“What theory do you mean? I’m afraid I can’t remember any theory. I really can’t, my friend – it’s slipped my mind.”
“It has, has it? Then who shouted, sitting on this sofa here and foaming at the mouth, that by our discoveries we engineers and inventors quicken the heartbeat of society to a feverish speed? Who compared this life with the condition of an animal sealed up in an oxygen jar? I remember perfectly, believe me, what a terrible list of children of the twentieth century – neurasthenics, madmen, overworked men, suicides – you hurled in the face of those same benefactors of mankind. You said the telegraph, the telephone, trains racing at eighty miles an hour, had reduced distance to a minimum, had in fact done away with it. Time has become so valuable, you said, that they’ll soon begin to turn night into day to make day twice as long. Negotiations which used to take months are now finished in five minutes. But even this hellish speed is no longer enough for us. Soon we’ll be able to see each other by wire hundreds and thousands of miles away! And yet, only fifty years ago, whenever our ancestors had to make a trip from the country to the provincial centre, they’d hold a service in church and set out with enough time to spare for a polar expedition. And we keep rushing on headlong, stunned by the rumbling and clanking of monstrous machines, dazed by the furious race, with irritated nerves, perverse tastes, and thousands of new diseases. Do you remember, doctor? It was you, a champion of beneficial progress, who said all that.”
The doctor, who had been making futile attempts to protest, profited by Bobrov’s momentary pause.
“Yes, my friend, I did say all that,” he cut in, a little doubtfully. “I will say that again. But then we must adapt ourselves, so to speak. How else are we to live? There are these tricky little points in every profession. Take us doctors. Do you imagine we have no doubts or difficulties at all? Why, we’re sure of nothing whatsoever beyond surgery. We think up new remedies and systems, but we completely forget that, among a thousand living beings, no two are alike in blood composition, heart activity, heredity, and God knows what else! We’ve moved away from real therapeutics – the medicine of wild creatures and quacks – and flooded the chemists’ shops with cocaine, atropine, phenacetin, and all that sort of stuff; but we’ve forgotten that if you give a sick man a glass of pure water and earnestly assure him it’s a strong medicine he’ll recover from his illness. Nevertheless, in ninety cases out of a hundred, what helps us in our practice is the confidence inspired by our professional sacerdotal self-assurance. Believe it or not, but a fine physician, who was also a clever, honest man, once confessed to me that sportsmen treat their sick dogs more rationally than we do people. Their only medicine is flower of brimstone – it can’t do much harm, and sometimes it even helps. A lovely picture, isn’t it, my friend? But we, too, do what we can. It’s the only way, for in this life we all must compromise. Sometimes you can relieve the suffering of a fellow-man by behaving like an omniscient augur if by nothing else. Thank God for even that much.”
“You talk about compromise,” said Bobrov gloomily, “but today you extracted the splinters from that Masalsk stone-mason’s skull, didn’t you?”
“Ah, my friend, what difference does one repaired skull make? Think how many bellies you keep full and how many people you give work to. Ilovaisky says in his History that ‘Tsar Boris, being desirous of winning the favour of the people, undertook the construction of public buildings in the years of famine,’ or something like that. Now try to work out what tremendous good you – ”
The doctor’s last words seemed to jolt Bobrov, who sat up quickly in bed and swung his bare feet over the side.
“Good?” he shouted frenziedly. “Are you talking to me about good? In that case, if you really want to sum up what’s good or bad, allow me to give you some statistics.” And he began in sharp, measured tones, as if speaking from a platform: “It has long been known that work in a mine, metal works, or large factory shortens the workman’s life by roughly a quarter, to say nothing of accidents or back-breaking toil. As a physician you know better than I do how many workmen suffer from syphilis or drink, or live in appalling conditions in those accursed barracks and mud-huts. Wait, doctor – before you object, try to remember how many workmen over forty or forty-five you’ve seen in factories. I haven’t met any. That means the workman gives his employer three months of his life a year, one week a month, or, in short, six hours a day. Now listen to this. Our six blast-furnaces will require some thirty thousand men – I suppose Tsar Boris never dreamt of such a figure. Thirty thousand men who burn up, so to speak, altogether a hundred and eighty thousand hours of their own lives every day, that is, seven thousand five hundred days, or – how many years does that add up to?”
“About twenty years,” the doctor prompted, after a brief pause.
“About twenty years a day!” cried Bobrov. “Two days of work swallow up one man. Damn it! Do you remember those Assyrians or Moabites in the Bible who offered human sacrifices to their gods? But, really, those brass gentlemen, Moloch and Dagon, would have blushed with shame and mortification at the figures I’ve quoted.”
This peculiar calculation had just occurred to Bobrov, who, like many impressionable people, discovered new ideas only in the heat of debate. Nevertheless, both he and Goldberg were struck by the unusual statistics.
“Hang it all, you bewilder me,” said the doctor. “The figures may be inaccurate, though.”
“And do you know anything,” Bobrov went on, with even greater vehemence, “about another statistical table which enables you to compute with devilish accuracy the price in human lives of each step forward of your damnable chariot, the invention of each paltry winnowing-fan, seeder, or rail-mill? A fine thing is your civilization, whose fruits are figures, the units being steel machines, and the ciphers human lives!”
“But look here, my friend,” said the doctor, taken aback by Bobrov’s violence, “do you mean to say, then, that we’d better fall back on primitive labour? Why do you consider only the black side? After all, in spite of your statistics, the mill has provided a school, a church, a good hospital, and a low-interest credit society for the workmen.”
Bobrov jumped out of bed and began to run about barefoot.
“Those hospitals and schools of yours don’t mean a thing! They’re no more than sops for humanists like you, concessions to public opinion. I can tell you, if you like, what we actually think of all that. Do you know what a finish is?”
“A finish? Hasn’t that got something to do with horses – with racing?”
“That’s it. A finish is the last seven-hundred foot spurt before the winning-post. The horse makes it at top speed – it’s the supreme effort, and to get the horse to make that effort they lash it till it bleeds. Then, when it’s passed the mark, it may die for all anybody cares. We’re like that, too. When we’ve squeezed the last spurt out of the horse and it drops with a broken back and shattered legs, to hell with it, it’s no longer good for anything! Your schools and hospitals mean a fat lot to a horse that’s breathed its last after the finish. Have you ever watched smelting or rolling? If you have, you ought to know that it takes deucedly strong nerves, steel muscles, and the agility of a circus performer. You ought to know that everyone on the job escapes death several times a day thanks only to his wonderful self-control. And would you like to know how much a workman gets for work of that sort?”
“Still, as long as the mill’s there, the workman’s sure of a job,” Goldberg persisted.
“Don’t be naive, doctor!” cried Bobrov, sitting on the window-sill. “The workman depends today more than ever on market demand, on stock-jobbing, on various intrigues. Each big enterprise passes through different hands three or four times before it gets under way. Do you know how our company came into being? A sum of money was put up by a small group of business men. At first the business was planned on a small scale. But a whole gang of engineers, directors and contractors frittered away the capital before the owners could see what was what. Enormous buildings were erected that turned out to be good for nothing. They were