Czytaj książkę: «The Embroidered Towel»

Translated from the Russian by S.E. Torrens

If a person has never ridden on a tipcart over ¹wild, backcountry roads, then telling him about it is pointless: all the same he won’t understand. And for the person who has done it, well, I don’t want to remind him of it.

I’ll say briefly: It took a full 24 hours for the cart driver and I to travel the 40 versts ² that separate the district town of Grachevka from Murya Hospital. It was uncanny how we arrived almost to the minute: At two pm on September 16, 1917 we were at the last silo on the edge of that most wonderful town of Grachevka and on September 17^th of that same, unforgettable year at five minutes past two o’clock in the afternoon, I stood on dying grass, beaten down and sodden with September rains, in the courtyard of Murya Hospital. I stood in the courtyard, legs ossified, dazed, I mentally flipped through the pages of my text books, stupidly trying to recall, if such an ailment did indeed exist or if I had dreamt of it last night in the village of Grabilovka – that illness where a man’s limbs go rigid? What is its damned name in Latin? Each of my muscles ached with an intolerable pain, like that of a toothache. I won’t even mention my toes. They no longer moved in my boots, instead they lay peacefully, like wooden stumps. I confess, in a burst of disheartened passion I whispered curses on the medical profession and the entrance application I submitted to the University Rector five years ago. During this entire time, it drizzled from above as if through a sieve. My coat welled up like a sponge. With the fingers of my right hand, I futilely tried to grasp the handle of the suitcase and finally I spat on the wet grass in frustration. My fingers unable to grip anything, my mind, filled with all sorts of facts from interesting medical textbooks, I finally remembered the illness – palsy…

”Paralysis,” I desperately, the devil knows why, said to myself.