Wearing another man's black overcoat with a torn lining and a pair of strange black trousers Alexei Turbin lay motionless on the divan below the clock. His face was pale, with a bluish pallor, and his teeth were clenched. Elena was fussing around him, her dressing-gown untied and showing her black stockings and lace-trimmed underwear. She was tugging at her brother's arms and at the buttons on his chest and shouting: 'Nik! Nik!'
Within three minutes, a student's cap crammed on to the back of his head and his grey overcoat flapping open, Nikolka was running up St Alexei's Hill, panting hard and muttering: 'What if he's not at home? And this extraordinary creature in the jockey's boots has to turn up at a moment like this! It's out of the question to call on Dr Kuritsky after Alexei laughed at him for speaking Ukrainian . . .'
An hour later a bowl was standing on the dining-room floor, full of red-stained water, scraps of red bandage lay scattered among fragments of broken crockery which the stranger in the yellow-topped boots had knocked down from the sideboard while fetching a glass. Everybody walked back and forth on the broken pieces, crunching them underfoot. Still pale but no longer looking blue, Alexei still lay on his back, his head on a cushion. He had recovered consciousness and was trying to say something, but the doctor, a man with a pointed beard with rolled-up sleeves and a pince-nez said as he wiped his bloodstained hands:
'Be quiet, doctor . . .'
Anyuta, the color of chalk and wide-eyed, and Elena, her red hair dishevelled, were lifting Alexei to take off his wet, bloodstained shirt with a torn sleeve.
'Cut it off him, it's ruined anyway', said the bearded doctor.
They cut up Alexei's shirt with scissors and took it off in shreds, baring his thin yellowish body and his left arm freshly bandaged up to the shoulder. The ends of splints protruded above and
below the bandaging. Nikolka knelt down carefully undoing Alexei's buttons, and removed his trousers.
'Undress him completely and straight into bed', said the pointed beard in his bass voice. Anyuta poured water from a jug on to his hands and blobs of lather fell into the bowl as he washed. The stranger stood aside from the confusion and bustle, at one moment gazing unhappily at the broken plates, at the next blushing as he looked at the dishevelled Elena who had ceased to care that her dressing-gown was completely undone. The stranger's eyes were wet with tears.
They all helped to carry Alexei from the dining-room into his bedroom, and in this the stranger took part: he linked his hands under Alexei's knees and carried his legs.
In the drawing-room Elena offered the doctor money. He pushed it aside. 'No really, for heaven's sake,' he said, 'not from a colleague. But there's a much more serious problem. The fact is, he ought to go into hospital . . .'
'No,' came Alexei's weak voice, 'impossible. Not into hosp . . .'
'Be quiet, doctor. We shall manage quite well without you. Yes, of course, I understand the situation perfectly well. . . God knows what's going on in the City at the moment . . .' He nodded towards the window. 'He's probably right, I suppose, hospital's out of the question at the moment. . . All right then, he'll have to be treated at home. I'll come again this evening.'
'Is he in danger, doctor?' asked Elena anxiously.
The doctor stared at the parquet floor as though a diagnosis were imprisoned in the bright yellow wood, grunted and replied, twisting his beard:
'The bone is not fractured . . . H'm . . . major blood-vessels intact . . . the nerve too . . . But it's bound to fester . . . strands of wool from the overcoat have entered the wound . . . Temperature . . .' Having delivered himself of these cryptic scraps of thought, the doctor raised his voice and said confidently: 'Complete rest, . . . Morphia if he's in pain. I will give him an injection this evening. Food - liquids, bouillon and so on . . . He mustn't talk too much . . .'
'Doctor, doctor, please - one thing: he begs you not to talk to anyone about this . . .'
The doctor glowered sidelong at Elena and muttered:
'Yes, I understand . . . How did it happen?'
Elena only gave a restrained sigh and spread her hands.
'All right', growled the doctor and sidled, bear-like, out into the lobby.
Twelve
In Alexei's small bedroom dark-colored blinds had been pulled down on the two windows that gave on to the glazed verandah. Twilight filled the room. Elena's golden-red hair seemed a source of light, echoed by another white blur on the pillow - Alexei's face and neck. The wire from the plug snaked its way to a chair, where the pink-shaded lamp shone and turned day into night. Alexei signed to Elena to shut the door.
'Warn Anyuta not to talk about me . . .'
'I know, I know . . . Try not to talk too much, Alyosha.'
'Yes . . . I'm only whispering . . . God, if I lose my arm!'
'Now, Alyosha, lie still and be quiet . . . Shall we keep that woman's overcoat here for a while?'
'Yes, Nikolka mustn't try and take it back to her. Otherwise something might happen to him ... in the street. D'you hear? Whatever happens, for God's sake don't let him go out anywhere.'
'God bless her', Elena said with sincere tenderness. 'And they say there are no more good people in this world . . .'
A faint color rose in the wounded man's cheeks. He stared up at the low white ceiling then turned his gaze on Elena and said with a frown:
'Oh yes - and who, may I ask, is that block-head who has just appeared?'
Elena leaned forwards into the beam of pink light and shrugged.
'Well, this creature appeared at the front door no more than a
couple of minutes before you arrived. He's Sergei's nephew from Zhitomir. You've heard about him - Illarion Surzhansky . . . Well, this is the famous Lariosik, as he's known in the family.'
'Well?'
'Well, he came to us with a letter. There's been some drama. He'd only just started to tell me about it when she brought you here.'
'He seems to have some sort of bird, for God's sake.'
Laughing, but with a look of horror in her eyes, Elena leaned towards the bed:
'The bird's nothing! He's asking to live here. I really don't know what to do.'
'Live here?'
'Well, yes . . . Just be quiet and lie still, please Alyosha. His mother has written begging us to have him. She simply worships him. I've never seen such a clumsy idiot as this Lariosik in my life. The first thing he did when he got here was to smash all our china. The blue dinner service. Now there are only two plates of it left.'
'I see. I don't know what to suggest . . .'
For a long time they whispered in the pink-shadowed room. The distant voices of Nikolka and the unexpected visitor could be heard through closed doors. Elena wrung her hands, begging Alexei to talk less. From the dining-room came a tinkling sound as Anyuta angrily swept up the remains of the blue dinner service. Finally they came to a whispered decision. In view of the uncertainty of life in the City from now on and the likelihood of rooms being requisitioned, and because they had no money and Lariosik's mother would be paying for him, they would let him stay, but on condition that he observed the rules of behaviour of the Turbin household. The bird would be put on probation. If it proved unbearable having the bird in the house, they would demand its removal and its owner could stay. As for the smashed dinner service, since Elena could naturally not bring herself to complain about it, and to complain would in any case be insufferably vulgar and rude, they agreed to consign it to tacit oblivion. Lariosik could
sleep in the library, where they would put in a bed with a sprung mattress and a table.
Elena went into the dining-room. Lariosik was standing in a mournful pose, hanging his head and staring at the place on the sideboard where a pile of twelve plates had once stood. His cloudy blue eyes expressed utter remorse. Nikolka, with his mouth open and a look of intense curiosity, stood facing Lariosik and listening to him.