The Big Green Tent (14 page)

The duel was, for all intents and purposes, over.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, when the students had already left for home, the two young elementary-school teachers were sitting with Andrei Ivanovich and drinking a modest nightcap. Only the cloakroom attendant and the cleaning lady, who sometimes stayed overnight in the utility room when her husband drank too much, were left behind. Katya Zueva, now without her tricorne newspaper hat, wearing her brown coat, its cuffs and hem lengthened with black wool, sat on a chair in the cloakroom waiting for Victor Yulievich.

When he came downstairs, she handed him a note.

“A letter for you.”

He looked puzzled—he had already forgotten about the game. “Oh? Thank you,” he said, stuffing it absentmindedly into his coat pocket.

He found the scrap of paper in his pocket the next morning. It said:

I can lend you his new novel. Do you want it?

—Katya

He didn't immediately understand what she was talking about.

On January 3, Katya called for him, and, still in postal-worker mode, delivered him a typewritten manuscript.

*   *   *

Pasternak's new novel was called
Doctor Zhivago.
The first pages—even those before the death of Maria Nikolaevna Zhivago—affected Victor Yulievich deeply. This was the continuation of that legacy of Russian literature he had thought was over and done with, lost forever. It seemed that this tradition had sprouted anew, in the present. Every line of the new novel echoed that tradition and spoke of the same thing—of the ordeals of the human heart in this world, of the growth of the human being, of physical death and moral triumph; in short, of the “creation and wonder” of life.

For the entire school break, Victor Yulievich was completely absorbed in Pasternak's novel. He was enchanted by the poems, though they seemed to be tacked on at the end in a clumsy and gratuitous way—they were recognizably Pasternak, but with a newly minted directness and simplicity. This was, evidently, the “unprecedented simplicity” the poet had long dreamed of.

As soon as he had finished the book, he began reading it again from the beginning. He discovered in it more and more gems of thought, feeling, and word. At the same time, he discerned its weaknesses, and the weaknesses appealed to him as well. They forced one to think, to ponder. Victor Yulievich felt no fondness for Lara, a rather thinly drawn character who kept doing things that attested to her foolishness and narcissism. But boy, how the author loved her!

Victor Yulievich was dismayed by the insistent coincidences, chance meetings, and convergences, until he realized that they were all connected, the loose ends all tied up, during the scene describing Yury Andreevich's death, the parallel movement of a streetcar carrying the dying Zhivago, and Mademoiselle Fleury, proceeding on foot, without haste, in the same direction, to freedom—one departing from the land of the living, the other leaving the land of her captivity.

A magnificent postscript to the classical tradition of Russian literature, Victor Yulievich thought, pronouncing his verdict.

On January 10, the last day of school break, Victor Yulievich phoned Katya. They met in front of the fabric store on Solyanka Street. He thanked her for the enormous happiness she had afforded him.

“As soon as I read the book, I realized there was someone I had to give it to,” she said.

Then she revealed something to him that he would on no account have asked her: how she had acquired the book. “My grandmother has known Boris Pasternak nearly her whole life. She typed out the novel for him. This is Grandmother's copy.”

Victor Yulievich placed a warm hand over the babbling mouth. “Never tell that to anyone. And you didn't tell me, either.”

He kept his hand over her lips, and they moved ever so slightly, as though she were whispering to him silently.

She had just turned seventeen. She was barely out of childhood, and she still displayed some of the ways and manners of a child. Her long, bare neck stuck out of her coat. She had no scarf. Her hat was a child's bonnet that tied under her chin. Her light brown eyes showed hurt, and a film of tears.

“No, no one—just you. I knew you would like it. I was right, wasn't I? You did like it?”

“More than you can know, Katya. More than you can ever know. A book like that changes one's life. I will be grateful to you until the day I die.”

“Really?” Her eyelashes opened wide, and her eyes lit up.

My God, it's Natasha Rostova! Natasha Rostova in the flesh!

It took his breath away.

*   *   *

After Katya finished school, they got married. The first to know about it were, of course, the LORLs. They were thrilled. By September, Katya's belly was noticeable to anyone who was paying attention, and the LORLs were doubly happy.

These circumstances drew them still closer to their teacher. Now, after their sessions, they would occasionally share a good bottle of Georgian wine, which flowed freely at Victor Yulievich's home. They even started calling him Vika—to his face. And he didn't object, though he preserved the custom of using the old-fashioned and respectful form of “you” when addressing them.

The sessions of the Lovers of Russian Literature continued to be held in Ksenia Nikolayevna's room, but Victor Yulievich and Katya now lived in an apartment that belonged to one of Katya's relatives. He had moved to the Russian north, having gotten a better job, and offered them the use of the apartment, in a residence for railroad workers, with windows facing onto the rail yards. They began their new life together against the background of an unceasing twenty-four-hour refrain: train departing, train arriving …

 

THE LAST BALL

These were Victor Yulievich's best years: a meaningful job, the adoration of his students, and a happy marriage—at least for now. He even earned a little extra on the side—two evenings a week, he gave private lessons.

He worked very hard, but the LORLs still gathered at his home on Wednesdays. The graduating class of '57 was his favorite—he had been their class adviser since the sixth grade, knew all their mamas and papas, grannies and grandpas, and siblings. The fifteen-year age gap became less and less palpable. The boys were growing into young men, and the marriage of their teacher to one of their classmates made the gap in their ages still less significant.

At the end of 1956 they announced the birth of a daughter. On December 1, in her eighth month of pregnancy, Katya had given birth to a fine four-and-a-half-pound girl. They named her Ksenia, after her grandmother. But even this diplomatic gesture could not soothe the hurt Ksenia Nikolayevna had suffered after her son's marriage. She couldn't bear the thought that another woman would make Vika his breakfast, talk with him in the evenings, wait for him after school, and wake him up in the morning. Moreover, she felt a particular antagonism toward Katya—relations between a mother-in-law and her son's wife are a chemical reaction in the blood. She believed that the underage girl had seduced him, perverted him, lured him with her wiles. In short, she had roped him into marriage.

Victor Yulievich's colleagues at school took a different view of the matter. The teachers' lounge was rife with backbiting rumors and gossip, which were especially ruthless and damning among the female teachers. When the little girl was born, the entire teaching staff experienced a thrill of malicious pleasure. Vera Lvovna, the mathematics teacher, counted off the months on her fingers, incontestably demonstrating that Zueva would have had to conceive in the third quarter of the school year to give birth in December.

Rybkina, the local Party organizer, who was also the head teacher, consulted with the higher-ups on the school board, as well as the regional committee of the Party, about how to deal with a criminal in their midst. The case was clear: the teacher was guilty of the corruption of a minor. On the other hand, the underage girl had come of age in the months that followed, and at the same time the transgressor of the law had made her his legal wife. But could he go unpunished?

The teachers maintained a unanimous tense silence whenever Victor Yulievich entered the room. The school administrators—the holy trinity of principal, Party organizer, and labor union organizer—had initially wanted to convene a faculty meeting to discuss the issue. But Larisa Stepanovna preferred to launch a probe with the authorities first. Reports were sent to the school board and the regional committee of the Party.

*   *   *

It was during this last winter of school that Victor Yulievich began writing the book he had been mulling over for several years. The title had already suggested itself:
Russian Childhood.
He wasn't sure about the genre—whether it would become a collection of essays or a monograph.

He laid no claim to any discoveries. He was distinctly aware that his interests partook of a variety of disciplines: developmental psychology, pedagogy, and anthropology in the broadest sense of the word. At the same time, the logic of his thoughts developed according to the terms deployed by medical doctors and biologists. The influence of his friend Kolesnik was undeniable.

He was at pains to describe the moral awakening of the adolescent, which is as fundamental and necessary as cutting teeth, babbling, and the first steps the baby attempts during the early months of development. In other words, it was the whole thrilling yet routine growth pattern that he was observing in his own child:

Thus it begins. At two or so they rush

From breasts into the dark of melody,

They chirp, they crow, they warble—then words

Appear already by the age of three …

The lyrical model that Pasternak outlined was far more obvious to him than all the tenets and premises of developmental psychology. Moral maturation seemed to be as valid a dimension of human development as the biological processes that unfolded in tandem with it. But moral awakening occurs in different ways, and the framework within which it takes place varies according to the individual cast of mind, and other contingencies. Moral awakening, or “moral initiation,” as he called it, occurs in boys between eleven and fourteen years of age, most often spurred by unfavorable circumstances—an unhappy or difficult family situation, an assault on one's sense of self-worth and dignity (or the dignity of those one holds dear), or the loss of a loved one. In short, an internal upheaval that calls the soul to life.

Every person has his “sore spots,” and this is where the inner revolution of the personality begins. According to Victor Yulievich's notions, the presence of a catalyst or “initiator” is almost a sine qua non of this process, whether it be a teacher, a guardian, an older friend, or even a relative (usually a fairly distant one). As in baptism, a child's parents rarely assume the role of godparents (unless, for example, the child's life is in some sort of danger). In exceptional circumstances, even a book that falls into a child's hands at the right moment can serve as an “initiator.”

Following a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, the author went on to describe several cases of initiation derived from classical Russian literature, examining the maturation of contemporary adolescents and analyzing the reasons for their tardy development. He also discussed the most alarming phenomenon of all: “initiation avoidance.”

It also occurred to Victor Yulievich that at just this age, Lutherans and Anglicans undergo the process of Confirmation, conscious acceptance of the faith; Jewish boys celebrate their bar mitzvahs, in which they are inducted into the adult community; and Muslims are circumcised. Thus, it seems that communities of believers attach particular significance to this transition from childhood to adulthood, whereas the atheist world has completely foregone this crucial mechanism. Becoming a Pioneer or a Komsomol member could hardly be considered a serious replacement for this practice.

The community sinks below the level of a moral minimum when the number of people who have not undergone this process of initiation in early youth exceeds half the population—this was the view that Victor Yulievich held at that time.

He and the late Vygotsky had serious differences of opinion about the formation and displacement of cultural interests, but that hardly mattered, since developmental psychology was a “closed” subject, forbidden, along with genetics and cybernetics. In truth, Victor Yulievich did not hold out any hopes that his future book might be published. But these kinds of pragmatic considerations could gain no toehold amid the heady pace of his life, which gave him every happiness he could ever have wished for—creative work, a marvelous young wife holding up that very diaper with the yellowish stain, a diminutive miracle with wonderful tiny fingers and lips and eyes, a little creature that grew more human by the day, and students whose enthusiasm raised him to heights hitherto unknown. He smiled in his sleep, and he smiled upon waking.

*   *   *

The country was, meanwhile, in the throes of its own mad existence. After the unseen wrangling at Dzhugashvili's coffin, the hidden struggle for power, after the return of the first thousands of people from the prison camps and from exile, after the inexplicable, unanticipated Twentieth Party Congress, the uprising in Hungary began and ended.

Victor Yulievich, steeped in the affairs of his own life, was only half-aware of these events. His “inner” life during this period seemed more important than the “outer.”

In September, during the first days of school, Tasya Vorobieva, a pretty student who took night classes at the pedagogical institute and with whom Victor Yulievich was on good terms, slipped him a packet of faded pages with Khrushchev's address to the Twentieth Party Congress typed on them. Although half a year had already passed since that event, it had still not been published anywhere. This address, full of cautious half-truths, was distributed only among the highest echelons of the Party. Rank and file Party members were informed about it during closed meetings, and only orally. The top of the document was marked “For Official Use Only”—thus, not for ordinary people. This was the run-of-the-mill Soviet phantasmagoria: a secret report for one sector of the populace, which it was required to keep secret from the other. A government with an impaired faculty of reason.