Chapter 4 Four

Four Ivan Dmitri's neighbor to the left was, as I have already said, the Jew Moseyka, and the neighbor to the right was a fat, round peasant with a dull, expressionless face.This is a sedentary, gluttonous, unclean animal who has long since lost the ability to think and feel.A suffocating stench continued to emanate from him. When Nikita made his bed, he beat him hard, swung his arms hard, and didn't spare his fists.Now, the terrible thing wasn't that he was beaten--it's something you get used to--but that the dull beast didn't respond to it: no sound, no movement, no expression in the eyes, It just swayed slightly, like a heavy wooden barrel.

The fifth and last patient in the sixth ward was a petty bourgeois, formerly a letter sorter at the post office.He was a small, blond man with a sly look on his kindly face.From his wise, serene eyes, and their bright, merry glance, one could infer that he had deep roots in the city, and that he harbored secrets of great importance and joy.He hides something under the pillow or under the mattress, and he always refuses to show it to others, not because he is afraid that someone will snatch it or steal it, but because he is a little embarrassed.Sometimes he went to the window, turned his back to the patient, wore something on his chest, and lowered his head to look and look.If someone came up to him at this time, he would look embarrassed and immediately tore off the things on his chest.But his little secret is not difficult to guess.

"You have to congratulate me," he used to say to Ivan Dmitry, "that my superiors have petitioned me for the Stanislav Star, Second Class. The Star Second Class has always been awarded only to foreigners, but for some reason they Willing to make an exception for me," he said, grinning, and shrugging his shoulders in bewilderment, "well, honestly, I didn't expect that." "I don't understand you at all," declared Ivan Dmitry darkly. "But do you know what I'm going to get sooner or later?" the former post office sorter went on, narrowing his eyes slyly. "I'm sure I'll get a Swedish 'North Star'. It's worth the trouble. White cross and black straps. It's gorgeous."

Probably nowhere else was life so monotonous as in this side house.Every morning, all but the paralyzed and the fat peasants washed their faces in an amphora in the outer room, and dried them with the hem of their sick clothes.After this they drank tea in tin cups, which Nikita had brought from the main building.Only one drink per person.At noon they drank sour cabbage soup and porridge, and at night they ate the porridge left over from noon.Between meals they lay down, slept, looked at the windows, and walked up and down the room.Every day.Even the letter sorters of the former post office still talked about those kinds of medals.

Ward Six rarely sees newcomers.Doctors have long stopped taking new insane patients, and there are not many people in the world who want to visit madhouses.The barber Semyon Lazarich comes here every two months.How he cuts the madmen's hair, how Nikita helped him, how the patients messed up every time the drunken, laughing barber showed up--we won't talk about that. Nobody but the barber came here to have a look.Patients are destined to see only Nikita all day long. But not long ago, there was a rather strange news circulating in the main building of the hospital. Legend has it that the doctor often goes to the sixth ward.