فصل 6

VI

Schizophrenia, as Predicted

IT was one-thirty in the morning when a man with a small pointed beard and a white coat entered the reception room of the famous psychiatric clinic that had recently been built outside of Moscow on the banks of the river. Three male nurses were keeping a vigilant eye on Ivan Nikolayevich who was sitting on the couch. The distraught poet Ryukhin was also present. The towels which had been used to tie Ivan Nikolayevich up were lying in a heap on the couch. Ivan Nikolayevich’s arms and legs were free.

When he saw the man walk in, Ryukhin turned pale, coughed, and said in a timid voice, “Hello, Doctor.” The doctor bowed to Ryukhin but in doing so, looked not at him, but at Ivan Nikolayevich. The latter was sitting completely still, with his eyebrows raised and an angry expression on his face. He did not stir even when the doctor walked in.

“Doctor,” began Ryukhin in a kind of conspiratorial whisper, looking timidly over at Ivan Nikolayevich, “this is the prominent poet Ivan Bezdomny … well, as you can see … we’re afraid it might be a case of delirium tremens …” “Has he been drinking heavily?” asked the doctor through his teeth.

“No, he did drink, but not enough to …”

“Has he been trying to catch cockroaches, rats, little devils, or running dogs?”

“No, “replied Ryukhin with a shudder. “I saw him yesterday and this morning too. He was completely fine …” “And why is he in his underwear? Did they get him out of bed?”

“That, doctor, is the way he arrived at the restaurant.”

“Aha, aha,” said the doctor with great satisfaction. “And why the cuts and bruises? Did he get in a fight with somebody?” “He fell off a fence, and then he hit someone in the restaurant … and there was someone else too …” “I see, I see, I see,” said the doctor, and turning to Ivan, he added, “Hello!”

“Hello, you wrecker!” replied Ivan in a loud, angry voice.

Ryukhin felt so embarrassed that he could not even look at the polite doctor. But the latter was not in the least offended. He removed his glasses in a practiced, graceful manner, and after lifting the hem of his smock, he put the glasses in the back pocket of his trousers. He then asked Ivan, “How old are you?” “All of you can go to the devil!” Ivan bellowed rudely and turned away.

“But why are you angry? Have I said something unpleasant to you?”

“I’m twenty-three,” said Ivan excitedly, “and I’m going to file a complaint against all of you. You in particular, scum!” he said, addressing Ryukhin separately.

“And what is it you wish to complain about?”

“That I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force to a madhouse!” Ivan replied angrily.

Here Ryukhin took a good look at Ivan and turned cold: there was absolutely no sign of madness in his eyes. They had looked lackluster at Griboyedov, but now their customary clarity had returned.

“My goodness!” thought Ryukhin in fright, “Can it be that he is completely normal? What nonsense this is! Whatever possessed us to drag him here? He’s normal, normal, only his mug’s been scratched up …” Sitting down on a gleaming white stool, the doctor began calmly, “You happen to be in a clinic, not an asylum, where no one will keep you if it is unnecessary.” Ivan Nikolayevich looked mistrustfully out of the corner of his eye but nonetheless muttered, “The Lord be praised! Finally there’s one normal person among all the idiots, chief of whom is that boody and hack Sashka!” “Who is this Sashka-hack?” inquired the doctor.

“He’s right here,” answered Ivan, pointing a dirty finger in Ryukhin’s direction.

Ryukhin flared up in indignation.

“That’s what I get instead of thanks!” he thought bitterly, “All because I was concerned about him! There’s a bastard for you!” “He has a typical kulak mentality,” began Ivan Nikolayevich, who obviously felt an urge to expose Ryukhin, “and even worse, a kulak who tries very hard to masquerade as a proletarian. Look at his glum face and compare it to the sonorous verses he concocted for New Year’s! Heh-heh-heh … “Soar!’ and ‘Unfurl’ … then take a look inside him and see what he’s thinking in there … and you’ll gasp!” And Ivan Nikolayevich let out a sinister laugh.

Ryukhin was red, breathing heavily, and thinking of only one thing, that he had nursed a viper to his breast and shown kindness to someone who turned out to be a vicious enemy when put to the test. And worst of all, there was nothing he could do—you could hardly exchange insults with a madman, could you?!

“And why were you brought here?” asked the doctor after he had listened attentively to Bezdomny’s accusations.

“May they rot in hell, the blockheads! They grabbed me, tied me up in rags, and dragged me off in a truck!” “May I ask you why you went to the restaurant in your underwear?”

“There’s nothing surprising in that,” Ivan answered, “I went for a swim in the Moscow River, and someone took my clothes and left me this junk! I couldn’t very well walk around Moscow naked! I put on what was available because I was in a hurry to get to the restaurant at Griboyedov.” The doctor gave Ryukhin a quizzical look, and the latter mumbled gloomily, “That’s the name of the restaurant.” “I see,” said the doctor, “and why were you in such a hurry? Did you have a business meeting?” “I was trying to catch the consultant,” answered Ivan Nikolayevich, looking around anxiously.

“What consultant?”

“Do you know Berlioz?” asked Ivan pointedly.

“You mean the composer?”

Ivan became flustered. “What does the composer have to do with it? Oh, I see. No, not the composer! He has the same name as Misha Berlioz!” Ryukhin did not want to say anything but was forced to give an explanation. “Berlioz, the secretary of MASSOLIT, was run over by a streetcar this evening at Patriarch’s Ponds.” “Don’t lie about things you don’t know anything about!” said Ivan, angry at Ryukhin, “You weren’t there but I was! He deliberately set it up so he’d fall under the streetcar!” “Did he push him?”

“What does ‘pushing’ have to do with it,” Ivan exclaimed, furious at how dense everyone was. “Someone like that doesn’t have to push! He can do things that would make your flesh crawl! He knew in advance that Berlioz would fall under a streetcar!” “And did anyone besides you see this consultant?”

“That’s the trouble, only me and Berlioz.”

“I see. And what did you do to catch this murderer?” At this point the doctor turned around and glanced over at the woman in a white coat who was sitting at a table off to the side. She took out a sheet of paper and began filling in the blank spaces in the columns.

“Here’s what I did. I took a small candle from the kitchen …”

“This one here?” asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle that was lying next to the icon on the table in front of the woman.

“Yes, and …”

“Why the icon?”

“Well, the icon …” Ivan turned red, “The icon was what scared them most of all,” he poked a finger in Ryukhin’s direction again, “but the fact is that he, the consultant, that is, let’s speak frankly … he’s in league with evil powers … so you won’t have an easy time catching him.” For some reason the attendants stood stiffly at attention and did not take their eyes off Ivan.

“Yes,” Ivan continued, “he’s in league with evil powers! That’s an incontrovertible fact. He personally conversed with Pontius Pilate. And there’s no reason to look at me like that! It’s true, I tell you! He saw it all—the balcony and the palm trees. He was there with Pontius Pilate, you have my word on it.” “I see, go on …”

“So I, well, pinned the icon on my chest and ran after him …”

At this point the clock struck 2 a.m.

“Uh oh!” exclaimed Ivan and got up from the couch, “it’s 2 a.m., and here I am wasting time talking with you! Excuse me, where’s the phone?” “Let him use the phone,” the doctor ordered the attendants.

Ivan grabbed the receiver while the woman asked Ryukhin in a whisper, “Is he married?” “No, single,” Ryukhin replied, frightened.

“A member of the union?”

“Yes.”

“Is this the police?” Ivan screamed into the receiver, “Is this the police? Comrade dispatcher, see to it that five armed motorcycles are sent on the double to catch the foreign consultant. What? Come get me and I’ll go with you … This is the poet Bezdomny speaking from the asylum … What’s your address?” whispered Bezdomny to the doctor, cupping his hand over the receiver. Then he again screamed into the phone, “Do you hear me? Hello! … What an outrage!” Suddenly, Ivan let out a wail and threw the phone against the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, extended his hand, said a chilly “good-bye” and started to leave.

“Excuse me,” said the doctor, looking Ivan in the eye, “where do you wish to go in the middle of the night in your underwear? You’re not well, stay here with us!” “Let me by” said Ivan to the attendants who were blocking the doors. “Are you going to let me by or not?” screamed the poet in an awful voice.

Ryukhin shuddered, and the woman pressed a button on the table, whereupon a small shiny box and a sealed ampule popped out on its glass surface.

“So that’s how it is?” said Ivan looking around wildly, like a hunted animal. “OK then! Good-bye!!” and he dove headlong at the blind covering the window.

A fairly loud crash was heard, but the glass behind the blind didn’t even crack, and Ivan was soon thrashing about in the attendants’ arms. He became hoarse, tried to bite, and screamed, “So that’s the kind of windows you have here! Let me go! Let me go!” A hypodermic syringe flashed in the doctor’s hands, and in a single motion the woman ripped open the bedraggled sleeve of Ivan’s Tolstoyan shirt and grabbed his arm with unfeminine strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan grew weak in the arms of the four attendants, and the agile doctor took advantage of the moment and plunged the needle into Ivan’s arm. They held on to Ivan a few seconds longer and then lowered him onto the couch.

“Bandits!” shouted Ivan and jumped up from the couch, but was deposited on it again. As soon as they let go of him, he was about to jump up again, but this time he sat back down himself. He fell silent for a moment, looking around wildly, then yawned suddenly, then grinned maliciously.

“So they’ve locked me up after all,” he said, yawned again, and then suddenly lay down, putting his head on the pillow and his fist under his cheek like a child. In a sleepy voice, free of malice, he mumbled, “Well, and very good too … You’ll pay for what you’ve done. I warned you, so now do as you wish! … Right now what interests me most is Pontius Pilate …” and here he closed his eyes.

“A bath, Room 117—private—and post a guard,” ordered the doctor while putting on his glasses. At this point Ryukhin shuddered again; the white doors opened noiselessly onto a corridor lit by blue night lights. A rubber-wheeled gurney rolled into the room from the corridor, and the sedated Ivan was transferred to it and wheeled down the corridor, the doors closing behind him.

“Doctor,” whispered the shaken Ryukhin, “is he really sick?”

“Oh, yes,” replied the doctor.

“But what’s the matter with him?” Ryukhin asked timidly.

The weary doctor looked at him and replied listlessly, “Speech and motor excitation … delirious episodes … clearly a complicated case … Schizophrenia, one must assume. And alcoholism too …” Ryukhin did not understand anything the doctor said except that Ivan Nikolayevich was obviously in a bad way. He sighed and asked, “And what was all that about a consultant?” “He probably saw someone who excited his disturbed imagination. Or perhaps he was hallucinating …” A few minutes later the truck was carrying Ryukhin back to Moscow. It was getting light, and the streetlights along the highway cast a glow that was both unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was angry that the night had been wasted, and he drove the truck so hard that it skidded on the turns.

Then the forest fell away and remained in the background, the river disappeared to the side, and a highly varied panorama came out to meet the truck: fences with sentry boxes, stacks of wood, towering poles and masts threaded with spools, piles of crushed stone, land slashed by canals—in short, one had the feeling that it, Moscow, was lying in wait just around the next bend, and was about to fall on one and engulf one.

Ryukhin was having a bumpy ride, since the stump he was sitting on kept trying to slide out from under him. The towels from the restaurant, which the policeman and Pantelei had tossed into the truck before leaving earlier on the trolleybus, were sliding all over the floor of the truck. Ryukhin had started to try and pick them up, but for some reason he hissed in fury, “The devil with them! Why am I making an ass of myself?”—and he kicked the towels aside and stopped looking at them.

The passenger was in a terrible mood. It was obvious that his visit to the insane asylum had had a most oppressive effect on him. He was trying to understand what was tormenting him. Was it the corridor with the blue lights that had stuck his mind? Was it the thought that there was nothing worse in the world than to lose your mind? Yes, yes, of course, it was that too. But that, after all, was a universal response. There must be something else. But what was it? It was the insult, that was it. Yes, yes, the insulting words that Bezdomny had thrown in his face. And the worst thing was not that they were insulting, but that they were true.

The poet had stopped looking off to the sides, and staring at the dirty, rattling floor of the truck, he began muttering and whining, gnawing away at himself.

Yes, his poetry … He was thirty-two! What did lie ahead? He would go on composing a few poems a year. Until he was old? Yes, until he was old. What would these poems bring him? Fame? “What nonsense! At least don’t deceive yourself. Fame never comes to someone who writes bad poetry. But why are my poems bad? It was true what he said, true!”—Ryukhin showed himself no mercy—“I don’t believe in anything I’ve ever written!” Poisoned by this attack of neurasthenia, the poet gave a lurch as the floor beneath him stopped shaking. Ryukhin raised his head and saw that he had long since arrived in Moscow, and, moreover, that a new day was dawning over the city, that the cloud above was outlined in gold, that his truck was stuck in a column of traffic at the turn onto the boulevard, and that close by there was a metal man on a pedestal, his head slightly bent, looking indifferently at the boulevard.

Strange thoughts poured into the stricken poet’s head. “There’s an example of real luck …” Here Ryukhin stood up in the truck and raised his fist in an attack against the cast-iron man who wasn’t harming anyone. “Whatever step he took in life, whatever happened to him, everything worked to his advantage, everything added to his fame! But what did he do? I don’t get it … What’s so special about the words: ‘Storm with mist the heavens covers …’? I don’t understand! … He was lucky, lucky, that’s all!” Ryukhin concluded with sudden venom, just as he felt the truck stir beneath him. “He was shot, shot by that white guard, who smashed his hip and guaranteed his immortality …” The column of traffic began to move. Not more than two minutes later, the poet, utterly ill and visibly older, was stepping onto the veranda of Griboyedov. It had already cleared out. There was a group in the corner, finishing up their drinks, presided over by a master of ceremonies Ryukhin knew who was wearing an embroidered skullcap and holding a glass of Abrau champagne in his hand.

Ryukhin, laden with towels, was met politely by Archibald Archibaldovich and immediately relieved of the accursed rags. Had Ryukhin not had such an agonizing time at the clinic and in the truck, he probably would have enjoyed recounting what had happened at the hospital, embellishing the story with a few details of his own invention. But now he wasn’t in the mood for it and however unobservant Ryukhin was, now, after the torture in the truck, he looked sharply into the pirate’s face for the first time and realized that despite his inquiries about Bezdomny and even his exclamations of “How awful!” he was at heart completely indifferent to Bezdomny’s fate and did not even feel sorry for him. “Good man! That’s right” thought Ryukhin with cynical, self-lacerating malice. Cutting short his story about schizophrenia, he asked, “Archibald Archibaldovich, may I have a little vodka?” The pirate put on a sympathetic face and whispered, “I understand … right away,” and he signalled a waiter.

A quarter of an hour later Ryukhin was sitting all by himself, hunched over a plate of carp, downing glass after glass. He was coming to realize and to acknowledge that he could not rectify anything in his life, he could only forget.

The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and now he realized it could never be brought back. He had only to raise his head from the table lamp up to the sky to realize that the night was gone forever. The waiters were hurriedly pulling the tablecoths off the tables. The cats nosing about the veranda had a morning look about them. Day was bearing down on the poet with full force.