Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [107]
“The maple’s losing its leaves,” said the prosector, coming in. Once a stout man, his skin had become baggy from loss of weight. “The rain poured down on it, the wind tore at it, and they couldn’t defeat it. But see what one morning frost has done!”
The doctor raised his head. Indeed, the mysterious birds flitting past the window turned out to be the wine and flame leaves of the maple, which flew off, floated smoothly through the air, and, like convex orange stars, settled away from the tree on the grass of the hospital lawn.
“Have you sealed the windows?” asked the prosector.
“No,” said Yuri Andreevich, and he went on writing.
“Why not? It’s time.”
Yuri Andreevich did not reply, absorbed in writing.
“Eh, no Tarasiuk,” the prosector went on. “He was solid gold. Could mend boots. And watches. And do everything. And supply anything in the world. It’s time to seal them. Have to do it yourself.”
“There’s no putty.”
“Make some. Here’s the recipe.” And the prosector explained how to prepare putty from linseed oil and chalk. “Well, forget it. I’m bothering you.”
He went to the other window and busied himself with his vials and preparations. It was getting dark. After a minute, he said:
“You’ll ruin your eyes. It’s dark. And they won’t give us any light. Let’s go home.”
“I’ll work a little longer. Twenty minutes or so.”
“His wife’s here as a nurse’s aide.”
“Whose?”
“Tarasiuk’s.”
“I know.”
“But where he is, nobody knows. He roams the wide earth. Came to visit a couple of times in the summer. Stopped by the hospital. Now he’s somewhere in the country. Founding the new life. He’s one of those Bolshevik soldiers you meet on the boulevards and on trains. And do you want to know the answer? To Tarasiuk’s riddle, for instance? Listen. He’s a jack-of-all-trades. Can’t do a bad piece of work. Whatever he turns his hand to goes without a hitch. The same thing happened to him in the war. He studied it like any other trade. Turned out to be a crack shot. In the trenches, at a listening post. His eye, his hand—first class! He got all his decorations, not for bravery, but for never missing. Well. Every job becomes a passion for him. He fell in love with military things. He sees that a weapon is power, that he can use it. He wanted to become power himself. An armed man is no longer simply a man. In the old days his kind went from the sharpshooters to the robbers. Try taking his rifle from him now. And suddenly there comes the call: ‘Bayonets, about face!’ and so on. And he about-faced. That’s the whole story for you. And the whole of Marxism.”
“And the most genuine besides, straight from life. What do you think?”
The prosector stepped over to his window, pottered a little with his vials. Then asked:
“Well, how’s the stove man?”
“Thanks for recommending him. A very interesting man. We spent around an hour talking about Hegel and Benedetto Croce.”10
“Well, what else! He has a doctorate in philosophy from Heidelberg University. And the stove?”
“Don’t talk about it.”
“Smokes?”
“Nothing but trouble.”
“He installed the pipe wrong. He should have built it into the Dutch stove, but he probably stuck it through the vent window.”
“No, he set it into the stove. But it smokes.”
“That means he didn’t find the smokestack and put it through the ventilation duct. Or into the airway. Eh, no Tarasiuk! But be patient. Moscow wasn’t built in a day. Using a stove isn’t like playing piano. It takes learning. Laid in firewood?”
“Where can I get it?”
“I’ll send you the churchwarden. He’s a firewood thief. Takes fences apart for fuel. But I warn you. You’ve got to haggle. He asks a lot. Or there’s the exterminator woman.”
They went down to the porter’s lodge, put their coats on, went out.
“Why the exterminator?” asked the doctor. “We don’t have bedbugs.”
“What have bedbugs got to do with it? I’m talking apples and you’re talking oranges. Not bedbugs,