The Listening Tube

A lecture table draped in green baize in the hall of a military hospital in Saint Petersburg at winter dusk, on the cloth an open flat black wooden case lined with old-rose fabric, a glass mercury tube on a narrow wooden strip faced with a plain white band, a folded beige linen cuff with dark leather straps, a black rubber bulb with a brass valve, orange-red rubber tubes linking them, laid across the cuff a straight turned wooden listening tube, a sheet lying face down, two hands in plain dark green sleeves resting there, empty wooden benches behind, a window of blue snowy dusk, warm brass oil-lamp light.