One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Read Online Free PDF

presence of one of the authorities and, letting his eyes shift, in the camp manner, where they had no business to shift, he noticed that Kolya was writing in even, neatly spaced lines and that each line, starting a little way from the edge of the page, began with a capital letter. He realized at once, of course, that Kolya was not doing official work but something on the side. But that was none of his business.

    "Well, Nikolai Semyonich, it's like this. . . . I'm feeling sort of . . . rotten . . . ,"
    said Shukhov shamefacedly, as if coveting something that didn't belong to him.

    Kolya Vdovushkin raised his big placid eyes from his work. His number was covered up by his smock;

    "Why've you come so late? Why didn't you report sick last night? You know very well there's no sick call in the morning. The sick list has already been sent to the planning department."

    Shukhov knew all this. He knew too that it was even harder to get on the sick list in the evening.

    "But after all, Kolya . . . You see, when I should have come . . . last night . . . it didn't ache."

    "And now it does? And what is it?"

    "Well, if you stop to think of it, nothing aches, but I feel ill all over."

    Shukhov was not one of those who hung around the dispensary. Vdovushkin knew this. But in the morning he had the right to exempt from work two men only, and he'd already exempted them--their names were written down under the glass--it was greenish--on his desk, and he'd drawn a line across the page.

    "Well, you ought to have considered that earlier. What are you thinking about?
    Reporting sick just before roll call. Come on, take this."

    He pulled a thermometer out of one of the jars where they stood in holes cut in pieces of gauze, wiped it dry, and handed it to Shukhov, who put it in his armpit.

    Shukhov sat on a bench near the wall, right at the very end, so that be nearly tipped it up. He sat in that uncomfortable way, involuntarily emphasizing that he was unfamifiar with the place and that he'd come there on some minor matter.

    Vdovushkin went on writing.

    The dispensary lay in the most remote and deserted corner of the zone, where no sounds of. any sort reached it. No clocks or watches ticked there--prisoners were not allowed to carry watches; the authorities knew the time for them. Even mice didn't scratch there; they'd all been dealt with by the hospital cat, placed there for the purpose.

    For Shukhov it was a strange experience to sit in that spick-and-span room, in such quietness, to sit under the bright lamps for five long minutes doing nothing. He cast his eyes around the wails and found them empty. He looked at his jacket--the number on the chest was almost rubbed off. That might be noticed. He ought to have it touched up.
    He ran his free hand over his chin and felt the stubble. His beard had grown fast since his last bath, over ten days back. But that didn't worry him. Next bath day was about three days off and he'd have a shave then. What was the sense in lining up at the barber's? Who did he have to doll himself up for?

    Then as he eyed Vdovuahkin's snow-white cap he remembered the hospital on the banks of the River Lovat where he'd been taken with a smashed jaw, and then--what a dope he was--volunteered for the front again, though he could have lain there in bed for five days.

    And now here he was dreaming of being ill for two or three weeks, not dangerously ill, of course, not so bad that they'd have to operate, yet bad enough to go to the hospital and lie in bed for three weeks without stirring; and let them feed him on nothing but that clear soup of theirs, he wouldn't mind.

    But, he recalled, now they didn't let you lie in bed even in the camp infirmary. A new doctor had arrived with one of the latest replacements--Stepan Grigorych, a fussy, loud-voiced fellow who gave neither himself nor his patients any peace. He invented jobs in and around the infirmary for all the patients who could stand on their feet--fencing the