Darkness, black as Egypt’s night, descended and in it I was standing alone, armed with something that might have been a sword or might have been a stethoscope. I was moving forward and fighting … somewhere at the back of beyond. But I was not alone. With me was my warrior band: Demyan Lukich, Anna Nikolaevna, Pelagea Ivanovna, all dressed in white overalls, all pressing forward.

Sleep … what a boon …

BAPTISM BY ROTATION

AS TIME PASSED IN MY COUNTRY HOSPITAL, I gradually got used to the new way of life.

They were braking flax in the villages as they had always done, the roads were still impassable, and no more than five patients came to my daily surgery. My evenings were entirely free, and I spent them sorting out the library, reading surgical manuals and spending long hours drinking tea alone with the gently humming samovar.

For whole days and nights it poured with rain, the drops pounded unceasingly on the roof and the water cascaded past my window, swirling along the gutter and into a tub. Outside was slush, darkness and fog, through which the windows of the feldsher’s house and the kerosene lantern over the gateway were no more than faint, blurred patches of light.

On one such evening I was sitting in my study with an atlas of topographical anatomy. The absolute silence was only disturbed by the occasional gnawing of mice behind the sideboard in the dining-room.

I read until my eyelids grew so heavy that they began to stick together. Finally I yawned, put the atlas aside and decided to go to bed. I stretched in pleasant anticipation of sleeping soundly to the accompaniment of the noisy pounding of the rain, then went across to my bedroom, undressed and lay down.

No sooner had my head touched the pillow than there swam hazily before me the face of Anna Prokhorova, a girl of seventeen from the village of Toropovo. She had needed a tooth extracting. Demyan Lukich, the feldsher, floated silently past holding a gleaming pair of pincers. Remembering how he always said ‘suchlike’ instead of ‘such’ because he was fond of a high-falutin’ style, I smiled and fell asleep.

About half an hour later, however, I suddenly woke up as though I had been pinched, sat up, stared fearfully into the darkness and listened.

Someone was drumming loudly and insistently on the outer door and I immediately sensed that those knocks boded no good.

Then came a knock on the door of my quarters.

The noise stopped, there was a grating of bolts, the sound of the cook talking, an indistinct voice in reply, then someone came creaking up the stairs, passed quietly through the study and knocked on my bedroom door.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ came the reply in a respectful whisper. ‘Me, Aksinya, the nurse.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Anna Nikolaevna has sent for you. They want you to come to the hospital as quickly as possible.’

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, feeling my heart literally miss a beat.

‘A woman has been brought in from Dultsevo. She’s having a difficult labour.’

‘Here we go!’ I thought to myself, quite unable to get my feet into my slippers. ‘Hell, the matches won’t light. Ah well, it had to happen sooner or later. You can’t expect to get nothing but cases of laryngitis or abdominal catarrh all your life.’

‘All right, go and tell them I’m coming at once!’ I shouted as I got out of bed. Aksinya’s footsteps shuffled away from the door and the bolt grated again. Sleep vanished in a moment. Hurriedly, with shaking fingers, I lit the lamp and began dressing. Half past eleven … What could be wrong with this woman who was having a difficult birth? Malpresentation? Narrow pelvis? Or perhaps something worse. I might even have to use forceps. Should I send her straight into town? Out of the question! A fine doctor he is, they’ll all say. In any case, I have no right to do that. No, I really must do it myself. But do what? God alone knows. It would be disastrous if I lost my head—I might disgrace myself in front of the midwives. Anyway, I must have a look first; no point in getting worried prematurely …

I dressed, threw an overcoat over my shoulders, and hoping that all would be well, ran to the hospital through the rain across the creaking duckboards. At the entrance I could see a cart in the semi-darkness, the horse pawing at the rotten boards under its hooves.

‘Did you bring the woman in labour?’ I asked the figure lurking by the horse.

‘Yes, that’s right … we did, sir,’ a woman’s voice replied dolefully.

Despite the hour, the hospital was alive and bustling.