Doctor Zhivago (61 page)

His memory had not deceived him. The shop was still in its former place; the work went on. The shop occupied a commercial space on the ground floor, with a window running the whole width of it and an entrance from the street. Through the window one could see inside to the opposite wall. The seamstresses worked in full view of the passersby.

The room was terribly crowded. In addition to the actual workers, some amateur seamstresses, aging ladies from Yuriatin society, had probably gotten places in order to obtain the work booklets spoken of in the decree on the wall of the house with figures.

Their movements could be distinguished at once from the efficiency of the real seamstresses. The shop worked only for the army, making padded trousers, quilted coats and jackets, and such clownish-looking overcoats as Yuri Andreevich had already seen in the partisan camp, tacked together from dog pelts of different colors. The clumsy fingers of the amateur seamstresses had a hard time doing the unaccustomed near-furrier’s work, as they put the edges turned back for hemming under the needles of the sewing machines.

Yuri Andreevich knocked on the window and made a sign with his hand to be let in. He was answered in signs that orders were not taken from private persons. Yuri Andreevich would not give up and, repeating the same gestures, insisted that he should be let in and listened to. By negative gestures he was given to understand that they had urgent business and he should leave off, not bother them, and go on his way. One of the seamstresses showed perplexity on her face and in a sign of vexation held her hand out palm up, asking with her eyes what, in fact, he wanted. With two fingers, index and middle, he showed the cutting movement of scissors. His gesture was not understood. They decided it was some sort of indecency, that he was teasing them and flirting with them. With his ragged look and strange behavior, he made the impression of a sick or crazy man. In the shop they giggled, exchanged laughs, and waved their hands, driving him away from the window. It finally occurred to him to look for the way through the courtyard, and, having found it and the door to the shop, he knocked at the back entrance.

The door was opened by an elderly, dark-faced seamstress in a dark dress, stern, perhaps the head of the establishment.

“Look, what a bother! A real punishment. Well, be quick, what do you want? I have no time.”

“I need scissors. Don’t be surprised. I want to ask to use them for a moment. I’ll cut my beard here in front of you and give them back with gratitude.”

Mistrustful astonishment showed in the seamstress’s eyes. It was undisguisedly clear that she doubted the mental faculties of her interlocutor.

“I come from far away. I’ve just arrived in town. I’m overgrown. I’d like to have my hair cut. But there isn’t a single barbershop. I think I could do it myself, but I don’t have any scissors. Lend them to me, please.”

“All right. I’ll give you a haircut. Only watch yourself. If you’ve got something else on your mind, some clever trick, changing your looks as a disguise, something political, don’t blame us. We won’t sacrifice our lives for you, we’ll complain in the proper place. It’s no time for things like that.”

“Good heavens, what fears you have!”

The seamstress let the doctor in, took him to a side room no wider than a closet, and a minute later he was sitting on a chair, as in a barbershop, all wrapped in a sheet that was tight on his neck and tucked in behind his collar.

The seamstress went to fetch her instruments and a little later came back with scissors, a comb, several clippers of different sizes, a strop and a razor.

“I’ve tried everything in my life,” she explained, seeing how amazed the doctor was that all this turned out to be in readiness. “I used to work as a barber. During the war, as a nurse, I learned how to shave and give haircuts. First we’ll chop the beard off with scissors, and then we’ll shave it clean.”

“And when it comes to the hair, cut it short, please.”

“I’ll try. Such an intellectual, and pretending to be a know-nothing! We don’t count in weeks now, but in tens of days. Today is the seventeenth, and on numbers with a seven barbers have the day off. As if you didn’t know.”

“I honestly didn’t. Why should I pretend? I told you. I come from far away. I’m not from here.”

“Sit still. Don’t jump. It’s easy to get cut. So you’re a newcomer? How did you get here?”

“On my own two feet.”

“Along the high road?”

“Partly, and the rest by the railway line. There’s no end of trains under the snow! All sorts, deluxe, special.”

“Well, there’s just a little bit left. I’ll snip it off, and that’s it. On family business?”

“What family business! I was working for the former union of credit associations. A traveling agent. They sent me around on inspection. I got stuck devil knows where in eastern Siberia. No way to get back. There are no trains. I had to go on foot, no help for it. I walked for a month and a half. The things I’ve seen, it would take more than a lifetime to tell.”

“And you oughtn’t to tell. I’m going to teach you a bit of wisdom. Now wait. Here’s a mirror. Take your hand from under the sheet and hold it. Look at yourself. Well, how do you find it?”

“I think you’ve cut too little. It could be shorter.”

“It won’t hold its shape. As I said, you oughtn’t to tell anything. It’s better to keep mum about all that now. Credit associations, deluxe trains under the snow, agents and inspections—it’s better if you even forget the words. You’ll get into a real mess with them! Don’t put your foot in it, it’s not the season. Better lie that you’re a doctor or a teacher. Well, there, I’ve chopped your beard off roughly, now we’ll give you a real shave. We’ll soap you up, zip-zap, and you’ll get ten years younger. I’ll go put some water on to boil.”

“Who is this woman!” the doctor thought while she was away. “There’s a feeling that we may have some points of contact and I should know her. Something I’ve seen or heard. She probably reminds me of someone. But, devil take it, who precisely?”

The seamstress returned.

“Well, now we’ll have a shave. Yes, so it’s better never to say anything unnecessary. That’s the eternal truth. Silence is golden. About those special trains and credit associations. Better to invent something about being a doctor or a teacher. And as for seeing all sorts of sights, keep it to yourself. Who’ll be surprised at it now? Does the razor bother you?”

“It hurts a little.”

“It scrapes, it must scrape, I know. Bear with it, dearie. No way to avoid it. Your hair has grown and turned coarse, the skin’s not used to it. Yes. Sights won’t surprise anybody now. People have been tried and tested. We’ve drunk our cup of grief. Such things went on here under the Whites! Robberies, murders, abductions. Hunting people down. For instance, there was this petty satrap, from Sapunov’s men, and, you see, he took a dislike to a certain lieutenant. He sends soldiers to ambush him near the Zagorodny woods, across from Krapulsky’s house. He’s disarmed and taken under escort to Razvilye. And Razvilye at that time was the same for us as the
provincial Cheka is now. Golgotha. Why are you shaking your head? Scrapes, does it? I know, dearie, I know. Nothing to be done. Here I’ve got to shave against the grain, and your hair’s stiff as bristles. Stiff. A tricky place. His wife is in hysterics. The lieutenant’s wife. ‘Kolya! My Kolya!’ And goes straight to the chief. Only ‘straight’ is just a manner of speaking. Who’s going to let her? Connections. A woman on the next street had access to the chief and interceded for everybody. He was an exceptionally humane man, not like the others, compassionate. General Galiullin. And all around there was lynch law, atrocities, dramas of jealousy. Just like in Spanish novels.”

“She’s talking about Lara,” the doctor guessed, but by way of precaution he said nothing and did not enter into more detailed questioning. Yet when she said “Just like in Spanish novels,” she again reminded him terribly of someone. Precisely by this inappropriate phrase, spoken out of place.

“Now, of course, it’s quite a different story. Let’s say there’s still more than enough investigations, denunciations, executions even now. But the idea is totally different. First, they’re new to power. They’ve been ruling less than no time, they still haven’t acquired a taste for it. Second, whatever you may say, they’re for the simple folk, that’s where their strength lies. There were four of us sisters, including me. And all working women. Naturally we lean towards the Bolsheviks. One sister died, she was married to a political. Her husband worked as a manager at one of the local factories. Their son, my nephew, is the leader of our village rebels—a celebrity, you might say.”

“So that’s what it is!” it dawned on Yuri Andreevich. “She’s Liberius’s aunt, Mikulitsyn’s notorious sister-in-law, hairdresser, seamstress, switchwoman, a jack-of-all-trades whom everybody knows. I’ll keep quiet like before, however, so as not to give myself away.”

“My nephew was drawn to the people from childhood. He grew up near his father, among the workers at the Mighty Sviatogor. The Varykino factories, maybe you’ve heard of them? Ah, what are we doing, the two of us! I’m a forgetful fool! Half the chin’s smooth, the other half unshaven. I’m talking away. And what are you doing, not stopping me? The soap on your face has dried up. I’ll go and heat some water. It’s grown cold.”

When Tuntseva came back, Yuri Andreevich asked:

“Varykino—it’s some sort of blessed backwoods, a wild place, where no shocks ever reach?”

“Well, ‘blessed,’ so to speak. That wild place got into maybe a worse pickle than we did. Some bands of men passed through Varykino, no one knows who. They didn’t speak our language. They went from house to house, taking people out and shooting them. And then left without a word. The bodies just stayed there unattended on the snow. It happened in the
winter. Why do you keep jumping all the time? I almost cut your throat with the razor.”

“But you said your brother-in-law lived in Varykino. Did he, too, suffer from these horrors?”

“No, why? God is merciful. He and his wife got out of there in time. The new wife, the second one. Where they are, nobody knows, but it’s certain they’re safe. Recently there were new people there. A Moscow family, visitors. They left even earlier. The younger man, a doctor, the head of the family, disappeared without a trace. Well, what does it mean, ‘without a trace’? It’s just a way of speaking, that it was without a trace, so as not to get upset. But in reality we’ve got to assume he’s dead, killed. They searched and searched, but didn’t find him. Meanwhile the other man, the older one, was called home. He’s a professor. Of agronomy. I heard he got a summons from the government. They passed through Yuriatin before the Whites came for the second time. You’re up to it again, dear comrade? If you fidget and jump like that under the razor, it won’t be long before the client’s throat is cut. You ask too much from a barber.”

“So they’re in Moscow!”

“In Moscow! In Moscow!” echoed in his soul with every step, as he went up the cast-iron stairs for the third time. The empty apartment met him again with an uproar of leaping, tumbling, scattering rats. It was clear to Yuri Andreevich that he would not get a wink of sleep next to these vermin, however worn out he was. He began his preparations for the night by stopping up the rat holes. Fortunately, there were not so many of them in the bedroom, far less than in the rest of the apartment, where the floors and baseboards were in less good condition. But he had to hurry. Night was falling. True, there waited for him on the kitchen table, perhaps in expectation of his coming, a lamp taken down from the wall and half filled, and, next to it in an open matchbox, several matches, ten in number, as Yuri Andreevich counted. But the one and the other, the kerosene and the matches, he had better use sparingly. In the bedroom he also discovered a night lamp—a bowl with a wick and some traces of lamp oil, which the rats had probably drunk almost to the bottom.

In some places, the edges of the baseboards had come away from the floor. Yuri Andreevich filled the cracks with several layers of broken glass, the sharp ends pointing inwards. The bedroom door fitted well to the doorstep. It could be closed tightly and, when shut, totally separated the
room with the stopped-up holes from the rest of the apartment. In a little more than an hour, Yuri Andreevich managed to do it all.

A tile stove cut off one corner of the bedroom, with a tile cornice that did not reach the ceiling. In the kitchen there was a supply of firewood, about ten bundles. Yuri Andreevich decided to rob Lara of a couple of armloads, and going on one knee, he began to pile the wood on his left arm. He brought it to the bedroom, set it down by the stove, familiarized himself with its mechanism, and quickly checked the condition it was in. He wanted to lock the door, but the lock turned out to be in disrepair, and therefore, tucking in some paper to make it tight and keep it from opening, Yuri Andreevich unhurriedly began making a fire in the stove.

While putting wood into the firebox, he saw a mark on the butt end of one of the logs. He recognized it with surprise. It was the trace of an old brand mark, the two initial letters K and D, which indicated what warehouse the logs came from before they were cut up. Long ago, when Krüger was still there, they had branded with these letters the ends of logs from the Kulabyshev plot in Varykino, when the factory sold off its extra unneeded fuel supplies.

The presence of this
sort of firewood in Lara’s household proved that she knew Samdevyatov and that he looked after her, just as he had once supplied all the needs of the doctor and his family. This discovery was a knife in the doctor’s heart. He had been burdened by Anfim Efimovich’s help even before. Now the embarrassment of these favors was complicated by other feelings.

It was unlikely that Anfim was Larissa Fyodorovna’s benefactor just for the beauty of it. Yuri Andreevich pictured Anfim Efimovich’s free and easy ways and Lara’s recklessness as a woman. It could not be that there was nothing between them.

In the stove the dry Kulabyshev wood was beginning to burn furiously, with a concerted crackling, and as it caught fire, Yuri Andreevich’s jealous blindness, having started from weak suppositions, arrived at complete certainty.