The miracle doctor (novel)
The Wunderdoktor ( Russian Предтеча / Predtetscha ) is a satirical novel by the Russian writer Vladimir Makanin , which was published in 1983 by the Moscow publishing house “Soviet Writer” ( Russian Советский писатель ). The translation into German by Willi Hoepp was published by Volk und Welt in Berlin in 1984.
In this farce, a previously convicted quack cures the terminally ill free of charge .
overview
Sergej Stepanowitsch Jakuschkin had married Maria Ivanovna not immediately after the war , but only when she was forty. When Yakushkin was making big money building dachas for Muscovites, his wife was already sick. Marja died while Yakushkin was serving his long sentence in a Siberian reform and labor camp . The Moscow entrepreneur had embezzled building materials. Lena, called Lenotschka, emerged from the marriage - at the time of the act, she was already a 25-year-old capable programmer at a research institute, married to an engineer.
With his friend Sotow, a bandit, Jakuschkin had to process tree trunks in the taiga . When Jakuschkin got a stick on his head, he suddenly knew what the truth was . Even more - his cute philosophy based on it made him in Moscow, having returned after serving his sentence, at times a successful and therefore sought-after healer . As the rare gift came, it inexplicably went away. According to Vladimir Makanin, Yakushkin's healing power was related to the flow of his psychoenergy. At his best, Yakushkin's “ psychological field” “spanned kilometers” in Moscow. The medical autodidact dies while attempting to regain the healing power that has suddenly disappeared.
content
Due to the above-mentioned work accident, Jakuschkin, who is now elderly, meager but still sprightly, is receiving a disability pension. That truth philosophy of Yakushkin, who is medically classified as schizophrenic , proves to be much more effective against cancer than his panacea, weak St. John's wort tea and time and again tooth powder as a “basic food” and of course as a “protective wall against microorganisms ”. Although the miracle doctor with “eight-year education” has “higher knowledge” than the doctors, at their insistence - modestly, as it sometimes appears - he endures an insulin cure in the nerve sanatorium. The attending physician, a certain Potyanichev, is lucky. Towards the end of the treatment, Yakushkin's roommate was amazed. The person pumped full of insulin gets his “active period” after a “period of silence”. Jakuschkin turns the tables. The patient treats the doctor's asthma "at the height of his talkative period" . The latter endures a test of miracle healing art. Jakuschkin called this philosophy of the correct way of life from now on system . He likes the word. He picked it up from the spa doctors. Potjanitschew has to recognize that he was cured by the quack with "brutal inexorability"; "mental pressure" was issued on him: Jakuschkin breaks the illness of the current patient into his "psychological field".
Jakuschkin is mainly known after the healing of a few cancer patients who either had been given up by the doctors or who did not want to go under the knife. K. suffers from stomach cancer and Jakuschkin cures him after about four weeks of "treatment". The healer also takes care of other diseases. The 54-year-old chief engineer AJ Tschermnych suffers from severe kidney failure . After Jakuschkin had cured the patient, he was invited to the banks of the Yenisei the following summer . When the great healer was driven through the Siberian landscape for a few days, he wisely concealed the fact that he had to get to know these beautiful areas against his will as a forest worker.
Not everyone shows thanks. Jakuschkin sends everyone who is cured out of the city. A master who used to be suffering from cancer, traveled to a washing machine repair shop with his wife for Western Siberia and suddenly barely wanted to know his benefactor.
Under “Jakuschkin's magical attraction”, a loyal adept thinks the faith healer is a demigod. The young student Kusowkin, one of the most zealous Yakushkin disciples , writes the master's sermon about the “ neutrino in our soul ” and would almost freeze in awe when the demigod presents flying saucers as reality. The nearly 40-year-old single pharmacist Inna Galkina gets into bed with Jakuschkin. Nothing. The master announces that he is only sleeping with his wife. As is well known, she died. Yakushkin's lung cancer patient, the 40-year-old technician Deriglotov, did not allow the doctors to operate on him when there was probably still time. The first advice of the healer: give up "hectic city life". Deriglotow, a man like a tree, is misunderstood by newcomers as the healer's bodyguard .
Quotes
- Two creeds of the angry prophet Jakuschkin to the address of his patients:
- "... you have to love still and still until you become human!"
- "Anyone who does not chase material goods will never suffer from serious illness."
shape
Lena and her husband have a five-year-old son - Wowka. Lena's marriage to the engineer is in two parts. The failed medical student Koljanja Anikejew approaches the desirable Lena. "The homeless single Koljanja" was also turned down by the journalism faculty, but throughout the novel he writes newspaper articles about " folk medicine " with increasing success . Not only Lena's father, whom Kolyanja secretly scolds a charlatan and dilettante , becomes the subject of the pamphlets. The microbiologist Suchanzew, the homeopath Schaginjan and the self-taught naturopath Karawajew are also hyped up as folk medicine by Koljanja . While the episodes around Jakuschkin are mostly narrative, the other three men are repetitive enumeration of medical cases. On the one hand, Koljanja appears as a figure behind whom Vladimir Makanin is presumably hiding when he condemns miracle medicine. On the other hand, the scribe Koljanja admires the willpower of the healer: "With your will you free people from their fear, and then they will get well on their own ..."
The deadly serious topic is presented in a fun way. Koljanja understands the father of his lover: "You destroy the cancer cells by dehydration and starvation ... The tumor is destroyed, but the patient is also killed."
The time told runs for months, if not a few years: The student Kusowkin graduates and works as an engineer.
German-language editions
- Vladimir Makanin: The Miracle Doctor. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Willi Hoepp . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1984. (used edition)
Web links
in Russian language