858. An Unusual Operation
The huge evacuation hospital No. 1170 in the Monastery of Saint
Alexander Nevsky was full to overflowing. I lay on a stretcher by
the wall in a long corridor. Maybe it was because the stretcher was
resting directly on the floor that the ceiling with its arched vault
seemed so high up. There were draughts all around, or so it seemed
to me, and my teeth were chattering.
Striding along the corridor and gesticulating vigorously was a
tall, slim man in a snowwhite smock with the sleeves rolled up to
the elbows. Tripping along beside him and explaining something
as she went was a short, greyhaired woman. They frequently
stopped by the stretchers and glanced at some papers thrust under
the heads of the wounded or else chatted briefly with them before
going on their way. They also approached me. Pulling back the
blanket covering me, the tall doctor began touching my stomach
for some reason. I was shivering from the cold and I felt very
unwell.
‘Get him straight onto the operating table!’ he snapped at the
greyhaired woman.
Even now, when I had no awareness of my own body but
just a dull pain in it and felt a certain indifference to everything
happening around, I experienced a jolt of fear on hearing words