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Chapter One
On this particular morning, like almost every other morning, my alarm went off at six o'clock sharp. The bus that would take me to the psychiatric hospital where I worked left exactly an hour later from a subway station a few blocks away. It was the last bus that would get me there on time, and I could not afford to miss it.
Today it was especially hard to force myself out of bed. My apartment was even colder than usual, and the sky outside was still dark, with sullen snow clouds obscuring the stars that might otherwise have brightened the night. The extreme cold in my room was a sure sign of a problem with the main furnace, and it meant I might not have heat again for days. Thinking of all this., I crawled reluctantly from under my warm blankets and prepared for a long day's work. After a quick breakfast of toast and coffee, more to warm myself than to furnish nourishment, I finished my morning chores.
I sighed as I closed the door to my apartment, thinking of the long trip I had to endure each morning to get to the work I loved. I entered the slippery, icy street, my frosty breath creating a path ahead of me in the still air. It had been snowing the entire night, and the janitor hadn't yet ventured out into the cold morning to shovel the mounds of windswept snow from the paths around the apartment building. It was difficult to make my way through the snowdrifts and frosty headwinds. I felt a cold chill run through my body, as much from the feeling of this dreary, somehow forbidding morning as from the wind and snow. The tall apartment buildings that surrounded me looked like huge dark, spiritless monsters. Only a fewwindows were lit among hundreds, each window a sign of human life in this Siberian stone jungle.
The sheltered subway stop was, fifteen minutes away. I walked quickly with xny head down, protecting myself as much as possible from the wind. The wet snow only appeared soft and beautiful; as it covered my face, hands, and clothes and then found its way to the uncovered skin of my neck, I again felt a cold chill run through my body.
My hurried steps created a rhythm, to which I added my usual winter morning's chant. The words were said just under my breath, in that singsong rhythm of preachers and spell weavers: "I want to get a seat today. I want to get a seat today" This time of year I would be very fortunate to find a seat on the bus, and I desperately wanted the nap I would take if I had the chance.
It didn't happen. I arrived at the station to find a long line of people already waiting, ghostlike within their white snowy outlines. The slov4y falling snow glistened in the dim white light of the street lamps and in the moving red taillights of white apparitions shaped like cars, their engines silenced by the wind. This morning as I approached the crowd, it melted together into a cloud of translucent common breath resembling a long, sinuously curling dragon, belching tobacco smoke and cursing loudly at the cold wind and the late bus.
I should have known there would be no hope of a seat or nap at this time of year because of all the men who traveled outside the city to the frozen river to fish. Each day my bus crossed the river Ob, one of the biggest rivers in Siberia. Its powerful wide stream divided my city, Novosibirsk, into two parts. Three long bridges had been built to connect the various districts of the city. It was after the first bridge was built, at the end of the last century, that the city began to grow. In winter the Obis covered with thick ice, and the men who love to fish, can walk all the way to the middle to cut their round openings. Then they sit with their comrades, telling stories and gossiping on the cold ice for hours, waiting for that first nibble from a hungry fish. The bus route follows the shore of the Ob until just before it reaches my hospital, and today, as nearly every other winter day, the early rising fishermen filled up the whole bus with their awkward equipment, sitting in the best seats, wearing long dark winter robes, and speaking in loud, raucous voices punctuated by curses.
I worked in a big psychiatric hospital with thousands of patients. The hospital lay outside the city because it had always been considered safer to locate such facilities well away from populated areas. After what seemed like much more than two hours of standing, swaying back and forth but otherwise immobilized by the pressing crowd in the freezing, unheated bus, I finally reached my stop at the hospital. I got out and walked quickly, trying to restore feeling to my numb legs.
Every day the same dreary picture greeted me: thirteen one-story buildings built in the style of old wooden army barracks, painted a yellow-green color, with heavy, badly rusted iron grates covering their tiny windows. This place, provided the most important part of my life. This was my hospital.
Walking, through the hospital yard, I saw about twenty people leaving the building that served as the kitchen. They carried big metal buckets full of breakfast in their hands, and they hurried back to their wards in a hopeless attempt to keep their morning tea and gruel warm. I could hardly see them because it was still so dark, but I could hear their steps distinctly on the icy snow, accompanied by the metallic sounds of their buckets as they took separate paths to their different buildings. The same gruel was served every day. It was the only food available to us. The huge metal buckets, with their two metal handles and flat lids, reminded me of what one might use to feed inmates in a prison.
There were some patients whose mental state allowed them to do menial work within the hospital grounds. These privileged few wore identical long-sleeved gray jerseys with their ward numbers printed in big numerals on the back.
Entering the Circle. Copyright © by Olga Kharitidi. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
