Doctor Zhivago (54 page)

"
It
'
s so strange that these people who once liberated mankind from the yoke of idolatry, and so many of whom now devote themselves to its liberation from injustice, should be incapable of liberating themselves from their loyalty to an obsolete, antediluvian identity that has lost all meaning, that they should not rise above themselves and dissolve among all the rest whose religion they have founded and who would be so close to them, if they knew them better.

"
Of course it
'
s true that persecution forces them into this futile and disastrous attitude, this shamefaced, self-denying isolation that brings them nothing but misfortune. But I think some of it also comes from a kind of inner senility, a historical centuries-long weariness. I don
'
t like their ironical whistling in the dark, their prosaic, limited outlook, the timidity of their imagination. It
'
s as irritating as old men talking of old age or sick people about sickness. Don
'
t you think so?
"

"
I haven
'
t thought about it much. I have a friend, Misha Gordon, who thinks as you do.
"

"
Well, I used to go to this place hoping to catch Pasha on his way in or out. In Tsarist times the Governor-General used to have his office in that part of the building. Now there is a notice on the door:
'
Complaints.
'
Have you seen it? It
'
s the prettiest place in town. The square in front of it is paved with wooden blocks, and across the square there is the town park, full of maples, hawthorn, honeysuckle. There was always a line in the street outside the door. I used to stand there and wait. Of course I didn
'
t try to crash the door, I didn
'
t say I was his wife. After all, our names are different. And don
'
t think that an appeal to sentiment would move them! Their ways are quite different. Do you know, his own father, Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov, a former political exile, an old worker, is quite near here, in a settlement along the highway, where he lived as an exile. And his friend Tiverzin is there too. They are both members of the local revolutionary court. Well, can you believe it, Pasha hasn
'
t been to see his father and he hasn
'
t told him who he is. And his father takes it for granted, he isn
'
t a bit hurt. If his son wants to remain incognito, then that
'
s as it should be, he can
'
t see him and that
'
s all there is to it. They are made of stone, these people, they aren
'
t human, with all their discipline and principles.

"
Even if I had managed to prove that I was his wife, it wouldn
'
t have done me any good! What do wives matter to them at a time like this? The workers of the world, the remaking of the universe—that
'
s something! But a wife, just an individual biped, is of no more importance than a flea or a louse!

"
His aide-de-camp used to come out and ask people what they wanted to see him for and let some of them in. But I never told him my name and when he asked me what my business was I always said it was personal. Of course, I knew I was wasting my time. The aide would shrug his shoulders and give me a suspicious look. I never once saw him.

"
I suppose you think he can
'
t be bothered with us, he doesn
'
t love us, he
'
s forgotten us? Well, you are wrong. I know him too well. I know just what he wants, and it
'
s just because he loves us. He can
'
t bear to come back to us empty-handed. He wants to come back as a conqueror, full of honor and glory, and lay his laurels at our feet. To immortalize us, to dazzle us! Just like a child.
"

Katenka came in again. Larisa Feodorovna snatched her up and, to the girl
'
s astonishment, started swinging her around and tickling and hugging her.

Yurii Andreievich was riding back to Varykino. He had been over this stretch of country countless times. He was so used to the road that he was no longer aware of it, he hardly saw it.

Soon he would come to the crossroad in the forest where the way ahead led to Varykino and another path turned off to the fishing village of Vasilievskoie on the river Sakma. Here stood yet a third billboard advertising agricultural machinery. As usual he reached the crossroad at dusk.

Two months had now elapsed since the day when, instead of going home from Yuriatin, he spent the night at Larisa Feodorovna
'
s and told his family that he had been kept on business and had stayed at Samdeviatov
'
s inn. He had long been calling her Lara and addressing her as
"
thou,
"
though she still called him Zhivago. Yurii Andreievich was betraying Tonia, and his involvement was becoming ever more serious. This was shocking, impossible.

He loved Tonia, he worshipped her. Her peace of mind meant more to him than anything in the world. He would defend her honor more devotedly than her father or herself. He would have torn apart with his own hands anyone who would hurt her pride. And yet he himself was now the offender.

At home he felt like a criminal. His family
'
s ignorance of the truth and their unchanged affection were a mortal torment to him. In the middle of a conversation he would suddenly be numbed by the recollection of his guilt and cease hearing a word of what was being said around him.

If this happened during a meal, his food stuck in his throat and he put down his spoon and pushed away his plate. He choked, repressing his tears.
"
What is wrong with you?
"
Tonia would ask, puzzled.
"
You must have had some bad news when you were in town. Has anyone been arrested? Or shot? Do tell me. Don
'
t be afraid of upsetting me. You
'
ll feel better when you
'
ve told me.
"

Had he been unfaithful because he preferred another woman? No, he had made no comparison, no choice. The idea of
"
free love,
"
terms like
"
the legitimate demands of love,
"
were alien to him. To think or speak in such terms seemed to him degrading. He had never
"
sown wild oats,
"
nor did he regard himself as a superman with special rights and privileges. Now he was crushed by the weight of his guilty conscience.

"
What next?
"
he had sometimes wondered, and hoped wretchedly for some impossible, unexpected circumstance to solve his problem for him.

But now he no longer wondered. He had decided to cut the knot, and he was going home with a solution. He would confess everything to Tonia, beg her to forgive him, and never see Lara again.

Not that everything was quite as it should be. He felt now that he had not made it clear enough to Lara that he was breaking with her for good, forever. He had announced to her that morning that he wished to make a clean breast of it with Tonia and that they must stop seeing each other, but now he had the feeling that he had softened it all down and not made it sufficiently definite.

Larisa Feodorovna had realized how unhappy he felt and had no wish to upset him further by painful scenes. She tried to hear him out as calmly as she could. They were talking in one of the empty front rooms. Tears were running down her cheeks, but she was no more conscious of them than the stone statues on the house across the road were of the rain running down their faces. She kept saying softly:
"
Do as you think best, don
'
t worry about me. I
'
ll get over it.
"
She was saying it sincerely, without any false magnanimity, and as she did not know that she was crying she did not wipe away her tears.

At the thought that Lara might have misunderstood him, and that he had left her with a wrong impression and false hopes, he nearly turned and galloped straight back, to say what he had left unsaid and above all to take leave of her much more warmly, more tenderly, in a manner more suitable to a last farewell. Controlling himself with difficulty, he continued on his way.

As the sun went down, the forest was filled with cold and darkness. It smelled of damp leaves. Swarms of mosquitoes hung in the air as still as buoys, humming sadly on a constant, high-pitched note. They settled on his sweating face and neck, and he kept swatting them, his noisy slaps keeping time with the sounds of riding—the creaking of the saddle, the heavy thud of hoofs on the squelching mud, and the dry, crackling salvoes as the horse broke wind. In the distance, where the sunset glow seemed to endure forever, a nightingale began to sing.

"
Wake up! Wake up!
"
it called persuasively; it sounded almost like the summons on the eve of Easter Sunday:
"
Awake, O my soul, why dost thou slumber?
"

Suddenly Yurii Andreievich was struck by a very simple thought. What was the hurry? He would not go back on his promise to himself; the confession would be made, but who had said that it must be made that day? He had not said anything to Tonia yet, it was not too late to put it off till his next trip to town. He would finish his conversation with Lara, with such warmth and depth of feeling that it would make up for all their suffering. How splendid, how wonderful! How strange that it had not occurred to him before!

At the thought of seeing Lara once more his heart leapt for joy. In anticipation he lived through his meeting with her.

The wooden houses and pavements on the outskirts of the town…He is on his way to her. In a moment he will leave the wooden sidewalks and vacant lots for the paved streets. The small suburban houses flash by like the pages of a book, not as when you turn them over one by one with your forefinger but as when you hold your thumb on the edge of the book and let them all swish past at once. The speed is breathtaking. And over there is her house at the far end of the street, under the white gap in the rain clouds where the sky is clearing, toward the evening. How he loves the little houses in the street that lead to her! He could pick them up and kiss them! Those one-eyed attics with their roofs pulled down like caps. And the lamps and icon lights reflected in the puddles and shining like berries! And her house under the white rift of the sky! There he will again receive the dazzling, God-made gift of beauty from the hands of its Creator. A dark muffled figure will open the door, and the promise of her nearness, unowned by anyone in the world and guarded and cold as a white northern night, will reach him like the first wave of the sea as you run down over the sandy beach in the dark.

Yurii Andreievich dropped his reins, leaned forward in his saddle, flung his arms around the horse
'
s neck, and buried his face in its mane. Taking this display of affection for an appeal to its strength, the horse broke into a gallop.

As it bounded smoothly, its hoofs barely touching the ground, it seemed to Yurii Andreievich that, besides the joyful thudding of his own heart, he heard shouts, but he thought he was imagining it.

Suddenly a deafening shot was fired very close to him. He sat up, snatched at the reins, and pulled. Checked in full flight, the horse side-stepped, backed, and went down on its haunches ready to rear.

In front of him was the crossroad. The sign,
"
Moreau & Vetchinkin. Mechanical seeders, Threshing machines,
"
glowed in the rays of the setting sun. Three armed horsemen blocked his way: a boy in a school cap and a tunic with two cartridge belts, a cavalryman in an officer
'
s overcoat and fur cap, and a fat man oddly clothed as for a fancy-dress ball in quilted trousers and a wide-brimmed clerical hat pulled low over his forehead.

"
Don
'
t move, Comrade Doctor,
"
said the cavalryman in the fur cap, who was the oldest of the three.
"
If you obey orders, we guarantee that you will not be harmed. If you don
'
t—no offense meant—we
'
ll shoot you. The surgeon attached to our unit has been killed and we are conscripting you as a medical worker. Get down from your horse and hand the reins over to this young man. And let me remind you: if you try to escape we
'
ll give you short shrift.
"

"
Are you Comrade Forester, Mikulitsyn
'
s son Liberius?
"

"
No, I am his chief liaison officer.
"