Doctor Zhivago (77 page)

"
All that is true enough, and I am grateful to you for being so considerate. But wait a minute. I keep meaning to ask you and forgetting. What has happened to Komarovsky? Is he still here or is he gone? Since I quarrelled with him and threw him out I
'
ve heard nothing more of him.
"

"
I don
'
t know anything either. But who cares! What do you want with him?
"

"
I have come to think that perhaps we shouldn
'
t have rejected his proposal outright—I mean both of us. We are not in the same position. You have your daughter to think of. Even if you wanted to share my fate, you
'
d have no right to do it.

"
But about Varykino. Of course, to go to that wilderness in winter, without food, without strength or hope—it
'
s utter madness. But why not, my love! Let
'
s be mad, if there is nothing except madness left to us. We
'
ll forget our pride once more and beg Samdeviatov to lend us a horse. And we
'
ll ask him, or not even him but the speculators who depend on him, to let us have flour and potatoes on credit, for what our credit is still worth. And we
'
ll persuade him not to take advantage of the favor he
'
s doing us by coming to see us at once, but to wait until later—not to come until he needs his horse. Let
'
s be alone for a while. Let
'
s go, my love. And we
'
ll cut and use more logs in a week than a careful housewife would use in a year in peaceful times.

"
And once again, forgive me for my confused way of speaking. How I wish I could talk with you without being so stupidly solemn! But after all, it
'
s true that we haven
'
t any choice. Call it what you like, death is really knocking at our door. Our days are really numbered. So at least let us take advantage of them in our own way. Let us use them up saying goodbye to life, being together for the last time before we are parted. We
'
ll say goodbye to everything we hold dear, to the way we look at things, to the way we
'
ve dreamed of living and to what our conscience has taught us, and to our hopes and to each other. We
'
ll speak to one another once again the secret words we speak at night, great and pacific like the name of the Asian ocean. It
'
s not for nothing that you stand at the end of my life, my hidden, forbidden angel, under the skies of wars and turmoil, you who arose at its beginning under the peaceful skies of childhood.

"
That night, as a girl in a dark brown school uniform, in the half shadow of the hotel room, you were exactly as you are now, and just as breathtakingly beautiful.

"
Often since then I have tried to define and give a name to the enchantment that you communicated to me that night, that faint glow, that distant echo, which later permeated my whole being and gave me a key to the understanding of everything in the world.

"
When you rose out of the darkness of that room, like a shadow in a schoolgirl
'
s dress, I, a boy who knew nothing about you, understood who you were, with all the tormenting intensity which responded in me: I realized that this scraggy, thin little girl was charged, as with electricity, with all the femininity in the world. If I had touched you with so much as the tip of my finger, a spark would have lit up the room and either killed me on the spot or charged me for the whole of my life with magnetic waves of sorrow and longing. I was filled to the brim with tears, I cried and glowed inwardly. I was mortally sorry for myself, a boy, and still more sorry for you, a girl. My whole being was astonished and asked: If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love.

"
There—at last I
'
ve said it. Such a thing can drive you mad. It expresses my very being.
"

Larisa Feodorovna lay dressed at the edge of her bed. She was not feeling well, and had curled up and covered herself with a shawl. Yurii Andreievich sat on a chair beside her, speaking quietly, with long pauses. Sometimes she raised herself on her elbow, propped her chin on her hand, and gazed at him, her lips parted. At other times she buried her head in his shoulder and cried silently with joy, without noticing her tears. At last she leaned out of bed, put her arms around him, and whispered happily:

"
Yurochka! Yurochka! How wise you are! You know everything, you divine everything, Yurochka, you are my strength and my refuge, God forgive me the blasphemy. Oh, I am so happy. Let
'
s go, my darling, let
'
s go. Out there I
'
ll tell you something I have on my mind.
"

He decided that she was referring to pregnancy, probably a false pregnancy, and he said:
"
I know.
"

They left town on the morning of a gray winter day. It was a weekday. People in the streets were going about their business; there were many familiar faces. At the squares, women who had no wells in their yards were queueing up for water at the old pumps, their yokes and buckets on the ground beside them. The doctor drove around them carefully, checking Samdeviatov
'
s spirited, smoky-yellow horse. The sleigh kept gliding off the slope of the street, icy with splashed water, onto the sidewalks and hitting lampposts and curbstones.

Galloping at full tilt, they caught up with Samdeviatov, who was walking down the street, and swept past him without looking back to see if he had recognized them and his horse, or whether he had anything to say to them. A little farther on they passed Komarovsky, and again swept by without a greeting.

Glafira Tuntseva shouted to them from across the street:
"
What lies people tell! They said you had left yesterday. Going for potatoes?
"
and signalling that she could not hear what they replied waved them goodbye.

They slowed down for Sima, and this was on an awkward slope where it was impossible to stop; the horse kept pulling at the reins. Sima, muffled from head to foot in several shawls and looking as stiff as a log, hobbled out into the middle of the street to say goodbye and wish them a good journey.

"
When you come back we must have a talk,
"
she said to Yurii Andreievich.

At last they left the town behind. Although the doctor had been on this road in winter, he mostly remembered it in its summer aspect and hardly recognized it now.

They had pushed their sacks of food and other bundles deep into the hay in the front of the sleigh and had tied them down with rope. Yurii Andreievich drove either kneeling upright on the floor of the sleigh like the local peasants or sitting with his legs in Samdeviatov
'
s felt boots hanging over the side.

In the afternoon when, as usual in winter, the day seemed on the point of ending long before sunset, Yurii Andreievich began to whip the horse mercilessly. It shot forward like an arrow. The sleigh pitched and tossed on the uneven road, like a ship in a storm. Lara and Katia were bundled up in their fur coats so that they could hardly move. Swinging around corners and bumping over ruts, they rolled from side to side and down into the hay like sacks, laughing themselves sick. Sometimes the doctor drove into the snowy banks on purpose, for a joke, and harmlessly tipped them all out into the snow. After being dragged for a few yards by the reins he stopped the horse, righted the sleigh, and was pummelled by Lara and Katia, who climbed back, scolding and laughing.

"
I
'
ll show you the place where I was stopped by the partisans,
"
the doctor told them when they were at some distance from the town, but he was unable to keep his promise because the winter bareness of the woods, the dead quiet, and the emptiness all around changed the country beyond recognition.
"
Here it is,
"
he soon shouted, mistaking the first of the Moreau & Vetchinkin signs, which stood in a field, for the one in the forest where he was captured. When they galloped past the second, still in its old place in the thicket at the Sakma crossroads, it was indistinguishable from the dazzling lacework of hoarfrost that made the forest look like black and silver filigree, so that they never saw it.

It was still daylight when they swept into Varykino, and as the Zhivagos
'
house came first they stopped in front of it. They burst in like robbers, hurrying because it would soon be dark. But inside it was dark already, so that Yurii Andreievich never saw half the destruction and abomination. Part of the furniture he remembered was still there; Varykino was deserted and there was no one to complete the damage. He could see no personal belongings; but as he had not been there when his family left he could not tell how much they had taken with them. In the meantime Lara was saying:

"
We must hurry. It will be dark in a moment. We haven
'
t time to stand about thinking. If we are to stay here, the horse must go into the barn, the food into the hallway, and we must fix this room for ourselves. But I
'
m against it. We talked it all out before. It will be painful for you and therefore also for me. What was this room, your bedroom? No, the nursery. There
'
s your son
'
s crib. It would be too small for Katia. On the other hand, the windows are whole, there are no cracks in the walls or ceiling, and the stove is marvellous—I admired it last time I came. So if you insist on our staying here—though I am against it—I
'
ll get out of my coat and set to work at once. The first thing is to get the stove going, and to stoke and stoke and stoke, we
'
ll have to keep it going all the time for at least twenty-four hours. But what is it, my darling? You haven
'
t answered.
"

"
In a moment. I
'
m all right. I
'
m sorry.… No, perhaps we
'
d better have a look at the Mikulitsyns
'
house.
"

They drove on.

The Mikulitsyns
'
door was padlocked. Yurii Andreievich wrenched off the lock together with its screws and splintered wood, and here again they rushed in hurriedly, going straight to the inner rooms without taking off their coats, hats, and felt boots.

They were immediately struck by the tidiness of certain parts of the house, particularly of Mikulitsyn
'
s study. Someone must have been living here until recently, but who? Had it been any of the Mikulitsyns, where had they gone, and why had they put a padlock on the door instead of using their keys? Furthermore, if the Mikulitsyns had been here continuously for long stretches, wouldn
'
t the whole house have been tidy and not just some of the rooms? Everything spoke of an intruder, but who could it have been? Neither the doctor nor Lara worried about the mystery. They did not try to solve it. There were plenty of half-looted houses now, and plenty of fugitives.
"
Some White officer on the run,
"
they told each other.
"
If he comes we
'
ll make some arrangement.
"

Once again, as so long before, Yurii Andreievich stood spellbound in the door of the study, so spacious and comfortable with its large, convenient table by the window. And once again he thought that such austere surroundings would be conducive to patient, fruitful work.

Among the outbuildings in the yard was the stable adjoining the barn, but it was locked and Yurii Andreievich did not bother to break in, since in any case it might not be fit to use. The horse could spend the night in the barn, which opened easily. He unharnessed the horse and when it had cooled down gave it water which he had got at the well. He had meant to give it the hay he had brought along, but it had been trampled to rubbish under their feet. Luckily, there was enough of it in the large loft over the barn.

They lay down without undressing, using their fur coats for blankets, and fell into a deep, sound, blissful sleep, like children after running about and playing all day.

From the moment they got up, Yurii Andreievich kept glancing at the table standing so temptingly by the window. His fingers itched for paper and pen. But he put off writing until the evening, until after Lara and Katia would have gone to bed. Until then he would have his hands full, even if no more than two of the rooms were to be made habitable. In looking forward to the evening he had no important work in mind. It was merely that the passion to write possessed him.