Avdotya and the District Medic

The little hospital on the outskirts of the village is shrouded by a young pine wood as if to keep it from the prying eyes of healthy folks. It’s been a long time since this place housed the ailing or resounded with the dull moans and sudden shrieks of some poor soul having his sore tooth yanked out by a merciless medic with a pair of iron forceps.

Now the door, painted a playful green, is locked up tight with a big, clunky padlock that’s hanging upside-down, and a gentle breeze is ruffling the sheet of notebook paper that gives the times when the district medic will be by to see patients. The ink on the paper has smeared, the tack holding it to the door has rusted.

With their backs to the sun-warmed clinic wall, the gals sit, their Chinese padded jackets unbuttoned, showing the colorful sweaters knitted from sheep’s wool they wear underneath. The benches lost their legs a long while ago, but they’ve been pushed up against an earth mound to keep them upright. There’s not a lick of space on the benches, by reason of the gals being so chunky in the stern. Plus, they’re bookended by old geezers, two of them. One, scrawny and hoary-headed, is smoking, and the other, hefty and short-winded, is blowing his nose into a woman’s kerchief and breathing heavy.

And as they wait, they do their share of grumbling.

“Oh girls,” moans the one in the middle with a nose like a duck bill, Avdotya’s her name. “Why’m I sitting and sitting here, when the cow’s to be milked, the sheep ain’t been watered, the piglet ain’t been slopped, the chickens’ve plowed up the vegetable patch like a dashed tractor, and what’re we waiting for?”

“Because he’s got things to do before he gets to us,” replies Nikitichna, round as a ball of butter. “Getting here I was aching all over, and that one there, the doc – he’s probably home having tea. Vas! Hey, Vas!” She’s talking to the scrawny geezer in the fur hat. “Have a look, will you, and see what time it says.”

Vasily stands up reluctantly, dragging his left foot. He limps to the porch, takes his spectacles out of a plastic case, and peers at the sheet of paper.

“It don’t say nothing about no clinic hours,” he croaks. “It’s about vaccinations for the cows.”

The gals break into merry laughter, elbowing each other.

“There you go! We’re cows, that we are. All our lives long we’re getting milked, having our tails tugged, and there’s no good to be had from us.”

“I only wish we got fertilizer from you too.” That’s the other geezer, Pyotr Nikanorych, who has held every high-level job there was on the collective farm, from agronomist to engineer, and for that reason knows his stuff and is skeptical about life in general. “What is a cow?” he continues, raising a finger to the sky. “A dumb beast. Pay that some mind, now, and if you’re cattle, don’t be bothering the health service for no good reason.”

The gals turn their backs on him as one, which nearly makes the bench topple over. Avdotya, a beauty in her younger days, pouts her lips and straightens her gaudy kerchief with its shiny metallic threads. Then she swivels around and calls out to a gal with plump cheeks and a veiny nose.

“Pasha! Hey, Pasha!” she says. “Did you get something to take away the rheumatiz in your joints?”

“Like all the rest I did.” Pasha replies, her chin propped on a gnarled walking stick. “Like my mamma and my grandma. And my great…”

“Hold up, chatterbox. Stop your jibber-jabber and tell what you did about it.”

“With chicken droppings,” the thoroughly offended Pasha responds. “Only not fresh droppings, they’ll scorch. The aged stuff’s good, though. If it’s been aging the whole winter, now that’s the ticket. You pull a bunch of nettles, young so they’ll sting something awful, pound them with the droppings, and put it all on a cloth. You bind up the sore spot and then more droppings and then more nettles. Then wrap it well. Oh, it burns all right, girls! You’ll cuss up a storm – a thunderstorm, even!”

Already Avdotya’s not convinced. “Don’t the skin come off?” she asks. “How long’ll it be before the bones get eaten away?”

“So smear on some pounded pig lard. Beaver fat’s good, yup … And put an ordinary pair of stockings on top. Instead of a compress.”

“Really?” Avdotya unbuttons her sweater and kneads her chest. “It’s so hot nowadays … everything’s burning up… To brass tacks, though – will it help?”

Pasha rubs her knees. “Damned if I know. I go for a jab too. Something helps, but I dunno which.”

Then scrawny Vasya butts in. “Well now, ladies, what would you do for a cough? I’ve been hacking my lungs out ever since the war.”

“I’ve got something for you, Vasily Kuzmich.” That’s Praskovya getting in on the act. As a former store manager, she’s respected in the village and is always up on everything. “You’ll need a sack.”

“And why’s that? To cart me off to the graveyard?” Vasya asks huffily.

“Not a bit of it. You’ll need a potato sack, like. Clean, though, laundered proper. And in Maytime, when the sap’s runs  from the birches and the beetles’re flying, pull off some birch leaves and dry them.”

The gals remember then. “That’s just it!” they say. “It’s coming back to me now.” “Just it!” “Even in hospitals they treated consumptives that way, indeed they did.”

“Stuff the sack full of leaves and tie it round your throat.”

“Won’t I suffocate?”

“I’ve yet to hear of any such thing. Take to your bed, sweat it out, and it’s good to rub the soles of your feet with lard. Uh-huh. Or with beaver fat.”

“And what about the innards?’ Vasily Kuzmich’s lips are moving, as if he’s taking a drink. “Next thing we know, you’ll be recommending turpentine or the like!”

“For that you’ll want swamp-root,” Pyotr Nikanorych pipes up, spitting into the goutweed that has just started sprouting by the bench. “All your turpentine does is stink up the place. You need to dig up some devyasil root” – he pronounces it “devil seal” – “It looks like a beet on top, but break it and it’s pure chalk inside. Pound it up and drink it in fortified wine. And what you can’t get down, rub it in where it hurts.”

“If you men would do anything except drink yourselves blotto, you wouldn’t need no doctoring,” the gals chorus. “Government’s got no business doctoring you at all. A good thrashing with nettles’d keep you hopping.”

Avdotya rummages in her wheeled tote for a copy of Arguments and Facts, smooths it out on her knees, adjusts her spectacles, and starts reading out loud.

She begins with the “Health” section. The gals listen, motionless. But when the newspaper’s been read, off they go again.

“A search for balloon berry, that’s what’s needed. There was this gal, she was in a settlement in Ostrov and she found some alright. Through a broom it went, and she set all to rights. Everyone was a-hopping, that they was.”

“And one time this lady medic came and said to mix up some of the old-style flu powder, add kerosene and vinegar, and then…”

“You’re pulling our legs! Kerosene! You’ll go up in flames.”

“What’s needed is to collect the slag out of the bathhouse stove, and put it on the small of the back...”

Then an off-road vehicle pulls up and a tired-looking, dusty district medic jumps out of the passenger seat, carrying a grey metal case. He has a smoke on the porch, neatly flicks the butt into a red-painted bucket, and proceeds to lay down the law.

“In the order you signed up, girls! We aren’t here all day! Step lively, grannies!”

An hour later, all is quiet. The gals are standing in a circle, waiting for the bus.

“What did he prescribe, then?” The oldster scratches his head under his cap. “Animal dung or chicken droppings?”

Avdotya sounds it out. “It’s an-al-gee-sick,” she says. “And some sort of oily stuff, can’t say off the top of my head. I’ll be going to the wise woman, and I can buy my own an-al-gee-sick, don’t need no doc for that. A waste of time is all it was…”  RL