Doctor Zhivago (75 page)

Yurii Andreievich had come home from the station tired. It was his day off, and usually he slept enough that day to last him the nine others of the ten-day week. He sat sprawling on the sofa, occasionally half reclining or stretching full length. But although he listened to Sima through a mist of oncoming drowsiness, her reflections delighted him.
"
Of course, she
'
s taken it all from Uncle Nikolai,
"
he thought.
"
But how intelligent she is, how talented.
"

He got up and went to the window. It looked out on the yard, like the window of the room next door from which only unintelligible whispers could now be heard.

The weather was getting worse, and it was growing dark in the yard. Two magpies flew in from the street and fluttered around looking for a place to settle, their feathers ruffled by the wind. They perched on the lid of the trash bin, flew up onto the fence, flew down to the ground, and walked about the yard.

"
Magpies mean snow,
"
thought the doctor. At the same moment Sima said aloud in the other room:

"
Magpies mean news. You
'
ll have guests, or else a letter.
"

A little later someone pulled the handle of the doorbell, which Yurii Andreievich had mended a few days earlier. Lara came out from behind the curtain and walked swiftly through to the hall to open the door. Yurii Andreievich heard her talking with Sima
'
s sister Glafira.

"
You
'
ve come for your sister? Yes, she
'
s here.
"

"
No, I didn
'
t come for her, though we might as well go home together if she is ready. I
'
ve brought a letter for your friend. It
'
s lucky for him that I once had a job at the post office. I don
'
t know how many hands it
'
s been through, it
'
s from Moscow and it
'
s been five months on the way. They couldn
'
t find the addressee. At last they thought of asking me and I knew, of course—he once came to me for a haircut.
"

The long letter, written on many sheets of paper, crumpled and soiled in its tattered envelope, which had been opened at the post office, was from Tonia. The doctor found it in his hands without knowing how it had got there; he had not noticed Lara handing it to him. When he began reading it he was still conscious of being in Yuriatin, in Lara
'
s house, but gradually, as he read on, he lost all realization of it. Sima came out, greeted him, and said goodbye; he said the right things automatically but paid no attention to her and never noticed when she left the house. Gradually he forgot more and more completely where he was or what surrounded him.

"
Yura,
"
Antonina Alexandrovna wrote,
"
do you know that we have a daughter? We have christened her Masha in memory of your mother, Maria Nikolaievna.

"
Now something entirely different. Several prominent people, professors who belonged to the Cadet Party and Right-wing Socialists, Miliukov, Kizevetter, Kuskov, and several others including your Uncle Nikolai, my father, and the rest of us, are being deported abroad.

"
This is a misfortune, especially in your absence, but we must accept it and thank God that our exile takes so mild a form when at this terrible time things could have been so much worse for us. If you were here, you would come with us. But where are you? I am sending this letter to Antipova
'
s address, she
'
ll give it to you if she finds you. I am tortured by not knowing if the exit permit we are getting as a family will be extended to you later on, when, if God is willing, you are found. I have not given up believing that you are alive and that you will be found. My loving heart tells me that this is so, and I trust it. Perhaps by then, by the time you reappear, conditions in Russia will be milder and you will manage to get a separate visa for yourself and we shall all be together once again in the same place. But as I write this, I don
'
t believe in the possibility of such happiness.

"
The whole trouble is that I love you and that you don
'
t love me. I keep trying to discover the meaning of this judgment on me, to interpret it, to justify it. I look into myself, I go over our whole life together and everything I know about myself, and I can
'
t find the beginning, and I can
'
t remember what it is I did or how I brought this misfortune on myself. I have a feeling that you misjudge me, that you take an unkind view of me, that you see me as in a distorting mirror.

"
As for me, I love you. If only you knew how much I love you! I love all that is unusual in you, the good with the bad, and all the ordinary traits of your character, whose extraordinary combination is so dear to me, your face ennobled by your thoughts, which otherwise might not seem handsome, your great gifts and intelligence which, as it were, have taken the place of the will that is lacking. All this is dear to me, and I know no man who is better than you.

"
But listen, do you know what? Even if you were not so dear to me, even if I did not like you so much, even then the distressing truth of my coldness would not have been disclosed to me, even then I would have believed that I love you. Out of sheer terror before the humiliating, destructive punishment which failure to love is, I would unconsciously have shunned the realization that I do not love you. Neither I nor you would ever have learned it. My own heart would have concealed it from me, for failure to love is almost like murder and I would have been incapable of inflicting such a blow on anyone.

"
Nothing is definitely settled yet, but we are probably going to Paris. I
'
ll be in those distant lands where you were taken as a child and where Father and my uncle were brought up. Father sends you his greetings. Sasha has grown a lot, he is not particularly good-looking but he is a big, strong boy and whenever we speak of you he cries bitterly and won
'
t be comforted. I can
'
t go on. I can
'
t stop crying. Well, goodbye. Let me make the sign of the cross over you and bless you for all the years ahead, for the endless parting, the trials, the uncertainties, for all your long, long, dark way. I am not blaming you for anything, I am not reproaching you, do as you please with your life, I
'
ll be happy if all is well with you.

"
Before we left the Urals—what a terrible and fateful place it turned out to be for us—I got to know Larisa Feodorovna fairly well. I am thankful to her for being constantly at my side at a difficult time and for helping me through my confinement. I must honestly admit that she is a good person, but I don
'
t want to be a hypocrite—she is my exact opposite. I was born to make life simple and to look for sensible solutions; she, to complicate it and create confusion.

"
Farewell, I must stop. They have come for the letter, and it
'
s time I packed. Oh, Yura, Yura, my dear, my darling, my husband, the father of my children, what is happening to us? Do you realize that we
'
ll never, never see each other again? Now I
'
ve written it down, do you realize what it means? Do you understand, do you understand? They are hurrying me and it
'
s as if they had come to take me to my death. Yura! Yura!
"

Yurii Andreievich looked up from the letter with absent, tearless eyes, dry with grief, ravaged by suffering. He could see nothing around him, he was not conscious of anything.

Outside it was snowing. The wind swept the snow aside, ever faster and thicker, as if it were trying to catch up with something, and Yurii Andreievich stared ahead of him out of the window, as if he were not looking at the snow but were still reading Tonia
'
s letter and as if what flickered past him were not small dry snow crystals but the spaces between the small black letters, white, white, endless, endless.

Involuntarily he groaned and clutched his breast. He felt he was going to faint, hobbled the few steps to the sofa, and fell down on it unconscious.

Winter had settled in. It was snowing hard as Yurii Andreievich walked back from the hospital. Lara met him in the hall.

"
Komarovsky is here,
"
she said in a low, hoarse voice. She stood looking bewildered as if she had been struck.

"
Where? Here?
"

"
No, of course not. He came this morning and said he would come back tonight. He
'
ll be here soon. He wants to have a word with you.
"

"
Why has he come?
"

"
I didn
'
t understand all he said. He said he was going to the Far East and that he had come out of his way to see us. Particularly to see you and Pasha. He talked a great deal about both of you. He insists that we are in mortal danger, all three of us, you and Pasha and I. And that he alone can save us, provided we do as he says.
"

"
I will go out. I don
'
t want to see him.
"

Lara burst into tears and tried to throw herself at his feet and clasp his knees, but he forced her to get up.

"
Please don
'
t go, for my sake,
"
she implored him.
"
It isn
'
t that I
'
m frightened of being alone with him, but it
'
s so painful. Spare me from having to see him alone. Besides, he is practical, experienced—he might really have some advice to give us. Your aversion for him is natural, but please put your feelings aside. Don
'
t go.
"

"
What is the matter with you, darling? Don
'
t be so upset. What are you trying to do? Don
'
t fall on your knees. Get up now, and cheer up. You really must get rid of this obsession—he
'
s frightened you for life. You know I
'
m with you. I
'
ll kill him if necessary, if you tell me to.
"

Night fell about half an hour later. It was completely dark. It was half a year now since all the ratholes had been stopped up. Yurii Andreievich watched for new ones, plugging them up in time. They also kept a big, fluffy tomcat who spent his time in immobile contemplation, looking enigmatic. The rats were still in the house, but they were now more cautious.

Waiting for Komarovsky, Larisa Feodorovna cut some slices of rationed black bread and put a plate with a few boiled potatoes on the table. They had decided to receive him in the old dining room, which they still used for their meals. The large, heavy, dark oak table and sideboard were part of its original furnishings. Standing on the table was a bottle of castor oil with a wick in it which they used as a portable lamp.

Komarovsky came out of the dark December night covered with snow. Lumps of it fell from his hat, coat, and galoshes and melted into puddles on the floor. His mustache and beard, plastered with snow, made him look like a clown. (He had been clean-shaven in the old days.) He wore a well-preserved suit with striped, well-creased trousers. Before greeting his hosts he spent a long time combing his rumpled, glistening hair with a pocket comb and drying his mustache and eyebrows with a handkerchief. Then, silently and with a solemn expression, he stretched out both his hands—the left one to Larisa Feodorovna and the right one to Yurii Andreievich.

"
We
'
ll assume that we are old acquaintances,
"
he said to Yurii Andreievich.
"
I was a great friend of your father
'
s, as you probably know. He died in my arms. I keep looking at you to see if there is any likeness. But I don
'
t think you take after him. He was an expansive man, spontaneous and impulsive. You must be more like your mother. She was gentle, a dreamer.
"

"
Larisa Feodorovna asked me to see you. She said you had some business with me. I agreed, but our meeting is not of my choice, and I don
'
t consider that we are acquainted. So shall we get on with it? What is it you want?
"

"
I am so happy to see you both, my dears. I understand everything, absolutely everything. Forgive my boldness, but you are wonderfully well suited to each other. A perfect match.
"