The Cooks Wedding and Other Stories | Page 9

till the next game.
Good-night!
THE RUNAWAY
IT had been a long business. At first Pashka had walked with his
mother in the rain, at one time across a mown field, then by forest paths,
where the yellow leaves stuck to his boots; he had walked until it was
daylight. Then he had stood for two hours in the dark passage, waiting
for the door to open. It was not so cold and damp in the passage as in
the yard, but with the high wind spurts of rain flew in even there. When
the passage gradually became packed with people Pashka, squeezed
among them, leaned his face against somebody's sheepskin which smelt
strongly of salt fish, and sank into a doze. But at last the bolt clicked,
the door flew open, and Pashka and his mother went into the
waiting-room. All the patients sat on benches without stirring or
speaking. Pashka looked round at them, and he too was silent, though
he was seeing a great deal that was strange and funny. Only once, when
a lad came into the waiting-room hopping on one leg, Pashka longed to
hop too; he nudged his mother's elbow, giggled in his sleeve, and said:
"Look, mammy, a sparrow."
"Hush, child, hush!" said his mother.
A sleepy-looking hospital assistant appeared at the little window.
"Come and be registered!" he boomed out.
All of them, including the funny lad who hopped, filed up to the
window. The assistant asked each one his name, and his father's name,

where he lived, how long he had been ill, and so on. From his mother's
answers, Pashka learned that his name was not Pashka, but Pavel
Galaktionov, that he was seven years old, that he could not read or
write, and that he had been ill ever since Easter.
Soon after the registration, he had to stand up for a little while; the
doctor in a white apron, with a towel round his waist, walked across the
waiting-room. As he passed by the boy who hopped, he shrugged his
shoulders, and said in a sing-song tenor:
"Well, you are an idiot! Aren't you an idiot? I told you to come on
Monday, and you come on Friday. It's nothing to me if you don't come
at all, but you know, you idiot, your leg will be done for!"
The lad made a pitiful face, as though he were going to beg for alms,
blinked, and said:
"Kindly do something for me, Ivan Mikolaitch!"
"It's no use saying 'Ivan Mikolaitch,'" the doctor mimicked him. "You
were told to come on Monday, and you ought to obey. You are an idiot,
and that is all about it."
The doctor began seeing the patients. He sat in his little room, and
called up the patients in turn. Sounds were continually coming from the
little room, piercing wails, a child's crying, or the doctor's angry words:
"Come, why are you bawling? Am I murdering you, or what? Sit
quiet!"
Pashka's turn came.
"Pavel Galaktionov!" shouted the doctor.
His mother was aghast, as though she had not expected this summons,
and taking Pashka by the hand, she led him into the room.
The doctor was sitting at the table, mechanically tapping on a thick
book with a little hammer.
"What's wrong?" he asked, without looking at them.
"The little lad has an ulcer on his elbow, sir," answered his mother, and
her face assumed an expression as though she really were terribly
grieved at Pashka's ulcer.
"Undress him!"
Pashka, panting, unwound the kerchief from his neck, then wiped his
nose on his sleeve, and began deliberately pulling off his sheepskin.
"Woman, you have not come here on a visit!" said the doctor angrily.
"Why are you dawdling? You are not the only one here."

Pashka hurriedly flung the sheepskin on the floor, and with his mother's
help took off his shirt. . . The doctor looked at him lazily, and patted
him on his bare stomach.
"You have grown quite a respectable corporation, brother Pashka," he
said, and heaved a sigh. "Come, show me your elbow."
Pashka looked sideways at the basin full of bloodstained slops, looked
at the doctor's apron, and began to cry.
"May-ay!" the doctor mimicked him. "Nearly old enough to be married,
spoilt boy, and here he is blubbering! For shame!"
Pashka, trying not to cry, looked at his mother, and in that look could
be read the entreaty: "Don't tell them at home that I cried at the
hospital."
The doctor examined his elbow, pressed it, heaved a sigh, clicked with
his lips, then pressed it again.
"You ought to be beaten, woman, but there is no one to do it," he said.
"Why didn't you bring him before? Why, the whole arm is done for.
Look, foolish woman.