Doctor Zhivago (40 page)

"
That
'
s right, you take the Buisky road.
"

"
That
'
s what I say—Buisky—Buisky village. Of course I know it, that
'
s where you get off the main road, you turn right and right again. That
'
s to get to us, to Veretenniki. And your way must be left, away from the river, isn
'
t it? You know the river Pelga? Well, of course! That
'
s our river. You keep following the river, on and on, and away up on the cliff on the right, overhanging that same river Pelga, there
'
s our village, Veretenniki! It
'
s right up on the edge, and it
'
s stee-eep! It makes you giddy, honest to God it does. There
'
s a quarry down below, for millstones. That
'
s where my mother lives, in Veretenniki, and my two little sisters. Alenka and Arishka…Mother is a bit like you, Aunt Pelagia, she
'
s young and fair. Uncle Voroniuk! Please, Uncle Voroniuk, for the love of Christ, please, I beg you, for God
'
s sake…Uncle Voroniuk!
"

"
Well, what? Uncle, uncle, I know I
'
m not your aunt. What do you expect me to do? Am I mad? If I let you go that would be the end of me, amen, they
'
d put me up against a wall.
"

Pelagia Tiagunova sat looking thoughtfully out of the window, stroking Vasia
'
s reddish hair. Now and then she bent down to him and smiled as if she were telling him:
"
Don
'
t be silly. This isn
'
t something to talk to Voroniuk about in front of everyone. Don
'
t worry, have patience, it will be all right.
"

Peculiar things began to happen when they left Central Russia behind on their way east. They were going through a restless region infested with armed bands, past villages where uprisings had recently been put down.

The train stopped frequently in the middle of nowhere and security patrols checked the passengers
'
papers and luggage.

Once they stopped at night, but no one came in and no one was disturbed. Yurii Andreievich wondered if there had been an accident and went out to see.

It was dark. For no apparent reason the train had stopped between two stations, in a field, with a row of firs on either side of the track. Other passengers who had come out and were stamping their feet in the snow told Yurii Andreievich that there was nothing wrong, but that the engineer refused to go on, saying that this stretch was dangerous and should first be inspected by handcar. Spokesmen of the passengers had gone to reason with him and if necessary to grease his palm. It was said that sailors were also taking a hand in it and would undoubtedly get their way.

The snow at the head of the train was lit up at intervals, as from a bonfire, by fiery flashes from the smokestack or the glowing coals in the firebox. By this light several dark figures were now seen running to the front of the engine.

The first of them, presumably the engineer, reached the far end of the running board, leapt over the buffers, and vanished as if the earth had swallowed him. The sailors who were chasing him did exactly the same thing: they too flashed for a moment through the air and vanished.

Curious about what was going on, several passengers including Yurii Andreievich went to see.

Beyond the buffers, where the track opened out before them, they were met with an astonishing sight. The engineer stood in the snow up to his waist. His pursuers surrounded him in a semicircle, like hunters around their quarry; like him, they were buried in snow up to the waist.

"
Thank you, comrades, fine stormy petrels you are,
"
[14]
the engineer was shouting.
"
A fine sight, sailors chasing a fellow worker with guns! All because I said the train must stop. You be my witnesses, comrade passengers, you can see what kind of place this is. Anybody might be roaming around unscrewing the bolts. Do you think I
'
m worrying about myself, you God-damned bastards? To hell with you. It
'
s for you I was doing it, so that nothing should happen to you, and that
'
s all the thanks I get for my trouble! Go on, go on, why don
'
t you shoot? Here I am. You be my witnesses, comrade passengers, I
'
m not running away.
"

Bewildered voices rose from the group.
"
Pipe down, old man…They don
'
t mean it…Nobody would let them…They don
'
t really mean it ...
"
Others urged him on:
"
That
'
s right, Gavrilka, stand up for yourself! Don
'
t let them bully you!
"

The first sailor to scramble out of the snow was a red-haired giant with a head so huge that it made his face look flat. He turned to the passengers and spoke in a deep, quiet, unhurried voice with a Ukrainian accent, like Voroniuk
'
s, his composure oddly out of keeping with the scene.

"
Beg pardon, what
'
s all this uproar about? Be careful you don
'
t catch a chill in this cold, citizens. It
'
s windy. Why not go back to your seats and keep warm?
"

The crowd gradually dispersed. The giant went to the engineer, who was still worked up, and said:

"
Enough hysterics, comrade engineer. Get out of the snow, and let
'
s get going.
"

Next day the train, creeping at a snail
'
s pace lest it run off the tracks, powdered by the wind with unswept snow, pulled up beside a lifeless, burned-out ruin. This was all that was left of the station, Nizhni Kelmes, its name still faintly legible on its blackened facade.

Beyond it lay a deserted village blanketed in snow. This too was damaged by fire. The end house was charred, the one next to it sagged where its corner timbers had fallen in; broken sleighs, fences, rusty pieces of metal, and smashed furniture were scattered all over the street; the snow was dirty with soot, and black patches of earth showed through the frozen puddles with half-burnt logs sticking out of them—all evidence of the fire and of the efforts to put it out.

The place was not in fact as dead as it looked; there were a few people still about. The stationmaster rose out of the ruins and the guard jumped down from the train and commiserated with him.
"
The whole place was burned down?
"

"
Good day to you, and welcome. Yes, we certainly had a fire, but it was worse than that.
"

"
I don
'
t follow.
"

"
Better not try.
"

"
You don
'
t mean Strelnikov!
"

"
I do.
"

"
Why? What had you done?
"

"
We didn
'
t do anything, it was our neighbors; we got it too for good measure. You see that village over there? Nizhni Kelmes is in the Ust-Nemdinsk county—it was all because of them.
"

"
And what crime had they committed?
"

"
Just about all the seven deadly sins: Dissolved their Poor Peasants
'
Committee, that
'
s one; refused to supply horses to the Red Army, that
'
s two (and they
'
re all Tartars, mind you, horsemen); resisted the mobilization decree, that makes three. Well, there you are.
"

"
Yes, I see. I quite see. So they were shelled?
"

"
Naturally.
"

"
From the armored train?
"

"
Of course.
"

"
That
'
s bad. All our sympathy. Still, it
'
s none of our business.
"

"
Besides, it
'
s an old story. And the news I have isn
'
t very good either. You
'
ll have to stop here for a couple of days.
"

"
You
'
re joking! I
'
m taking replacements to the front. This is an urgent matter.
"

"
I
'
m not joking at all. We
'
ve had a blizzard for a solid week—snowdrifts all along the line, and no one to clear it. Half the village has run away. I
'
ll put the rest of them on the job, but it won
'
t be enough.
"

"
Damn. What am I to do?
"

"
We
'
ll get it cleared, somehow.
"

"
How deep is the snow?
"

"
Not too bad. It varies. The worst patch is in the middle-about two miles long; we
'
ll certainly have trouble there. Farther on the forest has kept the worst of the snow off the tracks. And on this side it
'
s open country, so the wind has blown away some of it.
"

"
Hell, what a pain in the neck! I
'
ll mobilize all the passengers.
"

"
That
'
s what I was thinking.
"

"
We mustn
'
t use the sailors and Red Army men. But there
'
s a whole corps of labor conscripts—including the other passengers, there are about seven hundred in all.
"

"
That
'
s more than enough. We
'
ll start the moment we get the shovels. We
'
re a bit short of them, so we
'
ve sent to the near-by villages for more. We
'
ll manage.
"

"
God, what a blow! Do you think we can do it?
"

"
Of course we can. With plenty of troops you can take a city, they say, and this is only a bit of tracks. Don
'
t worry.
"

Clearing the line took three days, and all the Zhivagos, even Niusha, took part in it. They were the best three days of their journey.

The landscape had a withdrawn, secretive quality. It made one think of Pushkin
'
s story about the Pugachev uprising and of some places described by Aksakov. The ruins added to the air of mystery; so did the wariness of the remaining villagers, who, afraid of informers, avoided the passengers and were silent even among themselves.

The workers were divided into gangs, with the labor conscripts and the civilians kept apart. Armed soldiers guarded each working group.

The tracks were cleared in several places at the same time by separate gangs. Mounds of snow between the sections hid the gangs from one another and were left untouched until the last.

The workers spent all day in the open, going back only to sleep. The days were clear and frosty, and the shifts were short because there were not enough shovels. It was sheer pleasure.

Zhivago
'
s section of the track had a fine view. The country to the east dipped down into a valley and rose in gentle hills as far as the horizon.

On the top of a hill there was a house exposed to all the winds; its park must have been luxuriant in summer but could not give it any shelter now with its frosty lacework.

The snow smoothed and rounded all contours. It could not quite conceal the winding bed of a stream which in spring would rush down to the viaduct below the railway bank but at present was tucked up in the snow like a child in its cot with its head under the eiderdown.

Was anyone living in the house on the hill, Zhivago wondered, or was it standing empty and falling into ruins, held by some land committee? What had happened to the people who had once lived there? Had they fled abroad? Or been killed by the peasants? Or had they been popular and were they allowed to settle in the district as technical specialists? If they had stayed, had they been spared by Strelnikov or shared the fate of the kulaks?