The Right Hand (Solzhenitsyn)
Short summary
Tashkent, Soviet era, spring. A man arrived at a medical clinic expecting to die but slowly recovered.
As he regained strength, he wandered the hospital grounds, observing life around him. Despite recovering, he faced returning to exile under surveillance. One evening at the gates, he encountered an elderly man struggling to gain hospital admission.
The narrator helped Bobrov reach reception, where a young nurse refused admission despite his critical condition. Bobrov revealed he was a Revolution veteran who had personally executed counter-revolutionaries. The narrator reflected on the irony:
Strange … That right hand had once swung a sabre in a full arc and chopped off heads, necks, and shoulders. And now it could not even hold a scrap of paper …
Detailed summary
Division into sections is editorial.
The narrators recovery in Tashkent
In winter, a dying man arrived in Tashkent expecting death but was granted another chance at life. After months of recovery, he cautiously ventured outside on shaky legs as spring turned to summer. The warm, lush city offered him a reprieve from his harsh existence.
Though recovering like other patients, he was fundamentally different - he had fewer rights and was forced to remain silent about his past. While others had visitors and the singular goal of getting well, his recovery seemed almost pointless.
I was thirty-five years of age and yet in that spring I had no one I could call my own in the whole world. I did not even own a passport, and if I were to recover...
He would have to return to his desert exile where he lived under surveillance, reported on every fortnight. The local police had barely allowed him, even as a dying man, to seek treatment. Yet ten years of reflection had taught him that life's true meaning came from small things - his ability to walk hesitantly, breathe carefully, find an undamaged potato in soup.
So for me this spring was the most painful and the loveliest of my life.
Everything fascinated him - the ice-cream cart, street sweepers, women selling radishes, a stray foal. He wandered through the century-old park with its ornate buildings, watching healthy people hurry while sick ones promenaded slowly. A large alabaster Stalin statue grinned sarcastically near the main gates, surrounded by smaller statues. Beyond the gates stood a fruit stall and teahouse where he watched people consume tea at small tables or sprawl for hours on the Uzbek section's large dais.
His few kopecks earned in exile couldn't afford the fruit prices. Funeral marches from the adjacent cemetery drifted over the walls several times daily, affecting patients differently than healthy bystanders who barely paused. The narrator watched tennis players, gazed at the muddy Salar river, and marveled at the park's oak trees, maples, and Japanese acacias. The fountain threw silver streams skyward while succulent grass - unlike the weeded prison camp grass or the grassless exile - offered a taste of paradise to lie in.
Meeting the veteran Bobrov
Women constantly flowed along the paths - doctors, nurses, clerks in white coats and bright southern dresses, some twirling Chinese parasols. Each created a complete novel plot in his mind about her past and the nonexistent chance of meeting her. He was acutely aware of his pitiful appearance.
I was a pitiful wreck. My emaciated face bore the stamp of what I had been through—the wrinkles caused by the enforced gloom of camp life, the ashen colour of death...
His hunched back, clown-like striped jacket, short trousers, and prison boots with protruding brown footcloths marked him clearly. Yet he experienced the world through eyes as sensitive as those of the women who would never dare walk beside him.
One evening by the main gates, amid the usual bustling crowd with parasols and colorful clothing, he noticed a small, ungainly man addressing people in a gasping voice: "Comrades... Comrades..." The busy crowd ignored him. The narrator approached and asked what was wrong.
The man had an enormous belly hanging like a sack through his dirty khaki uniform, worn shoes, and a soiled overcoat unsuitable for the weather. His ancient peaked cap and dropsy-swollen eyes completed his wretched appearance. He clutched a crumpled application with two stamps - blue ink refusing hospital admission, red ink ordering acceptance. The narrator offered to help him reach Reception in Ward One, taking his light bag and supporting his arm as they slowly made their way past the alabaster statues.
At Reception: confrontation and revelation
They rested on a bench near the fountain where Bobrov shared his story. He needed to reach the Urals where his residence permit was valid, but had fallen ill near Takhia-Tashem. Hospitals everywhere had turned him away, sending him to the Urals despite his terminal condition. He lacked money for the train ticket and was too weak to travel.
The old man's head lolled forward, his thin neck unable to support it. He asked for a cigarette, which the narrator refused, then requested three rubles. Despite being a prisoner while Bobrov was free, and having earned nothing during his camp years, the narrator gave him the money from his oilskin purse.
Bobrov revealed his identity as a Revolution veteran, claiming that Sergey Mironovich Kirov had personally shaken his hand during fighting at Tsaritsyn.
He should have received a special pension, but records were burned or lost, witnesses were gone, and Kirov was murdered. At Reception, a young nurse with violet lipstick and a snub nose refused admission, insisting on the nine a.m. routine despite the red stamp.
The narrator's harsh prison-camp manner failed to move her bureaucratic callousness. Bobrov produced a tattered certificate from the "World Revolution" Special Detachment for "eliminating large numbers of counterrevolutionary terrorists." The narrator contemplated the irony - this small, swollen hand with round, puffed joints had once swung a sabre in deadly arcs, chopping off heads and shoulders, but now couldn't even hold a scrap of paper. He quietly placed the certificate on the nurse's comic book and walked away, leaving the veteran shrunken on the bench, his helpless fingers dangling as his swollen belly sagged into his thighs.