Doctor Zhivago (55 page)

There were towns, villages, and Cossack settlements along the highway. It was the ancient post road, the oldest highway in Siberia. It cut through the towns like a knife, slicing them like a loaf of bread along the line of their main streets. As for the villages, it swept through them without a backward glance, scattering them right and left, leaving the rows of houses far behind it, or going around them in a broad arc or a sharp turn.

In the distant past, before the railway came to Khodatskoie, the mail was rushed along the highway by troikas. Caravans of tea, bread, and pig iron travelled one way, and convicts under guard, on foot, were driven the other. They walked in step, jangling their fetters—lost souls, desperadoes who filled one
'
s heart with terror. And around them the forests rustled, dark, impenetrable.

Those who lived along the highway were as one family. Friendships and marriages linked village to village and town to town. Khodatskoie stood at a crossing of the road and the railway; it had engine repair shops and other workshops connected with the upkeep of the line, and there, crowded into barracks, the poorest of the poor lived and wasted away and died. Political exiles who had technical qualifications and had served their term of hard labor came to work as skilled mechanics, and settled here.

The original Soviets, which had been set up all along the line, had long since been overthrown. For some time the region had been under the Siberian Provisional Government, but now it had fallen to Admiral Kolchak, who had given himself the title of
"
Supreme Ruler.
"

At one stretch the road had a long uphill climb disclosing an ever broader panorama. It seemed as if there would be no end to the slow ascent and to the widening of the horizon, but when the tired horses and passengers stopped for a rest they found that they had reached the summit of the hill. The road went on over a bridge and the river Kezhma swirled beneath it.

Beyond the river, on an even steeper rise, they could see the brick walls of the Vozdvizhensky Monastery. The road circled the hill of the monastery and zigzagged on through the outskirts of the town.

When it reached the center of the town it skirted the monastery grounds once again, for the green-painted iron door of the monastery gave on to the main square. The icon over the arched gate was framed by the legend in gold letters:
"
Rejoice, life-giving Cross, unconquerable victory of piety.
"

It was Holy Week, the end of Lent, and winter was almost over. The snow on the roads was turning black, betraying the beginning thaw, but on the roofs it was still white, and covered them as with tall hats.

To the boys who had climbed up to the belfry to watch the bell ringers, the houses below looked like small caskets and boxes jumbled close together. Little black people, hardly bigger than dots, walked toward the houses. Some could be recognized from the belfry by the way they moved. They stopped to read the decree of the Supreme Ruler, posted on the walls, announcing that three age groups were drafted.

Many unexpected things had happened in the night. It had turned unusually warm for the time of year. A drizzle was coming down, so fine and airy that it seemed to drift away in mist before it reached the earth. But this was an illusion. In reality there was enough rain water to stream, warm and swift, along the ground—which had turned black all over and glistened as if it sweated—and to wash it clean of the remaining snow.

Stunted apple trees, covered with buds, reached miraculously across the garden fences. Drops of water fell from them, and their arrhythmic drumming on the wooden pavements could be heard throughout the town.

Tomik, the puppy, chained up for the night in the photographer
'
s yard, squealed and yelped, and in the Galuzins
'
garden the crow, perhaps irritated by the noise, cawed loud enough to keep the whole town awake.

In the lower part of the town, three cartloads of goods had been taken to the merchant, Liubeznov, who refused to accept delivery, saying it was a mistake, he had never ordered the stuff. The draymen, arguing the lateness of the hour, begged him to put them up for the night, but he cursed and sent them to the devil and refused to open the gate. This row, too, could be heard from one end of the town to the other.

At the seventh canonical hour, at one in the morning by the clock, a dark low sweet humming drifted from the deepest of the monastery bells, which hardly stirred. It mixed with the dark drizzle in the air. It drifted from the bell, sinking and dissolving in the air, as a clump of earth, torn from the riverbank, sinks and dissolves in the water of the spring floods.

It was the night of Maundy Thursday. Almost indistinguishable in the distance, behind the network of rain, candles, lighting a face here, a forehead or a nose there, stirred and moved across the monastery yard. The fasting congregation was going to mass.

A quarter of an hour later, steps sounded on the wooden sidewalk coming from the church. This was Galuzina, the grocer
'
s wife, going home, although the service had only begun. She went at an uneven pace, now running, now slowing down and stopping, her kerchief over her head and her fur coat unbuttoned. She had felt faint in the stuffy church and had come out into the fresh air, but now she was ashamed and sorry that she had not stayed to the end, and because, for the second year now, she was not fasting in Lent. But this was not the chief cause of her worry. The mobilization order posted that day affected her poor, silly boy, Terioshka. She tried to drive the thought of it from her head, but the white patches in the darkness were there to remind her at every turn.

Her house was just around the corner, but she felt better out of doors and was not in a hurry to go back into the airless rooms.

She was upset by gloomy thoughts. Had she tried to think them all out aloud, one by one, she would not have had sufficient words or time enough till dawn. But out here, in the street, these comfortless reflections flew at her in clusters, and she could deal with all of them together, in the short while it took her to walk a few times from the monastery gate to the corner of the square and back.

It was almost Easter and there was not a soul in the house; they had all gone away, leaving her alone. Well, wasn
'
t she alone? Of course she was. Her ward Ksiusha didn
'
t count. Who was she, anyway? Could you ever know anyone
'
s heart? Perhaps she was a friend, or perhaps she was an enemy or a secret rival. She was supposed to be the daughter of her husband
'
s first wife by another marriage. Her husband, Vlas, said that he had adopted her. But suppose she was his natural daughter? Or suppose she wasn
'
t his daughter but something else? Could you ever see into a man
'
s heart? Though, to give Ksiusha her due, there was nothing wrong with her. She had brains, looks, manners—much more brains than either poor stupid Terioshka or her adoptive father!

So here she was, deserted for Holy Week. They had all scattered, everyone had gone his way.

Her husband was travelling up and down the highway making speeches to the new recruits, exhorting them to mighty feats of arms. Instead of looking after his own son, the fool, and saving him from his mortal peril!

And Terioshka too had dashed away from home on the eve of the great feast. He had gone to their relatives in Kuteiny village to amuse himself and forget his troubles. The poor boy had been expelled from school. They had kept him back an extra year in almost every other grade, and now that he was in the eighth they had to kick him out!

Oh, how depressing it all was! Oh, Lord! Why had everything gone so wrong? It was so disheartening, she felt like giving up, she had no wish to live. What had caused all this misery? Was it the revolution? No, oh no! It was the war. The war had killed off the flower of Russia
'
s manhood, now there was nothing but rotten, good-for-nothing rubbish left.

How different it had been in her father
'
s time! Her father had been a contractor. Sober, literate. They had lived off the fat of the land. She and her two sisters, Polia and Olia, as fine a pair of girls as you could hope to meet and as well matched as their names. And master carpenters had called on their father, every one a fine, upstanding man, and a good match. At one time, she and her sisters—things they would think of!—had got it into their heads to knit scarves in wool of six colors. And believe it or not, such good knitters were they that their scarves had become famous all over the province! And everything in those days had been fine and rich and seemly—church services and dances and people and manners—everything had rejoiced her heart, for all that her own family were simple people who came of peasant and worker stock. And Russia too had been a marriageable girl in those days, courted by real men, men who would stand up for her, not to be compared with this rabble nowadays. Now everything had lost its glamour, nothing but civilians left, lawyers and Yids clacking their tongues day and night. Poor old Vlas and his friends thought they could bring back those golden days by toasts and speeches and good wishes! But was this the way to win back a lost love? For that you had to move mountains!

By now she had crossed the square and walked as far as the market place more than once. From there her house was down the street on the left, but every time she came to it she changed her mind about going in and turned back into the maze of alleys adjoining the monastery.

The market place of Krestovozdvizhensk was as big as a field. In times gone by, it had been crowded on market days with peasants
'
carts. At one end of it was Eleninskaia Street; the other formed a sharp arc lined with one- or two-story buildings used for warehouses, offices, and workshops.

There, she remembered, in more peaceful times, Brukhianov, a boorish misogynist in spectacles and a long frock coat, who dealt in leather, oats and hay, cart wheels and harness, would read the penny paper as he sat importantly on a chair outside his great, four-panelled iron door.

And there, in a small dim window, a few pairs of berib-boned wedding candles and posies in cardboard boxes gathered dust for years, while in the small room at the back, empty of either furniture or goods except for a pile of large round cakes of wax, thousand-ruble deals were made by the unknown agents of a millionaire candle manufacturer who lived nobody knew where.

There, in the middle of the row of shops, was the Galuzins
'
large grocery store with its three windows. Its bare, splintery floor was swept morning, noon, and night with used tea leaves: Galuzin and his assistants drank tea all day long. And here Galuzina as a young married woman had often and willingly sat at the cash box. Her favorite color was a violet mauve, the color of church vestments on certain solemn days, the color of lilac in bud, the color of her best velvet dress and of her set of crystal wine glasses. It was the color of happiness and of her memories, and Russia too, in her prerevolutionary virginity, seemed to her to have been the color of lilac. She had enjoyed sitting at the cash box because the violet dusk in the shop, fragrant with starch, sugar, and purple black-currant caramels in glass jars, had matched her favorite color.

Here at the corner, beside the timber yard, stood an old, gray frame house which had settled on all four sides like a dilapidated coach. It had two stories and two entrances, one at either end. Each floor was divided in two; downstairs were Zalkind
'
s pharmacy on the right and a notary
'
s office on the left. Above the pharmacist lived old Shmulevich, a ladies
'
tailor, with his big family. The flat across the landing from Shmulevich, and above the notary, was crammed with lodgers whose trades and professions were stated on cards and signs covering the whole of the door. Here watches were mended and shoes cobbled; here Kaminsky, the engraver, had his workroom and two photographers, Zhuk and Shtrodakh, worked in partnership.

As the first-floor premises were overcrowded, the photographers
'
young assistants, Blazhein, a student, and Magidson, who retouched the photographs, had fixed up a darkroom at one end of the large woodshed in the yard. To judge by the angry red eye of the lamp winking blearily in the darkroom window, they were working there now. It was underneath this window that the puppy, Tomik, sat on his chain and yelped, so that you could hear him all along Eleninskaia Street.

"
There they all are in a pack, the whole Kehillah,
"
thought Galuzina as she passed the gray house.
"
It
'
s a den of filthy beggars.
"
And yet, she reflected at once, her husband carried his Jew-hating too far. After all, these people were not important enough to affect Russia
'
s destinies. Though, if you asked old Shmulevich why he thought the country was in such turmoil and disorder, he would twist and turn and contort his ugly face into a grin and say:
"
That
'
s Leibochka up to his tricks.
"