Doctor Zhivago (91 page)

And now she took her leave of him, addressing him in the direct language of everyday life. Her speech, though lively and informal, was not down-to-earth. Like the choruses and monologues of ancient tragedies, like the language of poetry or music, or any other conventional mode of expression, its logic was not rational but emotional. The rhetorical strain in her effortless, spontaneous talk came from her grief. Her simple, unsolemn words were drenched in tears.

It was these tears that seemed to hold her words together in a tender, quick whispering like the rustling of silky leaves in a warm, windy rain.

"
At last we are together again, Yurochka. And in what a terrible way God has willed our reunion. Can you conceive of such misfortune! I cannot, cannot. Oh, God! I can
'
t stop crying. Think of it! It
'
s again so much in our style, made to our measure. Your going—my end. Again something big, irreparable. The riddle of life, the riddle of death, the enchantment of genius, the enchantment of unadorned beauty—yes, yes, these things were ours. But the small problems of practical life—things like the reshaping of the planet—these things, no thank you, they are not for us.

"
Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.

"
Remember how we said goodbye that day out there in the snow? How you deceived me! Would I ever have gone without you? Oh, I know, I know, you forced yourself to do it, you thought it was for my good. And after that everything was ruined. Oh, God, what I suffered there, what I went through! But of course you don
'
t know any of that. Oh, what have I done, Yura, what have I done? I am such a criminal, you have no idea. But it wasn
'
t my fault. I was in the hospital for three months, a whole month I was unconscious. And since then my life has been nothing but torment, Yura. My soul has no peace, I am torn by remorse and pain. But I
'
m not telling you the most important thing. I can
'
t say it, I haven
'
t the strength. Every time I come to that part of my life my hair stands on end with horror. And you know, I
'
m not even sure I
'
m in my right mind. But you see, I haven
'
t taken to drink as so many people do, I
'
m staying away from that, because a drunken woman, that really is the end, it
'
s impossible, don
'
t you think?
"

She went on speaking and sobbing in her agony. Suddenly she looked up in surprise and glanced around her. People had come into the room and were going about their business. She got down from the footstool and moved away from the coffin, swaying, pressing her hand to her eyes as if to wipe away the last of her tears.

Men came up to the coffin and lifted it on three cloths. The funeral procession began.

Larisa Feodorovna stayed several days in Kamerger Street. The sorting of Zhivago
'
s papers was begun with her help but finished without her. She also had her talk with Evgraf Andreievich and told him an important fact.

One day Larisa Feodorovna went out and did not come back. She must have been arrested in the street at that time. She vanished without a trace and probably died somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list that afterwards got mislaid, in one of the innumerable mixed or women
'
s concentration camps in the north.

In the summer of 1943, after the breakthrough on the Kursk bulge and the liberation of Orel, Gordon, recently promoted to Second Lieutenant, and Major Dudorov were returning to their unit, the one from a service assignment in Moscow, the other from three days
'
furlough.

They met on their way back and spent the night at Chern, a small town which, although in ruins, was not completely destroyed, as were most of the settlements in this
"
desert zone
"
left in the wake of the retreating invader.

Among the heaps of broken bricks and stone ground into fine dust they found an undamaged barn and settled down in it for the night.

They could not sleep, and talked for hours on end. When Dudorov finally dozed off at about three in the morning, a little before dawn, he was soon waked up again by Gordon. Awkwardly diving into the soft hay and rolling about in it as in water, he collected a few clothes into a bundle and then just as awkwardly crawled off the top of the mountain of hay, down to the door.

"
Where are you going? It
'
s early.
"

"
I
'
m going down to the river. I want to wash my things.
"

"
That
'
s mad. We
'
ll be back with the unit by evening. Tania, the laundry girl, will give you a change of clothes. What
'
s the hurry?
"

"
I don
'
t want to wait till then. They
'
re sweaty, filthy. I
'
ll rinse them quickly and wring them out well, in this heat they
'
ll be dry in no time. I
'
ll have a bath and change.
"

"
Still, it won
'
t look good. After all, you
'
re an officer.
"

"
It
'
s early, there
'
s no one about, they
'
re all asleep. Anyway, I
'
ll get behind a bush or something, nobody will see me. Stop talking and go back to sleep, or you
'
ll wake yourself up for good.
"

"
I won
'
t sleep any more anyway. I
'
ll go with you.
"

So they went down to the river, past the white stone ruins, already hot though it was only a little after sunrise. In what had once been streets, people were sleeping on the ground in the sun, snoring, their faces red and sweaty. They were mostly natives who had lost their homes, old men, women, and children, with a sprinkling of Red Army men who had lost touch with their units and were trying to catch up with them. Gordon and Dudorov made their way carefully through them so as not to disturb their sleep.

"
Keep your voice down or you
'
ll wake up the town and then it
'
ll be goodbye to my washing.
"

They continued their last night
'
s conversation quietly.

"
What
'
s this river?
"

"
I don
'
t know. The Zusha, probably.
"

"
No, that isn
'
t the Zusha.
"

"
Then I don
'
t know what it is.
"

"
It
'
s on the Zusha, you know, that it all happened—Christina, I mean.
"

"
Yes, but that would be lower down the river. They say the Church has canonized her.
"

"
There was an old stone building, which they called Stables. Once it actually was used as the stables of a sovkhoz stud-farm—now the name will go down in history—a very old place with huge thick walls. The Germans fortified it and made it impregnable. It was on a hill and they had the whole district under fire and were holding up our advance. It had to be captured. Christina, by a miracle of courage and ingenuity, got inside the German lines and blew it up, and was taken alive and hanged.
"

"
Why do they call her Christina Orletsova and not Dudorova?
"

"
We were only engaged, you know. We decided in the summer of forty-one that we
'
d be married at the end of the war. After that I moved about a great deal, like everybody in the army. My unit was sent from one place to another. Because of all those endless transfers I lost touch with her. I never saw her again. I heard of her extraordinary exploit and heroic death like everyone else—from the newspapers and the regimental orders. They say they
'
re going to put up a monument to her somewhere near here. I hear Zhivago—the General, Yurii
'
s brother—is going around the district collecting data about her.
"

"
I
'
m sorry—I shouldn
'
t have made you talk about her. It must all be very painful to you.
"

"
Well…But we
'
ve lost track of time, and I don
'
t want to hold you up. You get undressed and into the water, and get going. I
'
ll lie on the bank and chew a blade of grass and think. I may even sleep a bit.
"

A few moments later they began to talk again.

"
Where did you learn to wash clothes like that?
"

"
From necessity. We were unlucky. We got sent to just about the worst of the penal camps. There were very few survivors. Our arrival, to begin with. We got off the train. A wilderness of snow. Forest in the distance. Guards with rifles, muzzles pointing at us, wolfhounds. About the same time, other groups were brought up. We were spread out and formed into a big polygon all over the field, facing outward, so that we wouldn
'
t see each other. Then we were ordered down on our knees, and told to keep looking straight ahead on pain of death. Then the roll call, an endless, humiliating business going on for hours and hours. And all the time we were on our knees. Then we got up and the other groups were marched off and ours was told:
'
This is your camp. Make the best of it!
'
An open snow field with a post in the middle and a notice on it saying:
'
GULAG 92 Y.N. 90
'
—that
'
s all there was.
"

"
It wasn
'
t nearly so bad with us; we were lucky. Of course I was doing my second stretch, which followed automatically from the first. Moreover, I was sentenced under a different article, so the conditions were quite different. When I came out, I was reinstated again as I
'
d been the first time and allowed to go on lecturing. And when I was mobilized I was given my full rank of Major, not put into a disciplinary battalion, like you.
"

"
Yes, well…That was all there was, the post and the notice board,
'
GULAG 92 Y.N. 90.
'
First we broke saplings with our bare hands in the bitter cold, to get wood to build huts. And in the end, believe it or not, we gradually built our whole camp. We put up our prison and our stockade and our cells and our watchtowers, all with our own hands. And then we began our job as lumberjacks. We cut trees. We harnessed ourselves, eight to a sledge, and we hauled timber and sank into the snow up to our necks. For a long time we didn
'
t know the war had started. They kept it from us. And then suddenly there came the offer. You could volunteer for frontline service in a disciplinary battalion, and if you came out alive you were free. After that, attack after attack, mile after mile of electrified barbed wire, mines, mortars, month after month of artillery barrage. They called our company the death squad. It was practically wiped out. How and why I survived, I don
'
t know. And yet—would you believe it—all that utter hell was nothing, it was bliss compared to the horrors of the concentration camp, and not because of the material conditions but for an entirely different reason.
"

"
Yes, poor fellow. You
'
ve taken a lot.
"

"
It wasn
'
t just washing clothes you learned out there, you learned everything there is to learn.
"

"
It
'
s an extraordinary thing, you know. It isn
'
t only in comparison with your life as a convict, but compared to everything in the thirties, even to my easy situation at the university in the midst of books and money and comfort, the war came as a breath of fresh air, a purifying storm, a breath of deliverance.