Doctor Zhivago (48 page)

They liked and they marvelled at everything, most of all at the unceasing chatter of their quaint old driver, in whose speech archaic Russian forms, Tartar idioms, and local oddities of diction were punctuated with obscurities of his own invention.

Whenever the foal lagged behind, the mare stopped and waited. The foal would catch up with her in graceful, wave-like bounds, and then, walking up to the cart clumsily on its long legs set too close together, it would stretch its long neck and push its tiny head under the shaft to nurse.

"
But I don
'
t understand,
"
Antonina Alexandrovna shouted to her husband, slowly, for fear that her teeth, which chattered with the shaking of the cart, should bite off the tip of her tongue at some sudden jolt.
"
Can this be the same Bacchus that Mother used to tell us about? You remember all that stuff about the blacksmith who was disembowelled in a fight and made himself a set of new bowels? Bacchus Iron-Belly. Of course I know it
'
s only a story, but can it have been told about him? Is he the same Bacchus?
"

"
No, of course not. To begin with, as you say, it
'
s only a story, a legend, and then Mother told us that even the legend was over a hundred years old when she heard it. But don
'
t talk so loud. You don
'
t want to hurt the old man
'
s feelings.
"

"
He won
'
t hear anything, he
'
s deaf. And if he did, he wouldn
'
t understand—he
'
s not quite right in the head.
"

"
Hey, Feodor Nefeodich!
"
the old man shouted to his horse, addressing it for some reason by a male name and patronymic, although he knew as well as his passengers did that it was a mare.
"
Curse this heat! Like unto the children of Abraham in the Persian furnace! Gee-up, you unredeemed devil! It
'
s you I
'
m talking to, you bungler.
"

Sometimes, he would suddenly burst into snatches of old songs composed in the former Krueger factories.

"
Goodbye, main office,

Goodbye, shaft and mine.

The master
'
s bread is stale to me

And I am sick of drinking water.

A swan is swimming past the shores,

He makes furrows in the water.

It isn
'
t wine that makes me sway

It is because Vania is going into the army.

But I, Masha, I won
'
t blunder.

But I, Masha, am not a fool,

I
'
ll go to the town of Seliaba,

And work for Sentetiurikha.
"

"
Eh, you Godforsaken beast. Look at that carrion. I give her the whip and she gives me the lip! Eh, Fedia Nefedia, are you making up your mind to go?—That forest, it
'
s called the taiga, there
'
s no end to it. And there
'
s no end of peasant folk inside it, the Forest Brotherhood is there.—Eh, Fedia Nefedia, have you stopped again, you devil?
"

All at once he turned and looked Antonina Alexandrovna straight in the eye.

"
Do you really think, young woman, that I didn
'
t know who you were? You
'
re simple-minded, young lady, that I can see. May I fall dead if I didn
'
t recognize you! Certainly I recognized you! Couldn
'
t believe my eyes—you
'
re the living image of Grigov.
"
(This was his version of Krueger
'
s name.)
"
You wouldn
'
t be his granddaughter, would you? Who could tell a Grigov if not me! I
'
ve spent my life working for him. Did every kind of job for him—worked in the mines as a woodman, and at the winch above ground, and in the stables.—Gee-up, get a move on! Stopped again, like she had no legs! Angels in China! Can
'
t you hear I
'
m talking to you?
"

"
Well now, you were asking if I
'
m that same blacksmith Bacchus. What a simpleton you are, little mother, such big eyes and a lady, but a fool. Your Bacchus—he was called Postanogov, Postanogov Iron-Belly—he went to his grave more than fifty years ago. But my name is Mekhonoshin. Our Christian names are the same but our surnames are different.
"

Little by little, the old man told them in his own words what they had already heard from Samdeviatov about the Mikulitsyns. He called them Mikulich and Mikulichna. He spoke of the latter as the manager
'
s second wife and of his first wife as an
"
angel,
"
a
"
white cherub.
"
When he came to the partisan leader, Liberius, and learned that his fame had not yet reached Moscow and that the Forest Brotherhood was unknown there, he could hardly believe it.

"
They haven
'
t heard? They haven
'
t heard of Comrade Forester? Angels in China, then what has Moscow got ears for?
"

Evening was coming on. Their shadows, growing longer and longer, ran ahead of them. They were driving through a flat, treeless stretch. Here and there, in lonely clusters, stood tall stringy stalks of goosefoot, of willow herb and thistle tipped with flowering tufts. Their ghostlike contours, widely spaced, loomed like mounted guards keeping watch over the plain.

Far ahead of them, the plain abutted a tall range of hills. They stood across the road like a wall, beyond which there was perhaps a ravine or a stream. It was as though the sky over there were enclosed by a rampart, and the road were leading to its gate.

A long, one-story white house emerged at the top of the ridge.

"
See the lookout up on the hill?
"
said Bacchus.
"
That
'
s where your Mikulich and Mikulichna live. And down below there
'
s a gully, Shutma it
'
s called.
"

Two rifle shots rang out from the hills, followed by rolling echoes.

"
What
'
s that? It wouldn
'
t be partisans shooting at us, would it, little grandfather?
"

"
Bless you, no! Partisans! That
'
s Stepanych scaring the wolves away in the Shutma.
"

Their first meeting with the Mikulitsyns took place in the yard of the manager
'
s house. It was a painful scene that began in silence and became noisily confused.

Elena Proklovna was coming home across the yard from a walk in the woods. The rays of the setting sun, as golden as her golden hair, trailed behind her from tree to tree through the wood. She wore a light summer dress. She was hot from her walk and was wiping her face with her handkerchief. Her straw hat hung at her back from an elastic around her bare throat.

Her husband was coming to meet her from the ravine; he had just climbed up from it with his gun, which he meant to clean because he had noticed that there was something wrong with it.

Suddenly, into this peaceful setting Bacchus rolled up smartly with a loud clatter of cart wheels over the cobbles, bringing his surprise.

The passengers got out, and Alexander Alexandrovich, hemming and hawing and taking off and putting on his hat, began to explain.

Their hosts were struck dumb with amazement. Their genuine speechlessness lasted for several minutes; so did the sincere and appalled confusion of their miserable guests, who were burning with shame. The situation could not have been plainer, whatever might have been said, not only to those directly involved but also to Sashenka, Niusha, and Bacchus. Their painful embarrassment seemed to communicate itself even to the mare, the foal, the golden rays of the setting sun, and the gnats that swarmed around Elena Proklovna and settled on her face and neck.

The silence was finally broken by Mikulitsyn.
"
I don
'
t understand. I don
'
t understand a thing and I never will. What do you think this is? The south, where the Whites are, and plenty of bread? Why did you pick on us? What on earth has brought you here—here, of all places?
"

"
Has it occurred to you, I wonder, what a responsibility this is for Averkii Stepanovich?
"

"
Don
'
t interrupt, Lenochka. Yes, she
'
s quite right. Did you stop to think what a burden you would be imposing on us?
"

"
But heavens above! You misunderstand us. There is no question of intruding on you, of upsetting your peaceful existence. All we want is a very small thing, a corner in any old empty, tumble-down building and a strip of land that happens to be going to waste because nobody wants it, so that we can grow vegetables. And a cartload of firewood from the forest when there
'
s no one to see us take it. Is this really asking so much, is it such an imposition?
"

"
True, but the world is a big place. What does this have to do with us? Why should we be chosen for this honor, rather than anyone else?
"

"
Because we
'
ve heard of you and we hoped that you
'
d have heard of us, so that we would not be coming to complete strangers.
"

"
Ah! So it
'
s because of Krueger! Because you are related to him! But how can you even bring yourselves to admit such a thing at a time like this?
"

"
I wonder, do you understand? Precisely because you
'
re related to Krueger you should have spared us the pleasure of your acquaintance.
"

"
Lenochka, don
'
t meddle. My wife is absolutely right. Precisely because you
'
re related.
"

Yurii Andreievich had had no time to compare Samdeviatov
'
s portrait with the original. During the awkward scene the doctor forgot Samdeviatov
'
s description. Later, after things had calmed down, he was struck by the likeness and the aptness of the portrait. However, Anfim Efimovich
'
s characterization of the manager was incomplete. Yurii Andreievich supplemented it later.

Averkii Stepanovich pronounced the sound
l
in the Polish manner, like a
w
.
He actually never was separated from his pipe, which was an integral part of his face and which contributed to his style of speech, because he composed his words and ideas while relighting it and making it draw.

He had regular features. He tossed his hair back and took great strides, planting his feet squarely on the ground. In summer he wore a Russian shirt tied with a silk tasselled cord. He was the kind of man who, in the old days, might have become a pirate on the Volga. In more recent times such people have created the type of the eternal student, the dreamer turned schoolmaster.

Mikulitsyn had devoted his youth to the movement for emancipation, to the revolution, and his only fear had been that he would not live to see it or that when it came it would be too moderate, not bloody enough for him. Now it had come, surpassing his wildest dreams, but he, the born and faithful champion of the proletariat who had been among the first to set up a Factory Committee in the Sviatogor Bogatyr, and to hand the place over to the workers, had been left high and dry; instead of being in the thick of things, he was in a remote village from which the workers—some of whom were Mensheviks—had fled! And now what was this ridiculous nonsense on top of everything? These uninvited remnants of Krueger
'
s family seemed to him fate
'
s crowning joke, a deliberate trick, which was more than he could bear.

"
This is beyond all reason. Do you realize the danger you will put me in? I suppose I must be mad. I don
'
t understand. I don
'
t understand a thing and never will.
"