Summary:

Vanya and Uncle Nicolai, two orderlies in a morgue, are preparing for funeral the body of Trepov ("Known everywhere simply as Trepov" (63), a hated officer because of whom "more [Russian] people were murdered than absolutely necessary." Trepov is the pawn of "the Little Father" (64); both very well may be cruel administrators of an invading force, not necessarily Russians themselves, although this is not clear.

What is clear is that Vanya, the younger orderly, despises Trepov. After finishing the dressing of the cadaver in military finery, replete with "all those gilt-enameled medals" (64). Vanya suddenly closes the door, to Uncle Nicolai’s bewilderment. Even more surprising is Vanya’s determined slapping of Trepov’s face three times. With tacit approval from Uncle Nicolai, Vanya then kicks Trepov. Finally, Vanya slaps, with all his strength "the corpse’s face again. Now we can go, he stammered, his face flushed with the thrill of it." (65)

Vanya goes to bed thinking about the son his wife is expecting (since there was no ultrasound between 1908 and 1912 when Csáth most likely wrote this story, this detail remains mysterious) and how he will boast to him about "that day’s doings." And then he falls fast asleep, "breathing evenly, deeply, like all healthy people" (65).

View full annotation

Summary:

The unnamed narrator, a physician, notices a surgeon in a "seedy cafe on the edge of town." (73) He learns from the waiter that the shabby man with the "aristocratic demeanor" is "a doctor: Surgeon once" (73). The surgeon hears the narrator call for medical papers and makes his acquaintance. One night soon thereafter the narrator notices that the surgeon, sitting and drinking alone, drains the green syrup of his absinthe "so slowly and pleasurably" (74) that he must be, in fact is, an alcoholic.

The latter approaches the narrator and begins elaborating a complicated theory of time and how it is an internalized, organically controlled, locus in the brain, no different "from an ordinary brain cell" (77). As such, he, the surgeon, proposes to cut it out, imagining, grandiloquently, vast seas of gratitude washing up on his shore as he frees humanity of the "silent madness of mortality" (78). The surgeon ends with a toast to absinthe, "a drug to be taken orally, and which is useful against time, temporarily. . . . We won’t be needing it much longer, since the surgical method’s both radical and excellent. Cheers, my dear colleague!" (78-79)

View full annotation