Doctor Zhivago (58 page)

"
He
'
s a fine one for speeches, your old man! Deputy Miliukov is nothing to him,
"
said Goshka Riabikh to his friend Terentii Galuzin, who sat next to him, in a tipsy voice amidst the loud, drunken voices at the table.
"
He certainly is a fine fellow! But I suppose it
'
s not for nothing he
'
s working so hard. I expect he
'
ll earn you an exemption from the draft with his speeches.
"

"
Shame on you, Goshka! How can you think such a thing! Get me exempted indeed. I
'
d like to see him try! I
'
ll get my notification the same day you get yours, and that
'
ll be that. We
'
ll serve in the same unit. They
'
ve kicked me out of school, the bastards. Mother
'
s eating her heart out. I suppose I won
'
t get a commission now.… As for Father, he certainly knows how to make a speech. He hits it off every time. And the extraordinary thing is, it
'
s a natural gift he has. He
'
s had no formal education.
"

"
Have you heard about Sanka Pafnutkin?
"

"
Yes. Is it really such a terrible disease?
"

"
Incurable. He
'
ll end up with it in his spine. It
'
s his own fault. We warned him not to go. You have to be very careful whom you get mixed up with.
"

"
What will happen to him now?
"

"
It
'
s tragic. He wanted to shoot himself. He
'
s been called up, he
'
s having his medical now in Ermola
ï
. I suppose they
'
ll take him. He said he
'
d join the partisans—
'
to avenge the ills of society,
'
he said.
"

"
You know, Goshka, you talk about infectious diseases, but if you don
'
t go to them you might get another disease.
"

"
I know what you mean. I suppose you know it from personal experience. But that isn
'
t a disease, it
'
s a secret vice.
"

"
I
'
ll punch your nose for saying things like that, Goshka. That
'
s a nice way to talk to a friend, you rotten liar!
"

"
Calm down, it was only a joke. What I wanted to tell you was this—I went to Pazhinsk for Easter, and there was a visiting lecturer there, an anarchist, very interesting he was. He talked about the Liberation of the Personality. I liked that, it was good stuff. I
'
ll join the anarchists, damned if I won
'
t. There
'
s an inner force in us, he said. Sex, he said, and character are the manifestations of animal electricity. How do you like that? A genius, he was.… But I
'
m pretty loaded. People bawling their heads off all around, it
'
s enough to deafen a man. I can
'
t stand it any longer, so shut up, Terioshka, dry up, I tell you.
"

"
What you were saying about that electric force—I
'
ve heard about that. I was thinking of ordering an electric truss from Petersburg—cash on delivery—I saw it in an advertisement.
'
To increase your vigor,
'
it said. But then there was another revolution, so there were other things to think about.
"

Terentii did not finish his sentence. The roar of drunken voices was drowned by a loud, rumbling explosion not far away. For a moment the din at the table stopped. Then it broke out much louder and more confused. Some people jumped up from their seats, and those who were least unsteady remained on their feet. Others tried to stagger away but slumped under the table and at once began to snore. Women screamed. There was a general uproar.

Vlas Pakhomovich stood looking around for the culprit. At first he thought that the rumble had come from somewhere in the village, perhaps even from somewhere quite close to the tables. The veins in his neck stood out, his face went purple, and he bawled:
"
Who is the Judas in our ranks? Who has committed this outrage? Who
'
s been throwing hand grenades around? I
'
ll throttle him with my own hands, the reptile, even if it
'
s my own son. Citizens, we will not allow anyone to play such jokes on us. We must cordon off the village. We
'
ll find the provocateur, we won
'
t let him get away.
"

At first they listened to him, then their attention was distracted by a pillar of black smoke slowly rising up into the sky from the county office building in Maly Ermola
ï
, and they all rushed to the edge of the ravine to see what was happening in the valley.

The building was on fire. Several recruits—one of them barefoot and naked except for his trousers—ran out of the building with Colonel Strese and the other officers of the draft board. Mounted Cossacks and militiamen, leaning low out of their saddles and swinging their nagaikas, their horses writhing under them like snakes, galloped back and forth through the village, hunting for someone. Many people were running up the road to Kuteiny, pursued by the urgent flurry of the church bells ringing the alarm.

Event followed event with terrifying speed. At dusk Colonel Strese, apparently convinced that his quarry had left Ermolaï, rode up with his Cossacks to Kuteiny, surrounded the village with guards, and began to search every house and every farm.

Half the recruits were by now dead drunk. They had stayed on at the party and were snoring slumped on the ground or with their heads on the tables. By the time it became known that the militia were in the village it was already dark.

Several young men took to their heels, made their way through back yards to the nearest barn, and, kicking and jostling each other, crawled underneath the floor through a narrow opening at the bottom of the wall. In the dark and the commotion they had not been able to make out whose barn it was, but now, judging by the smell of fish and kerosene, it seemed to be one used as a warehouse by the village shop.

The young men had nothing on their conscience and it was foolish of them to hide; most of them had merely run away on the spur of the moment, because they were drunk and had lost their heads. A few, however, had kept company that now seemed to them compromising and might, they were afraid, lead to their undoing if it were known. It was true that their friends were nothing worse than hooligans, but you never knew. They knew that everything had a political angle in those days. Hooliganism was considered a sign of black reaction in the Soviet zone, while in the White zone it was regarded as Bolshevism.

They found that they were not alone in the barn; others had got in before them. The space between the ground and the floor was crammed with people from both villages. Those from Kuteiny were dead drunk. Some were snoring and grinding their teeth and moaning in their sleep, and others were being sick. It was pitch-dark and airless, and the stench was terrible. To conceal their hide-out, those who had come last had plugged the opening through which they had crowded with stones and earth. After a time the snores and grunts ceased. There was complete silence. The drunks had settled down to sleep quietly. Only in one corner was there an urgent, persistent whispering, where Terentii and Goshka huddled in panic with Koska Nekhvalenykha, a quarrelsome, heavy-handed bully from Ermolaï.

"
Not so loud,
"
Koska was saying.
"
You
'
ll give us all away, you devil. Can
'
t you hear—Strese
'
s crowd are prowling up and down. They
'
ve been to the end of the street, now they
'
re coming back. There they are. Don
'
t breathe or I
'
ll strangle you.… Lucky for you they
'
ve gone by.… What the devil did you have to come here for? What did you have to hide for, blockhead? Who on earth would have laid a finger on you?
"

"
I heard Goshka yelling
'
Hide,
'
so I crawled in here.
"

"
Goshka
'
s got good reason to hide. His whole family is in trouble, they
'
re all under suspicion. They
'
ve got relatives working at the railway yards in Khodatskoie, that
'
s why.… Don
'
t fidget, keep still, you fool. People have been throwing up and crapping all over the place; if you move you
'
ll get the mess all over us. Can
'
t you smell the stink? Do you know why Strese is racing around the village? He
'
s looking for people from outside, from Pazhinsk, that
'
s what he
'
s doing.
"

"
How did all this happen, Koska? How did it all begin?
"

"
Sanka started it—Sanka Pafnutkin. We were all at the recruiting office, lined up naked waiting for the doctor. When Sanka
'
s turn came he wouldn
'
t get undressed. He was a bit drunk when he came into the office. The clerk told him politely to take his clothes off, even saying
'
you
'
to him. Sanka snapped his head off.
'
I won
'
t undress,
'
he says,
'
I won
'
t show my private parts to everybody.
'
As if he were ashamed. And then he sidles up to the clerk and hits him in the jaw. And then, believe it or not, before you could so much as blink, Sanka bends down, grabs the office table by the leg, and turns it over. Bang it goes on the floor with everything that
'
s on it, inkstand and army lists and all! Then Strese comes in shouting:
'
I
'
m not putting up with hooligans. I
'
m not having any bloodless revolution here. I
'
ll teach you to be disrespectful to the law in an official place. Who
'
s the ringleader?
'
"

"
Sanka yells:
'
Grab your things, comrades. We
'
re in for it,
'
and he goes to the window and puts his fist through it. I pick up my things and run after him, putting them on as I run. Out he runs into the street and goes like the wind. I went after him, and so did one or two others. We all ran as fast as our legs would carry us, and they came after us yelling and shouting. But if you ask me what it
'
s all about—nobody can make head or tail of it.
"

"
But what about the bomb?
"

"
What about it?
"

"
Well, who threw it? The bomb or the grenade or whatever it was.
"

"
My God! You don
'
t think we did?
"

"
Who did, then?
"

"
How should I know? It must have been someone else. Somebody sees all this hullabaloo going on and says to himself:
'
Why shouldn
'
t I blow the place up while the racket is going on—they
'
ll suspect the others.
'
It must have been someone political, one of those politicals from Pazhinsk, the place is full of them.… Quiet! Shut up! Can
'
t you hear—Strese
'
s men are coming back. That
'
ll be the end of us. Keep quiet, I tell you.
"

Voices could be heard approaching from down the street; boots creaked, spurs clanked.

"
Don
'
t argue. You can
'
t fool me,
"
came the crisp commanding voice of the Colonel speaking with Petrograd distinctness.
"
I am certain that there was somebody talking over there.
"