Watson, Ian - Novel 11 Read Online Free PDF

beasts understood.
                 In
some places the swirling water was deep enough to drown a fellow. With so much
mud churned up, though, there was no telling which places these were. Drizzle
drifted down like a million grey spiders’ silks. Presumably somewhere there was
a proper river crossing. Somewhere.
                 A
tall peasant woman emerged from one of the houses. This was a heavy mud and
clay edifice with a thatched timber roof. Two other such huts stood off from
it, and together with a row of byres these formed a courtyard with litter and
tackle lying about. An upturned sledge rested against a wagon. The place seemed
relatively prosperous.
                 From
the porch, the woman hailed them. “Are you the medical assistant?”
                 “We’re
lost!” Yevgeny howled back at her. Opening his mouth wide, the more to magnify
their misfortunes, he afforded Anton an eyeful of gums awash with pus due to
pyorrhoea.
                 “But
I am a doctor!” shouted Anton.
                 They
tramped on to a slope of gluey black muck, which admittedly would grow splendid
crops. A few more loud oaths, and the horses were out
of the water too, dragging the skidding cart which was Yevgeny’s pride and joy.
                 “I’m
going to Tomsk ,” Anton told the woman.
                 “It’s
God’s will! He guided you here.”
                 “Ay,
and who’ll guide us away again?” demanded Yevgeny.
                 “Oh,
our Boris’ll do that. Just as soon as . . .”
                 Oh
yes. Just as soon as his Honour, the Doctor, cures septic appendicitis or
cancer of the spleen or something else equally daunting. Anton felt heavy
chains settle upon him. With as good a grace as he could muster he submitted
and followed the woman indoors.
                 Grandpa
lay abed on top of the stove. Four or five kids peered out from a deep and
fuggy shelf slung beneath the ceiling. Three crones, who bore a remarkable
resemblance to the Witches in Macbeth ,
were huddled round a wooden chest—the parental bed. A sick woman lay moaning on
it. A hairy bull of a man stood about, twiddling his thumbs and sighing. A
spindly youth, who looked as if he had gone for height in the style of an
overcrowded seedling, sat slumped on a bench staring morosely at his reflection
in the blade of a knife. And there was Grandma, clucking away like an old hen,
with Baby swaddled in her lap. The place was disgracefully overcrowded.
                 On
closer inspection, Grandma wasn’t actually clucking. Her toothless gums were
smacking away at an impromptu dummy: a twist of cloth with a bread crust in it,
or if Baby was specially lucky some bacon rind. Baby
in its mummy cloth was all open mouth and wide liquid eyes. As Anton
approached, Grandma quickly popped the saliva-sodden nib into Baby’s mouth.
Arms bound by its sides, mouth stoppered, Baby now only had his eyes to talk to
the world with.
                 Anton
had given up trying to count the number of people in this room. What was the
use? He could hardly turf them out into the drizzle. Anyway, they probably
wouldn’t go. Why should they? Here was a grand tale unfolding: of sickness and
a stranger.
                 He
jerked his thumb in the direction of the chest-bed.
                 “What’s
wrong with her?’’ he asked the tall woman.
                 “Well,
you see, Sir, she had her baby. But it died, and a bit of the afterbirth’s
stuck in her. So Pelagaya Osipovna tried to pull it out.’’
                 “She
tried to pull it out? What withV ’
                 The
tall woman searched around and produced a lamp hook, rusty and sooty, with
blood stains on it.
                 Oh shit. Unbelievable! They may as well
have murdered the poor bitch! Yes, using the same damn