Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [156]
“It is inconceivable what opposites this man unites in himself. He is sincerely for the revolution and fully deserves the trust that the Yuriatin City Council has vested in him. With his almighty powers, he could requisition and transport the entire forest of Varykino without even telling us and the Mikulitsyns, and we wouldn’t bat an eye. On the other hand, if he wished to steal from the state, he could most calmly pocket whatever and however much he wanted, and nobody would make a peep. He has no one to divide with and no one to butter up. What, then, induces him to look after us, help the Mikulitsyns, and support everybody around, such as, for example, the stationmaster in Torfyanaya? He’s on the go all the time, fetching and bringing things, and he analyzes and interprets Dostoevsky’s Demons and the Communist Manifesto2 with equal enthusiasm, and it seems to me that if he didn’t needlessly complicate his life so wastefully and obviously, he would die of boredom.”
2
A little later the doctor noted:
“We’re settled in the back part of the old manor house, in the two rooms of the wooden extension, which in Anna Ivanovna’s childhood years was intended for the select among Krüger’s servants—the live-in seamstress, the housekeeper, and the retired nanny.
“This corner was fairly decrepit. We repaired it rather quickly. With the help of knowledgeable people, we relaid the stove that heats the two rooms in a new way. With the present position of the flue, it gives more heat.
“In this part of the park, the traces of the former layout had disappeared under the new growth that filled everything. Now, in winter, when everything around is dormant and the living does not obscure the dead, the snow-covered outlines of former things stand out more clearly.
“We’ve been lucky. The autumn happened to be dry and warm. We managed to dig the potatoes before the rain and cold set in. Minus what we owed and returned to the Mikulitsyns, we have up to twenty sacks, and it is all in the main bin of the cellar, covered above, over the floor, with straw and old, torn blankets. Down there, under the floor, we also put two barrels of Tonya’s salted cucumbers and another two of cabbage she has pickled. The fresh cabbage is hung from the crossbeams, head to head, tied in pairs. The supply of carrots is buried in dry sand. As is a sufficient amount of harvested black radishes, beets, and turnips, and upstairs in the house there is a quantity of peas and beans. The firewood stored up in the shed will last till spring. I like the warm smell of the underground in winter, which hits your nose with roots, earth, and snow as soon as you lift the trapdoor of the cellar, at an early hour, before the winter dawn, with a weak, ready to go out, barely luminous light in your hand.
“You come out of the shed, day has not broken yet. The door creaks, or you sneeze unexpectedly, or the snow simply crunches under your foot, and from the far-off vegetable patch, where cabbage stumps stick up from under the snow, hares pop up and go pelting off, scrawling tracks that furrow the snow around far and wide. And in the neighborhood, one after another, the dogs set up a long barking. The last cocks already crowed earlier, they will not start now. And it begins to grow light.
“Besides hare tracks, the vast snowy plain is crossed by lynx tracks, hole after hole, strung neatly on a drawn-out thread. A lynx walks like a cat, one paw in front of the other, covering many miles a night, as people maintain.
“They set snares for them, ‘sloptsy,’ as they call them here. Instead of lynxes,