A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov

agronomist. Young doctor, he is. It’s a terrible business, terrible …’
    â€˜Who is the woman?’
    â€˜The clerk’s bride-to-be.’
    Aksinya groaned from behind the door.
    â€˜What happened?’ (I could hear Aksinya sidle up and glue her ear to the door.)
    â€˜Yesterday they had an engagement party, and afterwards the clerk wanted to take her for a sleigh-ride. He harnessed up a fast horse, sat her in the sleigh and started off towards the gate. But then the horse broke into a gallop with such a jerk that the girl fell out and hit her forehead on the gatepost. She just sort of flew out. It was the most terrible accident, I can’t tell you … They had to hold the clerk down to stop him killing himself. He’s gone crazy.’
    â€˜Look,’ I said miserably, ‘I’m having a bath. Why couldn’t you have brought her here?’ So saying I doused my head with water and rinsed the soap into the tub.
    â€˜Couldn’t be done, sir,’ the fireman said in an agonised voice and clasped his hands in entreaty. ‘Not a chance, sir. The girl would have died.’
    â€˜But how can
we
go? There’s a blizzard outside!’
    â€˜It’s letting up—in fact, sir, it’s died down completely. I’ve a couple of fast horses, harnessed in tandem. We’ll be there inside an hour.’
    I gave a faint groan, clambered out of the tub, and sluiced myself furiously with two buckets of water. Then, squatting on my haunches in front of the mouth of the stove I made an attempt to dry my hair a little by sticking my head right in.
    â€˜I’m bound to end up with pneumonia after a trip like this. In any case, what am I going to do with her? I cantell from his note that this doctor is even less experienced than I am. I know absolutely nothing except the few tips I’ve managed to pick up in six months’ practice, and he knows even less. He’s obviously only just qualified. And he thinks I’m an experienced man …’
    Preoccupied with these thoughts, I was not even aware of getting dressed, which was no simple matter: trousers and shirt, felt boots, over my shirt a leather jerkin, then an overcoat topped by a sheepskin, fur hat, and my bag containing caffeine, camphor, morphine, adrenalin, clamps, sterile dressings, hypodermic, probe, a Browning automatic, cigarettes, matches, watch, stethoscope.
    The weather was no longer so alarming, although the daylight was fading and darkness drawing in as we drove through the outskirts of the village. The snowfall seemed to have eased, and was falling diagonally in only one direction against my right cheek. The fireman’s bulk completely hid the rear horse’s rump from my view. The animals set off at a cracking pace, got into their stride, and the sleigh began flying over the bumpy track. I sank down into the seat and at once started to warm up; I thought of pneumonia and wondered whether a fragment of bone had broken off from inside the girl’s skull and penetrated the brain.
    â€˜Are these fire brigade horses?’ I asked through my sheepskin collar.
    â€˜Oh-huh … huh …’ grunted the driver without turning round.
    â€˜What has the doctor done to her?’
    â€˜Well, sir, he … huh … trouble is, he’s only studied venereal diseases.’
    The blizzard moaned through a copse, then lashed out, whistling, as we drove past the shelter of the trees. I felt Iwas swaying, swaying, swaying … until I found myself in the changing-room of Sandunov’s steam baths in Moscow—fully dressed, wearing my fur coat, and bathed in sweat. Then a torch flared up, the baths filled with cold water, I opened my eyes and saw a helmet shimmering in a blood-red glow. I thought there was a fire … then I blinked and realised that we had arrived. I was outside a white colonnaded building in the neo-classical style of