind, pure, loving soul—not a man, but crystal! He served science and died from science. And he worked like an ox, day and night, nobody spared him, and the young scientist, the future professor, had to look for patients, to do translations by night, in order to pay for these … mean rags!”
Korostelev looked hatefully at Olga Ivanovna, seized the sheet with both hands, and tore at it angrily, as if it were to blame.
“He didn’t spare himself, and no one else spared him. Ah, there’s nothing to say!”
“Yes, a rare person!” some bass voice said in the drawing room.
Olga Ivanovna recalled her whole life with him, from beginning to end, in all its details, and suddenly understood that he was indeed an extraordinary, rare man and, compared with those she knew, a great man. And, recalling the way her late father and all his fellow doctors had treated him, she understood that they had all seen a future celebrity in him. The walls, the ceiling, the lamp, and the rug on the floor winked at her mockingly, as if wishing to say: “You missed it! You missed it!” In tears, she rushed from the bedroom, slipped past some unknown man in the drawing room, and ran into her husband’s study. He lay motionless on the Turkish divan, covered to the waist with a blanket. His face was terribly pinched, thin, and of a gray-yellow color such as living people never have; and only by his forehead, his black eyebrows, and the familiar smile could one tell that this was Dymov. Olga Ivanovna quickly touched his chest, forehead, and hands. His chest was still warm, but his forehead and hands were unpleasantly cold. And his half-open eyes looked not at Olga Ivanovna but down at the blanket.
“Dymov!” she called loudly. “Dymov!”
She wanted to explain to him that this was a mistake, that all was not lost yet, that life could still be beautiful and happy, that he was a rare, extraordinary, and great man, and that she would stand in awe of him all her life, worship him and feel a holy dread …
“Dymov!” she called to him, patting him on the shoulder and refusing to believe that he would never wake up. “Dymov, but, Dymov!”
And in the drawing room Korostelev was saying to the maid:
“What is there to ask? Go to the church caretaker and find out where the almshouse women live. They’ll wash the body and prepare it—they’ll do everything necessary.”
JANUARY 1892
IN EXILE
Old Semyon, nicknamed the Explainer, and a young Tartar whose name no one knew, sat on the bank near a bonfire; the other three boatmen were inside the hut. Semyon, an old man of about sixty, lean and toothless, but broad-shouldered and still healthy-looking, was drunk; he would have gone to bed long ago, but he had a bottle in his pocket, and he was afraid the fellows in the hut might ask him for vodka. The Tartar was sick, pining away, and, wrapping himself in his rags, was telling how good it was in Simbirsk province and what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home. He was about twenty-five years old, not more, and now, in the light of the bonfire, pale, with a sorrowful, sickly face, he looked like a boy.
“It’s sure no paradise here,” the Explainer was saying. “See for yourself: water, bare banks, clay everywhere, and nothing else … Easter’s long past, but there’s ice drifting on the river, and it snowed this morning.”
“Bad! Bad!” said the Tartar, and he looked around fearfully.
Some ten paces away from them the dark, cold river flowed; it growled, splashed against the eroded clay bank,
