This time I did not lose my temper with her, I turned away and ordered Lidka to be given a camphor injection and for the staff to take turns at watching her. Then I went across the yard to my quarters. I remember the green lamp burning in my study, Döderlein lying there and books scattered everywhere. I walked over to the couch fully dressed, lay down and was immediately lost to the world in a dreamless sleep.

A month passed, then another. I grew more experienced and some of the things I saw were rather more frightening than Lidka’s throat, which passed out of my mind. Snow lay all around, and the size of my practice grew daily. Early in the new year, a woman came to my surgery holding by the hand a little girl wrapped in so many layers that she looked as round as a little barrel. The woman’s eyes were shining. I took a good look and recognised them.

‘Ah, Lidka! How are things?’

‘Everything’s fine.’

The mother unwound the scarves from Lidka’s neck. Though she was shy and resisted I managed to raise her chin and took a look. Her pink neck was marked with a brown vertical scar crossed by two fine stitch marks.

‘All’s well,’ I said. ‘You needn’t come any more.’

‘Thank you, doctor, thank you,’ the mother said, and turned to Lidka: ‘Say thank you to the gentleman!’

But Lidka had no wish to speak to me.

I never saw her again. Gradually I forgot about her. Meanwhile my practice still grew. The day came when I had a hundred and ten patients. We began at nine in the morning and finished at eight in the evening. Reeling with fatigue, I was taking off my overall when the senior midwife said to me:

‘It’s the tracheotomy that has brought you all these patients. Do you know what they’re saying in the villages? The story goes that when Lidka was ill a steel throat was put into her instead of her own and then sewn up. People go to her village especially to look at her. There’s fame for you, doctor. Congratulations.’

‘So they think she’s living with a steel one now, do they?’ I enquired.

‘That’s right. But you were wonderful, doctor. You did it so coolly, it was marvellous to watch.’

‘Hm, well, I never allow myself to worry, you know,’ I said, not knowing why. I was too tired even to feel ashamed, so I just looked away. I said goodnight and went home. Snow was falling in large flakes, covering everything, the lantern was lit and my house looked silent, solitary and imposing. As I walked I had only one desire—sleep.

BLACK AS EGYPT’S NIGHT

WHERE HAS THE WORLD DISAPPEARED TO TODAY, my birthday? Where, oh where are the electric lights of Moscow? Where are the people, where is the sky? I look out of my windows at nothing but darkness …

We are cut off; the nearest kerosene lanterns are seven miles away at the railway station, and even their flickering light has probably been blown out by the snowstorm. The midnight express to Moscow rushes moaning past and does not even stop; it has no need of this forlorn little halt, buried in snow—except perhaps when the line is blocked by drifts.

The nearest street lamps are thirty-two miles away in the district town. Life there is sweet: it has a cinema, shops. While the snow is whirling and howling out here in the open country, there on the screen, no doubt, the cane-brake is bending to the breeze and palm trees sway as a tropical island comes into view …

Meanwhile we are alone.

‘Black as Egypt’s night,’ observed Demyan Lukich, as he raised the blind.

His remarks are somewhat solemn but apt.