Doctor Zhivago (52 page)

Yurii Andreievich sat at the far end of the room. In front of him were several reports on local land statistics and some reference books on the ethnography of the region. He had also asked for two books on the history of the Pugachev rebellion, but the librarian in the silk blouse had whispered through her handkerchief that no one reader could have so many volumes at the same time and that he would have to give back some of the journals and reference books before taking out the others that interested him.

So he applied himself to his unsorted pile of books with more haste and industry than before in order to set aside those that he really needed and exchange the rest for the historical books he wanted. He was leafing through the manuals and going over the chapter headings, wholly concentrated on his work and not looking about him. The crowd of readers did not distract him. He had had a good look at his neighbors; those on his left and right were fixed in his mind, he knew they were there without raising his eyes and he had the feeling that they would not leave before him, just as the houses and churches outside the window would not move from their places.

The sun, however, did move. It had shifted from the east corner of the room and was now shining through the windows in the south wall straight into the eyes of the nearest readers.

The librarian who had a cold came down from her dais and went over to the windows. They had pleated white curtains that softened the light pleasantly. She drew them all except at the last window, which was still in the shade. Coming to it, she pulled the cord to open the transom and had a fit of sneezing.

After she had sneezed ten or twelve times Yurii Andreievich realized that she was Mikulitsyn
'
s sister-in-law, one of the Tuntseva girls mentioned by Samdeviatov. Like other readers, he raised his head and looked in her direction.

Now he noticed a change in the room. At its farther end there was a new reader. Yurii Andreievich recognized Antipova at once. She was sitting with her back to him, speaking in a low voice with the sneezing librarian, who stood leaning over her. The conversation seemed to have a good effect on the librarian. It cured her instantly, not only of her annoying cold but of her nervous tenseness. With a warm, grateful glance at Antipova, she took the handkerchief she had been ceaselessly pressing to her mouth away from her face, put it in her pocket, and went back to her place behind the partition, happy, self-confident, and smiling.

The incident marked by this touching detail was noticed by several people in different parts of the room; they too smiled, looking at Antipova with approval. From these trivial signs Yurii Andreievich gathered that Antipova was known and liked in the town.

His first impulse was to get up and speak to her. But a shyness and lack of simplicity, entirely alien to his nature, had, in the past, crept into his relationship with her and now held him back. He decided not to disturb her and not to interrupt his work. To keep away from the temptation of looking at her he turned his chair sideways, so that its back was almost against his table; he tried to concentrate on his books, holding one in his hand and another on his knees.

But his thoughts had wandered far from his studies. Suddenly he realized that the voice he had once heard in a dream on a winter night in Varykino had been Antipova
'
s. The discovery dumfounded him, and startling his neighbors he jerked his chair back to be able to see Antipova. He began to look at her.

He saw her in a quarter view from the rear. She wore a light checked blouse with a belt and read with complete absorption, like a child, her head bent slightly over her right shoulder. Occasionally she stopped to think, looked up at the ceiling or straight in front of her, then again propped her cheek on her hand and copied excerpts from the volume she was reading, writing with a swift, sweeping movement of her pencil in her notebook.

Yurii Andreievich noticed again what he had observed long ago in Meliuzeievo.
"
She does not want to please or to look beautiful,
"
he thought.
"
She despises all that aspect of a woman
'
s nature; it
'
s as though she were punishing herself for being lovely. But this proud hostility to herself makes her ten times more irresistible.

"
How well she does everything! She reads not as if reading were the highest human activity, but as if it were the simplest possible thing, a thing that even animals could do. As if she were carrying water from a well, or peeling potatoes.
"

These reflections calmed him. A rare peace descended upon his soul. His mind stopped darting from subject to subject. He could not help smiling; Antipova
'
s presence affected him the same way as it had affected the nervous librarian.

No longer worrying about the angle of his chair nor afraid of distractions, he worked for an hour or so with even greater concentration than before her arrival. He went through the whole pile of books in front of him, setting aside those he needed most, and even had time to read two important articles he found in them. Then, deciding that he had done enough for the day, he collected his books and took them back to the desk. With an easy conscience and without any ulterior motive, he reflected that after his hard morning
'
s work he deserved to take time off to see an old friend and that he could legitimately allow himself his pleasure. But when he stood up and looked around the room, Antipova was no longer there.

The books she had just returned were still lying on the counter where he had put his own. They were textbooks of Marxism. She must be re-educating herself politically before going back to her teaching job.

On her order slips, which stuck out from between the pages of the books, was her address. Yurii Andreievich took it down, surprised by its oddity:
"
Merchant Street, opposite the house with sculptures.
"
He asked another reader what this meant and was told that the expression
"
house with sculptures
"
was as familiar in Yuriatin as in Moscow the designation of a street by the name of its parish church, or the phrase
"
the Five Corners
"
in Petersburg.

The name referred to a dark, steel-gray house decorated with Caryatides and statues of the Muses holding cymbals, lyres, and masks. A merchant had built it in the last century as his private theater. His heirs had sold it to the Merchants
'
Guild, which gave its name to the street, and the whole neighborhood was known by the name of the house. It was now used by the Party
'
s Town Committee, and the lower part of its facade, where posters and programs had been displayed in the old days, was now covered with government proclamations and decrees

It was a cold, windy afternoon at the beginning of May. Yurii Andreievich, having finished what he had to do in town and having looked in at the library, suddenly changed his plans and decided to go see Antipova.

The wind often held him up, barring his way with clouds of dust and sand. He averted his head, closed his eyes, waited for the dust to stop blowing, and continued on his way

Antipova lived at the corner of Merchant Street opposite the dark, blue-gray house with sculptures, which he now saw for the first time. It did indeed live up to its name, and there was something strange and disturbing about it.

Its entire top floor was surrounded by female mythological figures half as big again as human beings. Between two gusts of the dust storm it seemed to him as if all the women in the house had come out on the balcony and were looking down at him over the balustrade.

There were two doors into Antipova
'
s house, one from Merchant Street, the other around the corner from the alley. Not having noticed the front entrance, Yurii Andreievich went in from the side street.

As he turned in at the gate the wind whirled scraps and trash up into the sky, screening the yard from the doctor. Through this black curtain, hens, chased by a cock, fled clucking from under his feet.

When the dust settled the doctor saw Antipova by the well. She had filled two buckets and hung them on a yoke across her left shoulder. Her hair was hastily tied in a kerchief knotted in front to protect it from the dust, and she was holding her billowing skirt down between her knees. She started for the house, but was stopped by another gust that tore the kerchief from her head and carried it off to the far end of the fence where the hens were still cackling.

Yurii Andreievich ran after it, picked it up, and took it back to her at the well. Preserving her usual natural air, she did not, even by an exclamation, betray her amazement or embarrassment. All she said was:
"
Zhivago!
"

"
Larisa Feodorovna!
"

"
What on earth are you doing here?
"

"
Put your buckets down. I
'
ll carry them for you.
"

"
I never stop halfway, I never leave what I do unfinished. If it
'
s me you
'
ve come to see, let
'
s go.
"

"
Who else?
"

"
How should I know?
"

"
Anyway, let me take those buckets. I can
'
t just stand by while you work.
"

"
You call that work? Leave them alone. You
'
d only splash the stairs. Better tell me what brought you here. You
'
ve been around more than a year and you never found a moment to come till now.
"

"
How do you know?
"

"
Things get around. Moreover, I saw you in the reading room.
"

"
Why didn
'
t you speak to me?
"

"
Don
'
t tell me you didn
'
t see me.
"

Swaying a little under the weight of the lightly swinging buckets, she walked in front of him through the low arch of the entrance. Here she squatted quickly, setting the pails on the earth floor, took the yoke off her shoulder, straightened up, and dried her hands with a small handkerchief.

"
Come, I
'
ll take you through the inside passage to the front hall. It
'
s lighter. You
'
ll have to wait there a moment. I
'
ll take the buckets up the back stairs and tidy up a bit. I won
'
t be long. Look at our smart stairs—cast-iron steps with an openwork pattern. You can see everything through them from the top. It
'
s an old house. The shelling has shaken it up a bit, you can see where the masonry has come loose. See this crack in the brickwork? That
'
s where Katenka and I leave the key to the flat when we go out. Keep it in mind. You might come someday when I
'
m out—you can open the door and make yourself at home till I come back. You see, there it is, but I don
'
t need to use it now. I
'
ll go in the back way and open the door from inside. Our only trouble is rats. There are swarms and swarms of them, and you can
'
t get rid of them. It
'
s these old walls. Cracks and crevices all over the place. I stop up all the ratholes I can, but it doesn
'
t do much good. Perhaps you
'
d come one day and help me? The cracks between the skirting and the floor boards need stopping up. Yes? Well, you stay here in the hall and think about something. I won
'
t be long, I
'
ll call you in a minute.
"

While waiting, he looked around at the peeling walls and the cast-iron steps. He told himself:
"
In the reading room I thought she was absorbed in her reading with the ardor she would give to a real, hard physical task. Now I see that the reverse is also true: she carries water from the well as lightly and effortlessly as if she were reading. There is the same gracefulness in everything she does, as if she had taken a flying start early in life, way back in her childhood, and now everything she does follows this momentum, easily, naturally. This quality is in the line of her back when she bends down and in her smile as it parts her lips and rounds her chin, and in her words and thoughts.
"

"
Zhivago!
"
Antipova called down from the top landing.

He went up.

"
Give me your hand and do as I tell you. We have to go through two dark rooms piled with furniture. You might bump into something and hurt yourself.
"