Doctor Zhivago (22 page)

"
You were saying, what is a nation?…And who does more for a nation—the one who makes a fuss about it or the one who, without thinking of it, raises it to universality by the beauty and greatness of his actions, and gives it fame and immortality? Well, the answer is obvious. And what are the nations now, in the Christian era? They aren
'
t just nations, but converted, transformed nations, and what matters is this transformation, not loyalty to ancient principles. And what does the Gospel say on this subject? To begin with, it does not make assertions:
'
It
'
s like this and like that.
'
It is a proposal, naïve and timid:
'
Do you want to live in a completely new way? Do you want spiritual happiness?
'
And everybody accepted, they were carried away by it for thousands of years.…

"
When the Gospel says that in the Kingdom of God there are neither Jews nor Gentiles, does it merely mean that all are equal in the sight of God? No—the Gospel wasn
'
t needed for that—the Greek philosophers, the Roman moralists, and the Hebrew prophets had known this long before. But it said: In that new way of living and new form of society, which is born of the heart, and which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, there are no nations, there are only individuals.

"
You said that facts are meaningless, unless meanings are put into them. Well, Christianity, the mystery of the individual, is precisely what must be put into the facts to make them meaningful.

"
We also talked about mediocre publicists who have nothing to say to life and the world as a whole, of petty second-raters who are only too happy when some nation, preferably a small and wretched one, is constantly discussed—this gives them a chance to show off their competence and cleverness, and to thrive on their compassion for the persecuted. Well now, what more perfect example can you have of the victims of this mentality than the Jews? Their national idea has forced them, century after century, to be a nation and nothing but a nation—and they have been chained to this deadening task all through the centuries when all the rest of the world was being delivered from it by a new force which had come out of their own midst! Isn
'
t that extraordinary? How can you account for it? Just think! This glorious holiday, this liberation from the curse of mediocrity, this soaring flight above the dullness of a humdrum existence, was first achieved in their land, proclaimed in their language, and belonged to their race! And they actually saw and heard it and let it go! How could they allow a spirit of such overwhelming power and beauty to leave them, how could they think that after it triumphed and established its reign, they would remain as the empty husk of that miracle they had repudiated? What use is it to anyone, this voluntary martyrdom? Whom does it profit? For what purpose are these innocent old men and women and children, all these subtle, kind, humane people, mocked and beaten up throughout the centuries? And why is it that all these literary friends of
'
the people
'
of all nations are always so un-talented? Why didn
'
t the intellectual leaders of the Jewish people ever go beyond facile
Weltschmerz
and ironical wisdom? Why have they not—even if at the risk of bursting like boilers with the pressure of their duty—disbanded this army which keeps on fighting and being massacred nobody knows for what? Why don
'
t they say to them:
'
Come to your senses, stop. Don
'
t hold on to your identity. Don
'
t stick together, disperse. Be with all the rest. You are the first and best Christians in the world. You are the very thing against which you have been turned by the worst and weakest among you.
'
"

The following day when Zhivago came home to dinner, he said:
"
Well, you were so anxious to leave, now your wish has come true. I won
'
t say
'
Just your luck
'
because it isn
'
t lucky that we are being hard-pressed and beaten again. The way east is open; the pressure is from the west. All the medical units are under orders to get out. We
'
ll be going tomorrow or the next day. Where to, I don
'
t know. And I suppose, Karpenko Mikhail Grigorievich
'
s linen still hasn
'
t been washed. It
'
s always the same thing. Karpenko will tell you he has given it to his girl to wash, but if you ask him who and where she is, he doesn
'
t know, the idiot.
"

He paid no attention to Karpenko
'
s excuses nor to Gordon
'
s apologies for borrowing his host
'
s shirts.

"
That
'
s army life for you,
"
he went on.
"
As soon as you get used to one place you
'
re moved to another. I didn
'
t like anything here when we came. It was dirty, stuffy, the stove was in the wrong place, the ceiling was too low. And now, even if you killed me I couldn
'
t remember what it was like where we came from. I feel as if I wouldn
'
t mind spending my life in this place, staring at that corner of the stove with the sunshine on the tiles and the shadow of that tree moving across.
"

They packed without haste.

During the night they were roused by shouts, gunfire, and running footsteps. There was a sinister glow over the village. Shadows flickered past the window. The landlord and his wife were getting up behind the partition. Yurii Andreievich sent the orderly to ask what the commotion was about.

He was told that the Germans had broken through. Zhivago hurried off to the hospital and found that it was true. The village was under fire. The hospital was being moved at once, without waiting for the evacuation order.

"
We
'
ll all be off before dawn,
"
Zhivago told Gordon.
"
You
'
re going in the first party, the carriage is ready now, but I
'
ve told them to wait for you. Well, good luck. I
'
ll see you off and make sure you get your seat.
"

They ran down the village street, ducking and hugging the walls. Bullets whizzed past them, and from the crossroads they could see shrapnel explosions like umbrellas of fire opening over the fields.

"
And what about you?
"
asked Gordon as they ran.

"
I
'
ll follow with the second party. I have to go back and collect my things.
"

They separated at the edge of the village. The carriage and several carts that made up the convoy started, bumping into one another and gradually spacing out. Yurii Andreievich waved to his friend, who saw him for a few moments longer by the light of a burning barn.

Again keeping to the shelter of the houses, Yurii Andreievich hurried back. A few yards from his house he was knocked off his feet by the blast of an explosion and hit by a shell splinter. He fell in the middle of the road, bleeding and unconscious.

The hospital where Yurii Andreievich was recovering in the officers
'
ward had been evacuated to an obscure, small town on a railway line close to the G.H.Q. It was a warm day at the end of February. The window near his bed was open at his request.

The patients were killing time before dinner as best they could. They had been told that a new nurse had joined the hospital staff and would be doing her first round that day. In the bed opposite Zhivago
'
s, Galiullin was looking at the newspapers that had just arrived and exclaiming indignantly at the blanks left by the censorship. Yurii Andreievich was reading Tonia
'
s letters, which had accumulated in one great batch. The breeze rustled the letters and the papers. At the sound of light footsteps he looked up. Lara came into the ward.

Zhivago and Galiullin each recognized her without realizing that the other knew her. She knew neither of them. She said:
"
Hello. Why is the window open? Aren
'
t you cold?
"
Going up to Galiullin, she asked him how he felt and took his wrist to feel his pulse, but immediately let go of it and sat down by his bed, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

"
This is indeed unexpected, Larisa Feodorovna,
"
he said.
"
I knew your husband. We were in the same regiment. I
'
ve kept his things for you.
"

"
It isn
'
t possible,
"
she kept saying,
"
it isn
'
t possible. You knew him! What an extraordinary coincidence. Please tell me quickly how it happened. He was killed by a shell, wasn
'
t he, and buried by the explosion? You see I know, please don
'
t be afraid of telling me.
"

Galiullin
'
s courage failed him. He decided to tell her a comforting lie.

"
Antipov was taken prisoner,
"
he said.
"
He advanced too far with his unit. They were surrounded and cut off. He was forced to surrender.
"

But she did not believe him. Shaken by the unexpectedness of the meeting and not wishing to break down in front of strangers, she hurried out into the corridor.

A few moments later she came back, outwardly collected; afraid of crying again if she spoke to Galiullin, she deliberately avoided looking at him and went over to Yurii Andreievich.
"
Hello,
"
she said absentmindedly and mechanically.
"
What
'
s the trouble with you?
"

Yurii Andreievich had seen her agitation and her tears. He wanted to ask her why she was so upset and to tell her that he had seen her twice before in his life, once as a schoolboy and once as a university student, but it occurred to him that he would sound too familiar and she would misinterpret his meaning. Then he suddenly remembered the coffin with Anna Ivanovna
'
s body in it and Tonia
'
s screams, and said instead:

"
Thank you. I am a doctor. I am looking after myself. I don
'
t need anything.
"

"
How have I offended him?
"
Lara wondered. She looked in surprise at the stranger with his snub nose and unremarkable face.

For several days the weather was variable, uncertain, with a warm, constantly murmuring wind in the night, smelling of damp earth.

During those days there came strange reports from G.H.Q., and there were alarming rumors from the interior. Telegraphic communications with Petersburg were cut off time and again. Everywhere, at every corner, people were talking politics.

Nurse Antipova did her rounds morning and evening, exchanging a few words with each patient, including Galiullin and Zhivago.
"
What a curious creature,
"
she thought.
"
Young and gruff. You couldn
'
t call him handsome with his turned-up nose. But he is intelligent in the best sense of the word, alive and with an attractive mind. However, that
'
s unimportant. What is important is to finish my job here as soon as possible and get transferred to Moscow to be near Katenka, and then to apply for my discharge and go home to Yuriatin, back to the gymnasium. It
'
s quite clear now what happened to poor Pasha, there isn
'
t any hope, so the sooner I stop playing the heroine the better. I wouldn
'
t be here if I hadn
'
t come to look for Pasha.
"

How was Katenka getting on out there, she wondered, poor orphan, and this always made her cry.

She had noticed a sharp change around her recently. Before, there had been obligations of all kinds, sacred duties—your duty to your country, to the army, to society. But now that the war was lost (and that was the misfortune at the bottom of all the rest) nothing was sacred any more.

Everything had changed suddenly—the tone, the moral climate; you didn
'
t know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute—life or truth or beauty—of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good. But in her own case, Lara reminded herself, she had Katenka to fulfill her need for an absolute, her need of a purpose. Now that she no longer had Pasha, Lara would be nothing but a mother, devoting all her strength to her poor orphaned child.