‘What time are you coming for them?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Say five.’
‘Remember, we shut at six.
‘it will be before.’
‘And the back door here.’ They were in the stores room. ‘Don’t go through the garage. People will be working there. Bring the bobik round to the back.’
‘Okay. First I have to get it.’
By a quarter to four he had the bobik and was running down to Tchersky in it. He knew the administrative building, and parked outside. He found the medical centre, and presented himself at the enquiry window.
‘Khodyan,’ he said to the woman clerk who answered the buzzer, ‘I was told to be here at four.’
‘For what?’
‘I’m a new driver with the transport company.’ He handed in the card he had been given. ‘You were getting my papers.’
She had a look at the card. ‘Oh yes. Khodyan. We have to update you. Just a minute, I’ll get them.’
He looked at the two other clerks at work in the room while she went out, and presently she was back and letting him in. ‘Yes. Come through,’ she said, and he followed her through the room and into a corridor, and into another room. ‘Khodyan,’ she said, and left him.
Medical Officer Komarova was in the room, writing at a desk. She was in her white hospital coat. She glanced up briefly. ‘Please sit down,’ she said.
He did so, after a small jolt.
‘I thought you wouldn’t be here,’ he said.
‘I thought so, too. Work.’ She continued writing for a few moments and then screwed the top back on an old-fashioned fountain pen. She drew a dossier towards her.
‘You had rheumatic fever at age twelve,’ she said.
‘Very slight. If I even had it at all.’ He flashed his smile.
‘Diagnosed at Anadyr. Streptococcal infection.’
‘But at Novosibirsk, not. There everything fine. All checked out. Nothing wrong with me.’
She read further. ‘Yes. What were you doing at Novosibirsk?’
‘My father was a teacher, without a degree. Nothing doing for our people then at Anadyr. We went to Novosibirsk and he got one.’
‘I see. And then the family went back?’
‘No. They like Novosibirsk.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t. I just knock about — no student. For me is better up here.’
‘Where did you learn your — Russian?’
‘Everywhere. Is not very good, I know.’
‘Better than my Chukchee,’ she said. She said it in Chukchee and his smile flashed wider.
This tough and knowing cow knew something. What? The faint smile was there again, elusive, slightly mocking. If she had Chukchee, she had mixed with Chukchees. Did she know he wasn’t one? He couldn’t make her out. She looked different every time he saw her. In the hospital, the cool doctor; at Bukarovsky’s banquet the stern suited spectre; at the road station the gamin in the cap; here, calmly managerial. Yet the same face — pale, thin-nosed, vaguely anaemic. No lipstick or makeup. The hair blondeish, severely drawn back; not remarkable. Nothing about her was remarkable, except the air of pale competence. Was she forty, thirty? Impossible to say. The grey eyes were looking him over.
‘Are you pure Chukchee?’
‘I don’t know how pure I am. I’m Chukchee.’ He allowed a spurt of temper to show as he said this, and she looked down at his dossier again.
‘There’s nothing further we should know about, here?’
‘Nothing.’
‘All right. Let’s have a look at you. Strip off over there. There’s a bench.’
His mouth opened, but she had risen immediately and was washing her hands at a basin. The bench was behind a plastic curtain. He took his boots off, then closed the curtain and took everything off down to his socks and shorts.
‘I’ll need to see your feet,’ she said, briskly parting the curtain.
‘My feet? My feet are fine.’
‘Have you had frostbite ever?’
‘No, never.’
‘Show me.’
He took his socks off, and she closely inspected the feet. ‘Yes. Good. A fine instep — all you northern people have it. Now the shorts.’
‘My shorts? What —’
‘I will examine your testicles.’
He silently removed the shorts and she examined the testicles.
‘Cough.’ He coughed.
‘Again.’ Again.
‘Yes.’ She examined further in the area, and then his abdomen, ribs, arms, armpits, mouth, ears, eyes, head.
‘The head. Have you had alopecia?’
‘I had delayed shock, after an accident. All the hair fell out.’
‘This has been shaved recently.’
‘I shave it. You don’t like it this way?’
She made no comment, adjusting her stethoscope. She listened to his chest. She listened to his back. She listened to his chest again.
‘Well, I think Anadyr was right,’ she said, ‘and Novosibirsk wrong. You have a murmur.’
‘A murmur?’ He had no murmur. Khodyan might have one, but he didn’t. ‘What murmur?’
‘The streptococcal infection had an effect on the heart. Very slight, but it’s there. You can get dressed now.’
He got dressed, thinking this over. What was going on here? He absolutely had no murmur. He had been checked out thoroughly at the camp. He went out of the cubicle, very wary.
‘I can’t recommend that you drive long distances,’ she said. She was writing again, and nodded to him to sit. ‘It’s dangerous, for you and for others.’
‘But I’m a driver!’
‘You are entitled to a cardiological examination. I will arrange it for you at the hospital if you wish. But for the present, no long journeys.’
‘Then what will I do?’
‘Are they so important to you, long journeys?’ She had glanced up quickly as she said this.
‘Well.’ He had seen the advantages at once: a word from her and no more of Yura’s Kamas. But what was her game? ‘It’s my work,’ he said.
‘You can do other work, short journeys. That I will allow. After a rest. You are quite tired. I am authorising a week off work for you. Hand this in to the office there.’
He stared blankly at the form she gave him.
‘A few days’ rest isn’t a punishment,’ she said, the faint smile appearing again. ‘You have friends here, I believe.’
‘Yes, friends.’
‘But not Chukchee — is that it?’
‘No. No Chukchees here,’ he said with more confidence.
‘Oh, but there are. At Novokolymsk, the collective. You haven’t been there yet?’
‘No.’ Chukchees there, too? It must be a collective for all the native peoples.
‘And even nearer at hand — at Panarovka, this side of the river. I go there tomorrow. It should have been today. If you want I’ll take you. Then you can talk Chukchee.’ There was now — was he wrong? — something taunting in her expression.
His smile easily outshone hers. ‘I would like that! Thank you.’
‘All right. I have a few things to do at Green Cape. Be outside your building at eleven and I can pick you up. I have to stay overnight, but there’s accommodation for you, too. Bring what you need — pyjamas, toothbrush. A razor,’ she said, looking at his head.
He went out in a daze.
In the bobik, he saw it was a quarter past six. He’d missed Vassili; the Light Vehicles depot would be shut. But there was more urgent and serious business here. She knew something. The inch-by-inch examination of him. She had examined him before … She knew.
But had she told anyone else? So far as he could tell he hadn’t been watched. Perhaps she hadn’t been sure until now; perhaps was still not sure. But tomorrow she would be sure. The Yukagir had not thought him a Yukagir, or the Evenks an Evenk. Was he any more likely to fool the Chukchees? … Perhaps with Khodyan’s screwed-up background — Anadyr, Novosibirsk, here, there — he might just swing it.