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all thesepatients. Do you know what they’re saying in the villages? The story goes that when Lidka was ill a steel throat was put into her instead of her own and then sewn up. People go to her village especially to look at her. There’s fame for you, doctor. Congratulations.’
    â€˜So they think she’s living with a steel one now, do they?’ I enquired.
    â€˜That’s right. But you were wonderful, doctor. You did it so coolly, it was marvellous to watch.’
    â€˜Hm, well, I never allow myself to worry, you know,’ I said, not knowing why. I was too tired even to feel ashamed, so I just looked away. I said goodnight and went home. Snow was falling in large flakes, covering everything, the lantern was lit and my house looked silent, solitary and imposing. As I walked I had only one desire—sleep.

BLACK AS EGYPT’S NIGHT
    WHERE HAS THE WORLD DISAPPEARED TO TODAY, my birthday? Where, oh where are the electric lights of Moscow? Where are the people, where is the sky? I look out of my windows at nothing but darkness …
    We are cut off; the nearest kerosene lanterns are seven miles away at the railway station, and even their flickering light has probably been blown out by the snowstorm. The midnight express to Moscow rushes moaning past and does not even stop; it has no need of this forlorn little halt, buried in snow—except perhaps when the line is blocked by drifts.
    The nearest street lamps are thirty-two miles away in the district town. Life there is sweet: it has a cinema, shops. While the snow is whirling and howling out here in the open country, there on the screen, no doubt, the cane-brake is bending to the breeze and palm trees sway as a tropical island comes into view …
    Meanwhile we are alone.
    â€˜Black as Egypt’s night,’ observed Demyan Lukich, as he raised the blind.
    His remarks are somewhat solemn but apt. Egyptian is the word for it.
    â€˜Have another glass,’ I invited him. (Don’t be too hardon us; after all, we—a doctor, a
feldsher
and two midwives—are human too. For months on end we see no one apart from hundreds of sick peasants. We work away, entombed in snow. Surely we may be allowed to drink a couple of glasses of suitably diluted spirit and relish a few of the local sprats on the doctor’s birthday?)
    â€˜Your health, doctor!’ said Demyan Lukich with heartfelt sincerity.
    â€˜Here’s hoping you survive your stay with us!’ said Anna Nikolaevna as she clinked her glass and smoothed her flowered party dress.
    Raising her glass, Pelagea Ivanovna took a sip and then squatted down on her haunches to poke the stove. The hot gleam lit up our faces and the vodka generated a warm inner glow.
    â€˜I simply cannot imagine,’ I said indignantly as I watched the shower of sparks raised by the poker, ‘what that woman did with so much belladonna. The whole story sounds insane!’
    Feldsher
and midwives smiled as they remembered what had happened. At morning surgery that day a red-faced peasant woman of about thirty had elbowed her way into my consulting room. She had bowed to the gynaecological chair which stood behind me, then produced from the front of her dress a wide-necked medicine bottle and crooned ingratiatingly:
    â€˜Thanks very much for the medicine, doctor. It did me so much good. Please may I have another bottle?’
    I took the bottle from her, and as I glanced at the label a green film passed across my vision. On the label was written in Demyan Lukich’s sprawling hand: ‘Tinct. Belladonnae … etc. 16th December 1916’.
    In other words, yesterday I had prescribed for this woman a hefty measure of belladonna and today, my birthday, 17 December, the woman had come back with an empty bottle and a request for more.
    â€˜You … you … you mean to say you drank all this yesterday?’ I asked, appalled.
    â€˜All of it, sir, all of