‘I’ve just learned from reliable hands,’ the barman replied, casting wild glances at some group photograph under glass, ‘that I’m going to die of liver cancer in February of this coming year. I beg you to stop it.’
Professor Kuzmin, as he sat there, threw himself against the high Gothic leather back of his chair.
‘Excuse me, I don’t understand you ... you’ve, what, been to the doctor? Why is your head bandaged?‘
‘Some doctor! ... You should’ve seen this doctor ...’ the barman replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. ‘And don’t pay any attention to the head, it has no connection ... Spit on the head, it has nothing to do with it ... Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it! ...’
‘Pardon me, but who told you?!’
‘Believe him!’ the barman ardently entreated. ‘He knows!’
‘I don’t understand a thing!’ the professor said, shrugging his shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. ‘How can he know when you’re going to die? The more so as he’s not a doctor!’
‘In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,’ replied the barman.
Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp trousers, and thought: Just what I needed, a madman ...‘ He asked:
‘Do you drink vodka?’
‘Never touch it,’ the barman answered.
A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said, the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of cancer, but since it was so ... since he was afraid and had been frightened by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests ...
The professor was scribbling away on some sheets of paper, explaining where to go, what to bring. Besides that, he gave him a note for Professor Bouret, a neurologist, telling the barman that his nerves were in complete disorder.
‘How much do I owe you, Professor?’ the barman asked in a tender and trembling voice, pulling out a fat wallet.
‘As much as you like,’ the professor said curtly and drily.
The barman took out thirty roubles and placed them on the table, and then, with an unexpected softness, as if operating with a cat’s paw, he placed on top of the bills a clinking stack wrapped in newspaper.
‘And what is this?’ Kuzmin asked, twirling his moustache.
‘Don’t scorn it, citizen Professor,’ the barman whispered. ‘I beg you — stop the cancer!’
‘Take away your gold this minute,’ said the professor, proud of himself. ‘You’d better look after your nerves. Tomorrow have your urine analysed, don’t drink a lot of tea, and don’t put any salt in your food.’
‘Not even in soup?’ the barman asked.
‘Not in anything,’ ordered Kuzmin.
‘Ahh! ...’ the barman exclaimed wistfully, gazing at the professor with tenderness, gathering up his gold pieces and backing towards the door.
That evening the professor had few patients, and as twilight approached the last one left. Taking off his white coat, the professor glanced at the spot where the barman had left his money and saw no banknotes there but only three labels from bottles of Abrau-Durso wine.
‘Devil knows what’s going on!’ Kuzmin muttered, trailing the flap of his coat on the floor and feeling the labels. ‘It turns out he’s not only a schizophrenic but also a crook! But I can’t understand what he needed me for! Could it be the prescription for the urine analysis? Oh-oh! ... He’s stolen my overcoat!’ And the professor rushed for the front hall, one arm still in the sleeve of his white coat. ‘Xenia Nikitishna!’ he cried shrilly through the door to the front hall. ‘Look and see if all the coats are there!’
The coats all turned out to be there. But instead, when the professor went back to his desk, having peeled off his white coat at last, he stopped as if rooted to the parquet beside his desk, his eyes riveted to it. In the place where the labels had been there sat an orphaned black kitten with a sorry little muzzle, miaowing over a saucer of milk.
‘Wh-what’s this, may I ask?! Now this is ...’ And Kuzmin felt the nape of his neck go cold.
At the professor’s quiet and pitiful cry, Xenia Nikitishna came running and at once reassured him completely, saying that it was, of course, one of the patients who had abandoned the kitten, as happens not infrequently to professors.
‘They probably have a poor life,’ Xenia Nikitishna explained, ‘well, and we, of course ...’
They started thinking and guessing who might have abandoned it. Suspicion fell on a little old lady with a stomach ulcer.
‘It’s she, of course,’ Xenia Nikitishna said. ‘She thinks: “I’ll die anyway, and it’s a pity for the kitten.”’
‘But excuse me!’ cried Kuzmin. ‘What about the milk? ... Did she bring that, too? And the saucer, eh?’
‘She brought it in a little bottle, and poured it into the saucer here,’ Xenia Nikitishna explained.
‘In any case, take both the kitten and the saucer away,’ said Kuzmin, and he accompanied Xenia Nikitishna to the door himself. When he came back, the situation had altered.
