Doctor Zhivago (2 page)

Nikolai Nikolaievich had with him the proofs of Voskoboinikov
'
s book on the land question; the publisher had asked the author to revise it in view of the increasingly strict censorship.

"
The people are getting out of hand here,
"
he told Pavel.
"
A merchant in a near-by village has had his throat slit and the county stud farm has been burned down. What do you make of it? Any talk of it in your village?
"

But evidently Pavel took an even gloomier view than the censor who urged Voskoboinikov to moderate his passionate views on the agrarian problem.

"
Talk of it? The peasants have been spoiled—treated too well. That
'
s no good for the likes of us. Give the peasants rope and God knows we
'
ll all be at each other
'
s throats in no time.—Get along, there!
"

This was Yura
'
s second trip with his uncle to Duplyanka. He thought he remembered the way, and every time the fields spread out, forming a narrow border around the woods, it seemed to him he recognized the place where the road would turn right and disclose briefly a view of the six-mile-long Kologrivov estate, with the river gleaming in the distance and the railway beyond it. But each time he was mistaken. Fields followed fields and were in turn lost in woods. These vast expanses gave him a feeling of freedom and elation. They made him think and dream of the future.

Not one of the books that later made Nikolai Nikolaievich famous was yet written. Although his ideas had taken shape, he did not know how close was their expression. Soon he was to take his place among contemporary writers, university professors, and philosophers of the revolution, a man who shared their ideological concern but had nothing in common with them except their terminology. All of them, without exception, clung to some dogma or other, satisfied with words and superficialities, but Father Nikolai had gone through Tolstoyism and revolutionary idealism and was still moving forward. He passionately sought an idea, inspired, graspable, which in its movement would clearly point the way toward change, an idea like a flash of lightning or a roll of thunder capable of speaking even to a child or an illiterate. He thirsted for something new.

Yura enjoyed being with his uncle. He reminded him of his mother. Like hers, his mind moved with freedom and welcomed the unfamiliar. He had the same aristocratic sense of equality with all living creatures and the same gift of taking in everything at a glance and of expressing his thoughts as they first came to him and before they had lost their meaning and vitality.

Yura was glad that his uncle was taking him to Duplyanka. It was a beautiful place, and this too reminded him of his mother, who had been fond of nature and had often taken him for country walks.

He also looked forward to seeing Nika Dudorov again, though Nika, being two years older, probably despised him. Nika was a schoolboy who lived at the Voskoboinikovs
'
; when he shook hands with Yura, he jerked his arm downwards with all his might and bowed his head so low that his hair flopped over his forehead and hid half his face.

"
The vital nerve of the problem of pauperism,
"
Nikolai Nikolaievich read from the revised manuscript.

"
Essence would be better, I think,
"
said Ivan Ivanovich, making the correction on the galleys.

They were working in the half-darkness of the glassed-in veranda. Watering cans and gardening tools lay about, a raincoat was flung over the back of a broken chair, mud-caked hip boots stood in a corner, their uppers collapsed on the floor.

"
On the other hand, the statistics of births and deaths show,
"
dictated Nikolai Nikolaievich.

"
Insert
'
for the year under review,
'
"
said Ivan Ivanovich and made a note. There was a slight draft. Pieces of granite lay on the sheets as paperweights.

When they finished Nikolai Nikolaievich wanted to leave at once.

"
There
'
s a storm coming. We must be off.
"

"
Nothing of the sort. I won
'
t let you. We
'
re going to have tea now.
"

"
But I must be back in town by night.
"

"
It
'
s no use arguing. I won
'
t hear of it.
"

From the garden, a whiff of charcoal smoke from the samovar drifted in, smothering the smell of tobacco plant and heliotrope. A maid carried out a tray with clotted cream, berries, and cheese cakes. Then they were told that Pavel had gone off to bathe in the river and had taken the horses with him. Nikolai Nikolaievich had to resign himself to staying.

"
Let
'
s go down to the river while they
'
re getting tea ready,
"
suggested Ivan Ivanovich.

On the strength of his friendship with Kologrivov, he had the use of two rooms in the manager
'
s house. The cottage with its own small garden stood in a neglected corner of the park, near the old drive, now thickly overgrown with grass and no longer used except for carting rubbish to the gully, which served as a dump. Kologrivov, a man of advanced views and a millionaire who sympathized with the revolution, was abroad with his wife. Only his two daughters, Nadia and Lipa, with their governess and a small staff of servants, were on the estate.

A thick hedge of blackthorn separated the manager
'
s house and garden from the park with its lawns and artificial lakes which surrounded the main house. As Ivan Ivanovich and Nikolai Nikolaievich skirted the hedge, small flocks of sparrows flew out at regular intervals. The blackthorn swarmed with them, and their even chatter accompanied them like water flowing in a pipe.

They passed the hothouses, the gardener
'
s cottage, and the ruins of some stone structure. They were talking about new talent in science and literature.

"
Yes, there are gifted men,
"
said Nikolai Nikolaievich;
"
but the fashion nowadays is all for groups and societies of every sort. Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Solovi
ë
v or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth. How many things in the world deserve our loyalty? Very few indeed. I think one should be loyal to immortality, which is another word for life, a stronger word for it. One must be true to immortality—true to Christ! Ah, you
'
re turning up your nose, my poor man. As usual, you haven
'
t understood a thing.
"

"
Hmm,
"
said Ivan Ivanovich. Thin, fair-haired, restless as an eel, he had a mocking little beard that made him look like an American of Lincoln
'
s time: he was always bunching it up in his hand and nibbling the tip.
"
I say nothing, of course. As you know, I look at these things rather differently. But while we
'
re at it, tell me, what was it like when they unfrocked you? I bet you were scared. They didn
'
t anathematize you, did they?
"

"
You
'
re trying to change the subject. However, why not.… Anathematize me? No, they don
'
t do that any more. It was unpleasant, and there are certain consequences. For instance, one is banned from the civil service for quite a long time, and I was forbidden to go to Moscow or Petersburg. But these are trifles. As I was saying, one must be true to Christ. I
'
ll explain. What you don
'
t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know whether God exists, or why, and yet believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, and that Christ
'
s Gospel is its foundation. Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That
'
s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that
'
s why they write symphonies. Now, you can
'
t advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can
'
t make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels. What are they? To begin with, love of one
'
s neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic ideals of modern man—without them he is unthinkable—the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice. Mind you, all this is still extraordinarily new. There was no history in this sense among the ancients. They had blood and beastliness and cruelty and pockmarked Caligulas who do not suspect how untalented every enslaver is. They had the boastful dead eternity of bronze monuments and marble columns. It was not until after the coming of Christ that time and man could breathe freely. It was not until after Him that men began to live toward the future. Man does not die in a ditch like a dog—but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of death is in full swing; he dies sharing in this work. Ouf! I got quite worked up, didn
'
t I? But I might as well be talking to a blank wall.
"

"
That
'
s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It
'
s forbidden by my doctors, my stomach won
'
t take it.
"

"
Oh well, you
'
re hopeless. Let
'
s leave it. Goodness, what a view, you lucky devil. Though I suppose as you live with it every day you don
'
t see it.
"

It was hard to keep one
'
s eyes on the shimmering river, which, like a sheet of polished metal, reflected the glare of the sun. Suddenly its surface parted in waves. A big ferry loaded with carts, horses, and peasants and their women started for the other shore.

"
Just think, it
'
s only a little after five,
"
said Ivan Ivanovich.
"
There
'
s the express from Syzran. It passes here at five past five.
"

Far out on the plain, crossing it from right to left, came a neat little yellow and blue train, tiny in the distance. Suddenly they noticed that it had stopped. White puffs of steam flurried over the engine, and then came a prolonged whistle.
"
That
'
s strange,
"
said Voskoboinikov.
"
Something
'
s wrong. It has no business to stop in the middle of the marsh out there. Something must have happened. Let
'
s go and have tea.
"

Nika was neither in the garden nor in the house. Yura guessed that he was hiding because they bored him, and because Yura was too young for him. When his uncle and Ivan Ivanovich went on the veranda to work, Yura was left to wander aimlessly about the grounds.

How enchanting this place was! Orioles kept making their clear three-note calls, stopping each time just long enough to let the countryside suck in the moist fluting sounds down to the last vibration. A heavy fragrance, motionless, as though having lost its way in the air, was fixed by the heat above the flower beds. This brought back memories of Antibes and Bordighera. Yura turned this way and that. The ghost of his mother
'
s voice was hallucinatingly present in the meadows. He heard it in the musical phrases of the birds and the buzzing of the bees. Now and then he imagined with a start that his mother was calling him, asking him to join her somewhere.

He walked to the gully and climbed from the clear coppice at its edge into the alder thicket that covered its bottom.

Down there among the litter of fallen branches it was dark and dank; flowers were few, and the notched stalks of horsetail looked like the staffs with Egyptian ornaments in his illustrated Bible.

Yura felt more and more lonely. He wanted to cry. He slumped to his knees and burst into tears.

"
Angel of God, my holy guardian,
"
he prayed,
"
keep me firmly on the path of truth and tell Mother I
'
m all right, she
'
s not to worry. If there is a life after death, O Lord, receive Mother into Your heavenly mansions where the faces of the saints and of the just shine like stars. Mother was so good, she couldn
'
t have been a sinner, have mercy on her, Lord, and please don
'
t let her suffer. Mother!
"
—in his heart-rending anguish he called to her as though she were another patron saint, and suddenly, unable to bear any more, fell down unconscious.