Doctor Zhivago (44 page)

Far ahead, at the end, the plain came up against the transverse ridge of a rising height. It stood across the road like a wall, at the foot of which a ravine or river could be surmised. As if the sky there were surrounded by a fence, with the country road leading to its gates.

At the top of the rise appeared the elongated form of a white, one-story house.

“See the lookout on the knob?” Vakkh asked. “That’s your Mikulich and Mikulichna. And under them there’s a split, a ravine, it’s called Shutma.”

Two gunshots, one after the other, rang out from that direction, generating multiple fragmented echoes.

“What’s that? Can it be partisans, grandpa? Shooting at us?”

“Christ be with you. What partizhans? It’s Stepanych scarifying wolves in Shutma.”

The first meeting of the new arrivals with the hosts took place in the yard of the director’s little house. A painful scene, at first silent, then confusedly noisy and incoherent, was played out.

Elena Proklovna was returning to the yard from her evening walk in the forest. The sun’s evening rays stretched behind her from tree to tree across the whole forest, almost the same color as her golden hair. Elena Proklovna was dressed in light summer clothes. She was red-cheeked and was wiping her face, flushed from walking, with a handkerchief. Her open neck was crossed in front by an elastic band, which held the hanging straw hat thrown behind her back.

Her husband was coming home from the opposite direction with a gun, climbing up from the ravine and intending to see at once to the cleaning of the sooty barrels, in view of the defects he had noticed in the discharge.

Suddenly, out of the blue, over the stones of the paved driveway, Vakkh drove up dashingly and loudly with his surprise.

Very soon, having climbed out of the cart with all the rest, Alexander Alexandrovich, falteringly, taking off his hat, then putting it on again, gave the first explanations.

The genuine, unaffected stupefaction of the nonplussed hosts and the unfeigned, sincere embarrassment of the wretched guests, burning with shame, lasted for several moments. The situation was clear without explanations, not only to the participants, Vakkh, Nyusha, and Shurochka. The
oppressive feeling communicated itself to the mare and the colt, to the golden rays of the sun, and to the mosquitoes circling around Elena Proklovna and settling on her face and neck.

“I don’t understand,” Averky Stepanovich finally broke the silence. “I don’t understand, don’t understand a thing and never will. What have we got here, the south, the Whites, the land of plenty? Why did your choice fall precisely on us? Why have you come here, here, why on earth to us?”

“I wonder if you’ve thought of what a responsibility it is for Averky Stepanovich?”

“Lenochka, don’t interrupt. Yes, precisely. She’s perfectly right. Have you thought of what a burden it is for me?”

“For God’s sake. You haven’t understood us. What are we talking about? About a very small thing, a nothing. There’s no encroachment on you, on your peace. A corner in some empty, dilapidated building. A spot of land nobody needs, gone to waste, for a vegetable garden. And a load of firewood from the forest when nobody’s looking. Is that so much to ask, is it some sort of infringement?”

“Yes, but the world is wide. What have we to do with it? Why is this honor bestowed precisely on us and not on somebody else?”

“We knew about you and hoped you had heard about us. That we’re no strangers to you and will not be coming to strangers ourselves.”

“Ah, so it’s a matter of Krüger, of you being his relatives? How can you open your mouth and acknowledge such things in our time?”

Averky Stepanovich was a man with regular features, wore his hair thrown back, stepped broadly on his whole foot, and in summer belted his Russian shirt with a tasseled strip of braid. In older times such men went and became river pirates; in modern times they constituted the type of the eternal student, the lesson-giving dreamer.

Averky Stepanovich gave his youth to the liberation movement, the revolution, and only feared that he would not live to see it or that, once it broke out, its moderation would not satisfy his radical and bloody lust. And then it came, overturning all his boldest suppositions, and he, a born and steadfast lover of the workers, who had been among the first to found a factory workers’ committee at the “Mighty Sviatogor” and set up workers’ control in it, was left with nothing for his trouble, excluded, in an empty village, deserted by the workers, who here mostly followed the Mensheviks. And now this absurdity, these uninvited last remnants of the Krügers, seemed to him a mockery of fate, a purposely mean trick, and they made the cup of his patience run over.

“No, that’s beyond me. Inconceivable. Do you realize what a danger you
are to me, what position you put me in? I really must be going out of my mind. I don’t understand anything and never will.”

“I wonder if you can conceive of what a volcano we’re sitting on here even without you?”

“Wait, Lenochka. My wife is perfectly right. It’s no sweet time even without you. A dog’s life, a madhouse. Between two fires all the time, and no way out. Some hang it on us that we’ve got such a red son, a Bolshevik, a people’s darling. Others don’t like it that I myself was elected to the Constituent Assembly. Nobody’s pleased, so just flounder about. And now you. How very merry to go and get shot over you!”

“What are you saying! Come to your senses! For God’s sake!”

After a while, exchanging wrath for mercy, Mikulitsyn said:

“Well, we’ve been yelping in the yard, and enough. We can continue in the house. Of course, I don’t see anything good ahead, but these be the dark waters in the clouds, the shadow-scripted murk of secrecy.
⁹
However, we’re not Janissaries, not heathens. We won’t drive you into the forest as a meal for Bruin the bear. I think, Lenok, they’ll be best off in the palm room, next to the study. And then we’ll discuss where they can settle. I think we’ll install them in the park. Please come in. Welcome. Bring the things in, Vakkh. Give the newcomers a hand.”

In carrying out the order, Vakkh merely sighed:

“Unwedded Mother! Wanderers have as much stuff. Just little bundles. Not a single sweetcase!”

A cold night set in. The newcomers washed. The women got busy turning the room allotted to them into night lodgings. Shurochka, who was unconsciously accustomed to having adults receive his infantile utterances in baby talk with delight, and who therefore, adapting himself to their taste, was pouring out his twaddle animatedly and zealously, felt disconcerted. Today his babble had no success, no one paid any attention to him. He was displeased that the black colt had not been brought into the house, and, when they told him to be quiet, he burst into tears, afraid that, being a bad and unsuitable boy, he would be sent back to the baby shop, from which, as he thought, he had been delivered to his parents when he was born. He loudly voiced his genuine fears to all around him, but his sweet absurdities did not make the usual impression. Constrained by staying in a strange house, the adults moved about more hurriedly than usual and were silently immersed in their cares. Shurochka felt hurt and blubbered, as nannies say. He was
given something to eat and, with some trouble, put to bed. At last he fell asleep. Mikulitsyn’s Ustinya took Nyusha to her room, to give her supper and initiate her into the mysteries of the house. Antonina Alexandrovna and the men were invited to evening tea.

Alexander Alexandrovich and Yuri Andreevich asked permission to absent themselves for a moment and went out to the porch for a breath of fresh air.

“So many stars!” said Alexander Alexandrovich.

It was dark. Standing two steps apart on the porch, the son- and father-in-law could not see each other. But behind them, from around the corner of the house, the light of a lamp fell from the window into the ravine. In its column, bushes, trees, and some other vague objects showed mistily in the damp air. The bright strip did not take in the conversing men and made the darkness around them still thicker.

“Tomorrow morning we’ll have to examine the outbuilding he intends for us, and if it’s fit to live in, start repairing it at once. While we’re getting that corner in shape, the soil will thaw, the earth will warm up. Then, without losing a moment, we’ll get to the garden beds. Between words in the conversation, I thought I heard him promise to help us with seed potatoes. Or did I hear wrong?”

“He promised, he promised. And other seed. I heard it with my own ears. And the corner he’s offering us we saw in passing as we crossed the park. You know where? It’s the rear of the manor house, drowning in nettles. It’s made of wood, but the house itself is stone. I showed you from the cart, remember? I’d dig the beds there. I think it’s the remains of a flower garden. It seemed so to me from a distance. Maybe I’m mistaken. The paths will have to be avoided, passed over, but the soil of the old flower beds was probably well manured and rich in humus.”

“We’ll see tomorrow. I don’t know. The ground is probably terribly overgrown with grass and hard as a rock. The manor must have had a kitchen garden. Maybe the plot’s still there and lying fallow. It will all become clear tomorrow. There are probably still morning frosts here. There will certainly be a frost during the night. How fortunate that we’re already here, in place. We can congratulate each other on that. It’s good here. I like it.”

“Very nice people. He especially. She’s a bit affected. She’s displeased with herself, there’s something in her she doesn’t like. Hence this tireless, fussily false garrulousness. As if she’s hastening to distract attention from her appearance, to forestall an unfavorable impression. And that she forgets to take her hat off and carries it on her shoulders is not absentmindedness either. It really becomes her.”

“Anyhow, let’s go in. We got stuck out here too long. It’s awkward.”

On their way to the lighted dining room, where, at a round table under a hanging lamp, the hosts and Antonina Alexandrovna were sitting by the samovar and drinking tea, the father- and son-in-law passed through the director’s dark study.

In it there was a wide, single-pane window across the whole wall, high above the ravine. From the window, as the doctor had managed to notice earlier, while it was still light, the view opened onto the distance far beyond the ravine and the plain across which Vakkh had taken them. By the window stood a planning or drafting table, wide, also across the whole wall. On it a big fowling piece lay lengthwise, leaving empty space to right and left, and thereby emphasizing the great width of the table.

Now, passing by the study, Yuri Andreevich again noted enviously the window with its panoramic view, the size and position of the table, and the spaciousness of the well-furnished room, and this was the first thing that escaped him in the form of an exclamation to his host, when he and Alexander Alexandrovich, on entering the dining room, went to the tea table.

“What a wonderful spot you have here. And what an excellent study, conducive to work, inspiring.”

“In a glass or in a cup? And how do you like it, weak or strong?”

“Look, Yurochka, what a stereoscope Averky Stepanovich’s son made for himself when he was little.”

“He still hasn’t grown up, hasn’t settled down, though he wins over district after district for Soviet power from the Komuch.”

“The what?”

“The Komuch.”

“What is that?”

“It’s the army of the Siberian government, which is for the restoration of power to the Constituent Assembly.”

“All day we’ve heard ceaseless praise of your son. You have every right to be proud of him.”

“These are views of the Urals, double, stereoscopic, also made by him and taken by a camera he made himself.”

“Are these cookies made with saccharine? They’re excellent.”

“Oh, come now! Such a backwoods and saccharine? Hardly! Real, honest sugar. I put some in your tea from the sugar bowl. Didn’t you notice?”

“Yes, in fact. I was looking at the photographs. And it seems the tea is also natural?”

“With flower petals. It goes without saying.”

“From where?”

“The magic tablecloth. An acquaintance. A modern-day activist. Of very leftist convictions. An official representative of the local economic council. He hauls our timber to town, and through acquaintances gets grain, butter, and flour for us. Siverka.” (So she called her Averky.) “Siverka, move the biscuit plate closer to me. And now I wonder if you can answer, what was the year of Griboedov’s death?”
¹⁰

“He was born, I think, in 1795. I don’t remember exactly when he was killed.”

“More tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“And now something else. Tell me when and between what countries was the peace of Nimwegen concluded?”

“Don’t torment them, Lenochka. Let the people recover from the trip.”

“Now here’s what interests me. List for me, please, the kinds of magnifying glasses and what images they produce in each case: actual, inverted, direct, or imaginary.”

“Where did you get such a knowledge of physics?”

“We had an excellent mathematician here in Yuriatin. He taught in two schools, the boys’ and ours. How he explained things, oh, how he explained things! Like a god! He’d chew it all and put it in your mouth. Antipov. He was married to a teacher here. The girls lost their minds over him, they were all in love with him. He went to war as a volunteer and never came back. He was killed. It’s alleged that our scourge of God and punishment from heaven, Commissar Strelnikov, is Antipov come back to life. A legend, of course. And it’s not like him. Who knows, though. Anything’s possible. Another little cup?”

In the winter, when there was more time, Yuri Andreevich began to take various kinds of notes. He noted for himself:

“How often during the summer I wanted to say together with Tyutchev:
¹