Doctor Zhivago (16 page)

This inaccessibly high sky once came all the way down to his nursery, as far as his nurse
'
s skirt when she was talking to him about God; it was close and within reach like the tops of hazel trees in the gullies when you pulled down their branches and picked the nuts. It was as if it dipped into the gilt nursery washbasin and, having bathed in fire and gold, re-emerged as the morning service or mass at the tiny church where he went with his nurse. There the heavenly stars became the lights before the icons, and the Lord God was a kindly Father, and everything more or less fell into its right place. But the main thing was the real world of the grownups and the city that loomed up all around him like a forest. At that time, with the whole of his half-animal faith, Yura believed in God, who was the keeper of that forest.

Now it was quite different. In his twelve years at gymnasium and university, Yura had studied the classics and Scripture, legends and poets, history and natural science, which had become to him the chronicles of his house, his family tree. Now he was afraid of nothing, neither of life nor of death; everything in the world, all the things in it were words in his vocabulary. He felt he was on an equal footing with the universe. And he was affected by the services for Anna Ivanovna differently than he had been by the services for his mother. Then he had prayed in confusion, fear, and pain. Now he listened to the services as if they were a message addressed to him and concerning him directly. He listened intently to the words, expecting them, like any other words, to have a clear meaning. There was no religiosity in his reverence for the supreme powers of heaven and earth, which he worshipped as his progenitors.

"
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and deathless, have mercy on us.
"
What was it? Where was he? They must be taking out the coffin. He must wake up. He had fallen asleep in his clothes on the sofa at six in the morning. Now they were hunting for him all over the house, but no one thought of looking in the far corner of the library behind the bookshelves.

"
Yura! Yura!
"
Markel was calling him. They were taking out the coffin. Markel would have to carry the wreaths, and nowhere could he find Yura to help him; to make matters worse he had got stuck in the bedroom where the wreaths were piled up, because the door of the wardrobe on the landing had swung open and blocked that of the bedroom.

"
Markel! Markel! Yura!
"
people were shouting from downstairs. Markel kicked open the door and ran downstairs carrying several wreaths.

"
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and deathless,
"
the words drifted softly down the street and stayed there; as if a feather duster had softly brushed the air, everything was swaying—wreaths, passers-by, plumed horses
'
heads, the censer swinging on its chain from the priest
'
s hand, and the white earth under foot.

"
Yura! My God! At last.
"
Shura Shlesinger was shaking his shoulder.
"
What
'
s the matter with you? They
'
re carrying out the coffin. Are you coming with us?
"

"
Yes, of course.
"

The funeral service was over. The beggars, shuffling their feet in the cold, closed up in two ranks. The hearse, the gig with wreaths on it, and the Kruegers
'
carriage stirred and swayed slightly. The cabs drew up closer to the church. Out of it came Shura Shlesinger, crying; lifting her veil, damp with tears, she cast a searching glance at the crowd, spotted the pallbearers, beckoned to them, and went back into the church. More and more people were pouring out.

"
Well, so now it
'
s Anna Ivanovna
'
s turn. She sends her best regards. She took a ticket to a far place, poor soul.
"

"
Yes, her dance is over, poor cricket, she
'
s gone to her rest.
"

"
Have you got a cab or are you going to walk?
"

"
I need to stretch my legs after all that standing. Let
'
s walk a bit and then we
'
ll take a cab.
"

"
Did you see how upset Fufkov was? Looking at her, tears pouring down his face, blowing his nose, staring at her face. Standing next to her husband at that.
"

"
He always had his eye on her.
"

They slowly made their way to the cemetery at the other end of town. That day the hard frost had broken. It was a still, heavy day; the cold had gone and the life had gone too—it was a day as though made for a funeral. The dirty snow looked as if it shone through cr
ê
pe, and the firs behind the churchyard railings, wet and dark like tarnished silver, seemed to be in deep mourning.

It was in this same churchyard that Yura
'
s mother lay buried. He had not been to her grave in recent years. He glanced in its direction and whispered,
"
Mother,
"
almost as he might have done years before.

They dispersed solemnly, in picturesque groups, along the cleared paths, whose meanderings did not harmonize with the sorrowful deliberation of their step. Alexander Alexandrovich led Tonia by the arm. They were followed by the Kruegers. Black was very becoming to Tonia.

Hoarfrost, bearded like mold, sprouted on the chains with crosses hanging from the domes and on the pink monastery walls. In the far corner of the monastery yard, washing hung on lines stretching from wall to wall—shirts with heavy sodden sleeves, peach-colored tablecloths, badly wrung out and crookedly fastened sheets. Yura realized that this, altered in appearance by the new buildings, was the part of the monastery grounds where the blizzard had raged that night.

He walked on alone, ahead of the others, stopping occasionally to let them catch up with him. In answer to the desolation brought by death to the people slowly pacing after him, he was drawn, as irresistibly as water funnelling downward, to dream, to think, to work out new forms, to create beauty. More vividly than ever before he realized that art has two constant, two unending concerns: it always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St. John.

With joyful anticipation he thought of the day or two which he would set aside and spend alone, away from the university and from his home, to write a poem in memory of Anna Ivanovna. He would include all those random things that life had sent his way, a few descriptions of Anna Ivanovna
'
s best characteristics, Tonia in mourning, street incidents on the way back from the funeral, and the washing hanging in the place where, many years ago, the blizzard had raged in the night and he had wept as a child.

Lara lay feverish and half conscious in Feliciata Semionovna
'
s bed; the Sventitskys, the servants, and Dr. Drokov were talking in whispers around her.

The rest of the house was dark and empty. Only in one small sitting room did a lamp on a bracket cast its dim light up and down the long suite of rooms.

Here Komarovsky strode with angry, resolute steps, as if he were at home and not a visitor. He would look into the bedroom for news and tear back to the other end of the house, past the tree with its tinsel, and through the dining room where the table stood laden with untasted dishes and the greenish crystal wineglasses tinkled every time a cab drove past the windows or a mouse scurried over the tablecloth among the china.

Komarovsky thrashed about in a fury. Conflicting feelings crowded in his breast. The scandal! The disgrace! He was beside himself. His position was threatened, his reputation would suffer from the incident. At whatever cost he must prevent the gossip or, if the news had already spread, stop the rumors, nip them in the bud.

Another reason for his agitation was that he had once again experienced the irresistible attraction of this crazy, desperate girl. He had always known that she was different. There had always been something unique about her. But how deeply, painfully, irreparably had he wounded her and upset her life, and how rebellious and violent she was in her determination to reshape her destiny and start afresh!

It was clear that he must help her in every way. Take a room for her, perhaps. But in no circumstances must he come near her; on the contrary, he must keep away, stand aside so as not to be in her way, or with her violent nature there was no knowing what she might do.

And what a lot of trouble ahead! This wasn
'
t the sort of thing for which they patted you on the head! The law didn
'
t wink at it. It was not yet morning, and hardly two hours had passed since it happened but already the police had been twice and he, Komarovsky, had had to go to the kitchen and see the inspector and smooth things over.

And the further it went the more complications there would be. They would have to have proof that Lara had meant to shoot at him and not at Kornakov. And even that wouldn
'
t be the end of it; she would only be cleared of one part of the charge, but she would still be liable to prosecution.

Naturally, he would do everything to prevent it. If the case came to court he would get expert evidence from a psychiatrist that she had not been responsible for her actions at the moment when she fired the shot and would see to it that the proceedings were dropped.

With these reflections he began to calm down. The night was over. Streaks of light probed from room to room and dived under the chairs and tables like thieves or appraisers.

After a last look in the bedroom, where he was told that Lara was no better, Komarovsky left and went to see a friend of his, Ruffina Onissimovna Voit-Voitkovsky, a woman lawyer who was the wife of a political émigré. Her eight-room apartment was now too large for her, she could not afford to keep it all up, so she let two of the rooms. One of them had recently become vacant, and Komarovsky took it for Lara. There she was taken a few hours later, only half conscious with brain fever.

Ruffina Onissimovna was a woman of advanced views, entirely unprejudiced, and well disposed toward everything that she called
"
positive and vital.
"

On top of her chest of drawers she kept a copy of the Erfurt Program with a dedication by the author. One of the photographs on the wall showed her husband,
"
her good Voit,
"
at a rally in Switzerland, together with Plekhanov, both in alpaca jackets and panama hats.

Ruffina Onissimovna took a dislike to her sick lodger the moment she saw her. She considered Lara a malingerer. The girl
'
s feverish ravings seemed to her nothing but play-acting. She was ready to swear that Lara was impersonating Gretchen gone mad in her dungeon.

She expressed her contempt for Lara by being brisker than usual. She banged doors, sang in a loud voice, tore through her part of the apartment like a hurricane, and kept the windows open all day long.

The apartment was on the top floor of a building in the Arbat. After the winter solstice its windows filled to overflowing with blue sky as wide as a river in flood. Through half the winter it was full of the early signs of the coming spring.

A warm wind from the south blew in through the casements. Locomotives at their distant stations roared like sea lions. Lara, lying ill in bed, filled her leisure with recollections.

She often thought of the night of her arrival in Moscow from the Urals, seven or eight years before, in the unforgettable days of her childhood. She was riding in a cab from the station through gloomy alleys to the hotel at the other end of town. One by one the street lamps threw the humpbacked shadow of the coachman on the walls. The shadow grew and grew till it became gigantic and stretched across the roofs, and was cut off. Then it all began again from the beginning. The bells of Moscow
'
s countless churches clanged in the darkness overhead, and the trolleys rang as they scurried through the streets, but Lara was also deafened by the gaudy window displays and glaring lights, as if they too emitted sounds of their own, like the bells and wheels.

In their hotel room she was staggered at the sight of a watermelon of incredible size. It was Komarovsky
'
s house-warming gift, and to her it was a symbol of his power and wealth. When he thrust a knife into this marvel, and the dark green globe split in half, revealing its icy, sugary heart, she was frightened, but she dared not refuse a slice. The fragrant pink mouthfuls stuck in her throat, but she forced herself to swallow them.

Just as she was intimidated by expensive food and by the night life of the capital, so she was later intimidated by Komarovsky himself—this was the real explanation of everything.