Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [134]
“Forty thousand milled fine.”
“I suppose it’s no wonder. This area’s first class. Heart of the meal trade. Here along the Rynva and up to Yuriatin, village after village, it’s landings, grain depots. The Sherstobitov brothers, Perekatchikov and sons, wholesaler after wholesaler!”
“Don’t shout. You’ll wake people up.”
“All right.”
The speaker yawned. The other suggested:
“How about a little snooze? Looks like we’ll be starting.”
Just then a deafening noise came rolling from behind, swiftly growing, covering the roar of the waterfall, and an old-fashioned express train raced at full steam down the second track of the junction past their train, which stood without moving, hooted, roared, and, blinking its lights for the last time, vanished into the distance without a trace.
The conversation below resumed.
“Well, that’s it now. We’ll sit it out.”
“It won’t be soon now.”
“Must be Strelnikov. Armored, special purpose.”
“It’s him, then.”
“When it comes to counterrevolutionists, he’s ferocious.”
“It’s him racing against Galeev.”
“Who’s that?”
“The ataman Galeev. They say he’s standing with his Czechs covering Yuriatin. Seized control of the landings, blast him, and he’s holding them. The ataman Galeev.”7
“Prince Galileev, maybe. I forget.”
“There’s no such prince. Must be Ali Kurban. You got mixed up.”
“Kurban, maybe.”
“That’s another story.”
22
Towards morning Yuri Andreevich woke up a second time. Again he had dreamed something pleasant. The feeling of bliss and liberation that had filled him did not end. Again the train was standing, maybe at a new station, or maybe at the old one. Again there was the noise of a waterfall, most likely the same one, but possibly another.
Yuri Andreevich began to fall asleep at once and through his dozing fancied running feet and turmoil. Kostoed grappled with the head of the convoy, and the two shouted at each other. Outside it was still better than before. There was a breath of something new that had not been there earlier. Something magical, something springlike, black-and-white, flimsy, loose, like the coming of a snowstorm in May, when the wet, melting flakes on the ground make it not white but blacker still. Something transparent, black-and-white, strong scented. “Bird cherry!” Yuri Andreevich guessed in his sleep.
23
In the morning Antonina Alexandrovna said:
“Still, you’re an amazing man, Yura. A tissue of contradictions. Sometimes a fly flies by, you wake up and can’t close your eyes till morning, and here there’s noise, arguments, commotion, and you can’t manage to wake up. During the night the cashier Pritulyev and Vasya Brykin ran off. Yes, just think! And Tyagunova and Ogryzkova. Wait, that’s still not all. And Voroniuk. Yes, yes, ran off, ran off. Yes, imagine. Now listen. How they got away, together or separately, and in what order, is an absolute mystery. Well, let’s allow that this Voroniuk, naturally, decided to save himself from the responsibility on finding that the others had escaped. But the others? Did they all vanish of their own free will, or was one of them forcibly eliminated? For instance, suspicion falls on the women. But who killed whom, Tyagunova Ogryzkova or Ogryzkova Tyagunova, nobody knows. The head of the convoy runs from one end of the train to the other. ‘How dare you give the whistle for departure,’ he shouts. ‘In the name of the law, I demand that you hold the train until the escapees are caught.’ But the train master doesn’t yield. ‘You’re out of your mind,’ he says. ‘I’ve got draft reinforcements for the front, an urgent first priority. I should wait for your lousy crew! What a thing to come up with!’ And both of them, you understand, fall on Kostoed with reproaches. How is it that he, a cooperator, a man of understanding, was right there and didn’t keep the soldier, a benighted, unconscious being, from the fatal step. ‘And you a populist,’ they say. Well, Kostoed, of course, doesn’t let it go at that. ‘Interesting!’ he says. ‘So according to you a prisoner should look after a convoy soldier? Yes, sure, when a hen crows like