The Pit. Nadezhda Nelidova

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      ***

      Before Katya’s illness, I had been naïvely confident. “Where ignorance is bliss, “tis folly to be wise.” They have a duty psychologist in hospitals like this. Why, to hear a diagnosis like that could blow your mind.

      But Katya had told me, with a wry smile: “Oh yes, everything is ‘there’. A team of psychologists and psychotherapists, who hastened to comfort me and treat me with valerian. And a special bath too. Dream on!”

      Coming out of the doctor’s, Katya hid herself in the bathroom. There was a yellow pool of urine from the broken toilet bowl on the tiled floor under a rag. She slumped down exhausted on the filthy trampled toilet seat with footprints from the soles of someone’s shoes on it. Seeking consolation, she pressed her hot forehead to the cold tank. She had a toilet instead of a psychologist.

      ***

      To be honest, that summer I had raced about the hospital at a gallop, tapping my high heels. Noting down interviews, pulling my frivolous skirt down over my knees, looking at my watch.

      That was then, in the former life. But now circumstances forced me to get to know the hospital thoroughly from the inside. I had thought everything would be different in such a hospital. Speaking in lowered voices. Doctors and nurses, discretion itself, Kind encouraging looks, Sympathetic supportive contacts. Empty of people, calm, silence, pictures on the walls, flowers. Feet sinking in soft carpets as if walking on a cloud.

      But what was it really? A dark gloomy vestibule with cracked tiles underfoot. Dismayingly long queues, lots of country people. In the buffets, greasy pies as hard as rock, awful even to look at. Enough to send a healthy patient to the next world.

      A cleaner in cut-down galoshes brushing pools over the gray floor, hitting your feet with a mop. The cloakroom attendant dipping a boiled egg in salt, drinking tea from a thermos flask. A bespectacled nurse short of sleep saying “No admittance today”.

      Even someone dying has a last wish. Heads should involuntarily bow before him, people should look away and voices become muffled of their own accord. All around should be a suite of security guards, doctors, priests, lawyers – abashed, recognizing the terrible grandeur of the moment. In the deadened air itself there should be hushed whispers. respect, superstitious fear of the mystery about to happen…

      Nothing of the sort! Life mockingly shows its ugly contorted mug and kicks you with a varicose foot in a filthy galosh. The universe will not collapse, finding your departure unbearable, that’s not hard to imagine, is it? Your disease is strictly your own business, so just behave accordingly.

      ***

      So Katya was sent home as a terminal patient. Then came the extrasensory sessions.

      From my interview with the doctor in charge:

      When she was told the chemotherapy was not effective, she went in for extrasensory treatment. On the quiet, we condemned her for it. How could such a clever woman believe in all that macabre nonsense? Mind you, we can all be clever about it till we ourselves are affected… You can wash your hands of someone else’s problem. And anyway, after she’d been with the face healers, her eyes brightened up a bit, if only for a few hours.

      “When you came here yourself, did you read the advertisements on the pillars about the sale of ‘miracle’ herbs?” asked the doctor, answering one question with another. “Did you see the herb sellers with their sacks of hay? Those charlatans ought to be cleared out regularly, by the police if necessary. To sell their trash, they passionately assure you that they cure everything in the world.”