Doctor Zhivago (80 page)

On the formerly built-up side, the shelterless citizens poked in the piles of still-smoldering ashes, digging things up and carrying them to one place from the far corners of the burned-down site. Others hastily burrowed into dugouts and sliced layers of earth so as to cover the upper parts of their dwellings with sod.

On the opposite, unbuilt side there were white tents, a crowd of trucks and horse-drawn wagons of various second-line services, field hospitals strayed from their division headquarters, confused units of every sort of depot, commissariat, supply dump, lost and looking for each other. There, too, relieving themselves, snatching something to eat, sleeping, and then trudging further west, were companies of skinny, ill-nourished adolescent draftees in gray forage caps and heavy gray coats, with wasted, sallow faces, bloodless from dysentery.

The town, blown up and half reduced to ashes, went on burning and exploding in the distance, where timed charges had been planted. Now and then men digging in their gardens interrupted their work, stopped by a trembling of the ground under their feet, straightened their bent backs, leaned on the handles of their spades and, turning their heads in the direction of the blast, rested, looking off that way for a long time.

There, first in pillars and fountains, then in lazy, ponderous swellings, the gray, black, brick-red and smokily flaming clouds of airborne trash ascended into the sky, thinned out, spread into plumes, scattered, and settled back down to earth. And the workers took up their work again.

One of the clearings on the unbuilt side was bordered with bushes and covered completely by the shade of the old trees growing there. The clearing was fenced off from the rest of the world by this vegetation, like a covered courtyard standing by itself and immersed in cool twilight.

In the clearing, the linen girl Tanya, with two or three persons from her regiment and several self-invited fellow travelers, as well as Gordon and Dudorov, had been waiting since morning for a truck sent for Tanya and the regimental property she was in charge of. It was stowed in several boxes piled up in the clearing. Tatiana kept an eye on them and did not move a step away, but the others also stayed close to the boxes, so as not to miss the possibility of leaving when it presented itself.

The wait had lasted a long time, more than five hours. The waiting people had nothing to do. They were listening to the incessant chatter of the garrulous girl, who had seen a lot. She had just told them about her meeting with Major General Zhivago.

“That’s right. Yesterday. Brought in person to the general. Major General Zhivago. He was passing through here and made inquiries about Christina, asked questions. Of eyewitnesses who knew her personally. They pointed me out. Said I was her friend. He summoned me. So I’m summoned, brought to him. Not scary at all. Nothing special, just like everybody else. Slant-eyed, dark. So what I knew, I laid out. He listened, said thank you. And you yourself, he says, where from and what sort? I, naturally, hemmed and hawed and nay-sayed him. What’s there to boast of? A homeless child. And so on. You know it yourselves. Correctional institutions, vagrancy. But he won’t hear of it, go ahead, he says, don’t be embarrassed, there’s no shame in it. So I said the first timid word or two, then more, he nods away, I got bolder. And I do have things to tell. If you heard, you wouldn’t believe it, you’d say—she’s making it up. Well, it was the same with him. Once I finished, he got up and paced up and down the cottage. You don’t say, he says, what wonders. Well, here’s the thing, he says. I’ve got no time now. But I’ll find you, don’t worry, I’ll find you and summon you again. I simply never thought I’d hear such things. I won’t leave you like this, he says. I’ll have to clarify a thing or two, various details. And then, he says, for all I know I may yet put myself down as your uncle, promote you to a general’s niece. And send you to study in any school you like. By God, it’s true. Such a jolly leg-puller.”

Just then a long, empty cart with high sides, such as is used in Poland and western Russia for transporting sheaves, drove into the clearing. The pair of horses hitched to the shafts was driven by a serviceman, a
furleit
in the old terminology, a soldier of the cavalry train. He drove into the clearing, jumped down from the box, and started unhitching the horses. Everyone except Tatiana and a few soldiers surrounded the driver, begging him not to unhitch and to drive them where they told him—not for free, of course. The soldier protested, because he had no right to dispose of the horses and cart and had to obey the orders he had been given. He led the unhitched horses somewhere and never came back again. Everyone who had been sitting on the ground got up and went to sit in the empty cart, which was left in the clearing. Tatiana’s story, interrupted by the appearance of the cart and the negotiations with the driver, was taken up again.

“What did you tell the general?” asked Gordon. “Repeat it for us, if you can.”

“Sure, why not?”

And she told them her horrible story.

“And it’s true I’ve got things to tell. I’m not from simple folk, I was told. Either other people told me, or I tucked it away in my heart, only I heard that my mama, Raissa Komarova, was the wife of a Russian minister, Comrade Komarov, who was hiding in White Mongolia. He wasn’t my father, wasn’t my kin, you can only suppose, this same Komarov. Well, of course, I’m an uneducated girl, grew up an orphan, with no father or mother. It may seem funny to you that I say it, well, I’m only saying what I know, you’ve got to put yourselves in my position.

“Yes. So, it all happened, what I’m going to tell you now, beyond Krushitsy, at the other end of Siberia, beyond Cossack country, closer to the Chinese border. When we—our Red Army, that is—started approaching the main town of the Whites, this same Komarov the minister put mama and all their family on a special reserved train and had it take them away, because mama was forever frightened and didn’t dare take a step without him.

“And he didn’t even know about me, Komarov didn’t. Didn’t know there was anybody like me in the world. Mama produced me during a long absence and was scared to death that somebody might let it slip to him. He terribly disliked having children around, and shouted and stamped his feet that it was all just filth in the house and a big bother. I can’t stand it, he shouted.

“Well, so, as I was saying, when the Red Army was approaching, mama sent for the signalman’s wife, Marfa, at the Nagornaya junction, three stops away from that town. I’ll explain right away. First the Nizovaya station, then the Nagornaya junction, then the Samsonovsky crossing. I see now how mama got to know the signalman’s wife. I think Marfa came to town to sell vegetables and deliver milk. Yes.

“And I’ll say this. It’s obvious there’s something I don’t know here. I think they tricked mama, told her something else. Described God knows what, it was just temporary, a couple of days, till the turmoil calmed down. And not for me to be in strangers’ hands forever. To be brought up forever. My mama couldn’t have given away her own child like that.

“Well, you know how they do with children. ‘Go to auntie, auntie will give you gingerbread, auntie’s nice, don’t be afraid of auntie.’ And how I cried and thrashed afterwards, how my child’s little heart was wrung, it’s better not to speak of it. I wanted to hang myself, I nearly went out of my mind in childhood. Because I was still little. They must have given Auntie Marfusha money for my keep, a lot of money.

“The farmstead at the post was a rich one, a cow and a horse, well, and of course all sorts of fowl, and a plot for a kitchen garden as big as you like, and free lodgings, needless to say, a signalman’s house, right by the tracks. From our parts below, the train could barely go up, had trouble making the climb, but from your Russian parts it went at high speed, had to put on the brakes. In autumn, when the forest thinned out, you could see the Nagornaya station like on a plate.

“The man himself, Uncle Vassily, I called daddy, peasantlike. He was a jolly and kind man, only much too gullible, and when he was under the influence, he ran off at the mouth—like they say, the hog told the sow, and the sow the whole town. He’d blurt out his whole soul to the first comer.

“But I could never get my tongue to call his wife mother. Whether because I couldn’t forget my own mama, or for some other reason, only this Auntie Marfusha was so scary. Yes. So I called the signalman’s wife Auntie Marfusha.

“Well, time went by. Years passed. How many, I don’t remember. I’d already started to run out to the trains with a flag. To unharness a horse or bring home a cow was no mystery to me. Auntie Marfusha taught me to spin. To say nothing of the cottage. To sweep the floor, to tidy up, or to cook something, to mix the dough, was nothing to me, I could do it all. Ah, yes, I forgot to tell you, I was also nanny to Petenka. Our Petenka had withered legs, he was just three, he lay there and couldn’t walk, so I was nanny to Petenka. And now so many years have gone by and it still gives me shivers,
how Auntie Marfusha used to look sideways at my healthy legs, as if to say, why weren’t mine withered, it would be better if mine were withered and not Petenka’s, as if it was my evil eye that had spoiled Petenka, just think, what malice and darkness there are in the world.

“Listen, now, that was all just flowers, as they say, what comes next will make you gasp.

“It was the NEP then, and a thousand rubles were worth a kopeck. Vassily Afanasievich went down with the cow, got two bags of money—kerenki, they were called, ah, no, sorry—lemons, they were called lemons—got drunk, and went sounding off about his riches all over Nagornaya.

“I remember, it was a windy autumn day, the wind tore at the roof and knocked you off your feet, the locomotives couldn’t make it uphill, the wind was so against them. I see an old woman, a wanderer, come down the hill, the wind tearing at her skirt and kerchief.

“The wanderer walks up, groaning, clutching her stomach, asking to come inside. We put her on the bench—ohh, I can’t, she yells, I can’t, it’s stomach cramps, it’s the death of me. And she begs us, take me to the hospital, for Christ’s sake, you’ll be paid, I won’t stint on money. Daddy hitched up Udaloy, put the old woman on the cart, and drove to the zemstvo hospital, ten miles from the railway line.

“After a time, maybe long, maybe short, Auntie Marfusha and I went to bed, we hear Udaloy neighing under the window and our own cart driving into the yard. It was a bit early for that. So. Auntie Marfusha lit a lamp, threw on a bed jacket, and, not waiting for daddy to knock, lifted the latch.

“She lifts the latch, and there’s no daddy on the doorstep, but a stranger, a dark and scary muzhik, and he says: ‘Show me,’ he says, ‘where the money for the cow is. I took care of your husband in the forest,’ he says, ‘but I’ll spare you, woman, if you tell me where the money is. And if you don’t tell, you know what’ll happen, don’t blame me. You’d better not dawdle. I’ve got no time to hang around.’

“Oh, saints alive, dear comrades, what a state we were in, put yourselves in our position! We tremble, more dead than alive, can’t speak from fright, such a horror! First of all, he’s murdered Vassily Afanasievich, he says so, cut him down with an axe. Secondly, we’re alone in the house with a robber, we’ve got a robber here, it’s clear he’s a robber.

“Here, obviously, Auntie Marfusha went right off her head, her heart broke for her husband. But we had to hold out, not show anything.

“Auntie Marfusha started by throwing herself at his feet. Have mercy, she says, don’t destroy us, I have no idea about this money, what are you talking
about, it’s the first I hear of it. But the cursed fellow wasn’t so simple as to be handled just by talk. And suddenly the thought popped into her head how to outwit him. ‘Well, all right,’ she says, ‘have it your way. The cash,’ she says, ‘is down below. I’ll open the trapdoor, and you,’ she says, ‘can go down.’ But the devil sees through her cleverness. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s your house, you hunt it up. Go yourself,’ he says. ‘Whether it’s down below or on the roof, as long as I get the money. Only,’ he says, ‘remember, don’t try to cheat me, tricks go down bad with me.’

“And she to him: ‘Good heavens, don’t be so suspicious. I’d gladly go, but I’m too clumsy. Better,’ she says, ‘if I stand on the top step and hold the light for you. Don’t be afraid, for your assurance I’ll send my daughter down with you’—me, that is.

“Oh, saints alive, dear comrades, think for yourselves what I felt when I heard that! Well, I thought, that’s it. My eyes went dim, I felt I was falling, my legs gave way under me.

“But again the villain wouldn’t be played for a fool, he looked at the two of us out of the corner of his eye, squinted, twisted his whole mouth and bared his teeth, meaning, there’s no way you’re going to trick me. He saw she didn’t care about me, so I wasn’t her own blood, and he grabbed Petenka with one hand, and with the other opened the trapdoor—‘give me light,’ he says, and with Petenka he goes down the ladder into the cellar.

“And I think Auntie Marfusha was already balmy then, didn’t understand anything, was already touched in the head. As soon as the villain went down below with Petenka, she slammed the lid, that is, the trapdoor, back in place and locked it, and started moving a heavy trunk onto it, nodding to me, help, I can’t do it, it’s too heavy. She moved it, and sat herself down on the trunk, overjoyed, fool that she was. Just as she sat down on the trunk, the robber started shouting from inside, and there was a bang-bang under the floor, meaning you’d better let me out, or I’ll finish off your Petenka right now. We couldn’t make out the words through the thick boards, but the sense wasn’t in the words. He roared worse than a beast of the forest, to put fear into us with his big voice. Yes, he shouts, now it’ll be the end of your Petenka. But she doesn’t understand a thing. She sits and laughs and winks at me. Shout away, every dog has his day, but I’m sitting on the trunk and the key’s clutched in my fist. I try to get at Auntie Marfusha this way and that. I shout in her ear, push her, want to dump her off the trunk. We must open the trapdoor and save Petenka. Too much for me! Could I do anything against her?