The Russian Doctor

( i )

 

 

In the smoking room of the Hotel Nuovo, Naples, Thorkild Andersen sat alone. A bunch of roses lay on a card table beside him. Outside the hotel garden was quiet and cool as early evening descended. In the distance he could hear the faint sound of a coach and horses driving along a cobbled street. Although he was forty six now he felt as if his life was just beginning.

   The calm was broken by Margarethe entering the room. Despite being his fiancés grandmother Thorkild had taken to addressing her as his own. He stood up immediately and went over to her with his hands outstretched. ‘My dear grandmother’ he said, ‘why aren’t you in your room resting ?’

   Her left foot was missing its shoe and two hotel porters were supporting her.

   ‘I can’t stay in my room forever. I’m not an invalid. I’ve decided to sit in here while I wait for the doctor to arrive - if he arrives at all!’

   The porters eased grandmother into a chair and, after tipping them, Thorkild lifted the old woman’s foot onto a pouffe. Margarethe had sprained her ankle stepping down from the carriage when they arrived earlier that afternoon. Since then it had swelled to the size of a small grapefruit.

   ‘And now my holiday is ruined’ she said. ‘I’ll have to watch the sunset from the terrace.’

   In her room Anna was getting ready. She was twenty five and had been engaged to Thorkild for three months. The wedding was fixed for the following year - May 1900, the first spring of the new century. Not only was Thorkild wealthy but he was sincere in his love for her and, despite the difference in age, she felt that with time she could grow to love him too. Ever since she was a girl she had longed for the day when she would be married. ‘I will marry a good man’ she had told her grandmother once. And Thorkild was a good man. Why, he’d even invited Margarethe to accompany them to Italy and paid for her out of his own pocket. ‘My way of thanking you grandmother’ he said ‘because it was at your house that I was first introduced to Anna and I want you to see that my intentions towards her are honourable.’

   Anna stood before the mirror adjusting her dress and could see her life stretched out before her - a life of pleasure and respectability. A life of dresses and dinner parties and well-mannered children. So why was it that she felt so unhappy ? So tired and miserable as if her life was about to end ?

   Anna went down to the smoking lounge. Thorkild kissed her and presented her with the roses. Then, after making sure that grandmother had been served tea, he took hold of Anna’s arm and gently guided her through the garden in the direction of the sea.

 

 

 

 

 

( ii )

 

When Anna and Thorkild arrived back at the hotel after their walk the doctor was dressing grandmother’s ankle. He was a tall, gaunt man with a thin beard. His shoes were muddy and the collar of his shirt frayed. And, as if to further inflame grandmother’s disapproval of him, he was Russian.

   ‘I’ve tried to tell this wretched man that the bandage is too tight but he doesn’t want to listen.’

   Thorkild reassured her as he emptied his pipe ‘I’m sure he’s experienced in these matters, otherwise the hotel wouldn’t have recommended him.’

   ‘He’s a charlatan. An impostor! Anna - ask him how long he expects me to wear this.’

   Because Anna was more proficient in Italian than either Thorkild or grandmother she had assumed the position of interpreter - a position which she found enjoyable but which Thorkild found mildly irritating.

   ‘The lady will have to wear the bandage for at least three days before it can be removed’ the doctor told her. ‘She must rest and keep her leg up.’ He turned away for a moment and coughed. ‘In the meantime I suggest she apply a cold compress to help stem the swelling.’

   Anna relayed the doctor’s advice to Margarethe who immediately dismissed the idea of applying a cold compress. ‘Even I know that a sprained ankle should be bathed in warm water and not cold. The man’s a fool.’

   While Thorkild ordered coffee the doctor took Anna aside. ‘Your grandmother is a very stubborn woman’ he said. ‘Stubborn and ungrateful. The only reason I come to this hotel is so that I can earn enough money to support my real work, among the poor of Naples. A sprained ankle is nothing compared to the suffering I see. Children dying in the streets.....the old begging outside their houses. Your grandmother lives a life of idle luxury and deserves nothing but contempt. She squeals and moans as though her ankle were broken, not merely sprained. I say these things to you because deep down you are of the same opinion. You look at your grandmother and see yourself in thirty years time. Madam - I implore you not to waste your life in the same way. Good day.’

   And with that he swept out of the hotel, coughing as he went.

 

 

 

 

 

( iii )

 

For the remainder of the holiday Anna had difficulty sleeping. She was filled with thoughts about her marriage to Thorkild. The doctor’s words kept returning to her - “I implore you not to waste your life” - and, as if his words had burst open a dam, she felt as though she were drowning in a tidal wave of doubt and despair.

   During their evening walk along the sea front Thorkild would stop and kiss her hands, pressing them to his lips with such force that she would have to prise them away. ‘My dear Anna, how I love you’ he would say and, instead of being flattered to hear such words, she felt nothing.

   At dinner she found Thorkild’s conversation empty and monotonous. And the sight of her grandmother eating began to repulse her.

   Anna was impatient for the day when the doctor would return to change grandmother’s bandage. She wanted to ask him why he had said those things to her - to demand an apology for his impudent remarks. But she was disappointed. Another doctor came. The Russian doctor, she was told, was ‘indisposed’.

   After three weeks they left Naples and returned to Copenhagen. Anna hoped that once she was back in the house she shared with her grandmother all her doubts about the marriage would disappear. She imagined that all young women had thoughts like this before they got married. All she needed to do was settle back into her daily routine - walking her dogs, helping grandmother in the garden, and seeing her friends. Then everything would return to how it had been before the trip to Italy when Thorkild had first courted her.

   Instead things got worse. Thorkild began to turn up at odd times, whisking her away to look at houses. They must have looked at seven in the first three weeks after their return, all of them old and smelling of damp and far too big for just two people. When she commented to her grandmother that she was tired of looking at houses Margarethe said in a sharp voice that she should be grateful that Thorkild was so conscientious and that he only had her happiness in mind. The harshness of her grandmother’s voice made Anna feel even more alone. Apart from her grandmother who else was there to talk to about her doubts ?

   One day Thorkild made another of his unexpected calls. Anna was sitting in the garden. The moment she heard his voice on the terrace she leapt from her chair and ran into the small wood beyond the pear trees to hide. As she crouched behind a bush she heard her grandmother and Thorkild calling out her name. When they returned to the house Anna lay herself down in the damp grass and wept.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

( iv )

 

Anna was confined to her bed for two weeks. She suffered cold sweats and her glands swelled. Thorkild said it was nervous exhaustion. Grandmother said that Anna was merely excited at the prospect of marriage.

   It was September now and winter had arrived early. Outside Anna heard the rain lash against the roof whilst downstairs she heard her grandmother shuffling between the kitchen and the living room.

   How cold the house had become! When her parents were alive she remembered it as a warm place. There were always friends and acquaintances stopping by - players from the amateur theatre or else relatives…..distant aunts and cousins whose names she had long forgotten but whose faces lingered in her mind. All of them had disappeared in the years following her parents’ death. Even the theatre had been turned into a warehouse. And when Anna’s grandmother took charge of her and moved in, the first ten years of her life took on a dream-like quality - as if she were recalling a character from a novel. Since then money had been a constant source of worry. She had inherited a small legacy but that had nearly been used up over the years. And although grandmother had a private income it wasn’t enough to keep the two of them for much longer. Perhaps she had been deluding herself all along. By agreeing to marry Thorkild, wasn’t she merely trying to recapture the comfort of her earlier life ?

   One evening grandmother entered the room with a bowl of soup and some bread. She was surprised to find Anna dressed.

   ‘What are you doing ?’ grandmother asked.

   ‘I’ve decided that I’m not going to marry Thorkild’ Anna told her. ‘I’m going away. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I’ve written a letter. I was hoping you’d be good enough to give it to Thorkild the next time he calls.’

   Grandmother stood holding the soup for a long time as if unsure whether to laugh or cry. Then she set the bowl on the bedside table and walked out of the room.

 

 

 

 

 

( v )

 

Anna arrived in Naples at the end of November. It was raining and the streets and buildings seemed much smaller than she remembered. A carriage took her to a hotel in the city centre. As she stood outside waiting for somebody to collect her luggage she thought of her grandmother making up the fire and Thorkild working in his office. She had never felt so alone.

   The following day she walked along the sea front. The Hotel Nuovo was shrouded in mist. The waves crashed against the sea barrier, spraying her dress. Now she felt more alive than she had ever done and yet was still filled with doubts as to why she had made the trip to Naples. All she knew was that she had to see the Russian doctor, as if he alone could supply the answers to a thousand unformed questions.

   For the rest of the week she wandered through the poorest quarters of the city trying to discover the whereabouts of the doctor. Walking through the tiny backstreets she was followed by barefooted children who stroked her dress and offered to sell her fruit and sweets. Young men, loitering on the street corners, stared at her, making her feel anxious as she passed by.

   In an orphanage near the cathedral a young priest told Anna that he knew of the pale, Russian doctor she was searching for. ‘Are you a relative of his ?’ he asked her. Anna shook her head. ‘I met him once and I would like to speak with him again. Do you know where I can find him ?’

   The priest smiled. He was cutting bread for the children’s evening meal. ‘My fellow priests and I have had many discussions about where our Russian friend might be found. Some say he is damned. Others say he is in Paradise.’

   Anna shivered. ‘Dead ?’

   ‘Yes. He died of consumption. He was a good man. He worked among the poor of the city. And, although he was an unbeliever, the church looked kindly on him.’

   With the priest’s help Anna located the place where the doctor was buried. It was a simple grave, the doctor’s name, Andrei Laptev, burned into a wooden marker. Anna laid some flowers and stood for a while, smiling, weeping, filled with love and happiness, as though she had reached the summit of a mountain beyond which lay a more fulfilling life.