“What’s the matter, my angel? Calm yourself. What are you doing? Don’t throw yourself on your knees. Stand up. Be cheerful. Drive away this obsession that pursues you. He’s frightened you for life. I’m with you. If need be, if you tell me to, I’ll kill him.”
Half an hour later evening fell. It became completely dark. For six months already, the holes in the floor had been stopped up everywhere. Yuri Andreevich watched for the forming of new ones and blocked them in time. They acquired a large, fluffy cat, who spent his time in immobile, mysterious contemplation. The rats did not leave the house, but they became more cautious.
In expectation of Komarovsky, Larissa Fyodorovna cut up the black rationed bread and put a plate with a few boiled potatoes on the table. They intended to receive the guest in the previous owners’ dining room, which had kept its purpose. In it stood a big oak dining table and a big, heavy sideboard of the same dark oak. On the table, castor oil burned in a vial with a wick in it—the doctor’s portable lamp.
Komarovsky came in from the December darkness all covered with the snow that was falling heavily outside. Snow fell in thick layers from his fur coat, hat, and galoshes, and melted, forming puddles on the floor. The snow that stuck to his mustaches and beard, which Komarovsky used to shave but now had let grow, made them look clownish, buffoonish. He was wearing a well-preserved jacket and vest and well-creased striped trousers. Before greeting them or saying anything, he spent a long time combing his damp, flattened hair with a pocket comb and wiping and smoothing his wet mustaches and eyebrows with a handkerchief. Then silently, with an expression of great significance, he held out his two hands simultaneously, the left to Larissa Fyodorovna and the right to Yuri Andreevich.
“Let’s consider ourselves acquaintances,” he addressed Yuri Andreevich. “I was on such good terms with your father—you probably know. He gave up the ghost in my arms. I keep looking closely at you, searching for a resemblance. No, clearly you didn’t take after your papa. He was a man of an expansive nature. Impulsive, impetuous. Judging by appearances, you are more like your mother. She was a gentle woman. A dreamer.”
“Larissa Fyodorovna asked me to hear you out. She says you have some business with me. I yielded to her request. Our conversation has been forced upon me against my will. I would not seek your acquaintance by my own inclination, and I do not consider us acquainted. Therefore let’s get down to business. What do you want?”
“Greetings, my good ones. I feel everything, decidedly everything, and understand everything thoroughly, to the end. Forgive my boldness, but you’re awfully well suited to each other. A harmonious couple in the highest degree.”
“I must interrupt you. I ask you not to interfere in things that do not concern you. No one has asked for your sympathy. You forget yourself.”
“Don’t you flare up at once like that, young man. No, perhaps you’re like your father after all. The same pistol and powder. Yes, so with your permission, I congratulate you, my children. Unfortunately, however, you are children not only in my expression, but in fact, who don’t know anything, who don’t reflect on anything. I’ve been here for only two days and have learned more about you than you yourselves suspect. You’re walking on the edge of an abyss without thinking of it. If the danger isn’t somehow averted, the days of your freedom, and maybe even of your lives, are numbered.
“There exists a certain Communist style. Few people measure up to it. But no one so clearly violates that way of living and thinking as you do, Yuri Andreevich. I don’t understand—why stir up a hornets’ nest? You’re a mockery of that world, an insult to it. It would be fine if it were your secret. But there are influential people from Moscow here. They know you inside and out. You’re both terribly distasteful to the local priests of Themis. Comrades Antipov and Tiverzin are sharpening their claws for Larissa Fyodorovna and you.
“You are a man—a free Cossack, or whatever it’s called. Madcap behavior, playing with your own life, is your sacred right. But Larissa Fyodorovna is not a free person. She’s a mother. She has a young life, a child’s destiny, in her hands. She’s in no position to fantasize, to live in the clouds.
“I wasted a whole morning talking to her, persuading her to take the local situation more seriously. She refuses to listen to me. Use your authority, influence Larissa Fyodorovna. She has no right to toy with Katenka’s safety, she should not disregard my arguments.”
“Never in my life have I tried to persuade or compel anyone. Especially people close to me. Larissa Fyodorovna is free to listen to you or not. That’s her business. Besides, I have no idea what you’re talking about. What you call your arguments are unknown to me.”
“No, you remind me more and more of your father. Just as intractable. So, then, let’s go on to the main thing. But since it’s a rather complex matter, arm yourselves with patience. I beg you to listen and not to interrupt.
“Big changes are being prepared at the top. No, no, I have it from the most reliable sources, you can trust me. They have in mind a switch to more democratic tracks, concessions to general legality, and that in the very near future.
“But precisely as a result of that, the punitive institutions liable to abolition will become all the more ferocious towards the end and will hasten to settle their local accounts. You are next in line to be annihilated, Yuri Andreevich. Your name is on the list. I’m not joking when I say it, I saw it myself, believe me. Think about saving yourself, otherwise it will be too late.
“But this is all a preface so far. I go on to the essence of the matter.
“In Primorye, on the Pacific Ocean, a gathering of political forces that have remained loyal to the deposed Provisional Government and the disbanded Constituent Assembly is taking place. Members of the Duma, social figures, the most prominent of the former zemstvo activists, businessmen, industrialists are coming together. The generals of the volunteer armies are concentrating what remains of their forces there.
“The Soviet government turns a blind eye to the emergence of the Far Eastern republic. The existence of such a formation on its outskirts is advantageous to it as a buffer between Red Siberia and the outside world. The government of the republic will be mixed. Moscow has negotiated more than half the seats for Communists, so that with their aid, at the right time, they can carry out a coup and take the republic in hand. The scheme is perfectly transparent, and the only thing is to be able to take advantage of the remaining time.1
“Before the revolution I used to conduct the affairs of the Arkharov brothers, the Merkulovs, and other trading and banking houses in Vladivostok. I’m known there. An unofficial emissary of the forming government brought me, half secretly, half with official Soviet connivance, an invitation to enter the Far Eastern government as minister of justice. I accepted and am on my way there. All this, as I’ve just said, is happening with the knowledge and silent consent of Soviet power, though not so openly, and there should be no noise about it.
“I can take you and Larissa Fyodorovna with me. From there you can easily make your way to your family by sea. Of course, you already know about their deportation. A story that made noise, the whole of Moscow is talking about it. I promised Larissa Fyodorovna to ward off the blow hanging over Pavel Pavlovich. As a member of an independent and recognized government, I’ll seek out Strelnikov in eastern Siberia and assist in his transfer to our autonomous region. If he doesn’t manage to flee, I’ll suggest that he be exchanged for some person detained by the allies who is of value for the central power in Moscow.”
Larissa Fyodorovna had difficulty following the content of the conversation, the meaning of which often escaped her. But at Komarovsky’s last words, concerning the safety of the doctor and Strelnikov, she came out of her state of pensive nonparticipation, pricked up her ears, and, blushing slightly, put in:
“You understand, Yurochka, how important these plans are for you and Pasha?”
“You’re too trusting, my dear friend. One can hardly take things promised for thin
gs performed. I’m not saying that Viktor Ippolitovich is consciously pulling our leg. But it’s all still in the air! And now, Viktor Ippolitovich, a few words from me. I thank you for your attention to my fate, but can you possibly think I’ll let you arrange it? As for your taking care of Strelnikov, Lara has to think it over.”
“What are you driving at? Either we go with him, as he suggests, or we don’t. You know perfectly well that I won’t go without you.”
Komarovsky sipped frequently from the diluted alcohol Yuri Andreevich had brought from the dispensary and set on the table, munched the potatoes, and gradually became tipsy.
2
It was already late. Relieved now and then of its snuff, the wick of the lamp flared up with a crackle, brightly lighting the room. Then everything sank into darkness again. The hosts wanted to sleep and had to talk things over alone. But Komarovsky would not leave. His presence was wearying, like the oppressive sight of the heavy oak sideboard and the dispiriting, icy December darkness outside the window.
He looked not at them, but somewhere over their heads, fixing his drunken, rounded eyes on that distant point, and with a sleepy, thick tongue ground away at something endlessly boring, all about one and the same thing. His hobbyhorse was now the Far East. He chewed his cud about it, developing before Lara and the doctor his reflections on the political significance of Mongolia.
Yuri Andreevich and Larissa Fyodorovna had not caught the point at which the conversation had landed on this Mongolia. The fact that they had missed how he skipped over to it increased the tiresomeness of the alien, extraneous subject.
Komarovsky was saying:
“Siberia—truly a New America, as they call it—conceals in itself the richest possibilities. It is the cradle of the great Russian future, the pledge of our democratization, prosperity, political health. Still more fraught with alluring possibilities is the future of Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, our great Far Eastern neighbor. What do you know about it? You’re not ashamed to yawn and blink with inattention, and yet it has a surface of over a million square miles, unexplored minerals, a country in a state of prehistoric virginity, which the greedy hands of China, Japan, and America are reaching for, to the detriment of our Russian interests, recognized by all our rivals under any division of spheres of interest in this remote corner of the globe.
“China takes advantage of the feudal and theocratic backwardness of Mongolia, influencing its lamas and khutukhtas. Japan leans on local serf-owning princes—khoshuns in Mongolian. Red Communist Russia finds an ally in the person of the khamdzhils, in other words, the revolutionary association of rebellious Mongolian shepherds. As for me, I would like to see Mongolia really prosperous, under the rule of freely elected khurultai. Personally, we ought to be concerned with the following. One step across the Mongolian border, and the world is at your feet, and you’re free as a bird.”
This verbose reasoning on an intrusive subject that had no relation to them exasperated Larissa Fyodorovna. Driven to the point of exhaustion by the boredom of the prolonged visit, she resolutely held out her hand to Komarovsky in farewell and, without beating around the bush, said with unconcealed hostility:
“It’s late. Time for you to go. I want to sleep.”
“I hope you won’t be so inhospitable as to put me out at such an hour. I’m not sure I’ll find my way at night in a strange, unlit town.”
“You should have thought of that earlier and not gone on sitting. Nobody was keeping you.”
“Oh, why do you speak so sharply with me? You didn’t even ask whether I have anywhere to stay here.”
“Decidedly uninteresting. No doubt you can stick up for yourself. If you’re inviting yourself to spend the night, I won’t put you in our bedroom, where we sleep together with Katenka. And in the others there’ll be no dealing with the rats.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“Well, as you like.”
3
“What’s wrong, my angel? You haven’t slept for so many nights now, you don’t touch your food at the table, you go around as if in a daze. And you keep thinking, thinking. What’s haunting you? You shouldn’t give such free rein to troubling thoughts.”
“The hospital caretaker Izot was here again. He’s carrying on with a laundress in the house. So he stopped by to cheer me up. ‘A terrible secret,’ he says. ‘Your man can’t avoid the clink. He’ll be put away any day now, so be ready. And you, hapless girl, after him.’ ‘Where did you get that, Izot?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘you can count on it. People from the hexcom told me.’ ‘Hexcom,’ as you may have guessed, is his version of ‘excom,’ the executive committee.”
Larissa Fyodorovna and the doctor burst out laughing.
“He’s quite right. The danger is ripe and at our doorstep. We must disappear at once. The only question is where exactly. There’s no use thinking about going to Moscow. The preparations are too complicated, and they’ll attract attention. It has to be done hush-hush, so that nobody notices anything. You know what, my joy? I think we’ll avail ourselves of your idea. We have to drop from sight for a while. Let the place be Varykino. We’ll go there for two weeks, a month.”
“Thank you, my dearest, thank you. Oh, how glad I am! I realize how everything in you must go against such a decision. But I wasn’t talking about your house. Life in it would really be unthinkable for you. The sight of the empty rooms, the reproaches, the comparisons. As if I don’t understand? To build happiness on another’s suffering, to trample on what is dear and sacred to your heart. I could never accept such a sacrifice from you. But that’s not the point. Your house is such a ruin that it would hardly be possible to make the rooms fit to live in. I was sooner thinking of the Mikulitsyns’ abandoned place.”
“All that is true. Thank you for your sensitivity. But wait a minute. I keep wanting to ask and keep forgetting. Where is Komarovsky? Is he here, or has he already left? Since I quarreled with him and kicked him out, I’ve heard nothing more of him.”
“I don’t know anything either. But let him be. What do you want with him?”
“I keep coming back to the thought that we should have treated his suggestion differently. We’re not in the same position. You have a daughter to look after. Even if you wanted to perish with me, you’d have no right to allow yourself to do it.
“But let’s get back to Varykino. Naturally, to go to that wild backwoods in harsh winter, with no supplies, with no strength, with no hopes, is the maddest madness. But let’s be mad, my heart, if there’s nothing left us but madness. Let’s humble ourselves once more. Let’s beg Anfim to give us a horse. Let’s ask him, or not even him but the dealers who work for him, to lend us some flour and potatoes, as a debt not justifiable by any credit. Let’s persuade him not to buy back the good service he has rendered us by coming to visit right away, at once, but to come only at the end, when he needs the horse back. Let’s stay alone for a little while. Let’s go, my heart. In a week we’ll cut and burn a whole stand of trees, which would be enough for an entire year of conscientious housekeeping.
“And again, again. Forgive me for the confusion that keeps breaking through my words. How I’d like to talk to you without this foolish pathos! But we really have no choice. Call it what you like, death really is knocking at our door. The days at our disposal are numbered. Let’s use them in our own way. Let’s spend them on taking leave of life, on a last coming together before separation. Let’s bid farewell to all that was dear to us, to our habitual notions, to how we dreamed of living and to what our conscience taught us, bid farewell to hopes, bid farewell to each other. Let’s say once more to each other our secret night words, great and pacific as the name of the Asian ocean. It’s not for nothing that you stand at the end of my life, my secret, my forbidden angel, under a sky of wars and rebellions, just as you once rose up under the peaceful sky of childhood at its beginning.
“On that night, a girl in the last year of high school, in a coffee-colored uniform, in the sem
idarkness behind the partition of a hotel room, you were exactly as you are now, and as stunningly beautiful.
“Often, later in life, I tried to define and name that light of enchantment that you poured into me then, that gradually dimming ray and fading sound that suffused my whole existence ever after and became, owing to you, the key for perceiving everything else in the world.
“When you, a shadow in a schoolgirl’s uniform, stepped out of the darkness of the hotel room’s depths, I, a boy who knew nothing about you, understood with all the torment of a force that answered yours: this slight, skinny girl is charged to the utmost, as with electricity, with all conceivable femininity in the world. If you go near her or touch her with your finger, a spark will light up the room and either kill you on the spot or electrify you for your whole life with a magnetically attractive, plaintive craving and sorrow. I was all filled with wandering tears, all my insides glittered and wept. I felt a mortal pity for the boy I was, and still more pity for the girl you were. My whole being was astonished and asked: If it’s so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.
“Here at last I’ve spoken it out. It could make you lose your mind. And the whole of me is in it.”
Larissa Fyodorovna was lying on the edge of the bed, dressed and feeling unwell. She was curled up and had covered herself with a shawl. Yuri Andreevich was sitting on a chair next to her and speaking quietly, with long pauses. At times Larissa Fyodorovna raised herself on her elbow, propped her chin in her hand, and gazed open-mouthed at Yuri Andreevich. At times she pressed herself to his shoulder and, not noticing her tears, wept quietly and blissfully. She finally drew towards him, hanging over the edge of the bed, and whispered joyfully:
Doctor Zhivago Page 52
