Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [121]
She walked anxiously about the three rooms of the house now assigned to the Gromeko family, and endlessly weighed each little trifle in her hand before placing it in the general pile of things destined to be packed.
Only an insignificant portion of their belongings went as the travelers’ personal luggage; the rest was kept in reserve as a means of exchange, necessary for the journey and on their arrival in the place.
Spring air came through the open vent window, tasting of a freshly bitten French loaf. Outside, cocks crowed and the voices of playing children were heard. The more they aired the room, the clearer became the smell of camphor, given off by the winter stuff removed from the trunks.
Concerning what ought to be taken and what renounced, there existed a whole theory worked out by those who had left earlier, whose observations had spread in the circle of their acquaintances who stayed behind.
These precepts, shaped into brief, indisputable instructions, were lodged with such distinctness in Antonina Alexandrovna’s head that she fancied she heard them from outside, together with the chirping of the sparrows and the noise of the playing children, as if some secret voice from the street were prompting her.
“Cloth, cloth,” said these considerations, “best of all in lengths, but there are inspections along the way, and it’s dangerous. Cut pieces quickly tacked together are more prudent. Fabric in general, textiles, clothes are acceptable, preferably outer wear, not too worn. As little rubbish as possible, no heavy things. Given the frequent need to carry it all yourselves, forget about hampers and trunks. After sorting them a hundred times, tie a few things into bundles light enough for a woman or a child. Salt and tobacco are expedient, as practice has shown, though the risk is considerable. Money in kerenki.2 Documents are hardest of all.” And so on and so forth.
5
On the eve of departure a snowstorm arose. The wind swept gray clouds of spinning snowflakes up into the sky, and they came back to earth in a white whirl, flew into the depths of the dark street, and spread a white shroud over it.
Everything in the house was packed. The supervision of the rooms and the belongings remaining in them was entrusted to an elderly married couple, Egorovna’s Moscow relations, whom Antonina Alexandrovna had met the preceding winter, when she arranged through them to exchange old things, clothes and unneeded furniture, for firewood and potatoes.
It was impossible to rely on Markel. At the police station, which he chose as his political club, he did not complain that the former house owners, the Gromekos, sucked his blood, but he reproached them after the fact for keeping him in the darkness of ignorance, deliberately concealing from him that the world descended from the apes.
Antonina Alexandrovna took this couple, Egorovna’s relations, a former commercial employee and his wife, around the rooms for a last time, showed them which keys fitted which locks and what had been put where, unlocked and locked the doors of the cupboards together with them, taught them everything and explained everything.
The tables and chairs in the rooms were pushed up against the walls, the bundles for the journey were dragged to one side, the curtains were taken down from all the windows. The snowstorm, more unhindered than in the setting of winter coziness, peeped through the bared windows into the empty rooms. It reminded each of them of something. For Yuri Andreevich it was his childhood and his mother’s death; for Antonina Alexandrovna and Alexander Alexandrovich, it was the death and funeral of Anna Ivanovna. It kept seeming to them that this was their last night in the house, which they would never see again. In that respect they were mistaken, but under the influence of the delusion, which they did not confide to each other, so as not to upset each other, they each went over the life they had spent under that roof and fought back the tears that kept coming to their eyes.
That did not prevent Antonina Alexandrovna