Doctor Zhivago (6 page)

Yusupka was the son of Gimazetdin, the janitor at the block of tenements where Tiverzin lived. Tiverzin had taken the boy under his wing, and this added fuel to Khudoleiev
'
s hostility.

"
Is that the way to hold a file, you Asiatic?
"
bellowed Khudoleiev, dragging Yusupka by the hair and pummelling the back of his neck.
"
Is that the way to strip down a casting, you slit-eyed Tartar?
"

"
Ouch, I won
'
t do it any more, mister, ow, I won
'
t do it any more, ouch, it hurts!
"

"
He
'
s been told a thousand times: first adjust the mandrel and then screw up the chuck, but no, he must do it his own way! Nearly broke the spindle, the bastard.
"

"
I didn
'
t touch the spindle, honest I didn
'
t.
"

"
Why do you tyrannize the boy?
"
asked Tiverzin, elbowing his way through the crowd.

"
It
'
s none of your business,
"
Khudoleiev snapped.

"
I
'
m asking you why you tyrannize the boy.
"

"
And I
'
m telling you to move off before there
'
s trouble, you socialist meddler. Killing
'
s too good for him, such scum, he nearly broke my spindle. He should thank his lucky stars he
'
s still alive, the slit-eyed devil—all I did was tweak his ears and pull his hair a bit.
"

"
So you think he should be beheaded for this. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, really, an old foreman like you—you
'
ve got gray hair but you still haven
'
t learned sense.
"

"
Move on, move on, I tell you, while you
'
re still in one piece. I
'
ll knock the stuffing out of you, preaching at me, you dog
'
s arse. You were made on the tracks, you jellyfish, under your father
'
s very nose. I know your mother, the slut, the mangy cat, the crumpled skirt!
"

What happened next was over in a minute. Both men seized the first thing that came to hand on the lathe benches where heavy tools and pieces of iron were lying about, and would have killed each other if the crowd had not rushed in to separate them. Khudoleiev and Tiverzin stood with their heads bent down, their foreheads almost touching, pale, with bloodshot eyes. They were so angry that they could not utter a word. They were held firmly, their arms gripped from behind. Once or twice they tried to break free, twisting their bodies and dragging their comrades who were hanging on to them. Hooks and buttons went flying, their jackets and shirts slipped off, baring their shoulders. Around them was a ceaseless uproar.

"
The chisel! Take the chisel away from him, he
'
ll smash his head in. Easy now, easy now, Piotr old man, or we
'
ll break your arm! What are we playing around with them for! Drag them apart and put them under lock and key and there
'
s an end to it.
"

With a superhuman effort Tiverzin suddenly shook off the men who clung to him and, breaking loose, dashed to the door. They started after him but, seeing that he had changed his mind, left him alone. He went out, slamming the door, and marched off without turning around. The damp autumn night closed in on him.
"
You try to help them and they come at you with a knife,
"
he muttered, striding on unconscious of his direction.

This world of ignominy and fraud, in which an overfed lady had the impertinence to stare right through a crowd of working-men and where a drink-sodden victim of such an order found pleasure in torturing his comrades—this world was now more hateful to him than ever before. He hurried on as though his pace might hasten the time when everything on earth would be as rational and harmonious as it was now inside his feverish head. He knew that all their struggles in the last few days, the troubles on the line, the speeches at meetings, the decision to strike—not carried out yet but at least not cancelled—were separate stages on the great road lying ahead of them.

But at the moment he was so worked up that he wanted to run all the way without stopping to draw breath. He did not realize where he was going with his long strides, but his feet knew very well where they were taking him.

It was not until much later that Tiverzin learned of the decision, taken by the strike committee after he had left the underground shelter with Antipov, to begin the strike that very night. They decided then and there which of them was to go where and which men would be called out. At the moment when the whistle of the engine repair shop blew, as though coming from the very depths of Tiverzin
'
s soul, hoarsely at first and then gradually clearing, a crowd was already moving from the depot and the freight yard. Soon it was joined by the men from the boiler room, who had downed tools at Tiverzin
'
s signal.

For many years Tiverzin thought that it was he alone who had stopped work and traffic on the line that night. Only much later, at the trial, when he was charged with complicity in the strike but not with inciting it, did he learn the truth.

People ran out asking:
"
Where is everybody going? What
'
s the signal for?
"
—
"
You
'
re not deaf,
"
came from the darkness.
"
It
'
s a fire. They
'
re sounding the alarm. They want us to put it out.
"
—
"
Where
'
s the fire?
"
—
"
There must be a fire or they wouldn
'
t be sounding the alarm.
"

Doors banged, more people came out. Other voices were heard.
"
Fire? Listen to the ignorant lout! It
'
s a strike, that
'
s what it is, see? Let them get some other fools to do their dirty work. Let
'
s go, boys.
"

More and more people joined the crowd. The railway workers were on strike.

Tiverzin went home two days later, unshaven, drawn with lack of sleep, and chilled to the bone. Frost, unusual at this time of year, had set in the night before, and Tiverzin was not dressed for winter. The janitor, Gimazetdin, met him at the gate.

"
Thank you, Mr. Tiverzin,
"
he babbled in broken Russian.
"
You didn
'
t let Yusupka come to harm. I will always pray for you.
"

"
You
'
re crazy, Gimazetdin, who
'
re you calling Mister? Cut it out and say what you have to say quickly, you see how cold it is.
"

"
Why should you be cold? You will soon be warm, Kuprian Savelich. Me and your mother Marfa Gavrilovna brought a whole shedful of wood from the freight station yesterday—all birch—good, dry wood.
"

"
Thanks, Gimazetdin. If there
'
s something else you want to tell me let
'
s have it quickly. I
'
m frozen.
"

"
I wanted to tell you not to spend the night at home, Savelich. You must hide. The police have been here asking who comes to the house. Nobody comes, I said, my relief comes, I said, the people from the railway but no strangers come, I said, not on your life.
"

Tiverzin was unmarried and lived with his mother and his younger married brother. The tenements belonged to the neighboring Church of the Holy Trinity. Among the lodgers were some of the clergy and two
artels
,
or associations, of street hawkers—one of butchers, the other of greengrocers—but most of them were workers on the Moscow-Brest railway.

It was a stone house. All around the dirty and unpaved courtyard ran a wooden passageway. Out of it rose a number of dirty, slippery outside staircases, reeking of cats and cabbage. On the landings were privies and padlocked storerooms.

Tiverzin
'
s brother had fought as a conscript in the war and had been wounded at Wafangkou. Now he was convalescing at the military hospital in Krasnoyarsk, and his wife and two daughters had gone there to see him and to bring him home (the Tiverzins, hereditary railway workers, travelled all over Russia on official passes). The flat was quiet; only Tiverzin and his mother lived in it at present.

It was on the second floor. On the landing outside there was a water butt, filled regularly by the water carrier. Tiverzin noticed as he came up that the lid of the butt had been pushed sideways and a tin mug stood on the frozen surface of the water.
"
Prov must have been here,
"
he thought, grinning.
"
The way that man drinks, his guts must be on fire,
"
Prov Afanasievich Sokolov, the church psalmist, was a relative of Tiverzin
'
s mother.

Tiverzin jerked the mug out of the ice and pulled the handle of the doorbell. A wave of warm air and appetizing vapors from the kitchen came out to him.

"
You
'
ve got a good fire going, Mother. It
'
s nice and warm in here.
"

His mother flung herself on his neck and burst into tears. He stroked her head and, after a while, gently pushed her aside.

"
Nothing ventured, nothing won, Mother,
"
he said softly.
"
The line
'
s struck from Moscow to Warsaw.
"

"
I know, that
'
s why I
'
m crying. They
'
ll be after you, Kuprinka, you
'
ve got to get away.
"

"
That nice boy friend of yours, Piotr, nearly broke my head!
"
He meant to make her laugh but she said earnestly:
"
It
'
s a sin to laugh at him, Kuprinka. You should be sorry for him, the poor wretch, the drunkard.
"

"
Antipov
'
s been arrested. They came in the night, searched his flat, turned everything upside down, and took him away this morning. And his wife Daria
'
s in hospital with the typhus. And their kid, Pasha, who
'
s at the
Realgymnasium
,
is alone in the house with his deaf aunt. And they
'
re going to be evicted. I think we should have the boy to stay with us. What did Prov want?
"

"
How did you know he came?
"

"
I saw the water butt was uncovered and the mug on the ice—sure to have been Prov guzzling water, I said to myself.
"

"
How sharp you are, Kuprinka. Yes, he
'
s been here. Prov—Prov Afanasievich. Came to borrow some logs—I gave him some. But what am I talking about, fool that I am. It went clean out of my head—the news Prov brought. Think of it, Kuprinka! The Tsar has signed a manifesto and everything
'
s to be changed—everybody
'
s to be treated right, the peasants are to have land, and we
'
re all going to be equal with the gentry! It
'
s actually signed, he says, it
'
s only got to be made public. The Synod
'
s sent something to be put into the Church service, a prayer of thanks or something. He told me what it was, but I
'
ve forgotten.
"

Pasha Antipov, whose father had been arrested as one of the organizers of the strike, went to live with the Tiverzins. He was a clean, tidy boy with regular features and red hair parted in the middle: he was always slicking it down with a brush
"
and straightening his tunic or the school buckle on his belt. He had a great sense of humor and an unusual gift of observation and kept everyone in fits with his clever imitations of everything he heard and saw.