Doctor Zhivago (79 page)

And she said something more and wept and suffered. Suddenly she raised her head in surprise and looked around. There had long been people in the room, anxiousness, movement. She got down from the footstool and, staggering, stepped away from the coffin, passing her palm over her eyes, as if to squeeze out the remaining unwept tears and shake them onto the floor.

Some men went up to the coffin and lifted it on three cloths. The carrying out began.

Larissa Fyodorovna spent several days in Kamergersky Lane. The sorting of papers she had talked about with Evgraf Andreevich was begun with her participation, but not brought to an end. The conversation with Evgraf that she had asked for also took place. He learned something important from her.

One day Larissa Fyodorovna left the house and did not come back again. Evidently she was arrested on the street in those days and died or vanished no one knew where, forgotten under some nameless number on subsequently lost lists, in one of the countless general or women’s concentration camps in the north.

In the summer of 1943, after the breakthrough on the Kursk bulge and the liberation of Orel,
¹
Gordon, recently promoted to second lieutenant, and Major Dudorov were returning separately to their common army unit, the first from a service trip to Moscow, the second from a three-day leave there.

They met on the way back and spent the night in Chern, a little town, devastated but not completely destroyed, like most of the settlements in that “desert zone” wiped off the face of the earth by the retreating enemy.

Amidst the town’s ruins, heaps of broken brick and finely pulverized gravel, the two men found an undamaged hayloft, where they made their lair for the night.

They could not sleep. They spent the whole night talking. At dawn, around three in the morning, the dozing Dudorov was awakened by Gordon’s pottering about. With awkward movements, bobbing and waddling in the soft hay as if in water, he was gathering some underthings into a bundle, and then, just as clumsily, began sliding down the hay pile to the doorway of the loft on his way out.

“What are you getting ready for? It’s still early.”

“I’m going to the river. I want to do me some laundry.”

“That’s crazy. We’ll be in our own unit by evening; the linen girl Tanka will give you a change of underwear. What’s the rush?”

“I don’t want to put it off. I’ve been sweating, haven’t changed for too long. The morning’s hot. I’ll rinse it quickly, wring it out well, it’ll dry instantly in the sun. I’ll bathe and change.”

“All the same, you know, it doesn’t look good. You must agree, you’re an officer, after all.”

“It’s early. Everybody around is asleep. I’ll do it somewhere behind a bush. Nobody will see. And you sleep, don’t talk. You’ll drive sleep away.”

“I won’t sleep any more as it is. I’ll go with you.”

And they went to the river, past the white stone ruins, already scorching hot in the just-risen sun. In the middle of the former streets, on the ground, directly in the hot sun, sweaty, snoring, flushed people slept. They were mostly locals, old men, women, and children, left without a roof over their heads—rarely, solitary Red Army soldiers who had lagged behind their units and were catching up with them. Gordon and Dudorov, watching their feet so as not to step on them, walked carefully among the sleepers.

“Talk softly, or we’ll wake up the town, and then it’s good-bye to my laundry.”

And they continued their last night’s conversation in low voices.

“What river is this?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Probably the Zusha.”

“No, it’s not the Zusha. It’s some other.”

“Well, then I don’t know.”

“It was on the Zusha that it all happened. With Christina.”

“Yes, but in a different place. Somewhere downstream. They say the Church has canonized her a saint.”

“There was a stone building there that acquired the name of ‘The Stable.’ In fact it was the stable of a collective farm stud, a common noun that became historical. An old one, with thick walls. The Germans fortified it and turned it into an impregnable fortress. The whole neighborhood was exposed to fire from it, and that slowed our advance. The stable had to be taken. Christina, in a miracle of courage and resourcefulness, penetrated the German camp, blew up the stable, was taken alive and hanged.”

“Why Christina Orletsova, and not Dudorova?”

“We weren’t married yet. In the summer of forty-one we gave each other our word that we would get married once the war was over. After that I moved about with the rest of the army. My unit was being endlessly transferred. What with these transfers, I lost sight of her. I never saw her again. I learned of her valiant deed and heroic death like everybody else. From newspapers and regimental orders. They say they’re going to set up a monument to her somewhere here. I’ve heard that General Zhivago, the brother of the late Yuri, is making the rounds of these parts, gathering information about her.”

“Forgive me for bringing her up in our conversation. It must be painful for you.”

“That’s not the point. But we keep babbling away. I don’t want to hinder you. Get undressed, go into the water, and do your work. And I’ll stretch out on the bank with a blade of grass in my teeth, I’ll chew and think, and maybe take a nap.”

A few minutes later, the conversation picked up again.

“Where did you learn to wash clothes like that?”

“From necessity. We had no luck. Of all the penal camps, we landed in the most terrible one. Few survived. Beginning from our arrival. The party was taken off the train. A snowy waste. A forest in the distance. Guards, rifles with lowered muzzles, German shepherds. Around that same time, new groups were driven in at various moments. They formed us into a wide polygon the size of the whole field, facing out, so as not to see each other. The order came: on your knees, and don’t look to the sides or you’ll be shot, and then began the endless, humiliating procedure of the roll call, which was drawn out for long hours. Kneeling down the whole time. Then we stood up, other parties were taken elsewhere, and we were told: ‘Here’s your camp. Settle in as you can.’ A snowy field under the open sky, a post in the middle, an inscription on the post: ‘Gulag 92 Y N 90’ and nothing more.”

“No, for us it was easier. We were lucky. I was serving my second term, which usually followed on the first. Besides, the article was different and so were the conditions. After my release, my rights were restored, as they were the first time, and I was again allowed to lecture at the university. And I was mobilized in the war with the full rights of a major, not in a penal unit like you.”

“Yes. A post with the number ‘Gulag 92 Y N 90’ and nothing else. At first we broke off laths for huts with our bare hands in the freezing cold. And, you won’t believe it, but we gradually built the place up for ourselves. We cut wood for shacks, surrounded ourselves with palings, set up punishment cells, watchtowers—all by ourselves. And we started logging. Tree felling. We felled trees. Eight of us would hitch ourselves to the sledge, load it with logs, sinking up to our chests in the snow. For a long time we didn’t know that war had broken out. They concealed it. And suddenly—an offer. Volunteer for penal battalions at the front and, if you chance to come out of the endless battles alive, you’ll all go free. And then attacks, attacks, miles of electrified barbed wire, mines, mortars, month after month under a hail of fire. It was not for nothing that in these companies we were known as ‘the condemned.’ We’d be mowed down to a man. How did I survive? How did
I ever survive? But, imagine, that whole bloody hell was happiness compared to the horrors of the concentration camp, and not at all owing to the harsh conditions, but to something else entirely.”

“Yes, brother, you’ve drunk a bitter cup.”

“It wasn’t just washing clothes you could learn there, but anything you like.”

“An amazing thing. Not only compared to your convict’s portion, but in regard to the whole previous life of the thirties, even in freedom, even in the well-being of university activity, books, money, comfort, the war came as a cleansing storm, a gust of fresh air, a breath of deliverance.

“I think collectivization was a false, unsuccessful measure, and it was impossible to acknowledge the mistake. To conceal the failure, it was necessary to cure people, by every means of intimidation, of the habit of judging and thinking, and force them to see the nonexistent and prove what was contrary to evidence. Hence the unprecedented cruelty of the Ezhovshchina, the promulgation of a constitution not meant to be applied, the introduction of elections not based on the principle of choice.
²

“And when the war broke out, its real horrors, real danger, and the threat of real death were beneficial in comparison with the inhuman reign of fiction, and brought relief, because they limited the magic power of the dead letter.

“Not only people in your situation, at forced labor, but decidedly everybody, in the rear and at the front, breathed more freely, with a full breast, and threw themselves rapturously, with a feeling of true happiness, into the crucible of the fierce fight, deadly and salutary.

“The war is a special link in the chain of revolutionary decades. The action of causes that lay directly in the nature of the upheaval came to an end.

“The indirect results began to tell, the fruits of the fruits, the consequences of the consequences. A tempering of character derived from calamity, nonindulgence, heroism, readiness for the great, the desperate, the unprecedented. These are fantastic, stunning qualities, and they constitute the moral flower of the generation.

“These observations fill me with a feeling of happiness, in spite of the martyr’s death of Christina, of my wounds, of our losses, of all this high, bloody price of the war. The light of self-sacrifice that shines on her end and on the life of each of us helps me to endure the pain of Orletsova’s death.

“Just when you, poor fellow, were enduring your countless tortures, I was released. At that time, Orletsova was studying history at the university. The nature of her scholarly interests placed her under my guidance. Much earlier, after my first term in the camps, when she was still a child, I had paid
attention to this remarkable girl. While Yuri was still alive, remember, I told you about her. Well, so now she turned up among my auditors.

“The custom of students publicly criticizing teachers had just come into fashion then. Orletsova fervently threw herself into it. God only knows why she picked on me so ferociously. Her attacks were so persistent, bellicose, and unjust that other students in the department occasionally rose up and defended me. Orletsova was a remarkable satirist. Under an imaginary name, in which everybody recognized me, she mocked me to her heart’s content in a wall newspaper. Suddenly, by complete chance, it turned out that this deep-rooted hostility was a form of camouflage for a young love, strong, hidden, and long-standing. I had always felt the same.

“We spent a wonderful summer in forty-one, the first year of the war, just on the eve of it and soon after it was declared. Several young students, boys and girls, and she among them, had settled in a summer place outside Moscow, where my unit was later stationed. Our friendship began and took its course in the circumstances of their military training, the forming of suburban militia units, Christina’s training as a parachutist, the repulsing of the first German air raids by night from the rooftops of Moscow. I’ve already told you that we celebrated our engagement there and were soon parted by the beginning of my displacements. I never saw her again.
³

“When there were signs of a favorable change in our affairs, and the Germans began to surrender by the thousand, I was transferred, after two wounds and two stays in the hospital, from the anti-aircraft artillery to seventh division headquarters, where there was a demand for people with a knowledge of foreign languages, and where I insisted that you, too, should be sent, after I fished you up as if from the bottom of the sea.”

“The linen girl Tanya knew Orletsova well. They met at the front and were friends. She told many stories about Christina. This Tanya has the same manner of smiling with her whole face as Yuri had, have you noticed? For a moment, the turned-up nose and angular cheekbones disappear, and the face becomes attractive, pretty. It’s one and the same type, very widespread among us.”

“I know what you’re talking about. Maybe so. I hadn’t paid attention.”

“What a barbaric, ugly name, Tanka Bezocheredeva, ‘Tanka Out-of-Turn.’ In any case it’s not a surname, it’s something invented, distorted. What do you think?”

“She did explain it. She was a homeless child, of unknown parents. Probably somewhere in the depths of Russia, where the language is still pure and unsullied, she was called Bezotchaya, meaning ‘without father.’ Street kids, for whom this derivation was incomprehensible, and who get everything
from hearing and distort it, remade the designation in their own way, closer to their actual vulgar parlance.”

It was not long after the night Gordon and Dudorov spent in Chern and their nighttime conversation there. Overtaking the army in the town of Karachevo, which had been razed to its foundations, the friends found some rear units that were following the main forces.

The clear and calm weather of the hot autumn had settled in for more than a month without interruption. Bathed in the heat of the cloudless blue sky, the fertile black soil of Brynshchina, the blessed region between Orel and Bryansk, was burnished to a chocolate-coffee color by the play of sunlight.

The town was cut by a straight main street that merged with the high road. On one side of it lay collapsed houses, turned by mines into heaps of building rubble, and the uprooted, splintered, and charred trees of orchards flattened to the ground. On the other side, across the road, stretched empty lots, probably little built upon to begin with, before the town’s destruction, and spared more by the fire and powder blasts because there was nothing there to destroy.