At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister Katya, a girl of eighteen.  When Katya greeted him she had a pencil and exercise book in her hand, and he remembered that she was preparing for an examination as a teacher.  Gasping with fever, he walked aimlessly through all the rooms without answering their questions or greetings, and when he reached his bed he sank down on the pillow.  The Finn, the red cap, the lady with the white teeth, the smell of roast meat, the flickering blurs, filled his consciousness, and by now he did not know where he was and did not hear the agitated voices.

When he recovered consciousness he found himself in bed, undressed, saw a bottle of water and Pavel, but it was no cooler, nor softer, nor more comfortable for that.  His arms and legs, as before, refused to lie comfortably; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he heard the wheezing of the Finn’s pipe. . . .  A stalwart, black-bearded doctor was busy doing something beside the bed, brushing against Pavel with his broad back.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, young man,” he muttered.  “Excellent, excellent . . . goo-od, goo-od . . . !”

The doctor called Klimov “young man,” said “goo-od” instead of “good” and “so-o” instead of “so.”

“So-o . . . so-o . . . so-o,” he murmured.  “Goo-od, goo-od . . . !  Excellent, young man.  You mustn’t lose heart!”

The doctor’s rapid, careless talk, his well-fed countenance, and condescending “young man,” irritated Klimov.

“Why do you call me ’young man’?” he moaned.  “What familiarity!  Damn it all!”

And he was frightened by his own voice.  The voice was so dried up, so weak and peevish, that he would not have known it.

“Excellent, excellent!” muttered the doctor, not in the least offended. . . .  “You mustn’t get angry, so-o, so-o, so-s. . . .”

And the time flew by at home with the same startling swiftness as in the railway carriage.  The daylight was continually being replaced by the dusk of evening.  The doctor seemed never to leave his bedside, and he heard at every moment his “so-o, so-o, so-o.”  A continual succession of people was incessantly crossing the bedroom.  Among them were:  Pavel, the Finn, Captain Yaroshevitch, Lance-Corporal Maximenko, the red cap, the lady with the white teeth, the doctor.  They were all talking and waving their arms, smoking and eating.  Once by daylight Klimov saw the chaplain of the regiment, Father Alexandr, who was standing before the bed, wearing a stole and with a prayer-book in his hand.  He was muttering something with a grave face such as Klimov had never seen in him before.  The lieutenant remembered that Father Alexandr used in a friendly way to call all the Catholic officers “Poles,” and wanting to amuse him, he cried: 

“Father, Yaroshevitch the Pole has climbed up a pole!”