Doctor Zhivago (8 page)

"
Um-m-m,
"
he mooed helplessly, looking around the room.

"
Put them down anywhere,
"
said Nikolai Nikolaievich, restoring Vyvolochnov
'
s power of speech and self-possession.

Here was one of those followers of Tolstoy in whom the ideas of the genius who had never known peace had settled down to enjoy a long, unclouded rest, growing hopelessly shallow in the process. He had come to ask Nikolai Nikolaievich to speak at a meeting in aid of political deportees that was to be held at some school or other.

"
I
'
ve spoken at that school already.
"

"
In aid of our exiles?
"

"
Yes.
"

"
You
'
ll have to do it again.
"

Nikolai Nikolaievich balked a little and then gave in.

The business dealt with, Nikolai Nikolaievich did not attempt to delay his guest. Nil Feoktistovich could have left at once but he evidently felt that it would be unseemly and was looking for something lively and natural to say by way of parting. The conversation became strained and awkward.

"
So you
'
ve become a Decadent? Going in for mysticism?
"

"
What do you mean?
"

"
It
'
s a waste, you know. Do you remember the county council?
"

"
Of course. Didn
'
t we canvass for it together?
"

"
And we did some good work fighting for the village schools and teachers
'
colleges. Remember?
"

"
Of course. It was a splendid battle.
"

"
And then you became interested in public health and social welfare, didn
'
t you?
"

"
For a time, yes.
"

"
Hmm. And now it
'
s all this highbrow stuff—fauns and nenuphars and ephebes and
'
Let
'
s be like the sun.
'
I can
'
t believe it, bless me if I can—an intelligent man like you, and with your sense of humor and your knowledge of the people.… Come, now.… Or am I intruding into the holy of holies?
"

"
Why all this talk? What are we arguing about? You don
'
t know my ideas.
"

"
Russia needs schools and hospitals, not fauns and nenuphars.
"

"
No one denies it.
"

"
The peasants are in rags and famished.…
"

So the conversation dragged on. Knowing how useless it was, Nikolai Nikolaievich tried nevertheless to explain what attracted him to some of the writers of the Symbolist school. Then, turning to Tolstoyan doctrines, he said:

"
Up to a point I am with you, but Tolstoy says that the more a man devotes himself to beauty the further he moves away from goodness.…
"

"
And you think it
'
s the other way round—the world will be saved by beauty, is that it? Dostoievsky, Rozanov,
[3]
mystery plays, and what not?
"

"
Wait, let me tell you what I think. I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats—any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death—then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don
'
t you see, this is just the point—what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. It has always been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea that underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because it is meaningful.
"

"
I haven
'
t understood a word. You should write a book about it!
"

After Vyvolochnov had left, Nikolai Nikolaievich felt extremely cross. He was angry with himself for having blurted out some of his most intimate thoughts to that fool, without impressing him in the least. Then his annoyance, as sometimes happens, changed its target. He recalled another incident.

He did not keep a diary, but once or twice a year he would record in a thick notebook some thought which struck him particularly. He got out the notebook now and began to write in a large, legible hand. This is what he wrote.

"
Upset all day by that silly Shlesinger woman. She came in the morning, stayed till lunchtime, and for two solid hours bored me reading out that gibberish—a libretto in verse by the Symbolist A—to the cosmogonic symphony by the composer B—with the spirits of the planets, voices of the four elements, etc., etc. I listened with impatience, then I couldn
'
t stand it and begged her to stop.

"
And suddenly I understood everything. I understood why this stuff is so deadly, so insufferably false, even in
Faust
.
The whole thing is artificial, no one is genuinely interested in it. Modern man has no need of it. When he is overcome by the mysteries of the universe he turns to physics, not to Hesiod
'
s hexameters.

"
And it isn
'
t just that the form is an anachronism, or that these spirits of earth and air only confuse what science has unravelled. The fact is that this type of art is wholly out of keeping with the spirit, the essence, the motivating force of contemporary art.

"
These cosmogonies were natural in the ancient world—a world settled so sparsely that nature was not yet eclipsed by man. Mammoths still walked the earth, dragons and dinosaurs were still fresh in people
'
s memory. Nature hit you in the eye so plainly and grabbed you so fiercely and so tangibly by the scruff of the neck that perhaps it really was still full of gods. Those were the first pages of the chronicle of mankind, it was only just beginning.

"
This ancient world ended with Rome, because of overpopulation.

"
Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction. Dacians, Herulians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Hyperboreans, heavy wheels without spokes, eyes sunk in fat, sodomy, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves. There were more people in the world than there have ever been since, all crammed into the passages of the Coliseum, and all wretched.

"
And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being—man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd with his flock of sheep at sunset, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over.
"

The Petrovka looked like a corner of Petersburg in Moscow, with its matching houses on both sides of the street, the tastefully sculptured house entrances, the bookshop, the library, the cartographer
'
s, the elegant tobacco shop, the excellent restaurant, its front door flanked by two gaslights in round frosted shades on massive brackets.

In winter the street frowned with a forbidding surliness. Its inhabitants were solid, self-respecting, prosperous members of the liberal professions.

Here Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky rented his magnificent third-floor apartment, reached by a wide staircase with massive oak banisters. His housekeeper, or rather the chatelaine of his quiet retreat, Emma Ernestovna, took care of everything without meddling in his private life; she ran the place unseen and unheard. He repaid her with the knightly delicacy to be expected of so fine a gentleman, and never tolerated visitors, male or female, whose presence would have disturbed her peaceful, spinsterish world. A monastic stillness reigned in their home; the blinds were drawn, and everything was spotlessly clean, as in an operating room.

On Sunday mornings Victor Ippolitovich, accompanied by his bulldog, usually took a leisurely walk down the Petrovka and along Kuznetsky Most, and at one of the street corners they were joined by the actor and gambler Constantine Illarionovich Satanidi.

They walked together along Kuznetsky Most, telling each other dirty stories, snorting with contempt, and laughing shamelessly in deep, loud voices that filled the air with sounds no more significant than the howling of a dog.

The weather was on the mend. Plop-plop-plop went the water drops on the metal of the drainpipes and the cornices, roof tapping messages to roof as if it were spring. It was thawing.

Lara walked all the way in a daze and realized what had happened to her only when she reached home.

Everyone was asleep. She fell back into her trance and in this abstracted state sat down at her mother
'
s dressing table, still in her pale mauve, almost white, lace-trimmed dress and long veil borrowed for the evening from the workshop, like a costume. She sat before her reflection in the mirror, and saw nothing. Then, folding her arms, she put them on the dressing table and buried her head in them.

If Mother learned about it she would kill her. She would kill her and then she would kill herself.

How had it happened? How could it possibly have happened? It was too late now, she should have thought of it earlier.

Now she was—what was it called?—a fallen woman. She was a woman out of a French novel, and tomorrow she would go to school and sit side by side with those other girls who were like little children compared with her. O God, O God, how did it happen?

Some day, many, many years later, when it would be possible, Lara would tell Olia Demina, and Olia would hug her and burst into tears.

Outside the window the water drops plopped on and on, the thaw muttered its spells. Down the road someone was banging on a neighbor
'
s door. Lara did not raise her head. Her shoulders quivered. She was weeping.

"
Ah, Emma Ernestovna, that
'
s unimportant. I
'
m sick and tired of it.
"
He kept opening and shutting drawers, turning things out, throwing cuffs and collars all over the rug and the sofa, without knowing what he was looking for.

He needed her desperately, and there was no way of seeing her that Sunday. He paced up and down the room frantically like a caged animal.

Nothing equalled her spiritual beauty. Her hands were stunning like a sublime idea. Her shadow on the wall of the hotel room was like the outline of her innocence. Her slip was stretched over her breast, as firmly and simply as linen on an embroidery frame.

His fingers drummed on the windowpane in time to the unhurried thud of horses
'
hoofs on the asphalt pavement below.
"
Lara,
"
he whispered, shutting his eyes, and he had a vision of her head resting on his hands; her eyes were closed, she was asleep, unconscious that he watched her sleeplessly for hours on end. Her hair was scattered and its beauty stung his eyes like smoke and ate into his heart.

His Sunday walk was not being a success. He strolled a few paces with Jack, stopped, thought of Kuznetsky Most, of Satanidi
'
s jokes, of the acquaintances he met on the street—no, it was more than he could bear. He turned back. The dog, startled, looked up disapprovingly and waddled after him reluctantly.

"
What can it all mean?
"
thought Komarovsky.
"
What has come over me?
"
Could it be his conscience, a feeling of pity, or repentance? Or was he worried about her? No, he knew she was safe at home? Then why couldn
'
t he get her out of his head?

He walked back to his house, up the stairs, and past the first landing. The stained-glass ornamental coats of arms at the corners of the window threw colored patches of light at his feet. Halfway up the second flight he stopped.