Ward No. 6-Anton Chekhov

0:001. Chapter 1 and 2 of Ward No. 6. This is the LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekov. Recording by Constance Garnett, 1861 to 1946. Chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1. In the hospital yard, there stands a small lodge, surrounded by a perfect forest of burdox, nettles, and wild hemp. Its roof is rusty, the chimney is tumbling down. The steps at the front door are rotting away, and overgrown with grass, and there are only traces left of the stucco. The front of the lodge faces the hospital. At the back, it looks out into the open country, from which it is separated by the gray hospital fence with nails on it.

1:01These nails, with their points upwards and the fence and the lodge itself, have that peculiar, desolate, god-for-saken look, which is only found in our hospital in prison buildings. If you are not afraid of being stung by the nettles, come by the narrow footpath that leads to the lodge, and let us see what is going on inside. Opening the first door we walk into the entry. Here along the walls, and by the stove, every sort of hospital rubbish lies littered about. Matresses, old tattered dressing gowns, trousers, blue stripe shirts, boots and shoes no good for anything. All these remnants are piled up in heaps, mixed up and crumpled, moldering and giving out a sickly smell. The porter, Nikita, an old soldier wearing rusty good conduct stripes, is always lying on the litter with a pipe between his teeth. He has a grim, surly, battered looking face, overhanging eyebrows which give him the expression of a sheep dog of the steps, and a red nose.

2:02He is short and looks thin and scraggy, but he is of imposing deportment and his fists are vigorous. He belongs to the class of simple-hearted, practical and dull-witted people, prompting carrying out orders who like discipline better than anything in the world, and so are convinced that it is their duty to beat people. He showers blows on the face, on the chest, on the back, on whatever comes first, and is convinced that there would be no order in the place if he did not. Next you come into a big spacious room which fills up the whole lodge except for the entry. Here the walls are painted a dirty blue. The ceiling is as sooty as in a hut without a chimney. It is evident that in the winter the stove smokes and the room is full of fumes. The windows are disfigured by iron gratings on the inside. The wooden floor is gray and full of splinters. There is a stench of sour cabbage of smoldering wicks, of bugs and of ammonia, and for the first minute the stench gives you the impression of having walked into a menagerie.

3:05There are bedsteads screwed to the floor, men in blue hospital dressing gowns, and wearing nightcaps in the old style are sitting and lying on them. These are the lunatics. There are five of them in all here. Only one is of the upper class, the rest are all artisans. The one nearest the door, a tall lean workman, with shining red whiskers and tear-stained eyes, sits with his head propped on his hand, staring at the same point. Day and night he grieves, shaking his head, sighing and smiling bitterly. He takes apart in conversation and usually makes no answer to questions. He eats and drinks mechanically when food is offered him. From his agonizing, throbbing cough, his thinness and the flush on his cheeks, one may judge that he is in the first stage of consumption. Next to him is a little alert, very lively old man, with a pointed beard and curly black hair like a negro's. By day he walks up and down the ward from window to window, or sits on his bed, crossed

4:09legged like a Turk, and ceaselessly as a bullfinch whistles, softly sings and titters. He shows his childish gaiety and lively character at night also when he gets up to say his prayers, that is to beat himself on the chest with his fists, and to scratch with his fingers at the door. This is the Jew Moiseka, an imbosil who went crazy twenty years ago when his hat factory was burnt down. And of all the inhabitants of Ward number six, he is the only one who is allowed to go out of the lodge and even out of the yard into the street. He has enjoyed this privilege for years, probably because he is an old inhabitant of the hospital, a quiet, harmless imbosil, the buffoon of the town, where people are used to seeing him surrounded by boys and dogs. In his wretched gown and his absurd nightcap and in slippers, sometimes with bare legs and even without trousers, he walks about the streets, stopping at the gates and little shops and begging for a copper.

5:09In one place they will give him some kvass and another some bread, in another a copper, so that he generally goes back to the Ward feeling rich and well fed. Everything that he brings back Nikita takes from him for his own benefit. The soldier does this roughly, angrily turning the Jews' pockets inside out and calling God to witness that he will not let him go into the street again, and that breach of the regulations is worse to him than anything in the world. Moiseka likes to make himself useful. He gives his companions water and covers them up when they are asleep. He promises each of them to bring him back a copack and to make him a new cap. He feeds with a spoon his neighbor on the left who is paralyzed. He acts in this way not from compassion, nor from any considerations of a humane kind, but through imitation, unconsciously dominated by Gromoth, his neighbor on the right hand. Ivan Dmitrich Gromoth, a man of thirty-three, who is a gentleman by birth and has been a

6:10court usher and provincial secretary, suffers from the mania of persecution. Either lies curled up in bed or walks from corner to corner as though for exercise. He very rarely sits down. He is always excited, agitated, and overwrought by a sort of vague undefined expectation. The faintest rattle in the entry or shout in the yard is enough to make him raise his head and begin listening, whether they are coming for him, whether they are looking for him, and at such times his face expresses the utmost uneasiness and repulsion. I like his broad face with its high cheekbones, always pale and unhappy, and reflecting as though in a mirror a soul tormented by conflict and long continued terror. His grimaces are strange and abnormal, but the delicate lines traced on his face by profound, genuine suffering show intelligence in sense, and there is a warm and healthy light in his eyes. I like the man himself, courteous, anxious to be of use, and extraordinarily gentle to

7:15everyone except Nikita. When anyone drops a button or a spoon, he jumps up from his bed quickly and picks it up. Every day he says good morning to his companions, and when he goes to bed he wishes them good night. Besides his continually overwrought condition and his grimaces, his madness shows itself in the following way also. Sometimes in the evenings he wraps himself in his dressing gown, and trembling all over with his teeth chattering, begins walking rapidly from corner to corner and between the bed studs. It seems as though he is an avialant fever. When the way he suddenly stops and glances at his companions, it can be seen that he is longing to say something very important, but apparently reflecting that they would not listen or would not understand him. He shakes his head impatiently and goes on pacing up and down. As soon the desire to speak gets the upper hand of every consideration, and he will let himself go and speak fervently and passionately.

8:15His talk is disordered and feverish like delirium, disconnected and not always intelligible, but on the other hand something extremely fine may be felt in it, both in the words and the voice. When he talks, he recognizes in him the lunatic and the man. It is difficult to reproduce on paper his insane talk. He speaks of the baseness of mankind, of violence trampling on justice, of the glorious life which will one day be upon earth, of the window-gradings which remind him every minute of the stupidity and cruelty of oppressors. It makes a disorderly, incoherent popery of themes old but not yet out of date. CHAPTER 2 Some twelve or fifteen years ago an official call Gromoth, a highly respectable and prosperous person, was living in his own house in the principal street of the town. He had two sons, Sergei and Ivan. When Sergei was a student in his fourth year he was taken ill with galloping consumption

9:17and died, and his death was, as it were, the first of a whole series of calamities which suddenly showered on the Gromoth family. Within a week of Sergei's funeral the old father was put on trial for fraud and misappropriation, and he died of typhoid in the prison hospital soon afterwards. The house, with all their belongings, was sold by auction, and Ivan Demetrich and his mother were left entirely without means. Hither too, in his father's lifetime, Ivan Demetrich, who was studying in the University of Petersburg, had received an allowance of sixty or seventy rubles a month, and had had no conception of poverty. Now he had to make an abrupt change in his life. He had to spend his time from morning to night giving lessons for next to nothing, to work at copying and with all that to go hungry, as all his earnings were sent to keep his mother. Ivan Demetrich could not stand such a life. He lost heart and strength, and giving up the university went home.

10:18Here through interest he obtained the post of teacher in the district school, but could not get on with his colleagues was not liked by the boys, and soon gave up the post. His mother died. He was for six months without work, living on nothing but bread and water. When he became a court usher, he kept this post until he was dismissed owing to his illness. He had never even in his young student days given the impression of being perfectly healthy. He had always been pale, thin, and given to catching cold. He ate little and slept badly. A single glass of wine went to his head and made him hysterical. He always had a craving for society, but owing to his irritable temperament and suspiciousness he never became very intimate with anyone and had no friends. He always spoke with contempt of his fellow townsmen, saying that their coarse ignorance and sleepy animal existence seemed to him loathsome and horrible. He spoke in a loud tenor with heat, and invariably either with scorn and indignation or with wonder

11:22and enthusiasm, and always with perfect sincerity. Whoever one talked to him about, he always brought it round to the same subject, that life was dull and stifling in the town, that the townspeople had no lofty interests, but lived a dingy meaningless life diversified by violence, coarse profligacy, and hypocrisy. Its scoundrels were well fed and clothed, while honest men lived from a hand to mouth, that they needed schools of progressive local paper, a theater, public lectures, the coordination of the intellectual elements, that society must see its failings and be horrified. In his criticisms of people he laid on the colors thick, using only black and white and no fine shades. Mankind was divided for him into honest men and scoundrels. There was nothing in between. He always spoke with passion and enthusiasm, a women end of love, but he had never been in love. Despite of the severity of his judgments and his nervousness, he was liked, and behind

12:24his back was spoken of affectionately as vanya. His innate refinement and readiness to be of service, his good breeding, his moral purity, and his shabby coat, his frail appearance and family misfortunes, aroused a kind, warm, sorrowful feeling. Moreover he was well educated and well read. According to the townspeople's notions, he knew everything, and was in their eyes something like a walking encyclopedia. He had read a great deal. He would sit at the club, nervously pulling at his beard and looking through the magazines and books, and from his face one could see that he was not reading, but devouring the pages, without giving himself time to digest what he read. It must be supposed that reading was one of his morbid habits, as he fell upon anything that came into his hands with equal evidity, even last year's newspapers and calendars. At home he always read, lying down. End of Section 1 Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine

13:33Chapter 3 and 4 of Ward Number 6 by Anton Chekhov Translated by Constance Garnet, 1861 to 1946 This late revoked recording is in the public domain. End of Section 1 Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine Chapter 3 One autumn morning, Ivan Demetrich, turning up the collar of his great coat and splashing through the mud, made his way by side-street and back lanes to see some artisan, and to collect some payment that was owing. He was in a gloomy mood as he always was in the morning. In one of the side-street he was met by two convicts and fetters, and four soldiers with rifles in charge of them. Anton Demetrich had very often met convicts before, and they had always excited feelings of compassion and discomfort in him. But now this meeting made a peculiar strange impression on him. It suddenly seemed to him for some reason that he too might be put into fetters and led through the mud to prison like that.

14:35After visiting the artisan on the way home, he met near the post office a police superintendent of his acquaintance, who greeted him and walked a few paces along the street with him, and for some reason this seemed to him suspicious. At home he could not get the convicts or the soldiers with their rifles out of his head all day, and an unaccountable inward agitation prevented him from reading or concentrating his mind. In the evening he did not light his lamp, and at night he could not sleep, but kept thinking that he might be arrested, put into fetters and thrown into prison. He did not know of any harm he had done, and could be certain that he would never be guilty of murder, arson, or theft in the future either. But was it not easy to commit a crime by accident, unconsciously, and was not false witness always possible, and indeed, miscarriage of justice? It was not without good reason that the age-long experience of the simple people teaches that beggary and prison are ill none can be safe from.

15:36A judicial mistake is very possible as legal proceedings are conducted nowadays, and there is nothing to be wondered at in it. People who have an official professional relation to other men's sufferings, for instance judges, police officers, doctors, in course of time through habit, grow so callous that they cannot even if they wish it, take any but a formal attitude to their clients. In this respect they are not different from the peasant whose slaughter's sheep and calves in the backyard and does not notice the blood. With this formal soulless attitude to human personality, the judge needs but one thing, time, in order to deprive an innocent man of all rights of property, and to condemn him to penal servitude. Only the time spent on performing certain formalities for which the judge has paid his salary, and then it is all over. Then you may look in vain for justice and protection in this dirty, wretched little town, 150 miles from a railway station.

16:37And indeed, is it not absurd even to think of justice when every kind of violence is accepted by society as a rational and consistent necessity, and every act of mercy, for instance a verdict of acquittal, calls forth a perfect outburst of dissatisfied and revengeful feeling. In the morning, Ivan Dmitrich got up from his bed in a state of horror, with cold perspiration on his forehead, completely convinced that he might be arrested at any minute. Once his gloomy thoughts of yesterday had haunted him so long he thought, it must be that there was some truth in them, they could not indeed have come into his mind without any ground, whatever. A policeman walking slowly passed by the windows, that was not for nothing. Here were two men standing still and silent near the house. Why were they silent? An agonizing days and nights followed for Ivan Dmitrich. Someone who passed by the windows or came into the yard seemed to him a spy or a detective. And midday the chief of the police usually drove down the street with a pair of horses.

17:42He was going from his estate near the town to the police department. But Ivan Dmitrich fancied every time that he was driving especially quickly, and that he had a peculiar expression. It was evident that he was in haste to announce that there was a very important criminal in the town. Ivan Dmitrich started at every ring at the bell and knock at the gate and was agitated whenever he came upon anyone new at his landlady's. When he met police officers and jaundhorns, he smiled and began whistling so as to seem unconcerned. He could not sleep for whole nights in succession, expecting to be arrested. But he snored loudly inside as though in deep sleep that his landlady might think he was asleep. For if he could not sleep it meant that he was tormented by the stings of conscience, what a piece of evidence. Facts and common sense persuaded him that all these terrors were nonsense and morbidity, that if one looked at the matter more broadly there was nothing really terrible in arrest and imprisonment, so long as the conscience is at ease.

18:46But the more sensibly and logically he reasoned, the more acute and agonizing his mental distress became. It might be compared with the story of a hermit who tried to cut a dwelling place for himself in a virgin forest. The more zealously he worked with his axe, the thicker the forest grew. In the end, Ivan Dmitrich, seeing it was useless, gave up reasoning altogether and abandoned himself entirely to despair and terror. He began to avoid people and to seek solitude. His official work had been distasteful to him before, now it became unbearable to him. He was afraid they would somehow get him into trouble, would put a bribe in his pocket unnoticed and then denounce him, or that he would accidentally make a mistake in official papers that would appear to be fraudulent, or would lose other people's money. It is strange that his imagination had never at other times been so agile and inventive as now. When every day he thought of thousands of different reasons for being seriously anxious over

19:46his freedom and honor. But on the other hand, his interest in the outer world, in books in particular, grew sensibly fainter and his memory began to fail him. In the spring when the snow melted, there were found in the ravine near the cemetery, two half decomposed corpses. The bodies of an old woman and a boy bearing the traces of death by violence. Nothing was talked of but these bodies and their unknown murderers. That people might not think he had been guilty of the crime, Ivan Dmitrich walked about the streets smiling, and when he met acquaintances he turned pale, flushed, and began declaring that there was no greater crime than the murder of the weak and defenseless. But this duplicity soon exhausted him, and after some reflection he decided that in his position the best thing to do was to hide in his landlady's cellar. He sat in the cellar all day and then all night, then another day was fearfully cold and waiting till dusk stole secretly like a thief back to his room.

20:48He stood in the middle of the room till daybreak, listening without stirring. Very early in the morning before sunrise some workmen came into the house. Ivan Dmitrich knew perfectly well that they had come to mend the stove in the kitchen, but terror told him that they were police officers disguised as workmen. He slipped stealthily out of the flat and overcome by terror ran along the street without his cap and coat. Once raced after him barking a peasant shouted somewhere behind him the wind whistled in his ears, and it seemed to Ivan Dmitrich that the force and violence of the whole world was massed together behind his back and was chasing after him. He was stopped and brought home, and his landlady sent for a doctor. Dr. Andrei Yephimich of whom we shall have more to say hereafter prescribed cold compresses on his head and lural drops. Mark his head and went away, telling the landlady he should not come again, as one should not interfere with people who are going out of their minds.

21:48As he had not the means to live at home and be nursed, Ivan Dmitrich was soon sent to the hospital and was there put into the ward for venereal patients. He could not sleep at night, was full of whims and fancies and disturbed the patients, and was soon afterwards by Andrei Yephimich's orders transferred to ward number six. Within a year Ivan Dmitrich was completely forgotten in the town, and his books heaped up by his landlady in a sledge in the shed were pulled to pieces by boys. CHAPTER IV Ivan Dmitrich's neighbor on the left hand is, as I have said already, the Jew Moiseka. His neighbor on the right hand is a peasant so rolling in fat that he is almost spherical with a blankly stupid face utterly devoid of thought. This is a motionless, gluttonous, unclean animal, who as long ago lost all powers of thought or feeling. An accurate stifling stench always comes from him.

22:49Nikita, who has to clean up after him, beats him terribly with all his might not sparing his fists. And what is dreadful is not his being beaten, that one can get used to. But the fact that this stupified creature does not respond to the blows with a sound or movement, nor by a look in the eyes, but only sways a little like a heavy barrel. The fifth and last inhabitant of Ward number six is a man of the artisan class who had once been a sorter in the post office, a thinnish, fair little man with a good natured but rather sly face. To judge from the clear, cheerful look in his column in intelligent eyes, he has some pleasant idea in his mind, and has some very important and agreeable secret. He has under his pillow and under his mattress something that he never shows anyone, not from fear of its being taken from him and stolen but from modesty. Sometimes he goes to the window, and turning his back to his companions, puts something on his breast and bending his head looks at it.

23:51If you go up to him at such a moment he has overcome with confusion, and snatches something off his breast, but it is not difficult to guess his secret. To congratulate me he often says to Ivan Dmitrich, I have been presented with the stonisloth order of the second degree with the star. The second degree with the star is only given to foreigners, but for some reason they want to make an exception for me, he says with a smile, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity, that I must confess I did not expect. I don't understand anything about that Ivan Dmitrich replies moreosely, but do you know what I shall attain to sooner or later? The former sorter persists, screwing up his eyes slightly. I shall certainly get the Swedish polar star. That's in order it is worth working for, a white cross with a black ribbon. It's very beautiful. Probably in no other place is life's summonautnus as in this ward. In the morning the patients accept the paralytic and the fat peasant, wash in the entry at a big tub and wipe themselves with a skirt of their dressing gowns.

24:54After that they drink tea out of tin mugs, which Nikita brings them out of the main building. Everyone is allowed one mugful. At midday they have soup made out of sour cabbage and boiled grain, in the evening their supper consists of grain left from dinner. In the intervals they lie down, sleep, look out of window, and walk from one corner to the other. And so, every day, even the former sorter always talks of the same orders. Such faces are rarely seen in ward number six. The doctor has not taken in any new mental cases for a long time, and the people who were fond of visiting lunatic asylum are few in this world. Once every two months, semion laserage, the barber, appears in the ward. How he cuts the patient's hair and how Nikita helps him to do it, and what a trepidation the lunatics are always thrown into by the arrival of the drunken smiling barber, we will not describe. No one even looks into the ward except the barber. The patients are condemned to see day after day no one but Nikita.

25:58A rather strange rumor has, however, been circulating in the hospital of late. It is rumored that the doctor has begun to visit ward number six. End of chapters three and four, recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter five of ward number six by Anton Chekhov. Translated by Constance Garnett, 1861 to 1946. This little revox recording is in the public domain. Recording by expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter five. A strange rumor. Dr. Andrei Yephimich Ragen is a strange man in his way. They say that when he was young he was very religious and prepared himself for a clerical career. And that when he had finished his studies at the high school in 1863, he intended to enter a theological academy, but that his father, a surgeon and doctor of medicine,

27:03jeered at him and declared point blank that he would disown him if he became a priest. How far this is true, I don't know. But Andrei Yephimich himself has more than once confessed that he has never had a natural bent for medicine or science in general. However that may have been, when he finished his studies in the medical faculty he did not enter the priesthood. He showed no special devoutness and was no more like a priest at the beginning of his medical career than he is now. His exterior is heavy, coarse like a peasant, his face, his beard, his flat hair, and his coarse clumsy figure suggests an overfed, intemperate and harsh inkeeper on the high road. His face is surly looking and covered with blue veins, his eyes are little and his nose is red. With his height and broad shoulders he has huge hands and feet. One would think that a blow from his fist would knock the life out of anyone, but his step is soft and his walk is cautious in insinuating. When he meets anyone in a narrow passage he is always the first to stop and make way,

28:09and to say not in a base as one would expect, but in a high soft tenor, I beg your pardon. He has a little swelling on his neck which prevents him from wearing stiff, start colors, and so he always goes about in soft linen or cotton shirts. Altogether he does not dress like a doctor. He wears the same suit for ten years, and the new clothes which he usually buys at a Jewish shop look as shabby and crumpled on him as his old ones. He sees patience and dines and pays visits all in the same coat, but this is not due to niggeredliness but to complete carelessness about his appearance. When Andre Yefamitch came to the town to take up his duties the institution founded to the glory of God was in a terrible condition. One could hardly breathe for the stench in the wards, in the passages, and in the courtyard of the hospital. The hospital servants, the nurses and their children slept in the wards together with the patients. They complained that there was no living for beetles, bugs, and mice. The surgical wards were never free from erasipolis.

29:14There were only two scalpils and not one thermometer in the whole hospital. Potatoes were kept in the babs. The superintendent, the housekeeper, and the medical assistant robbed the patients, and of the old doctor, Andre Yefamitch's predecessor, people declared that he secretly sold the hospital alcohol, and that he kept a regular herm consisting of nurses and female patients. These disorderly proceedings were perfectly well known in the town, and were even exaggerated, but people took them calmly. Some justified them on the ground that there were only peasants and working men in the hospital, who could not be dissatisfied since they were much worse off at home than in the hospital. They couldn't be fed on woodcocks. Other said an excuse that the town alone without help from the Zemstvo was not equal to maintaining a good hospital. Thank God for having one at all, even a poor one. And the newly formed Zemstvo did not open infirmaries either in the town or the neighborhood, relying on the fact that the town already had its hospital. After looking

30:18over the hospital, Andre Yefamitch came to the conclusion that it was an immoral institution and extremely prejudicial to the health of the townspeople. In his opinion, the most sensible thing that could be done was to let out the patients and close the hospital. But he reflected that his will alone was not enough to do this, and that it would be useless. If physical and moral impurity were driven out of one place, they would only move to another. One must wait for it to wither away of itself. Besides, if people open a hospital and put up with having it, it must be because they need it. Superstition and all the nastiness and abominations of daily life were necessary. Since in process of time they worked out to something sensible, just as manure turns into black earth. There was nothing on earth so good that it had not something nasty about its first origin. When Andre Yefamitch undertook his duties, he was apparently not greatly concerned about the irregularities at the hospital. He only asked the attendance and nurses not to sleep in the

31:20wards and had two cupboards of instruments put up. The superintendent, the housekeeper, the medical assistant, and the arecipulus remained unchanged. Andre Yefamitch loved intelligence and honesty intensely, but he had no strength of will nor belief in his right to organize an intelligent and honest life about him. He was utterly unable to give orders to forbid things into insist. It seemed as though he had taken a vow never to raise his voice and never to make use of the imperative. It was difficult for him to say fetch or bring. When he wanted his meals, he would cough hesitatingly and say to the cook, how about tea, or how about dinner? To dismiss the superintendent or to tell him to leave off stealing or to abolish the unnecessary parasitic post altogether was absolutely beyond his powers. When Andre Yefamitch was deceived or flattered, or accounts he knew to be cooked were brought him to sign, he would turn as red as a crab and feel guilty,

32:22but yet he would sign the accounts. When the patients complained to him of being hungry or of the roughness of the nurses, he would be confused and mutter guiltily very well, very well, I will go into it later, most likely there is some misunderstanding. At first Andre Yefamitch worked very zealously, he saw patients every day from morning till dinner time, performed operations and even attended confinement. The lady said of him that he was attentive and clever at diagnosing diseases, especially those of women and children, but in process of time the work unmistakably weird him by its monotony and obvious uselessness. Today one sees thirty patients and tomorrow they have increased to thirty-five, the next day forty and so on from day to day, from year to year, while the mortality in the town did not decrease and the patients did not leave off coming. To be any real help to forty patients between morning and dinner was not physically possible, so it could but lead to deception. If twelve thousand patients were seen in a year,

33:26it meant if one looked at it simply, that twelve thousand men were deceived. To put those who were seriously ill into wards and to treat them according to the principles of science was impossible too, because though there were principles there was no science. If he were to put aside philosophy and pedantically follow the rules as other doctors did, the things above all necessary were cleanliness and ventilation instead of dirt. Wholesome nourishment instead of broth made a stinking sour cabbage and good assistance instead of thieves. And indeed, why hinder people dying if death is the normal and legitimate end of everyone? What is gained if some shopkeeper or clerk lives an extra five or ten years? If the aim of medicine is by drugs to alleviate suffering, the question forces itself on one. Why alleviate it? In the first place they say that suffering leads man to perfection. And in the second, if mankind really learns to alleviate its sufferings with pills and drops,

34:27it will completely abandon religion and philosophy, in which it has hitherto found not merely protection from all sorts of trouble, but even happiness. Pushkin suffered terrible agonies before his death. Poor Haine lay paralyzed for several years. Why then should not some Andrei Yephamitch or matriona savisna be ill since their lives had nothing of importance in them and would have been entirely empty and like the life of an amoeba except for suffering? Oppressed by such reflections, Andrei Yephamitch relaxed his efforts and gave up visiting the hospital every day. End of chapter 5. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine Chapter 6. Award Number 6 by Anton Chekov Translated by Constance Garnet 1861 to 1946 This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine.

35:33Chapter 6. His life was passed like this. As a rule, he got up at eight o'clock in the morning, dressed and drank his tea. Then he sat down in his study to read or went to the hospital. At the hospital, the outpatients were sitting in the dark, narrow little corridor waiting to be seen by the doctor. The nurses and the attendants trampling with their boots over the brick floors ran by them, gaunt looking patience and dressing gowns passed. Dead bodies and vessels full of filth were carried by. The children were crying and there was a cold draft. Andrei Yephamitch knew that such surroundings were torture to feverish, consumptive and impressionable patients. But what could be done? In the consulting room he was met by his assistant, Sergei Sergeiich, a fat little man with a plump, well-washed, shaven face with soft, smooth manners, wearing a new, loosely cut suit, and looking more like a senator than a medical assistant. He had an immense practice in the town,

36:34wore a white tie and considered himself more proficient than the doctor who had no practice. In the corner of the consulting room there stood a large icon in a shrine with a heavy lamp in front of it, and near it a candle stand with a white cover on it. On the walls hung portraits of bishops, a view of the Tsvatogorzki monastery and wreaths of dried cornflowers. Sergei Sergeiich was religious and liked salinity and decorum. The icon had been put up at his expense. At his instructions some one of the patients read the hymns of praise in the consulting room on Sundays, and after the reading Sergei Sergeiich himself went through the wards with a censor and burned incense. There were a great many patients but the time was short, and so the work was confined to the asking of a few brief questions and the administration of some drugs, such as castor oil or volatile ointment. Andrei Yefemitch would sit with his cheek resting in his hand, lost in thought and asking questions

37:39mechanically. Sergei Sergeiich sat down too, rubbing his hands, and from time to time putting in his word. We suffer pain and poverty, he would say, because we do not pray to the merciful God as we should, yes. Andrei Yefemitch never performed any operation when he was seeing patients. He had longed to go, given up doing so, and the sight of blood upset him. When he had to open a child's mouth in order to look at its throat and the child cried and tried to defend itself with his little hands, the noise in his ears made his head go round and brought tears to his eyes. He would make haste to prescribe a drug and motion to the woman to take the child away. He was soon worried by the timidity of the patients and their incoherence, by the proximity of the pious Sergei Sergeiich, by the portraits on the walls, and by his own questions which he had asked over and over again for twenty years. And he would go away after seeing five or six patients. The rest would be seen

38:40by his assistant in his absence. With the agreeable thought that, thank God, he had no private practice now, and that no one would interrupt him, Andrei Yefemitch sat down to the table immediately on reaching home and took up a book. He read a great deal and always with enjoyment. Half his salary went on buying books, and of the six rooms that made up his abode, three were heaped up with books and old magazines. He liked best of all works on history and philosophy. The only medical publication to which he'd subscribed was the doctor, of which he always read the last pages first. He would always go on reading for several hours without a break and without being weary. He did not read as rapidly and impulsively as Ivan Demetrish had done in the past, but slowly in with concentration, often pausing over a passage which he liked, or did not find intelligible. Near the books, they're always stood a decanter of vodka, an assaulted cucumber, or a pickled apple they beside it, not on a plate but on the bay's tablecloth. Every half hour he would pour

39:46himself out a glass of vodka and drink it without taking his eyes off the book. Then without looking at it he would feel for the cucumber and bite off the bit. At three o'clock he would go cautiously to the kitchen door, cough and say, Darushka, what about dinner? After his dinner, a rather poor and untidely served one, Andrejefemitch would walk up and down his rooms with his arms folded thinking. The clock would strike four than five, and still he would be walking up and down thinking. Occasionally the kitchen door would creak, and the red and sleepy face of Darushka would appear. Andrejefemitch isn't it time for you to have your beer if you would ask anxiously? No, it's not time yet he would answer. I'll wait a little. I'll wait a little. Towards the evening the postmaster, Mikhail Averionic, the only man in town the society did not bore Andrejefemitch, would come in. Mikhail Averionic had once been a very rich landowner and had

40:46served in the cavalry, but had come to ruin and was forced by poverty to take a job in the post office late in life. He had a hail and hearty appearance, luxuriant grey whiskers, the manners of a well-bred man, and allowed pleasant voice. He was good-natured and emotional but hot-tempered. When anyone in the post office made a protest, expressed disagreement, or even began to argue, Mikhail Averionic would turn crimson, shake all over, and shout in a voice of thunder, hold your tongue, so that the post office had long enjoyed the reputation of an institution which it was terrible to visit. Mikhail Averionic liked and respected Andrejefemitch for his culture and the loftiness of his soul. He treated the other inhabitants of the town superciliously as though they were his subordinates. Here I am, he would say, going into Andrejefemitch, good evening, my dear fellow, I'll be bound, you're getting sick of me, aren't you? On the contrary, I am delighted to

41:47the doctor, I am always glad to see you. The friends would sit on the sofa in the study, and for some time would smoke in silence. Dharishka, what about the beer Andrejefemitch would say? They would drink their first bottle still in silence, the doctor brooding in Mikhail Averionic with a gay and animated face, like a man who has something very interesting to tell. The doctor was always the one to begin the conversation. What a pity, he would say quietly and slowly, not looking his friend in the face, he never looked anyone in the face. What a great pity it is that there are no people in our town who are capable of carrying on intelligent and interesting conversation or care to do so. It is an immense privation for us. Even the educated class do not rise above vulgarity. The level of their development I assure you is not a bit higher than that of the lower orders. Perfectly true, I agree. You know, of course, the doctor went on quietly and

42:47deliberately, that everything in this world is insignificant and uninteresting, except the higher spiritual manifestations of the human mind. Intellect draws a sharp line between the animals and man, suggests the divinity of the latter, and to some extent even takes the place of the immortality which does not exist. Consequently, the intellect is the only possible source of enjoyment. We see in here of no trace of intellect about us, so we are deprived of enjoyment. We have books it is true, but that is not at all the same as living talk in converse. If you will allow me to make a not quite apt comparison, books are the printed score while talk is the singing. Perfectly true. A silence would follow. Daryushka would come out of the kitchen, and with an expression of blank dejection would stand in the doorway to listen, with her face propped under fist. A. Mikhail Averyana would sigh, to expect intelligence of this generation. And he would describe how wholesome,

43:50entertaining, and interesting life had been in the past, how intelligent the educated class in Russia used to be, and what lofty ideas it had of honor and friendship, how they used to lend money without an IOU, and it was thought a disgrace not to give a helping hand to a comrade in need, and what campaigns, what adventures, what skirmishes, what comrades, what women, and the caucuses, what a marvelous country. The wife of a battalion commander, a queer woman, used to put on an officer's uniform, and drive off into the mountains in the evening alone without a guide. It was said that she had a love affair with some pristling in the native village. Queen of heaven, holy mother, Daryushka would sigh, and how we drank and how we ate, in what desperate liberals we were. Andrei Yefimich would listen without hearing, he was musing as he sipped his tea. I often dream of intellectual people in conversation with them, he said suddenly interrupting Mikhail Averyanač, my father gave me an excellent education,

44:54but under the influence of the ideas of the 60s made me become a doctor. I believe if I had not obeyed him then, by now I should have been in the very center of the intellectual movement. Most likely I should have become a member of some university. Of course intellect too is transient and not eternal, but you know why I cherish a partiality for it. Life is a vexatious trap. When a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness, he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape. Indeed he is summoned without his choice by fortuitous circumstances from non-existence into life. What for? He tries to find out the meaning and object of his existence. He is told nothing, or he is told absurdities. He knocks and it is not open to him. Death comes to him also without his choice. And so just as in prison men held together by common misfortune feel more at ease when they are together, so one does not notice the trap in life when

45:54people with a bent for analysis and generalization meet together and pass their time in the interchange of proud and free ideas. In that sense the intellect is a source of enjoyment nothing can replace. Perfectly true. Not looking his friend in the face, Andrei Yefimich would go on quietly and with pauses, talking about intellectual people and conversation with them, and Mikhail Avriyanyev would listen attentively and agree perfectly true. And you do not believe in the immortality of the soul, he would ask suddenly? No, honored Mikhail Avriyanyevich, I do not believe it, and have no grounds for believing it. I must own, I doubt it too, and yet I have a feeling as though I should never die. Oh, I think to myself, old foggy at his time you were dead, but there is a little voice in my soul says, don't believe it, you won't die. Soon after nine o'clock Mikhail Avriyanyevich would go away, as he put on his fur coat in the entry he would say with a sigh, what a wilderness fate has carried us

47:00to, though, really. What's most vexatious of all is to have to die here. Ech. End of chapter 6, recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 7 and 8 of Ward number 6 by Anton Chakka, translated by Constance Garnet, 1861 to 1946. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 7. After seeing his friend out, Andrei Yethemich would sit down at the table and begin reading again, the stillness of the evening and afterwards of the night was not broken by a single sound, and it seemed as though time were standing still and brooding with the doctor over the book, and as though there were nothing in existence but the books in the lamp with the green shade. The doctor's course, peasant-like face, was gradually lighted up by a smile of delight,

48:04and enthusiasm over the progress of the human intellect. Oh, why is not man immortal, he thought? What is the good of the brain centers and convolutions? What is the good of sight, speech, self-consciousness, genius? If it is all destined to depart into the soil, and in the end to grow cold together with the earth's crust, and then for millions of years to fly with the earth around the sun with no meaning and no object. To do that, there was no need at all to draw man with his lofty almost godlike intellect out of non-existence, and then, as though in mockery to turn him into clay, the transmutation of substances, but what cowardice to comfort oneself with that cheap substitute for immortality. The unconscious processes that take place in nature are lower even than the stupidity of man, since in stupidity there is any way consciousness and will, while in those processes there is absolutely nothing. Only the coward who has

49:05more fear of death than dignity can comfort himself with the fact that his body will in time live again in the grass, in the stones, in the toad. To find one immortality in the transmutation of substances is as strange as to prophesy a brilliant future for the case after a precious violin has been broken and become useless. When the clock struck, Andre Yephamitch would sink back into his chair and close his eyes to think a little, and under the influence of the fine ideas of which he had been reading, he would unaware as recall his past in his present. The past was hateful, better not to think of it, and it was the same in the present as in the past. He knew that at the very time when his thoughts were floating together with a cooling earth around the sun, in the main building beside his abode people were suffering in sickness and physical impurity. Someone perhaps could not sleep and was making war upon the insects. Someone was being infected by a reciproceless or moaning over too

50:08tight a bandage. Perhaps the patients were playing cards with the nurses and drinking vodka. According to the yearly return, 12,000 people had been deceived. The whole hospital rested as I had done twenty years ago on thieving filth, scandals, gossip, on gross quackery, and as before it was an immoral institution extremely injurious to the health of the inhabitants. He knew that Nikita knocked the patients about behind the barred windows of ward number six, and that Moiseka went about the town every day begging alms. On the other hand, he knew very well that a magical change had taken place in medicine during the last twenty-five years. When he was studying at the university, he had fancy that medicine would soon be overtaken by the fate of alchemy and metaphysics. But now when he was reading at night, the science of medicine touched him and excited his wonder and even enthusiasm, what unexpected brilliance, what a revolution. Thanks to the antiseptic system,

51:10operations were performed such as the great pyrogoff had considered impossible even in spay. Ward narrowly Zem's faux doctors were venturing to perform the resection of the Nikap, of abdominal operations only one percent was fatal, while stone was considered such a trifle that they did not even write about it. A radical cure for syphilis had been discovered, and the theory of heredity, hypnotism, the discoveries of pastor and of Koch, hygiene based on statistics and the work of Zem's faux doctors. The kiatry with its modern classification of mental diseases, methods of diagnosis and treatment, was a perfect elboris in comparison with what had been in the past. They no longer poured cold water on the heads of lunatics, nor put straight weskets upon them. They treated them with humanity and even so it was stated in the papers, got up balls and entertainments for them. Andrei Yefimich knew that with modern taste and views, such an abomination

52:12as Ward number six was possible only 150 miles from a railway in a little town where the mayor and all the town council were half illiterate tradesmen who looked upon the doctor as an oracle who must be believed without any criticism, even if he had poured molten lead into their mouths. In any other place the public and the newspapers, with long ago, have torn this little bastille to pieces. But after all, whatever, Andrei Yefimich would ask himself, opening his eyes, there is the antiseptic system, there is Koch, there is Pasteur, but the essential reality is not altered a bit. Ill health and mortality are still the same, they get up balls and entertainments for the mad, but still they don't let them go free, so it's all nonsense and vanity, and there is no difference in reality between the best Vienna clinic in my hospital. But depression and a feeling akin to envy prevented him from feeling indifferent, it must have been owing to exhaustion. His heavy head sank

53:15onto the book, he put his hands under his face to make it softer and thought, I serve in a pernicious institution, and receive a salary from people whom I am deceiving, I am not honest, but then I of myself am nothing, I am only part of an inevitable social evil, all local officials are pernicious and receive their salary for doing nothing, and so for my dishonesty it is not I who am to blame, but the times, if I had been born two hundred years later I should have been different. When it struck three he would put out his lamp and go into his bedroom, he was not sleepy. Chapter 8 Two years before the Zempsfo in a liberal mood had decided to allow 300 rubles a year to pay for additional medical service in the town, till the Zempsfo hospital should be open, and the district doctor, Yavgaini Fyodorich Hobotov, was invited to the town to assist Andrei Yephemich. He was a very young man, not yet thirty, tall and dark, with broad cheekbones and little eyes.

54:19His forefathers had proudly come from one of the many alien races of Russia. He arrived in the town without a farthing, with a small portmanteau and a plain young woman whom he called his cook. This woman had a baby at the breast. Yavgaini Fyodorich used to go about in a cap with a peak and in high boots, and in the winter wore a sheepskin. He made great friends with Sergei Sergeiich, the medical assistant and with the treasurer, but held a luth from the other officials, and for some reason called the Marista Krabs. He had only one book in his lodgings, the latest prescriptions of the Vienna Clinic for 1881. When he went to a patient, he always took this book with him. He played billiards in the evening at the club. He did not like cards. He was very fond of using in conversation, such expressions as endless bobbery, canting, soft soap, shut up with your finicking. He visited the hospital twice a week, made the round of the wards and saw outpatients. The complete absence of antiseptic treatment and

55:23the cupping roused his indignation, but he did not introduce any new system, being afraid of offending Andrei Yephamich. He regarded his colleague as a sly old rascal, suspected him of being a man of large means and secretly envied him. He would have been very glad to have his post. End of chapter 8, Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine Chapter 9 of Ward number 6 by Anton Chakka translated by Constance Garnet 1861 to 1946. This leave Reevaughts Recording is in the public domain, Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 9 On a spring evening towards the end of March, when there was no snow left on the ground, and the starlings were singing in the hospital garden, the doctor went up to see his friend

56:25the postmaster as far as the gate. At that very moment, the Jew Moiseka, returning with his booty, came into the yard. He had no cap on, and his bare feet were thrust into galoshes. In his hand he had a little bag of coppers. Give me a copak, he said to the doctor smiling, and shivering with cold. Andrei Yephamich, who could never refuse anyone anything, gave him a 10 copak piece. How bad that is, he thought, looking at the Jews bare feet with their thin red ankles, why it's wet. And stirred by a feeling akin both to pity and disgust, he went into the lodge behind the Jew, looking now at his bold head, now at his ankles. As the doctor went in, Nikita jumped up from his heap of litter, and stood at attention. Good day Nikita, Andrei Yephamich said mildly, that Jew should be provided with boots or something, he will catch cold. Certainly, Your Honor, I'll inform the superintendent. Please do, ask him in my name, tell him that I ask. The door into the ward was open. Ivan Demetrich, lying propped on his elbow

57:31on the bed, listened in alarm to the unfamiliar voice, and suddenly recognized the doctor. He trembled all over with anger, jumped up, and with a red and raffle face, with his eyes starting out of his head, ran out into the middle of the road. The doctor has come, he shouted, and broke into a laugh. At last, gentlemen, I congratulate you. The doctor is honoring us with a visit, cursed reptile he shrieked, and stamped in a frenzy such as had never been seen in the ward before. Kill the reptile. No, killings too good. Drown him in the midden pit. Andrei Yephamich, hearing this, looked into the ward from the entry and asked gently, what for? What for, shouted Ivan Demetrich, going up to him with a menacing air, and convulsively wrapping himself in his dressing gown? What for? Fif, he said, with a look of repulsion, moving his lips as though he would spit at him. Quack, hang man! Call him yourself to Dr. Andrei Yephamich, smiling guiltily. I assure you I have never stolen anything,

58:37and as to the rest, most likely you greatly exaggerate. I can see you are angry with me. Call him yourself, I beg if you can, and tell me coolly what are you angry for? What are you keeping me here for? Because you are ill. Yes, I am ill, but you know dozens, hundreds of mad men are walking about in freedom, because your ignorance is incapable of distinguishing them from the sane. Why am I, and these poor wretches to be shut up here like scapegoats for all the rest? You, your assistant, the superintendent, and all your hospital rabble are immeasurably inferior to every one of us morally. Why then are we shut up and you not? Where is the logic of it? Morality and logic don't come in, it all depends on chance. If anyone is shut up, he has to stay, and if anyone is not shut up, he can walk about. That's all. There is neither morality nor logic, in my being a doctor, and you're being a mental patient. There is nothing but idle chance. That twaddle I don't understand, Ivan Dmitrius brought out in a hollow voice,

59:39and he sat down on his bed. Moiseka, whom Nikita did not venture to search in the presence of the doctor, laid out on his bed pieces of bread, bits of paper and little bones, and still shivering with coal began rapidly in a sing-song voice, saying something in Yiddish. He most likely imagined that he had opened a shop. Let me out, said Ivan Dmitrius and his voice quivered. I cannot. But why? Why? Because it is not in my power. Think. What use will it be to you if I do let you out? Go. The towns people or the police will detain you or bring you back. Yes, yes, that's true, that Ivan Dmitrius and he rubbed his forehead. It's awful. But what am I to do? What? Andrei Yephimich liked Ivan Dmitrius' voice and his intelligent young face with its grimaces. He longed to be kind to the young man and sooth him. He sat down on the bed beside him, thought and said, you ask me what to do. The very best thing in your position would be to run away.

1:00:40But unhappy that is useless, you would be taken up. When society protects itself from the criminal, mentally deranged or otherwise inconvenient people, it is invincible. There is only one thing left for you to resign yourself to the thought that your presence here is inevitable. It is no use to anyone. So long as prisons and mad houses exist, someone must be shut up in them. If not you, I, if not I, some third person. Wait until in the distant future prisons and mad houses no longer exist, and there will be neither bars on the windows nor hospital gowns. Of course, that time will come sooner or later. Ivan Dmitrius smiled ironically. You are justing, he said, screwing up his eyes. Such gentleman as you and your assistant Nikita have nothing to do with the future, but you may be sure, sir, better days will come. I may express myself cheaply, you may laugh, but the dawn of a new life is at hand. Truth and justice will triumph, and our turn will come. I shall not

1:01:42live to see it, I shall perish, but some people's great grandsons will see it. I greet them with all my heart and rejoice, rejoice with them. Onward, God be your help friends. With shining eyes, Ivan Dmitrius got up and stretching his hands towards the window, went on with emotion in his voice. From behind these bars I bless you, a raw for truth and justice I rejoice. I see no particular reason to rejoice, said Andrei Yephemitch, who thought Ivan Dmitrius' movement theatrical, though he was delighted by it. Prisons and mad houses there will not be, and truth as you have just expressed it, will triumph. But the reality of things you know will not change. The laws of nature will still remain the same. People will suffer pain, grow old and die, just as they do now. However magnificent a dawn lighted up your life, you would yet in the end be nailed up in a coffin and thrown into a hole. In immortality? Oh come now. You don't believe in it, but I do.

1:02:43Somebody in Dostoyevsky or Voltaire said that if there had not been a God, men would have invented him. And I firmly believe that if there is no immortality, the great intellect of man will sooner or later invent it. Well said, observed Andrei Yephemitch, smiling with pleasure. It's a good thing you have faith. With such a belief one may live happily even shut up within walls. You have studied somewhere I presume? Yes, I have been at the university but did not complete my studies. You are reflecting in a thoughtful man. In any surroundings you can find tranquility in yourself. Free and deep thinking which strive for the comprehension of life and complete contempt for the foolish bustle of the world. Those are two blessings beyond any that man has ever known. And you can possess them even though you live behind threefold bars. Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the kings of the earth. Your diogenes were the blockhead, said Ivan Dmitrich Morosli. Why do you talk to me about diogenes in some foolish comprehension of life he cried,

1:03:49growing suddenly angry and leaping up? I love life. I love it passionately. I have the mania of persecution, a continual agonizing terror, but I have moments when I am overwhelmed by the thirst for life. And then I am afraid of going mad. I want dreadfully to live dreadfully. He walked up and down the ward in agitation and said, dropping his voice, when I dream I am haunted by phantoms. People come to me. I hear voices and music, and I fancy I am walking through woods or by the seashore, and I long so passionately for movement, for interest. Come, tell me what news is there, Ask Ivan Dmitrich. What's happening? You wish to know about the town or in general? Well, tell me first about the town and then in general. Well, in the town it is appallingly dull. There is no one to say a word to, no one to listen to. There are no new people. A young doctor called Hobbitov has come here recently. He had come in my time, while he is a low-cat, isn't he?

1:04:49Yes, he's a man of no culture. It's strange, you know. Judging by every sign, there is no intellectual stagnation in our capital cities. There is a movement, so there must be real people there too. But for some reason they always send us such men as I would rather not see. It's an unlucky town. Yes, it is an unlucky town, sight, Ivan Dmitrich, and he laughed. And how are things in general? What are they writing in the papers and reviews? It was by now dark in the ward. The doctorate got up and standing began to describe what was being written abroad and in Russia, and the tendency of thought that could be noticed now. Ivan Dmitrich listened attentively and put questions, but suddenly as though recalling something terrible, clutched at his head and lay down on the bed with his back to the doctor. What's the matter, asked Andrei Yephimich? You will not hear another word from me, said Ivan Dmitrich rudely. Leave me alone. Why so? I tell you, leave me alone. Why the devil do you persist? Andrei Yephimich shrugged his shoulders, heave to sigh and went out.

1:05:54As he crossed the entry, he said, you might clear up here, Nikita. There's an awfully stuffy smell. Well, certainly, Your Honor. What an agreeable young man thought Andrei Yephimich going back to his flat. In all the years I've been living here, I do believe he's the first I've met with him one can talk. He is capable of reasoning and is interested in just the right things. While he was reading and afterwards while he was going to bed, he kept thinking about Ivan Dmitrich, and when he woke next morning, he remembered that he had the day before made the acquaintance of an interesting and intelligent man and determined to visit him again as soon as possible. End of chapter 9, Recording by Expatriate in Bangor, Maine Chapter 10, Award Number 6 by Anton Chekhov Translated by Constance Garnet, 1861 to 1946, the sleep-revox recording is in the public domain,

1:06:59recording by Expatriate in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 10, Ivan Dmitrich was lying in the same position as on the previous day, with his head clutched in both hands and his legs drawn up. His face was not visible. Good day, my friends, said Andrei Yephimich, you're not asleep are you? In the first place I am not your friend, Ivan Dmitrich, articulated into the pillow, and in the second your efforts are useless, you will not get one word out of me. Strange, modern Andrei Yephimich in confusion. Yesterday we talked peacefully, but suddenly for some reason you took offense and broke off all at once. Probably I expressed myself awkwardly or perhaps gave utterance to some idea which did not fit in with your convictions. Yes, a likely idea said Ivan Dmitrich, sitting up and looking at the doctor with irony and uneasiness. His eyes were red, you can go and spy and probe somewhere else. It's no use you're doing it here.

1:07:59I knew yesterday what you would come for. A strange fancy laughed the doctor, so you suppose me to be a spy? Yes, I do, a spy or a doctor who has been charged to test me it's all the same. Oh excuse me, what a queer fellow you are really. The doctor sat down on the stool near the bed and shook his head reproachfully. But let us suppose you were right he said. Let us suppose that I am treacherously trying to trap you into saying something so as to betray you to the police. You would be arrested and then tried. But would you be any worse off being tried and in prison than you are here? If you are banished to a settlement or even sent to penal servitude, would it be worse than being shut up in this ward? I imagine it would be no worse. What then are you afraid of? These words evidently had an effect on Ivan Dmitrich. He sat down quietly. It was between four and five in the afternoon. The time when Andre Yefimich usually walked up and down his rooms and Darushka asked whether it was not time for his beer. It was a still bright day.

1:09:05I came up for a walk after dinner and here I have come as you see said the doctor. It is quite spring. What month is it? March asked Ivan Dmitrich? Yes, the end of March. Is it very muddy? No, not very. There are already paths in the garden. It would be nice now to drive in an open carriage somewhere into the country, Siddivand Dmitrich, rubbing his red eyes as though he were just awake. And then to come home to a warm snug study and then to have a decent doctor to cure one's headache. It's so long since I have lived like a human being, it's disgusting here, insufferably disgusting. After his excitement of the previous day, he was exhausted and listless, and spoke unwillingly. His fingers twitched and from his face it could be seen that he had a splitting headache. There is no real difference between a warm snug study and this ward at Andre Yefimich. A man's peace and contentment do not lie outside a man but in himself. What do you mean?

1:10:05The ordinary man looks for good and evil in external things, that is, in carriages, in studies, but a thinking man looked for it in himself. You should go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it's warm and fragrant with the scent of pomegranates. The here is not suited to the climate, with whom was it I was talking of diogenes? Was it with you? Yes, with me yesterday. Diogenes did not need a study or a warm habitation. It's hot there without. You can lie in your tub and eat oranges and olives. But bring him to Russia to live. He'd be begging to be let indoors in May, let alone December. He'd be doubled up with the cold. No, one can be insensible to cold as to every other pain. Marcus Aurelius says, a pain is a vivid idea of pain. Make an effort of will to change that idea, dismiss it, cease to complain and the pain will disappear. That is true. The wise man, or simply the reflecting thoughtful man, is distinguished precisely by his contempt for

1:11:07suffering. He is always contented and surprised at nothing. Then I am an idiot, since I suffer and am discontented and surprised at the baseness of mankind. You are wrong in that. If you will reflect more on the subject, you will understand how insignificant is all that external world that agitates us. One must strive for the comprehension of life, and in that is true happiness. Comprehension, repeated Ivan Dmitrich frowning. External, internal, excuse me, but I don't understand it. I only know, he said, getting up and looking angrily at the doctor. I only know that God has created me of warm blood and nerves. Yes, indeed. If organic tissue is capable of life, it must react to every stimulus. And I do, to pain I respond with tears and out cries, to baseness with indignation, to filth with loathing. To my mind, that is just what is called life. The lower the organism, the less sensitive it is, and the more feebly it reacts to stimulus.

1:12:09And the higher it is, the more responsibly and vigorously it reacts to reality. How is it you don't know that? A doctor and not no such trifles? To despise suffering to be always contented, and to be surprised at nothing, one must reach this condition. And Ivan Dmitrich pointed to the peasant who was a mass of fat, or to harden oneself by suffering to such a point that one loses all sensibility to it. That is, in other words, to cease to live. You must excuse me, I am not a sage or a philosopher, Ivan Dmitrich continued with irritation, and I don't understand anything about it, I am not capable of reasoning. On the contrary, your reasoning is excellent. The stoics, whom you are peridine, were remarkable people, but their doctrine crystallized two thousand years ago and has not advanced and will not advance an inch forward since it is not practical or living. It had a success only with the minority which spends its life in savoring all sorts of theories

1:13:11and ruminating over them. The majority did not understand it. A doctrine which advocates in difference to wealth and to the comforts of life, and a contempt for suffering and death, is quite unintelligible to the vast majority of men. Since that majority has never known wealth or the comforts of life, and to despise suffering would mean to it, despising life itself, since the whole existence of man is made up of the sensations of hunger, cold, injury, and a handlit like dread of death. The whole of life lies in these sensations, one may be oppressed by it, one may hate it, but one cannot despise it. Yes, so I repeat, the doctrine of the stoics can never have a future. From the beginning of time up to today, you see continually increasing the struggle, the sensibility to pain, the capacity of responding to stimulus. Ivan Dmitryt suddenly lost the threat of his thoughts, stopped, and rubbed his forehead with vexation. I meant to say something important, but I have lost it, he said. What was I saying?

1:14:15Oh yes, this is what I mean. One of the stoics sold himself into slavery to redeem his neighbor, so you see even a stoic did react to stimulus, since for such a generous act as the destruction of oneself, for the sake of one's neighbor, he must have had a soul capable of pity and indignation. Here in prison I have forgotten everything I have learned, or else I could have recalled something else. Take Christ, for instance. Christ responded to reality by weeping, smiling, being sorrowful, and moved to wrath, even overcome by misery. He did not go to meet his sufferings with a smile. He did not despise death, but prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that this cup might pass him by. Ivan Dmitryt left and sat down. Granted that a man's peace and contentment lie not outside, but in himself, he said. Granted that one must despise suffering and not be surprised at anything. Yet on what ground do you preach the theory? Are you a sage, a philosopher?

1:15:16No, I am not a philosopher, but everyone ought to preach it because it is reasonable. No, I want to know how it is that you consider yourself competent to judge of comprehension, contempt for suffering, and so on. Have you ever suffered? Have you any idea of suffering? Allow me to ask you, were you ever thrashed in your childhood? No, my parents had an aversion for corporal punishment. My father used to flog me cruelly. My father was a harsh, sickly government clerk with a long nose and a yellow neck, but let us talk of you. No one has laid a finger on you all your life. No one has scared you nor beaten you. You were as strong as a bull. You grew up under your father's wing and studied at his expense, and then you dropped that once into a sinecure. For more than 20 years you have lived rent-free with heating, lighting, and service all provided, and had the right to work how you pleased and as much as you pleased, even to do nothing. You were naturally a flabby, lazy man,

1:16:18and so you have tried to arrange your life so that nothing should disturb you or make you move. You have handed over your work to the assistant and the rest of the rabble while you sit in peace and warmth, save money, read, amuse yourself with reflections, with all sorts of lofty nonsense, and, Ivan Dmitrich looked at the doctor's red nose with boozing. In fact, you have seen nothing of life. You know absolutely nothing of it, and are only theoretically acquainted with reality. You despise suffering and are surprised at nothing for a very simple reason. Vanity of vanities, the external and the internal contempt for life, for suffering and for death, comprehension, true happiness, that's a philosophy that suits the Russian sluggard best. You see a peasant beating his wife, for instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her. They will both die sooner or later anyway, and besides he who beats injures by his blows, not the person he is beating but himself. To get drunk is stupid and unsingually, but if you drink you die and if you

1:17:23don't drink you die. A peasant woman comes with toothache. Well, whatever. Pain is the idea of pain, and besides there is no living in this world without illness, we shall all die, and so go away woman, don't hinder me from thinking and drinking vodka. A young man asks advice what he is to do, how he is to live. Anyone else would think before answering, but you have got the answer ready. Strive for comprehension or for true happiness, and what is that fantastic true happiness? There is no answer of course. We are kept here behind barred windows, tortured, left to rot, but that is very good and reasonable because there is no difference at all between this word and a warm snug study. A convenient philosophy. You can do nothing and your conscience is clear and you feel you are wise. No sir, it is not philosophy, it is not thinking, it is not breadth of vision, but laziness, fakerism, drowsy stupifaction. Yes, Critey von Demetrich, getting angry again,

1:18:26you despise suffering, but I will be bound if you pinch your finger in the door you will howl at the top of your voice. And perhaps I shouldn't howl said Andrei Ephimich with a gentle smile. Oh, I dare say, well if you had a stroke of paralysis or supposing some fool or bully took advantage of his position and rank to insult you in public and if you knew he could do it with impunity, then you would understand what it means to put people off with comprehension and true happiness. That is original said Andrei Ephimich, laughing with pleasure and rubbing his hands. I am agreeably struck by your inclination for drawing generalizations and the sketch of my character you have just drawn is simply brilliant. I must confess that talking to you gives me great pleasure. Well, I've listened to you and now you must graciously listen to me. End of chapter 10, recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 11 and 12 of Ward number 6 by Anton Chekhov translated by Constance Garnet 1861 to 1946.

1:19:39This lead Brivaks recording is in the public domain, recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 11 The conversation went on for about an hour longer and apparently made a deep impression on Andrei Ephimich. He began going to the ward every day. He went there in the mornings and after dinner, and often the dusk of an evening found him in conversation with Ivan Dmitrich. At first, Ivan Dmitrich held a luth from him, suspected him of evil design and openly express his hostility, but afterwards he got used to him, and his abrupt manner changed to one of candy-sending irony. Soon it was all over the hospital that the doctor, Andrei Ephimich, had taken to visiting Ward number 6. No one, neither Sergei Sergeyevich nor Nikita nor the nurses, could conceive why he went there, why he stayed there for hours together, what he was talking about, and why he did not write prescriptions. His actions seemed strange.

1:20:41Often Mikhail Avriyanovich did not find him at home, which had never happened in the past, and Daryushka was greatly perturbed, for the doctor drank his beer now at no definite time, and sometimes was even late for dinner. One day it was at the end of June. Dr. Hobitoff went to see Andrei Ephimich about something. Not finding him at home, he proceeded to look for him in the yard. There he was told that the old doctor had gone to see the mental patients. Going into the lodge and stopping in the entry, Hobitoff heard the following conversation. We shall never agree, and you will not succeed in converting me to your faith, Ivan Dmitrich was saying irritably, you are utterly ignorant of reality, and you have never known suffering, but have only like a leech fed beside the suffering of others, while I have been in continual suffering from the day of my birth till today. For that reason I tell you frankly, I consider myself superior to you and more competent in every respect. It's not for you to teach me. I have absolutely no ambition to convert you to my faith at Andrei Ephimich gently,

1:21:46and with regret that the other refuse to understand him. And that is not what matters, my friend. What matters is not that you have suffered, and I have not. Joy and suffering are passing, let us leave them, never mind them. What matters is that you and I think. We see in each other people who are capable of thinking and reasoning, and that is a common bond between us, however different our views. If you knew my friend, how sick I am of the universal senselessness in aptitudes, stupidity, and with what delight I always talk with you. You are an intelligent man, and I enjoyed your company. Hobitoff opened the door and inch and glanced into the ward. Ivan Demetrich and his nightcap and the Dr. Andrei Ephimich were sitting side by side on the bed. The madman was grimacing, twitching, and convulsively wrapping himself in his gown, while the doctor sat motionless with bowed head, and his face was red and looked helpless and sorrowful. Hobitoff shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and glanced at Nikita. Nikita shrugged his shoulders too.

1:22:51Next day, Hobitoff went to the lodge accompanied by the assistant, both stood in the entry and listened. A fancy-our old man has gone clean off his chumps that Hobitoff, as he came out of the lodge. Lord have mercy upon us sinners, side the deckerous Sergei Sergeiich, scrupulously avoiding the puddles that he might not muddy his polished boots. I must own honored Yevgeny Fyodorich, I have been expecting it for a long time. Chapter 12 After this, Andrei Ephimich began to notice a mysterious air in all around him. The attendance, the nurses and the patients looked at him inquisitively when they met him, and then whispered together. The superintendent's little daughter, Masha, whom he liked to meet in the hospital garden, for some reason ran away from him now when he went up with a smile to stroke around the head. The postmaster no longer said perfectly true as he listened to him, but in unaccountable confusion muttered, yes, yes, yes, and looked at him with aggrieved and thoughtful expression. For some reason,

1:23:57he took to advising his friend to give up vodka and beer, but as a man of delicate feeling, he did not say this directly, but hinted at, telling him first about the commanding officer of his battalion and excellent man, and then about the priest of the regiment, a capital fellow, both of whom drank and fell ill, but on giving up drinking completely regained their health. On two or three occasions, Andrei Ephimich was visited by his colleague, Hobbitol, who also advised him to give up spiritual liquors, and for no apparent reason recommended him to take bromide. In August, Andrei Ephimich got a letter from the mayor of the town, asking him to come on very important business. On arriving at the town hall at the time fixed, Andrei Ephimich found there the military commander, the superintendent of the district school, a member of the town council, Hobbitol, in a plump fair gentleman who was introduced to him as a doctor. This doctor, with a Polish surname, difficult to pronounce, lived at a pedigree stud farm 20 miles away, and was now on a visit to

1:25:02the town. There's something that concerns you, said the member of the town council, addressing Andrei Ephimich after they had all greeted one another and sat down to the table. Here, Yavgaini Fjodoric says that there is not room for the dispensary in the main building, and that it ought to be transferred to one of the lodges. That's of no consequence. Of course, it can be transferred, but the point is that the lodge wants doing up. Yes, it would have to be done up, said Andrei Ephimich, after a moment's thought. If the corner lodge, for instance, were fitted up as a dispensary, I imagine it would cost at least 500 rubles, an unproductive expenditure. Everyone was silent for a space. I had the honor of submitting to you ten years ago Andrei Ephimich went on in a low voice, that the hospital in its present form is a luxury for the town beyond its means. It was built in the forties, but things were different then. The town spends too much on unnecessary buildings in superfluous staff. I believe with a different system, two model hospitals might be maintained

1:26:05for the same money. Well, let us have a different system then, the member of the town council said briskly. I have already had the honor of submitting to you that the medical department should be transferred to the supervision of the Zempo. Yes, transfer the money to the Zempo and they will steal it, laugh the fair hair doctor. That's what it always comes to the member of the council is sented, and he also laughed. Andrei Ephimich looked with apathetic, lustrous eyes at the fair hair doctor and said, one should be just. Again, there was silence. Tee was brought in. The military commander, for some reason much embarrassed, touched Andrei Ephimich's hand across the table and said, you have quite forgotten this doctor. But of course you are a hermit. You don't play cards and don't like women. You would be dull with fellows like us. They all began saying how boring it was for a decent person to live in such a town. No theater, no music, and at the last dance at the club there had been about 20 ladies and only two gentlemen. The young men did not dance but spent all the

1:27:07time crowding around the refreshment bar or playing cards. Not looking at anyone and speaking slowly in a low voice, Andrei Ephimich began saying, what a pity, what a terrible pity it was that the townspeople should waste their vital energy, their hearts, and their minds on cards and gossip, and should have neither the power nor the inclination to spend their time in interesting conversation and reading, and should refuse to take advantage of the enjoyment of the mind. The mind alone was interesting and worthy of attention. All the rest was low and petty. Obitov listened to his colleague attentively and suddenly asked, Andrei Ephimich, what day of the month is it? Having received an answer, the fair hair doctor and he, in the tone of examiner's conscious of their lack of skill, began asking Andrei Ephimich, what was the day of the week? How many days there were in the year? And whether it was true that there was a remarkable profit living in Ward number six? In response to the last question, Andrei Ephimich turned rather red and said, yes, he is mentally deranged but he is an interesting young man.

1:28:13They asked him no other questions. When he was putting on his overcoat in the entry, the military commander laid a hand on his shoulder and said with a sigh, it's time for us old fellows to rest. As he came out of the hall, Andrei Ephimich understood that it had been a committee appointed to inquire into his mental condition. He recalled the questions that had been asked him, flushed crimson, and for some reason for the first time in his life felt bitterly grieved for medical science. My God, he thought, remembering how these doctors had just examined him. Why they have only lately been hearing lectures on mental pathology, they had passed an examination. What's the explanation of this crass ignorance? They have not a conception of mental pathology. And for the first time in his life, he felt insulted and moved to anger. In the evening of the same day, Mikhail Aveyanich came to see him. The postman went up to him without waiting to greet him, took him by both hands and said in an agitated voice, my dear fellow, my dear friend, show me that you believe in my genuine affection and look on me as

1:29:18your friend. And preventing Andrei Ephimich from speaking, he went on, growing excited. I love you for your culture and nobility of soul. Listen to me, my dear fellow. The rules of their profession compel the doctors to conceal the truth from you. But I blurt out the plain truth like a soldier. You are not well. Excuse me, my dear fellow. But it is the truth. Everyone about you has been noticing it for a long time. Dr. Yevgeniy Fyodorich has just told me that it is essential for you to rest and distract your mind for the sake of your health. Perfectly true, excellent. In a day or two, I am taking a holiday and I'm going away for a sniff of a different atmosphere. Show that you are a friend to me. Let us go together. Let us go for a jaunt as in the good old days. I feel perfectly well, Sidandri Ephimich, after a moment's thought. I can't go away. Allow me to show you my friendship in some other way. To go off with no object without his books, without his Dariuska, without his beer, to break abruptly through the routine of life established for twenty years,

1:30:21the idea for the first minute struck him as wild and fantastic. But he remembered the conversation at the Zemspho committee and the depressing feelings with which he had returned home and the thought of a brief absence from the town in which stupid people looked on him as a madman was pleasant to him. And where precisely do you intend to go, he asked? To Moscow, to Petersburg, to Warsaw. I spent the five happiest years of my life in Warsaw. What a marvelous town. Let us go, my dear fellow. End of chapter 12, Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter is 13 and 14 of Ward number six by Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garner, 1861 to 1946. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 13. A week later it was suggested to Andrei

1:31:26Yefimic that he should have a rest, that is, send in his resignation, a suggestion he received within difference, and a week later still, Mikhail Averyanich and he were sitting in a posting carriage driving to the nearest railway station. The days were cool and bright with a blue sky in a transparent distance. They were two days driving the 150 miles to the railway station and stayed two nights on the way. When at the posting station the glass has given them for their tea had not been properly washed, or the drivers were slow in harnessing the horses, Mikhail Averyanich would turn crimson and quivering all over which shalt hold your tongue, don't argue. And in the carriage he talked without ceasing for a moment, describing his campaigns in the Caucasus and in Poland. What adventures he had had, what meetings, he talked loudly and opened his eyes so wide with wonder that he might well be thought to be lying. Moreover, as he talked he breathed in Andrei Yefimic's face and laughed into his ear. This bothered the doctor and prevented him from thinking or concentrating

1:32:31his mind. In the train they traveled from motives of economy, third class in a non-smoking compartment. Half the passengers were decent people. Mikhail Averyanich soon made friends with everyone, and moving from one seat to another kept saying loudly that they ought not to travel by these appalling lines. It was a regular swindle, a very different thing riding on a good horse, one could do over 70 miles a day and feel fresh and well after it. And our bad harvest were due to the draining of the Pinsk marshes, all together the way things were done was dreadful. He got excited, talked loudly and would not let others speak. This endless chatter to the accompaniment of loud laughter and expressive gestures, we read Andrei Yefimic, which of us is the madman he thought with vexation, I who try not to disturb my fellow passengers in any way, or this egoist who thinks that he is cleverer and more interesting than anyone here, and so will leave no one in peace. In Moscow Mikhail Averyanich put on a military coat without epilets and trousers with red braid on

1:33:38them. He wore a military cap and overcoat in the street and soldiers saluted him. It seemed to Andrei Yefimic now that his companion was a man who had flung away all that was good, and kept only what was bad of all the characteristics of a country gentleman that he had once possessed. He liked to be waited on even when it was quite unnecessary. The matches would be lying before him on the table, and he would see them and shout to the waiter to give him the matches. He did not hesitate to appear before a maidservant in nothing but his underclothes. He used the familiar mode of address to all footmen indiscriminately even old men, and when he was angry called them fools and blockheads. This, Andrei Yefimic thought, was like a gentleman but disgusting. First of all Mikhail Averyanich led his friend to the Iversky Madonna. He prayed fervently shedding tears and bowing down to the earth, and when he had finished heave to deep sigh and said, even though one does not believe it makes one somehow easier when one prays a little. Kiss the

1:34:42icon my dear fellow. Andrei Yefimic was embarrassed and he kissed the image while Mikhail Averyanich perched up his lips and prayed in a whisper, and again tears came into his eyes. Then they went to the Kremlin and looked there at the Tsar cannon and the Tsar bell and even touched them with their fingers, admired the view over the river, visited St. Saviour's in their room Yotsov Museum. They dined at Chyotsovs. Mikhail Averyanich looked a long time at the menu stroking his whiskers, and said in the tone of a gourmand a custom to eat in restaurants. We shall see what you give us to eat today, angel. Chapter 14 The doctor walked about looked at things eight and drank, but he had all the while one feeling annoyance with Mikhail Averyanich. He longed to have a rest from his friend to get away from him, to hide himself, while the friend thought it was his duty not to let the doctor move a step away from him, and to provide him with as many distractions as possible.

1:35:45When there was nothing to look at, he entertained him with conversation. For two days, Andrei Yephamich endured it, but on the third he announced to his friend that he was ill and wanted to stay at home for the whole day. His friend replied that in that case he would stay too, that really he needed rest, or he was run off his legs already. Andrei Yephamich lay on the sofa with his face to the back, and clenching his teeth, listened to his friend, was short him with heat that sooner or later France would certainly thrash Germany, but there were a great many scoundrels in Moscow, and that it was impossible to judge of a horse's quality by its outward appearance. The doctor began to have a buzzing in his ears and palpitations of the heart, but out of delicacy could not bring himself to beg his friend to go away or hold his tongue. Fortunately, Mikhail Averyanich grew weary of sitting in the hotel room, and after dinner he went out for a walk. As soon as he was alone, Andrei Yephamich abandoned himself to a feeling of relief, how pleasant to lie motionless

1:36:47on the sofa and to know that one is alone in the room. Real happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel betrayed God probably because he longed for solitude, of which the angels know nothing. Andrei Yephamich wanted to think about what he had seen in her during the last few days, but he could not get Mikhail Averyanich out of his head. Why, he has taken a holiday and come with me out of friendship, out of generosity, thought the doctor with vexation. Nothing could be worse than this friendly supervision. I suppose he is good-natured and generous and a lively fellow, but he is a boar, an insufferable boar. In the same way there are people who never say anything, but what is clever and good, yet one feels that they are dull-witted people. For the following days, Andrei Yephamich declared himself ill and would not leave the hotel room. He lay with his face to the back of the sofa and suffered agonies of weariness when his friend entertained him with conversation, or rested when his friend was absent. He was vexed with himself for having come,

1:37:52and with his friend who grew every day more talkative and more free and easy. He could not succeed in attuning his thoughts to a serious and lofty level. This is what I get from the real life Ivan Dmitrich talked about, he thought, angry at his own pettiness. It's of no consequence, though, I shall go home, and everything will go on as before. It was the same thing in Peter's burg, too. For a whole day is together he did not leave the hotel room, but lay on the sofa and only got up to drink beer. Mikhail Avrianich was all haste to get to Warsaw. My dear man, which should I go there forced at Andrei Yephamich? In an imploring voice, you go alone and let me get home, I entreat you. On no account protested Mikhail Avrianich, it's a marvelous town. Andrei Yephamich had not the strength of will to insist on his own way, and much against his inclination went to Warsaw. There he did not leave the hotel room, but lay on the sofa, furious with himself, with his friend and with the waiters, who obstinately refused to understand Russian. While Mikhail Avrianich,

1:38:57healthy, hearty, and full of spirits as usual, went about the town from morning to night, looking for his old acquaintances. Several times he did not return home at night. After one night spent in some unknown haunt, he returned home early in the morning in a violently excited condition, with a red face and tousled hair. For a long time he walked up and down the rooms, muttering something to himself, then stopped and said, honor before everything. After walking up and down a little longer he clutched his head in both hands and pronounced in a tragic voice. Yes, honor before everything. A curse would be the moment when the idea first entered my head to visit this babelon. My dear friend he added, addressing the doctor, you may despise me. I have played and lost, lend me 500 rubles. Andrei Yephamich counted up 500 rubles and gave them to his friend without a word. The latter still crimson with shame and anger, incoherently articulated some useless vow,

1:39:58put on his cap and went out. Returning two hours later he flopped into an easy chair. Heaved a loud sigh and said, my honor is saved. Let us go my friends. I do not care to remain another hour in this accursed town. Scoundrels, Austrian spies. By the time the friends were back in their own town it was November, and deep snow was lying in the streets. Dr. Hobomov had Andrei Yephamich's post. He was still living in his old lodgings, waiting for Andrei Yephamich to arrive and clear out of the hospital apartments. The plain woman whom he called his cook was already established in one of the lodges. Fresh scandals about the hospital were going the round of the town. He was said that the plain woman had quarreled with a superintendent and that the latter had crawled on his knees before her begging forgiveness. On the first day he arrived Andrei Yephamich had to look out for lodgings. My friend the postmaster said to him timidly, excuse an indiscreet question. What means have you

1:41:00at your disposal? Andrei Yephamich without a word counted out his money and said, 86 rubles. I don't mean that, Mikhail Averyonich brought out in confusion, misunderstanding him. I mean, what have you to live on? I tell you, 86 rubles, I have nothing else. Mikhail Averyonich looked upon the doctor as an honorable man, yet he suspected that he had accumulated a fortune of at least 20,000. Now learning that Andrei Yephamich was a beggar, that he had nothing to live on, he was for some reason suddenly moved to tears and embraced his friend. End of chapter 14 15 Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine 15 End of chapter 15 Translated by Constance Garnet, 1861-1946 This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine

1:42:0515 Andrei Yephamich now lodged in a little house with three windows. There were only three rooms besides the kitchen in the little house. The doctor lived in two of them which looked into the street, while Daryushka and the landlady with her three children lived in the third room in the kitchen. Sometimes the landlady's lover, a drunken peasant, who was rowdy and reduced the children in Daryushka to terror, would come for the night. When he arrived and established himself in the kitchen and demanded vodka, they all felt very uncomfortable, and the doctor would be moved by pity to take the crying children into his room and let them lie on his floor in this gave him great satisfaction. He got up as before at eight o'clock, and after his morning tea sat down to read his old books and magazines, he had no money for new ones, either because the books were old or perhaps because of the change in his surroundings, reading exhausted him and did not grip his attention as before,

1:43:05that he might not spend his time in idleness he made a detailed catalog of his books and gun little labels on their backs, and this mechanical tedious work seemed to him more interesting than reading. The monotonous tedious work lulled his thoughts to sleep in some unaccountable way, and the time passed quickly while he thought of nothing. Even sitting in the kitchen, peeling potatoes with Daryushka or picking over the buckwheat grain seemed to him interesting. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to church, standing near the wall and half-closing his eyes, he listened to the singing and thought of his father, of his mother, of the university, of the religions of the world. He felt calm and melancholy, and as he went out of the church afterwards, he regretted that the service was so soon over. He went twice to the hospital to talk to Ivan Dmitrich, but on both occasions Ivan Dmitrich was unusually excited and ill-humored. He bade the doctor leave him in peace, as he had long been sick of empty chatter and declared to make up for all his

1:44:10sufferings. He asked from the damn scoundrels only one favor, solitary confinement. Surely they would not refuse him even that. On both occasions when Andrei Yephemitch was taking leave of him and wishing him good night, he answered rudely and said, go to hell. And Andrei Yephemitch did not know now whether to go to him for the third time or not. He longed to go. In old days Andrei Yephemitch used to walk about his rooms and think in the interval after dinner, but now from dinner time till evening tea he lay on the sofa with his face to the back and gave himself up to trivial thoughts which he could not struggle against. He was mortified that after more than 20 years of service, he had been given neither a pension nor any assistance. It is true that he had not done his work honestly, but then all who are in the service get a pension without distinction whether they are honest or not. Contemporary justice lies precisely in the bestowal of grades, orders and pensions, not from moral qualities or capacities, but for service whatever it may have been like. Why was

1:45:15he alone to be an exception? He had no money at all. He was ashamed to pass by the shop and look at the woman who owned it. He owed thirty-two rubles for beer already. There was money owing to the landlady also. Daryushka sold old clothes and books on the sly and told lies to the landlady, saying that the doctor was just going to receive a large sum of money. He was angry with himself for having wasted on traveling the thousand rubles he had saved up. How useful that thousand rubles would have been now. He was vexed that people would not leave him in peace. Hobito thought of his duty to look in on his sick colleague from time to time. Everything about him was revolting to Andrey Yephimich. His well-fed face and vulgar condescending tone and his use of the word colleague and his high top boots. The most revolting thing was that he thought it was his duty to treat Andrey Yephimich and thought that he really was treating him. On every visit he brought a bottle of bromide and rhubarb pills. Mikhail Averyanich too thought of his duty to visit his friend

1:46:20and entertain him. Every time he went into Andrey Yephimich with an affectation of ease, laughed constrainedly and began assuring him that he was looking very well today, and that thank God he was on the high road to recovery. And from this it might be concluded that he looked on his friend's condition as hopeless. He had not yet repaid his Warsaw debt and was overwhelmed by shame. He was constrained and so tried to laugh louder and talk more amusingly. His anecdotes and descriptions seemed endless now, and were an agony both to Andrey Yephimich and himself. In his presence Andrey Yephimich usually lay on the sofa with his face to the wall, and listened with his teeth clenched. His soul was oppressed with wrinkling disgust, and after every visit from his friend he felt as though this disgust had risen higher and was mounting into his throat. Distifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself and Hobotov and Mikhail Averyanich would all sooner or later perish without leaving any trace

1:47:21on the world. If one imagined some spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years, he would see nothing but clay and bare rocks. Everything, culture and the moral law would pass away and not even a bird-ock would grow out of them. Of what consequence was shame in the presence of a shopkeeper, of what consequence was the insignificant Hobotov or the weary some friendship of Mikhail Averyanich. It was all trivial and nonsensical, but such reflections did not help him now. Scarcely had he imagined the earthly globe in a million years when Hobotov in his high top boots or Mikhail Averyanich with his force laugh would appear from behind a bare rock, and he even heard the shame faced whisper, the war saw death. I will repay it in a day or two my dear fellow without fail. End of chapter 15 Recording by Ex Patriot in Bangor, Maine

1:48:26Chapter 16 and 17 of Ward number 6 by Anton Chekov Translated by Constance Garnet 1861 to 1946, this Librivaks recording is in the public domain, recording by Ex Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 16 One day Mikhail Averyanich came after dinner when Andrei Yefimich was lying on the sofa. It so happened that Hobotov arrived at the same time with his bromide. Andrei Yefimich got up heavily and sat down leaning both arms on the sofa. You have a much better color today than you had yesterday. My dear man began Mikhail Averyanich. Yes, you look jolly, upon my soul you do. It's high time you were well dear colleagues at Hobotov, yawning, I'll be bound you're sick of this bobbery. And we shall recover Sid Mikhail Averyanich cheerfully, we shall live another hundred years to be sure. Not a hundred years but another twenty Hobotov said reassuringly, it's alright, alright colleague, don't lose heart, don't go piling it on.

1:49:32We'll show what we can do, laugh Mikhail Averyanich and he slept his friend on the knee. We'll show them yet. Next summer please God we shall be off to the Caucasus, and we will ride all over it on horseback, trot trot trot. And when we are back from the Caucasus I shouldn't wonder if we will all dance at the wedding. Mikhail Averyanich gave a sly wink, we'll marry you my dear boy, we'll marry you. Andrei Yefimich felt suddenly that the rising disgust had mounted to his throat. His heart began beating violently. That's vulgar, he said, getting up quickly and walking away to the window. Don't you understand that you were talking vulgar nonsense? He meant to go on softly and politely, but against his will he suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head. Leave me alone he shouted and avoids unlike his own, blushing crimson and shaking all over, go away both of you. Mikhail Averyanich and Hobotov got up and stared at him first with amazement and then with alarm. Go away both. Andrei Yefimich went on shouting, stupid people, foolish people,

1:50:37I don't want either your friendship or your medicine, stupid man, vulgar nasty. Hobotov and Mikhail Averyanich looking at each other and bewildered and staggered to the door and went out. Andrei Yefimich snatched up the bottle of bromide and flung it after them. The bottle broke with a crash on the doorframe. Go to the devil he shouted in a tearful voice running out into the passage to the devil. When his guests were gone, Andrei Yefimich lay down on the sofa, trembling as though in a fever and went on for long while repeating stupid people, foolish people. When he was calmer what occurred to him first of all was the thought that poor Mikhail Averyanich must be feeling fearfully ashamed and depressed now and that it was all dreadful. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Where was his intelligence and his tact? Where was his comprehension of things and his philosophical indifference? The doctor could not sleep all night for shame and vexation with himself. And at 10 o'clock

1:51:38next morning he went to the post office and apologized to the postmaster. We won't think of what has happened Mikhail Averyanich greatly touched, said with a sigh, warmly pressing his hand, that bygones be bygones. The bofkin he suddenly shouted so loud that all the postmen and other persons present started, and a chair, and you wait he shouted to a peasant woman who was stretching out a registered letter to him through the grating. Don't you see that I am busy? We will not remember the past he went on, affectionately addressing Andrei Averyanich. Sit down, I beg you, my dear fellow. For a minute he stroked his knees in silence and then said, I have never had a thought of taking offense. Illness is no joke, I understand. You're attacked frightened the doctor in me yesterday, and we had a long talk about you afterwards. My dear friend, why won't you treat your illness seriously? You can't go on like this. Excuse me speaking openly as a friend with Mikhail Averyanich. You live in the most unfavorable surroundings, in a crowd, in uncleanness, no one to look after you, no money for proper treatment.

1:52:41My dear friend, the doctor and I implore you with all our hearts, listen to our advice, go into the hospital. There you will have wholesome food and attendance and treatment. Though between ourselves you have gaining fjodoric, is Moveton, yet he does understand his work, he can fully rely upon him. He has promised me he will look after you. Andrei Averyanich was touched by the postmaster's genuine sympathy, and the tears which suddenly glittered on his cheeks. My honored friend, don't believe it, he whispered, laying his hand on his heart, don't believe them, it's all a sham. My illness is only that in twenty years I have only found one intelligent man in the whole town, and he is mad. I am not ill at all, it's simply that I have got into an enchanted circle which there is no getting out of. I don't care, I am ready for anything. Go into the hospital, my dear fellow. I don't care if it were into the pit. Give me your word, my dear man, that you will obey you have gaining fjodoric and everything. Certainly I will give you my word, but I repeat my

1:53:44honored friend. I have got into an enchanted circle. Now everything, even the genuine sympathy of my friends, leads to the same thing, to my ruin. I am going to my ruin, and I have the manliness to recognize it. My dear fellow, you will recover. What's the use of saying that, said Andrei Efamich, with irritation? There are few men who at the end of their lives do not experience what I am experiencing now. When you are told that you have something such as disease, kidneys, or in large heart, and you begin being treated for it, or are told you are mad or a criminal, that is, in fact, when people suddenly turn their attention to you, you may be sure you have got into an enchanted circle from which you will not escape. You will try to escape and make things worse. You had better give in for no human effort can save you, so it seems to me. Meanwhile, the public was crowding at the grating that he might not be in their way, Andrei Efamich got up and began to take leave. Mikhail Averyanich made him promise on his honor once more, and escorted him to the outer

1:54:46door. Towards evening on the same day, Hobotov, in his sheepskin and his high top boots, suddenly made his appearance, and said to Andrei Efamich, in a tone as though nothing had happened the day before, I have come on business, colleague. I have come to ask you whether you would not join me in a consultation, eh? Thinking that Hobotov wanted to distract his mind with an outing, or perhaps really to enable him to earn something, Andrei Efamich put on his coat and hat and went out with him into the street. He was glad of the opportunity to smooth over his fault of the previous day, and to be reconciled, and in his heart thanked Hobotov, who did not even allude to yesterday's scene and was evidently sparing him. One would never have expected such delicacy from this uncultured man. Where is your invalid, asked Andrei Efamich? In the hospital, I have long wanted to show him to you a very interesting case. They went into the hospital yard and going round the main building, turned towards the lodge where the mental cases were kept, and all this for some reason in silence.

1:55:51When they went into the lodge, Nikita as usual jumped up and stood at attention. One of the patients here has a lung complication Hobotov said, in an undertone, going into the yard with Andrei Efamich, you wait here, I'll be back directly, I'm going for a stethoscope, and he went away. Chapter 17 It was getting dusk. Ivan Demetrich was lying on his bed with his face thrust into his pillow. The paralytic was sitting motionless, crying quietly and moving his lips. The fat peasant and the former's sorder were asleep. It was quiet. Andrei Efamich sat down and Ivan Demetrich's bed and waited. But half an hour passed, and instead of Hobotov, Nikita came into the ward with a dressing gown, some under linen, and a pair of slippers and a heap on his arm. Please change your things, Your Honor, he said softly. Here is your bed, come this way he added, pointing to an empty bedstead which had obviously recently been brought into the ward.

1:56:52It's alright, please God, you will recover. Andrei Efamich understood it all. Without saying a word, he crossed to the bed to which Nikita pointed and sat down. Seeing that Nikita was standing waiting, he undressed entirely, and he felt ashamed. Then he put on the hospital clothes. The drawers were very short, the shirt was long, and the dressing gown smelt of smoked fish. Please God, you will recover repeated Nikita, and he gathered up Andrei Efamich's clothes into his arms, went out and shut the door after him. No matter thought Andrei Efamich, wrapping himself in his dressing gown in a shame-faced way, and feeling that he'd looked like a convict in his new costume, it's no matter. It does not matter whether it's a dresscoat or a uniform or this dressing gown. But how about his watch, and the notebook that was in the side pocket, and his cigarettes, were had Nikita taken his clothes, now perhaps to the day of his death he would not put on trousers, a wesket, and high boots.

1:57:52It was all somehow strange and even incomprehensible at first. Andrei Efamich was even now convinced that there was no difference between his landlady's house and ward number six, that everything in this world was nonsense and vanity of vanities, and yet his hands were trembling, his feet were cold, and he was filled with dread, at the thought that soon Ivan Demetrich would get up and see that he was in a dressing gown. He got up and walked across the room and sat down again. Here he had been sitting already half an hour and hour, and he was miserably sick of it. Was it really possible to live here a day, a week, and even years like these people? Why he had been sitting here had walked about and sat down again. He could get up and look out of window and walk from corner to corner again and then what? Sit so all the time like a post and think. No, that was scarcely possible. Andrei Efamich lay down, but at once got up, wiped the cold sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and felt it his whole face, smelt of smoked fish. He walked about again. It's some misunderstanding,

1:58:57he said. Turning out the palms of his hands and perplexity, it must be cleared up, there is a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, Ivan Demetrich woke up. He sat up and propped his cheeks on his fists. He spat. Then he glanced lazily at the doctor and apparently for the first minute did not understand, but soon his sleepy face grew malicious and mocking. Aha! So they put you in here too old fellow, he said, in a voice husky from sleepiness, screwing up one eye. Very glad to see you. You suck the blood of others and now they will suck yours. Excellent. It's a misunderstanding. Andrei Efamich brought out, frightened by Ivan Demetrich's words. He shrugged his shoulders and repeated, it's some misunderstanding. Ivan Demetrich spat again and lay down. Curse it life he grumbled, and what bitter and insulting, this life will not end in compensation for our sufferings, it will not end with a pothiosis as it would in an opera, but with death. Peasants will come and drag one's dead body by the arms and the

2:00:01legs to the cellar. Ah! Well, it does not matter. We shall have our good time in the other world. I shall come here as a ghost from the other world and frighten these reptiles. I'll turn their hair gray. Woiseka returned and seeing the doctor held out his hand. Give me one little copak, he said. End of chapter 17, recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 18 and 19 of Ward number 6 by Anton Chekhov translated by Constance Garnet, 1861 to 1946. This lead revoked recording is in the public domain, recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 18 Andrei Yephamitch walked away to the window and looked out into the open country. It was getting dark, and on the horizon to the right a cold crimson moon was mounting upwards.

2:01:04Not far from the hospital fence, not much more than 200 yards away stood a tall white house, shut in by a stone wall. This was the prison. So this is real life thought Andrei Yephamitch and he felt frightened. The moon and the prison and the nails on the fence and the faraway flames at the bone-charming factory were all terrible. Behind him there was a sound of a sigh. Andrei Yephamitch looked round and saw a man with glittering stars and orders on his breasts, who was smiling and slightly winking. And this too seemed terrible. Andrei Yephamitch assured himself that there was nothing special about the moon or the prison, that even sane persons wear orders, and that everything in time will decay and turn to earth, but he was suddenly overcome with desire. He clutched at the grating with both hands and shook it with all his might. The strong grating did not yield. Then that it might not be so dreadful he went to Ivan Dmitrich's bed and sat down. I have lost heart, my dear fellow. He muttered trembling and wiping away the cold sweat.

2:02:08I have lost heart. You should be philosophical, said Ivan Dmitrich ironically? My God, my God, yes, yes. You were pleased to say once that there was no philosophy in Russia, but that all people, even the polterists, talk philosophy, but you know the philosophizing of the polterists did not harm anyone, said Andrei Yephamitch in a tone as if he wanted to cry and complain. Why then that malignant laugh, my friend? And how can these poultry creatures help philosophizing if they are not satisfied? For an intelligent, educated man made in God's image, proud and loving freedom, to have no alternative but to be a doctor in a filthy, stupid, wretched little town, and to spend his whole life among bottles, leeches, mustered plasters, quackery, narrowness, vulgarity. Oh my God, you are talking nonsense. If you don't like being a doctor, you should have gone in for being a statesman. I could not. I could not do anything. We are weak, my dear friend. I used to be indifferent. I reason boldly and soundly,

2:03:11but at the first course touch of life upon me I have lost heart. Prostration, we are weak, we are poor creatures, and you too, my dear friend. You are intelligent, generous. You drew in good impulses with your mother's milk, but you had hardly entered upon life when you were exhausted and fell ill. Weak, weak. Andrei Yephamitch was all the while at the approach of evening, tormented by another persistent sensation besides terror and the feeling of resentment. At last he realized that he was longing for a smoke and for beer. I am going out, my friend, he said. I will tell them to bring a light. I can't put up with this. I am not equal to it. Andrei Yephamitch went to the door and opened it, but at once Nikita jumped up and barred his way. Where are you going? You can't. You can't, he said. It's bedtime. But I'm only going out for a minute to walk about the yard, said Andrei Yephamitch. You can't. You can't. It's forbidden. You know that yourself. But what difference will it make to anyone if I do go out

2:04:13asked Andrei Yephamitch, shrugging his shoulders? I don't understand. Nikita, I must go out, he said, in a trembling voice. I must. Don't be disorderly. It's not right, Nikita said, preemptorally. This is beyond everything, Ivan Dmitrich cried suddenly, and he jumped up. What right has he not to let you out? How dare they keep us here? I believe it is clearly laid down in the law that no one can be deprived of freedom without trial. It's an outrage, it's tyranny. Of course, his tyranny said Andrei Yephamitch, encouraged by Ivan Dmitrich's outburst. I must go out. I want to. He has no right. Open, I tell you. You hear you dull-witted brute cried Ivan Dmitrich, and he banged on the door with his fist. Open the door, I will break it open, torture her. Open the door, cried Andrei Yephamitch, trembling all over. I insist. Talk away, Nikita answered through the door. Talk away. Anyhow, go and call Yevgeny Fyodorich, say that I beg him to come for a minute. His honor will come of himself tomorrow.

2:05:16They will never let us out, Ivan Dmitrich, with going on meanwhile. They will leave us to rot here. Oh, Lord, can there really be no hell in the next world, and will these wretches be forgiven? Where is justice? Open the door, you wretch. I am choking. He cried in a horse voice and flung himself upon the door. I'll dash out my brains, murderers. Nikita opened the door quickly, and roughly with both his hands and his knee shoved Andrei Yephamitch back, then swung his arm and punched him in the face with his fist. It seemed to Andrei Yephamitch as though a huge salt wave enveloped him from his head downwards and dragged him to the bed. There really was a salt taste in his mouth. Most likely the blood was running from his teeth. He waved his arms as though he were trying to swim out and clutched at a bedstead, and at the same moment felt Nikita hit him twice on the back. Ivan Dmitrich gave a loud scream. He must have been beaten too. Then all was still. The faint moonlight came through the grating, and a shadow like a net lay on the floor.

2:06:18It was terrible. Andrei Yephamitch lay and held his breath. He was expecting with horror to be struck again. He felt as though someone had taken a sickle, thrusted into him, and turned it round several times in his breast and bowels. He bit the pillow from pain and clenched his teeth, and all at once through the chaos in his brain, there flashed the terrible, unbearable thought that these people, who seem now like black shadows in the moonlight, had to endure such pain day by day for years. How could it have happened that for more than twenty years he had not known it, and had refused to know it? He knew nothing of pain had no conception of it, so he was not to blame, but his conscience as inexorable and as rough as Nikita made him turn cold from the crown of his head to his heels. He leaped up, tried to cry out with all his might, and to run in haste to kill Nikita, and then hobotop the superintendent and the assistant, and then himself, but no sound came from his chest, and his legs would not obey him. Gasping for breath, he tore at the dressing-gown,

2:07:22and the shirt on his breast, rent them and fell senseless on the bed. Chapter 19 Next morning, his head ached, there was a droning in his ears and a feeling of utter weakness all over. He was not ashamed at recalling his weakness the day before. He had been cowardly, and even been afraid of the moon, and openly expressed thoughts and feelings such as he had not expected in himself before. For instance, the thought that the poultry people who philosophized were really dissatisfied, but now nothing mattered to him. He ate nothing, he drank nothing, he lay motionless and silent. It is all the same to me he thought when they asked him questions, I am not going to answer, it's all the same to me. After dinner, Michal Averyanich brought him a quarter pound of tea and a pound of fruit pastilles. Dauryushka came too and stood for a whole hour by the bed, with an expression of del grief on her face. Dr. Hobitoff visited him, he brought a

2:08:25bottle of bromide and told Nikita to fumigate the ward with something. Towards evening, Andrejeffemit died of an apoplectic stroke. At first he had a violent shivering fit and a feeling of sickness, something revolting as it seemed, penetrating through his whole body, even to his fingertips, strained from his stomach to his head, and flooded his eyes and ears. There was a greenness before his eyes. Andrejeffemit understood that his end had come, and remembered the Ivan Dmitrich, Michal Averyanich, and millions of people believed in immortality, and what if it really existed? But he did not want immortality, and he thought of it only for one instant. A herd of deer extraordinarily beautiful and graceful of which he had been reading the day before ran by him, then a peasant woman stretched out her hand to him with a registered letter. Michal Averyanich said something than it all vanished, and Andrejeffemit sank into oblivion forever.

2:09:25The hospital-portus came, took him by his arms and legs and carried him away to the chapel. There he lay on the table with open eyes, and the moon shed its light upon him at night. In the morning, Sergeye Sergeyevich came, prayed piously before the crucifix, and closed his former chief's eyes. Next day Andrejeffemit was buried, Michal Averyanich and Daryushka were the only people at the funeral. End of chapter 19, recording by Expatriate in Bangor main, End of Ward number six by Anton Chekov, translated by Constance Garnett, 1861 to 1946.