In “The District Doctor,” which is appended in a new translation, we find a fuller and even more characteristic specimen of Turgenev’s story-telling. Both reveal the warm heart of the great man, and his unfailing sympathy, which his own painful despair was never allowed to suppress.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] From “A Sportman’s Sketches.”
THE DISTRICT DOCTOR
By Ivan Turgenev
Returning from a distant field one autumn day, I fell ill with a bad cold. Luckily for me, the fever caught me in the district town, in a hotel. I sent for the doctor. After a half-hour, the district physician appeared—a dark, meagre little man. He prescribed the customary sudorific and a mustard-plaster; and dexterously inserting into his cuff my five-ruble note—coughing dryly and glancing sideways as he did so—he was about to depart, but somehow began to talk and remained. The fever made me restless; anticipating a sleepless night, I was glad to have some one to chat with. Tea was brought in. The doctor was in a conversational mood. He was not a bad fellow, and expressed himself well and divertingly. How strange it is with men! You have known one for a long time and are intimate with him, yet not once have you ventured to talk with him frankly, from your very soul; another you have hardly become acquainted with, and yet—either you tell him or else he tells you, as if in confessional, his very inmost thoughts. I do not know how I earned the confidence of my new acquaintance; but he somehow or other “got started,” as they say, and told me a really remarkable tale, which I present here to the sympathetic reader. I shall try to express the story in the doctor’s own words.
“You don’t know,” he began in a faltering, trembling voice (such is the effect of the unmixed Berezovsk snuff)—“you don’t know the judge of this place, Pavel Luikich Muilov?... No?... Well, it doesn’t matter.” The doctor coughed and wiped his eyes. “Any way, to be exact, it happened during Lent, in the thaw season. I was sitting in the judge’s house, playing ‘preference.’ Our judge is a good fellow, and loves to play the game. Suddenly”—the doctor employed the word suddenly often—“I was informed that some one came for me. ‘What does he want?’ I asked. ‘It’s some one with a note; it must be from a sick person.’ I read the note, and, sure enough, it was from some one ill.... Well, all right—that, you see, is my bread.... The note was from a widow, and here was the case as she put it:
“My daughter is dying; come at once, for God’s sake! I am sending the horses to fetch you.”
“But that was not all.... Her house was some twenty versts from town; a black night outdoors, and the roads simply mean! She was as poor as a mouse, too. ‘Lucky,’ I thought, ‘if I get two rubles.’ Still, duty before everything—you can’t let a person die! Suddenly I handed over my cards to Councillor Kalliopin, and started for home. To be sure, there was a coach waiting for me near the porch; and a couple of working horses, very big-bellied, and with hides like felt; the driver, out of respect, was sitting with his hat off. ‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘it’s plain to be seen your masters haven’t got much gold.’... You may laugh, but here is a fact worth considering.... When the driver sits like a prince, and keeps his cap on his head, and even laughs under his beard, and flourishes his whip—you may count on a couple of bank-notes! But this, you could see, was an altogether different matter. Still, there was no way out of it; duty before everything. Quickly I collected my most indispensable medicines, and off I went.
“Believe me, I don’t see how I got there. A wretched road, puddles, snow, mud, ruts, suddenly a dam burst somewhere—misery, in short! Any way, I got there. It was a small, thatched-roofed house. There was a light in the windows. It meant they were awaiting me. I was met by a little old lady, very dignified-looking, in a cap. ‘Save her!’ she cried. ‘She is dying!’ ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ I told her, and asked to be shown the patient.... ‘This way, please!’