Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [149]
“That may well be, Tonechka. But I’m not glad that you’re recognized by your resemblance to your grandfather and that he’s so well remembered here. And Strelnikov, too, as soon as I mentioned Varykino, put in caustically: ‘Varykino? Krüger’s factories? His little relatives, by any chance? His heirs?’
“I’m afraid we’ll be more visible here than in Moscow, which we fled from in search of inconspicuousness.
“Of course, there’s nothing to be done now. No use crying over spilt milk. But it will be better not to show ourselves, to lie low, to behave more modestly. Generally, I have bad presentiments. Let’s wake up the others, pack our things, tie the belts, and prepare to get off.”
7
Antonina Alexandrovna stood on the platform in Torfyanaya counting people and things innumerable times to make sure nothing had been forgotten in the car. She felt the trampled sand under her feet, and yet the fear of somehow missing the stop did not leave her, and the rumble of the moving train went on sounding in her ears, though her eyes convinced her that it was standing motionless by the platform. This kept her from seeing, hearing, and understanding.
Her companions on the long journey said good-bye to her from above, from the height of the car. She did not notice them. She did not notice the train leaving and discovered its disappearance only after she noticed the second track, revealed after its departure, with a green field and blue sky beyond it.
The station building was of stone. By its entrance stood two benches, one on each side. The Moscow travelers from Sivtsev were the only passengers to get off at Torfyanaya. They put down their things and sat on one of the benches.
The newcomers were struck by the silence at the station, the emptiness, the tidiness. It seemed unusual to them that there was no crowding around, no swearing. Life was delayed in this out-of-the-way place, it lagged behind history. It had yet to catch up with the savagery of the capital.
The station was hidden in a birch grove. It became dark in the train as it approached it. The moving shadows cast by its barely swaying tops shifted over hands and faces and over the clean, damp yellow sand of the platform. The whistling of birds in the grove suited its freshness. As undisguisedly pure as ignorance, the full sounds echoed throughout the wood and permeated it. The grove was crosscut by two roads, the railway and the country track, and it curtained both with its flung-out, low-hanging branches, like the ends of wide, floor-length sleeves.
Suddenly Antonina Alexandrovna’s eyes and ears were opened. She became aware of everything at once. The ringing birdcalls, the purity of the forest solitude, the serenity of the peace all around her. In her mind she had composed a phrase: “I couldn’t believe we would arrive unharmed. You understand, your Strelnikov might play at magnanimity before you and let you go, but telegraph orders here to have us all detained when we got off. I don’t believe in their nobility, my dear. It’s all only for show.” Instead of these prepared words, she said something different. “How delightful!” escaped her when she saw the loveliness around her. She could not say any more. Tears began to choke her. She burst into loud sobs.
Hearing her weeping, a little old man, the stationmaster, came out of the building. With rapid little steps he trotted over to the bench, put his hand politely to the visor of his red-topped uniform cap, and asked:
“Perhaps the young lady needs some drops of calmative? From the station medicine chest?”
“It’s nothing. Thank you. It will pass.”
“The cares and anxieties of travel. A well-known, widespread thing. Besides, there’s this African heat, rare in our latitudes. And, on top of that, the events in Yuriatin.”
“We watched the fire from the train as we passed.”
“So you’d be coming from Russia, if I’m not mistaken?”
“From our White-Stoned Mother.”7
“Muscovites? Then no wonder the lady’s nerves are upset. They say there’s no stone left upon stone?”
“They’re exaggerating.