Doctor Zhivago (24 page)

One of the most outspoken of his defenders was Ustinia. At first held back by womanly reserve, she had gradually become bolder in heckling orators whose views were unacceptable in Meliuzeievo. In the end she developed into an expert public speaker.

The humming of the voices in the square could be heard through the open windows of the hospital, and on quiet nights even fragments of speeches. When Ustinia took the floor, Mademoiselle often rushed into any room where people were sitting and urged them to listen, imitating her without malice in her broken accent:
"
Disorder…Disorder…Tsarist, bandit…Zybushi…deaf-mute…traitor! traitor!
"

Mademoiselle was secretly proud of the spirited and sharp-tongued cook. The two women were fond of each other although they never stopped bickering.

Yurii Andreievich prepared to leave, visiting homes and offices where he had friends, and applying for the necessary documents.

At that time the new commissar of the local sector of the front stopped at Meliuzeievo on his way to the army. Everybody said he was completely inexperienced, a mere boy.

A new offensive was being planned and a great effort was made to improve the morale of the army masses. Revolutionary courts-martial were instituted, and the death penalty, which had recently been abolished, was restored.

Before leaving, the doctor had to obtain a paper from the local commandant.

Usually crowds filled his office, overflowing far out into the street. It was impossible to elbow one
'
s way to the desks and no one could hear anything in the roar caused by hundreds of voices.

But this was not one of the reception days. The clerks sat writing silently in the peaceful office, disgruntled at the growing complication of their work, and exchanging ironic glances. Cheerful voices came from the commandant
'
s room; it sounded as if, in there, people had unbuttoned their tunics and were having refreshments.

Galiullin came out of the inner room, saw Zhivago, and vigorously beckoned to him.

Since the doctor had in any case to see the commandant, he went in. He found the room in a state of artistic disorder.

The center of the stage was held by the new commissar, the hero of the day and the sensation of the town, who, instead of being at his post, was addressing the rulers of this paper kingdom quite unconnected with staff and operational matters.

"
Here
'
s another of our stars,
"
said the commandant, introducing the doctor. The commissar, completely self-absorbed, did not look around, and the commandant turned to sign the paper that the doctor put in front of him and waved him politely to a low ottoman in the center of the room.

The doctor was the only person in the room who sat normally. All the rest were lolling eccentrically with an air of exaggerated and assumed ease. The commandant almost lay across his desk, his cheek on his fist, in a thoughtful, Byronic pose. His aide, a massive, stout man, perched on the arm of the sofa, his legs tucked on the seat as if he were riding side saddle. Galiullin sat astride a chair, his arms folded on its back and his head resting on his arms, and the commissar kept hoisting himself up by his wrists onto the window sill and jumping off and running up and down the room with small quick steps, buzzing about like a wound-up top, never still or silent for a moment. He talked continuously; the subject of the conversation was the problem of the deserters at Biriuchi.

The commissar was exactly as he had been described to Zhivago. He was thin and graceful, barely out of his teens, aflame with the highest ideals. He was said to come of a good family (the son of a senator, some people thought) and to have been one of the first to march his company to the Duma in February. He was called Gints or Gintse—the doctor had not quite caught the name—and spoke very distinctly, with a correct Petersburg accent and a slight Baltic intonation.

He wore a tight-fitting tunic. It probably embarrassed him to be so young, and in order to seem older he assumed a sneer and an artificial stoop, hunching his shoulders with their stiff epaulettes and keeping his hands deep in his pockets; this did in fact give him a cavalryman
'
s silhouette which could be drawn in two straight lines converging downward from the angle of his shoulders to his feet.

"
There is a Cossack regiment stationed a short distance down the railway,
"
the commandant informed him.
"
It
'
s Red, it
'
s loyal. It will be called out, the rebels will be surrounded, and that will be the end of the business. The corps commander is anxious that they should be disarmed without delay.
"

"
Cossacks? Out of the question!
"
flared the commissar.
"
This is not 1905. We
'
re not going back to prerevolutionary methods. On this point we don
'
t see eye to eye. Your generals have outsmarted themselves.
"

"
Nothing has been done yet. This is only a plan, a suggestion.
"

"
We have an agreement with the High Command not to interfere with operational matters. I am not cancelling the order to call out the Cossacks. Let them come. But I, for my part, will take such steps as are dictated by common sense. I suppose they have a bivouac out there?
"

"
I guess so. A camp, at any rate. Fortified.
"

"
So much the better. I want to go there. I want to see this menace, this nest of robbers. They may be rebels, gentlemen, they may even be deserters, but remember, they are the people. And the people are children, you have to know them, you have to know their psychology. To get the best out of them, you must have the right approach, you have to play on their best, most sensitive chords.

"
I
'
ll go, and I
'
ll have a heart-to-heart talk with them. You
'
ll see, they
'
ll go back to the positions they have deserted. You don
'
t believe me? Want to bet?
"

"
I wonder. But I hope you
'
re right.
"

"
I
'
ll say to them,
'
Take my own case, I am an only son, the hope of my parents, yet I haven
'
t spared myself. I
'
ve given up everything—name, family, position. I have done this to fight for your freedom, such freedom as is not enjoyed by any other people in the world. This I did, and so did many other young men like myself, not to speak of the old guard of our glorious predecessors, the champions of the people
'
s rights who were sent to hard labor in Siberia or locked up in the Schl
ü
sselburg Fortress. Did we do this for ourselves? Did we have to do it? And you, you who are no longer ordinary privates but the warriors of the first revolutionary army in the world, ask yourselves honestly: Have you lived up to your proud calling? At this moment when our country is being bled white and is making a supreme effort to shake off the encircling hydra of the enemy, you have allowed yourselves to be fooled by a gang of nobodies, you have become a rabble, politically unconscious, surfeited with freedom, hooligans for whom nothing is enough. You
'
re like the proverbial pig that was allowed in the dining room and at once jumped onto the table.
'
Oh, I
'
ll touch them to the quick, I
'
ll make them feel ashamed of themselves.
"

"
No, that would be risky,
"
the commandant objected halfheartedly, exchanging quick, meaningful glances with his aide.

Galiullin did his best to dissuade the commissar from his insane idea. He knew the reckless men of the 212th, they had been in his division at the front. But the commissar refused to listen.

Yurii Andreievich kept trying to get up and go. The commissar
'
s naïveté embarrassed him, but the sly sophistication of the commandant and his aide—two sneering and dissembling opportunists—was no better. The foolishness of the one was matched by the slyness of the others. And all this expressed itself in a torrent of words, superfluous, utterly false, murky, profoundly alien to life itself.

Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!

The doctor remembered his coming talk with Antipova. Though it was bound to be unpleasant, he was glad of the necessity of seeing her, even at such a price. She was unlikely to be back. But he got up as soon as he could and went out, unnoticed by the others.

She was back. Mademoiselle, who gave him the news, added that she was tired, she had had a quick meal and had gone up to her room saying she was not to be disturbed.
"
But I should go up and knock if I were you,
"
Mademoiselle suggested.
"
I am sure she is not asleep yet.
"
—
"
Which is her room?
"
the doctor asked. Mademoiselle was surprised beyond words by his question. Antipova lived at the end of the passage on the top floor, just beyond several rooms in which all of the Countess
'
s furniture was kept locked, and where the doctor had never been.

It was getting dark. Outside, the houses and fences huddled closer together in the dusk. The trees advanced out of the depth of the garden into the light of the lamps shining from the windows. The night was hot and sticky. At the slightest effort one was drenched with sweat. The light of the kerosene lamps streaking into the yard went down the trees in a dirty, vaporous flow.

The doctor stopped at the head of the stairs. It occurred to him that even to knock on Antipova
'
s door when she was only just back and tired from her journey would be discourteous and embarrassing. Better leave the talk for tomorrow. Feeling at a loss as one does when one changes one
'
s mind, he walked to the other end of the passage, where a window overlooked the neighboring yard, and leaned out.

The night was full of quiet, mysterious sounds. Next to him, inside the passage, water dripped from the washbasin regularly and slowly. Somewhere outside the window people were whispering. Somewhere in the vegetable patch they were watering cucumber beds, clanking the chain of the well as they drew the water and poured it from pail to pail.

All the flowers smelled at once; it was as if the earth, unconscious all day long, were now waking to their fragrance. And from the Countess
'
s centuries-old garden, so littered with fallen branches that it was impenetrable, the dusty aroma of old linden trees coming into bloom drifted in a huge wave as tall as a house.

Noises came from the street beyond the fence on the right—snatches of a song, a drunken soldier, doors banging.

An enormous crimson moon rose behind the crows
'
nest in the Countess
'
s garden. At first it was the color of the new brick mill in Zybushino, then it turned yellow like the water tower at Biriuchi.

And just under the window, the smell of new-mown hay, as perfumed as jasmine tea, mixed with that of belladonna. Below there a cow was tethered; she had been brought from a distant village, she had walked all day, she was tired and homesick for the herd and would not yet accept food from her new mistress.

"
Now, now, whoa there, I
'
ll show you how to butt,
"
her mistress coaxed her in a whisper, but the cow crossly shook her head and craned her neck, mooing plaintively, and beyond the black barns of Meliuzeievo the stars twinkled, and invisible threads of sympathy stretched between them and the cow as if there were cattle sheds in other worlds where she was pitied.

Everything was fermenting, growing, rising with the magic yeast of life. The joy of living, like a gentle wind, swept in a broad surge indiscriminately through fields and towns, through walls and fences, through wood and flesh. Not to be overwhelmed by this tidal wave, Yurii Andreievich went out into the square to listen to the speeches.

By now the moon stood high. Its light covered everything as with a thick layer of white paint. The broad shadows thrown by the pillared government buildings that surrounded the square in a semicircle spread on the ground like black rugs.

The meeting was being held across the square. Straining one
'
s ears, one could hear every word. But the doctor was stunned by the beauty of the spectacle; he sat down on the bench outside the fire station and instead of listening looked about him.