“Ah, you whore, ah, you slattern,” shouted Tyagunova. “You can’t take a step but she’s there, swishing her skirts on the floor, goggling her eyes! So my oaf’s not enough for you, you bitch, you’ve got to gawk at a child’s soul, spreading your tail, you’ve got to corrupt a young one.”
“So it means you’re Vasenka’s lawful one, too?”
“I’ll show you who’s lawful, you gob, you plague! You won’t escape me alive, don’t lead me into sin!”
“Hey, hey, stop swinging! Keep your hands to yourself, hellcat! What do you want from me?”
“I want you to drop dead, you lousy trollop, mangy she-cat, shameless eyes!”
“There’s no talking about me. Sure, I’m a bitch and a she-cat, everybody knows that. But you, you’ve got you a title. Born in a ditch, married in a gateway, made pregnant by a rat, gave birth to a hedgehog … Help, help, good people! Aie, aie, she’ll do me to death, the murderous hag! Aie, save a poor girl, protect an orphan …”
“Quick, let’s go. I can’t listen, it’s disgusting,” Antonina Alexandrovna began hurrying her husband. “It won’t end well.”
18
Suddenly everything changed, the place and the weather. The plain ended, the road went between mountains, through hills and high country. The north wind that had blown all the time recently ceased. Warmth breathed from the south, as from a stove.
The forests here grew in terraces on the hillsides. When the path of the railway crossed them, the train first had to go up steeply, then change in the middle to a sloping descent. The train crept groaning into the dense forest and barely dragged itself along, like an old forester on foot leading a crowd of passengers who look around on all sides and observe everything.
But there was nothing to look at yet. In the depths of the forest there were sleep and peace, as in winter. Only rarely did some bushes and trees, with a rustle, free their lower branches from the gradually subsiding snow, as if taking off a yoke or unbuttoning a collar.
Yuri Andreevich was overcome by sleepiness. All those days he lay on his upper berth, slept, woke up, reflected, and listened. But as yet there was nothing to listen to.
19
While Yuri Andreevich slept his fill, spring thawed and melted all the masses of snow that had fallen on Moscow the day of their departure and had gone on falling throughout the journey; all the snow that they had spent three days digging and shoveling in Ust-Nemda and that lay in immense and thick layers over thousand-mile expanses.
At first the snow melted from inside, quietly and secretively. But when the Herculean labors were half done, it became impossible to conceal them any longer. The miracle came to light. Water ran from under the shifted shroud of snow and set up a clamor. Impassable forest thickets roused themselves. Everything in them awoke.
The water had room for a spree. It rushed down the cliffs, overflowed the ponds, flooded vast areas. The forest was soon filled with its noise, steam, and haze. Streams snaked their way through the thickets, getting mired down and sinking into the snow that cramped their movement, flowed hissing over the flat places, and dropped down, scattering in a watery spray. The earth could not absorb any more moisture. From a dizzying height, almost from the clouds, it was drunk up by the roots of age-old firs, at whose feet it was churned into puffs of brownish white foam, drying like beer foam on a drinker’s lips.
The intoxication of spring went to the sky’s head, and it grew bleary from fumes and covered itself with clouds. Low, feltlike clouds with drooping edges drifted over the forest, and warm cloudbursts, smelling of dirt and sweat, poured down through them, washing the last pieces of pierced, black, icy armor from the earth.
Yuri Andreevich woke up, pulled himself over to the square window, from which the frame had been removed, propped himself on his elbow, and began to listen.
20
With the approach of the mining region, the country became more populated, the stages shorter, the stations more frequent. The passengers changed less rarely. More people got on and off at small intermediate stops. Those who were traveling for shorter distances did not settle for long and did not go to sleep, but found places at night somewhere by the doors in the middle of the freight car, talked among themselves in low voices about local affairs, comprehensible only to them, and got off at the next junction or way station.
From some remarks dropped by the local public, who had replaced each other in the freight car over the past three days, Yuri Andreevich concluded that the Whites were gaining the upper hand in the north and either had taken or were about to take Yuriatin. Besides, if his hearing had not deceived him and it was not some namesake of his comrade in the Meliuzeevo hospital, the White forces in that direction were under the command of Galiullin, who was well-known to Yuri Andreevich.
Yuri Andreevich did not say a word to his family about this talk, so as not to upset them uselessly while the rumors remained unconfirmed.
21
Yuri Andreevich woke up at the beginning of the night from a vague feeling of happiness welling up in him, which was so strong that it roused him. The train was standing at some night stop. The station was surrounded by the glassy twilight of a white night. This bright darkness was saturated with something subtle and powerful. It bore witness to the vastness and openness of the place. It suggested that the junction was situated on a height with a wide and free horizon.
On the platform, talking softly, shadows went past the freight car with inaudible steps. That also touched Yuri Andreevich. He perceived in the careful steps and voices a respect for the hour of night and a concern for the sleepers on the train as might have been in the old days, before the war.
The doctor was mistaken. There was the same hubbub and stamping of boots on the platform as everywhere else. But there was a waterfall in the vicinity. Its breathing out of freshness and freedom extended the limits of the white night. It had filled the doctor with a feeling of happiness in his sleep. The constant, never ceasing noise of its falling water reigned over all the sounds at the junction and imparted to them a deceptive semblance of silence.
Not divining its presence, but lulled by the mysterious resilience of the air of the place, the doctor fell fast asleep again.
Two men were talking below in the freight car. One asked the other:
“Well, so, have you calmed them down? Twisted their tails?”
“The shopkeepers, you mean?”
“Yes, the grain dealers.”
“We’ve pacified them. Like silk now. We knocked off a few as an example, and the rest got quiet. We collected a contribution.”
“How much did you take from the area?”
“Forty thousand.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Why should I kid you?”
“Holy cow, forty thousand!”
“Forty thousand bushels.”
“Well, there’s no flies on you! Good boys, good boys!”
“Forty thousand milled fine.”
“I suppose it’s no wonder. This area’s first class. Heart of the meal trade. Here along the Rynva and up to Yuriatin, village after village, it’s landings, grain depots. The Sherstobitov brothers, Perekatchikov and sons, wholesaler after wholesaler!”
“Don’t shout. You’ll wake people up.”
“All right.”
The speaker yawned. The other suggested:
“How about a little snooze? Looks like we’ll be starting.”
Just then a deafening noise came rolling from behind, swiftly growing, covering the roar of the waterfall, and an old-fashioned express train raced at full steam down the second track of the junction past their train, which stood without moving, hooted, roared, and, blinking its lights for the last time, vanished into the distance without a trace.
The conversation below resumed.
“Well, that’s it now. We’ll sit it out.”
“It won’t be soon now.”
“Must be Strelnikov. Armored, special purpose.”
“It�
�s him, then.”
“When it comes to counterrevolutionists, he’s ferocious.”
“It’s him racing against Galeev.”
“Who’s that?”
“The ataman Galeev. They say he’s standing with his Czechs covering Yuriatin. Seized control of the landings, blast him, and he’s holding them. The ataman Galeev.”7
“Prince Galileev, maybe. I forget.”
“There’s no such prince. Must be Ali Kurban. You got mixed up.”
“Kurban, maybe.”
“That’s another story.”
22
Towards morning Yuri Andreevich woke up a second time. Again he had dreamed something pleasant. The feeling of bliss and liberation that had filled him did not end. Again the train was standing, maybe at a new station, or maybe at the old one. Again there was the noise of a waterfall, most likely the same one, but possibly another.
Yuri Andreevich began to fall asleep at once and through his dozing fancied running feet and turmoil. Kostoed grappled with the head of the convoy, and the two shouted at each other. Outside it was still better than before. There was a breath of something new that had not been there earlier. Something magical, something springlike, black-and-white, flimsy, loose, like the coming of a snowstorm in May, when the wet, melting flakes on the ground make it not white but blacker still. Something transparent, black-and-white, strong scented. “Bird cherry!” Yuri Andreevich guessed in his sleep.
23
In the morning Antonina Alexandrovna said:
“Still, you’re an amazing man, Yura. A tissue of contradictions. Sometimes a fly flies by, you wake up and can’t close your eyes till morning, and here there’s noise, arguments, commotion, and you can’t manage to wake up. During the night the cashier Pritulyev and Vasya Brykin ran off. Yes, just think! And Tyagunova and Ogryzkova. Wait, that’s still not all. And Voroniuk. Yes, yes, ran off, ran off. Yes, imagine. Now listen. How they got away, together or separately, and in what order, is an absolute mystery. Well, let’s allow that this Voroniuk, naturally, decided to save himself from the responsibility on finding that the others had escaped. But the others? Did they all vanish of their own free will, or was one of them forcibly eliminated? For instance, suspicion falls on the women. But who killed whom, Tyagunova Ogryzkova or Ogryzkova Tyagunova, nobody knows. The head of the convoy runs from one end of the train to the other. ‘How dare you give the whistle for departure,’ he shouts. ‘In the name of the law, I demand that you hold the train until the escapees are caught.’ But the train master doesn’t yield. ‘You’re out of your mind,’ he says. ‘I’ve got draft reinforcements for the front, an urgent first priority. I should wait for your lousy crew! What a thing to come up with!’ And both of them, you understand, fall on Kostoed with reproaches. How is it that he, a cooperator, a man of understanding, was right there and didn’t keep the soldier, a benighted, unconscious being, from the fatal step. ‘And you a populist,’ they say. Well, Kostoed, of course, doesn’t let it go at that. ‘Interesting!’ he says. ‘So according to you a prisoner should look after a convoy soldier? Yes, sure, when a hen crows like a cock!’ I nudged you in the side and shoulder. ‘Yura,’ I shout, ‘wake up, an escape!’ Forget it! Cannon shots wouldn’t have roused you … But forgive me, of that later. And meanwhile … No, I can’t … Papa, Yura, look, how enchanting!”
Beyond the opening of the window, by which they lay with their heads thrust forward, spread a flooded area with no beginning or end. Somewhere a river had overflowed, and the waters of its side branch had come up close to the railway embankment. In foreshortening, brought about by looking from the height of the berth, it seemed as if the smoothly rolling train was gliding right over the water.
Its glassy smoothness was covered in a very few places by a ferrous blueness. Over the rest of the surface, the hot morning drove mirrory, oily patches of light, like a cook smearing the crust of a hot pie with a feather dipped in oil.
In this seemingly boundless backwater, along with meadows, hollows, and bushes, the pillars of white clouds were drowned, their piles reaching to the bottom.
Somewhere in the middle of the backwater a narrow strip of land was visible, with double trees suspended upwards and downwards between sky and earth.
“Ducks! A brood!” cried Alexander Alexandrovich, looking in that direction.
“Where?”
“By the island. Not there. To the right, to the right. Ah, damn, they flew away, got frightened.”
“Ah, yes, I see. There’s something I must talk with you about, Alexander Alexandrovich. Some other time. But our labor army and the ladies did well to get away. And it was peaceful, I think, without doing anybody harm. They simply ran off, the way water runs.”
24
The northern white night was ending. Everything was visible, but stood as if not believing itself, like something made up: mountain, copse, and precipice.
The copse had barely begun to turn green. In it several bird cherry bushes were blooming. The copse grew under the sheer of the mountain, on a narrow ledge that also broke off some distance away.
Nearby was a waterfall. It could not be seen from everywhere, but only from the other side of the copse, at the edge of the precipice. Vasya got tired going there to gaze at the waterfall for the experience of terror and admiration.
There was nothing around equal to the waterfall, nothing to match it. It was fearsome in this singularity, which turned it into something endowed with life and consciousness, into a fairy-tale dragon or giant serpent of those parts, who exacted tribute from the people and devastated the countryside.
Halfway down, the waterfall struck a protruding jag of rock and divided in two. The upper column of water was almost motionless, but in the two lower ones a barely perceptible movement from side to side never ceased for a moment, as if the waterfall kept slipping and straightening up, slipping and straightening up, and however often it lurched, it always kept its feet.
Vasya, spreading his sheepskin under him, lay down at the edge of the copse. When the dawn became more noticeable, a big, heavy-winged bird flew down from the mountain, glided in a smooth circle around the copse, and alighted at the top of a silver fir near the spot where Vasya lay. He raised his head, looked at the blue throat and blue-gray breast of the roller, and, spellbound, whispered aloud its Urals name: “Ronzha.” Then he got up, took the sheepskin from the ground, threw it on, and, crossing the clearing, came over to his companion. He said to her:
“Come on, auntie. See, you’re chilled, your teeth are chattering. Well, what are you staring at like you’re so scared? I’m talking human speech to you, we’ve got to go. Enter into the situation, we’ve got to keep to the villages. In a village they won’t harm their own kind, they’ll hide us. We haven’t eaten for two days, we’ll starve to death like this. Uncle Voroniuk must have raised hell looking for us. We’ve got to get out of here, Auntie Palasha, clear off, to put it simply. You’re such a pain to me, auntie, you haven’t said a word the whole day! Grief’s got your tongue, by God. What are you pining over? There was no wrong in you pushing Auntie Katya, Katya Ogryzkova, off the train. You just brushed against her with your side, I saw it myself. She got up from the grass unhurt, got up and ran. And the same with Uncle Prokhor, Prokhor Kharitonych. They’re catching up with us, we’ll be together again, don’t you think? The main thing is you mustn’t grieve, then your tongue’ll start working again.”
Tyagunova got up from the ground and, giving Vasya her hand, said softly:
“Come on, dovey.”
25
Creaking all over, the cars went uphill along the high embankment. Under it grew a mixed young forest, the tops of which did not reach its level. Below were meadows from which the water had just receded. The grass, mixed with sand, was covered with logs for ties, which lay randomly in all directions. They had probably been prepared for rafting at some nearby woodlot, and had been washed away and carried here by the high water.
The young forest below the e
mbankment was still almost bare, as in winter. Only in the buds, which were spattered all over it like drops of wax, was something superfluous setting in, some disorder, a sort of dirt or swelling, and this superfluous thing, this disorder and dirt, was life, enveloping the first opening trees of the forest in the green flame of foliage.
Here and there birches stood straight as martyrs, pierced by the cogs and arrows of twin, just unfolded leaves. What they smelled of could be told by eye. They smelled of the same thing they shone with. They smelled of wood spirit, from which varnish is made.
Soon the railway came up to the place from which the logs might have been washed. At a turn in the forest, a clearing appeared, strewn with sawdust and chips, with a heap of twenty-foot logs in the middle. The engineer braked by the cutting area. The train shuddered and stopped in the position it assumed, slightly inclined on the high arc of a big curve.
The engine gave several short, barking whistles and someone shouted something. The passengers knew even without the signals: the engineer had stopped the train to take on fuel.
The doors of the freight cars slid open. Out onto the tracks poured the goodly population of a small town, excluding the mobilized men from the front cars, who were always exempt from deckhands’ work and did not take part in it now.
The pile of stove wood in the clearing was not enough to load the tender. In addition they were required to cut up a certain number of the twenty-foot logs.
The engine team had saws in its outfit. They were handed out among volunteers, who broke up into pairs. The professor and his son-in-law also received a saw.
From the open doors of the military freight cars, merry mugs stuck out. Adolescents who had never been under fire, naval cadets from the senior classes, mistakenly intruded into the wagon, as it seemed, among stern workers, family men, who had also never smelled powder and had only just finished military training, deliberately made noise and played the fool with the older sailors, so as not to start thinking. Everyone felt that the hour of trial was at hand.
Doctor Zhivago Page 30
