Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Having tended the stove, Chevanin passed into the third room that served as an office-cum-dispensary. Moving an ancient armchair from one corner of the office to reveal a small green strong box embedded in the wall, he knelt down and fitted the last two mortice keys that remained unused on his key ring. From this crude safe, he extracted a bunch of keys and three ledgers, each of which bore a label in the Doctor’s neat hand: “Account Book”; “Medical Register” and “Dispensary Log”. Closing and locking the safe, he left the accounts book on top of the desk that identified this part of the room as the Doctor’s private office and took the other two books through to the dispensary area.

Despite the dispensary’s basic appurtenances its purpose would have been recognisable to a medical practitioner in any of the larger cities of western Europe. Around the room at waist height, and extending about an arm’s length into the room, ran an acid stained worktop upon which the drugs and medicines were prepared. Into this had been set a heavy stone sink with a single water tap. Leaving the logbook on one side, Chevanin used the keys from the safe to unlock the four glass-fronted cabinets that hung from the walls above the worktop. Having done this, he reached below the worktop and pulled out a large heavy-bottomed iron boiling pan.

As he filled the pan two thirds with water, his ears strained to catch the sound of the Doctor’s footsteps in the waiting room, for it was usually at this point in his preparations that the Doctor arrived at the surgery. Peering through the hatch that linked the dispensary with the consulting room (and which could in fact be said to extend right through to the waiting room if the hatch between the consulting room and the waiting room was open) he saw the hand of the surgery clock move stiffly to ten minutes to nine. He felt his heart miss a beat as he heard the sound of the outer door open and the clatter of footsteps on the bare boards of the waiting room floor. But instead of the customary jangle of keys as the Doctor let himself into the consulting room, he heard the creak of the bench and a hawking sound as his first patient of the day spat at (and missed) the wooden cuspidor that his employer had provided in a vain attempt to halt the spread of disease. Relieved, Chevanin continued his chores, carrying the pan, heavy now with water, into the consulting room and placing it on top of the stove. Slipping off his overcoat he donned a light cotton overall and, sitting down behind his desk, began to remove his boots.

It was not until he had laid out all the instruments that the Doctor might be likely to require for a routine morning’s clinic and had arranged the medical register, note pad and two sharpened pencils on his own desk that Chevanin admitted to himself that the Doctor was late. There seemed only one explanation for such an unheard-of occurrence and as each minute passed his sense of doom deepened. Vivid scenes of melodrama such as those depicted in the pages of the illustrated magazines in Maslov’s library now sprang horribly to life in his mind. A tearful Madame Tortsova on her knees in front of her husband, her hands clasped in supplication before her upturned face, protesting that she had done nothing that might have given his assistant encouragement in pressing his attentions. The Doctor casting her to one side and reaching for his sleigh whip and rushing headlong out into the street, determined to avenge the insult… Was there nothing that could be done to deflect her husband’s righteous anger?

The noise of the creaking bench in the waiting room provided an answer. Let his employer find him as he should be: quietly and methodically attending to the needs of his patients. More eloquently than any words he had, that might persuade the Doctor to show clemency. Hoping that his patient was suffering from something that would show his medical knowledge in a good light, he opened the door out into the waiting room and beamed expectantly.