'Have you already had treatment?'
'Yes, but the treatment was bad and ineffective.
It didn't help much.'
'Who sent you to me?'
'The vicar of St Nicholas' Church, Father Alexander.'
'What?'
'Father Alexander.'
'You mean you know him?'
'I have been saying confession to him, and what the saintly old man has had to say to me has brought me great relief, explained the visitor, staring out at the sky. 'I didn't need treatment.
Or so I thought.
I should have patiently borne this trial visited upon me by God for my terrible sin, but the father persuaded me that my reasoning was false.
And I have obeyed him.'
Alexei gazed intently into the patient's pupils and began by testing his reflexes.
But the pupils of the owner of the mohair coat seemed to be normal, except that they were filled with a profound, black sadness.
'Well, now', said Alexei as he put down his little hammer. 'You are obviously a religious man.'
'Yes, I think about God night and day.
He is my only refuge and comforter.'
'That is very good, of course,' said Alexei, without taking his gaze from the patient's eyes, 'and I respect your views, but this is ray advice to you: while you are undergoing treatment, give up thinking so hard about God.
The fact is that in your case it is beginning to develop into an idee fixe.
And in your condition that's harmful.
You need fresh air, exercise and sleep.'
'I pray at night.'
'No, you must change that.
You must reduce the time you spend praying.
It will fatigue you, and you need rest.'
The patient lowered his eyes in obedience.
He stood naked in front of Alexei and submitted himself to examination.
'Have you been taking cocaine?'
'That too was one of the degrading sins in which I indulged.
But I don't do it any longer.'
'God knows ... he may turn out to be a fraud and a thief . . . malingering. I'll have to make sure there are no fur coats missing from the lobby when he leaves.'
Alexei drew a question mark on the patient's chest with the handle of his hammer.
The white mark turned red.
'Stop this obsession with religion.
In fact, give up thinking about things that are painful or disturbing.
Get dressed.
From tomorrow I shall start you on a course of mercury injections, then after a week I shall give you the first transfusion.'
'Very well, doctor.'
'No cocaine.
No alcohol.
And no women, either . . .'
'I have given up women and intoxicants.
And I shun the company of evil men', said the patient as he buttoned up his shirt. 'The evil genius of my life, the forerunner of the Antichrist, has departed for the city of the devil.'
'My dear fellow, stop it,' Alexei groaned, 'or you'll end up in a psychiatric clinic.
Who is this Antichrist you're talking about?'
'I'm talking about his precursor, Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky, a man with the eyes of a snake and black sideburns.
He has gone away to Moscow, to the kingdom of the Antichrist, to give the signal for a horde of fallen angels to descend on this City in punishment for the sins of its inhabitants.
Just as once Sodom and Gomorrah . . .'
'By fallen angels I suppose you mean Bolsheviks?
Agreed.