Doctor Zhivago (61 page)

"
The people you worship go in for proverbs, but they
'
ve forgotten one proverb—
'
You can lead a horse to water but you can
'
t make it drink
'
—and they
'
ve got into the habit of liberating and of showering benefits on just those people who haven
'
t asked for them. I suppose you think I can
'
t imagine anything in the world more pleasant than your camp and your company. I suppose I have to bless you for keeping me a prisoner and thank you for liberating me from my wife, my son, my home, my work, from everything I hold dear and that makes life worth living for me!

"
There is a rumor going around that some unknown force—not Russian—has raided and sacked Varykino. Kamennodvorsky doesn
'
t deny it. They say your people and mine managed to escape. Apparently some sort of mythical slit-eyed warriors in padded coats and fur hats crossed the Rynva in a terrible frost, and calmly shot every living soul in the place and vanished as mysteriously as they had come. Do you know anything about it? Is it true?
"

"
Nonsense. All lies. Groundless rumors.
"

"
If you are as kind and generous as you claim to be when you lecture on the moral improvement of the soldiers, then let me go. I
'
ll go and look for my family—I don
'
t know where they are, I don
'
t even know whether they are alive or dead. And if you won
'
t do that, then shut up, for heaven
'
s sake, and leave me alone, because I am not interested in anything else and I won
'
t answer for myself if you go on. Anyway, the devil take it, haven
'
t I the right to go to sleep?
"

Yurii Andreievich lay down flat on the bunk, his face in his pillow, doing his utmost not to listen to Liberius justifying himself and comforting him once more with the prospect of a final victory over the Whites by the spring. The civil war would be over, there would be peace, liberty, and prosperity, and no one would dare to detain the doctor a moment longer. But until then he must be patient. After all they had gone through, and all the sacrifices they had made, and all that time they had been waiting, a few months mattered little, and anyhow, where could the doctor go at present? For his own good he must be prevented from going anywhere alone.

"
Just like a phonograph record, the devil!
"
Yurii Andreievich raged in silent indignation.
"
He can
'
t stop. Why isn
'
t he ashamed of chewing on the same cud all these years? How can he go on listening to the sound of his own voice, the wretched dopefiend? Day and night he goes on. God, how I hate him! As God is my witness, I
'
ll murder him someday!

"
Tonia, my darling, my poor child! Where are you? Are you alive? Dear Lord, she was to have her baby long ago. How did she get through the confinement? Have we got a son or a daughter? My dear ones, what is happening to all of you? Tonia, you are my everlasting reproach. Lara, I daren
'
t speak your name for fear of gasping out my life. O God! God!—And that loathsome, unfeeling brute is still talking! One day he
'
ll go too far and I
'
ll kill him, I
'
ll kill him.
"

The Indian summer was over. It was a clear, golden autumn day. At the western end of Fox
'
s Thicket the wooden turret of a blockhouse built by the Whites showed above the ground. Here Yurii Andreievich had arranged to meet Dr. Lajos, to discuss various service matters. He arrived on time and, waiting for his friend, strolled along the edge of the crumbling earthworks, climbed into the watchtower, and looked out of the slits in front of the now empty machine-gun nests at the wooded distance beyond the river.

The autumn had already clearly marked the frontiers between the coniferous and the deciduous trees. Between the gloomy, bristling walls of almost black pines the leafy thickets shone flame- and wine-colored like medieval towns with painted and gold-roofed palaces built of the timber cut down in the thickness of the forest.

The earth at the doctor
'
s feet, inside the trench and in the ruts of the forest road, was hard with ground frost and heaped with small dry willow leaves, curled up in little scrolls. The autumn smelled of these brown, bitter leaves and of many other things. Greedily he breathed in the mixed peppery smell of frostbitten apples, bitter dry twigs, sweetish damp earth, and the blue September mist that smoked like the fumes of a recently extinguished fire.

He did not hear Lajos come up behind him.

"
How are you, colleague?
"
Lajos said in German. They discussed their business.

"
There are three points. First, the court-martial of the vodka brewers; second, the reorganization of the field ambulance and the pharmacy; and third, my proposal for the treatment of mental illnesses. I don
'
t know whether you agree with me, my dear Lajos, but from what I observe we are going mad, and modern forms of insanity spread like an epidemic.

"
It
'
s a very interesting question. I
'
ll come to it in a moment. But first I
'
d like to mention something else. There is unrest in the camp. There is sympathy with the vodka brewers. Moreover, the men are worried about their families who are fleeing from the Whites. As you know, there
'
s a convoy coming, with wives, children, and old people, and many of the partisans have refused to leave the camp until it comes.
"

"
I know. We
'
ll have to wait for them.
"

"
And all this on the eve of the election of a joint commander for our unit and several others, so far independent of us. I think the only candidate is Comrade Liberius. But some of the young people are putting Vdovichenko forward. He is supported by a group, alien to us in spirit, connected with the vodka brewers—sons of shopkeepers and kulaks, deserters from Kolchak. They are particularly restless.
"

"
What do you think will happen to the vodka brewers?
"

"
I think they will be sentenced to be shot and be reprieved.
"

"
Well, let
'
s get down to business. First, the field ambulance.
"

"
All right. But I must tell you that I am not surprised at your suggestion for preventive psychiatry. I believe in it myself. We are faced with the rise and spread of a form of psychic illness that is typical of our time and is directly related to the contemporary upheavals. We have a case of it in the camp—Pamphil Palykh, a former private in the Tsarist army with a highly developed class instinct and devoted to the revolution. The cause of his trouble is precisely his anxiety for his family in the event of his being killed and of their falling into the hands of the Whites and being made to answer for him. It
'
s a very complex case. I believe his family is one of those who are coming in the convoy. I don
'
t know enough Russian to question him properly. You could find out from Angelar or Kamennodvorsky. He ought to be examined.
"

"
I know Palykh very well. At one time we often came across each other in the army soviet. Swarthy and cruel with a low forehead. I can
'
t think what good you find in him. He was always for extreme measures, harshness, execution. I
'
ve always found him repellent. All right, I
'
ll see what I can do about it.
"

It was a clear, sunny day; the weather had been still and dry for a whole week.

The usual rumble of noise hung over the large camp, like the distant roar of the sea. There were footsteps, voices, axes chopping wood, the ringing of anvils, the neighing of horses, the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks. Crowds of sunburned, smiling men with shining white teeth moved through the forest. Those who knew the doctor nodded to him, others passed him by without a greeting.

The men had refused to leave Fox
'
s Thicket until their families had caught up with them, but now the fugitives were expected shortly and preparations for the move were being made. Things were being cleaned and mended, crates nailed down, carts counted and checked over.

There was a large clearing in the middle of the wood where meetings were often held. It was a sort of mound or barrow on which the grass had been trodden down. A general meeting had been called that day for an important announcement.

Many of the trees in the forest had not yet turned; in its depths they were still fresh and green. The afternoon sun was setting behind the forest, piercing it with its rays, and the leaves, letting them through, glowed green like transparent bottle glass.

In an open space outside his tent Kamennodvorsky, the chief liaison officer, was burning papers, discarded rubbish from General Kappel
'
s records that had fallen into his hands, as well as papers from his own partisan files. The fire with the setting sun behind it was as transparent as the leaves; the flames were invisible and only the waves of shimmering heat showed that something was burning.

Here and there the woods were brilliant with ripe berries—bright tassels of lady
'
s smock, brick-red alderberries, and clusters of viburnum, shimmering from white to purple. Whirring their glassy wings, dragonflies as transparent as the flames and the leaves sailed slowly through the air.

Ever since his childhood Yurii Andreievich had been fond of woods seen at evening against the setting sun. At such moments he felt as if he too were being pierced by shafts of light. It was as though the gift of the living spirit were streaming into his breast, piercing his being and coming out at his shoulders like a pair of wings. The archetype that is formed in every child for life and seems for ever after to be his inward face, his personality, awoke in him in its full primordial strength, and compelled nature, the forest, the afterglow, and everything else visible to be transfigured into a similarly primordial and all-embracing likeness of a girl. Closing his eyes,
"
Lara,
"
he whispered and thought, addressing the whole of his life, all God
'
s earth, all the sunlit space spread out before him.

But everyday, current reality was still there, Russia was going through the October revolution, and he was a prisoner of the partisans. Absent-mindedly he went up to Kamennodvorsky
'
s bonfire.

"
Burning your records? Not finished yet?
"

"
There
'
s enough of this stuff to burn for days.
"

The doctor kicked a heap of papers with his foot. It was the White staff headquarters
'
correspondence. It occurred to him that he might come across some mention of Rantsevich. But all he saw were boring, out-of-date communiqués in code. He kicked another heap. It proved to be an equally dull collection of minutes of partisan meetings. A paper on top of the pile said:
"
Extra urgent. Re-furloughs. Re-election of members of draft board. Current business. In view of the fact that the charges against the schoolmistress of the village Ignatodvortsy have not been substantiated, the army soviet proposes ...
"

Kamennodvorsky took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to the doctor.

"
Here are your marching orders for the medical unit. The convoy with the partisans
'
families is quite near and the dissensions inside the camp will be settled by this evening, so we can expect to move any day now.
"

The doctor glanced at the paper and groaned:

"
But you
'
re giving me less transportation than last time and there are all those extra wounded. Those who can will have to walk; there are only a few of these. What am I to do with the stretcher cases? And the stores and the bedding and the equipment?
"

"
You
'
ll have to manage somehow. We must adjust ourselves to circumstances. Now another thing. It
'
s a request from all of us. Will you have a look at a comrade of ours—tried, tested, devoted to the cause and a splendid soldier. There
'
s something wrong with him.
"