CHAPTER 6. Schizophrenia, as was Said
It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard andwearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famouspsychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank ofthe river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, whowas sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there.The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been bed up lay in a pile on thesame couch. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free. Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and saidtimidly: 'Hello, Doctor.' The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but atIvan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfecdy motionless, with an angry face andknitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor's entrance. 'Here, Doctor,' Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in amysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, 'is therenowned poet Ivan Homeless .. . well, you see .. . we're afraid it might bedelirium tremens . . .' 'Was he drinking hard?' the doctor said through his teeth. 'No, he drank, but not really so . ..' 'Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinkingdogs?' 'No,' Riukhin replied with a shudder, 'I saw him yesterday and thismorning ... he was perfectly well.' 'And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?' 'No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way ...' 'Aha, aha,' the doctor said with great satisfaction, 'and why thescratches? Did he have a fight?' 'He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody ...and then somebody else . . .' 'So, so, so,' the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: 'Hellothere!' 'Greetings, saboteur!'' Ivan replied spitefully and loudly. Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to thecourteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off hisglasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, putthem into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan: 'How old are you?' 'YOU can all go to the devil!' Ivan shouted rudely and turned away. 'But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?' 'I'm twenty-three years old,' Ivan began excitedly, 'and I'll file acomplaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!' he advertedseparately to Riukhin. 'And what do you want to complain about?' 'About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by forceto a madhouse!' Ivan replied wrathfully. Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedlyno insanity in the man's eyes. No longer dull as dicy had been atGriboedov's, they were now clear as ever. 'Good God!' Riukhin thought fearfully. 'So he's really normal! Whatnonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He's normal, normal, only hismug got scratched . . .' 'You are,' the doctor began calmly, sitting down on a white stool witha shiny foot, 'not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will keepyou if it's not necessary.' Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the comer of hiseye, but still grumbled: 'Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots,of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!' 'Who is this giftless Sashka?' the doctor inquired. 'This one here - Riukhin,' Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger inRiukhin's direction. The latter flushed with indignation. That's the thanks I get,' hethought bitterly, 'for showing concern for him! What trash, really!' 'Psychologically, a typical little kulak,'[2] IvanNikolaevich began, evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin,'and, what's more, a little kulak carefully disguising himself as aproletarian. Look at his lenten physiognomy, and compare it with thoseresounding verses he wrote for the First of May[3] - heh, heh,heh ... "Soaring up!" and "Soaring down!!" But if you could look inside himand see what he thinks ... you'd gasp!' And Ivan Nikolaevich burst intosinister laughter. Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just onething, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concernfor a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there wasnothing to be done: there's no arguing with the mentally ill! 'And why, actually, were you brought here?' the doctor asked, afterlistening attentively to Homeless's denunciations. 'Devil take them, the numskulls! They seized me, tied me up with somerags, and dragged me away in a truck!' 'May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?' There's nothing surprising about that,' Ivan replied. 'I went for aswim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash!I couldn't very well walk around Moscow naked! I put it on because I washurrying to Griboedov's restaurant.' The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly: 'The name of the restaurant.' 'Aha,' said the doctor, 'and why were you in such a hurry? Somebusiness meeting?' 'I'm trying to catch the consultant,' Ivan Nikolaevich said and lookedaround anxiously. 'What consultant?' 'Do you know Berlioz?' Ivan asked significantly. The . . . composer?' Ivan got upset. 'What composer? Ah, yes ... Ah, no. The composer has the same name asMisha Berlioz.' Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain: The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonightat the Patriarch's Ponds.' 'Don't blab about what you don't know!' Ivan got angry with Riukhin. 'Iwas there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!' 'Pushed him?' '"Pushed him", nothing!' Ivan exclaimed, angered by the generalobtuseness. 'His kind don't need to push! He can perform such stunts - holdon to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under thetram-car!' 'And did anyone besides you see this consultant?' That's the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.' 'So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?' Here thedoctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who wassitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and beganfilling in the blank spaces in its columns. 'Here's what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen...' That one?' asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on thetable in front of the woman, next to the icon. That very one, and . . .' 'And why the icon?' 'Ah, yes, the icon . . .' Ivan blushed. 'It was the icon thatfrightened them most of all.' He again jabbed his finger in the directionofRiukhin. 'But the thing is that he, the consultant, he ... let's speakdirectly . .. is mixed up with the unclean powers . .. and you won't catchhim so easily.' The orderlies for some reason snapped to attention and fastened theireyes on Ivan. Yes, sirs,' Ivan went on, 'mixed up with them! An absolute fact. Hespoke personally with Pontius Pilate. And there's no need to stare at melike that. I'm telling the truth! He saw everything -- the balcony and thepalm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate's, I can vouch for it.' 'Come, come .. .' 'Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran .. .' Here the clock suddenly struck twice. 'Oh-oh!' Ivan exclaimed and got up from the couch. 'It's two o'clock,and I'm wasting time with you! Excuse me, where's the telephone?' 'Let him use the telephone,' the doctor told the orderlies. Ivan grabbed the receiver, and the woman meanwhile quietly askedRiukhin: 'Is he married?' 'Single,' Riukhin answered fearfully. 'Member of a trade union?' 'Yes.' 'Police?' Ivan shouted into the receiver. 'Police? Comradeofficer-on-duty, give orders at once for five motor cycles with machine-gunsto be sent out to catch the foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me up,I'll go with you ... It's the poet Homeless speaking from the madhouse .. .What's your address?' Homeless asked the doctor in a whisper, covering thereceiver with his hand, and then again shouting into it: 'Are you listening?Hello! .. . Outrageous!' Ivan suddenly screamed and hurled the receiveragainst the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, offered him his hand, said'Goodbye' drily, and made as if to leave. 'For pity's sake, where do you intend to go?' the doctor said, peeringinto Ivan's eyes. 'In the dead of night, in your underwear .. . You're notfeeling well, stay with us.' 'Let me pass,' Ivan said to the orderlies, who closed ranks at thedoor. 'Will you let me pass or not?' the poet shouted in a terrible voice. Riukhin trembled, but the woman pushed a button on the table and ashiny little box with a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface. 'Ah, so?!' Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look.'Well, then . . . Goodbye!' And he rushed head first into the window-blind. The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave nocrack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of theorderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted: 'So that's the sort of windows you've got here! Let me go! Let me go! .. .' A syringe flashed in the doctor's hand, with a single movement thewoman slit the threadbare sleeve of the shirt and seized the arm withunwomanly strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the handsof the four people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuckthe needle into Ivan's arm. They held Ivan for another few seconds and thenlowered him on to the couch. 'Bandits!' Ivan shouted and jumped up from the couch, but was installedon it again. The moment they let go of him, he again jumped up, but sat backdown by himself. He paused, gazing around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned,then smiled maliciously. 'Locked me up after all,' he said, yawned again, unexpectedly lay down,put his head on the pillow, his fist under his head like a child, andmuttered now in a sleepy voice, without malice: 'Very well, then ... you'llpay for it yourselves ... I've warned you, you can do as you like ... I'mnow interested most of all in Pontius Pilate ... Pilate ...', and he closedhis eyes. 'A bath, a private room, number 117, and a nurse to watch him,' thedoctor ordered as he put his glasses on. Here Riukhin again gave a start:the white door opened noiselessly, behind it a corridor could be seen, litby blue night-lights. Out of the corridor rolled a stretcher on rubberwheels, to which the quieted Ivan was transferred, and then he rolled offdown the corridor and the door closed behind him. 'Doctor,' the shaken Riukhin asked in a whisper, 'it means he's reallyill?' 'Oh, yes,' replied the doctor. 'But what's wrong with him, then?' Riukhin asked timidly. The tired doctor glanced at Riukhin and answered listlessly: 'Locomotor and speech excitation . . . delirious interpretations ... Acomplex case, it seems. Schizophrenia, I suppose. Plus this alcoholism . ..' Riukhin understood nothing from the doctor's words, except that thingswere evidently not so great with Ivan Nikolaevich. He sighed and asked: 'But what's all this talk of his about some consultant?' 'He must have seen somebody who struck his disturbed imagination. Ormaybe a hallucination ...' A few minutes later the truck was carrying Riukhin off to Moscow. Daywas breaking, and the light of the street lights still burning along thehighway was now unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was vexed at havingwasted the night, drove the truck as fast as he could, and skidded on theturns. Now the woods dropped off, stayed somewhere behind, and the river wentsomewhere to the side, and an omnium gatherum came spilling to meet thetruck: fences with sentry boxes and stacks of wood, tall posts and some sortof poles, with spools strung on the poles, heaps of rubble, the earth scoredby canals -- in short, you sensed that she was there, Moscow, right there,around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you. Riukhin was jolted and tossed about; the sort of stump he had placedhimself on kept trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant napkins,thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier by bus, movedall around the flatbed. Riukhin tried to collect them, but then, for somereason hissing spitefully: 'Devil take them! What am I doing fussing like afool? ...', he spumed them aside with his foot and stopped looking at them. The rider's state of mind was terrible. It was becoming clear that hisvisit to the house of sorrow had left the deepest mark on him. Riukhin triedto understand what was tormenting him. The corridor with blue lights, whichhad stuck itself to his memory? The thought that there is no greatermisfortune in the world than the loss of reason? Yes, yes, of course, that,too. But that - that's only a general thought. There's something else. Whatis it? An insult, that's what. Yes, yes, insulting words hurled right in hisface by Homeless. And the trouble is not that they were insulting, but thatthere was truth in them. The poet no longer looked around, but, staring into the dirty, shakingfloor, began muttering something, whining, gnawing at himself. Yes, poetry ... He was thirty-two years old! And, indeed, what then? Sothen he would go on writing his several poems a year. Into old age? Yes,into old age. What would these poems bring him? Glory? 'What nonsense! Don'tdeceive yourself, at least. Glory will never come to someone who writes badpoems. What makes them bad? The truth, he was telling the truth!' Riukhinaddressed himself mercilessly. 'I don't believe in anything I write! . . .' Poisoned bv this burst of neurasthenia, the poet swayed, the floorunder him stopped shaking. Riukhin raised his head and saw that he had longbeen in Moscow, and, what's more, that it was dawn over Moscow, that thecloud was underlit with gold, that his truck had stopped, caught in a columnof other vehicles at the turn on to the boulevard, and that very close tohim on a pedestal stood a metal man, his head inclined slightly, gazing atthe boulevard with indifference. Some strange thoughts flooded the head of the ailing poet. 'There's anexample of real luck. . .' Here Riukhin rose to his full height on theflatbed of the truck and raised his arm, for some reason attacking thecast-iron man who was not bothering anyone. 'Whatever step he made in hislife, whatever happened to him, it all turned to his benefit, it all led tohis glory! But what did he do? I can't conceive ... Is there anythingspecial in the words: "The snowstorm covers . . ."? I don't understand! .. .Luck, sheer luck!' Riukhin concluded with venom, and felt the truck movingunder him. 'He shot him, that white guard shot him, smashed his hip, andassured his immortality...' The column began to move. In no more than two minutes, the completelyill and even aged poet was entering the veranda of Griboedov's. It was nowempty. In a corner some company was finishing its drinks, and in the middlethe familiar master of ceremonies was bustling about, wearing a skullcap,with a glass of Abrau wine in his hand. Riukhin, laden with napkins, was met affably by ArchibaldArchi-baldovich and at once relieved of the cursed rags. Had Riukhin notbecome so worn out in the clinic and on the truck, he would certainly havederived pleasure from telling how everything had gone in the hospital andembellishing the story with invented details. But just then he was far fromsuch things, and, little observant though Riukhin was, now, after thetorture on the truck, he peered keenly at the pirate for the first time andrealized that, though the man asked about Homeless and even exclaimed'Ai-yai-yai!', he was essentially quite indifferent to Homeless's fate anddid not feel a bit sorry for him. 'And bravo! Right you are!' Riukhinthought with cynical, self-annihilating malice and, breaking off the storyabout the schizophrenia, begged: 'Archibald Archibaldovich, a drop of vodka . ..' The pirate made acompassionate face and whispered: 'I understand . . . this very minute . . .' and beckoned to a waiter. Aquarter of an hour later, Riukhin sat in complete solitude, hunched over hisbream, drinking glass after glass, understanding and recognizing that it wasno longer possible to set anything right in his life, that it was onlypossible to forget. The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and nowunderstood that it was impossible to get it back. One needed only to raiseone's head from the lamp to the sky to understand that the night wasirretrievably lost. Waiters were hurriedly tearing the tablecloths from thetables. The cats slinking around the veranda had a morning look. Dayirresistibly heaved itself upon the poet.