Doctor levitin, p.16
Doctor Levitin, page 16
Tatyana came out into the hallway to see what was happening, and her presence made the late-night guests even more self-conscious. They stood there and mumbled some awkward phrases.
“You will excuse us please. Just stopping by to say hello.”
“Of course. Don’t worry. Please, do come in,” said Herbert Anatolyevich.
In the meantime, Semyon was fishing out a bottle from his rusty-red briefcase. Alik was growing more timid as he understood, even in his drunkenness, that he was doing something almost dangerous, and certainly very dubious. Tatyana went to the kitchen, to prepare some appetizers to go with the bottle, and the guests dropped down onto the couch in Herbert Anatolyevich’s study. The host himself was quiet, as he didn’t want to force opinions on his former colleagues. Alik went back to the kitchen, feeling a need to help with the preparations, just for old times’ sake. In the old days, when Herbert Anatolyevich invited colleagues to parties at his home, Alik Volkovich would always be part of the celebrations. Well-mannered, a connoisseur of cuisine and music, Alik was always the life and soul of the party. Maybe it was this popularity and sociability, in conjunction with his official belonging to the Belorussian nation, that had stopped Professor Ivan Ivanovich Baronov from blocking Volkovich’s candidature during the search for his academic position. Or maybe the elder Volkovich’s stature had played a role.
Semyon Antipov leaned his heavy body towards Herbert Anatolyevich and whispered, “You think I don’t feel how you despise us? No, dear Herbert Anatolyevich, I feel it! I feel it all, I see it, and I sense it, like a dog that’s afraid of a new owner. Because he beat fear into the dog—beat him to the point of blind terror.”
“Don’t do this, Senya. Let’s not wax sentimental now. Everybody has his own mission in life. And don’t torment yourself over what happened to me.”
“No, how can I not torment myself? I suffer not only because I’ve lost you. I’ve lost my sense of purpose. Together we tried to move the treatment of patients forward, at least a small step forward. Remember how we were all fired up about using the deep kidney diathermy in conjunction with electrophoresis? We had some success in the regeneration of kidney tissue in experimental animals, didn’t we?”
“And thank God we had success. So go and finish the work, and you’ll immediately get your habilitation and become a doctor of science and a professor,” the host said, and smiled gently. He liked Semyon, and he knew very well that the words he just heard were not the affectation of a drunk person, but a lamented truth that broke out of his soul.
“Alik will come back any moment now,” Semyon was whispering. “Then I won’t be able to talk openly about everything. But please know that we’re perishing without you. The most important thing is gone—enthusiasm. A vested interest. Or even more than that.”
“What more?” Herbert Anatolyevich asked, and his voice quivered.
“The thin thread that connected us doctors with the patients is gone. It’s as if we stopped being doctors. We are now medical employees of different categories with different ranks and titles. Patients felt this even before we did. Particularly those from other cities. They call, they write, begging us to help them, to give them appointments with you. You gave so many of their lives back, Herbert Anatolyevich.”
“So why don’t you give them my home number? Or the number at the health center where I work?”
“Not allowed to. You’re not here anymore. Period. You’ve been sliced off, my dear Herbert Anatolyevich. Severed from Soviet medicine.” Semyon said these words, and a huge cloudy tear rolled from his big green eye and fell onto his rusty-red briefcase, which stood next to the couch.
“You shouldn’t really, Semyon. Everything will be all right. The patients will get better and forget all about me. And you’ll learn to deal with it. One gets used to everything.”
Alik Volkovich entered Doctor Levitin’s den. Actually, a table with food and glasses rolled in first, followed by Alik and Tatyana. Tatyana was pleased by this unexpected visit. It was good his old friends came. Perhaps Herbert Anatolyevich would lighten up a bit, be distracted from his dark thoughts. Alik opened the vodka, then looked at the light through this transparent liquid imprisoned in a bottle sweating with condensation. “Good stuff!” Gently gurgling, vodka flowed into glasses. They drank to the success of the “affair” the Levitins had embarked on. Tatyana sat with the men for a bit and then left. Alik was silent, crunching on a pickle. He just couldn’t get a conversation going with Herbert Anatolyevich. And they used to be good friends. True, Herbert Anatolyevich had been more successful in those old days when he was part of academic medicine; he had become a full professor. But Alik thought this was fully deserved. Both in their old department and beyond the medical school, Levitin was considered to be a rising star, the “hope” of the country’s internal medicine. And this was how things had turned out.
As if apologizing for his silence, Volkovich proposed another toast. “Herbert, I’d like to drink to you, my friend. To the star that no longer shines over the Russian horizon.”
“To a star, I agree. I’ll drink to that all you want,” said Semyon. “But I don’t agree with the horizons.”
“So what is it you don’t agree with, Semyon dear?” Alik smiled slyly.
“Esteemed Alik, I don’t agree, because the horizons are the same above all humanity. And the biology of Homo sapiens is also the same everywhere. And because the same factors influence all humankind, consisting of identical species, medicine should serve all humankind at the same time. And wherever an honest and talented doctor works, he serves not only his own patients, but all humankind, the entire earthly community of people. That’s that. And that’s why I don’t judge Herbert Anatolyevich, I just mourn his departure. I miss him, and I constantly feel his absence in our clinical work.”
Former Professor Levitin was silent, thinking about the words spoken by his former colleagues. Of course Alik is being wily, he doesn’t wish to speak his mind, thought Herbert Anatolyevich. But why? Hypocrisy has become a life’s principle. He felt sorry for Volkovich, the way one felt sorry for a terminally ill person that one had once been close to. Alik lit up a cigarette and inhaled several times. He got up and walked around the room. It was clear that he didn’t want to be judged on the basis of his words. He was suffering from the ambivalence of his position, and, above all, from the bifurcation of his soul.
“You are right, of course, Semyon,” Volkovich said. “Right in the ideal sense. But I’m not talking about an ideal situation. It’s quite realistic to expect that Herbert Anatolyevich will leave, leave for good, so that we won’t be able to just stop by and see him more or less on a whim, at least every once in a while, as we did this time, let’s say, in a state of boozy euphoria. Only then will we truly understand what we have lost, although this will have no effect on world medicine, since Professor Levitin will surely secure a professorship abroad, wherever he desires to work. And you, my dear Semyon, will be the first one to realize that here you can still visit Herbert Anatolyevich, but there—it might as well be Mars.”
Volkovich’s voice suddenly faltered. He sat down, coughing from the vodka and emotion. They were all silent. Then they talked for a while about new things in academic medicine and about their children. Semyon started to ask Herbert Anatolyevich questions about his son.
“Anatoly must be a grown man now, yes? And I remember when I was teaching him to play hockey. Any news about the army?”
“If we don’t emigrate, he’ll be drafted,” Herbert Anatolyevich answered.
They sat there for a little bit longer. Some sort of a spring that had previously held together their relationship had snapped. Now, neither shared academic interests nor a table set for a celebration could hold them together. That’s why in the hallway they were talking in a forced, unnatural way, as though they were escorting their guests out, rather than seeing them off. This unnaturalness was totally natural; that is, it was at the very core of the Levitin family predicament, and Herbert Anatolyevich’s colleagues saw it and weren’t upset with him. Herbert Anatolyevich stood there lost in his thoughts, saying goodbye to Semyon Antipov and to Alik Volkovich, telling them they should come again, without waiting for special invitations, and they promised to stop by soon and kissed him goodbye, and through all this they understood that if there should be an occasion to see each other, it would be an unusual occasion, a difficult one, because the normal, natural course of life was forever taking them in different directions. Downstairs the entryway door slammed shut. The Levitins were still standing in their hallway, and they both knew that the day, filled to the brim with words and emotions, wasn’t yet over.
“Are you upset?” Tatyana asked her husband.
“About what?”
“About their visit. The conversation.”
“The visit—no. And in fact the conversation was perfectly ordinary, trite. Even if I’m a little upset, Tanyusha, it’s by the triteness of the conversation. I’m becoming an ordinary conversation partner, with nothing interesting to contribute. Something snapped inside of me like a string.”
“But when? Tell me, when did you start feeling this way?”
Herbert Anatolyevich took Tatyana’s hand. The clock struck midnight.
“This started right after Grandfather Vasily Matveyevich’s funeral. You know, Tanyusha, there wasn’t too much love lost between us. But when he lived with us, I knew way deep inside that always present in our home there was something like a conscience incarnate in the flesh and blood of your father. Some kind of a constantly present opponent. For me it was like a benchmark.”
“I know this, darling. You’re tormenting yourself because you think that you were the one that destroyed this benchmark,” said Tatyana quietly, and she timidly stroked her husband’s prickly cheek with the back of her hand, as she used to do in happier times. “I understand that feeling. Constant losses, like dues we pay for our past sins or sins we might have committed. My father died. Now I’m constantly worried about Anatoly. I just hope all turns out well for him and Natasha.”
“You’re right, Tanyusha. Our family’s life has moved on into a difficult, still unchartered phase. A period of self-reflection has begun, except now we shouldn’t be reflecting, just acting. Time’s running out. I’m turning into Chekhov’s character Ionych, the old doctor. Look, just today, my friends came over, my colleagues. It seems they valued me for something; they were drawn to me for some reason. But everything that I had done was so imperfect; I never had the leisure to look at myself carefully. Oh how I’d love to work at my fullest capacity now, having seen my way anew.
“Do you want to return to the old department, to the medical school?” Tatyana asked.
“No, of course not. There’s no way back there. I want to return to real science, to real medicine, but not to Baronov’s shop. I want to return to a place where they don’t constantly make note of relationships, states of mind, and correspondences of words allowed and disallowed. Take today’s visitors, Semyon and Alik. It would seem that they are both my comrades, that they were once my good friends, but my impression is that they aren’t even honest with each other, that they’re always on guard. It’s not good for a friendship and for working together.”
“But still, they are your good friends, ones you can rely on, Herbert.”
“That’s what you think. But when Alik was in the kitchen with you, Semyon whispered that I should be careful. It seems that Alik has become a KGB informant.”
“That’s not possible! This way you’ll stop trusting the whole world.”
“I don’t believe it, either. But something else is frightening, Tanyusha. And I know you find it hard to believe. Something rotten, some kind of a giant swamp rat, is grating at my soul. Believe it if you want or don’t believe it, it’s saying, but don’t you forget, trust no one.”
Herbert Anatolyevich pulled the curtain to the side and opened the window. The building across the street was sleeping. There were lights in only a few windows. On the fifth floor, a girl was standing in the yellow glow of electric light, smoking, automatically bringing the cigarette to her mouth. You could hear some music. Herbert Anatolyevich imagined that the little spirals of smoke coming through the window were singing a melody. Suddenly a telephone rang, a sound both sharp and distant, like a messenger from another world. The girl abruptly threw away her cigarette and dissolved into the yellow world of the room. The telephone fell silent. Then Herbert Anatolyevich saw that the girl had returned to the window, hugging the phone to her cheek, and then she closed the window and turned off the light.
Someone was running from the Garden Ring down a lane toward their house. While he ran, his legs were dancing, and his lips were humming a joyful song. It was impossible to hear what exactly the runner was singing, but Herbert Anatolyevich immediately recognized the gait and voice of his son Anatoly. He would sing with such abandon when he was in happy solitude. What could be more joyful than the happiness you feel when you are alone with this happiness, when nothing and no one can prevent you from concentrating on this feeling, from frolicking in the waves of happiness. It’s as if you’re plunging into the Black Sea in the early morning, when there are only seagulls and crabs on the shore.
Tatyana and Herbert Anatolyevich rushed to the hallway and opened the door even before their son rang the bell—they were dying to see Anatoly. He was coming up the stairs, tap-dancing on the jagged granite steps, and singing, very quietly, so as not to wake anybody: “Tra-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. Tra-ta-ta, Shalom Aleichem, tara-ta shalom, shalom, Shalom Aleichem!” They were waiting for their son on the landing, Tatyana in a brown wool top thrown over her shoulders and Herbert Anatolyevich in his navy sweat suit. Anatoly saw his parents, smiled, hugged them both at once, and shoved them back into the apartment.
“Papa! Mama! Please don’t be upset that I’m back so late. I’m so happy. I have never been so happy!”
He kissed Tatyana on the cheek and touched his father’s stubble-covered neck with his lips.
“You were at Natasha’s?” Tatyana hugged her son and looked deep into his eyes.
“Yes, mama.”
“And Natasha, is she as happy as you?”
“Yes, she’s happy. We both are the happiest people in the world. So please don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
He disappeared to his room, and from there he yelled, “Good night, mama, good night, papa!”
THERE EXISTS A saving proportionality in the world. Not a harmony in the high, pantheistic sense, but a proportionality destined to distribute happiness and unhappiness among people. I know this most definitely from my own experience, because a writer has nowhere to learn all of this for certain, except from the depths of his own soul. From where else, if not from those inescapable depths, does a writer gain the knowledge of human beings? Of course experience is important, as are also the powers of observation and imagination. These are all forms into which the energy of the writer’s soul is poured. The more active the life of the writer’s soul is in both the external and the internal world, the greater are the writer’s opportunities to understand his characters, to penetrate along with them into the hidden treasure chambers of their souls, to live with his heroes through their happiest and bitterest moments. The right hand of fate has long been raised over the character’s head, and he, unaware of that, lives as though he still has a thousand years of rejoicing and happiness ahead of him.
NATASHA COMPLETED HER spring semester exams. The whole summer lay ahead. And even though she and Anatoly were spending every free moment together, they still wanted more, because each separation—for an hour, a day, a night—was turning into an ordeal for them. Natasha’s parents, worldly and liberal people, always assumed that their daughter would act with common sense and good character. Natasha’s mother, Katya Leyn, or Ekaterina Nikolaevna, as Anatoly addressed her, came to admire the younger Levitin, and this was, perhaps, her attempt to soothe the guilty feeling that had followed her all her life since that ill-fated encounter with Herbert Anatolyevich at Driz’s party. A feeling of guilt before an innocent, uninitiated Jewish boy who had readily opened his heart to her and who couldn’t comprehend why she had so cruelly rejected him. And the suave Evgeny Lvovich Leyn himself, he who scorned many conventions as long as these conventions did not interfere with his life, saturated as it was with pleasant and useful activities, looked at his daughter’s infatuation as something perfectly natural, like good food or good company, but also transient, like any good food or good company, and therefore not requiring serious thought. Ekaterina Nikolaevna had, on several occasions, tried to speak to her husband about the possible consequences of Natasha’s new friendship, but Evgeny Lvovich only dismissed her with carefree laughter and continued to display a lack of concern. However, the friendship grew into an infatuation, and the infatuation into a mutual bond that is universally referred to as love. Natasha didn’t hide from her mother her intimacy with Anatoly. It would have been difficult to hide such a thing from Ekaterina Nikolaevna, who was an expert in these matters. As time passed, the Leyns took no measures. Finally Natasha said that she wanted to spend the whole summer with Anatoly.
