1

Clever people have long been aware that happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don’t notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!

For myself I realise now that I was happy in that winter of 1917, that headlong, never-to-be-forgotten year of storm and blizzard.

The first blast of the snowstorm snatched me up like a scrap of torn newspaper and transported me from a practice in the depths of the countryside to the town. What, you may wonder, is so special about a country town? If like me you have ever spent the winters snowbound and the summers deep in a landscape of sparse, monotonous woodland, without a single day off in more than a year; if you have ever torn the wrapper off last week’s newspaper with your heart beating as though you were a lover joyfully ripping open a pale blue envelope; if you have ever driven twelve miles in a tandem-harnessed sleigh to a woman in labour, then you may realise what the town meant to me.

Kerosene lamps may be very cosy, but I prefer electricity.

And there they were again at last, those seductive little electric lights! The main street of the little town, the snow well flattened by the runners of peasants’ sleighs, was hung with red flags and shop signs that entranced the eye: a boot; a golden pretzel; a picture of a young man with insolent, pig-like eyes and a wholly unnatural haircut, signifying that behind those glass doors was the local Figaro, who for thirty kopecks was prepared to shave you at any hour of the day—except on holidays, in which this land of ours abounds.

To this day I shudder when I recall that Figaro’s towels, which reminded me forcibly of a page in my German textbook of skin diseases, illustrating with appalling clarity a growth of hard chancre on a man’s chin.

But even those towels cannot spoil my happy memories!

At the crossroads stood a real, live policeman, in a dusty shop window one could just make out tin trays packed with rows of cakes topped with orange cream. The square was carpeted with fresh straw, people were driving, walking about and chatting; there was a kiosk selling yesterday’s Moscow papers full of thrilling news, and from not far away came the sound of Moscow-bound trains hooting to one another. In short, this was civilisation, Babylon, the Nevsky Prospekt.

The hospital, I need hardly add, boasted separate surgical, medical, isolation and maternity departments. There was an operating theatre with a gleaming autoclave, plated taps and operating tables with ingeniously designed flaps, cogwheels and screws. It had a Medical Superintendent, three interns (beside myself), several feldshers, midwives, nurses, a dispensary and a laboratory. Just think—a laboratory, complete with a Zeiss microscope and a fine assortment of stains.

All this impressed me so much that I would shudder and turn cold. It took me several days to get used to it when, in the December twilight, the hospital’s single-storey wards would blaze with electric light as though at a word of command.

I was dazzled. Water splashed and roared in the bathtubs, and worn wooden-cased thermometers plunged or floated in them. All day long the children’s isolation ward reverberated with moans, thin plaintive weeping and hoarse gurgles. Nurses darted to and fro.

I had shed a heavy burden. I no longer bore the godlike responsibility for everything that happened in the world. It was not my fault if someone developed a strangulated hernia, and I did not shudder when a sleigh drove up bringing a woman with a transverse foetus, a case of epyema requiring operation was no longer my affair. For the first time I felt that there was a limit to my responsibilities. Childbirth? Over there, please, to that low building—the furthest window with the net curtains; there you’ll find our obstetrician, a charming, fat, balding man with a ginger moustache. That’s his business. The sleigh makes for the curtained window. A compound fracture? You want our chief surgeon. Inflammation of the lungs? Go and see Pavel Vladimirovich in the medical department.

Oh, what a splendid thing a large hospital is, with its smooth, well-oiled machinery! I fitted into the mechanism like a new screw dropping into its appointed slot and took over the children’s department; from then on my days were wholly taken up with diphtheria and scarlet fever. But only my days. I started sleeping at night, undisturbed by that ominous nocturnal tapping downstairs, which meant that I was likely to be roused and dragged out into the darkness to face danger or whatever fate had in store. I took to reading in the evenings (chiefly about diphtheria and scarlet fever, but I also developed an odd addiction to Fenimore Cooper). I appreciated to the full the electric light over my desk, the charred ash that dropped down on to the tray of my samovar, my cooling tea, and the chance to sleep after many sleepless months.

So I was happy in that winter of 1917, after my transfer to that town from a remote, snow-swept country practice.

2

One month flew by, then another, and a third. 1917 receded and February 1918 began. I got used to my new life and gradually began to forget my far-off practice. The hissing, green-shaded kerosene lamp, the loneliness and the snowdrifts became just a blurred memory. Ungrateful as I am, I forgot about my front-line post, where alone and without the least support I had relied on my own resources to fight disease and extricate myself from the most hair-raising situations, like a Fenimore Cooper hero.

Now and again, I must admit, when I went to bed with the pleasant thought that I would shortly fall asleep, fragments of recollection would pass through my fading consciousness. A green flash, a flickering lantern, the creak of sleigh-runners … a moan and then darkness, the muffled howl of a snowstorm … then the memory would turn head over heels and vanish into oblivion.

‘I wonder who’s in that job now? A young man like me, I suppose. Ah well, I did my stint, Muryovo and then Gorelovo hospital … February, March, April and, let’s say, May as well—and I will have finished my probationary period. So I shall leave this splendid town at the end of May and return to Moscow. And if the revolution calls me to its service, I may yet have some more travelling to do … but at all events I shall never see my country practice again … Never again … Moscow … a clinic … asphalt, the bright lights …’

Such were my thoughts.

‘Still, it’s a good thing that I spent some time out there in the wilds. It taught me to be brave and nothing frightens me now … Is there anything I haven’t treated—literally anything? I didn’t have any psychiatric cases … or did I? No, that’s right … there was the farm manager who was drinking himself to death. I made rather a mess of treating him, though … delirium … Surely that’s a mental illness? I really ought to read up some psychiatry … still, what the hell … maybe later, in Moscow. Right now children’s diseases are my main concern, and especially the wearisome business of prescribing for children. Hell, if a child’s ten years old, for instance, how big a dose of aminopyrine can I give him? Is it 0.1 or 0.15 grammes? I’ve forgotten. And if he’s three? There are quite enough hideous, unforeseen problems in paediatrics alone, so it’s goodbye to my old general practice. But why does that place keep creeping back into my mind so insistently this evening? The green lamp … After all, I’m finished with it for the rest of my days … well, that’s enough of that … time for sleep.’

* * * * *

‘Letter for you. Someone who happened to come into town brought it.’

‘Let’s have it.’

The nurse was standing in my hallway. An overcoat with a moth-eaten collar was thrown over her white overall with its hospital badge. Snow was melting on the cheap blue envelope.

‘Are you on duty in Casualty Reception?’ I asked, yawning.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Anyone there?’

‘No, it’s empty.’

‘If any cashesh come in …’ (I was yawning so hard my pronunciation was sloppy) ‘come and let me know. I’m going to sleep …’

‘Yes, doctor. Can I go now?’

‘Yes, yes. Off you go.’

She went out. The door squeaked, and I shuffled into the bedroom in my slippers, clumsily tearing open the envelope as I went. It contained a crumpled oblong prescription form stamped with the address of my old country practice … that unforgettable letterhead.

I smiled.

‘That’s interesting … I’ve been thinking about the place all evening and now this turns up … must have had a premonition …’

Beneath the letterhead a prescription was written in indelible pencil. Some of the Latin words were illegible, others crossed out.

‘What’s this? Some prescription gone astray?’ I muttered, then stared at the word ‘morphini’. ‘Well, what’s so unusual about this prescription? Ah, yes … a four-percent solution! Who’s been prescribing a four-per-cent solution of morphine? And what for?’

I turned the sheet over. On the reverse side was a letter, written in small spidery handwriting:

11th February 1918.
Dear Colleague,
Forgive me for writing on this old scrap. There’s no proper paper at hand. I have fallen seriously ill with something unpleasant. There’s no one to help me, and in any case I don’t want to ask help of anyone except you.
This is my second month in your old practice, and I know that you are in town and not too far away from me.
On the strength of our friendship at university, I implore you to come and see me as soon as you can—if only for a day, or even an hour. And if you tell me I’m a hopeless case, then I’ll believe you. Or perhaps I can still be saved? Perhaps there’s still a ray of hope? I beg you to tell no one about the contents of this letter.
Ever yours,
Sergei Polyakov.

‘Maria! Go down to casualty at once and fetch me the nurse on duty. What’s her name? I forget … I mean the one who gave me this letter just now. Hurry.’

‘Very good, doctor.’

A few minutes later the nurse was standing in front of me, wet snow on the moulting cat fur that had been used for the collar of her coat.

‘Who brought this letter?’

‘I don’t know who he was. A man with a beard. Said he worked for the co-op and was in town on business.’

‘Hmm … all right, you can go now. No, wait. I’ll just write a note to the Medical Superintendent. Would you take it to him, please, and bring his answer back?’

‘All right.’

This is what I wrote to the Medical Superintendent:

13th February 1918.
Dear Pavel Illarionovich,
I have just received a letter from my university friend, Doctor Polyakov. He is working in my previous country practice at Gorelovo, where he is completely alone. He appears to be seriously ill. I think it is my duty to go and see him. With your permission I should like to hand over the dept. to Doctor Rodovich for the day tomorrow and drive out to Polyakov. He has no one else to turn to.
Yours,
Dr Bomgard.

The Medical Superintendent replied:

Dear Vladimir Mikhailovich,
Go.

I spent that evening poring over the railway timetable. The way to reach Gorelovo was as follows: to catch the Moscow mail train at 2 p.m. the following afternoon, travel twenty miles by rail, get off at N. station, and then cover the remaining sixteen miles to Gorelovo hospital by sleigh.

‘With luck I should be in Gorelovo tomorrow night,’ I reflected as I lay in bed. ‘What’s the matter with him, I wonder? Typhus? Pneumonia? Neither, I should think … because if so, he would simply have written: “I have caught pneumonia”. His letter was too vague, even faintly evasive. “Seriously ill … something unpleasant …”

‘What could that mean? Syphilis? Yes, no doubt about it, syphilis. He’s appalled, he’s concealing it, and he’s afraid. But who, I’d like to know, am I going to find to drive me to Gorelovo? It would be just my luck to get to the station at nightfall and find there’s no one to take me. No, no, I’ll find a way. I’ll find someone at the station who has some horses. Should I send him a telegram asking to be met at the station? No use. The telegram won’t reach him until the day after I get there. It can’t fly to Gorelovo. It would sit at the station until someone was driving out that way. I know that place. What a godforsaken hole!’

The letter on the prescription form lay on my bedside table in the circle of light shed by the lamp, beside it an ashtray bristling with cigarette ends, the outward sign of nagging insomnia. As I tossed about on the crumpled sheet, irritation began to get the better of me, and I started to resent the letter.

After all, if it was nothing worse than, say, syphilis, why didn’t he come here himself? Why must I dash through a blizzard to go and see him? Was I supposed to cure him of syphilis or cancer of the aesophagus in one evening? Anyway how could he have cancer? He was two years younger than myself. He was 24 … ‘Seriously ill’. Sarcoma? It was an absurd, hysterical letter, enough to give the recipient migraine. There, it was starting: the nerve on my temple was starting to twitch; I would wake up in the morning to find that the tension in that nerve had moved to the crown of my head, half my head would feel as if it were clamped in a vice, and I would have to take pyramidon and caffeine. And where would I find pyramidon on a sleigh journey? I should have to borrow one of the hospital’s travelling fur coats; I would freeze to death in my own overcoat. What can be the matter with him? ‘… still a ray of hope’, indeed! People write that sort of thing in novels, not in sober doctors’ letters! Must get to sleep … stop thinking about it. It will all be clear tomorrow … tomorrow.

I turned the switch and darkness instantly engulfed my room. Sleep … that nerve was twitching. But I had no right to be angry with the man for his stupid letter without knowing what the matter was. The man was suffering and he had written to someone else in the way he thought best. And it was unkind to slander him, even mentally, simply because one was worried or suffering from migraine. Perhaps his letter wasn’t dishonest or overdramatic at all. I had not seen Sergei Polyakov for two years, but I remembered him perfectly. He was always a very reasonable man. Yes, obviously some disaster had befallen him … And that nerve of mine was giving less trouble. Clearly I would be asleep soon. What was the mechanism of sleep? I had read about it once during my physiology course, but I had found it obscure. I didn’t really know what sleep was. How did the brain cells fall asleep? To be honest, I had no idea. And I was almost certain that the man who wrote that textbook wasn’t really very sure either. One theory is as good as another. There was Sergei Polyakov standing in his green medical student’s uniform tunic with brass buttons, bending over a zinc-topped table, and there was a corpse on the table.

Hmm, I must be dreaming …

3

TAP, TAP … BANG, BANG, BANG … AHA … Who’s that? What is it? … Someone’s knocking—hell … Where am I? What’s going on? Ah, yes, I’m lying in my bed … Why are they waking me up? They’re allowed to because I’m on call tonight. Wake up, Doctor Bomgard. Maria has just shuffled across the lobby to open the door. What’s the time? Half past midnight. That means I’ve only been asleep for an hour. How’s the migraine? Yes, it’s there all right.

A gentle knock at the door.

‘What is it?’

I slightly opened the door into the dining-room. A nurse’s face was looking at me from the dark and I could see at once that it was pale, her eyes wide open with anxiety.

‘Who’s been brought in?’

‘The doctor from the Gorelovo clinic,’ the nurse replied in a loud, hoarse voice. ‘He’s shot himself.’

‘Polyakov? Impossible! Polyakov?’

‘I don’t know his name.’

‘I see … all right, I’ll come at once. Run to the Medical Superintendent and wake him up this minute. Tell him I want him urgently in Casualty.’

The nurse rushed off, disappearing in a flash of white.

Two minutes later on the porch a wicked blizzard, dry and stinging, was lashing at my cheeks, lifting the skirts of my coat and freezing my startled body. An unsteady white light was flickering in Casualty Reception. In a swirl of snow on the porch I bumped into the Medical Superintendent, who was hastening in the same direction.

‘Is this your friend Polyakov?’ he asked, coughing.

‘Apparently so. I don’t understand it,’ I replied as we both hurried inside.

A woman, warmly wrapped up, rose from a bench to meet us. Her eyes, familiar but now tear-stained, gazed at me from under the edge of a red-brown shawl. I recognised her as Marya Vlasievna, a midwife from Gorelovo and my devoted assistant in the labour ward of the Gorelovo hospital.

‘Is it Polyakov?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Marya Vlasievna answered. ‘It was so awful, doctor. I was shaking with terror all the way in case I might not get here in time.’

‘When …?’

‘This morning at dawn,’ Marya Vlasievna muttered. ‘The night watchman came running and said he’d heard a shot from the doctor’s quarters.’

Under the flickering, inadequate light of the lamp lay Doctor Polyakov. As soon as I caught sight of the stonelike rigidity of his feet I instinctively winced.

They took off his hat, to reveal his hair sticking damply to his scalp. The nurse, Marya Vlasievna, and I set to work on Polyakov and a white gauze bandage, with its spreading yellow and red stains, was revealed beneath his overcoat. His chest rose and fell feebly. I felt his pulse and shivered: the pulse was fading beneath my touch, slowing to a mere flicker and breaking off, then reviving in a cluster of fast, unsteady beats. The surgeon’s hand had already reached for his shoulder and was pinching up a fold of pale skin to make a camphor injection. At that moment the wounded man unglued his mouth, revealing a pinkish trickle of blood on it, and with a faint movement of his bluish lips he said in a dry, weak voice:

‘To hell with camphor. Forget it.’

‘Shut up,’ the surgeon retorted, injecting the yellow oil beneath the skin.

The pericardium seems to be damaged,’ Marya Vlasievna whispered, clutching the edge of the table and staring at the wounded man’s smooth eyelids (his eyes were shut). Greyish-violet shadows, like the shadows cast at sunset, showed more and more clearly in the hollows around his nostrils, and a fine sweat, like droplets of mercury, was forming in the shadows.

‘Revolver?’ the surgeon asked, his cheek twitching.

‘Automatic.’ Marya Vlasievna mouthed the word.

‘Hell …’ the surgeon barked as if in angry frustration, made a brusque gesture and strode away.

I turned to him in alarm, not understanding. Another man’s eyes appeared for a moment behind the patient’s shoulder—a second doctor had come.

Suddenly Polyakov’s mouth twisted into a feeble grimace, like a sleepy person trying to blow a fly off his nose, and then his lower jaw began to move as though he was choking on a lump of food and was trying to swallow it. Anyone who has seen fatal gunshot wounds will be familiar with this movement. Marya Vlasievna frowned painfully and sighed.

‘I want … Doctor Bomgard,’ Polyakov said, almost inaudibly.

‘I’m here,’ I whispered softly, close to his lips.

‘The notebook’s for you …’ Polyakov muttered hoarsely and even more faintly.

With this he opened his eyes and raised them to the gloomy, shadowy ceiling. His dark pupils were lit by an inner light, the whites of his eyes seemed to grow translucent, bluish. His eyes turned upwards, then a film came over them and their momentary brightness faded.

Doctor Polyakov was dead.

4

Night. Nearly dawn. The lamp is burning very brightly because the town is asleep and there is only a light load on the electricity supply. Everything is silent. Polyakov’s body is lying in the chapel. Night.

My eyes are reddened from reading, and on the table in front of me lie an open envelope and a sheet of paper. The letter reads:

My dear friend,
I shall not wait for you. I have decided against treatment. It’s hopeless. And I don’t want to torment myself any longer. I have tried it long enough. I warn others to beware of the white crystals dissolved in 25 parts water. I relied on them too much and they have destroyed me. I bequeath you my diary. You have always struck me as a person of an enquiring nature and a connoisseur of human documents. If you are interested, read the story of my illness.
Farewell.
Ever yours, Sergei Polyakov.

There was a postscript in block capitals:

NO ONE IS TO BE BLAMED FOR MY DEATH.
Doctor S. Polyakov.
13th February, 1918.

Alongside the suicide note was an ordinary school exercise book in a black oilcloth cover. The first half of the pages had been torn out. In the remaining half was a series of jottings; at first they were in ink or pencil in small neat handwriting, then towards the end of the notebook they changed to indelible pencil or red crayon in an untidy, jerky hand and with many of the words abbreviated.

20th January 1917
… and a good thing too. The more remote the better, thank God. I don’t want to see people and here I shall see no one, apart from sick peasants, and I don’t suppose they are likely to open up my wound. The others, incidentally, have been assigned to practices quite as remote as mine. Our graduating year, not being liable for active service (second-line reservists of the 1916 class), has been posted to local government clinics all over the country. But who cares, anyway? Of my friends, I have only had news of Ivanov and Bomgard. Ivanov chose to go to Archangel Province (de gustibus) and Bomgard, so my woman feldsher tells me, is in some godforsaken spot three districts away from here, at Gorelovo. I thought of writing to him, but changed my mind. I don’t want to have anything to do with people.

21st January
Blizzard. Nothing else.

25th January
Brilliant sunset. Slight attack of migraine—mixture of aminopyrine, caffeine and citric acid, 1.0 gramme in powder form. Is it all right to take one gramme? Of course it is.

3rd February
Today I received last week’s newspapers. I didn’t read them, but couldn’t help looking at the theatre page all the same. Aida was on last week. That means she was walking on stage and singing: ‘Oh, my beloved, come to me …’
She has an extraordinary voice. How strange it is that such a clear powerful voice should belong to a woman with such a mean little soul …

(here there is a gap, where two or three pages have been torn out)

… of course, you’re being unreasonable, Doctor Polyakov. And what school-boyish idiocy to use so much filthy language on a woman because she left you! She didn’t want to go on living with you, so she went. That’s all. Very simple, really. An opera singer fell for a young doctor, lived with him for a year and then walked out.
Did I really want to kill her? Kill her? How stupid and pointless. Hopeless. I don’t want to think about it any more.

11th February
Perpetual blizzards … I’m sick of it. Alone every evening. I light the lamp and sit down. Of course I see people in the daytime, but I do my work mechanically. I’ve got used to the job, though. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. And having worked in a military hospital has proved to be very useful, because it meant that I wasn’t totally incompetent when I came to this place.
Today for the first time I performed the operation of turning a baby in the womb.
There are three of us here, buried under the snow: Anna Kirillovna, feldsher and midwife; the male feldsher, who is married; and myself. They live in an annexe. And I am on my own.

15th February
Last night an interesting thing happened. I was just going to bed when I suddenly felt pain in the region of my stomach. And what pain! I came out in a cold sweat. I must say that medicine as we know it is a most dubious science. Why, when someone has absolutely nothing wrong with his stomach or gut (such as appendicitis), when his liver and kidneys are in perfect shape, and his bowels are functioning perfectly normally, why should he be stricken one night with such pain that he starts to writhe all over the bed?
Groaning, I reached the kitchen, where the cook and her husband Vlas sleep. I sent Vlas for Anna Kirillovna. She came to my room and had to give me a morphine injection. She said I had turned quite green. From what?
I don’t like our feldsher. He’s unsociable, but Anna Kirillovna is very kind and intelligent. I am amazed that a woman like her, who is still young, can live completely alone in this snowbound tomb. Her husband is a prisoner of war in Germany.
I must give due praise to the man who first extracted morphine from poppyheads. He was a true benefactor of mankind. The pain stopped seven minutes after the injection. Interesting: the pain passed over me in ceaseless waves, so that I had to gasp for breath, as though a red-hot crowbar were being thrust into my stomach and rotated. Four minutes after the injection I was able to distinguish the wave-like nature of the pain.
It would be a good thing if a doctor were able to test many more drugs on himself. He would then have a completely different understanding of their effect. After the injection I slept soundly and well for the first time in months—and I forgot completely about the woman who deceived me.

16th February
During surgery today Anna Kirillovna enquired how I felt and said that this was the first time she had seen me without a frown on my face.
‘Do I frown?’
‘Very much,’ she replied firmly, adding that she had been struck by how taciturn I always was.
‘I’m that sort of person.’
But that was a lie. I had always been very cheerful before my disastrous love affair.
Dusk has set in early. I am alone in my quarters. The pain came again this evening, but it was not acute—a mere shadow of yesterday’s pain. I felt it somewhere behind my breast bone. Fearing a recurrence of yesterday’s attack, I injected myself in the thigh with one centigramme. The pain ceased almost instantaneously. A good thing Anna Kirillovna left the phial behind.

18th
Four injections. No harm in that.

21st February
Anna Kirillovna is behaving very oddly—just as though I weren’t a doctor at all! 1½ syringes = 0.015 grammes morph.? Yes.

1st March
Take care, Doctor Polyakov!
Nonsense.

Twilight.
It is two weeks now since I last thought about the woman who deceived me. I no longer have the tune of her aria as Amneris on the brain. I am very proud of that. I am a man. Anna Kirillovna has become my mistress. It was inevitable. We are imprisoned on a desert island.

A change has come over the snow; it seems to have turned greyer. There are no more savage frosts, but snowstorms still blow up from time to time.

For the first minute there is a sensation of being touched on my neck. The touch grows warmer and spreads. In the second minute there is a sudden surge of cold in the pit of my stomach, after which I start to think with unusual clarity and experience a burst of mental energy. All unpleasant sensations stop completely. Man’s inner powers are manifested at their absolute peak. And if I had not been spoiled by my medical training, I would say that a man can only work normally after an injection of morphine. After all, what good is a man when the slightest attack of neuralgia can knock him completely off balance?

Anna K. is frightened. Calmed her, saying that since childhood I have been remarkable for having tremendous willpower.

2nd March
Rumours of great events. It seems that Nicholas II has been deposed.
I shall go to bed very early—about nine o’clock.
And my sleep will be sweet.

10th March
A revolution is going on ‘up there’.
The days are getting longer, the twilight seems faintly tinged with blue.
Never before have I had such dreams at dawn. They are double dreams. The main one, I would say, is made of glass. It is transparent.
This is what happens: I see a lighted lamp, fearfully bright, from which blazes a stream of many-coloured light. Amneris, swaying like a green feather, is singing. An unearthly orchestra is playing with a full, rich sound—although I cannot really convey this in words. In short, in a normal dream music is soundless (in a normal dream? What dream, may one ask, is ever normal! But I’m joking) … soundless, but in my dream the music sounds quite heavenly. And best of all I can make the music louder or softer at will. It reminds me of a passage in War and Peace in which Petya Rostov experiences the same phenomenon when half asleep. Leo Tolstoy is a remarkable writer!
As to the dream’s transparency, what happens is that through the iridescent colours of Aida the edge of my desk shows through with complete reality, through the study door I can see the lamp, the gleaming floor, and behind the wave of sound from the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra I can clearly hear the welcome tread of footsteps like muffled castanets.
That means it is eight o’clock, Anna K. is coming to tell me what is happening in the surgery.
She doesn’t realise that I don’t need waking, that I can hear everything and can talk to her.
I tried the following experiment yesterday:

Anna: Sergei Vasilievich …
Myself: I’m listening … (to the music, sotto voce: ‘Louder!’)
The music: a powerful chord of D sharp.
Anna: Twenty patients on the register.

Amneris sings …

But it can’t be conveyed on paper.
Is there any harm in these dreams? Not at all. When they are over I get up, feel wide awake and cheerful. I’ve even started to take an interest in the work, which I never did before—not surprisingly, since I could never think of anything but my former mistress.
Whereas now I don’t worry any more.

19th March
Last night I had a quarrel with Anna K.
‘I’m not going to make up the solution any more.’
I started to try and persuade her.
‘Don’t be silly, my dear. I’m not a little boy, am I?’
‘I won’t do it. It’ll kill you.’
‘All right, please yourself. Don’t you realise, though, that I’ve got pains in my chest?’
‘Get it treated.’
‘Where?’
‘Take a holiday. Morphine’s not a cure.’ Then after a moment’s thought she added: ‘I can never forgive myself for having made up a second phial for you.’
‘What do you think I am—an addict?’
‘Yes, you’re becoming an addict.’
‘So you won’t?’
‘No, I won’t.’
It was then that I first discovered in myself a nasty tendency to lose my temper and, worse, to shout at people when I am in the wrong.
However, this did not happen at once. I went into my bedroom and had a look: there was a very little left in the bottom of the phial. I drew it into the syringe, and it only filled a quarter of it. I threw the syringe away, almost breaking it, and shuddered. Carefully, I picked it up and examined it—not a single crack. I sat in the bedroom for twenty minutes. When I came out, she was gone.
Imagine—I couldn’t bear it and went to look for her. I knocked on the lighted window of her quarters. Wrapped in a scarf, she came out on to the porch. The night was silent, the snow powdery and dry. Far away in the sky was a hint of coming spring.
‘Please, Anna Kirillovna, give me the keys to the dispensary.’
She whispered: ‘No, I won’t.’
‘Kindly give me the keys to the dispensary. I’m speaking as a doctor.’
In the twilight I saw her expression change. She turned very white, her eyes seemed to sink into her head and they darkened. She replied in a voice which stirred me to pity. But at once my anger surged up again.
She said: ‘Why, why must you talk like this? Oh Sergei Vasilievich—I pity you.’
Just then she drew her hands from under her shawl and I saw that she was holding the keys. She had obviously gone over to my consulting room and removed them.
‘Give me the keys!’ I said roughly.
And I snatched them out of her hand.
I set off towards the white-painted hospital building, picking my way along the rotten, swaying duckboards. Rage was boiling inside me, chiefly because I had not the slightest idea how to make up a morphine solution for hypodermic injection. I’m a doctor, not an assistant! I trembled as I went.
I could hear her walking behind me like a faithful dog. Tenderness welled up inside me, but I suppressed it. I turned round, bared my teeth and said:
‘Are you going to do it or not?’
She gave a despairing gesture as much as to say ‘What does it matter?’ and answered quietly:
‘All right, I’ll do it.’
An hour later I was myself again, and I naturally asked her to forgive me for my absurd rudeness. I don’t know what happened to me: I was always polite before.
Then she did something extraordinary. She fell to her knees, clasped my hands and said:
‘I’m not angry with you. I know now that you’re lost. I know it now. And I curse myself for giving you that first injection.’
I calmed her down as best I could, assuring her that none of this was her doing, that I was responsible for my own behaviour. I promised her that the very next day I would make a serious start on breaking the habit and would reduce the dosage.
‘How much did you inject just now?’
‘Not much. Three syringes of a 1% solution.’
She clasped her head and said nothing.
‘There’s no cause for you to worry.’
In my heart of hearts I understood her concern. The fact is that hydrochloric morphium is terrifying stuff. You can very quickly get used to it. But surely mild habituation is not the same as becoming an addict?
To tell the truth, this woman is the only person I can really trust. She ought really to be my wife. I’ve forgotten the other woman, quite forgotten her. However, I have morphine to thank for that.

8th April 1917
This is torture.

9th April
This horrible spring weather.
The devil is in this phial. Cocaine—the devil in a phial!

This is its effect: on injecting one syringe of a 2% solution, you feel almost immediately a state of calm, which quickly grows into a delightful euphoria. This lasts for only a minute or two, then it vanishes without a trace as though it had never been. Then comes pain, horror, darkness.

Outside, the spring thaw is in noisy spate, blackbirds fly from branch to bare branch and in the distance the forest pierces the sky like a jagged row of black bristles; behind the trees, colouring a quarter of the sky, glows the first spring sunset.
I pace diagonally across the big, empty, lonely room in my quarters, from the door to the window and back again. How many times can I cover that stretch of floor? Fifteen or sixteen times, not more; then I have to turn round and go into the bedroom. Lying on a piece of gauze beside a phial is the syringe. I pick it up and after giving my puncture-riddled thigh a careless smear of iodine, I dig the needle into the skin. Far from feeling any pain, I have a foretaste of the euphoria which will overtake me in a moment. And here it comes. I am aware of its onset, for as Vlas the night watchman sits in the porch playing the accordion, the faint, muffled snatches of music sound like angelic voices, and the harsh bass chords wheezing from the bellows ring out like a celestial choir. But now comes the moment when, by some mysterious law that is not to be found in any book on pharmacology, the cocaine inside me turns into something different. I know what it is: it is a mixture of my blood and the devil himself. The sound of Vlas’ accordion music falters and I hate the man, while the sunset growls restlessly and burns my entrails. This feeling comes over me several times in the course of the evening, until I realise that I have poisoned myself. My heart begins to beat so hard that I can feel it thumping when I put my hands to my temples … Then my whole being sinks into the abyss and there are moments when I wonder whether Doctor Polyakov will ever come back to life.

13th April
I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely managed to revive me with camphor injections and today I am half dead.

6th May 1917
It is a long time since I last wrote anything in my diary. A pity, because in fact this is not a diary but a pathological history. Not only do I have a natural professional interest in it, but it is my only friend in the world (if one doesn’t count my sad and often tearful mistress Anna). So if I am to record the progress of my disease, here it is: I inject myself with morphine twice every twenty-four hours—at five o’clock in the afternoon (after supper) and at midnight before going to bed. Two syringes of a 3% solution; my dose is thus 50 milligrammes. A fair amount!

My previous notes must sound somewhat hysterical. In fact there is nothing particularly unusual or alarming about my condition. It does not in the least affect my capacity to work. On the contrary, I live through the day on the previous night’s injection. I cope splendidly with operations, I am irreproachably careful when prescribing, and I give my professional oath that my addiction causes no harm to my patients. I pray that it never will. But something else does worry me: I keep thinking that other people may find out about my vice. During consultation hours I am disturbed by the thought of my assistant’s grim, searching look behind my back.
Nonsense! He’ll never guess. There’s nothing to give me away. The pupils of my eyes can only betray me in the evening, and I never see him in the evening.
To make up for the terrible drain on the stock of morphine in our dispensary, I drove into the local town. There, too, I went through a nasty few minutes. I had taken care to fill out my order with all kinds of stuff such as caffeine (of which we had plenty), but as the storekeeper took it he said dubiously:
‘Forty grammes of morphine?’
I did not know where to look, and felt myself blushing like a guilty schoolboy. He said:
‘We haven’t got that much. I can give you ten grammes.’
He really did not have that quantity, but I had the impression that he had discovered my secret; his probing eyes were boring into me and this made me nervous and jumpy.
My pupils, I have decided, are the only danger signs, and for that reason I shall make it a rule not to see anyone in the evening. For this, incidentally, there could be no more convenient place than my isolated practice; it is six months since I have seen anyone except my patients, and they have not the slightest interest in me.

18th May
A sultry night. A thunderstorm is brewing, black storm clouds building up beyond the forest. A moment ago there came a pale warning flash of lightning. The storm has begun.
A book is open in front of me and this is what it has to say about the symptoms of morphine withdrawal:

‘… morbid anxiety, a nervous depressed condition, irritability, weakening of the memory, occasional hallucinations and a mild impairment of consciousness …’

I have not experienced any hallucinations, but I can only say that the rest of this description is dull, pedestrian and totally inadequate. ‘Depressed condition’ indeed! Having suffered from this appalling malady, I hereby enjoin all doctors to be more compassionate toward their patients. What overtakes the addict deprived of morphine for a mere hour or two is not a ‘depressed condition’: it is slow death. Air is insubstantial, gulping it down is useless … there is not a cell in one’s body that does not crave … but crave what? This is something which defies analysis and explanation. In short, the individual ceases to exist: he is eliminated. The body which moves, agonises and suffers is a corpse. It wants nothing, can think of nothing but morphine. To die of thirst is a heavenly, blissful death compared with the craving for morphine. The feeling must be something like that of a man buried alive, clawing at the skin on his chest in the effort to catch the last tiny bubbles of air in his coffin, or of a heretic at the stake, groaning and writhing as the first tongues of flame lick at his feet.
Death. A dry, slow death. That is what lurks behind that clinical, academic phrase ‘a depressed condition’.
I can’t hold out. I have just had to inject myself. A deep breath. And another.
Feeling better. Ah … there it is … a stab of cold in the pit of my stomach, a taste of peppermint …
Three syringes of a 3% solution. That will last me until midnight.

Nonsense. That last entry was nonsense. It’s not as bad as that. Sooner or later I’ll give it up … but now I need sleep, sleep.
This idiotic, agonising battle against morphine is wearing me out.

(The next couple of dozen or so pages are torn out.)

…ing.
…gain vomited at 4.30 a.m.
When I feel better I shall record this appalling experience.

14th November 1917
So having run away from Doctor …’s (the name has been carefully crossed out) clinic in Moscow, I am home again. The rain is streaming down and shrouding the outside world from my sight. Long may it do so. I don’t need the world any more, and no one in the world needs me. I was in the clinic while the shooting and the coup d’etat took place, but the idea of abandoning the cure had begun insidiously to grow in my mind even before the fighting started in the streets of Moscow. I have the morphine to thank for making me brave. I’m not afraid of rifle fire now. After all, what can possibly frighten a man obsessed by one thing only—the divine, wonder-working crystals? The nurse, utterly terrified by the crash of gunfire …

(page torn out)

…pped out that page so that no one should read the disgraceful account of how a professional man ran away like a cowardly thief and stole his own suit.
And not only my suit; I was so desperate that I also took a hospital shirt. Next day, having given myself an injection, I pulled myself together and returned to Doctor N. His attitude was one of pity, but even so I sensed contempt behind his pity, which was wrong of him: he is after all a psychiatrist and ought to realise that I am not always in control of myself. I am a sick man. He should not despise me. I gave back the hospital shirt.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And what do you propose to do now?’
Being then in a state of euphoria, I said cheerfully: ‘I have decided to go back to my practice; my leave is over, anyway. I am very grateful to you for your help and I feel decidedly better. I shall continue the treatment at home.’
To this he replied: ‘You are not in the least better. I find it ludicrous that you should say this to me. One look at your pupils is enough. Who do you think you’re talking to?’
‘I can’t throw off the addiction all at once, professor … especially now, with all that’s going on around us … the gunfire has made me a nervous wreck.’
‘It’s over now. We have a new government. Go back to bed.’
As he said this I remembered it all: the chilly corridors, the blank, shiny oil-painted walls … and myself limping past them like a lame dog, waiting for something … For what? For a hot bath? No, for a wretchedly small injection of 5 milligrammes of morphine. I can stay alive on a dose of that size, but only just. And the anguish remains, weighing me down like lead, just as it did before. Sleepless nights, the shirt which I tore to shreds as I begged them to let me go.
No. They have invented morphine, extracting it from the dried, rattling seed-heads of that divine plant, so let them damn well find a painless cure for it! I shook my head obstinately. At that the professor stood up and I suddenly rushed for the door in terror. I thought he meant to lock me in and keep me in the clinic by force.
The professor turned red in the face. ‘I am not a warder,’ he said with some irritation, ‘and this isn’t the Butyrki Prison. Sit down and relax. Two weeks ago you claimed you were completely normal. Yet now …’ Expressively, he imitated my gesture of fear. ‘I’m not keeping you here.’
‘Professor, give me back my committal certificate. I beg you.’ my voice quavered pitifully.
‘By all means.’
With a jingle of keys he opened a drawer in his desk and handed me the certificate, on which I had voluntarily committed myself to taking the full two-month cure and had agreed that they should restrain me from leaving the clinic—the usual wording.
As I took the certificate with a trembling hand and stuffed it into my pocket I mumbled:
‘Thank you.’
Then I got up to go and started to leave.
‘Doctor Polyakov!’ His voice rang out behind me. I turned round, my hand on the doorknob. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘think it over. You must realise that you will inevitably land up in a psychiatric hospital at a slightly, er … later stage. And when you do, you will be in a far worse condition. So far I have at least been able to deal with you as a doctor. But later you will be in a state of total mental collapse. Strictly speaking, my dear fellow, you are not fit to practise and I shall be breaking the law if I do not notify your local medical authority to that effect.’
I shuddered and plainly felt the colour drain from my face (although I was pale enough already).
‘I beg you, professor,’ I said dully, ‘not to tell them anything … I’d be struck off with ignominy for being an addict … Surely you wouldn’t do that to me?’
‘Oh, very well then, go,’ he shouted irritably. ‘I won’t say anything. All the same, you’ll be back.’
I went, and I swear that I was racked with pain and shame all the way home. Why?

The answer’s simple. Ah, my diary, my faithful friend—you at least won’t give me away, will you? It was not because of the suit, but because I also stole some morphine from the hospital. Three cubes in crystal form and ten grammes of 1% solution.
But this in itself is not the only thing which interests me. The key was in the lock of the hospital’s drug cabinet. Supposing it had not been. Would I have smashed open the cupboard? Would I? In all honesty?
Yes, I would.

So Doctor Polyakov is a thief. I must remember to tear that page out.

Still, he was exaggerating when he said I was unfit to practise. It is absolutely true that I am degenerating; the break-up of my moral personality has set in. But I can still work, and I am incapable of inflicting harm or wrong on a single one of my patients.

Why did I steal? It’s very simple. During the fighting and unrest connected with the coup d’etat, I thought I might not be able to get any more supplies of morphine. But when the disturbances died down, I managed to find some in a suburban pharmacy—15 grammes of 1% solution, which to me was almost worse than useless, as one dose would have required nine injections. What was more, I had to put up with being humiliated: the pharmacist demanded a rubber stamp on my prescription and glowered at me suspiciously. Next day, however, all was well again when I was given 20 grammes in crystal form without the slightest delay, having written out a prescription for the hospital (adding, of course, an order for caffeine and aspirin as well). But why, after all, should I have to hide and feel afraid? I’m behaving as if the words ‘drug addict’ were branded on my forehead. Whose business is it besides mine, for heaven’s sake?

In any case, have I really gone so far downhill? I cite this diary as evidence. The entries are fragmentary, but then I’m not a writer by profession. Do they sound unbalanced? I would say that my reasoning is entirely sane.

For an addict there is one pleasure of which no one can deprive him—his ability to spend his time in absolute solitude. And solitude means deep, significant thought; it means, calm, contemplation—and wisdom.

The night flows on, black and silent. Somewhere out there is the bare leafless forest, beyond it the river, the chill air of autumn. Far away lies the strife-torn, restless city of Moscow. Nothing concerns me, I need nothing and there is nowhere for me to go.
The flame in my lamp burns softly; I want to rest after my adventures in Moscow and forget them.
And I have forgotten them.

18th November
Frost. The ground dry and hard. I went out for a walk along the path by the river, because I hardly ever get any fresh air.
I may be in a state of moral decay, but I am nevertheless making an effort to arrest it. This morning, for instance, I did not have an injection (I am now injecting myself with three syringes of 4% solution three times daily). Awkward. I feel sorry for Anna. Each extra percent causes her agony, which saddens me. She is such a wonderful person.
So when the pains began I decided to suffer awhile (how Professor N. would approve if only he could see me!) by delaying my injection, and set off for a walk by the river.
It was completely deserted. Not a sound, not so much as a rustle. Dusk had not yet fallen, but it was in the air, lurking in the marshland, creeping between the tussocks and tree-stumps … slowly closing in on Levkovo hospital, while I shuffled along leaning on my stick (to tell the truth, I have grown somewhat weaker recently).
Then I noticed a little old woman with yellow hair coming quickly towards me up the slope from the river, moving so fast that I could not see her feet under her colourful, bell-shaped skirts. At first sight I paid no attention to her and felt no alarm; she was after all just an old peasant woman. Then it struck me as odd that she was bareheaded and wearing only a blouse, because it was so cold. A moment later I began to wonder—where was she from? Who was she? When consulting hours at Levkovo are over, the peasant sleighs all drive away and there is no one to be seen for miles around—nothing but mist, marshland and woods. Suddenly I felt a cold sweat break out up and down my spine and I realised: the old woman was not running but actually flying, without touching the ground. This was bad enough; but what made me scream aloud was the fact that she was holding a pitchfork in both hands. Why was I so frightened? I fell on to one knee, holding out my hands to shield myself from the sight, then I turned and ran, stumbling, for home and safety, praying that my heart would not give out before I could reach my warm room, see my flesh-and-blood Anna … and take some morphine …
And I came home at a run.
What nonsense. A meaningless, chance hallucination.

19th November
Vomiting. A bad sign.

My conversation with Anna on the night of the 21st:

Anna: The feldsher knows.
Myself: Does he? So what? I don’t care.
Anna: If you don’t leave this place and go into town, I shall kill myself. D’you hear? Look at your hands.
Myself: They’re trembling slightly. That doesn’t stop me working, though.
Anna: Just look at them—they’re absolutely transparent. Nothing but skin and bone. And take a look at your face. Listen, Sergei—go away, I implore you …
Myself: What about you?
Anna: Go away, go away. You’re dying.
Myself: Don’t exaggerate. Still, I must admit I don’t understand why I’ve suddenly weakened so quickly. After all, it’s less than a year since this illness started. I suppose it’s due to my constitution.
Anna (sadly): What can bring you back to life? Perhaps your Amneris, that opera singer?
Myself: Oh no, don’t worry. I’ve got over her, thanks to the drug. I have morphine instead of her.
Anna: Oh my God … what am I to do?

I thought that women like Anna only existed in novels. If ever I’m cured, I shall stay with her for the rest of my life. I only hope her husband never comes back from Germany.

27th December
I haven’t touched my diary for a long time. I am wrapped up for the journey, the horses are waiting. Bomgard has left his practice at Gorelovo and I am being sent to replace him. A woman doctor is coming to take over my practice.
Anna is staying here. She will drive over to see me. Even though it is twenty miles away.
We have firmly decided that I will take a month’s sick leave from 1st January and go back to the professor in Moscow. I shall sign a form again and suffer another month of inhuman torture in his clinic.
Farewell, Levkovo. Au revoir, Anna.

1918

January
I didn’t go. I can’t leave those life-giving crystals.
I would die if I took a cure now. I am becoming more and more convinced that I don’t need a cure at all.

15th January
Vomiting in the morning.
Three syringes of 4% solution at dusk.
Three syringes of 4% solution late at night.

16th January
Operation day today, so I have to endure a long period of abstinence—from night time until 6 p.m.
At dusk—always my worst time—I clearly heard a voice in my room, monotonous and threatening, repeating my name and patronymic:
‘Sergei Vasilievich. Sergei Vasilievich.’
It stopped as soon as I injected myself.

17th January
Blizzard today, so no consultation. During the hours of abstention I read a textbook of psychiatry and it appalled me. I am done for; there’s no hope.
During abstinence I am terrified by the slightest sound and I find people detestable. I am afraid of them. In the euphoric phase I love everyone, although I prefer solitude.

I must be careful at Gorelovo—there is a feldsher here and two midwives. I must take the greatest possible care not to give myself away. I shall succeed, because by now I am very experienced. No one will find out, as long as I have a supply of morphine. I either prepare the solution myself or send a prescription to Anna in good time. Once she made a clumsy attempt to substitute a 2% for a 5% solution. She brought it herself from Levkovo in bitter cold and a raging snowstorm.
This caused a violent quarrel between us that night. I persuaded her not to do it again. I have told the staff here that I am ill, after racking my brains for a long time to decide what illness to invent. I said that I had rheumatism in my legs and severe neuralgia. They have been warned that I am going away in February for a month’s sick leave to take a cure in Moscow. All is going smoothly. No trouble with my work. I avoid operating on the days when I am overcome by uncontrollable vomiting and retching. Because of this, I’ve had to add gastric catarrh to my alleged ailments. Too many diseases for one person, I fear.
The staff here are very sympathetic and are themselves urging me to take sick leave.

Outward appearance: thin, pale with a waxen pallor.
I took a bath and afterwards weighed myself on the hospital scales. Last year I weighed 148 lbs (67 kgs); now I weigh 120 lbs (54 kgs). I had a fright as I watched the needle on the dial, but the shock soon passed.
My forearms and thighs are a mass of unhealed abscesses. I don’t know how to prepare sterile solutions, besides which I have injected myself with an unsterilised syringe on about three occasions when I was in a great hurry to go out on my rounds.
This can’t be allowed to go on.

18th January
I had the following hallucination:
I was sitting in front of a blank, dark window expecting some kind of pale figures to appear. The suspense was intolerable. Yet there was nothing there except the blind. I fetched some gauze from the hospital and draped it over the window. I was unable to think of a rational excuse for my action.

Hell, why should I have to find a pretext for every single thing I do? What I am living is not a normal existence, but torture.

Do I express my thoughts lucidly?
I think I do.
What is my life? An absurdity.

19th January
Today during the break in consulting hours, when we were relaxing and having a smoke in the dispensary, the feldsher started to tell a story as he wrapped powders in little screws of paper. Laughing for some reason, he described how a woman feldsher had become a morphine addict; unable to get the drug, she had swallowed half a tumbler full of an infusion of opium. I did not not know where to look during this painful story. Why on earth did he find it amusing? Why?
I slunk furtively out of the dispensary.
I wanted to say: ‘What’s so funny about that affliction?’ But I restrained myself.
In my position I cannot afford to be too rude to people.
That feldsher is as cruel as those psychiatrists who are so utterly, completely incapable of helping their patients.
Totally incapable.

I wrote the last entry during a period of abstinence and much of what I said was unfair.

A moonlit night. I am lying down, feeling weak after a fit of vomiting. I can hardly lift my hands, so am scribbling my thoughts in pencil. My mind is calm and serene. For a few hours I am happy. Soon I shall sleep. Overhead is the moon, surrounded by a halo. Nothing upsets me after an injection.

1st February
Anna has arrived. She looks sallow and ill.
I have driven her to the end of her tether. This terrible wrong weighs on my conscience.
I have given her my oath that I will leave here in mid-February.
Will I do as I have promised?
Yes, I will.
Provided I am still alive.

3rd February
So now I am poised at the top of a slope. It is icy, slippery and as endlessly long as the hill down which Kaj’s sledge ran in Hans Andersen’s fairy tale. This is my last ride down this slope, and I know what is waiting for me at the bottom. Oh Anna, terrible grief will soon be your reward for having loved me …

11th February
I have decided to appeal to Bomgard. Why to him? Because he is not a psychiatrist; because he’s young and we were friends at university. He is healthy and tough yet kind-hearted, if I have gauged his character right. Perhaps he will be reli … sympathetic. He will think of some solution. He can take me to Moscow if he wants to. I can’t go to him. My sick leave has been approved. I am not going to work in the hospital, but am lying in bed.
I swore at the feldsher. He just laughed … It doesn’t matter. He had come to report to me, and offered to sound my respiration and heartbeat.
I refused to let him. Must I go on finding excuses for refusing? I am sick of inventing pretexts.
The note has been sent off to Bomgard.

People! Won’t anyone help me?
I am lapsing into outbursts of self-pity. If anybody were to read this they would find it maudlin and insincere. But no one will read it.

Before writing to Bomgard, all my memories came back to me. I had a particular recollection of a Moscow railway station in November, when I was running away from the clinic. What an appalling evening that was. I had gone to a lavatory in the station to inject my stolen morphine. It was a nightmare. People were banging on the door, shouting and swearing at me for spending too long in there, my hands were shaking and the door-handle was rattling so violently that I thought the door would burst open at any moment.
This was when I started to develop abscesses.
I wept the night that I remembered that incident.

12th Night
I wept again. Why does this disgusting weakness come over me at night?

13th February 1918. Dawn, Gorelovo
I can congratulate myself: I have not had an injection for fourteen hours! Fourteen! An unbelievable number. Murky yellowish light of dawn. Soon I shall be quite cured.
On mature reflection I don’t need Bomgard, or anyone else for that matter. It would be shameful to prolong my life a minute more. Certainly not a life like mine. The remedy is right beside me. Why didn’t I think of it before?
Well, let’s get it over with. I owe nothing to anyone. I have destroyed only myself. And Anna. What else can I do?
Time will heal all, as Amneris sang. It’s easy and simple enough for her.
This notebook is for Bomgard. That’s all …

5

I read Sergei Polyakov’s notes at dawn on the 14th February 1918 in that faraway little country town. They are reproduced here in full, without the slightest alteration. Not being a psychiatrist, I cannot say with certainty whether or not they are instructive or useful though I believe they are.

Now that ten years have passed, the pity and terror evoked by this diary have, of course, faded. This is natural, but on rereading the jottings, now, when Polyakov’s body has long since decayed and the memory of him vanished for ever, I still find them interesting. Are they of value? I shall not presume to make a firm judgement on that point. Anna K. died of typhus in 1922 in the same country practice where she had always worked. Amneris—Polyakov’s first mistress—has gone abroad and will not return.

Should I publish the diary which was entrusted to me?

I should. Here it is.