Doctor Zhivago (78 page)

He had to scribble something. For a beginning, he would put down old unwritten thoughts, just to get him into trim. Later, he hoped, if he and Lara managed to stay on, there would be time for undertaking something new, important.

"
Are you busy? What are you doing?
"

"
Stoking and stoking. What is it?
"

"
I want a tub to wash the linen in.
"

"
We
'
ll run out of logs in three days if we go on using them at this rate. I must have a look in our old woodshed, there might be some left—who knows? If there are, I
'
ll bring them over. I
'
ll do that tomorrow. A tub, you said. I
'
m sure I
'
ve seen one somewhere, I can
'
t think where.
"

"
So have I, and I can
'
t think where either. It must have been somewhere it had no business to be, that
'
s why I forgot. Well, never mind. Remember, I
'
m heating a lot of water for cleaning up. What
'
s left I
'
ll use for laundering some of Katia
'
s and my things. You might as well give me your laundry too. We
'
ll have baths in the evening, when we
'
ve settled in, before we go to bed.
"

"
Thank you. I
'
ll get my things now. I
'
ve moved all the heavy furniture away from the walls, as you wanted it.
"

"
Good. I
'
ll use the dish-washing basin for the laundry, since we can
'
t find the tub. But it
'
s greasy, I
'
ll have to scrub it.
"

"
As soon as the stove is properly stoked I
'
ll go through the rest of the drawers. I keep finding more things in the desk and the chest—soap, matches, paper, pencils, pens, ink. And the lamp on the table is full of kerosene. I am sure the Mikulitsyns didn
'
t have any, it must come from somewhere else.
"

"
What luck! It
'
s our mysterious lodger. Just like something out of Jules Verne. But here we are gossiping again, and my water
'
s boiling.
"

They bustled and dashed about from room to room, their hands never still or empty for a moment, running into one another and stumbling over Katenka, who was always under their feet. She drifted about, getting in the way of their work and sulking when they scolded her. She shivered and complained of the cold.

"
These poor modern children,
"
thought the doctor,
"
victims of our gypsy life, wretched little fellow wanderers.
"
Aloud he said:

"
Cheer up, girl. You can
'
t be cold, that
'
s nonsense, the stove is red hot.
"

"
The stove may be feeling warm but I
'
m cold.
"

"
Well then, you
'
ll have to be patient till this evening. I
'
ll get a huge blaze going and you heard Mama say she
'
ll give you a hot bath. And now you play with these—catch.
"
He got all Liberius
'
s old toys out of the chilly storeroom and dumped them on the floor, some whole, some broken, blocks, trains, and locomotives, boards with squares and pictures or numbers on them for games with dice and counters.

"
What can you be thinking of, Yurii Andreievich?
"
Katia protested like a grownup.
"
They aren
'
t mine. And they are for a baby. I
'
m too big.
"

But the next moment she had made herself comfortable in the middle of the rug and all the toys had turned into bricks for a house for Ninka, the doll she had brought from town. It was a much more sensible and settled home than any of the temporary lodgings in other people
'
s houses where she had spent most of her life.

Lara watched her from the kitchen.
"
Look at that instinct for domesticity. It just shows, nothing can destroy the longing for home and for order. Children are more honest, they aren
'
t frightened of the truth, but we are so afraid of seeming to be behind the times that we are ready to betray what is most dear to us and praise what repels us and say yes to what we don
'
t understand.
"

"
Here
'
s the tub,
"
said Yurii Andreievich, coming in out of the dark hallway.
"
It certainly wasn
'
t in its place. It was standing under the leak in the ceiling. I suppose it
'
s been there since last autumn.
"

For dinner, Lara, who had started on the provisions they had brought and had cooked enough for three days, served an unprecedented feast of potato soup and roast mutton and potatoes. Katenka ate till she could eat no more, giggling and getting more and more naughty, and afterwards, warm and full, curled up in her mother
'
s shawl on the sofa and went to sleep.

Larisa Feodorovna, hot and tired from the oven, almost as sleepy as her daughter, and pleased with the success of her cooking, was in no hurry to clear away the plates and sat down to have a rest. After making sure that Katenka was asleep, she said, leaning forward on the table, with her chin on her hand:

"
I
'
d slave and be happy if only I knew it was getting us somewhere, if it wasn
'
t all for nothing. You
'
ll have to keep reminding me that we came here to be together. Keep cheering me up, don
'
t let me think. Because strictly speaking, if you look at it honestly, what are we doing, what is all this? We
'
ve raided someone else
'
s house, we
'
ve broken in and made ourselves at home, and now we bustle around like mad so as not to see that this isn
'
t life, that it
'
s a stage set, that it isn
'
t real, that it
'
s all
'
pretend,
'
as children say, a child
'
s game—just ridiculous.
"

"
But, darling, isn
'
t it you who insisted on our coming? Don
'
t you remember how long I held out against it?
"

"
Certainly I did. I don
'
t deny it. So now I am at fault! It
'
s all right for you to think twice and hesitate, but I have to be logical and consistent all the time! You come in, you see your son
'
s crib, and you nearly faint. That
'
s your right, but I
'
m not allowed to be worried, to be afraid for Katenka, to think about the future, everything has to give way before my love for you.
"

"
Larusha! Pull yourself together. Think. It
'
s not too late to go back on your decision. I was the first to tell you to take Komarovsky
'
s plan more seriously. We
'
ve got a horse. If you like we
'
ll go straight back to Yuriatin tomorrow. Komarovsky is still there, we saw him—and incidentally I don
'
t think he saw us. I
'
m sure we
'
ll still find him.
"

"
I
'
ve hardly said a word, and you sound annoyed. But tell me, am I so wrong? We might just as well have stayed in Yuriatin if we weren
'
t going to hide better than this. If we really meant to save ourselves we should have had a sensible plan, properly thought out, and that after all is what Komarovsky offered us. Disgusting as he is, he is a well-informed and practical man. We are in greater danger here than anywhere else. Just think!—alone on a boundless, wind-swept plain! If we were snowed under in the night we couldn
'
t dig ourselves out in the morning! Or suppose our mysterious benefactor, who visited this house, turns out to be a bandit and comes and slits our throats! Have you at least got a gun? I thought not! You see? What terrifies me is your thoughtlessness, and you
'
ve infected me with it as well. I simply can
'
t think straight.
"

"
But what do you want? What do you want me to do now?
"

"
I don
'
t know myself what to say. Keep me under your thumb all the time. Keep reminding me that I
'
m your loving slave and that it
'
s not my business to think or argue. Oh, I
'
ll tell you what. Your Tonia and my Pasha are a thousand times better than we are, but that isn
'
t the point. The point is that the gift of love is like any other gift. However great it is, it won
'
t thrive without a blessing. You and I, it
'
s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught. It
'
s a sort of crowning harmony—no limits, no degrees, everything is of equal value, everything is a joy, everything has become spirit. But in this wild tenderness that lies in wait for us at every moment there is something childish, unrestrained, irresponsible. It
'
s a willful, destructive element, hostile to domestic happiness, such a love. It
'
s my duty to be afraid of it and to distrust it.
"

She threw her arms around his neck, struggling with tears.

"
Don
'
t you see, we are not in the same position. You were given wings to fly above the clouds, but I
'
m a woman, mine are given me to stay close to the ground and to shelter my young.
"

He was deeply moved by everything she said, but he didn
'
t show it, lest he give way to his emotions.

"
It
'
s quite true that there is something false and strained about this camp life we lead. You are perfectly right. But it isn
'
t we who invented it. This frantic dashing about from pillar to post is what is happening to everyone, it
'
s in the spirit of the times.

"
I
'
ve been thinking about it myself all day. I should like to do everything possible to stay here for some time. I can
'
t tell you how I
'
m longing to get back to work. I don
'
t mean farming. That
'
s what we were doing here before, we took it on as a family and we succeeded. But I wouldn
'
t have the strength to do it again. I
'
ve got something else in mind.

"
Things are gradually settling down. Perhaps one day they
'
ll start publishing books again.

"
This is what I was thinking. Couldn
'
t we come to an agreement with Samdeviatov—we
'
d have to give him profitable terms, of course—so that he should keep us here for six months at his expense, on condition that I spend this time writing a book, say a textbook on medicine, or something literary, perhaps a collection of poems. Or I might translate some famous classic. I
'
m good at languages. I saw an advertisement the other day, there
'
s a big publisher in Petersburg who is doing nothing but translations. I
'
m pretty sure this sort of work will have a value in terms of money. I
'
d be very happy doing something of that kind.
"