Free A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov

unpleasant disease—you have syphilis …’
    As soon as I had said this I felt awkward. I thought he might be frightened out of his wits. But not at all. He gave me a sidelong glance, rather as a hen looks up with her round eye when she hears a voice calling her. I was astonished to see mistrust in his round eye.
    â€˜You’ve got syphilis,’ I repeated softly.
    â€˜What’s that, then?’ asked the man with the speckled rash.
    I had a brief, sharp mental vision of a snow-white ward at the university hospital, a lecture-theatre filled with rows of students’ heads and the grey beard of the professor of venereology … But I quickly came to myself and remembered that I was about a thousand miles away from the lecture-theatre and thirty miles from the nearest railway, and that my only light was a kerosene lamp … I could hear the dull buzz of voices coming from my numerous patients waiting their turn on the other side of the white door. Outside the window, night was steadily drawing in and the first winter snow was flying on the wind.
    I made my patient take off more clothes and found a primary lesion which was already healing. I was no longer in any doubt, and felt the pride which invariably arose inside me whenever I made a correct diagnosis.
    â€˜You can get dressed again,’ I said. ‘You’ve got syphilis! It is an extremely serious illness which affects the whole body. It will take a long time to cure.’
    Here I faltered because—I swear it—I detected in that hen-like gaze astonishment clearly mixed with derision.
    â€˜But I’m only a bit hoarse in the throat,’ said the patient.
    â€˜Yes, I know. That’s
why
it’s gone hoarse, and that’s why you’ve got a rash on your chest. Have a look at your chest.’
    He squinted at his chest. The ironic glint in his eyes did not fade.
    â€˜Couldn’t you just give me something for my throat?’ he asked.
    â€˜Why does he keep on like this?’ I thought somewhat impatiently. ‘I’m talking about syphilis and all he worries about is his throat!’
    â€˜Look here,’ I continued aloud, ‘your throat is a minor matter. We’ll make your throat better too, but the most important thing is to get rid of the general disease. And the treatment’s going to take a long time—two years.’
    At this the patient stared at me. I saw the verdict in his eyes: You’ve gone off your head, doctor!
    â€˜Why so long?’ he asked. ‘How can it take two years? All I need is something to gargle for my throat.’
    I saw red. I started to speak. I was no longer afraid of frightening him. Oh, no; on the contrary, I even hinted that his nose might drop off. I told him what the future held for him if he did not take the necessary treatment. I mentioned how contagious syphilis was and spoke atlength about plates, spoons and cups, and about separate towels.
    â€˜Are you married?’ I said.
    â€˜Yes, I am,’ he answered in amazement.
    â€˜Send your wife to me immediately!’ I said heatedly. ‘I suppose she’s sick too, isn’t she?’
    â€˜Send the wife?’ he asked, looking at me in great astonishment.
    We went on in this vein. He kept blinking and looking into my eyes, and I into his. It was, in fact, less of a conversation than a monologue—a brilliant monologue by me, which would have earned a final year student the highest marks from any professor. I discovered that I was a mine of information on syphilis. My unexpected resourcefulness filled in the lacunae of all those passages where the German and Russian textbooks fail to go into detail. I told him what happens to the bones of an untreated syphilitic and sketched en passant an outline of progressive paralysis. Then there were his offspring—and how was his wife to be saved? Or if she was already infected, which she was bound to be, how was she to