Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [130]
“Yes, yes. It’s all clear, then. And for that they got it from the artillery?”
“Precisely.”
“From an armored train?”
“Naturally.”
“Regrettable. Deserving of pity. However, it’s none of our business.”
“Besides, it’s a thing of the past. But my news won’t gladden you any. You’ll be staying here for a day or two.”
“Stop joking. I’m not here for just anything at all: I’ve got draft reinforcements for the front. I’m not used to standing around.”
“This is no joke. It’s a snowdrift, you’ll see for yourself. A blizzard raged for a week along this whole section. Buried it. And there’s nobody to shovel. Half the village has run away. I’ve set the rest to work, but they don’t manage.”
“Ah, confound you all! I’m finished, finished! Well, what to do now?”
“We’ll clear it somehow and you’ll go on.”
“Big drifts?”
“Not very, I wouldn’t say. For stretches. The blizzard went slantwise, at an angle to the tracks. The hardest part’s in the middle. There’s a mile and a half of hollow. We’ll really suffer there. The place is packed solid. But further on it’s not bad, taiga—the forest sheltered it. The same before the hollow, there’s an open stretch, nothing terrible. The wind blew it away.”
“Ah, devil take you all! What a nightmare! I’ll get the whole train on their feet, they can all help.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“Only don’t touch the sailors and the Red Army soldiers. There’s a whole trainload of labor conscripts. Along with freely traveling people, it’s as much as seven hundred.”
“That’s more than enough. As soon as the shovels are delivered, we’ll set them to it. There aren’t enough shovels. We’ve sent to the neighboring villages. There’ll be some.”
“God, what a disaster! Do you think we’ll manage?”
“Sure. Pull together, they say, and you take cities. It’s the railway. An artery. For pity’s sake.”
15
Clearing the line took three days. All the Zhivagos, including Nyusha, took an active part in it. This was the best time of their trip.
The country had something reserved, not fully told, about it. It gave off a breath of Pugachevism, in Pushkin’s perception of it, of Asiatic, Aksakovian description.5
The mysteriousness of the corner was completed by the destruction and by the reticence of the few remaining inhabitants, who were frightened, avoided the passengers on the train, and did not communicate with each other for fear of denunciations.
People were led out to work by categories, not all kinds simultaneously. The work area was cordoned off by the guards.
The line was cleared from both ends at once, by separate brigades set up in different places. Between the freed sections there remained to the very end piles of untouched snow, which separated the adjacent groups from each other. These piles were removed only at the last moment, once the clearing had been completed over the whole required stretch.
Clear, frosty days set in. They spent them in the open air, returning to the car only for the night. They worked in short shifts, which caused no fatigue, because there were too many workers and not enough shovels. The untiring work afforded nothing but pleasure.
The place where the Zhivagos went to dig was open, picturesque. The country at this point first descended to the east of the tracks, and then went up in an undulating slope as far as the horizon.
On a hill stood a solitary house, exposed on all sides. It was surrounded by a garden, which probably bushed out in the summer, but now its spare, frost-covered tracery did not protect the building.
The shroud of snow leveled and rounded everything. But, judging by the main irregularities of the slope, which it was unable to conceal with its drifts, in spring a brook, flowing into the pipe of the viaduct under the railway, probably ran from above down the meandering gully, now thickly