Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [117]
“Don’t mix into it, Fatima, I can stand up for myself. Stop, Khrapugina. Reach you a hand, and you bite it off. Shut up, I said, or I’ll turn you over to the organs immediately and not wait till they pick you up for making moonshine and running a dive.”
The noise reached the limit. No one was given a chance to speak. Just then the doctor came into the storeroom. He asked the first man he ran into by the door to point out someone from the house committee. The man put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and, above the noise and racket, shouted syllable by syllable:
“Ga-li-ul-li-na! Come here. Somebody’s asking for you.”
The doctor could not believe his ears. A thin, slightly stooping woman, the caretaker, came over. The doctor was struck by the resemblance of mother and son. But he did not yet give himself away. He said:
“One of your tenants here has come down with typhus” (he gave the woman’s name). “Precautions must be taken to keep the infection from spreading. Besides, the sick woman will have to be taken to the hospital. I’ll write out a document, which the house committee will have to certify. How and where can I do it?”
The caretaker understood the question as referring to transporting the sick woman, not to writing out the accompanying document.
“A droshky will come from the district soviet to pick up Comrade Demina,” said Galiullina. “Comrade Demina’s a kind person, I’ll tell her, she’ll give it up to you. Don’t worry, comrade doctor, we’ll transport your sick woman.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that! I just need a corner where I can write out an order. But if there’ll be a droshky … Excuse me, but are you the mother of Lieutenant Galiullin, Osip Gimazetdinovich? I served with him at the front.”
The caretaker shuddered all over and turned pale. Seizing the doctor’s hand, she said:
“Let’s step outside. We can talk in the courtyard.”
As soon as they crossed the threshold, she began hurriedly:
“Shh. God forbid anyone hears. Don’t ruin me. Yusupka’s gone bad. Judge for yourself, who is Yusupka? Yusupka was an apprentice, a workman. Yusup should understand, simple people are much better off now, a blind man can see that, there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t know what you think, maybe you can do it, but for Yusupka it’s wrong, God won’t forgive it. Yusup’s father died a soldier, killed, and how—no face left, no arms, no legs.”
She was unable to go on speaking and, waving her hand, waited for her agitation to subside. Then she continued:
“Let’s go. I’ll arrange the droshky for you now. I know who you are. He was here for two days, he told me. He said you know Lara Guisharova. She was a nice girl. She came here to see us, I remember. But who knows what she’s like now. Can it be that the masters go against the masters? But for Yusupka it’s wrong. Let’s go and ask for the droshky. Comrade Demina will let us have it. And do you know who Comrade Demina is? Olya Demina, who used to work as a seamstress for Lara Guisharova’s mother. That’s who she is. Also from here. From this house. Let’s go.”
13
It was already growing quite dark. Night lay all around. Only the white circle of light from Demina’s pocket flashlight leaped some five steps ahead of them from one snowdrift to another, and confused more than lit up the way for the walkers. Night lay all around, and the house stayed behind, where so many people had known her, where she used to come as a girl, where, as the story went, her future husband, Antipov, was brought up as a boy.
Demina addressed him with patronizing jocularity:
“Will you really get further without the flashlight? Eh? Otherwise I’ll give it to you, comrade doctor. Yes. Once I was badly smitten with her, I loved her to distraction, when we were girls. They had a sewing establishment here, a workshop. I lived with them as an apprentice. I saw her this year. Passing through. She was passing through Moscow. I say to her, where are you going, fool? Stay here. We’ll live together, you’ll find work. No way! She doesn’t want to. That’s her business. She married Pashka with her head,