Doctor Zhivago (46 page)

"
I still can
'
t hear.
"

"
I said Samdeviatov is a form of San Donato. They say we are a branch of the Demidov family, the Princess Demidov San Donato. But it may be just a family legend. This place here is called Spirka
'
s Dell. It
'
s full of summer houses and amusement parks. Strange name, isn
'
t it?
"

Before them extended a field crisscrossed by branch tracks. Telegraph poles strode away to the horizon like giants in seven-league boots, and the broad winding ribbon of a highway competed in beauty with the tracks. It vanished beyond the horizon, reappeared in a broad arc at a turn, and again vanished.

"
That
'
s our famous highway. It runs right across Siberia. The convicts used to sing songs about it. Now it
'
s the operational base of the partisans.… You
'
ll like it here, you know, it
'
s not at all bad. You
'
ll get used to it. You
'
ll get to like the curiosities of the town. Our water pumps, for instance. The women queue up for water at the intersections, it
'
s their open-air club through the winter.
"

"
We are not going to live in town. We
'
re going to Varykino.
"

"
I know. Your wife told me. Still, you
'
ll be coming in to town on business. I guessed who your wife was the moment I saw her. She
'
s the living image of Krueger—eyes, nose, forehead—just like her grandfather. Everyone here remembers him.
"

There were round red oil tanks in the field, and large advertisements on wooden billboards. One of them caught the doctor
'
s eye twice. It bore the inscription:
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Moreau & Vetchinkin. Mechanical seeders. Threshing machines.
"

"
That was a good firm. Their agricultural machinery was first-rate.
"

"
I can
'
t hear. What did you say?
"

"
A good firm, I said. Can you hear? A good firm. They made agricultural machinery. It was a corporation. My father was a stockholder.
"

"
I thought you said he kept an inn.
"

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He did. That didn
'
t mean he couldn
'
t have stock. Very shrewd investments he made, too. He had money in the
'
Giant.
'
"

"
You sound as if you were proud of it.
"

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Of my father being shrewd? Of course I am.
"

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But what about your socialism?
"

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Good Lord, what has that got to do with it? Why on earth should a man, because he is a Marxist, be a drivelling idiot? Marxism is a positive science, a theory of reality, a philosophy of history.
"

"
Marxism a science? Well, it
'
s taking a risk, to say the least, to argue about that with a man who hardly knows. However—Marxism is too uncertain of its ground to be a science. Sciences are more balanced, more objective. I don
'
t know a movement more self-centered and further removed from the facts than Marxism. Everyone is worried only about proving himself in practical matters, and as for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of their infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore the truth. Politics doesn
'
t appeal to me. I don
'
t like people who don
'
t care about the truth.
"

Samdeviatov took the doctor
'
s words for the fooling of a witty eccentric. He listened with a smile, and did not contradict him.

The train was still being shunted. Every time it reached the
"
go
"
signal, an elderly woman with a milk can tied to her belt, who was on duty at the switch, shifted her knitting, bent down, and moved the lever, sending the train back. As it slowly rolled away she sat up and shook her fist at it.

Samdeviatov took this personally.
"
Why does she do that?
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he wondered.
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Her face is familiar. Can it be Tuntseva? No, I don
'
t think it can be Glasha. She looks too old. Anyway, what has she got against me? I suppose, what with Mother Russia in the throes of her upheavals and the railways in a muddle, the poor old thing is having a bad time, so she is taking it out on me. Oh, to hell with her!—Why should I rack my brains about her?
"

At long last the woman waved her flag, shouted something to the engineer, and let the train past the signals, out into the open; but as the fourteenth car sped by she stuck her tongue out at the two men chatting on the floor, who had got on her nerves. Once again Samdeviatov wondered.

When the outskirts of the burning town, the round oil tanks, telegraph poles, and advertisements had vanished in the distance, giving way to a landscape of woods and low hills with occasional glimpses of the winding road, Samdeviatov said:

"
Let
'
s go back to our seats. I have to get off soon and your station is the one after the next. Be careful you don
'
t miss it.
"

"
I suppose you know all this area very well?
"

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Like my own back yard. Up to a hundred-mile radius. I
'
m a lawyer, you know. Twenty years of practice. I
'
m always travelling about on business.
"

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Even now?
"

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Certainly.
"

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But what kind of business can there be, these days?
"

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Anything you please. Old unfinished deals, business operations, breaches of contract. I
'
m up to my ears in it.
"

"
But haven
'
t all such activities been abolished?
"

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Of course they have, nominally. But in practice people are asked to do all sorts of things, sometimes mutually exclusive. There
'
s the nationalization of all enterprises, but the municipal soviet needs fuel, and the Provincial Economic Council wants transportation. And everyone wants to live. This is a transitional period, when there is still a gap between theory and practice. At a time like this you need shrewd, resourceful people like myself. Blessed is the man who doesn
'
t see too much. Also an occasional punch on the jaw doesn
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t come amiss, as my father used to say. Half the province depends on me for its livelihood. I
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ll be dropping in at Varykino about timber one of these days. Not just yet, though. You can
'
t get there except by horse, and my horse is lame. Otherwise you wouldn
'
t catch me jolting along on this pile of scrap. Look at the way it crawls. Calls itself a train! I might be useful to you in Varykino. I know those Mikulitsyns of yours inside out.
"

"
Do you know why we are going there, what we want to do?
"

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More or less. I have an idea. Man
'
s eternal longing to go back to the land. The dream of living by the sweat of your brow.
"

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What
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s wrong with it? You sound disapproving.
"

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It
'
s naïve and idyllic, but why not? Good luck to you. Only I don
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t believe in it. It
'
s Utopian. Arts and craftsy!
"

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How do you think Mikulitsyn will receive us?
"

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He won
'
t let you in, he
'
ll drive you out with a broomstick, and he
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ll be quite right! He
'
s in a fine pickle as it is. Idle factories, workers gone, no means of livelihood, no food, and then you turn up. If he murders you, I won
'
t blame him!
"

"
There you are. You are a Bolshevik, and yet you yourself don
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t deny that what
'
s going on isn
'
t life—it
'
s madness, an absurd nightmare.
"

"
Of course it is. But it
'
s historically inevitable. It has to be gone through.
"

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Why is it inevitable?
"

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Are you a baby, or are you just pretending? Have you dropped from the moon? Gluttons and parasites sat on the backs of the starving workers and drove them to death, and you imagine things could stay like that? Not to mention all the other forms of outrage and tyranny. Don
'
t you understand the rightness of the people
'
s anger, of their desire for justice, for truth? Or do you think a radical change was possible through the Duma, by parliamentary methods, and that we can do without dictatorship?
"

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We are talking at cross-purposes, and even if we argued for a hundred years we
'
d never see eye to eye. I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness. But let
'
s drop the subject. To return to Mikulitsyn—if that
'
s what is in store for us, then why are we going? We should turn back.
"

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Nonsense. To begin with, Mikulitsyn is not the only pebble on the beach. And second, Mikulitsyn is kind to excess, almost criminally kind. He
'
ll make a fuss and refuse and resist, and then he
'
ll relent. He
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ll give you the shirt off his back and share his last crust of bread with you.
"
And Samdeviatov told Yurii Andreievich Mikulitsyn
'
s story.

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Mikulitsyn arrived here twenty-five years ago from Petersburg. He had been a student at the Technological Institute. He was deported and put under police supervision. He came here, got a job as manager at Krueger
'
s, and married. There were four sisters here in those days—one more than in Chekhov
'
s play—the Tuntsevas, Agrippina, Avdotia, Glafira, and Serafima. All the young men were after them. Mikulitsyn married the eldest.

"
Before long they had a son. His fool of a father, who worshipped freedom, gave him the unusual name Liberius. Liberius—Livka, for short—grew up a bit wild but he had all sorts of unusual talents. When the war came he was fifteen. He faked the date on his birth certificate and made off to the front as a volunteer. His mother, a sickly woman, couldn
'
t stand the shock. She took to her bed and didn
'
t get up again. She died the year before last, just before the revolution.

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At the end of the war Liberius came back as a lieutenant hero with three medals, and of course he was a thoroughly indoctrinated Bolshevik delegate from the front. Have you heard about the
'
Forest Brotherhood
'
?
"

"
No, I
'
m afraid not.
"

"
In that case there
'
s no sense in telling you the story, half the point would be lost. And there isn
'
t any point in your staring out of the window at the highway either. What
'
s so remarkable about the highways these days? The partisans. And what are the partisans? They are the backbone of the revolutionary army in the civil war. Two things account for the power of this army: the political organization that has taken over the leadership of the revolution, and the common soldier who after the last war refused to obey the old authorities. The partisan army was born of the union of the two. Most of them are middle peasants, but you find all sorts of people—poor peasants, unfrocked monks, sons of kulaks up in arms against their fathers. There are ideological anarchists, riffraff without identity papers, and high-school boys expelled for precocious skirt chasing. And then there are German and Austrian prisoners of war lured by the promise of freedom and repatriation. Well, one of the units of this great people
'
s army is called the Forest Brotherhood, and the Forest Brotherhood is commanded by Comrade Forester, and Comrade Forester is Livka, Liberius Averkievich, the son of Averkii Stepanovich Mikulitsyn.
"