Doctor Zhivago (32 page)

"
What are we arguing about? It
'
s so obvious that it makes you blush to have to prove it. It
'
s elementary. For centuries the mass of the people have lived impossible lives. Take any history textbook. Whatever it was called—feudalism and serfdom or capitalism and industrial workers, it was unnatural and unjust. This has been known for a long time, and the world has been preparing for an upheaval that would bring enlightenment to the people and put everything in its proper place.

"
You know perfectly well that it
'
s quite useless tinkering with the old structure, you have to dig right down to the foundations. I don
'
t say the whole building mayn
'
t collapse as a result. What of it? The fact that it
'
s frightening doesn
'
t mean it won
'
t happen. It
'
s a question of time. How can you dispute it?
"

"
That
'
s not the point, that
'
s not what I was talking about,
"
Alexander Alexandrovich said angrily, and the argument flared up.
"
Your Potpourris and Miroshkas are people without a conscience. They say one thing and do another. Anyway, where
'
s your logic? It
'
s a complete nonsequitur. No, wait a minute, I
'
ll show you something,
"
and he would begin hunting for some newspaper with a controversial article, banging the drawers of his desk and stimulating his eloquence with this noisy fuss.

Alexander Alexandrovich liked something to get in his way when he was talking; the distraction served as an excuse for his mumbling and his hems and haws. His fits of talkativeness came on him when he was looking for something he had lost—say, hunting for a matching snow boot in the dimly lighted cloakroom—or when he stood at the bathroom door with a towel over his arm, or when he was passing a heavy serving dish or pouring wine into the glasses of his friends.

Yurii Andreievich enjoyed listening to his father-in-law. He adored the familiar, old-Moscow singsong and the soft, purring Gromeko
r
'
s.

Alexander Alexandrovich
'
s upper lip with its little cropped mustache protruded above the lower lip in just the same way as his butterfly tie stuck out from his neck. There was something in common between the lip and the tie, and it somehow gave him a touching, childishly trusting look.

On the night of the party Shura Shlesinger appeared very late. She had come straight from a meeting and was wearing a suit and a worker
'
s cap. She strode into the room and, shaking everyone
'
s hand in turn, at once burst into complaints and accusations.

"
How are you, Tonia? Hello, Alexander. You must admit it
'
s disgusting. The whole of Moscow knows he
'
s back, everyone is talking about it, and I am the last to be told. Well, I suppose I
'
m not good enough. Where is he, anyway? Let me get at him, you surround him like a wall. Well, how are you? I
'
ve read it, I don
'
t understand a word, but it
'
s brilliant, you can tell at once. How are you, Nikolai Nikolaievich? I
'
ll be back in a moment, Yurochka, I
'
ve got to talk to you. Hello, young men. You
'
re here too, Gogochka, Goosey-Goosey-Gander
"
(this to a distant relative of the Gromekos
'
, an enthusiastic admirer of all rising talents, known as Goosey because of his idiot laugh and as the Tapeworm on account of his lankiness).
"
So you
'
re eating and drinking? I
'
ll soon catch up with you. Well, my friends, you
'
ve simply no idea what you
'
re missing. You don
'
t know anything, you haven
'
t seen a thing. If you only knew what
'
s going on! You go and have a look at a real mass meeting, with real workers, real soldiers, not out of books. Just try to let out a squeak to them about fighting the war to a victorious end! They
'
ll give you a victorious end! I
'
ve just been listening to a sailor—Yurochka, you
'
d simply rave! What passion! What single-mindedness!
"

Shura was interrupted time and again. Everyone shouted. She sat next to Yurii Andreievich, took his hand in hers, and, moving her face close to his, shouted like a megaphone above the din:

"
Let me take you along someday, Yurochka. I
'
ll show you real people. You must, you simply must get your feet on the ground, like Antaeus. Why are you staring at me like that? I
'
m an old war horse, didn
'
t you know? An old Bestuzhevist.
[12]
I
'
ve seen the inside of a prison, I
'
ve fought on the barricades.—Well of course, what did you think? Oh, we don
'
t know the people at all. I
'
ve just come from there, I was right in the thick of it. I
'
m collecting a library for them.
"

She had had a drink and was obviously getting tipsy. But Yurii Andreievich
'
s head was also spinning. He never noticed how it happened that Shura was now at one end of the room and he at the other; he was standing at the head of the table and apparently, quite unexpectedly to himself, making a speech. It took him some time to get silence.

"
Ladies and gentlemen…I should like…Misha! Gogochka! Tonia, what am I to do, they won
'
t listen! Ladies and gentlemen, let me say a word or two. Unprecedented, extraordinary events are approaching. Before they burst upon us, here is what I wish you: May God grant us not to lose each other and not to lose our souls. Gogochka, you can cheer afterwards, I haven
'
t finished. Stop talking in the corners and listen carefully.

"
In this third year of the war the people have become convinced that the difference between those on the front line and those at the rear will sooner or later vanish. The sea of blood will rise until it reaches every one of us and submerge all who stayed out of the war. The revolution is this flood.

"
During the revolution it will seem to you, as it seemed to us at the front, that life has stopped, that there is nothing personal left, that there is nothing going on in the world except killing and dying. If we live long enough to read the chronicles and memoirs of this period, we shall realize that in these five or ten years we have experienced more than other people do in a century. I don
'
t know whether the people will rise of themselves and advance spontaneously like a tide, or whether everything will be done in the name of the people. Such a tremendous event requires no dramatic proof of its existence. I
'
ll be convinced without proof. It
'
s petty to explore causes of titanic events. They haven
'
t any. It
'
s only in a family quarrel that you look for beginnings—after people have pulled each other
'
s hair and smashed the dishes they rack their brains trying to figure out who started it. What is truly great is without beginning, like the universe. It confronts us as suddenly as if it had always been there or had dropped out of the blue.

"
I too think that Russia is destined to become the first socialist state since the beginning of the world. When this comes to pass, the event will stun us for a long time, and after awakening we shall have lost half our memories forever. We
'
ll have forgotten what came first and what followed, and we won
'
t look for causes. The new order of things will be all around us and as familiar to us as the woods on the horizon or the clouds over our heads. There will be nothing else left.
"

He said a few more things, and by then he had sobered up completely. As before, he could not hear clearly what people were saying, and answered them pointlessly. He saw that they liked him, but could not rid himself of the sadness that oppressed him. He said:

"
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate your feelings, but I don
'
t deserve them. It
'
s wrong to bestow love in a hurry, as though otherwise one would later have to give much more of it.
"

They all laughed and clapped, taking it for a deliberate witticism, while he did not know where to escape from his forebodings of disaster and his feeling that despite his striving for the good and his capacity for happiness, he had no power over the future.

The guests began to leave. They had long, tired faces. Their yawns, snapping and unsnapping their jaws, made them look like horses.

Before going, they drew the curtains and pushed the windows open. There was a yellowish dawn in the wet sky filled with dirty, pea-colored clouds.
"
Looks as if there
'
s been a storm while we were chattering,
"
said someone.
"
I was caught in the rain on my way here, I only just made it,
"
Shura confirmed.

In the deserted street it was still dark and the drip-drip of the water from the trees alternated with the insistent chirruping of drenched sparrows.

There was a roll of thunder, as if a plow had been dragged right across the sky. Then silence. Then four loud, delayed thuds, like overgrown potatoes in autumn being flung out with a shovel from the soft ground.

The thunder cleared the dusty, smoke-filled room. Suddenly the element of life became distinguishable, as apprehensible as electric currents, air and water, desire for happiness, earth, sky.

The street filled with the voices of the departing guests. They had begun a heated argument in the house and continued arguing just as hotly in the street. Gradually the voices grew fainter in the distance and died out.

"
How late it is,
"
said Yurii Andreievich.
"
Let
'
s go to bed. The only people I love in the world are you and Father.
"

August had gone by and now September was almost over. The inevitable was approaching. Winter was near and, in the human world, something like a state of suspended animation, which was in the air, and which everyone was talking about.

This was the time to prepare for the cold weather, to store up food and wood. But in those days of the triumph of materialism, matter had become a disembodied idea, and the problems of alimentation and fuel supply took the place of food and firewood.

The people in the cities were as helpless as children in the face of the unknown—that unknown which swept every established habit aside and left nothing but desolation in its wake, although it was itself the offspring of the city and the creation of city-dwellers.

All around, people continued to deceive themselves, to talk endlessly. Everyday life struggled on, by force of habit, limping and shuffling. But the doctor saw life as it was. It was clear to him that it was under sentence. He looked upon himself and his milieu as doomed. Ordeals were ahead, perhaps death. Their days were counted and running out before his eyes.

He would have gone insane had he not been kept busy by the details of daily life. His wife, his child, the necessity to earn money, the humble daily ritual of his practice—these were his salvation.

He realized that he was a pygmy before the monstrous machine of the future; he was anxious about this future, and loved it and was secretly proud of it, and as though for the last time, as if in farewell, he avidly looked at the trees and clouds and the people walking in the streets, the great Russian city struggling through misfortune—and was ready to sacrifice himself for the general good, and could do nothing.

He most often saw the sky and the people from the middle of the street when he crossed the Arbat at the corner of Old Coachyard Row, near the pharmacy of the Russian Medical Society.

He resumed his duties at his old hospital. It was still called the Hospital of the Holy Cross, although the society of that name had been dissolved. So far no one had thought of a new name for the hospital.

The staff had already divided up into camps. To the moderates, whose obtuseness made the doctor indignant, he seemed dangerous; to those whose politics were advanced, not Red enough. Thus he belonged to neither group, having moved away from the former and lagging behind the latter.