Doctor Zhivago (71 page)

Once he thought he heard voices near him and was terrified, imagining that he was going mad. Crying with self-pity, he complained in a soundless whisper that Heaven had abandoned him.
"
Why hast Thou cast me off, O Light everlasting, and cast me down into the darkness of hell?
"

Suddenly he realized that he was not delirious, that he no longer had his clothes on, that he had been washed and was in a clean shirt, lying not on the sofa but in a freshly made bed, and that sitting beside him, leaning over him, her hair mingling with his and her tears falling with his own, was Lara. He fainted with joy.

He had complained that Heaven had cast him off, but now the whole breadth of heaven leaned low over his bed, holding out two strong, white, woman
'
s arms to him. His head swimming with joy, he fell into a bottomless depth of bliss as one who drops unconscious.

All his life he had been active, doing things about the house, looking after patients, thinking, studying, writing. How good it was to stop doing, struggling, thinking, to leave it all for a time to nature, to become her thing, her concern, the work of her merciful, wonderful, beauty-lavishing hands.

His recovery was rapid. Lara fed him, nursed him, surrounded him with her care, and her dazzling loveliness, her questions and answers, whispered in a warm, gentle voice, were always present.

Their subdued conversations, however casual, were as full of meaning as the dialogues of Plato.

Even more than by what they had in common, they were united by what separated them from the rest of the world. They were both equally repelled by what was tragically typical of modern man, his textbook admirations, his shrill enthusiasms, and the deadly dullness conscientiously preached and practiced by countless workers in the field of art and science in order that genius should remain a great rarity.

Their love was great. Most people experience love without becoming aware of the extraordinary nature of this emotion. But to them—and this made them exceptional—the moments when passion visited their doomed human existence like a breath of eternity were moments of revelation, of continually new discoveries about themselves and life.

"
Of course you must go back to your family. I won
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t keep you a day more than necessary. But just look at what is going on. As soon as we became part of Soviet Russia we were sucked into its ruin. To keep going, they take everything from us. You have no idea of how much Yuriatin has changed while you were ill. Our supplies are sent to Moscow—for them it
'
s a drop in the ocean, all these shipments simply vanish down a bottomless pit—and in the meantime nothing is left to us. There are no mails, there is no passenger service, all the trains are used for bread. There
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s a lot of grumbling going on in town, as there was before the Haida uprising, and once again, the Cheka is savagely putting down the slightest sign of discontent.

"
How could you travel, weak as you are, nothing but skin and bones? Do you really imagine you could go on foot? You would never get there. When you are stronger, it will be different.

"
I won
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t presume to give you advice, but in your place I would take a job for the time being. Work at your own profession—they
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d like that. You might get something in the regional health service.

"
You
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ll have to do something. Your father was a Siberian millionaire who committed suicide, your wife is the daughter of a local landowner and industrialist, you were with the partisans and you ran away. You can
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t get around it—you left the ranks of the revolutionary army, you
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re a deserter. Under no circumstances must you remain idle. I am not in a much better position myself. I
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ll have to do something too. I
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m living on a volcano as it is.
"

"
How do you mean? What about Strelnikov?
"

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It
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s precisely because of him. I told you before that he has many enemies. Now that the Red Army is victorious those non-Party soldiers who got too near the top and knew too much are done for. Lucky if they
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re only thrown out and not killed so as to leave no trace. Pasha is particularly vulnerable; he is in very great danger. You know he was out in the East. I
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ve heard he
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s run away. He
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s in hiding. They
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re hunting for him. But don
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t let
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s talk about it. I hate crying, and if I say another word about him I know I
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ll howl.
"

"
You were very much in love with him? You still are?
"

"
I married him, he
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s my husband, Yurochka. He has a wonderful, upright, shining personality. I am very much at fault. It isn
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t that I ever did him any harm, it wouldn
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t be true to say that. But he is so outstanding, so big, he has such immense integrity—and I
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m no good at all, I
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m nothing in comparison. That
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s where my fault lies. But please let
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s not talk about it now. I
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ll tell you more some other time, I promise you I will.

"
How lovely your Tonia is. Just like a Botticelli. I was there when she had her baby. We got on terribly well. But let
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s not talk about that either just at the moment!

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As I was saying, let
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s both get jobs. We
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ll go out to work every morning, and at the end of the month we
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ll collect our salaries in billions of rubles. You know, until quite recently the old Siberian bank notes were still valid. Then they were declared invalid and for a long time, all the time you were ill, we had no currency at all! Just imagine! Well, we managed somehow. Now they say a whole trainload of new bank notes has arrived, at least forty carfuls! They are printed on big sheets in two colors, red and blue, and divided into little squares like postage stamps. The blue squares are worth five million rubles each and the red ones ten. They are badly printed, they fade and the colors are smudged.
"

"
Yes, I
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ve seen that kind of money. It was put into circulation in Moscow just before we left.
"

"
Why were you so long in Varykino? Is there anybody there? I thought there wasn
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t a soul, it was deserted. What kept you so long?
"

"
I was cleaning your house with Katenka. I thought you
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d go there first thing and I didn
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t want you to see it in the state it was in.
"

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Why, what kind of state is it in? Is it so bad?
"

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It was untidy, dirty, and we put it straight.
"

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How evasively terse! I feel there
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s something you are not telling me. But just as you like, I won
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t try to get it out of you. Tell me about Tonia. What did they call the little girl?
"

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Masha, in memory of your mother.
"

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Tell me all about them.
"

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Please, not now. I
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ve told you, I still can
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t talk about it without crying.
"

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That Samdeviatov who lent you the horse, he
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s an interesting character, don
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t you think?
"

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Very.
"

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I know him quite well, you know. He was in and out of the house when we lived there. It was all new to us and he helped us to settle in.
"

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I know, he told me.
"

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You must be great friends. Is he trying to help you, too?
"

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He positively showers me with kindness! I don
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t know what I should do without him.
"

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I can imagine! I suppose you
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re on informal, comradely terms. Does he run after you much?
"

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All the time! Naturally!
"

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And you like him? Sorry. I shouldn
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t have asked you that. I
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ve got no business to question you. That was going too far! I apologize.
"

"
Oh, that
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s all right! I suppose what you really mean is, what kind of terms are we on? Is there anything more between us than friendship? Of course there isn
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t! He has done a tremendous amount for me, I am enormously in his debt, but if he gave me my weight in gold, if he gave his life for me, it wouldn
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t bring me a step nearer to him. I have always disliked men of that kind, I have nothing whatever in common with them. These resourceful, self-confident, masterful characters—in practical things they are invaluable, but in matters of feeling I can think of nothing more horrible than all this impertinent, male complacency! It certainly isn
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t my idea of life and love! More than that, morally Anfim reminds me of someone else, of someone infinitely more repulsive. It
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s his fault that I
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ve become what I am.
"

"
I don
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t understand. What do you think you are? What have you got in mind? Explain to me. You are the best person in the world.
"

"
How can you, Yurochka! I am talking seriously, and you pay me compliments as though we were in a drawing room. What am I like? There
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s something broken in me, there
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s something broken in my whole life. I discovered life much too early, I was made to discover it, and I was made to see it from the very worst side—a cheap, distorted version of it—through the eyes of a self-assured, elderly parasite, who took advantage of everything and allowed himself whatever he fancied.
"

"
I think I understand. I thought there was something. But wait a moment. I can imagine your suffering as a child, a suffering much beyond your years, the shock to your inexperience, a very young girl
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s sense of outrage. But all that is in the past. What I mean is that it isn
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t for you to make yourself unhappy about it now, it
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s for people who love you, people like myself. It
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s I who should be tearing my hair because I wasn
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t with you to prevent it, if it really makes you unhappy. It
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s a curious thing. I think I can be really jealous—deadly, passionately jealous—only of my inferiors, people with whom I have nothing in common. A rival whom I look up to arouses entirely different feelings in me. I think if a man whom I understood and liked were in love with the same woman as I am I wouldn
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t feel a grievance, or want to quarrel with him, I would feel a sort of tragic brotherhood with him. Naturally, I wouldn
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t dream of sharing the woman I loved. But I would give her up and my suffering would be something different from jealousy—less raw and angry. It would be the same if I came across an artist who was doing the same sort of thing as I do and doing it better. I would probably give up my own efforts, I wouldn
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t want to duplicate his, and there would be no point in going on if his were better.

"
But that wasn
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t what we were talking about. I don
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t think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don
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t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn
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t revealed its beauty to them.
"

"
It
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s this beauty I
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m thinking of. I think that to see it your imagination has to be intact, your vision has to be childlike. That is what I was deprived of. I might have developed my own view of life if I hadn
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t, right from the beginning, seen it stamped in someone else
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s vulgar distortion. And that isn
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t all. It
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s because of the intrusion into my life, right at the start, of this immoral, selfish nonentity that when later on I married a man who was really big and remarkable, and who loved me and whom I loved, my marriage was destroyed.
"