Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

no other doctors of any kind. There aren’t any laboratories either. It’s impossible to get a blood test done. I had a blood count. It turned out to be sixty, and no one knew a thing about it.”
    â€œGod, what a nightmare! And then you take it upon yourself to decide whether you should be treated or not. If you haven’t any pity for yourself at least have some for your family and your children.”
    â€œChildren?” It was as if Kostoglotov had suddenly come to, as if the whole gay tug-of-war with the book had been a dream and he was now returning to his normal self, with his hard face and his slow way of speaking. “I haven’t any children.”
    â€œAnd your wife, isn’t she a human being?”
    His speech was even slower now.
    â€œNo wife either.”
    â€œMen always say they’ve got no wife. Then what about those family affairs that you had to put in order? What was it you told the Korean?”
    â€œI told him a lie.”
    â€œHow do I know you’re not lying to me now?”
    â€œI’m not, I swear it.” Kostoglotov’s face was growing grave. “It’s just that I’m a choosy sort of person.”
    â€œI suppose she couldn’t stand your personality?” Zoya nodded sympathetically.
    Kostoglotov shook his head very slowly. “There never was a wife—ever.”
    Zoya tried unsuccessfully to work out his age. She moved her lips once, but decided not to put the question. She moved them again, and again did not ask it.
    Zoya was sitting with her back to Sibgatov, and Kostoglotov was facing him. He saw him haul himself gingerly out of the little bath, clasp both hands to the small of his back and stand there to dry. His face was that of a man who had suffered all he could. Acute misery lay behind him now, but there was nothing to lure him on toward happiness.
    Kostoglotov breathed in and then out, as if respiration was his whole job in life.
    â€œI’m dying for a smoke! Couldn’t I possibly…”
    â€œCertainly not. For you smoking means death.”
    â€œNot in any circumstances?”
    â€œIn no circumstances, especially not in front of me.” All the same, she smiled.
    â€œPerhaps I could have just one?”
    â€œThe patients are asleep; how can you?”
    However, he pulled out a long, empty cigarette holder, hand-made and encrusted with stones, and began to suck it.
    â€œYou know what they say: a young man’s too young to get married, and an old man’s too old.” He leaned both elbows on her table and ran his fingers with the cigarette holder through his hair. “I nearly got married after the war, though. I was a student and so was she. I wouldn’t have minded getting married, but everything went wrong.”
    Zoya scrutinized Kostoglotov’s face. It didn’t look very friendly, but it was strong. Those raw-boned arms and shoulders … but that was the disease.
    â€œDidn’t it work itself out?”
    â€œShe … How does one say it?… She perished.” He closed one eye in a crooked grimace and stared hard with the other. “She perished, although in fact she’s still alive. Last year we wrote to each other a couple of times.”
    He opened his other eye. He saw the cigarette holder between his fingers and put it back into his pocket.
    â€œAnd, you know, there were some sentences in those letters that set me thinking: was she really as perfect as she seemed to me then? Perhaps she wasn’t. What can we possibly understand when we’re twenty-five?” His dark-brown eyes looked steadily at Zoya. “You, for instance, what do you understand now about men? Not a damn thing!”
    Zoya burst out laughing. “Maybe I understand them very well!”
    â€œThat would be quite impossible,” Kostoglotov decreed. “What you call understanding isn’t understanding at all. You’ll get married and you’ll