Doctor Zhivago (23 page)

“I may arrive any day now like a bolt from the blue. However, I will try to send you a telegram.”

But even before his departure, Yuri Andreevich had time to receive a reply from Antonina Alexandrovna.

In her letter, in which the construction of the sentences was broken by sobs, and tearstains and inkblots served as periods, Antonina Alexandrovna insisted that her husband should not return to Moscow, but go straight on to the Urals after that wonderful nurse, who journeys through life accompanied by such portents and coincidences, with which her, Tonya’s, modest path in life could not be compared.

“Don’t worry about Sashenka and his future,” she wrote. “You will not have to be ashamed for him. I promise to bring him up by those same principles that you saw an example of as a child in our home.”

“You’re out of your mind, Tonya,” Yuri Andreevich rushed to reply. “What suspicions! Don’t you know, or don’t you know well enough, that you, the thought of you, and faithfulness to you and our home saved me from death and all sorts of destruction during these two horrible and devastating years of war? Anyhow, there’s no need for words. Soon we’ll see each other, our former life will begin again, everything will become clear.

“But that you could reply to me like that frightens me in another way. If I gave you cause for such a reply, maybe I am indeed behaving ambiguously, and am therefore also to blame before this woman for misleading her, and will have to apologize to her. I will do so as soon as she comes back from making the round of several nearby villages. The zemstvo, which previously existed only in provinces and districts, is now being introduced on a lower level, in village neighborhoods. Antipova went to help her acquaintance, a woman who works as an instructor in these legislative innovations.

“It is remarkable that, living in the same house with Antipova, I am unaware to this day of where her room is, and I’ve never been interested in finding out.”

Two main roads went east and west from Meliuzeevo. One, a forest dirt road, led to Zybushino, a grain trading post, administratively subordinate to Meliuzeevo, but far ahead of it in all respects. The other, paved with gravel, was laid across swampy meadows that dried up in the summer and went to Biriuchi, a railway junction not far from Meliuzeevo.

That June in Zybushino the independent republic of Zybushino, which lasted for two weeks, was proclaimed by the local miller Blazheiko.

The republic was supported by deserters from the 212th infantry regiment, who, weapons in hand, abandoned their positions and came through Biriuchi to Zybushino at the moment of the coup.

The republic did not recognize the authority of the Provisional Government
²
and separated itself from the rest of Russia. The sectarian Blazheiko, who as a young man had corresponded with Tolstoy, proclaimed a new thousand-year kingdom in Zybushino, communalized labor and property, and renamed the local administration an apostolate.

Zybushino had always been a source of legends and exaggerations. It stood in the deep forest, was mentioned in documents from the Time of Troubles,
³
and in later times its environs swarmed with robbers. The prosperity of its merchants and the fantastic fertility of its soil were on everyone’s lips. Some of the beliefs, customs, and peculiarities of speech that distinguished this western sector of the front line came precisely from Zybushino.

Now the same sort of tall tales were told about Blazheiko’s chief assistant. It was maintained that he was deaf and dumb from birth, acquired the gift of speech under inspiration, and lost it again when the illumination expired.

In July the Zybushino republic fell. A unit loyal to the Provisional Government entered the place. The deserters were driven out of Zybushino and withdrew to Biriuchi.

There, beyond the tracks, for a few miles around, stood a cleared forest, with stumps sticking up overgrown with wild strawberry, stacks of old, undelivered firewood, half of which had been stolen, and the dilapidated mud huts of the seasonal woodcutters who had once worked there. It was here that the deserters lodged themselves.

The hospital in which the doctor had been a patient, and had then worked, and which he was now preparing to leave, was housed in the mansion of the countess Zhabrinskaya, which the owner had donated for the care of the wounded at the beginning of the war.

The two-story mansion occupied one of the best locations in Meliuzeevo. It stood at the intersection of the main street with the central square of the town, the so-called “platz,” on which soldiers formerly performed their drills and meetings now took place in the evenings.

Its position at the intersection gave the mansion good views on several sides. Besides the main street and the square, one could see the next-door neighbors’ yard—a poor provincial property, in no way different from a villager’s. One could also see the countess’s old garden behind the back wall of the house.

The mansion had never had any independent value for Countess Zhabrinskaya. Razdolnoe, a large estate in the district, belonged to her, and the house in town served only as a pied-à-terre for business visits, and also as a gathering place for guests who came to the estate from all sides in the summer.

Now there was a hospital in the house, and the owner had been arrested in Petersburg, her place of permanent residence.

Of the former staff, two curious women remained in the mansion, Mademoiselle Fleury, the old governess of the countess’s daughters (now married), and the countess’s former first cook, Ustinya.

The gray-haired and ruddy-cheeked old woman, Mademoiselle Fleury, shuffling her slippers, in a loose, shabby jacket, slovenly and disheveled, strolled about the whole hospital, where she was now on familiar terms with everyone, as once with the Zhabrinsky family, and told something or other in broken language, swallowing the endings of the Russian words in French fashion. She struck a pose, swung her arms, and at the end of her
babble burst into hoarse laughter, which turned into a prolonged, irrepressible coughing.

Mademoiselle knew all about the nurse Antipova. It seemed to her that the doctor and the nurse simply must like each other. Yielding to the passion for matchmaking deeply rooted in the Latin nature, Mademoiselle was glad when she found them together, shook her finger at them meaningfully, and winked mischievously. Antipova was perplexed, the doctor was angry, but Mademoiselle, like all eccentrics, greatly valued her delusions and would not part with them for anything.

Ustinya presented a still more curious nature. She was a woman of a figure tapering awkwardly upward, which gave her the look of a brooding hen. Ustinya was dry and sober to the point of venom, but with that rationality she combined an unbridled fantasy with regard to superstitions.

Ustinya knew a great many folk charms, and never stepped out without putting a spell against fire on the stove and whispering over the keyhole to keep the unclean spirit from slipping in while she was gone. She was a native of Zybushino. They said she was the daughter of the local sorcerer.

Ustinya could be silent for years, but once the first fit came and she burst out, there was no stopping her. Her passion was standing up for justice.

After the fall of the Zybushino republic, the executive committee of Meliuzeevo launched a campaign against the anarchic tendencies coming from there. Every evening on the platz peaceful and poorly attended meetings sprang up of themselves, to which the unoccupied Meliuzeevans would trickle in, as in past times they used to sit together in summer under the open sky by the gates of the fire station. The Meliuzeevo cultural committee encouraged these meetings and sent their own or visiting activists to them in the quality of guides for the discussion. They considered the talking deaf-mute the most crying absurdity of all the tales told about Zybushino, and referred to him especially often in their exposures. But the small artisans of Meliuzeevo, the soldiers’ wives, and the former servants of the nobility were of a different opinion. The talking deaf-mute did not seem to them the height of nonsense. They defended him.

Among the disjointed cries coming from the crowd in his defense, Ustinya’s voice was often heard. At first she did not dare to come forward; womanly modesty held her back. But, gradually plucking up courage, she began ever more boldly to attack the orators, whose opinions were not favored in Meliuzeevo. Thus inconspicuously she became a real speaker from the rostrum.

Through the open windows of the mansion, the monotonous hum of voices on the square could be heard, and on especially quiet evenings even
fragments of some of the speeches. Often, when Ustinya spoke, Mademoiselle would run into the room, insist that those present listen, and, distorting the words, imitate her good-naturedly:

“Raspou! Raspou! Sar’s diamon! Zybush! Deaf-mute! Trease! Trease!”
⁴

Mademoiselle was secretly proud of this sharp-tongued virago. The two women had a tender attachment to each other and grumbled at each other endlessly.

Yuri Andreevich was gradually preparing for departure, went to homes and offices where he had to say good-bye to someone, and obtained the necessary papers.

Just then a new commissar of that sector of the front stopped in town on his way to the army. The story went that he was still nothing but a boy.

Those were days of preparation for a major new offensive. There was an effort to achieve a change of morale in the mass of soldiers. The troops were tightened up. Military-revolutionary courts were established, and the recently abolished death penalty was reinstated.
⁵

Before departure the doctor had to register with the commandant, whose duties in Meliuzeevo were fulfilled by the military superior—“the district,” as he was known for short.

Ordinarily there was jostling in his quarters. There was not room enough for the babel in the front hall and the yard, and it filled half the street in front of the office windows. It was impossible to push through to the desks. In the noise of hundreds of people, no one understood anything.

On that day there was no reception. In the empty and quiet offices, the clerks, displeased by the ever more complicated procedures, wrote silently, exchanging ironic glances. From the chief’s office came merry voices, as if, having unbuttoned their tunics, they were taking some cool refreshment.

Galiullin came out to the common room, saw Zhivago, and, with a movement of the whole torso, as if preparing to break into a run, invited the doctor to share in the animation that reigned inside.

The doctor had to go to the office anyway for the superior’s signature. He found everything there in the most artistic disorder.

The village sensation and hero of the day, the new commissar, instead of proceeding to his appointed goal, turned up there, in the office, which had no relation to the vital sections of headquarters or operative questions, turned up before the administrators of the military paper kingdom, stood before them, and held forth.

“And here is another of our stars,” said the district, introducing the doctor to the commissar, who did not even glance at him, totally absorbed in himself, while the district, changing his pose only in order to sign the paper the doctor held out to him, assumed it again and, with a courteous movement of the hand, showed Zhivago to the low, soft pouffe that stood in the middle of the room.

Of all those present, only the doctor settled himself in the study like a human being. The others sat one more oddly and casually than the other. The district, his head propped on his hand, reclined Pechorin-like
⁶
at the desk; facing him, his assistant heaped himself up on a bolster of the couch, tucking his legs under as if riding sidesaddle. Galiullin sat astride a reversed chair, embracing the back and laying his head on it, while the young commissar first swung himself up by the arms into the embrasure of the windowsill, then jumped down from it, and, like a spinning top, never for a moment falling silent and moving all the time, paced the office with small, rapid steps. He talked nonstop. The subject was the Biriuchi deserters.

The rumors about the commissar proved true. He was thin and slender, a still quite unfledged youth, who burned like a little candle with the loftiest ideals. He was said to be from a good family, maybe even the son of a senator, and in February had been one of the first to lead his company to the State Duma.
⁷
His last name was Gintze or Gintz; they pronounced it unclearly when he and the doctor were introduced. The commissar had a correct Petersburg enunciation, as distinct as could be, with a slight hint of the Baltic.

He wore a very tight field jacket. He was probably embarrassed at being so young, and, in order to seem older, he made a wry, peevish face and put on an affected stoop. For that he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding breeches and hunched his shoulders in their new, stiff epaulettes, which in fact gave his figure a simplified cavalryman’s look, so that it could have been drawn from shoulders to feet in two lines converging downwards.

“There’s a Cossack regiment stationed on the railway line several stops from here. Red, devoted. Call them in, the rebels will be surrounded, and that will be the end of it. The commander of the corps insists they should be speedily disarmed,” the district informed the commissar.

“Cossacks? Never!” the commissar flared up. “That’s some sort of 1905, some prerevolutionary reminiscence! Here we’re at opposite poles from you, here your generals have outsmarted themselves!”

“Nothing’s been done yet. It’s all just a plan, a suggestion.”

“We have an agreement with the military command not to interfere in operational instructions. I don’t cancel the Cossacks. Let it be. But I for my part will undertake the steps prompted by good sense. Do they have a bivouac there?”

“Hard to say. A camp, in any case. Fortified.”

“Excellent. I want to go to them. Show me this menace, these forest bandits. They may be rebels, even deserters, but they’re the people, gentlemen, that’s what you forget. And the people are children, you must know that, you must know their psychology. Here a special approach is needed. You must know how to touch their best, most sensitive strings, so that they begin to sound. I’ll go to them in their clearing and have a heart-to-heart talk with them. You’ll see in what exemplary order they return to their abandoned positions. Want to bet? You don’t believe me?”