“Comrade Lokhankin,” said the dumbfounded Ptiburdukov, grabbing his mustache again.
“Go, go away, I truly do abhor you,” continued Basilius, rocking like an old Jew at prayer, “you are a lout, sad and ghastly too.
An engineer you’re not—you are a scoundrel, a lowly creep, a pimp, and bastard too!”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Basilius Andreevich,” said Ptiburdukov, who was getting tired of all this. “It’s foolish, plain and simple.
Look what you’re doing!
In the second year of the Five-Year Plan . . .”
“He dares tell me that I’m acting foolish!
He, he, the one who stole my wife away!
Go now, Ptiburdukov, or else a thrashing, that is, a beating, I will give to thee!”
“A sick man,” said Ptiburdukov, trying to stay within the confines of decency.
For Barbara, however, these confines were too tight.
She grabbed the dried-up green sandwich from the table and approached the hunger striker again.
Lokhankin defended himself desperately, as if he was about to be castrated.
Ptiburdukov turned away and looked through the window at the horse chestnut that was blooming with white candles.
Behind him he heard Lokhankin’s disgusting bellowing and Barbara’s cries:
“Eat, you nasty man!
Eat, you slave-master!”
The next day, Barbara didn’t go to work because she was too upset about this unexpected obstacle.
The hunger striker turned for the worse.
“I already have stomach cramps,” he reported with satisfaction, “then comes scurvy due to malnutrition, the hair and teeth start falling out.”
Ptiburdukov brought in his brother, an army doctor.
Ptiburdukov the second held his ear to Lokhankin’s torso for a long time and listened to the functioning of his organs with the concentration of a cat listening to a mouse that had snuck into a sugar bowl.
During the examination, Basilius stared at his naked chest, shaggy like a woolen overcoat, his eyes full of tears.
He felt very sorry for himself.
Ptiburdukov the second looked at Ptiburdukov the first and reported that the patient had no need to follow a diet.
He could eat everything: for example, soup, meat patties, fruit drinks.
Bread, vegetables, and fresh fruit were also allowed.
Fish was permitted.
Smoking was fine—within reason, of course.
Drinking was not recommended, but in order to boost the appetite, it might be a good idea to introduce a small glass of nice port into his system.
In other words, the doctor hadn’t quite grasped the Lokhankins’ drama.
Puffing self-importantly and stomping with his boots, he departed, his final piece of advice being that the patient could also swim in the sea and ride a bicycle.
But the patient had no intention of introducing any fruit, fish, meat, or other delicacies into his system.
He didn’t want to go to the beach for a swim. Instead, he continued to lie on the couch and shower those around him with spiteful pentameters.
Barbara started feeling sorry for him.
“He’s starving because of me,” she thought proudly, “what remarkable passion.
Is Sasha capable of such powerful feelings?” And she kept glancing anxiously at the well-fed Sasha, who looked like no romantic drama would stop him from introducing lunches and dinners into his system on a regular basis.
Once, when Ptiburdukov stepped out, she even called Basilius “poor dear.”
With that, a sandwich once again appeared at the hunger striker’s lips, and was once again rejected.
“A little more endurance,” he thought to himself, “and Ptiburdukov can kiss my Barbara goodbye.”
He listened to the voices from the other room with satisfaction.
“He’ll die without me,” Barbara was saying. “We’re going to have to wait.
Don’t you see that I can’t leave him right now?”
That night, Barbara had a bad dream.
Basilius, emaciated by his powerful feelings, gnawed on the silver-colored spurs that the army doctor wore on his boots.
It was terrifying.
The doctor’s face expressed the same resignation as a cow who was being milked by the village thief.
The spurs banged, the teeth chattered.
Barbara woke up in horror.
A yellow Japanese sun was shining directly into the room, wasting all its power on illuminating such trifles as the cut-glass stopper from a Turandot toilet water bottle.