Doctor Zhivago (11 page)

The boys asked to go with him for the sake of the drive through the frosty night.

Although the normal flow of life had been restored since December, shooting could still be heard, and the houses burned down as the result of ordinary fires looked like the smoldering ruins of those destroyed during the uprising.

The boys had never been for such a long drive before. In reality the Montenegro was a stone
'
s throw away—down the Smolensky Boulevard, along the Novinsky, and halfway up Sadovaia Street—but the savage frost and fog separated space into disconnected fragments, as if space were not homogeneous the world over. The shaggy, ragged smoke of bonfires,
[6]
the crunch of footsteps and the whine of sleigh runners, contributed to give the impression that they had been travelling for God knows how long and had arrived at some terrifyingly remote place.

Outside the hotel entrance stood a narrow, elegant-looking sleigh; the horse was covered with a cloth and had bandaged fetlocks. The driver sat hunched up in the passengers
'
seat, trying to keep warm, his swathed head buried in his huge gloved paws.

It was warm in the hotel lobby. Behind the cloakroom counter the porter dozed, lulled by the hum of the ventilator, the roar of the blazing stove, and the whistle of the boiling samovar, to be wakened occasionally by one of his own snores.

A thickly made-up woman with a face like a dumpling stood by the looking glass on the left. Her fur jacket was too light for the weather. She was waiting for someone to come down; her back to the glass, she turned her head over each shoulder to make sure that she looked attractive behind.

The frozen cab driver came in. His bulging coat made him look like a twisted bun on a baker
'
s sign, and the clouds of steam he gave off increased the likeness.
"
How much longer will you be, Mam
'
zel?
"
he asked the woman by the looking glass.
"
Why I ever get mixed up with your sort, I don
'
t know. I don
'
t want my horse to freeze to death.
"

The incident in No. 23 was only one more nuisance added to the daily vexations of the hotel staff. Every minute the bells shrilled and numbers popped up inside the long glass box on the wall showing which guest in which room was going frantic and pestering the servants without knowing what he wanted.

At the moment the doctor was giving an emetic to that old fool Guisharova and washing out her guts. Glasha, the maid, was run off her feet mopping up the floor and carrying dirty buckets out and clean ones in. But the storm now raging in the service room had started well before this hullabaloo, before Tirashka had been sent in a cab to fetch the doctor and that wretched fiddler, before Komarovsky had arrived and so many people had cluttered up the corridor outside the door.

The trouble had started that afternoon, when someone had turned clumsily in the narrow passage leading from the pantry to the landing and had accidentally pushed the waiter Sysoi just as he was rushing out, bending slightly with a fully loaded tray balanced on his right hand. The tray clattered to the floor, the soup was spilled, and two soup plates and one meat plate were smashed.

Sysoi insisted that it had been the dishwasher, she was answerable and she should pay for the damage. By now it was nearly eleven o
'
clock and half the staff were due to go off duty shortly, but the row was still going on.

"
He
'
s got the shakes, can
'
t keep his hands and feet steady. All he cares about is sitting with a bottle, you
'
d think it was his wife, getting pickled like a herring, and then he asks who pushed him, who spilled his soup, who smashed his crockery. Now who do you think pushed you, you devil, you Astrakhan pest, you shameless creature?
"

"
I have told you already, Matriona Stepanovna, watch your language.
"

"
And who
'
s the one that all the fuss is about now, I ask you? You
'
d think it was somebody worth smashing crockery for. But it
'
s that slut, that streetwalker giving herself airs, that damned madam, innocence in retirement, done so well for herself she
'
s swigging arsenic. Of course, living at the Montenegro, she wouldn
'
t know an alley cat if she met one.
"

Misha and Yura walked up and down the corridor outside Madame Guishar
'
s room. It had all turned out quite differently from anything Alexander Alexandrovich had expected. He had imagined a clean and dignified tragedy in a musician
'
s life. But this was sordid and scandalous, and certainly not for children.

The boys were waiting in the corridor.

"
Go in to the lady now, young gentlemen.
"
The valet came up to them and for the second time tried to persuade them in his soft unhurried voice.
"
You go in, don
'
t worry. The lady
'
s all right, you needn
'
t be afraid. She
'
s quite recovered. You can
'
t stand here. There was an accident here this afternoon, valuable china was smashed. You can see we have to run up and down serving meals, and it
'
s a bit narrow. You go in there.
"

The boys complied.

Inside the room, a lighted kerosene lamp which ordinarily hung over the table had been taken out of its bracket and carried behind the wooden screen, where it stank of bedbugs. This was a sleeping alcove separated from the rest of the room and strangers
'
eyes by a dusty curtain, but the curtain had been flung over the screen and in the confusion no one had thought of drawing it. The lamp stood on a bench and lit the alcove harshly from below as though by a footlight.

Madame Guishar had tried to poison herself not with arsenic, as the dishwasher thought, but with iodine. The room had the tart, astringent smell of green walnuts when their husks are still soft and blacken at a touch.

Behind the screen the maid was mopping up the floor, and lying on the bed was a half-naked woman; drenched with water, tears, and sweat, her hair stuck together, she was holding her head over a bucket and crying loudly.

The boys turned away at once, so embarrassing and unmannerly did they feel it was to look in her direction. But Yura had seen enough to be struck by the fact that in certain clumsy, tense positions, in moments of strain and exertion, a woman ceases to be such as she is represented in sculpture and looks more like a wrestler with bulging muscles, stripped down to his shorts and ready for the match.

At last someone behind the screen had the sense to draw the curtain.

"
Fadei Kazimirovich, my dear, where
'
s your hand? Give me your hand,
"
the woman was saying, choking with tears and nausea.
"
Oh, I have been through such horrors. I had such terrible suspicions.… Fadei Kazimirovich…I imagined…but happily it has all turned out to be nonsense, just my disordered imagination.… Just think what a relief, and the upshot of it all…here I am…here I am alive.…
"

"
Calm yourself, Amalia Karlovna, I beg you…How awkward all this is, I must say, how very awkward.
"

"
We
'
ll be off home now,
"
said Alexander Alexandrovich gruffly to the children. Excruciatingly embarrassed, they stood in the doorway, and as they did not know where to look they stared straight in front of them into the shadowy depth of the main room, from which the lamp had been removed. The walls were hung with photographs, there was a bookshelf filled with music scores, a desk piled with papers and albums, and beyond the dining table with a crocheted cover a girl was asleep in an armchair, clasping its back and pressing her cheek against it. She must have been dead tired to be able to sleep in spite of all the noise and excitement.

"
We
'
ll be off now,
"
Alexander Alexandrovich said again. There had been no sense in their coming, and to stay any longer would be indecent.
"
As soon as Fadei Kazimirovich comes out…I must say goodbye to him.
"

It was not Tyshkevich who came out from behind the screen, but a thickset, portly, self-confident man. Carrying the lamp above his head, he went over to the table and replaced it in its bracket. The light woke up the girl. She smiled at him, squinting her eyes and stretching.

At sight of the stranger, Misha gave a start and stared at him intently. He pulled Yura
'
s sleeve and tried to whisper to him, but Yura would not have it.
"
You can
'
t whisper in front of people. What will they think of you?
"

Meanwhile a silent scene took place between the girl and the man. Not a word passed their lips, only their eyes met. But the understanding between them had a terrifying quality of magic, as if he were the master of a puppet show and she were a puppet obedient to his every gesture.

A tired smile puckered her eyes and loosened her lips, but in answer to his sneering glance she gave him a sly wink of complicity. Both of them were pleased that it had all ended so well—their secret was safe and Madame Guishar
'
s attempted suicide had failed.

Yura devoured them with his eyes. Unseen in the half darkness, he kept staring into the circle of lamplight. The scene between the captive girl and her master was both ineffably mysterious and shamelessly frank. His heart was torn by contradictory feelings of a strength he had never experienced before.

Here was the very thing which he, Tonia, and Misha had endlessly discussed as
"
vulgar,
"
the force which so frightened and attracted them and which they controlled so easily from a safe distance by words. And now here it was, this force, in front of Yura
'
s very eyes, utterly real, and yet troubled and haunting, pitilessly destructive, and complaining and calling for help—and what had become of their childish philosophy and what was Yura to do now?

"
Do you know who that man was?
"
said Misha when they went out into the street. Yura, absorbed in his thoughts, did not reply.

"
He
'
s the one who encouraged your father to drink and drove him to his death. In the train—you remember—I told you.
"

Yura was thinking about the girl and the future, not about his father and the past. At first he could not even understand what Misha was saying. It was too cold to talk.

"
You must be frozen, Semion,
"
Alexander Alexandrovich said to the coachman. They drove home.