15

She was shaken by her repressed sobs. She fought her tears as long as she could, but at times it was beyond her strength and they burst from her, pouring down her cheeks and onto her dress, her hands, and the coffin, to which she clung.

She neither spoke nor thought. Sequences of ideas, notions, insights, truths drifted and sailed freely through her mind, like clouds in the sky, as happened so often before during their nighttime conversations. It was such things that had brought them happiness and liberation in those days. A spontaneous mutual understanding, warm, instinctive, immediate.

Such an understanding filled her now, a dark, indistinct knowledge of death, preparedness for death, a preparedness that removed all feeling of helplessness in its presence. It was as if she had lived twenty lives, and had lost Yurii countless times, and had accumulated such experience of the heart in this domain that everything she felt and did beside this coffin was exactly right and to the point.

Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did.

Ah, that was just what had united them and had made them so akin! Never, never, even in their moments of richest and wildest happiness, were they unaware of a sublime joy in the total design of the universe, a feeling that they themselves were a part of that whole, an element in the beauty of the cosmos.

This unity with the whole was the breath of life to them. And the elevation of man above the rest of nature, the modern coddling and worshipping of man, never appealed to them. A social system based on such a false premise, as well as its political application, struck them as pathetically amateurish and made no sense to them.

16

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.

17

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.

SIXTEEN

Epilogue

 

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.

2

"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.

"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'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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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's death and the lives of all of us helps me to bear her loss.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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."

"Tania, the laundry girl, was a friend of Christina'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's quite pretty and attractive. It's the same type, you see it all over Russia."

"I know what you mean. No, I hadn't noticed."

"What a hideous, barbarous nickname, Tania Bezocheredeva, Tania Out-of-Turn.' It can't possibly be her surname. I wonder how she got it."

"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."

3

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.

"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'd been friends. He told them to bring me along. So they came and got me. He didn't scare me a bit. Nothing special about him, just like everybody else. He'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'm a bezprizornaia. One of the homeless children. And all that. I don't have to tell you. Reformatories, always on the move. But he kept at me. Let's have it, he said. Don't be embarrassed. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Well, at first I couldn't say much, then I told him a bit more, and he kept nodding his head, then as he went on nodding, I wasn't afraid any longer. And it's true I've got a lot to tell. You wouldn't believe it if I told you; you'd say, She'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's extraordinary, he said. Really extraordinary. I'll tell you what, he said. I haven't got time now. But I'll find you again, you can be sure of that. I'll find you and send for you again. I never thought I'd hear a thing like that. I won't leave you this way, he said, I've just got to take care of a few things. And then, who can tell, I might put myself down as your uncle, you'll be promoted to being General's niece. And I'll send you to a university, he said. Anywhere you like. I swear to God, that'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.

"What did you tell the General?" asked Gordon. "Tell us, if you can."

"Why not? I'll tell you."

And so she told them her terrible story.

4

"Yes, it's true that I've got a lot to tell. They say I don't come from poor people. Whether strangers told me or I somehow remembered it, I don't know, but I've heard it said that my mother, Raïsa 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'm only saying what I know, you have to put yourselves in my place.

"Yes. Well now, what I'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't dare to move a step without him.

"This Komarov didn't know about me. He didn'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't stand it, he used to yell.

"Well now, as I was saying, when the Reds began to come up to the town, my mother sent to Nagornaia Station for Marfa, the signal woman. That was three stations away from the town. I'll tell you how it was. First there was Nizovaia, and then there was Nagornaia, and then there was the Samsonov Pass. Now I think I understand it, why Mother knew this signal woman. I think this signal woman, Marfa, used to come and sell milk and vegetables in the town. That's it.

"And here is something I don't know. I think they cheated Mother, they didn't tell her the truth. The Lord only knows what sort of story they told her, I suppose they said it was just for a time, for a day or two, till things settled down. She didn't mean to give me to strangers forever. To be brought up by strangers—Mother could not have given up her own child like that.

"Well, you know how it is with a child. 'Go and talk to Auntie, she'll give you a piece of gingerbread, nice Auntie, don't be frightened of Auntie.' How I cried afterwards, how heartbroken I was, how I missed my mother—it's better not to remember that. I wanted to hang myself, I nearly went out of my mind as a small child. That was all I was at that time. I suppose Aunt Marfa got money for my keep, a lot of money.

"There was a rich farm that went with the signal job, a cow and a horse and of course all kinds of fowl, and a big place for vegetables—out there you could get as much land as you liked—and of course no rent because the house belonged to the government; it was right next to the tracks. When the train was coming from home, it could hardly get up the hill, it was so steep, but coming from your parts, from Russia, down it came so fast they had to use the brakes. Down below, in the autumn, when the woods thinned out, you could see Nagornaia as if it were set on a saucer.

"The signal man, Uncle Vasilii, I used to call just Daddy. He was a kind and cheerful man, only terribly trusting, especially when he was drunk. Everybody knew all there was to know about him all over the countryside. He'd turn his heart inside out to every stranger he met.

"But the signal woman I never could call Mother. Whether it was because I couldn't forget my own mother or for some other reason, the fact is Aunt Marfa really was terrible. Yes. And so I called the signal woman Aunt Marfa.

"Well, time went on, years went by, how many I don't know. I was beginning to go out to the trains to wave the flag, and I could bring the cow in or unhitch the horse. Aunt Marfa taught me to spin, and as for the housework, it goes without saying I did that. Anything like sweeping or tidying or doing a bit of cooking, that was nothing to me, I did all that. Oh, yes, and I forgot to tell you, I looked after Petia. Our Petia had withered legs, he was three but he couldn't walk at all, so I carried him around. And now, after all those years, I still get shivers down my back when I think of how Auntie Marfa used to squint at my strong legs as much as to say why weren't my legs withered, it would be better if I had withered legs instead of her Petia, as if I'd put the evil eye on him. You wouldn't believe what spite and superstition there is in the world.

"But now listen to what I'm going to tell you. All that was nothing to what happened later. It'll make your hair stand on end.

"It was the time of NEP, a thousand rubles was worth a kopeck. Uncle Vasia sold a cow down below and got two sacks full of money. Kerenki it was called—no, sorry, they were called lemons then, that's what they were called. He had a drink and told everyone in Nagornaia how rich he was.

"I remember it was a windy day in autumn. The wind was tearing at the roof, it nearly knocked you off your feet, and the engines couldn't get uphill because the wind was head on. Suddenly I saw an old beggar woman coming down from the top of the hill, the wind tugging at her skirt and blowing off her kerchief.

"She was walking along and moaning and clutching her belly. She asked us to take her in, and we put her on the bench. Oh, she yelled, I can't stand it, I can't stand it, my belly is on fire, this is my end. In Christ's name, she begged, take me to the hospital, I'll pay you whatever you like. Well, Daddy hitched Udaloy, the horse, to the cart, put the old woman in the cart, and took her to the county hospital, which was eleven miles away.

"After a time we went to bed, Aunt Marfa and I, then we heard Udaloy neighing outside and the cart driving into the yard. It seemed a bit too soon for them to be back. But anyway Aunt Marfa lit a light, put on her jacket, and undid the bolt without waiting for Daddy to knock.

"She opened the door, but it wasn't Daddy, it was a stranger, dark and frightening, and he said, Show me where the money is that you got for the cow. I've killed your old man in the wood, he said, but you being a woman I'll let you alone if you tell me where the money is. If you don't tell me you know what will happen, you'll only have yourself to blame, and better not keep me waiting, I don't have any time to hang around.

"Oh, God in heaven, need I tell you the state we were in, you can imagine, yourselves. We were shaking all over, half dead with fright and speechless with terror! First Uncle Vasia was killed, he'd said so himself, he'd killed him with an ax, and now we were alone with him, a murderer right in our house, we could see he was a murderer.

"I suppose it was just then that Aunt Marfa went out of her mind. The moment she heard her husband was dead, something snapped inside her. And she knew she mustn't show how she felt.

"First she threw herself at his feet. Have mercy on me, she said, don't kill me, I don't know a thing, I've never heard about any money, I don't know what money you are talking about. But he wasn't going to be put off with that, he wasn't such a fool, the devil. All right, then, she told him. The money is in the cellar. I'll open the trap door for you. But the devil saw right through that. No, he said, you go down, you know the way, you get it. I don't care if you go down to the cellar or up on the roof, all I want is the money. But remember—don't try to pull any tricks, he said, it doesn't pay to fool with me.

"Then she said to him: God be with you, why are you so suspicious? I'd gladly go down and get it for you myself, but my legs are bad, I can't manage the ladder. I'll stand on the top step and hold the light for you. Don't worry, I'll send my daughter down with you, she said. That was me she meant.

"Oh, God in heaven, need I tell you how I felt when I heard that? Well, that's the end of me, I thought, and everything went black in front of my eyes and my legs wouldn't hold me up, I thought I'd fall down.

"But that devil, he was no fool, he took one look at both of us and screwed up his eyes and grinned at her, showing all his teeth, as much as to say: I know your tricks, you can't fool me. He could see that I meant nothing to her, I wasn't her own flesh and blood, so he made a grab at Petia and picked him up in one hand and pulled up the trap door with the other. Let's have a light, he said to her, and down he went—down the ladder into the cellar with Petia.

"I think she was already cracked and couldn't understand anything; her mind was gone. As soon as he had gone down with little Petia, bang, she slammed the trap door and locked it and began to drag a heavy trunk on top of it, nodding and beckoning to me to help her, because it was too heavy for her. She got it in place and sat on it, pleased with herself, the crazy woman. No sooner had she sat down than the robber started yelling and banging on the floor. You couldn't make out what he was saying, the floor boards were too thick, but you could tell from his voice what he meant: let him out or he'd murder Petia. He roared worse than a wild beast to frighten us. Now your Petia's in for it, he yelled, but she couldn't understand a thing. She just sat there winking at me and laughing, as much as to say: No matter what you do, I won't budge from the trunk and I'll keep the keys. I did everything I could with her, I screamed right into her ears saying she must open up the cellar and save Petia, and I tried to push her off the trunk, but I couldn't, she was too strong for me and she wouldn't listen.

"Well, he was banging, banging on the floor, and the time was going by, and she just sat there rolling her eyes, not listening to anything.

"Well, after a time—Oh, God in heaven, I've been through many things in my life, but this I'll never forget. As long as I live I'll hear Petia's thin little voice—little Petia cried and groaned down below, the little angel, that devil choked him to death.

"Now what shall I do, what shall I do with this mad old woman and this murderer, I thought. And I had to do something. The moment I thought this I heard Udaloy neighing outside. He'd been standing out there in the yard and he hadn't been unharnessed. Yes. Udaloy was neighing as much as to say: Let's fly quickly, Tania, and find some good people and get help. I looked out of the window and I saw that it was near dawn. You're right, Udaloy, it's a good idea, I thought. Let's go. But hardly had I thought this when again I heard, like a voice calling from the wood, Wait, don't hurry, Tania, we'll do it another way. And again I knew I wasn't alone in the wood. It was like our own cock crowing. An engine hooted down below. I recognized its whistle; it was from the engine that they always kept ready at Nagornaia—a pusher, they called it—to help freight trains up the hill. This was a mixed train going by, it always went by at that time every night. Well, I heard this engine I knew, calling me from below. I listened and my heart leapt. Am I off my head, I wondered, like Auntie Marfa, that every living beast and every dumb engine speaks to me in plain Russian?

"Well, it was no good thinking, the train was getting near, there was no time to think. I grabbed the lantern—there wasn't much light yet—and I raced to the track and stood right in the middle, between the rails, waving the light up and down.

"Well, what more is there to say? I stopped the train. Because of the wind it was going slowly, very slowly, almost at a crawl. I stopped it and the driver, who knew me, leaned out of the window of the cab and called out something, I couldn't hear what it was because of the wind. I shouted to him, the signal house had been raided, murder and robbery, a killer in the house, help us, Comrade Uncle, we need help right away. And while I was saying this, Red Army men came jumping out of the train, one after the other, it was an army train, they jumped out on the track. What's up? they asked, they couldn't make out why on earth the train had stopped in the wood, on a steep hill at night, and was standing still.

"I told them everything. They dragged the murderer out of the cellar. He was squealing in a voice thinner than Petia's, Have mercy on me, good people, he said, don't kill me, I'll never do it again. They took the law into their own hands. They dragged him out onto the tracks, tied his hands and feet to the rails, and drove the train over him.

"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."

5

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.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE POEMS OF YURII ZHIVAGO

HAMLET

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.

 

MARCH

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.

 

HOLY WEEK

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.

 

WHITE NIGHT

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.

 

BAD ROADS IN SPRING

The flames of sunset were smoldering out.

A horseman headed for a remote farmstead in the Urals

Was plodding over a spring-mired trail

In a thick pine forest.

 

The horse's inwards heaved. In answer

To the swish and clink of its shod hoofs

The swirling whirlpools loosed their echoes

Over the road, in pursuit.

 

But when the horseman, dropping reins,

Would slow his mount down to a walk,

The spring freshets would roll very close to him

All of their roaring, all their din.

 

Someone was laughing, someone wept;

Stones ground to dust against the flints,

And loosened and uprooted tree-stumps

Went tumbling into churning pools.

 

A nightingale raged in frantic song

Like a church bell pealing forth a tocsin;

He sang among branches interlaced and darkling

Against the sunset's conflagration.

 

Where a willow leant over a hollow

Like a widow burying her mate

The bird was whistling on seven oaks,

As Robber Nightingale did in days of old.

 

Against what evil, against what forlorn love

Was this predestined fervor meant?

Against whom had the singer fired

This charge of small shot in the woods?

 

It seemed that he would emerge like a wood demon

From the camp of the escaping convicts

To meet the outposts of the partisans,

Whether on foot or horse.

 

The earth and sky, the field and forest

Hearkened to catch each unique note,

These measured doles of sheerest madness,

Of pain, of happiness, of anguish.

 

EXPLANATION

Life has returned with just as little reason

As on a time it so oddly snapped.

I am on the same ancient thoroughfare

That I was on that summer, on that day and hour.

 

The same people, and their cares are the same,

And the sunset's red fire has not yet grown cold:

It was just the same when that deathly evening

Quickly nailed it against a white wall.

 

Women in worn and sleazy cottons

Go tap-tapping along (just as they did then)

And night (just as it did then) will crucify them

Under the tin roofs of their garret rooms.

 

There, one of them, with her feet dragging,

Slowly emerges upon her threshold

And, climbing out of her semibasement,

Goes eater-corner across the yard.

 

I am again brushing up on excuses

And (once again) nothing means much to me.

Now my fair neighbor, having skirted the back yard,

Leaves us alone, all alone by ourselves.

 

Keep back your tears. And do not twist

Your swollen lips. And don't pucker them,

For that would merely break the scab

That was formed by the enfevered spring.

 

Remove your hand—don't keep it on my breast:

We are merely wires—and the current's on.

Once more—watch out!—we will be thrown together,

And this time not by chance.

 

The years will pass and you will marry.

You will forget the hardships you endured.

To be a woman is a great adventure;

To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

 

For my part, all my life long

I have stood like a devoted slave

In reverence and awe before the miracle

Of woman's hands, her back, her shoulders, and her sculptured throat.

 

And yet, no matter how the night

May chain me within its ring of longing,

The pull of separation is still stronger

And I have a beckoning passion for the clean break.

 

SUMMER IN TOWN

Conversation in murmured tones.

With an impatient gesture

She upsweeps her hair—the whole sheaf of it—

From the nape of her neck.

 

As she peers out from under her heavy comb

She is a woman in a helmet.

Her head, braids and all,

Is thrown back.

 

Outside, the sultry night

Threatens to turn inclement.

Pedestrians, shuffling their feet,

Hasten homeward.

 

You can hear abrupt thunderings

And their grating echoes,

While the gusts of wind

Are making the curtains sway.

 

Not a word breaks the silence.

The air is as sticky as it was before

And, as before, lightnings go rummaging,

Rummaging, rummaging all over the sky.

 

And when the morning comes

Sunshot and sultry

And once more starts drying the puddles

Left on the street by last night's downpour,

 

The fragrant lindens,

Ages old but still in full blossom,

Have a glum look about them

Because they haven't slept themselves out.

 

WIND

I have died, but you are still among the living.

And the wind, keening and complaining,

Makes the country house and the forest rock—

Not each pine by itself

But all the trees as one,

Together with the illimitable distance;

It makes them rock as the hulls of sailboats

Rock on the mirrorous waters of a boat-basin.

And this the wind does not out of bravado

Or in a senseless rage,

But so that in its desolation

It may find words to fashion a lullaby for you.

 

HOPBINES

We seek shelter from inclement weather

Under a willow entwined with ivy.

A raincape is thrown over our shoulders.

My arms are tightly encircled about you.

 

Sorry—I erred. The shrubs in these thickets

Are not ivy-grown but covered with hopbines.

Well, we'll do better if we take this raincape

And spread it out wide for a rug beneath us.

 

FALSE SUMMER

The leaves of the currants are coarse and woolly.

The house shakes with laughter, the windowpanes ring.

There's great chopping within it, and pickling, while pepper

And cloves are put in to lend tang to the brine.

 

The grove, like a cavorting clown, casts this hubbub

As far as that field with its rather steep slope

Where the sun-scorched hazels are blazing with color

As if they'd been seared by the heat of a fire.

 

Here the road dips to a gravelly gully;

Here among the ancient and gnarled river-snags

One can feel sorry for even that rag-picking crone Autumn

Who has swept all of her queer treasure-trove down here.

 

And also because all Creation is simpler

Than some of our crafty philosophers think.

And because the grove seems to be plunged under water,

And because for all things there's a predestined end.

 

And because there's no sense for one's eyes to be blinking

When all they behold has been scorched by the sun,

And the fine ashes of Autumn (its white gossamer)

Float in at the windows with each vagrant breeze.

 

There's a hole in the fence; it leads from the garden

To a path that gets lost where the birches grow thick.

The house hums with laughter and housewifely bustling—

That bustling and laughter also come from afar.

 

WEDDING

Guests came until dawn

To the bride's house for the celebration,

Cutting right across the yard,

Bringing their own music.

 

After midnight until seven

Not a murmur came

From behind the felt-lined door

Of the master's bedroom.

 

But at dawn (the sleepiest time

When one could sleep forever)

The accordion struck up,

Once again, at leaving.

 

The harmonica played too

Like a hurdy-gurdy;

Clapping hands and clicking beads

Helped the charivari.

 

And again, again, again

Sped by guests carousing

All the ribald catches burst

Right into the bedroom,

 

While one wench, as white as snow,

To the calls and whistles

Once more did her peahen dance

Gliding, with hips swinging,

 

Head tossed high

And right hand waving,

Dancing fast on cobbles—

Just a peahen, peahen!

 

Suddenly the din and doings

And rings-around-a-rosy—

Vanished as if hell had yawned

Or water had engulfed them.

 

Noisily the barnyard woke

And sounds of daily chores

Mingled with the noisy talk

And the peals of laughter.

 

Up into the boundless skies

Rose whirlwinds of gray patches:

Flocks of pigeons taking off

In fast flight from dovecotes.

 

Just as if some drowsy soul

Bestirred himself to set loose

Birds with wishes for long life

To overtake the wedding.

 

For life, too, is only an instant,

Only the dissolving of ourselves

In the selves of all others

As if bestowing a gift—

 

Only wedding noises

Soaring in through a window;

Only a song, only a dream,

Only a gray pigeon.

 

AUTUMN

I have let all the members of my household go their ways;

All those close to me have long since scattered.

And everything—within the heart and throughout nature

Is filled with the loneliness of always.

 

And now I am here with you in the forester's hut.

The forest is unpeopled and deserted.

Its trails and paths are (as the old song has it)

Half overgrown with grass and weeds.

 

We are the only ones now

For the walls of logs to regard in melancholy.

We made no promises to storm barricades;

We shall go down to perdition openly.

 

We will take our seats at one: at three we will leave our seats—

I with a book, you with your needlework.

And when day breaks we shall not notice

At what time we had done with our kissing.

 

Be noisy, leaves, as you flutter down—

Still more flamboyantly, with more abandon!

And raise the level of the gall of yesterday

Within the cup, by adding to it today's yearning.

 

Attachment, craving, splendor of beauty.…

Let us scatter like smoke in this September soughing.

Bury all of yourself, my dearest, in this autumnal rustling;

Swoon, or go half insane!

 

You shed your coverings in much the same fashion

As this grove sheds its leaves,

Whenever you fall into my embraces

In your dressing gown with its silken tassels.

 

You are the blessing in a stride toward perdition,

When living sickens more than sickness does itself;

The root of beauty is audacity,

And that is what draws us to each other.

 

FAIRY TALES

Once upon a time

In a faery realm

A knight was urging his steed

Over a steppe of burdocks.

 

He was most eager

To take part in battle,

Yet he could see through the dust

A forest looming ahead.

 

A nagging foreboding

Gnawed at his doughty heart.

(Shun the water hole—

Tighten saddle-girth!)

 

But the knight, unheeding,

Put spurs to his steed

And at full tilt rode

Up the wooded knoll.

 

Then, from this burial mound,

He rode into a dry river bed.

Next, skirting a meadow,

He crossed over a mountain.

 

He veered into a hollow

And, by a forest trail,

Came upon a spoor,

Found a water hole.

 

Deaf to any warning,

Unheeding his inner call,

He led his steed down from a rise

To drench him at the stream.

 

By the stream a cave yawned,

Before the cave was a ford;

Flaming brimstone seemed

To light the cavern's mouth.

 

From behind the crimson smoke

That screened everything from sight

A far-off cry came echoing

Through the towering pines.

 

The knight, startled,

Dashed off straight ahead,

Racing through the ravine

In answer to this cry for help.

 

And the knight beheld

A dread dragon's head,

And its scales and tail—

And gripped his lance hard.

 

Flaming at its maw,

The dragon scattered light like seed.

Its spine was wound in a triple coil

Around a maid.

 

The great serpent's neck

Flicked like the tip of a whip

Over the white shoulders

Of his fair captive.

 

For that country's custom

Gave up to this forest monster

A beautiful young creature

As its prey.

 

The people of that region

Paid this tribute to save

Their wretched huts and hovels

From the great worm's wrath.

 

Its body bound her arms

And was wound about her throat:

It had accepted this sacrifice

To torture as it willed.

 

With his eyes turned up to heaven

The knight implored its aid

And ready to give battle

Aimed his lance at full tilt.

 

Tightly closed eyelids.

Towering heights. And clouds.

Waters. Fords. And rivers.

Years. And countless ages.

 

The knight in dented helmet

Lies unhorsed in the battle.

His faithful steed's hoofs trample

The life out of the serpent.

 

Steed and dragon carcass

Lie together on the sand.

The knight lies there unconscious.

The maid is in a swoon.

 

The noontide vault of heaven

Is radiant and blue.

Who is this maid? A princess?

Bred to the land? Or to the purple born?

 

Tears from excess of joy

Course down her cheeks in streams.

Then her soul is overcome

By sleep and oblivion.

 

He feels he is recovering,

Then cannot stir a limb—

So great his loss of blood,

So much his strength is spent.

 

Yet both their hearts are beating.

By turns he and she

Strain to come to,

Only to sleep again.

 

Tightly closed eyelids.

Towering heights. And clouds.

Waters. Fords. And rivers.

Years. And countless ages.

 

AUGUST

The sun, keeping its promise without deception,

Had penetrated early in the morning,

Tracing a saffron streak obliquely

From the window curtains to the divan.

 

The same sun splashed with sultry ocher

The woods near by, the hamlet's houses,

My bed, my dampened pillow

And the watt's angle near the bookshelf.

 

I have recalled the very reason

For the slight dampness of my pillow.

I had dreamt that all of you were trailing

Through the woods, coming to see me off.

 

There was a crowd of you, yet you were straggling. Suddenly

Someone recalled: according to the Old Style

It was the sixth of August—

The Lord's Transfiguration.

 

On this day, usually, a light without a flame

Issues from Mount Tabor, and Autumn,

Refulgent as an oriflamme,

Draws all eyes by its many glories.

 

And you traversed the stunted, beggared,

Denuded, quaking scrubwood of the alders

And entered the cemetery coppice

Of flaring red and ornate as a ginger bunny.

 

The sky was pompously playing neighbor

To the unstirring treetops, while the distance

Was clamorous with the exchange

Of long-drawn clarion calls of roosters.

 

Death stood like a state surveyor

Within God's acre in this forest, scanning

My lifeless face, as if in thought

How best to dig my grave to proper measure.

 

All of you heard (not inwardly but with your sense of hearing)

The calm voice of someone close beside you.

That voice had been mine once, a fatidic voice.

It sounded now, untouched by death's corruption:

 

"Farewell to Transfiguration's azure

And to the Second Coming's gold!

Abate, with a last womanly caress,

The bitterness to me of this predestined hour.

 

Farewell to years of timelessness.

Let us part now, you who threw

Your woman's gauntlet to an abyss of degradations:

I am the arena of your ordeal.

 

Farewell, broad sweep of outspread wings,

Farewell to willfulness of soaring,

And to the image of the world through words made manifest,

And to creativity, and to working wonders."

 

WINTER NIGHT

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,

Snow swept the world from end to end.

A candle burned on the table;

A candle burned.

 

As during summer midges swarm

To beat their wings against a flame,

Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed

To beat against the windowpane.

 

The blizzard sculptured on the glass

Designs of arrows and of whorls.

A candle burned on the table;

A candle burned.

 

Distorted shadows fell

Upon the lighted ceiling:

Shadows of crossed arms, of crossed legs—

Of crossed destiny.

 

Two tiny shoes fell to the floor

And thudded.

A candle on a nightstand shed wax tears

Upon a dress.

 

All things vanished within

The snowy murk—white, hoary.

A candle burned on the table;

A candle burned.

 

A corner draft fluttered the flame

And the white fever of temptation

Upswept its angel wings that cast

A cruciform shadow.

 

It snowed hard throughout the month

Of February, and almost constantly

A candle burned on the table;

A candle burned.

 

PARTING

The man is staring across the threshold

And cannot recognize his home.

Her going had been like a flight.

Havoc has left its traces everywhere.

 

Chaos prevails in all the rooms.

He cannot judge the devastation

Because his eyes are blurred with tears,

Because his head is pounding.

 

Ever since morning his ears have been ringing.

Is he awake or having a bad dream?

And why do thoughts about the sea

Persist in coming to his mind?

 

When one no longer sees the day

Because of hoarfrost on the panes

The hopelessness of grief redoubles

Its likeness to the sea's vast desert.

 

He drew her every trait to him

Even as the sea draws near it

Each of the many littorals

Throughout the stretch of its incoming tide.

 

Even as reeds go down beneath

The rough seas following a storm

So every line of her had gone

To the bottom of his soul.

 

In years of hardships, in the days

Of an unthinkable existence

She had been cast up from the depths

By a high wave of destiny.

 

Amid innumerable perils,

Avoiding every reef and shoal

The wave had borne her on and on

And brought her close.

 

And now, this flight of hers.

Perhaps It had been forced upon her.

This parting will consume them both

And grief gnaw clean their bones.

 

His eyes take in the whole scene.

At the moment of her going

She had upset the contents of

Every compartment in her dresser.

 

He paces aimlessly and till dark comes

Keeps putting back inside a drawer

The scattered scraps of cloth,

The crumpled sample patterns.

 

And having run into his hand

A needle left in some unfinished sewing

He suddenly sees all of her.

And falls to sobbing. Softly.

 

ENCOUNTER

The snow will bury roads,

Will cover the roofs deeply.

If I step out to stretch my legs

I will see you from the door.

 

Alone, in a fall coat,

No hat and no snow boots;

You are trying to be calm,

Nibbling your snow-wet lips.

 

The distant trees and fences

Recede into the murk.

You stand at the corner

Alone in the midst of the falling snow.

 

Water runs down your scarf,

Inside your sleeves, your collar,

And melted snow sparkles

In dewdrops on your hair.

 

And a flaxen strand of it

Lights up your face, your scarf,

Your bravely erect figure,

That wretched coat of yours.

 

Snow melts upon your lashes.

Sadness is in your eyes.

And all of you seems fashioned

Out of a single piece.

 

It is as if your image

Were being etched forever

With burin and strong acid

Upon my very heart.

 

Nor can your submissive features

Ever be burnished off.

And so, what does it matter

If the world is stonyhearted?

 

And so, this night is doubling itself

With all its murk and snow

And I cannot draw a line

Dividing you and me.

 

For who are we, and where from,

If after all these years

Gossip alone still lives on

While we no longer live?

 

STAR OF THE NATIVITY

It was wintertime.

The wind blew from the plain

And the infant was cold

In the cave on the slope of a knoll.

 

The breath of an ox served to warm Him.

The cattle were huddling

Within the cave.

Warmth hovered in a mist over the manger.

 

Up on a cliff shepherds shook from their sheepskins

The straws from their pallets

And stray grains of millet

And sleepily stared into the midnight distance.

 

Far off were fields covered over with snow,

And a graveyard, and gravestones and fences,

A cart with its shafts deep in a snowdrift

And, over the graveyard, a star-studded sky.

 

And seemingly near yet unseen until then,

Its light more timorous than that of a tallow-dip

Set in the window of some watchman's hut,

A star glimmered over the road to Bethlehem.

 

Now it looked like a hayrick blazing

Off to one side from heaven and God;

Like the reflection of an arsonous fire,

Like a farmstead in flames on a threshing floor burning.

 

It reared in the sky like a fiery stack

Of straw, of hay,

In the midst of a Creation startled, astounded

By this new Star.

 

An increasing redness that was like a portent

Was glowing above it.

And three stargazers heeded, and hasted

To answer the call of these unwonted lights.

 

Gift-laden camels plodded behind them,

And comparisoned asses, each one smaller and smaller,

Were daintily, cautiously descending a hill.

 

And all of the things that were to come after

Sprang up in the distance as a strange prevision:

All the thoughts of the ages, all the dreams, all the worlds,

All the future of galleries and of museums,

All the pranks of goblins, all the works of the workers of miracles,

All the yule trees on earth, all the dreams of small children,

All the warm glow of tremulous candles, all chains,

All the magnificence of brightly hued tinsel.…

(Ever more cruel, more raging, the wind blew from the plain.)

…All rosy-cheeked apples, all the blown-glass gold globes.

 

Part of the pond was screened by alders

But, beyond rook nests among the treetops,

Part could be seen clearly from the brink of the cliff.

The shepherds could mark well the camels and asses

Threading their way at the edge of the milldam.

"Let us go with all others and worship the miracle,"

Said they, and muffled their sheepskins about them.

 

Plowing through snow made their bodies feel warm.

Tracks of bare feet, glinting like mica,

Led over the bright plain and beyond the inn's hut,

And the dogs sighting these tracks by the Stars' light

Growled at them as if at a candle-end's flame.

 

The frosty night was like a fairy tale,

And some beings from the snow-crushed mountain ridge

Were mingling constantly, unseen, with all the others.

The dogs were wavering, looking back in terror,

And, in dire foreboding, cringed close to a young shepherd.

 

Through the same countryside, over the same highway

Some angels walked among the throng of mortals.

Their incorporeality made them invisible

Yet each step they took left the print of a foot.

 

Day was breaking. The trunks of the cedars stood out.

A horde of men milled by the stone at the cave's mouth.

"Who are you?" Mary asked them.

"We are from a shepherd tribe, and envoys of heaven.

We have come to sing praises to both of you."

"You cannot all enter. Bide a while here."

 

In the gloom before dawn, gray as cold ashes,

The drovers and shepherds stamped to keep warm.

Those come on foot bickered with those who came mounted.

Near the hollowed-out log that served as a water trough

The camels bellowed, the gray asses kicked out.

 

Day was breaking. Dawn swept the last of the stars

Off heaven's vault as if they were ash motes.

And Mary, out of all the countless multitude, allowed

Only the Magi to enter the cleft in the crag.

 

He slept, all refulgent, in the manger of oakwood,

Like a moonbeam within a deep-hollowed tree.

In lieu of sheepskins His body was warmed

By the lips of an ass and the nostrils of an ox.

 

The Magi stood in shadow (the byre seemed in twilight);

They spoke in whispers, groping for words.

Suddenly one, in deeper shadow, touched another

To move him aside from the manger, a little to the left.

The other turned: like a guest about to enter,

The Star of the Nativity was gazing upon the Maid.

 

DAWN

You were the be-all in my destiny.

Then came the war, the devastation,

And for a long, long time there was

No word from you, not even a sign,

 

And after many, many years

I find again your voice disturbs me.

All night I read your testament—

And found my consciousness returning.

 

I'm drawn to people, to be one of a crowd,

To share their morning animation.

I'm ready to smash everything to smithereens

And make all kneel in schoolboy penance.

 

And so I dash down all the stairs

As if this were my first sortie

Into these streets and their deep snow

And pavements that long since died out.

 

Each way I turn I see awakenings, lights, comfort.

Men gulp their tea, they hurry to catch trolleys.

Within the space of a few minutes

You'd never recognize the town.

 

The blizzard weaves its nets in gateways

Out of the thickly falling flakes.

And all, to get to work in time,

Dash madly, hardly taking breakfast.

 

I feel for all these people

As if I'd been within their hides;

I feel I'm melting, even as the snow melts,

I feel I glower, even as the morning glowers.

 

The nameless ones are part of me.

Children also, the trees, and stay-at-homes.

All these are victors over me—

And therein lies my sole victory.

 

MIRACLE

He was on His way from Bethany to Jerusalem,

Languishing under the sadness of premonitions.

 

The slope's prickly scrubwood had been scorched by the sun;

No smoke rose from a near-by hut.

The air was hot; the reeds did not stir

And the calm of the Dead Sea was unbroken.

 

And, knowing a bitterness that rivalled the bitterness of the sea,

Accompanied only by a small band of clouds,

He went on along the dusty road

Intent on reaching a certain religious school.

He was on His way to attend a gathering of disciples.

 

And so deeply was He plunged in His thoughts

That the countryside sent forth an odor of wormwood.

A stillness fell over all things. He stood alone

In the midst of it all. And all the region lay prostrate

As if in a swoon. All things became confused:

The sultriness and the desert,

And lizards, and wellsprings and streams.

 

A fig tree rose up a short distance ahead—

Utterly fruitless, putting forth only branches and leaves.

And He said unto it: "Of what use art thou?

What joy have I from thee, standing there petrified?

I am enhungered and athirst, yet thou art all barren

And coming upon thee is of less joy than stumbling on granite.

Oh, how thou dost offend, how void of any gift!

Remain, then, even as thou art until the end of time."

 

A shudder at the condemnation ran through the tree

Even as a spark of lightning runs down a rod.

The fig tree was instantly consumed to ashes.

 

If at that point but a moment of free choice had been granted

To the leaves, the branches, to the trunk and roots

The laws of nature might have contrived to intervene.

But a miracle is a miracle—and miracle is God.

When we are in confusion, then in the midst of our straggling

It overtakes us and, on the instant, confounds us.

 

EARTH

High-handed spring barges right into

The stateliest Moscow houses.

Moths flutter out when one opens closets

And start crawling over summer headgear.

Furs are put away in trunks.

 

The ledges of high wooden garrets

Put forth their vernal flowerpots

Of gillyflowers and wallflowers;

Rooms flaunt a free-and-easy air

And attics smell of dust.

 

Streets are on hail-fellow-well-met terms

With each and every purblind window.

White night and sunset, by the river,

Just can't, somehow, pass each other.

 

And you can hear inside the hallway

What's going on out in the open,

Or overhear the eavesdrop talking

By chance with April (which month has

Thousands and thousands of true stories

That have to do with mankind's woes).

Dawnglows and evenglows congeal on fences,

Dawdling and shirking at their tasks.

 

The selfsame blend of fire and eeriness

Prevails outside and in snug dwelling.

Everywhere the air is not its own self.

The selfsame pussywillow twigs interlace,

The selfsame white buds beget their swellings,

Whether on window sill or at crossroads,

Whether in the street or in a workshop.

 

Why, then, does the distance weep in a mist

And humus have so sharp an odor?

For that's just what my calling's for—

To keep the vistas from being bored,

To keep the land beyond the city

From pining by its lonely self.

 

That is the reason my friends gather

To be with me in early spring

And why our evenings serve as farewells

And our little feasts as testaments,

So that the secret stream of sorrow

May impart some warmth to the chill of being.

 

EVIL DAYS

When He was entering Jerusalem

During that last week

He was hailed with thunderous hosannas;

The people ran in His wake, waving palm branches.

 

Yet the days were becoming ever more ominous, more grim.

There wax no stirring the hearts of men through love:

Their eyebrows knit in disdain.

And now, the epilogue. Finis.

 

The heavens lay heavy over the houses,

Crushing with all of their leaden weight.

The Pharisees were seeking evidence against Him,

Yet cringed before Him like foxes.

 

Then the dark forces of the Temple

Gave Him up to be judged by the offscourings.

And, with the same fervor with which they once sang His praises,

Men now reviled Him.

The rabble from the vicinity

Was peering in at the gateway.

They kept jostling as they bided the outcome,

Surging, receding.

 

The neighborhood crawled with sly whispers

And rumors crept in from all sides.

He recalled the flight into Egypt and His childhood

But recalled them now as if in a dream.

 

He remembered the majestic cliffside in the wilderness

And that exceeding high mountain

Whereon Satan had tempted Him,

Offering Him all the kingdoms of the world.

 

And the marriage feast at Cana

And the guests in great admiration over the miracle.

And the sea on which, in a mist,

He had walked to the boat as if over dry land.

 

And the gathering of the poor in a hovel

And His going down into a cellar by the light of a taper

Which had suddenly gone out in affright

When the man risen from the dead was trying to get to his feet.

 

MAGDALENE

I

As soon as night comes my demon springs up out of the ground.

That is the price I pay for my past.

They come, those memories of vice,

And fall to gnawing at my heart.

Those memories of days when I, a slave

To the whims and quirks of males,

Was but a demoniac fool and the street was all my shelter.

 

A few scant moments still remain

And then a silence as of the grave will fall.

But before they pass I, having reached

The very limit of my life,

Am shattering that life at Thy feet

As if it were an alabaster vessel.

 

Oh, where would I now be,

My Master and my Saviour,

If eternity were not awaiting me

Of nights, standing by my bed

Like a new visitor enticed

Into the net of my profession?

 

But still, I would have Thee expound for me the meaning

Of sin, and death, and hell and brimstone fire—

When I, before the eyes of all, have grown into one

With Thee, even as scion and tree,

Because my yearning is beyond all measure.

 

When, Jesus, I embrace Thy feet

As I support them on my knees

It may be that I am learning to embrace

The squared beam of the Cross

And, bereft of my senses, am straining for Thy body

As I prepare Thee for Thy interment.

 

II

People are tidying up before the holiday.

Aloof from all this bustle, I am anointing

Thy most immaculate feet

With myrrh from a small bowl.

 

I grope for and cannot find Thy sandals.

I can see naught because of my tears.

Strands of my loosened hair have fallen

Like a pall over my eyes.

 

I have set Thy feet upon my lap,

I have poured my tears over them, Jesus;

I have entwined them with the string of beads from around my neck,

I have buried them in my hair, as in the folds of a burnous.

 

I see the future in such detail

As if Thou hast made it stand still.

At this moment I can foretell events

With the fatidical clairvoyance of the Sybils.

 

The veil will fall on the morrow within the Temple.

We will be huddled in a knot off to one side.

And the earth will rock underfoot—

Out of pity for me, perhaps.

 

The ranks of the guard will realign

And the mounted soldiers will start dispersing.

Just as a waterspout in a storm strains upward

So will that Cross be straining to reach the sky.

I shall prostrate myself on the earth at the foot of the crucifix.

 

I shall make my heart stop its beating, I shall bite my lips.

Thou hast spread Thy arms to embrace far too many,

Flinging Thy hands out till they reach the ends of the crossbeam.

 

For whom in this world is all this breadth,

So much agony and such power?

Are there so many souls and lives in this universe—

So many settlements, and rivers and groves?

 

Yet three days such as this shall pass

And they shall thrust me into such a void

That during this brief interval of time

I shall, even before the Resurrection, attain my full stature.

 

GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

The turn in the road was illumined

By the indifferent glimmer of the remote stars.

The road led around the Mount of Olives;

Below, in its valley, the Brook Kedron ran.

 

Halfway, the small meadow dipped in a sharp break;

Beyond it began the great Milky Way,

While the silver-gray olives still strained forward

As if to stride onward upon empty air.

 

Furthest away was someone's garden plot.

He left His disciples outside the stone fence

Saying, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;

Tarry ye here, and watch with me."

 

He had rejected without resistance

Dominion over all things and the power to work miracles,

As though these had been His only on loan

And now was as all mortals are, even as we.

 

Night's distance seemed the very brink

Of annihilation, of nonexistence.

The universe's span was void of any life;

The garden only was a coign of being.

 

And peering into these black abysses—

Void, without end and without beginning—

His brow sweating blood, He pleaded with His Father

That this cup of death might pass from Him.

 

Having eased His mortal anguish through prayer,

He left the garden. Beyond its wall His disciples,

Overcome with sleep, sprawled on the ground

In the wayside feathergrass.

 

He awakened them: "God hath granted you to live

During my days on earth, and yet you lie there sprawling.

Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man

Shall betray Himself into the hands of sinners."

 

He had scarcely spoken when, coming from none knew where,

A throng of slaves sprang up, a host of vagrant men

With swords and torches, and at their head stood Judas

With the perfidious kiss writhing on his lips.

 

Peter drew sword and thrust the cutthroats back

And struck a man and smote off his ear.

Whereon he heard, "No metal can resolve dissension.

Put up thy sword again into his place.

 

Thinkest thou my Father would not send

Sky-darkening hosts of winged legions to my succor?

And without harming even a hair of mine

My enemies would scatter, leaving no trace behind.

 

But now the book of life has reached a page

Which is more precious than are all the holies.

That which was written now must be fulfilled.

Fulfilled be it, then. Amen.

 

Seest thou, the passing of the ages is like a parable

And in its passing it may burst to flame.

In the name, then, of its awesome majesty

I shall, in voluntary torments, descend into my grave.

 

I shall descend into my grave. And on the third day rise again.

And, even as rafts float down a river,

So shall the centuries drift, trailing like a caravan,

Coming for judgment, out of the dark, to me."

 

 

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BORIS PASTERNAK belonged to a generation that gave Russia its twentieth-century poets—Blok, Esenin, and Mayakovsky. He was born in Moscow in 1890, the eldest son of Leonid Pasternak, the painter, and Rosa Kaufman Pasternak, the musician. Early in life he became interested in music and the study of composition, but later abandoned music for philosophy and went to study with Professor Cohen in Marburg, Germany. During the First World War he returned to Russia and worked in a factory in the Ural Mountains; after the Revolution he was employed in the library of the Commissariat for Education. He joined avant-garde poetry groups, experimenting in new techniques of rhythm and composition. His poems, most of which appeared between 1917 and 1932, gave him an eminent and unique position in the world of letters. In 1932, an autobiographical poem, Spectorsky, gave rise to violent accusations of "anti-sociability." From 1933 on, Pasternak lived a retired life, devoting himself mainly to translations of foreign poets. He also translated a number of Shakespeare's plays; his versions are considered the most outstanding and popular in the Russian language.

 

Doctor Zhivago was the first Original work published by Pasternak after twenty-five years of silence. It was announced for publication in Russia in 1954 but subsequently withdrawn. In the meantime an Italian edition was already on press and it could not be withheld from publication. Thus it happened that one of the most important works of contemporary Russian literature appeared first in translation. Doctor Zhivago has still not appeared in Russia, but has been published in Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian (University of Michigan Press), Spanish, and Swedish.

In October of 1958, one month after the American publication of this novel, Boris Pasternak was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mr. Pasternak died in his sleep on May 30, 1960 at his home in Peredelkino, a writer's colony about twenty miles outside of Moscow.