Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Page B

else’s blood for? I don’t want anyone else’s and I’m not giving a drop of my own. Make a note of my blood group. I remember it from the war, when I was at the front.”
    And nothing she said would change his mind. He refused to give way, finding new and unexpected arguments. He was convinced it was all a waste of time.
    At long last she took offense. “You’re putting me in a stupid, ludicrous position. For the last time, please. ”
    Of course it was a mistake on her part to humiliate herself like that. Why should she do the pleading? But he instantly bared his arm and held it out. “All right, but only for you. You may take three cc.’s.”
    In fact, she felt ill at ease with him, and one day something funny happened. Kostoglotov said, “You don’t look like a German. You must have taken your husband’s name?”
    â€œYes.” The word fell involuntarily from her lips.
    Why had she said that? Because at that moment it would have hurt to say anything else.
    He didn’t ask her anything more.
    In fact Gangart had been her father’s and her grandfather’s name. They were Russianized Germans. But what should she have said. “I’m not married … I’ve never been married?”
    Out of the question.

6. The Story of an Analysis
    First, Ludmila Afanasyevna took Kostoglotov into the treatment room. A female patient had just emerged after her session. The huge 180,000-volt X-ray tube, hanging by wires from the ceiling, had been in operation almost nonstop since 8 A.M. There was no ventilation and the air was full of that sweetish, slightly repellent X-ray warmth.
    This warmth (although there was more to it than just warmth) made itself felt in the lungs and became repellent to the patients after half a dozen or so sessions. But Ludmila Afanasyevna had grown used to it and never even noticed whether it was pleasant or not. She had started work there twenty years ago when the machine had no shield of any sort. She had also been caught under a high-tension wire and very nearly killed. Every day she breathed in the air of the X-ray rooms, and she sat in on screening sessions for far longer than was allowed. In spite of all the modern shields and gloves, she had certainly taken in many more rads than even the most acquiescent and seriously ill patients, except that nobody bothered to count the rads or to add them up.
    She was in a hurry, not only because she wanted to get out quickly, but also because the X-ray program could not be delayed even for a few minutes. She motioned Kostoglotov to lie on the hard couch under the X-ray tube and to uncover his stomach. Then she went over his skin with some sort of cool, tickly brush. She outlined something and seemed to be painting figures on it.
    After this she told the nurse about the “quadrant scheme” and how she was to apply the tube to each quadrant. She then ordered the patient to turn over onto his stomach and she brushed some more lines on his back. “Come and see me after the session,” she said.
    When she had left the room, the nurse told Kostoglotov to turn over onto his back again and laid sheets around the first quadrant. Then she brought up heavy mats of rubber impregnated with lead, which she used to cover all the surrounding areas which were not for the moment to receive the direct force of the X rays. The pressure of the pliable mats, molded to his body, was pleasantly heavy.
    Then the nurse too went out and shut the door. Now she could see him only through a little window in the thick wall. A quiet humming began, the auxiliary lamps lit up, the main tube started to glow.
    Through the square of skin that had been left clear on his stomach, through the layers of flesh and organs whose names their owner himself did not know, through the mass of the toadlike tumor, through the stomach and entrails, through the blood that flowed along his arteries and veins, through lymph and