Her movements slowed down, although she mumbled dully:

‘Oh … let me go … ah …’

She grew weaker and weaker. The white room was silent. The translucent drops continued to drip, drip, drip on to the white gauze.

‘Pulse, Pelagea Ivanovna?’

‘Firm.’

Pelagea Ivanovna raised the woman’s arm and let it drop: as lifeless as a leather thong, it flopped on to the sheet. Removing the mask, the feldsher examined the pupil of her eye.

‘She’s asleep.’

A pool of blood. My arms covered in blood up to the elbows. Bloodstains on the sheets. Red clots and lumps of gauze. Pelagea Ivanovna shaking and slapping the baby, Aksinya rattling buckets as she poured water into basins.

The baby was dipped alternately into cold and hot water. He did not make a sound, his head flopping lifelessly from side to side as though on a thread. Then suddenly there came a noise somewhere between a squeak and a sigh, followed by the first weak, hoarse cry.

‘He’s alive … alive …’ mumbled Pelagea Ivanovna as she laid the baby on a pillow.

And the mother was alive. Fortunately nothing had gone wrong. I felt her pulse. Yes, it was firm and steady; the feldsher gently shook her by the shoulder as he said:

‘Wake up now, my dear.’

The bloodstained sheets were thrown aside and the mother hastily covered with a clean one before the feldsher and Aksinya wheeled her away to the ward. The swaddled baby was borne away on his pillow, the brown, wrinkled little face staring out from its white wrapping as he cried ceaselessly in a thin, pathetic whimper.

Water gushing from the taps of the sluice. Anna Nikolaevna coughed as she dragged hungrily at a cigarette.

‘You did the version well, doctor. You seemed very confident.’

Scrubbing furiously at my hands, I glanced sidelong at her: was she being sarcastic? But no, her expression was a sincere one of pride and satisfaction. My heart was brimming with joy. I glanced round at the white and bloodstained disorder, at the red water in the basin and felt that I had won. But somewhere deep down there wriggled a worm of doubt.

‘Let’s wait and see what happens now,’ I said.

Anna Nikolaevna turned to look at me in astonishment.

‘What can happen? Everything’s all right.’

I mumbled something vague in reply. What I had meant to say was to wonder whether the mother was really safe and sound, whether I might not have done her some harm during the operation … the thought nagged dully at my mind. My knowledge of obstetrics was so vague, so fragmentary and bookish. What about a rupture? How would it show? And when would it show—now or, perhaps, later? Better not talk about that.

‘Well, almost anything,’ I said. ‘The possibility of infection cannot be ruled out,’ I added, repeating the first sentence from some textbook that came into my mind.

‘Oh, tha-at,’ Anna Nikolaevna drawled complacently. ‘Well, with luck nothing of that sort will happen. How could it, anyway? Everything here is clean and sterile.’

It was after one o’clock when I went back to my room. In a pool of light on the desk in my study lay Döderlein open at the page headed ‘Dangers of Version’. For another hour after that, sipping my cooling tea, I sat over it, turning the pages. And an interesting thing happened: all the previously obscure passages became entirely comprehensible, as though they had been flooded with light; and there, at night, under the lamplight in the depth of the countryside I realised what real knowledge was.

‘One can gain a lot of experience in a country practice,’ I thought as I fell asleep, ‘but even so one must go on and on reading, reading … more and more …’

THE SPECKLED RASH

‘THIS IS IT!’ INTUITION PROMPTED ME. NO NEED to rely on my knowledge; as a doctor only six months qualified, I had none. Afraid to touch the man’s bare, warm shoulder (though there was nothing to fear), I said to him from where I stood:

‘Just move nearer to the light, would you?’

He turned the way I wanted him to, and the light of the kerosene pressure-lamp shone on his yellow-tinged skin.