Communist Daze by Vladimir A. Tsesis

Author:Vladimir A. Tsesis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

A listener asks Armenian Radio, “What is the easiest way

to explain the meaning of the word ‘Communism’?”

Armenian Radio replies, “With your fists.”

Windmills

Two weeks after the bonfire, I’m rolling over and over on the chilly hospital grounds, trading punches and elbow jabs with a belligerent jerk, hot rage driving my fists because the white lab coat I washed last night is now not only smudged but also getting bloody.

Welcome to another day at Gradieshti Hospital. Most were full of the routine of practice and paperwork, but there was always—and I mean always—a chance the unexpected, the absurd, and sometimes the crazy would wander onto our grounds. Those very special days I remember well.

Like this one. At the beginning of a crisp autumn afternoon, I’m making my way across the hospital grounds toward one of our older buildings that has recently been rehabbed, by order of the Republic. It now houses forty transferred syphilis patients, and I have been assigned temporarily to treat them. Last week they revolted and forced two condescending doctors to flee for their lives from the building. I get along with them just fine.

A thin tendril of smoke curls up slowly behind the main hospital building. A heavy, burnt smell has hung heavy in the air for several hours now, since one of our sheds caught fire out back around 4 a.m. and burned to the ground. Wouldn’t you know it, we discovered in the ashes the charred corpse of one of the syphilis patients, a quiet fellow who had been known to sneak away for hours at a time but always made it back for his shots of penicillin. Not anymore. Seems he liked to nap in that shed.

Suddenly, I spot a truck driving at full speed through the gate. In the back, a group of men, all in working clothes, are crouched in a circle, looking down.

Instead of driving to the admitting office, the truck screeches to a halt in front of the main hospital building. Seeing me in a white coat, the men in the truck scream and wave wildly at me to come quick.

“Come up to the back of the truck right away, doctor!” shouts a short man as I run up. Later I learned that he is Fyodor Ostapóvich, foreman of this electricians’ crew. “One of ours is in critical condition,” he exclaims. “He was electrocuted before our eyes. Accidentally stepped on a highvoltage wire, that’s what!”

Scrambling up, I see the victim lying on a thin layer of straw on the bed of the truck. Spare tires, wires, and pieces of canvas are scattered around him.

“We’ve done artificial respiration on him nonstop on the way here,” the foreman adds, pointing. Two men are performing the Silvester artificial respiration method, which was very popular at that time. The victim is face up, shoulders elevated to allow the head to drop backward. One of the rescuers grasps the victim’s wrists and crosses them over the lower chest. He then rocks forward, pressing on the victim’s chest, and then backward, stretching the victim’s arms outward and upward.

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