I started reading the text, but could take none of it in—the words seemed to jump before my eyes. I had never seen a tracheotomy performed. ‘Ah well, it’s a bit late now,’ I said to myself, and looked miserably at the green lamp and the clear illustration. Feeling that I had suddenly been burdened with a most fearful and difficult task, I went back to the hospital, oblivious of the snowstorm.

In the surgery a dim figure in full skirts clung to me and a voice whined:

‘Oh, sir, how can you cut a little girl’s throat? How can you? She’s agreed to it because she’s stupid. But you haven’t got my permission—no you haven’t. I agree to giving her medicine, but I shan’t allow her throat to be cut.’

‘Get this woman out!’ I shouted, and added vehemently: ‘You’re the stupid one! Yes, you are. And she’s the clever one. Anyway, nobody asked you! Get her out of here!’

A midwife took a firm hold of the old woman and pushed her out of the room.

‘Ready!’ the feldsher said suddenly.

We went into the small operating theatre; the shiny instruments, blinding lamplight and oilcloth seemed to belong to another world … for the last time I went out to the mother, and the little girl could scarcely be torn from her arms. She just said in a hoarse voice: ‘My husband’s away in town. When he comes back and finds out what I’ve done, he’ll kill me!’

‘Yes, he’ll kill her,’ the old woman echoed, looking at me in horror.

‘Don’t let them into the operating theatre!’ I ordered.

So we were left in the operating theatre, my assistants, myself, and Lidka, the little girl. She sat naked and pathetic on the table and wept soundlessly. They laid her on the table, strapped her down, washed her throat and painted it with iodine. I picked up the scalpel, still wondering what on earth I was doing. It was very quiet. With the scalpel I made a vertical incision down the swollen white throat. Not one drop of blood emerged. Again I drew the knife along the white strip which protruded between the slit skin. Again not a trace of blood. Slowly, trying to remember the illustrations in my textbooks, I started to part the delicate tissues with the blunt probe. At once dark blood gushed out from the lower end of the wound, flooding it instantly and pouring down her neck. The feldsher started to staunch it with swabs but could not stop the flow. Calling to mind everything I had seen at university, I set about clamping the edges of the wound with forceps, but this did no good either.

I went cold and my forehead broke out in a sweat. I bitterly regretted having studied medicine and having landed myself in this wilderness. In angry desperation I jabbed the forceps haphazardly into the region of the wound, snapped them shut and the flow of blood stopped immediately. We swabbed the wound with pieces of gauze; now it faced me clean and absolutely incomprehensible. There was no windpipe anywhere to be seen. This wound of mine was quite unlike any illustration. I spent the next two or three minutes aimlessly poking about in the wound, first with the scalpel and then with the probe, searching for the windpipe. After two minutes of this, I despaired of finding it. ‘This is the end,’ I thought.