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and lips. She had started the job ages ago but would never get through because she butted in on every single conversation. Meanwhile Sibgatov was waiting for his wash. His bed was in the hall next to the entrance to the men’s ward. Because of these nightly washes, and also because he felt ashamed of the foul smell from his back, Sibgatov chose to stay out in the hall, even though he had been in the hospital longer than all the other residents. In fact he was less like a patient than a member of the permanent staff. Dashing around in the women’s ward, Zoya gave Nellya a dressing down, and then another, but Nellya just snapped back and carried on slowly: she was no younger than Zoya and thought it beneath her dignity to be under the other girl. Zoya had come to work today in a festive mood, but this defiance on the part of the orderly irritated her. As a rule Zoya felt everyone had a right to his share of freedom and that when one came to work one was under no obligation to work oneself to death. But there was a reasonable limit somewhere, especially when it was sick people you were dealing with.
    Finally, when Zoya had taken everything round and was finished and Nellya was through with wiping the floor, they turned off the light in the women’s ward and the top light in the hall. It was already after eleven when Nellya had prepared the warm solution on the second floor and brought it from there to Sibgatov in his usual bowl.
    â€œOoh … ah … ah … ah, I’m dead on my feet.” She yawned loudly. “I feel like forty winks. Listen, patient, I know you’ll be sitting here a good hour. I’m not waiting for you to finish. What about taking the bowl down and emptying it yourself?”
    (The solid old building, with its spacious halls, had no upstairs drain.)
    What Sharaf Sibgatov had once been like was impossible to guess; there was nothing to go by. His suffering had been so prolonged that there was practically nothing left of his former self. Yet after three years of continuous, oppressive illness, this young Tartar was the gentlest and most courteous patient in the whole clinic. Often he would smile very weakly, as if to ask pardon for the trouble he had been causing for so long. After the four- and six-month periods he had spent lying there he knew all the doctors, nurses and orderlies as if they were his own family, and they knew him. But Nellya was brand-new. She had only been there a few weeks.
    â€œIt will be too heavy for me,” Sibgatov objected quietly. “If there was something smaller to put it in I should do it myself, bit by bit.”
    But Zoya’s table was nearby. She heard what was happening and jumped up. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! He’s not allowed to strain his back. And you’d make him carry the bowl, would you?”
    She said all this as though she were shouting, but in a half-whisper which only the three of them could hear. But Nellya replied quite calmly, her voice resounding over the whole floor, “Why should I be ashamed? I’m worn out myself.”
    â€œYou’re on duty! You get paid for it!” said Zoya indignantly, even more quietly.
    â€œHuh! Paid! You call that money? I can get more at the textile factory.”
    â€œSh … sh! Can’t you be quieter?”
    â€œOooh,” Nellya, her mass of hair all over the place, half groaned, half sighed to the whole hall. “My lovely, lovely pillow. I’m so sleepy, I spent last night living it up with the truck drivers. All right, patient, put the bowl under your bed. I’ll take it away in the morning.”
    Without covering her mouth she gave a deep, long-drawn-out yawn. When she had finished she said to Zoya, “I shall be in session in there on the sofa,” and without waiting for permission walked off to the corner door which led into a room with upholstered furniture used for doctors’ meetings and short daily