Doctor Zhivago (94 page)

"
I never even went back for my clothes, I was so frightened. I asked them to take me along in the train, and they put me on the train and off I went. After this, I wandered over half our own country and others with the bezprizornys, I don
'
t know where I haven
'
t been. I
'
m not exaggerating. What happiness, what freedom now, after all I suffered as a child! Though it must be said that there was also much sin and misery. But all this came later, I
'
ll tell you about it some other time.… That night I was telling you about, a railway official came off the train and went to the house to take charge of the government property, and to decide what to do about Auntie Marfa. Some say she never recovered and died in a madhouse, but others say she got better and came out.
"

For a long time after hearing Tania
'
s story Gordon and Dudorov strolled about under the trees in silence. Then the truck came; it turned clumsily off the road into the clearing, and the crates were loaded onto it. Gordon said:

"
You realize who this Tania is?
"

"
Yes, of course.
"

"
Evgraf will look after her.
"
Gordon added after a pause:
"
It has often happened in history that a lofty ideal has degenerated into crude materialism. Thus Greece gave way to Rome, and the Russian Enlightenment has become the Russian Revolution. There is a great difference between the two periods. Blok says somewhere:
'
We, the children of Russia
'
s terrible years.
'
Blok meant this in a metaphorical, figurative sense. The children were not children, but the sons, the heirs, the intelligentsia, and the terrors were not terrible but sent from above, apocalyptic; that
'
s quite different. Now the metaphorical has become literal, children are children and the terrors are terrible, there you have the difference.
"

Five or ten years later, one quiet summer evening, Dudorov and Gordon were again together, sitting at an open window above Moscow, which extended into the dusk as far as the eye could reach. They were looking through an album of Yurii
'
s writings that Evgaf had put together, a book they had read more than once and almost knew by heart. They read and talked and thought. By the time they came to the middle of the book it was dark and they turned on the light.

And Moscow, right below them and stretching into the distance, the author
'
s native city, in which he had spent half his life—Moscow now struck them not as the stage of the events connected with him but as the main protagonist of a long story, the end of which they had reached that evening, book in hand.

Although victory had not brought the relief and freedom that were expected at the end of the war, nevertheless the portents of freedom filled the air throughout the postwar period, and they alone defined its historical significance.

To the two old friends, as they sat by the window, it seemed that this freedom of the soul was already there, as if that very evening the future had tangibly moved into the streets below them, that they themselves had entered it and were now part of it. Thinking of this holy city and of the entire earth, of the still-living protagonists of this story, and their children, they were filled with tenderness and peace, and they were enveloped by the unheard music of happiness that flowed all about them and into the distance. And the book they held seemed to confirm and encourage their feeling.

The stir is over. I step forth on the boards.

Leaning against an upright at the entrance,

I strain to make the far-off echo yield

A cue to the events that may come in my day.

Night and its murk transfix and pin me,

Staring through thousands of binoculars.

If Thou he willing, Abba, Father,

Remove this cup from me.

I cherish this, Thy rigorous conception,

And I consent to play this part therein;

But another play is running at this moment,

So, for the present, release me from the cast.

And yet, the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted,

And nothing can avert the final curtain
'
s fall.

I stand alone. All else is swamped by Pharisaism.

To live life to the end is not a childish task.

The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath;

The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below.

Spring—that corn-fed, husky milkmaid—

Is busy at her chores with never a letup.

The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia—

See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?)

Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming,

And the tines of pitchforks simply glow with health.

These days—these days, and these nights also!

With eavesdrop thrumming its tattoos at noon,

With icicles (cachectic!) hanging on to gables,

And with the chattering of rills that never sleep!

All doors are flung open—in stable and in cowbarn;

Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow;

And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter—

The pile of manure—is pungent with ozone.

The murk of night still prevails.

It is yet so early in this world

That the sky even now flaunts its countless stars,

And each star is radiant as the day.

And if the earth could really have its way

It would sleep through all of Eastertide

To the droning of the Psalms as a lullaby.

The murk of night still prevails.

The Creation
'
s hour is yet so early

The square extends like eternity

From one corner to the other,

And there is still a millennium

Until the dawn and warmth come.

The earth is stark-naked yet:

It hasn
'
t got a stitch to wear of nights

To ring the bells, or to chime in

Of its own accord, with choirs singing.

From Maundy Thursday right up to

The very eve of Easter the waters gnaw

At riverbanks, and are busy weaving

Their currents, whirlpools, and eddies.

The forest, too, is stripped, exposed,

And all through Passiontide

The trunks of pines stand in a throng

Like worshippers aligned in prayer.

While in the town, not too far off,

The trees stand mother-naked too,

As if about to enter church

And peering within its gratings.

Their gaze is overcome with awe,

Nor is their panic hard to fathom:

The gardens leave their boundary walls,

The laws that govern the earth are shaken—

A god is being interred.

They see a glow about the altar screen,

And the black pall, and tapers in a row,

And faces all in tears.…

And a procession suddenly emerges

Bearing the Cross and Shroud,

And comes toward them. Two birches

Guarding the portals have to step aside

And yield the right of way.

The procession makes a circuit of the church grounds,

Walking along the very curb of the pavement,

And brings in from the street within the portals

The spring, and all the murmurings of spring,

And air that has about it the tang of consecrated wafers

And of the heady fumes of spring.

And March scoops up the snow on the porch

And scatters it like alms among the halt and lame—

As though a man had carried out the Ark,

And opened it, and distributed all it held.

The singing lasts until the glow of dawn.

The voices, having sobbed their fill,

Are more subdued. Their chanting of the Psalms and Gospels

Floats out more and more faintly

Until it reaches wastelands under lonely lamps.

And when the midnight comes

All creatures and all flesh will fall silent

On hearing spring put forth its rumor

That just as soon as there is better weather

Death itself can be overcome

Through the power of the Resurrection.

I have visions of a remote time:

A house on the Petersburg side of the Neva;

You, the daughter of a none-too-well-off landed proprietress

(The land being out in the steppes),

Are taking courses—and were born in Kursk.

You are a darling; you have admirers.

This night you and I

Have made ourselves cozy on your window sill;

We are looking down from this skyscraper of yours.

The street lamps are just like butterflies of gas.

The morning has flicked us with its first chill.

That which I am telling you is so much like

The far-off vistas now plunged in sleep.

You and I are in the grasp

Of precisely that timid devotion to a mystery

Which holds St. Petersburg, spread like a panorama

Beyond the unencompassable Neva.

There, far, far among thick-wooded landmarks,

On this night, so vernal and so white,

The nightingales roll and trill their paeans,

Filling with rumbling the city
'
s wooded limits.

Their frenzied trilling surges.

The song of each tiny, dull-hued singer

Stirs rapture and awakens unrest

Deep within each ensorcelled grove.

Night, like a barefooted pilgrim woman,

Is creeping close to the fences as she makes her way there,

And the tracks of our murmurs, which she has eavesdropped,

Trail after her from our window sill.

Amid echoes of these overheard murmurs

The boughs of the apple and cherry trees

Bedeck themselves in whitish blossoms

In the gardens with their rough-hewn palings.

And the trees, themselves white as specters,

Come out on the road jostling and thronging,

Just as if they were waving their farewells

To the white night which has witnessed so very many things.