Doctor Zhivago (68 page)

“Just a moment. It’s nothing. Forgive me, please. No, you know, we’d really better have a look at the Mikulitsyns’.”

And they drove further on.

The Mikulitsyns’ house was locked with a padlock hanging from the eye of the door bar. Yuri Andreevich pried at it for a long time and ripped it off, with splintered wood clinging to the screws. As in the previous house, they barged in hurriedly and went through the rooms with their coats, hats, and felt boots on.

Their eyes were immediately struck by the stamp of order on the objects in certain parts of the house—for instance, in Averky Stepanovich’s study. Someone had been living here, and quite recently. But who precisely? If it was the owners or some one of them, what had become of them, and why had they locked the outside door with a padlock instead of the lock in the door? Besides, if it was the owners, and they had been living there long and permanently, the house would have been in order throughout and not in separate parts. Something told the intruders that it was not the Mikulitsyns. But in that case who was it? The doctor and Lara were not troubled by the uncertainty. They did not start racking their brains over it. As if there were not enough abandoned dwellings now with half the furniture pilfered? Or enough fugitives in hiding? “Some White officer being pursued,” they agreed unanimously. “If he comes, we’ll live together, we’ll work things out.”

And again, as once before, Yuri Andreevich stood as if rooted to the threshold of the study, admiring its spaciousness and astonished at the width and convenience of the desk by the window. And again he thought how such austere comfort probably disposes one and gives one a taste for patient, fruitful work.

Among the outbuildings in the Mikulitsyns’ yard there was a stable built right onto the barn. But it was locked, and Yuri Andreevich did not know what state it was in. So as not to lose time, he decided to put the horse in the easily opened, unlocked barn for the first night. He unharnessed Savraska, and when she cooled down, he gave her water that he brought from the well. Yuri Andreevich wanted to give her some hay from the bottom of the sleigh, but the hay had turned to dust under the passengers and was unfit for horse feed. Luckily, he found enough hay along the walls and in the corners of the wide hayloft over the barn and stable.

They slept that night under their fur coats, without undressing, blissfully, deeply, and sweetly, as children sleep after a whole day of running about and playing pranks.

When they got up in the morning, Yuri Andreevich began to gaze admiringly at the tempting desk by the window. His hands were itching to get to work over a sheet of paper. But he chose to enjoy that right in the evening, when Lara and Katenka had gone to bed. And meanwhile he had his hands full just putting two rooms in order.

In dreaming of his evening’s work, he did not set himself any important goals. A simple passion for ink, an attraction to the pen and the occupation of writing, possessed him.

He wanted to scribble, to set down lines. At first he would be satisfied with recalling and writing down something old, unrecorded, only so as to warm up his faculties, which had been standing inactive and drowsing in the interim. And later, he hoped, he and Lara would manage to stay on there longer, and he would have plenty of time to take up something new and significant.

“Are you busy? What are you doing?”

“Heating and heating. Why?”

“I need a tub.”

“If we keep the place this warm, we won’t have wood enough for more than three days. We’ve got to go and look in our former Zhivago shed. What if there’s more there? If there’s enough left, I’ll make several trips and bring it here. Tomorrow I’ll see to it. You asked for a tub. Imagine, my eye fell on one somewhere, but where—it’s gone clean out of my head, I can’t place it.”

“It’s the same with me. I saw one somewhere and forgot. Probably not in the right place, that’s why I’ve forgotten. But let it be. Mind you, I’m heating
a lot of water for cleaning. What’s left I’ll use to do some laundry for me and Katya. Let me have all your dirty things at the same time. In the evening, when we’ve put the place in order and can see what else needs to be done, we’ll wash ourselves before going to bed.”

“I’ll collect my laundry right now. Thanks. I’ve moved the wardrobes and heavy things away from the walls, as you asked.”

“Good. Instead of a tub, I’ll wash it in the dish basin. Only it’s very greasy. I’ll have to scrub the fat off the sides.”

“Once the stove is heated, I’ll close it and go back to sorting the remaining drawers. At each step I find new things in the desk and chest. Soap, matches, pencils, paper, writing materials. And also unexpected things in plain sight. For instance, a lamp on the desk, filled with kerosene. It’s not the Mikulitsyns’, that I know. It’s from some other source.”

“Amazing luck! It’s all him, our mysterious lodger. Like out of Jules Verne. Ah, well, how do you like that, really! We’re babbling and chattering away, and my cauldron’s boiling over.”

They were bustling, rushing here and there about the rooms, their hands full, busy, bumping into each other or running into Katenka, who kept getting in the way and under their feet. The girl wandered from corner to corner, hindering their cleaning, and pouted when they told her so. She was chilled and complained of the cold.

“Poor modern-day children, victims of our gypsy life, unmurmuring little participants in our wanderings,” thought the doctor, while saying to the girl:

“Well, forgive me, my sweet, but there’s nothing to shiver about. Stuff and nonsense. The stove is red-hot.”

“The stove may be hot, but I’m cold.”

“Then bear with it, Katyusha. In the evening I’ll heat it a second time hot as can be, and mama says she’ll also give you a bath, do you hear? And meanwhile—here, catch!” And he poured out on the floor a heap of Liberius’s old toys from the cold storeroom, broken or intact, building blocks, cars, railroad engines, and pieces of ruled cardboard, colored and with numbers in the squares, for games with chips and dice.

“Well, how can you, Yuri Andreevich!” Katenka became offended like a grown-up. “It’s all somebody else’s. And for little kids. And I’m big.”

But a minute later she was settled comfortably in the middle of the rug, and under her hands the toys of all sorts turned into building materials, from which Katenka constructed a home for her doll Ninka, brought with her from town, with greater sense and more permanence than those strange, changing shelters she was dragged through.

“What domestic instinct, what ineradicable striving for a nest and order!” said Larissa Fyodorovna, watching her daughter’s play from the
kitchen. “Children are unconstrainedly sincere and not ashamed of the truth, while we, from fear of seeming backward, are ready to betray what’s most dear, to praise the repulsive, and to say yes to the incomprehensible.”

“The tub’s been found,” the doctor interrupted, coming in with it from the dark front hall. “In fact, it wasn’t in the right place. It’s been sitting on the floor under a leak in the ceiling, evidently since autumn.”

For dinner, prepared for three days ahead from their freshly started provisions, Larissa Fyodorovna served unheard-of things—potato soup and roast lamb with potatoes. Katenka relished it, could not eat enough, laughed merrily and frolicked, and then, full and languid from the heat, covered herself with her mother’s plaid and fell fast asleep on the sofa.

Larissa Fyodorovna, straight from the stove, tired, sweaty, half asleep like her daughter, and satisfied with the impression produced by her cooking, was in no rush to clear the table and sat down to rest. Having made sure that the girl was asleep, she said, leaning her breast on the table and propping her head with her hand:

“I’d spare no strength and I’d find happiness in it, if only I knew that it’s not in vain and is leading to some goal. You must remind me every moment that we’re here to be together. Encourage me and don’t let me come to my senses. Because, strictly speaking, if you look at it soberly, what is it we’re doing, what’s going on with us? We raid someone else’s home, break in, take charge, and urge ourselves on all the while so as not to see that this is not life, it’s a theatrical production, not serious but ‘pretend,’ as children say, a puppet comedy, a farce.”

“But, my angel, you yourself insisted on this journey. Remember how long I resisted and did not agree.”

“Right. I don’t argue. So now it’s my fault. You can hesitate, ponder, but for me everything must be consistent and logical. We went into the house, you saw your son’s little bed and felt ill, you almost swooned from the pain. You have the right to that, but for me it’s not allowed, my fear for Katenka, my thoughts about the future must give way before my love for you.”

“Larusha, my angel, come to your senses. It’s never too late to think better of it, to change your mind. I was the first to advise you to take Komarovsky’s words more seriously. We have a horse. If you want, we can fly off to Yuriatin tomorrow. Komarovsky is still there, he hasn’t left. We saw him in the street from the sleigh, and I don’t think he noticed us. We’ll probably find him.”

“I’ve said almost nothing, and you already have displeased tones in your
voice. But tell me, am I not right? We could hide just as insecurely, at random, in Yuriatin. And if we were seeking salvation, then it should have been for certain, with a thought-out plan, as, in the end, was suggested by that well-informed and sober, though repulsive, man. While here I simply don’t know how much closer we are to danger than anywhere else. A boundless, windswept plain. And we’re alone as can be. We may get snowbound overnight and be unable to dig ourselves out in the morning. Or our mysterious benefactor who visits the house may drop in, turn out to be a robber, and put his knife in us. Do you have any sort of weapon? No, you see. I’m frightened of your lightheartedness, which you’ve infected me with. It muddles my thinking.”

“But in that case what do you want? What do you order me to do?”

“I don’t know myself how to answer you. Keep me in submission all the time. Constantly remind me that I’m your blindly loving, unreasoning slave. Oh, I’ll tell you. Our families, yours and mine, are a thousand times better than we are. But is that the point? The gift of love is like any other gift. It may be great, but without a blessing it will not manifest itself. And with us it’s as if we were taught to kiss in heaven and then sent as children to live in the same time, so as to test this ability on each other. A crown of concord, no sides, no degrees, no high, no low, equivalence of the whole being, everything gives joy, everything becomes soul. But in this wild tenderness, lying in wait every moment, there is something childishly untamed, illicit. It’s a self-willed, destructive element, hostile to peace in the home. My duty is to fear it and not to trust it.”

She threw her arms around his neck and, fighting back her tears, finished:

“You understand, we’re in different positions. Wings were given you so as to fly beyond the clouds, and to me, a woman, so as to press myself to the ground and shield my fledgling from danger.”

He terribly liked everything she said, but did not show it, so as not to fall into excessive sweetness. Restraining himself, he remarked:

“Our bivouac life really is false and overwrought. You’re profoundly right. But we didn’t invent it. A frantic casting about is everybody’s lot, it’s the spirit of the time.

“I myself have been thinking today, since morning, about approximately the same thing. I’d like to make every effort to stay on here longer. I can’t tell you how much I miss work. I don’t mean agricultural work. Once our whole household here threw itself into it, and it succeeded. But I wouldn’t be able to repeat that again. It’s not what I have in mind.

“Life on all sides is gradually being put in order. Maybe someday books will be published again.

“Here’s what I’ve been thinking over. Couldn’t we arrange it with Samdevyatov, on conditions profitable for him, to keep us supplied for six months, on the pledge of a work I would promise to write during that time, a textbook on medicine, let’s suppose, or something artistic, a book of poems, for example. Or let’s say I undertake to translate some world-famous foreign book. I have a good knowledge of languages, I recently read an advertisement from a big Petersburg publisher who specializes in bringing out works in translation. Work like that would probably acquire an exchange value that could be turned into money. I’d be happy to busy myself with something of that sort.”

“Thank you for reminding me. I was also thinking of something like that today. But I don’t believe we can hold out here. On the contrary, I have a presentiment that we’ll soon be carried somewhere further on. But while this stopover is at our disposal, I have something to ask you. Sacrifice a few hours for me during the next few nights and, please, write down everything you’ve recited to me from memory at various times. Half of it has been lost, the other half has never been written down, and I’m afraid you’ll forget it all afterwards and it will perish, as you say has often happened to you before.”

By the end of the day they had all washed with hot water, left over in abundance from the laundry. Lara bathed Katenka. Yuri Andreevich, with a blissful feeling of cleanness, sat at the desk by the window with his back to the room in which Lara, fragrant, wrapped in a bathrobe, her wet hair wound turbanlike in a Turkish towel, was putting Katenka to bed and settling for the night. All immersed in the foretaste of impending concentration, Yuri Andreevich perceived everything that was going on through a veil of softened and all-generalizing attention.

It was one o’clock in the morning when Lara, who until then had been pretending, actually fell asleep. The changed linen on her, on Katenka, and on the bed shone, clean, ironed, lacy. Even in those years Lara somehow contrived to starch it.

Yuri Andreevich was surrounded by blissful silence, filled with happiness and breathing sweetly with life. The light of the lamp cast its calm yellowness on the white sheets of paper, and its golden patches floated on the surface of the ink in the inkstand. The frosty winter night shone pale blue outside the window. Yuri Andreevich stepped into the next room, cold and unlit, from which he could better see outside, and looked through the window.
The light of the full moon bound the snowy clearing with the tangible viscosity of egg white or white sizing. The luxuriance of the winter night was inexpressible. There was peace in the doctor’s soul. He went back to the bright, warmly heated room and got down to writing.