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begin right now. Let’s take these three axioms. You see, these axioms are simple in form, but they’ll come into every theorem, and you have to spot where. Here’s the first one: if two points in a straight line are in a plane, then every point along that line is also in the plane. What’s the idea of that? Look, supposing this book is a plane and the pencil a straight line, all right? Now try to arrange them…”
    They plunged into the subject and droned on about axioms and deductions. But Pavel Nikolayevich resolved to bear it, his back turned on them pointedly. At last they stopped talking and broke up. After his double sleeping draft Azovkin dropped off too and was quiet. Then the aksakal started coughing. Pavel Nikolayevich was lying with his face toward him. The light was off by now, but there he was, curse him, coughing away, in such a disgusting manner too, with that whistling noise, on and on, so that it seemed he was going to choke.
    Pavel Nikolayevich turned his back on him. He removed the towel from his head, but it still wasn’t properly dark; light was coming in from the corridor, and noises, too, people walking about and clanking spittoons and buckets.
    He could not get to sleep. His tumor weighed him down. His whole happy life, so well thought out, so harmonious and useful, was now about to crack. He felt very sorry for himself. One little push would be enough to bring tears to his eyes.
    It was Yefrem who did not fail to provide the push. Unrestrained even in the dark, he was telling Ahmadjan next to him some idiotic fairy tale:
    â€œWhy should man live a hundred years? This is how it happened. Allah gave all the animals fifty years each, and that was enough. But man came last, and Allah had only twenty-five left.”
    â€œYou mean a twenty-fiver?” * asked Ahmadjan.
    â€œThat’s right. And man started complaining it wasn’t enough. Allah said, ‘It’s enough!’ And man said, ‘No, it isn’t.’ So Allah said, ‘All right, go out and ask, maybe someone has some over and will give you some.’ Man went off and met a horse. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘my life’s too short. Give me some of yours.’ ‘All right,’ said the horse, ‘take twenty-five years.’ Man went a bit further and met a dog. ‘Listen, dog, let me have some of your life.’ ‘All right, have twenty-five years.’ On he went. He met a monkey, and he got twenty-five years out of him, too. Then he went back to Allah, and Allah said, ‘As you wish, it’s up to you. The first twenty-five years you will live like a man. The second twenty-five you’ll work like a horse. The third you’ll yap like a dog. And for the last twenty-five, people will laugh at you like they laugh at a monkey…’”

3. Teddy Bear
    Although Zoya was quick and alert, moving very swiftly about the wards from table to beds and back again, she realized she would not be able to deal with all the prescriptions before lights out. So she hurried to finish and put the lights out in the men’s ward and the small women’s ward. In the large women’s ward—it was huge, with more than thirty beds in it—the women never settled down at the proper time anyway, whether the light was turned off or not. Many of them had been there a long time and were thoroughly tired of the hospital. They slept badly, it was stuffy, and there were always arguments about whether the door to the terrace should be kept open or shut. And there were even a few dedicated enthusiasts who talked across the room from one end to the other, discussing everything from prices, goods, furniture, children, men, neighbors, right down to the most shameless subjects imaginable—until midnight or one in the morning.
    On top of it all Nellya, the orderly, was washing the floor there that evening. She was a loud-mouthed, round-bottomed girl with thick eyebrows