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.