Doctor Zhivago (83 page)

It was winter.
Wind was blowing from the steppe.
And the infant was cold there in the grotto
On the slope of the hill.

He was warmed by the breathing of the ox.
Domestic animals
Stood about in the cave,
And a warm mist floated above the manger.

Shaking bed straw from their sheepskin capes
And grains of millet,
Shepherds on the cliff
Stood looking sleepily into the midnight distance.

Far off there was a snowy field and graveyard,
Fences, tombstones,
A shaft stuck in a snowdrift,
And the sky over the cemetery, full of stars.

And alongside them, unknown till then,
More bashful than an oil lamp
In a watchman’s window,
A star glittered on the way to Bethlehem.

It blazed like a haystack, quite apart
From heaven and God,
Like the gleam of arson,
Like a burning farm, a fire on a threshing floor.

It raised itself up like a flaming rick
Of straw and hay amidst
The entire universe,
Which took alarm at the sight of this new star.

A reddish glow spread out above it
And had a meaning,
And three stargazers
Hastened to the call of the unprecedented light.

After them came camels bearing gifts.
And harnessed asses, one smaller than the other,
Moved down the hillside with little steps.

And in a strange vision of the time to be,
All that came later rose up in the distance,
All the thoughts of the ages, the dreams, the worlds,
All the future galleries and museums,
All pranks of fairies, all tricks of sorcerers,
All the Christmas trees on earth, all children’s dreams.

All the flicker of gleaming candles, all the paper chains,
All the magnificence of gaudy tinsel …
 … All the more fiercely the wind blew from the steppe …
 … All the apples, all the golden balls.

Part of the pond was hidden by the tops of the alders,
But part of it was perfectly visible from there,
Through the nests of jackdaws and the treetops.
The shepherds could make out very well
How the asses and camels went past the dam.
“Let’s go with them to worship the miracle,”
They said, wrapping their leather coats around them.

Scuffling through the snow made them hot.
Across the bright clearing, like sheets of mica,
The tracks of bare feet led behind the hovel.
At these tracks, as at the flame of a candle end,
The sheepdogs growled in the light of the star.

The frosty night was like a fairy tale.
And from the heaped-up snowdrifts, all the while,
Someone invisibly slipped into their ranks.
The dogs trudged on, looking warily around,
And pressed to the herdsboy, and expected trouble.

Down the same road, over the same country,
Several angels walked in the thick of the crowd.
Bodilessness made them invisible,
But their tread left the imprints of their feet.

By the stone a throng of people crowded.
Daybreak. Cedar trunks outlined themselves.
“And who are you?” asked Mary.
“We’re of the tribe of shepherds and heaven’s envoys.
We’ve come to offer up praises to you both.”
“You can’t all go in together. Wait by the door.”

In the predawn murk, as gray as ash,
Drivers and shepherd boys stamped about,
The men on foot cursed the men on horseback,
At the hollowed log of the water trough
Camels bellowed, asses kicked.

Daybreak. Dawn was sweeping the last stars
Like specks of dust from the heavenly vault.
And only the Magi of that countless rabble
Would Mary allow through the opening in the rock.

He slept, all radiant, in the oaken manger,
Like a moonbeam in the wooden hollow,
Instead of a sheepskin coat, he had for warmth
The ox’s nostrils and the ass’s lips.

They stood in shadow, like the twilight of a barn,
Whispering, barely able to find words.
Suddenly, in the darkness, someone’s hand
Moved one of the Magi slightly to the left
Of the manger. He turned: from the threshold, like a guest,
The star of the Nativity looked in at the maiden.

You meant everything in my destiny.
Then came war, devastation,
And for a long, long time there was
No word of you, no trace.

And after many, many years
Your voice has stirred me up again.
All night I read your Testament,
As if I were reviving from a faint.

I want to go to people, into the crowd,
Into their morning animation.
I’m ready to smash everything to bits
And put everybody on their knees.

And I go running down the stairs,
As if I’m coming out for the first time
Onto these streets covered with snow
And these deserted sidewalks.

Everywhere waking up, lights, warmth,
They drink tea, hurry for the tram.
In the course of only a few minutes
The city’s altered beyond recognition.

In the gateway the blizzard weaves
A net of thickly falling flakes,
And in order to get somewhere on time,
They drop their breakfast and rush off.

I feel for them, for all of them,
As if I were inside their skin,
I myself melt as the snow melts,
I myself knit my brows like morning.

With me are people without names,
Trees, children, stay-at-homes.
Over me they are all the victors,
And in that alone lies my victory.

He was walking from Bethany to Jerusalem,
Already weighed down by sad presentiments.

The prickly brush on the steep hillside was scorched,
Over a nearby hut the smoke stood still,
The air was hot and the rushes motionless,
And the Dead Sea was an unmoving calm.

And in a bitterness that rivaled the bitterness of the sea,
He was going with a small throng of clouds
Down a dusty road to someone’s house,
Going to town, to a gathering of his disciples.

And he was so deep in his own thoughts
That the fields in their wanness smelled of wormwood.
All fell silent. He stood alone in the midst,
And the countryside lay flat, oblivious.
Everything mixed together: the heat and the desert,
And the lizards, and the springs and rivulets.

A fig tree rose up not far away
With no fruit on it, only leaves and branches.
And he said to it: “What good are you?
Is your stupor of any earthly use to me?

“I hunger and thirst, and you are a sterile blossom.
Meeting with you is more cheerless than with stone.
Oh, how galling you are and how ungifted!
Stay that way until the end of time.”

A shudder of condemnation ran down the tree,
Like a flash of lightning down a lightning rod,
And the fig tree was reduced to ashes.

If the leaves, the branches, roots, and trunk
Had found themselves a free moment at that time,
Nature’s laws might have managed to intervene.
But a miracle is a miracle, and a miracle is God.
When we’re perturbed, in the midst of our disorder,
It overtakes us on the instant, unawares.

Spring comes barging loutishly
Into Moscow’s private houses.
Moths flutter behind the wardrobe
And crawl over the summer hats,
And fur coats are put away in trunks.

Pots of wallflowers and stock
Stand on the wooden mezzanines,
There’s a breath of freedom in the rooms,
And the garrets smell of dust.

And the street enjoys hobnobbing
With the nearsighted window frame,
And the white night and the sunset
Can’t help meeting by the river.

And in the corridor you can hear
What’s happening in the wide outdoors,
What April says to the dripping eaves
In a random conversation.

He can tell a thousand stories
About the woes of humankind,
And dawn feels chilly along the fences,
And draws it all out endlessly.

And that same mix of fire and fright
Outside and in our cozy dwellings,
And the air everywhere is not itself,
And the same transparent pussy willows,
And the same swelling of white buds
At the window and at the crossroads,
In the workshop and in the street.

Then why does the distance weep in mist,
And why does the humus smell so bitter?
In that precisely lies my calling,
So that the expanses won’t be bored,
So that beyond the city limits
The earth will not languish all alone.

It is for that my friends and I
Get together in early spring,
And our evenings are farewells,
Our little feasts are testaments,
So that the secret stream of suffering
Can lend warmth to the chill of being.

When in the last week
He was entering Jerusalem,
Thundering hosannas met him,
People ran after him with branches.

But the days grow more grim and menacing,
Love will not touch hearts.
Brows are knitted scornfully,
And now it’s the afterword, the end.

The sky lay over the courtyards
With all its leaden weight.
The Pharisees sought evidence,
Twisting before him like foxes.

And the dark powers of the temple
Hand him to the scum for judgment.
And with the same ardor as they praised him
Earlier, they curse him now.

The crowd from the lot next door
Peered in through the gates,
Jostling and shoving each other
As they waited for the outcome.

And a whisper crept through the neighbors,
And rumors came from all sides,
And childhood and the flight into Egypt
Were recalled now like a dream.

He remembered the majestic hillside
In the desert, and that height
From which Satan tempted him
With power over all the world.

And the marriage feast at Cana,
And the miracle that astonished the guests,
And the misty sea he walked on
To the boat, as over dry land.

And a gathering of the poor in a hovel,
And the descent into the dark cellar,
Where the candle died of fright
When the raised man stood up …

I
At nightfall my demon’s right here
In payment for my past.
Memories of depravity
Come and suck at my heart,
Of when, a slave of men’s fancies,
I was a bedeviled fool,
And the street was my only shelter.

A few minutes remain,
And then comes sepulchral silence.
But, before they pass,
Having reached the brink, I take
My life and smash it before you
Like an alabaster vessel.

Oh, where would I be now,
My teacher and my Savior,
If eternity had not been waiting
By night at the table for me,
Like a new client, lured
Into the nets of my profession?

But explain to me what sin means,
Death, hell, and flaming brimstone,
When, before the eyes of all,
I’ve grown into you like a graft on a tree
In my immeasurable anguish.

When I rest your feet, Jesus,
Upon my knees, it may be
That I am learning to embrace
The four-square beam of the cross
And, feeling faint, strain towards your body,
Preparing you for burial.

II
People are tidying up before the feast.
Away from all that fuss,
I wash your most pure feet
With myrrh from a little flask.

I feel for and do not find your sandals.
I can see nothing for my tears.
Loosened strands of hair
Fall over my eyes like a veil.

I rested your feet on my skirt
And poured tears over them, Jesus,
I wound them in a necklace of beads,
Buried them in the burnous of my hair.

I see the future in such detail
As if you had made it stop.
I am now able to predict
With a sybil’s prophetic clairvoyance.

Tomorrow the veil in the temple
Will fall, we will huddle in a circle
To one side, and the earth will sway underfoot,
Perhaps out of pity for me.

The ranks of the convoy will reform,
The cavalry will begin their departure.
Like a whirlwind in a storm, this cross
Will tear into the sky overhead.

I’ll throw myself at the foot of the crucifix,
Go numb and bite my lip.
For the embrace of all too many
You have spread your arms wide on the cross.

For whom on earth is there so much breadth,
So much torment and such power?
Are there so many souls and lives in the world?
So many villages, rivers, and groves?

But three such days will go by
And push me down into such emptiness,
That in this terrible interval
I’ll grow up to the Resurrection.

The bend of the road was lighted up
By the indifferent glitter of distant stars.
The road went around the Mount of Olives,
Down below it flowed the Kedron.

The little meadow broke off halfway,
Beyond it the Milky Way began.
The gray, silvery olive trees tried
To step on air into the distance.

At the end was someone’s garden plot.
Leaving his disciples outside the wall,
He said, “My soul is sorrowful unto death,
Tarry here and watch with me.”

He renounced without a struggle,
As things merely borrowed for a time,
His miracle-working and omnipotence,
And was now like mortals, like us all.

Now night’s distance seemed the verge
Of annihilation and nonbeing.
The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,
And the garden only was the place for life.

And, peering into those dark gulfs,
Empty, without beginning or end,
And sweating blood, he prayed to his Father
That this cup of death might pass.

Having eased his mortal anguish with prayer,
He went back out. There, on the ground,
His disciples, overcome with sleep,
Lay about among the roadside weeds.

He woke them: “The Lord has granted you
To live in my days, but you lie sprawling.
The hour of the Son of Man has struck.
He will give himself into the hands of sinners.”

He had barely said it when, who knows from where,
A crowd of slaves and vagabonds appeared,
Torches, swords, and at their head—Judas,
With a treacherous kiss upon his lips.

Peter rushed the cutthroats with his sword
And lopped off the ear of one. He hears:
“Disputes can never be resolved with iron.
Put your sword back in its place, man.

“Could my Father not provide me
With hosts of winged legions? Then,
Having touched not a hair upon my head,
My enemies would scatter without a trace.

“But the book of life has reached a page
Dearer than all that’s sacred.
What has been written must now be fulfilled.
Then let it be fulfilled. Amen.

“For the course of the ages is like a parable,
And can catch fire in its course.
In the name of its awful grandeur, I shall go
In voluntary suffering to the grave.

“I shall go to the grave, and on the third day rise,
And, just as rafts float down a river,
To me for judgment, like a caravan of barges,
The centuries will come floating from the darkness.”