Fifty-Two Stories

“That was a performance! The lower-ranking hospice workers put the blankets and sheets under lock and key so that the old women wouldn’t dirty them, and let the old hags sleep on the floor! The old women didn’t dare sit on the beds, or put on bed jackets, or walk on the polished parquet. Everything was kept for display and hidden from the old women, as if from thieves, and the old women secretly went begging for food and clothing, and prayed to God day and night to get out of this jail as soon as possible and to be rid of the sanctimonious admonishments of the well-fed scoundrels you appointed to look after them. And what were the higher ranks up to? That was simply delightful! About twice a week, in the evening, thirty-five thousand messengers came galloping³ to announce that the next day the princess—you, that is—would come to the hospice. That meant that the next day I had to abandon my patients, dress up, and go to the parade. Very well, I arrive. The old women, all fresh and clean, are already lined up and waiting. Around them walks the retired garrison rat—the supervisor, with his sweet, lickspittle smile. The old women yawn and exchange glances, but they’re afraid to murmur. We wait. The junior manager comes galloping. Half an hour later the senior manager, then the head manager of the accounting office, then someone else, then someone else…no end to the galloping! They all have mysterious, solemn faces. We wait and wait, we shift our feet, we keep glancing at our watches—all this in sepulchral silence, because we all hate each other and are at daggers drawn…An hour goes by, then another, and now, finally, a carriage appears in the distance, and…and…”

The doctor dissolved in high-pitched laughter and in a high little voice squeaked:

“You step out of the carriage, and the old hags, at the command of the garrison rat, start to sing: ‘How glorious is our Lord in Zion, the tongue cannot tell…’⁴ Not bad, eh?”

The doctor guffawed in a bass voice and waved his hand, as if wishing to show that he could not utter a word more from laughter. He laughed painfully, sharply, with tightly clenched teeth, as unkind people laugh, and by his voice, his face, and his gleaming, slightly impudent eyes one could tell that he deeply despised the princess, and the hospice, and the old women. There was nothing funny or merry in anything he told so ineptly and crudely, but he guffawed with pleasure and even with glee.

“And the school?” he went on, breathing heavily from laughter. “Remember how you wanted to teach the peasant children yourself? You must have taught them very well, because soon all the boys ran away, so that they had to be whipped and then given money to come to you. And remember how you wanted to give bottles with your own hands to the nursing babies whose mothers worked in the fields? You went around the village lamenting that these babies were not at your service—the mothers had all taken them to the fields with them. Then the headman ordered the mothers to take turns leaving their babies for you to have fun with. It’s amazing! Everyone fled from your good deeds like mice from a cat! And why? Very simple! Not because our people are ignorant and ungrateful, as you always explained, but because in all your escapades—forgive me the expression—there was not a pennyworth of love and mercy! There was only a wish to amuse yourslf with living dolls and nothing else…Somebody who is unable to distinguish people from lapdogs should not get involved in charitable works. I assure you, there’s a big difference between people and lapdogs!”

The princess’s heart was pounding terribly, there was a throbbing in her ears, and she still felt as if the doctor was hammering her on the head with his hat. The doctor spoke quickly, heatedly, and unpleasantly, stammering and gesticulating excessively; she could only understand that this was a rude, ill-bred, spiteful, ungrateful man talking to her, but what he wanted from her and what he was talking about she did not understand.

“Go away!” she said in a tearful voice, raising her hands to protect her head from the doctor’s hat. “Go away!”