SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: DR. POLNITZSKI

 "Dr. Polnitzski" by Arlo Bates  (first published in Ainslee's Magazine, July 1903; reprinted in The Intoxicated Ghost and Other Stories, 1908)

Our narrator is recuperating from a serious horse riding injury at the estate of a friend.  His friend's family physician had been taken ill, so another doctor in the area, Dr. Polnitzski, had been called into treat the man's serious leg wound.  Then our narrator's friend and family had been called away to attend to a married daughter who had become ill, leaving the narrator with Dr. Polnitzski as his main companion during his recovery.

Little was known about Polnitzski.  He was Russian and had been in England for some dozen years, living quietly and unobstrusively while all the while gaining a reputation as an extraordinary physician while quietly engaging in philanthropic work.  One evening, Polnitzski told his story for the first time since he had been in England.

Polnitzski came from a line of small nobles in Moscow.  His father died when the boy was seventeen, leaving only Polnitzski and his sainted mother.  Around the same time, Polnitzski became obsessed with Alexandrina, nicknamed "Shurochka," the daughter of the family's steward.  P{olnitzski trierd to keep his feelings hidden, knowing that a relationship with a descendant of serfs would be impossible.  Besides, Shurochka had been pledge since childhood to her cousin.  Eventually, she and her cousin were married and they maved from the area.  Shortly after that, our narrator's mother died, leaving him alone to study medicine.

It was, as always, a tubulant time in Russia.  Corruption and oppression were rampant.  Polnitzski and others, pledgiong loyalty to Mother Russia and her people, organized into secret cadres.  They were called by some Patriots, by others, Nihilists.  The years pased and Polnitski gor word that Shurochka had goone missing.  She had attracted the attentions of a powerful officer who had kidnapped her; her husband, when complaining to the authorities, was branded a traitor and sent to Siberia,  No word was heard of Shurochka's ultimate fate.

Then came a time when the powerful General Kakonzoff was to come to the area.  He had information that would implicate two members of the cabal and would have to be stopped before he passed the information on.  It was determined the general must be assassinated.  By a fluke, the bullet missed his heart, entering instead into his lung.  And by another fluke, Polnitzki was assigned as his physician.  As a patriot pledged to Mother Russia, Polnitzski was pobligated to let the general die.  As a physician pledge to his sacred calling, he must do all possible to save the man.  The physiucian part of him won out, but the the general took a turn for the worse -- perhaps nature would relive Polnitzski of his Hobson's choice.  Then a woman stopped him and begged hm to save the general.  It turned out to be Shurochka, older, paler, with scars on her face.  The general himself had tired of Polnitzski's childhood obsession, but she refused to leave the man who had beaten her and thrown her aside.  Polnitzski's choice worsened.  Should he honor his childhood love's plea, and perhaps place his compatriots in danger?  Or should he go against his sacred oath and allow the man to die, perhaps saving countless other lives?  His decision would lead to his enventually exile to England.

Arlo Bates (1850-1918) was a noted poet, author, journalist, and educator.  He was the editor of the Boston Sunday Courier for fourteen years, and later became a professor of English at the Massachusetts Instuitute of Technology.  He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1900.  His best-known novels were The Pagans (1884), The Philistines (1888), and The Puritans (1889).  The Intoxicated Ghost and Other Stories collected nine stories, a number of them from the major literary magazines of the day, and is available to be be read online at Haithi Trust and other sources.