The Old Horse

I was already on my second lap of Australian hospitals in search of job and had run the gauntlet of a dozen interviews without success, when finally a country hospital took me on as doctor. I was assigned to the Emergency Department and hitched straight to the cart. So much was new for me: the apparatus and instruments, medicines, and the paperwork for God knows what. Problems piled one on top of another, and there was no time for me to think.

I slipped up at every turn. The first time I came across a previously unseen type of scalpel, I grabbed it by the blade. The nurse cried out in alarm and showed me how to use the instrument properly. She was gentle and tactful in this, but I could read the surprise in her eyes. Believe me, it’s not easy to take when a little fledgling teaches you the basics. Especially when you are soaked with the smells of hospitals, when you have turned grey sitting at patients’ bed-sides, when venerable scientific types used to seek your opinion, when… It was shameful! I could have offered hundreds excuses, but who would have listened? My error was the fact now and it wasn’t only one I had made.

Australians are an extremely kind and well-wishing people. A stranger’s smile is a wonderful gift. If I did manage to do something correctly, I would invariably hear the word ‘beautiful’. This amazingly soft, velvet-smooth word enveloped my wounded soul like a warm wave, but I was aware that I still had much work to do before earning this compliment.

‘Beautiful’ was one of those rare words whose meaning I caught easy. English came to me with vague snatches as if from a deep well. I would strain and stare in confusion with my jaw hanging. I looked like, well, a complete fool. I suspected they took me for one, in any case. I wanted to yell, “I’m not as stupid as I seem”, but this really would have been stupid.

At the clinic conferences, after forcing out a few spasmodic and inarticulate sentences I would feel the accentuated attention of my colleagues on me, then become covered in perspiration and shut up.

However, I did actually have something to say. For several years I had been the head of a leading capital clinic – surely this counted for something. I could felt patients’ insides, their emotion and pain, and touched each of their internal organs, every rib. I could also speak publicly in a logical and confident manner. I was no Cicerone, but I had known how to talk… there just, in Russia.

Here, on the other hand, I would rummage feverishly in the already holey basket of my memory, picking out the first vaguely appropriate one. As a result, I was not able to speak my thoughts or express what I might have if I had known English as well as Russian. I just cobbled together whatever I could from the pitiful collection of words surfaced.

And you should have seen how I communicated with my patients. I puffed and whistled, pulled faces. I gesticulated wildly with jumps and wriggles, striking all sorts of likely and unlikely poses. In short, Marcel Masseur himself would have envied me. The patients were within their rights to refuse a doctor who was a specialist in pantomime, but they didn’t. On the contrary, they tried to encourage me. They called me ‘our Russian doc’.

One of my patients, Joshua, had learnt from me how to say ‘good morning’ in Russian,
and each morning he would meet me with the words ‘dobroe utro’, pronounced in an accent which was funny to my Russian ear. I guessed my accent was the same for Australians. At least some patients told me that they liked my Russian accent. Joshua also taught me when I was asked, “how are you?” to answer “shit hot”, and when I did this without getting the meaning he burst out laughing.    

Another person who I felt at ease with was David, а nurse. He was a big bearded man who looked like a hero from some Russian epic. Once I asked him as a joke: “Are you, by any chance Russian?” He answered with pride: “I am an Australian!” He was a born fisherman. I also knew a thing or two in this regard. They say that fishermen recognise one another one from afar (‘birds of a feather flock together’ is the Australian equivalent). We quickly came to understand each other using an international fisherman's Esperanto, where gestures often mean more than words. We became good friends. Unfortunately, this was a pleasant exception.

I felt isolated. Before arriving here I hadn’t imagined the role everyday chatter might play in communication with people. To throw around a couple of insignificant phrases or to ask questions not out of curiosity but just because you feel like it, is like saying, a la Kipling, “We be of one blood – ye and I”. However this was luxury denied me. Often I couldn’t understand what was being said, and nothing remained for me, but smiling. I smiled as often and as broadly as possible, until my cheekbones hurt. I kept up my smiling until one surgeon, who for some reason had taken an instant dislike to me, asked, “Why are you smiling all the time?” He then turned his back and added something in a mocking and scornful tone. Everyone began to laugh, and I felt like running far away.

This dreary feeling of inferiority and humility was utterly exhausting. Fatigue welled within me. Everything was annoying; from the doctors’ frightful handwriting, to the television programs, which I watched to improve my English. Even the affability of Australians, which had won me over the first, now appeared affected, and their spontaneity seemed like simple-mindedness. Their enthusiastic, but excessive use of the word ‘fantastic’ drove me quietly mad.

The feeling of gratitude that I had experienced towards Australia and Australians before was now gradually leaving me. Sometimes I would catch myself and tell myself:

 “Stop!
Enough is enough!
Don’t forget all the good you have got here.
Remember that Australia has sheltered you and your family.
Australia has allowed for you such facilities that you couldn’t even dream about.
They have given your job despite your awful English.
And many other good things you have not to forget.
Don’t be like some immigrants who through they did nothing good for Australia are demanding from her all sorts of conceivable and inconceivable welfare, and at the same time are picking on her and swearing like a bargee...”

However this glimmer of sober mind was appearing more rarely. The grey weight of exhaustion was pressing my any ability to think sanely.

In the lunch breaks I secluded myself in my world-weary Toyota, which I parked in a distant corner of the hospital carpark next to a large paddock. My lunch would consist of a couple of oranges and a banana. I couldn’t have stomached anything more substantial. I would listlessly chew down my unintentionally vegetarian lunch looking at Mt. Baw Baw, its top covered with dense grey clouds. I thought: “I doubt whether I will ever manage to climb it”. Then dim pictures came to me either from my distant childhood or from forgotten dreams and I drifted off.

Once, through my daydreaming I felt someone’s gaze upon me. I opened my eyes a little and saw a horse staring at me. I got out of the car, walked up to the fence, and held my hand out to the horse. The horse whinnied and darted away, then ambled out a beautiful circle and stopped like rooted to the ground. With his head lowered artistically to the side he looked at me askance with his dark-plum eye. I froze in astonishment. Then he started dancing on the spot, gracefully pawing the ground.

 “Wow, you are really an artist, mate”, I exclaimed and applauded. The horse repeated the trick, made another circle and other moves… until I realised that he wanted more than just applause. I had nothing apart from an orange peel. I held it out and he, exposing his yellow-brown teeth expertly swept the peel from my palm with his lips. I patted the horse behind his ear and he pushed my shoulder with his muzzle in thanks.

It was plain to see that this was the old horse. His spine had sagged with the years and his coat had lost its shine. However, you could sense by his still noble bearing that the horse had known some good times. “Yes, you and I are of the same vintage, old man”, I said. The horse moved his ears in agreement. We shared a conversation.

This is how our daily meetings began. The horse would spy me from far off and rush up to the fence before me. We would share oranges for launch – I’d have the flesh and he the peel – and I’d tell him about my ordeals. The horse, it seemed, understood Russian. He would look sadly at me and nod in sympathy. Sometimes he would neigh quietly, and I guessed he was also telling me something, perhaps of his glorious past.

One time I walked up to our meeting place and didn’t find the horse there. I caught sight of him not far away, talking to two women who were feeding him. I whistled, however he was so engrossed in the pleasant female company that he didn’t even bat an eyelid. Jealousy stirred within me. I fumbled with my oranges, glancing hopefully in the horse’s direction. But to no avail. “He’s dumped me for a woman”, I sang the Russian song and plodded off.

The next day, the horse was waiting me as if nothing had happened. “You are already here, two-face”, I said and began to tuck into oranges with gusto, without offering him any. The horse stood there, his head hung in guilt. It seemed he regretted events. I wasn’t satisfied through, and threw the peel down at my feet. I watched the horse’s unsuccessful attempts to reach the leftovers with malicious delight. “That’ll teach you to betray a friend”, I said in a pompous and didactic tone.

Suddenly the horse straightened up, turned his rear to me and unburdened himself of the steaming contents of his intestines, as if wishing me ‘bon appetite’. I chocked in amazement. Flinging the rest of the orange at the horse I yelled, “You’ll pay for this!” However, the horse didn’t look back. He moved off in an unhurried, dignified manner.

For several days I parked well away from the paddock to avoid the horse. I stayed indignant, harping on a phrase I had read somewhere: “What good is a friend who’s a friend to everyone?” I played scenes of revenge over in my mind.

When I had finally cooled down, I went back the paddock but the horse wasn’t there. I raced around its edge. Little birds splashed around in a puddle, timid rabbits flitted amongst the bushes, a flock of grey and pink galahs took flight, but my good friend the horse was gone.

I recalled how in the last few days that I had seen him, he had looked suspiciously sluggish. A bitter idea of what might have happened to him tightened my chest. I was filled with sadness. And shame. Shame for my futile sensitivity, my petty vengefulness, and my ugly egoism. Shame at how stuffed full with inane desires I had become. What could be more disgraceful than the grimaces of wounded ambition? And who had I vented them all on? On a horse; on nature itself; which has more wisdom than all we humans with our celebrated power over things. Nature is wiser, if nothing else, because she is more true… More true and more noble.

But that just wasn’t enough for me, eaten up inside by a writhing nest of complexes. I had lost my ability to feel, think and act freely and along with that, a sense of the fullness and joy of life.

And if the candid emotions of others had started irritating me, if in their natural behaviour I could see taunts, then that meant something was wrong with me, not them. My soul had shrivelled up and was covered with the scabs of intolerance, hostility and hard-heartedness. I could no longer distinguish the line between the natural and the unnatural, true and false, good and evil. It had been washed away in a cloudy tear of resentment and disappointments.

How could I talk of decency, – not nobleness, that was too great an honour for me, – but basic human decency, while approaching everyone with my furlong of far-fetched ideas, stubborn principles and tedious demands? I had endured misfortune, but wasn’t able to resist the temptation to blame others for my failure. I was suffering myself and sought relief in the suffering of others. Offended – I offended, humiliated – I humiliated.

No, it couldn’t go on like this any more. It was time to clean the Augean stables of my soul. The old Australian horse had taught me a good lesson.

Each day I went to the paddock, hoping to see the horse. But in vain. I was surprised at myself. I had witnessed many deaths, but the loss of the horse stuck like a splinter in my heart and wouldn’t let go. My guilt stayed with me. Oh, if only I could have turned back time.

Two or three weeks went by. One morning as I was parking, I threw my habitual glance over at the paddock and noticed in the distance a familiar figure. I jumped out of the car waved my arms, yelling out with joy. In a few moments I was stroking his resilient neck, nearly in tears. Over and over I repeated “You are alive, my old friend…We’ll show ourselves once more… It’s too early to write us off…” The horse lay his head on my shoulder and from time to time gently nudged my head, reapproaching me for my long absence. I gave him my lunch and watched tenderly as he ate.

When the horse finished the meal I hugged him and whispered in his ear, “Forgive me, old friend”. It was as though something had loosened inside me. Things became light and clear. The horse shook his head and neighed happily.

It had poured during the night. The greenery sparkled in the sun’s rays. Mt. Baw Baw rose in the distance above the misty morning horizon. Now it didn’t seem as inaccessible to me.