Doctor Zhivago (92 page)

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I think that collectivization was an erroneous and unsuccessful measure and it was impossible to admit the error. To conceal the failure people had to be cured, by every means of terrorism, of the habit of thinking and judging for themselves, and forced to see what didn
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t exist, to assert the very opposite of what their eyes told them. This accounts for the unexampled cruelty of the Yezhov
[18]
period, the promulgation of a constitution that was never meant to be applied, and the introduction of elections that violated the very principle of free choice.

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And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, and they brought relief because they broke the spell of the dead letter.

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It was felt not only by men in your position, in concentration camps, but by absolutely everyone, at home and at the front, and they all took a deep breath and flung themselves into the furnace of this mortal, liberating struggle with real joy, with rapture.

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The war has its special character as a link in the chain of revolutionary decades. The forces directly unleashed by the revolution no longer operated. The indirect effects of the revolution, the fruit of its fruit, the consequences of the consequences, began to manifest themselves. Misfortune and ordeals had tempered characters, prepared them for great, desperate, heroic exploits. These fabulous, astounding qualities characterize the moral elite of this generation.

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And when I see such things I am filled with happiness, in spite of Christina
'
s martyrdom and our losses and my wounds, in spite of the high cost in blood of the war. The light of self-sacrifice that illuminates Orletsova
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s death and the lives of all of us helps me to bear her loss.

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I was released just when you, poor fellow, were going through your endless torture. Soon after that, Christina came to the university as a history student. I taught her. I had noticed her before, after my first term in concentration camp, as a remarkable girl, when she was still a child. You remember, Yurii was still alive, I told you both. Well, now she was one of my students.

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That was the time when the custom of political re-education of teachers by students had come in. Orletsova flung herself into that work with passion. I had no idea why she went at me so fiercely. She was so aggressive and unjust that sometimes the other students protested and stood up for me. She had a great sense of humor and she made fun of me to her heart
'
s content in the wall newspaper, referring to me by some invented name that everyone could see through. And then suddenly, completely by chance, I realized that this inveterate hostility was a camouflage of her love for me—a strong, enduring love she had felt for a long time, and which I had always returned.

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We spent a wonderful summer in forty-one, just before and after the beginning of the war. Christina was in a group of undergraduates, men and women, who were billeted in a Moscow suburb where my unit was also stationed. Our friendship began and ran its course against this background. At that time civilian units were being formed, Christina was being trained as a parachutist, the first German bombers were spotted from the rooftops of Moscow and driven back. That was when we became engaged, as I told you, but we were separated almost at once because my regiment was moved. I never saw her again.

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Later on, when the war took a turn for the better and the Germans were surrendering by the thousands, I was transferred after I had been wounded twice, from Anti-Aircraft to the Seventh Staff Division, where they needed people who knew languages. Then, after I fished you out of the depths, I got you assigned to my unit.
"

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Tania, the laundry girl, was a friend of Christina
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s. They got to know each other at the front. She talks a lot about her. Have you noticed the way Tania smiles, all over her face, like Yurii? You forget the snub nose and the high cheekbones, and you think she
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s quite pretty and attractive. It
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s the same type, you see it all over Russia.
"

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I know what you mean. No, I hadn
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t noticed.
"

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What a hideous, barbarous nickname, Tania Bezocheredeva, Tania Out-of-Turn.
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It can
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t possibly be her surname. I wonder how she got it.
"

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She told us, you know. She was a bezprizornaia of unknown parents. Probably somewhere in the depths of Russia where the language is still pure she was called Bezotchcheia,
'
Fatherless.
'
Then her name was distorted by city people who introduced a connotation closer to their recent experiences.
"

Shortly after this, Gordon and Dudorov were in the town of Karachev, which had been razed to the ground. There they caught up with some rear units of their army.

It was a hot autumn; the weather had been fine and still for more than a month. The black soil of Bryanshchina, the blessedly fertile region between Orel and Bryansk, shimmered a chocolate or coffee brown under the blue, cloudless sky.

The main street, which was part of the highway, cut straight across the town. On one side of it had been houses that were blown up and turned into piles of rubble by mines, and uprooted, splintered, and charred fruit trees from the blasted gardens. Nor were there any houses on the other side, but it was less ravaged by fire and explosions, probably because it had consisted largely of vacant lots and thus offered no targets for destruction.

On the side where there had once been houses, the homeless inhabitants were poking about in the still smoldering ashes, picking up odds and ends in different corners of the ruins and putting them all together in one place. Others were busy making dugouts and cutting strips of turf with which to roof them.

The vacant lots across the road were white with tents and crowded with auxiliary-service trucks and horse-drawn wagons of all kinds—field ambulances, cut off from their divisional staffs, and units of every sort of commissariat and depot, lost and mixed up and trying to sort themselves out. And here, too, weedy boys from the replacement companies, in gray caps, with heavy, rolled-up overcoats on their backs, their faces earthy, drawn, and wasted from dysentery, rested their packs and had a sleep and a snack before trudging on farther west.

Half the gutted, blown-up town was still burning and in the distance delayed-action mines kept exploding. Every now and then, people digging in their yards straightened their bent backs, leaned on their picks, and rested, turning and gazing in the direction of a blast.

There, the gray, black, brick-red clouds of smoke, flame, and rubble rose into the sky, first in jets and fountains, then more lazily, like heavily rising scum, then fanning and spreading into plumes; finally they scattered and sank back to earth. Then the diggers went on with their work.

Across the road from the ruins there was an open space bordered by a hedge and shaded by tall old trees. The trees and the hedge isolated it from the rest of the world, like a private courtyard, shaded and cool.

Here Tania, the laundry girl, together with several people from her unit, as well as others who had joined them, including Dudorov and Gordon, had been waiting since morning for the truck that had been sent for her. The regimental laundry entrusted to her care was packed in several crates that stood piled one on top of the other on the ground. Tania kept a close eye on it, and the rest of the group remained in sight for fear of missing the chance of a lift.

They had been waiting a long time—more than five hours. With nothing to do, they listened to the incessant chatter of the garrulous girl, who had seen a great deal in her life. At the moment she was telling them of how she had met Major-General Zhivago.

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Of course. Yesterday. They took me to the General himself. Major-General Zhivago. He was passing through here, and asking everyone about Christina. He was looking for eyewitnesses, people who had known her personally. They pointed me out to him. They said we
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d been friends. He told them to bring me along. So they came and got me. He didn
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t scare me a bit. Nothing special about him, just like everybody else. He
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s got slit eyes and black hair. Well, I told him what I knew. He heard me out and said thank you. And who are you? he said to me. Where do you come from? Well, naturally, I was shy. What have I got to boast about? I
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m a bezprizornaia. One of the homeless children. And all that. I don
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t have to tell you. Reformatories, always on the move. But he kept at me. Let
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s have it, he said. Don
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t be embarrassed. There
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s nothing to be ashamed of. Well, at first I couldn
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t say much, then I told him a bit more, and he kept nodding his head, then as he went on nodding, I wasn
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t afraid any longer. And it
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s true I
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ve got a lot to tell. You wouldn
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t believe it if I told you; you
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d say, She
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s making it up. Well, it was the same with him. When I finished he got up and started walking up and down the room. That
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s extraordinary, he said. Really extraordinary. I
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ll tell you what, he said. I haven
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t got time now. But I
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ll find you again, you can be sure of that. I
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ll find you and send for you again. I never thought I
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d hear a thing like that. I won
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t leave you this way, he said, I
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ve just got to take care of a few things. And then, who can tell, I might put myself down as your uncle, you
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ll be promoted to being General
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s niece. And I
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ll send you to a university, he said. Anywhere you like. I swear to God, that
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s what he said. Probably a joke, just to tease me.
"

At this moment a long, empty cart with high sides, of the kind used for carting hay in Poland and West Russia, drove up. The two horses in their shaft harness were driven by a soldier from the horse transport corps who in the old days would have been called a wagoner. He pulled up, jumped down from his seat, and began to unhitch the cart. Everyone except Tania and one or two soldiers crowded around him begging him to take them wherever they were going, telling him, of course, that they would make it worth his while. But the driver refused, saying he had no right to use the cart or the horses except as he was ordered. He led the horses away and was not seen again.

Tania and the others, who until then had been sitting on the ground, all climbed into the empty cart, which had been left standing in the field. The conversation, interrupted by its arrival and by the argument with the driver, was resumed.

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What did you tell the General?
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asked Gordon.
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Tell us, if you can.
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Why not? I
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ll tell you.
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And so she told them her terrible story.

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Yes, it
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s true that I
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ve got a lot to tell. They say I don
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t come from poor people. Whether strangers told me or I somehow remembered it, I don
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t know, but I
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ve heard it said that my mother, Ra
ï
sa Komarova, was the wife of a Russian cabinet minister, Comrade Komarov, who was in hiding in White Mongolia. But I guess Komarov was not my real father. Well, of course, I
'
m not an educated girl, I grew up an orphan without a father and mother. Perhaps what I say seems funny to you, but I
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m only saying what I know, you have to put yourselves in my place.

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Yes. Well now, what I
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m going to tell you. It all happened beyond Krushitsy, the other end of Siberia, beyond the Cossack country, near the Chinese border. When we—the Reds, that is—moved up to the chief town of the Whites, that same Komarov, the minister, he put my mother and all those families on a special train and ordered it to take them away. My mother was frightened, you see, she didn
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t dare to move a step without him.

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This Komarov didn
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t know about me. He didn
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t know that I even existed. My mother had me when she had been parted from him for a long time, and she was frightened to death that somebody might tell him. He hated children terribly, and he yelled and stamped his feet. They only bring filth and worry into the house, I can
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t stand it, he used to yell.