I was no longer afraid of frightening him. Oh, no; on the contrary, I even hinted that his nose might drop off. I told him what the future held for him if he did not take the necessary treatment. I mentioned how contagious syphilis was and spoke at length about plates, spoons and cups, and about separate towels.

‘Are you married?’ I said.

‘Yes, I am,’ he answered in amazement.

‘Send your wife to me immediately!’ I said heatedly. ‘I suppose she’s sick too, isn’t she?’

‘Send the wife?’ he asked, looking at me in great astonishment.

We went on in this vein. He kept blinking and looking into my eyes, and I into his. It was, in fact, less of a conversation than a monologue—a brilliant monologue by me, which would have earned a final year student the highest marks from any professor. I discovered that I was a mine of information on syphilis. My unexpected resourcefulness filled in the lacunae of all those passages where the German and Russian textbooks fail to go into detail. I told him what happens to the bones of an untreated syphilitic and sketched en passant an outline of progressive paralysis. Then there were his offspring—and how was his wife to be saved? Or if she was already infected, which she was bound to be, how was she to be treated?

In the end my torrent of words dried up and I self-consciously took out of my pocket a reference book in a red binding with gold lettering. It was my faithful friend, and I was never parted from it in those first stages of my difficult career. How many times did it come to my rescue when the accursed problem of prescriptions gaped before me like a black abyss! While the patient was getting dressed I furtively leafed through its pages and found what I needed.

Mercury ointment is a great remedy!

‘You must rub this stuff on you. You’ll be given six little bags of ointment. You’ll rub on one bagful a day, like this …’

I gave a vigorous demonstration of how to do it, rubbing my overall with my open palm.

‘Today you must rub it on your arm, tomorrow on your leg, then on the other arm. When you’ve rubbed it on six times, wash it all off and come and see me. Without fail. Do you hear? Without fail! And apart from this, you must take great care of your teeth and your mouth in general while you are under treatment. I’ll give you a mouthwash. After meals you must be certain to rinse out your mouth.’

‘And my throat?’ he asked hoarsely, and at once I noticed that he only came to life at the word ‘mouthwash’.

‘Yes, yes, your throat too.’

A few minutes later the yellow back of his sheepskin jerkin was disappearing through the door and a woman in a headscarf was elbowing past him. A few minutes later, as I ran along the half-dark passage from my out-patient surgery to get some cigarettes from the pharmacist, I happened to overhear a hoarse whisper:

‘He’s no good. Young fellow. I’ve just got a sore throat, see, but he looks me all over … chest, belly … I’ve more than enough work on my hands and it took me half a day to get to the hospital. By the time I get back it’ll be dark. Lord, here am I with nothing but a sore throat and he gives me ointment for my legs.’

‘Careless, careless,’ a quavering peasant woman’s voice agreed, and then suddenly stopped short as I flitted past like an apparition in my white overall. I could not help looking round, and in the semi-darkness I recognised the little beard looking as if it were made of tow, the heavy eyelids, the hen-like eyes and the ferociously hoarse voice. I pulled my head into my shoulders and furtively tried to hunch myself up as if I were guilty, and disappeared with a burning sense of resentment. I was in a terrible state.

Had I been completely wasting my time?

I refused to believe it. Every morning for a month I studied the reception book as keenly as a detective, expecting to come across the surname of the wife of the man who had listened so attentively to my monologue on syphilis. I waited for the man himself for a whole month.