The night was filled with soft, mysterious sounds. Close by in the corridor, water was dripping from a washstand, measuredly, with pauses. There was whispering somewhere behind a window. Somewhere, where the kitchen garden began, beds of cucumbers were being watered, water was being poured from one bucket into another, with a clink of the chain drawing it from the well.
It smelled of all the flowers in the world at once, as if the earth had lain unconscious during the day and was now coming to consciousness through all these scents. And from the countess’s centuries-old garden, so littered with windfallen twigs and branches that it had become impassable, there drifted, as tall as the trees, enormous as the wall of a big house, the dusty, thickety fragrance of an old linden coming into bloom.
Shouts came from the street beyond the fence to the right. A soldier on leave was acting up there, doors slammed, snippets of some song beat their wings.
Beyond the crow’s nests of the countess’s garden appeared a blackish purple moon of monstrous dimensions. At first it looked like the brick steam mill in Zybushino; then it turned yellow like the Biriuchi railway pump house.
And below, in the courtyard under the window, the scent of showy four o’clocks mingled with the sweet smell of fresh hay, like tea with flowers. Earlier a cow, bought in a far-off village, had been brought here. She had been led all day, was tired, missed the herd she had left, and refused to take food from the hands of her new mistress, whom she had not yet grown used to.
“Now, now, don’t be naughty, Bossie, I’ll teach you to butt, you devil,” the mistress admonished her in a whisper, but the cow either tossed her head angrily or stretched her neck and mooed rendingly and pitifully, while beyond the black sheds of Meliuzeevo the stars twinkled, and from them to the cow stretched threads of invisible compassion, as if they were the cattle yards of other worlds, where she was pitied.
Everything around fermented, grew, and rose on the magic yeast of being. The rapture of life, like a gentle wind, went in a broad wave, not noticing where, over the earth and the town, through walls and fences, through wood and flesh, seizing everything with trembling on its way. To stifle the effect of this current, the doctor went to the platz to listen to the talk at the meeting.
7
The moon was already high in the sky. Everything was flooded by its light, thick as spilled white lead.
By the porches of the official stone buildings with columns that surrounded the square, their wide shadows lay on the ground like black carpets.
The meeting was taking place on the opposite side of the square. If one wished, one could listen and make out everything that was being said across the platz. But it was the magnificence of the spectacle that fascinated the doctor. He sat down on a bench by the gates of the fire brigade, without paying attention to the voices heard across the street, and began to look around.
From all sides, obscure little streets flowed into the square. Deep down them one could see decrepit, lopsided little houses. The mud was as impassable in these little streets as in a village. From the mud long fences of woven willow withes stuck up, looking like nets thrown into a pond or baskets for catching crayfish.
In the little houses, the glass in the frames of the open windows gleamed weak-sightedly. From the front gardens, sweaty, fair-haired corn reached into the rooms, its silks and tassels gleaming as if they were oiled. From behind the sagging wattle fences, pale, lean mallows gazed solitarily into the distance, looking like farm women whom the heat had driven out of the stuffy cottages in their nightshirts for a breath of fresh air.
The moonlit night was astounding, like mercy or the gift of clairvoyance, and suddenly, into the silence of this bright, scintillating fairy tale, the measured, clipped sounds of someone’s voice, familiar, as if just heard, began to fall. The voice was beautiful, fervent, and breathed conviction. The doctor listened and at once recognized who it was. It was the commissar Gintz. He was speaking on the square.
The local powers had probably asked him to support them with his authority, and he, with great feeling, was reproaching the Meliuzeevans for being disorganized, for succumbing too easily to the corrupting influence of the Bolsheviks, the real perpetrators, he insisted, of the Zybushino events. In the same spirit as he had spoken at the military superior’s, he reminded them of the cruel and powerful enemy and the hour of trial that had struck for the motherland. Midway through his speech, he began to be interrupted.
Requests not to interrupt the speaker alternated with shouts of disagreement. The expressions of protest became louder and more frequent. Someone who accompanied Gintz and for the moment took upon himself the task of chairman shouted that remarks from the audience were not allowed and called for order. Some demanded that a citizeness from the crowd be given the floor, others hissed and asked them not to interfere.
A woman was making her way through the crowd towards the upside-down box that served as a platform. She had no intention of getting onto the box, but having squeezed her way there, she stood beside it. The woman was known. Silence fell. The woman held the attention of the crowding people. It was Ustinya.
“Zybushino, you were saying, comrade commissar, and then concerning eyes, you were saying, we must have eyes and not fall into deception, and yet you yourself, I listened to you, only know how to carp at us with your Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, that’s all we hear from you.9 But that there’ll be no more war and everything will be like between brothers, that’s called God’s way and not the Mensheviks’, and that the mills and factories go to the poor, that again is not the Bolsheviks, but human pity. And the deaf-mute gets thrown in our faces without you, I’m sick of hearing it. What is he to you, really! Have you got something against him? That he went around mute all the time, and then suddenly up and spoke without asking anybody? Never saw the like, eh? Well, there’s been even better! That famous she-ass, for instance. ‘Balaam, Balaam,’ she says, ‘I ask you honestly, don’t go there, you’ll be sorry.’10 Well, sure enough, he didn’t listen and went. Like you saying, ‘A deaf-mute.’ He thinks, ‘Why listen to her—she’s an ass, an animal.’ He scorned the brute. And how he repented later. But you surely know how it ended.”
“How?” someone in the public became curious.
“All right!” barked Ustinya. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”
“No, that’s no good. Tell us how.” The same voice would not quiet down.
“How, how—you stick like a thistle! He turned into a pillar of salt.”
“Nice try, dearie! That was Lot. Lot’s wife,”11 shouts rang out. Everyone laughed. The chairman called the assembly to order. The doctor went to bed.
8
The next day he saw Antipova. He found her in the butler’s pantry. Before Larissa Fyodorovna lay a pile of laundry. She was ironing.
The pantry was one of the back rooms on the upper floor, and it gave onto the garden. In it samovars were prepared, food delivered on the dumbwaiter from the kitchen was put on plates, dirty dishes were sent down to be washed. In the pantry the material accounts of the hospital were kept. In it dishes and linen were checked against the lists, people rested during their time off and arranged meetings with each other.
The windows on the garden were open. The pantry smelled of linden blossoms, the caraway bitterness of dry twigs, as in old parks, and slightly of coal gas from the two irons, which Larissa Fyodorovna used alternately, putting now one, now the other into the ventilation pipe to fire them up again.
“Why didn’t you knock on my door yesterday? Mademoiselle told me. Anyhow, you did the right thing. I was already in bed and couldn’t have let you in. Well, hello. Be careful, don’t get yourself dirty. There’s coal spilled here.”
“You’re obviously ironing for the whole hospital?”
“No, a lot of it is mine. So you’ve been teasing me that I’ll never get out of here. But this time I’m serious. See, I’m getting ready, packing. I’ll pack up—and be off. I to the Urals, an
d you to Moscow. And then one day they’ll ask Yuri Andreevich: ‘Have you ever heard of the little town of Meliuzeevo?’ ‘Not that I recall.’ ‘And who is this Antipova?’ ‘I have no idea.’ ”
“Well, that’s unlikely. How was your trip around the rural areas? Is it nice in the country?”
“I can’t put it in a couple of words. How quickly the irons get cold! Give me a new one, please, if you don’t mind. There, sticking in the ventilation pipe. And this one goes back into the pipe. So. Thank you. Villages differ. It all depends on the inhabitants. In some the people are hardworking, industrious. There it’s all right. But in others there must be nothing but drunkards. There it’s desolation. It’s frightening to look at.”
“Don’t be silly. What drunkards? A lot you understand. There’s simply nobody there, the men have all been taken as soldiers. Well, all right. And how is the zemstvo, the new revolutionary one?”
“You’re not right about the drunkards, I disagree with you. And the zemstvo? There will be a long torment with the zemstvo. The instructions are inapplicable, there’s nobody to work with in the rural areas. At the moment all the peasants are interested in is the land question.12 I went to Razdolnoe. What beauty! You should go there. In the spring there was a bit of burning and looting. A barn burned down, the fruit trees got charred, part of the façade is damaged by soot. I didn’t get to Zybushino, didn’t have time. But everywhere they assure you that the deaf-mute isn’t made up. They describe his appearance. They say he’s young, educated.”
“Last night Ustinya laid herself out for him on the platz.”
“I only just came back, and again there was a whole cartload of junk from Razdolnoe. I’ve begged them so many times to leave us in peace. As if we don’t have enough of our own! And this morning guards came from the commandant’s with a note from the district. They desperately need the countess’s silver tea service and crystal. Just for one evening, to be returned. We know their ‘to be returned.’ Half of the things will be missing. For a party, they say. Some sort of visitor.”
“Ah, I can guess who. A new frontline commissar has come. I saw him by chance. He’s preparing to take on the deserters, surround them and disarm them. The commissar is still quite green, an infant in practical matters. The locals suggest using Cossacks, but he thinks he can take them with tears. He says the people are children, and so on, and he thinks it’s all children’s games. Galiullin begs him, says don’t awaken the sleeping beast, leave it to us, but you can’t argue with such a man once something’s lodged in his head. Listen. Leave your irons for a moment and listen. There’s going to be an unimaginable scramble here soon. It’s not in our power to prevent it. How I wish you’d be gone before the mess begins!”
“Nothing will happen. You’re exaggerating. Besides, I am leaving. But it can’t be just like that: snip-snap and good luck to you. I have to turn over the inventory with a list, otherwise it will look as if I’ve stolen something. And who am I to turn it over to? That’s the question. I’ve suffered so much with this inventory, and the only reward is reproaches. I registered Zhabrinsky’s property as the hospital’s, because that was the sense of the decree. And now it comes out that I did it as a pretense, in order to keep things for the owner. How vile!”
“Ah, spit on the rugs and china, let it all perish. As if there was anything to be upset about! Yes, yes, it’s vexing in the highest degree that we didn’t see each other yesterday. I was so inspired! I’d have explained all of heavenly mechanics for you, and answered all the accursed questions!13 No, no joking, I really was longing to speak myself out. To tell about my wife, my son, my life. Devil take it, can’t a grown-up man talk with a grown-up woman without the immediate suspicion that there’s something ‘behind’ it? Brr! To the devil with all these fronts and behinds!
“Iron, iron, please—I mean, iron the laundry and pay no attention to me, and I’ll talk. I’ll talk for a long time.
“Just think what a time it is now! And you and I are living in these days! Only once in eternity do such unprecedented things happen. Think: the roof over the whole of Russia has been torn off, and we and all the people find ourselves under the open sky. And there’s nobody to spy on us. Freedom! Real, not just in words and demands, but fallen from the sky, beyond all expectation. Freedom by inadvertence, by misunderstanding.
“And how perplexedly enormous everyone is! Have you noticed? As if each of them is crushed by himself, by the revelation of his own heroic might.
“No, go on ironing. Keep still. You’re not bored? I’ll change the iron for you.
“I watched a meeting last night. An astounding spectacle. Mother Russia has begun to move, she won’t stay put, she walks and never tires of walking, she talks and can’t talk enough. And it’s not as if only people are talking. Stars and trees come together and converse, night flowers philosophize, and stone buildings hold meetings. Something gospel-like, isn’t it? As in the time of the apostles. Remember, in Paul? ‘Speak in tongues and prophesy. Pray for the gift of interpretation.’ ”14
“About the meetings of the trees and stars I understand. I know what you want to say. The same has happened to me.”
“The war did half of it, the rest was completed by the revolution. The war was an artificial interruption of life, as if existence could be postponed for a time (how absurd!). The revolution broke out involuntarily, like breath held for too long. Everyone revived, was reborn, in everyone there are transformations, upheavals. You might say that everyone went through two revolutions, one his own, personal, the other general. It seems to me that socialism is a sea into which all these personal, separate revolutions should flow, the sea of life, the sea of originality. The sea of life, I said, the life that can be seen in paintings, life touched by genius, life creatively enriched. But now people have decided to test it, not in books, but in themselves, not in abstraction, but in practice.”
The unexpected tremor in his voice betrayed the doctor’s incipient agitation. Interrupting her ironing for a moment, Larissa Fyodorovna gave him a serious and surprised look. He became confused and forgot what he was talking about. After a short pause, he began to talk again. Rushing headlong, he poured out God knows what. He said:
“In these days one longs so much to live honestly and productively! One wants so much to be part of the general inspiration! And then, amidst the joy that grips everyone, I meet your mysteriously mirthless gaze, wandering no one knows where, in some far-off kingdom, in some far-off land. What wouldn’t I give for it not to be there, for it to be written on your face that you are pleased with your fate and need nothing from anyone. So that somebody close to you, your friend or husband (best if he were a military man), would take me by the hand and ask me not to worry about your lot and not to burden you with my attention. And I would tear my hand free, swing, and … Ah, I’ve forgotten myself! Forgive me, please.”
The doctor’s voice failed him again. He waved his hand and with the feeling of an irreparable blunder got up and went to the window. He stood with his back to the room, propped his cheek in his hand, leaning his elbow on the windowsill, and, in search of pacification, directed his absentminded, unseeing gaze into the depths of the garden shrouded in darkness.
Going around the ironing board that rested on the table and on the edge of the other window, Larissa Fyodorovna stopped a few steps away from the doctor, behind him, in the middle of the room.
“Ah, how I’ve always been afraid of this!” she said softly, as if to herself. “What a fatal error! Stop, Yuri Andreevich, you mustn’t. Ah, look what I’ve done because of you!” she exclaimed loudly and ran to the board, where a thin stream of acrid smoke was rising from a blouse burned through under the iron forgotten on it. “Yuri Andreevich,” she went on, banging the iron down angrily on the burner. “Yuri Andreevich, be a good boy, go to Mademoiselle for a moment, drink some water, dearest, and come back here the way I’m used to you and would like to see you. Do you hear, Yuri Andreevich? I know you can do it. Please, I beg you.�
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Such talks between them were not repeated again. A week later Larissa Fyodorovna left.
9
A short time later Zhivago began to prepare for the road. The night before his departure, there was a terrible storm in Meliuzeevo.
The noise of the hurricane merged with the noise of the downpour, which now fell vertically on the roofs, now, under the pressure of the shifting wind, moved down the street, its lashing torrents as if winning step by step.
Peals of thunder followed one another without pause, becoming one uniform rumbling. Frequent flashes of lightning showed the street running away into the distance, with trees bending over and running in the same direction.
During the night, Mademoiselle Fleury was awakened by an anxious knocking at the front door. Frightened, she sat up in bed and listened. The knocking did not stop.
Can it be that in the whole hospital not a soul will be found to come out and open the door, she thought, and that she alone, a wretched old woman, must do it all for them, only because nature had made her honest and endowed her with a sense of duty?
Well, all right, the Zhabrinskys were rich people, aristocrats. But the hospital is theirs, the people’s. Why did they abandon it? It would be curious to know, for instance, where the orderlies have vanished to. Everybody’s scattered, there are no directors, no nurses, no doctors. And there are still wounded in the house, two with amputated legs upstairs in the surgical section, where the drawing room used to be, and the storeroom downstairs, next to the laundry, is full of dysentery cases. And that she-devil Ustinya has gone visiting somewhere. The foolish woman could see the storm gathering, why the deuce did she have to go? Now she’s got a good excuse for staying the night.
Well, they’ve stopped, thank God, they’ve quieted down. They saw no one will open and they waved their hand and left. What the devil are they doing out in such weather? But maybe it’s Ustinya? No, she has her own key. My God, how frightening, they’re knocking again!
Doctor Zhivago Page 19
