First undress him, then he’ll cure us,
If he doesn’t, then we’ll kill him!
He’s a doctor, just a doctor.
Then I’m naked, calmly surveying the people, with my fingers in my beard, my head bowed. I am quite composed and feel fairly superior to the situation and remain so, but still it doesn’t help me, for they pick me up by the head and feet and carry me to the bed. They lay me down next to the wall, on the side of the wound. They all leave the room and shut the door, the singing stops, clouds obscure the moon, the bedding lies warm all around me, the heads of the horses sway like shadows in the open windows. “You know,” a voice says in my ear, “I don’t have much confidence in you. You just blew in here, you didn’t even come on your own two feet. Instead of helping me, you’re crowding my deathbed. What I’d love best is to scratch your eyes out.” “You’re right,” I say, “it’s disgraceful. But I am a doctor. What should I do? Believe me, it’s not easy for me either.” “Is that excuse supposed to satisfy me? Oh, I suppose it must. I’m always supposed to be satisfied. I came into the world with a gorgeous wound, that was my sole endowment.” “Young friend,” I say, “your trouble is that you have no sense of perspective. I have been in sickrooms far and wide, and I tell you this: Your wound isn’t that bad—made at angles with two sharp blows of the ax. Many offer up their sides and barely hear the ax in the forest, let alone that it’s coming closer.” “Is it really so, or are you deluding me in my fever?” “It is really so, I give you my word of honor, the word of a public health official.” He took me at my word and lay still. But now it was time for me to think of my own salvation. The horses were faithfully standing their ground. I quickly collected my clothes, furs, and bag, as I didn’t want to waste time dressing. If the horses sped back as fast as they had come, I would more or less be jumping from this bed into mine. One of the horses obediently drew back from the window; I flung my bundle into the trap; the fur coat, flying too far, caught on a hook by only one sleeve. Good enough. I swung myself up onto the horse. The reins trailed loose, one horse was barely hitched to the other, the trap swayed wildly behind, and, last of all, the fur coat dragged in the snow. “Giddap!” I shouted, but the horses didn’t gallop. We crawled slowly through the wasteland of snow like old men; for a long time the sound of the children’s new but incorrect song followed us:
All you patients now be joyful,
The doctor’s laid in bed beside you!
I’ll never reach home at this rate; my thriving practice is lost; my successor will rob me of it, but in vain, for he cannot replace me; that foul groom is raging through my house; Rosa is his victim; I don’t want to think of it anymore. Naked, exposed to the frosts of this most unfortunate era, with my earthly carriage and unearthly horses, old man that I am, I am buffeted about. My fur coat hangs from the back of the trap, but I cannot reach it, and not one of my agile pack of patients lifts a finger. Betrayed! Betrayed! A false ring of the night bell, once answered—it can never be made right.
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In the Penal Colony
IT’S AN EXCEPTIONAL APPARATUS,” the officer said to the world traveler and, with a certain admiration, surveyed the apparatus that was, after all, quite familiar to him. The traveler appeared to have accepted purely out of politeness the commandant’s invitation to attend the execution of a soldier, who had been condemned for insubordination and insulting a superior officer. There did not seem to be much interest in the execution throughout the penal colony itself. In any event, the only other persons present besides the officer and the traveler in this small but deep and sandy valley, surrounded by barren slopes on all sides, were the condemned man—a dull, thick-lipped creature with a disheveled appearance—and a soldier, who held the heavy chain that controlled the smaller chains attached to the condemned man’s ankles, wrists, and neck, chains that were also linked together. But the condemned man looked so submissively doglike that it seemed as if he might have been allowed to run free on the slopes and would only need to be whistled for when the execution was due to begin.