| Ward No 6 |
| 1 | Ward No. 6 1 In the hospital yard there is a small outbuilding surrounded by a dense jungle of burdock, nettles and wild hemp. The roof is rusty, half of the chimney has collapsed, the steps to the door are rotten and overgrown with grass; only traces of plaster remain. The front faces the main hospital and the rear looks out on to open country, from which it is cut off by the grey hospital fence topped with nails. |
| 2 | These nails, with their points sticking upwards, the fence and the outbuilding itself have that mournful, god-forsaken look that you find only in our hospitals and prisons. If you are not afraid of being stung by the nettles let us go down the narrow path leading to this outbuilding and see what is going on inside. |
| 3 | We open the first door and enter the lobby. Here, against the walls and by the stove, are piled great mountains of hospital rubbish. Mattresses, old tattered smocks, trousers, blue-striped shirts, useless, worn-out footwear – all this junk lies jumbled up in crumpled heaps, rotting and giving off a suffocating stench. |
| 4 | On top of all this rubbish, his pipe perpetually clenched between his teeth, lies Nikita the warder, an old soldier with faded reddish-brown chevrons. He has a red nose, a grim, haggard face and beetling eyebrows that give him the expression of a steppe sheepdog. Although short, thin and wiry, he has an intimidating air and powerful fists. |
| 5 | He is one of those simple, efficient, thoroughly dependable, thickheaded men who worship discipline above all else in this world and who are therefore convinced that patients are there to be beaten. He showers blows on face, chest, back – on whatever comes first – in the firm belief that this is the only way to maintain discipline. |
| 6 | Next you enter a large and spacious room which occupies the rest of the building, apart from the lobby. Here the walls are painted dirty blue, the ceiling is black with soot, as in a chimneyless peasant hut – obviously the stoves smoke in winter and fill the place with fumes. On the inside the windows are disfigured with iron bars. |
| 7 | The floor is grey and splintery; there is a stench of sour cabbage, burnt candlewicks, bed-bugs and ammonia – a stench that immediately makes you think you are entering a zoo. Around the room there are beds screwed to the floor. On these beds men in dark blue hospital smocks and old-fashioned nightcaps are lying or sitting: these are the lunatics. |
| 8 | There are five in all. Only one is of the gentry, the others are all from the lower classes. Nearest the door is a tall, thin, working-class man with a sleek ginger moustache and tear-filled eyes. There he sits, head propped on hands, staring at one fixed point. Day and night he grieves, shakes his head, sighs and smiles bitterly. |
| 9 | Rarely does he join in conversation and usually he doesn't reply to questions. When they bring him his food he eats and drinks like an automaton. Judging from his agonizing, hacking cough, his emaciated look and flushed cheeks, he is in the early stages of consumption. |
| 10 | Next is a small, lively, very active old man with a little pointed beard and the black fuzzy hair of a Negro. He spends all day sauntering from window to window, or squatting on his bed Turkish style; tirelessly, like a bullfinch, he chirrups, softly sings and titters. |
| … |
Комментарии