THE PAIN

Katya fled in disgust from all this extrasensory nonsense.

***

The months of chemotherapy were behind her.

Now, from morn till night, her days were devoted to dieting. She squeezed vegetable juices – she cleaned out the cellars of all those she knew in the village.

She would lie down to gather her strength and take deep breaths, then back to the cooker again, quietly cooking vegetable jelly and rubbing burdock root into it (Ugh! It tastes horrible, girls!”).

Buckwheat was left on the window sill to swell up. She kept spring nettles in a jar – they improve immunity tremendously. There were bunches of grass hanging everywhere in the kitchen and the hall. Round her neck she wore some miraculous root sent from the other end of the country kept in a finger stall cut from a glove and hung on a cord.

“They say a dessert spoonful of paraffin with vegetable oil can help…”

Katya sighed.

“I’ve drunk paraffin too.”

***

I forced myself to get up. I went over to the mirror. Instead of a face, just a hazy spot, as flat and pale as the mirror itself – distorted, as if floating out from the facial bones and muscles. My son will be home from school shortly, he mustn’t see me like this. Nor should anyone else. I’d better take a hot shower. No, not a hot one, a mildly warm one… And I’ll ring Raisa, my dear busy unfailing helper. When I’m not here, she’ll look after the house, wipe and vacuum the floors, and she won’t leave my son or the dog hungry either…

Last night I honestly, earnestly tried to seek out the logic, the train of events, the guiding thread. If I could find the end of the thread, get hold of it and wind it up, I could try to get back to my former life, before the fatal parting of the ways. When and where did I first draw back and stumble, without noticing the secret sign, the hints of fate?

Not long ago, something strange, almost mystical, happened. The oldest person in out editorial office had passed away. They gave me the job of writing the obituary. I picked out the text, swinging my leg and munching an apple. A dropped apple seed stuck between the shift key and the next key, the backslash. The key got stuck.

“I was typing without looking and the screen and when I did I was stupefied. After the heading “Obituary’ the whole page consisted of the letter Ya [which in Russian means “I, myself’]. I automatically typed again, to finish off, and the same letter jumped up again: “Ya’.

Oh, really, I’m not supposed to believe in all this mysticism, how did this nonsense get into my head?

***

By morning I realized it was not worth uselessly striving to get back to some turning point, It’s fruitless to beat your brains out looking for answers, so why do it? There may not be much time anyway. I ought to have time to think about other questions, more necessary, important, urgent.

Questions, questions.

Why did it have to be me?

Is my disease a punishment for my sins?

Is other people’s good health a reward for the good they do?

What will I feel at the moment I depart this life? Will everything instantly become amazingly clear? Will there be a blazing carousel in my head? A blinding white flash in my eyes? A cosmic black hole inside, rushing to draw me into itself?

And finally, the most important: What comes after that?

***

From my interview with the doctor in charge:

So, the patient has realized she is incurable. When a prisoner is sentenced, they watch him carefully, they almost go as far as having a first aid team on hand. Does your department have a duty psychotherapist for such cases? Are there efficient tranquillizers for patients and relatives?

Oh, God! We don’t even have provision for a duty therapist! Although in oncological practice there was a time when they were frantically trying to introduce the specialty of psychotherapist. “But a good doctor, particularly a good oncologist, is himself the best psychotherapist”, the doctor assured me. “Without special knowledge, it is not possible to discuss the course of the disease, and the problems, and to instill hope. It is enough for the patient simply to have psychological help from the doctor on the case. He knows what words to choose, he can observe the problem professionally from every angle. Why, if a psychotherapist were to see these catheters sticking out of the body and this awful swelling, he would need urgent psychiatric help himself.

“It’s another matter”, he continued, gesturing, “if the doctor is physically unable to hold long explanatory, comforting, hope-inspiring conversations with the patient. When an oncologist is dealing with 40 patients a day, no psychotherapy will help. It can happen in our offices here that two doctors receive two patients at the same time. The Oncology Center has been under construction for ten years! That’s how they treat us, those are the conditions we work under. And you are talking about a particular reverential attitude to patients.”

The doctor tapped the table thoughtfully.

“Another problem stems from boredom and overcrowding, Not all those sitting in the crowd in reception are cancer sufferers. We find four thousand of them a year, whereas about 70,000 people pass through the surgery in that time. They come as ‘possible’ sufferers, or for cancer to be ruled out. And there they are, sitting next to each other, chatting, exchanging negative information. And the nervous ones discover similar symptoms in themselves and begin to panic. They infect those around them with fear, causing a chain reaction which is quite harmful in a hospital atmosphere.”

***

Before Katya’s illness, I had been naïvely confident. “Where ignorance is bliss, “tis folly to be wise.” They have a duty psychologist in hospitals like this. Why, to hear a diagnosis like that could blow your mind.

But Katya had told me, with a wry smile: “Oh yes, everything is ‘there’. A team of psychologists and psychotherapists, who hastened to comfort me and treat me with valerian. And a special bath too. Dream on!”

Coming out of the doctor’s, Katya hid herself in the bathroom. There was a yellow pool of urine from the broken toilet bowl on the tiled floor under a rag. She slumped down exhausted on the filthy trampled toilet seat with footprints from the soles of someone’s shoes on it. Seeking consolation, she pressed her hot forehead to the cold tank. She had a toilet instead of a psychologist.

***

To be honest, that summer I had raced about the hospital at a gallop, tapping my high heels. Noting down interviews, pulling my frivolous skirt down over my knees, looking at my watch.

That was then, in the former life. But now circumstances forced me to get to know the hospital thoroughly from the inside. I had thought everything would be different in such a hospital. Speaking in lowered voices. Doctors and nurses, discretion itself, Kind encouraging looks, Sympathetic supportive contacts. Empty of people, calm, silence, pictures on the walls, flowers. Feet sinking in soft carpets as if walking on a cloud.

But what was it really? A dark gloomy vestibule with cracked tiles underfoot. Dismayingly long queues, lots of country people. In the buffets, greasy pies as hard as rock, awful even to look at. Enough to send a healthy patient to the next world.

A cleaner in cut-down galoshes brushing pools over the gray floor, hitting your feet with a mop. The cloakroom attendant dipping a boiled egg in salt, drinking tea from a thermos flask. A bespectacled nurse short of sleep saying “No admittance today”.

Even someone dying has a last wish. Heads should involuntarily bow before him, people should look away and voices become muffled of their own accord. All around should be a suite of security guards, doctors, priests, lawyers – abashed, recognizing the terrible grandeur of the moment. In the deadened air itself there should be hushed whispers. respect, superstitious fear of the mystery about to happen…

Nothing of the sort! Life mockingly shows its ugly contorted mug and kicks you with a varicose foot in a filthy galosh. The universe will not collapse, finding your departure unbearable, that’s not hard to imagine, is it? Your disease is strictly your own business, so just behave accordingly.

***

So Katya was sent home as a terminal patient. Then came the extrasensory sessions.

From my interview with the doctor in charge:

When she was told the chemotherapy was not effective, she went in for extrasensory treatment. On the quiet, we condemned her for it. How could such a clever woman believe in all that macabre nonsense? Mind you, we can all be clever about it till we ourselves are affected… You can wash your hands of someone else’s problem. And anyway, after she’d been with the face healers, her eyes brightened up a bit, if only for a few hours.

“When you came here yourself, did you read the advertisements on the pillars about the sale of ‘miracle’ herbs?” asked the doctor, answering one question with another. “Did you see the herb sellers with their sacks of hay? Those charlatans ought to be cleared out regularly, by the police if necessary. To sell their trash, they passionately assure you that they cure everything in the world.”