Doctor Zhivago (25 page)

Narrow dead-end streets ran off the square, as deep in mud as country lanes and lined with crooked little houses. Fences of plaited willows stuck out of the mud like bow nets in a pond, or lobster pots. You could see the weak glint of open windows. In the small front gardens, sweaty red heads of corn with oily whiskers reached out toward the rooms, and single pale thin hollyhocks looked out over the fences, like women in night clothes whom the heat had driven out of their stuffy houses for a breath of air.

The moonlit night was extraordinary, like merciful love or the gift of clairvoyance. Suddenly, into this radiant, legendary stillness, there dropped the measured, rhythmic sound of a familiar, recently heard voice. It was a fine ardent voice and it rang with conviction. The doctor listened and recognized it at once. Commissar Gints was addressing the meeting on the square.

Apparently the municipality had asked him to lend them the support of his authority. With great feeling he chided the people of Meliuzeievo for their disorganized ways and for giving in to the disintegrating influence of the Bolsheviks, who, he said, were the real instigators of the Zybushino disorders. Speaking in the same spirit as at the commandant
'
s, he reminded them of the powerful and ruthless enemy, and of their country
'
s hour of trial. Then the crowd began to heckle.

Calls of protest alternated with demands for silence. The interruptions grew louder and more frequent. A man who had come with Gints, and who now assumed the role of chairman, shouted that speeches from the floor were not allowed and called the audience to order. Some insisted that a citizeness who wished to speak should be given leave.

A woman made her way through the crowd to the wooden box that served as a platform. She did not attempt to climb on the box but stood beside it. The woman was known to the crowd. Its attention was caught. There was a silence. This was Ustinia.

"
Now you were saying, Comrade Commissar, about Zybushino,
"
she began,
"
and about looking sharp—you told us to look sharp and not to be deceived—but actually, you yourself, I heard you, all you do is to play about with words like
'
Bolsheviks, Mensheviks,
'
that
'
s all you talk about—Bolsheviks, Mensheviks. Now all that about no more fighting and all being brothers, I call that being godly, not Menshevik, and about the works and factories going to the poor, that isn
'
t Bolshevik, that
'
s just human decency. And about that deaf-mute, we
'
re fed up hearing about him. Everybody goes on and on about the deaf-mute. And what have you got against him? Just that he was dumb all that time and then he suddenly started to talk and didn
'
t ask your permission? As if that were so marvellous! Much stranger things than that have been known to happen. Take the famous she-ass, for instance.
'
Balaam, Balaam,
'
she says,
'
listen to me, don
'
t go that way, I beg you, you
'
ll be sorry.
'
Well, naturally, he wouldn
'
t listen, he went on. Like you saying,
'
A deaf-mute,
'
he thought
'
a she-ass, a dumb beast, what
'
s the good of listening to her.
'
He scorned her. And look how sorry he was afterwards. You all know what the end of it was.
"

"
What?
"
someone asked curiously.

"
That
'
s enough,
"
snapped Ustinia.
"
If you ask too many questions you
'
ll grow old before your time.
"

"
That
'
s no good. You tell us,
"
insisted the heckler.

"
All right, all right, I
'
ll tell you, you pest. He was turned into a pillar of salt.
"

"
You
'
ve got it wrong, that was Lot. That was Lot
'
s wife,
"
people shouted. Everyone laughed. The chairman called the meeting to order. The doctor went to bed.

He saw Antipova the following evening. He found her in the pantry with a pile of linen, straight out of the wringer; she was ironing.

The pantry was one of the back rooms at the top, looking out over the garden. There the samovars were got ready, food was dished out, and the used plates were stacked in the dumb-waiter to be sent down to the kitchen. There too the lists of china, silver, and glass were kept and checked, and there people spent their moments of leisure, using it as a meeting place.

The windows were open. In the room, the scent of linden blossoms mingled, as in an old park, with the caraway-bitter smell of dry twigs and the charcoal fumes of the two flat-irons that Antipova used alternately, putting them each in turn in the flue to keep them hot.

"
Well, why didn
'
t you knock last night? Mademoiselle told me. But it
'
s a good thing you didn
'
t. I was already in bed. I couldn
'
t have let you in. Well, how are you? Look out for the charcoal, don
'
t get it on your suit.
"

"
You look as if you
'
ve been doing the laundry for the whole hospital.
"

"
No, there
'
s a lot of mine in there. You see? You keep on teasing me about getting stuck in Meliuzeievo. Well, this time I mean it, I
'
m going. I
'
m getting my things together, I
'
m packing. When I
'
ve finished I
'
ll be off. I
'
ll be in the Urals and you
'
ll be in Moscow. Then one day somebody will ask you:
'
Do you happen to know a little town called Meliuzeievo?
'
and you
'
ll say:
'
I don
'
t seem to call it to mind.
'
—
'
And who is Antipova?
'
—
'
Never heard of her.
'
"

"
That
'
s unlikely. Did you have a good trip? What was it like in the country?
"

"
That
'
s a long story. How quickly these irons cool! Do hand me the other, do you mind? It
'
s over there, look, just inside the flue. And could you put this one back? Thanks. Every village is different, it depends on the villagers. In some the people are industrious, they work hard, then it isn
'
t bad. And in others I suppose all the men are drunks. Then it
'
s desolate. A terrible sight.
"

"
Nonsense! Drunks? A lot you understand! It
'
s just that there is no one there, all the men are in the army. What about the new councils?
"

"
You
'
re wrong about the drunks, I don
'
t agree with you at all. The councils? There
'
s going to be a lot of trouble with the councils. The instructions can
'
t be applied, there
'
s nobody to work with. All the peasants care about at the moment is the land question.… I stopped at Razdolnoie. What a lovely place, you should go and see it.… It was burned a bit and looted last spring, the barn is burned down, the orchards are charred, and there are smoke stains on some of the houses. Zybushino I didn
'
t see, I didn
'
t get there. But they all tell you the deaf-mute really exists. They describe what he looks like, they say he
'
s young and educated.
"

"
Last night Ustinia stood up for him on the square.
"

"
The moment I got back there was another lot of old furniture from Razdolnoie. I
'
ve asked them a hundred times to leave it alone. As if we didn
'
t have enough of our own. And this morning the guard from the commandant
'
s office comes over with a note—they must have the silver tea set and the crystal glasses, it
'
s a matter of life and death, just for one night, they
'
ll send it back. Half of it we
'
ll never see again. It
'
s always a loan—I know these loans. They
'
re having a party—in honor of some visitor or something.
"

"
I can guess who that is. The new commissar has arrived, the one who
'
s appointed to our sector of the front. They want to tackle the deserters, have them surrounded and disarmed. The commissar is a greenhorn, a babe in arms. The local authorities want to call out the Cossacks, but not he—he
'
s planning to speak to their hearts. The people, he says, are like children, and so on; he thinks it
'
s a kind of game. Galiullin tried to argue with him, he told him to leave the jungle alone, not to rouse the wild beast.
'
Leave us to deal with it,
'
he said. But you can
'
t do anything with a fellow like that once he
'
s got a thing in his head. I do wish you
'
d listen to me. Do stop ironing a minute. There will be an unimaginable mess here soon; it
'
s beyond our power to avert it. I do wish you
'
d leave before it happens.
"

"
Nothing will happen, you
'
re exaggerating. And anyway, I am leaving. But I can
'
t just snap my fingers and say goodbye. I have to hand in a properly checked inventory. I don
'
t want it to look as if I
'
ve stolen something and run away. And who is to take over? That
'
s the problem, I can
'
t tell you what I
'
ve been through with that miserable inventory, and all I get is abuse. I listed Zhabrinskaia
'
s things as hospital property, because that was the sense of the decree. Now they say I did it on purpose to keep them for the owner! What a dirty trick!
"

"
Do stop worrying about pots and rugs. To hell with them. What a thing to fuss about at a time like this! Oh, I wish I
'
d seen you yesterday. I was in such good form that I could have told you all about everything, explained the whole celestial mechanics, answered any accursed question! It
'
s true, you know, I
'
m not joking, I really did want to get it all off my chest. And I wanted to tell you about my wife, and my son, and myself.… Why the hell can
'
t a grown-up man talk to a grown-up woman without being at once suspected of some ulterior motive? Damn all motives—ulterior ones and others.

"
Please, go on with your ironing, make the linen nice and smooth, don
'
t bother about me, I
'
ll go on talking. I
'
ll talk a long time.

"
Just think what
'
s going on around us! And that you and I should be living at such a time. Such a thing happens only once in an eternity. Just think of it, the whole of Russia has had its roof torn off, and you and I and everyone else are out in the open! And there
'
s nobody to spy on us. Freedom! Real freedom, not just talk about it, freedom, dropped out of the sky, freedom beyond our expectations, freedom by accident, through a misunderstanding.

"
And how great everyone is, and completely at sea! Have you noticed? As if crushed by his own weight, by the discovery of his greatness.

"
Go on ironing, I tell you. Don
'
t talk. You aren
'
t bored. Let me change your iron for you.

"
Last night I was watching the meeting in the square. An extraordinary sight! Mother Russia is on the move, she can
'
t stand still, she
'
s restless and she can
'
t find rest, she
'
s talking and she can
'
t stop. And it isn
'
t as if only people were talking. Stars and trees meet and converse, flowers talk philosophy at night, stone houses hold meetings. It makes you think of the Gospel, doesn
'
t it? The days of the apostles. Remember St. Paul? You will speak with tongues and you will prophesy. Pray for the gift of understanding.
"