Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [166]
“They say he’s not a party member.”
“Yes, so it seems. What makes him so winning? He’s a doomed man. I think he’ll end badly. He’ll pay for the evil he’s brought about. The arbitrariness of the revolutionaries is terrible not because they’re villains, but because it’s a mechanism out of control, like a machine that’s gone off the rails. Strelnikov is as mad as they are, but he went crazy not from books, but from something he lived and suffered through. I don’t know his secret, but I’m certain he has one. His alliance with the Bolsheviks is accidental. As long as they need him, they’ll tolerate him, they’re going the same way. But the moment that need passes, they’ll cast him aside with no regret and trample on him, like so many military specialists before him.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
“But is there really no salvation for him? In flight, for instance?”
“Where to, Larissa Fyodorovna? That was before, under the tsars. Try doing it now.”
“Too bad. Your story has made me feel sympathy for him. But you’ve changed. Before, your judgment of the revolution wasn’t so sharp, so irritated.”
“That’s just the point, Larissa Fyodorovna, that there are limits to everything. There’s been time enough for them to arrive at something. But it turns out that for the inspirers of the revolution the turmoil of changes and rearrangements is their only native element, that they won’t settle for less than something on a global scale. The building of worlds, transitional periods—for them this is an end in itself. They haven’t studied anything else, they don’t know how to do anything. And do you know where this bustle of eternal preparations comes from? From the lack of definite, ready abilities, from giftlessness. Man is born to live, not to prepare for life. And life itself, the phenomenon of life, the gift of life, is so thrillingly serious! Why then substitute for it a childish harlequinade of immature inventions, these escapes of Chekhovian schoolboys to America?9 But enough. Now it’s my turn to ask. We were approaching the city on the morning of your coup. Was it a big mess for you then?”
“Oh, what else! Of course. Fires all around. We almost burned down ourselves. The house, I told you, got so shaken! There’s still an unexploded shell in the yard by the gate. Looting, bombardment, outrage. As always with a change of power. By then we’d already learned, we were used to it. It wasn’t the first time. And what went on under the Whites! Covert killings for personal revenge, extortions, bacchanalias! But I haven’t told you the main thing. Our Galiullin! He turned up here as the most important bigwig with the Czechs. Something like a governor-general.”
“I know. I heard. Did you see him?”
“Very often. I saved so many people thanks to him! Hid so many! He has to be given credit. He behaved irreproachably, chivalrously, not like the small fry, all those Cossack chiefs and police officers. But the tone was set then precisely by the small fry, not the decent people. Galiullin helped me in many ways, I’m thankful to him. We’re old acquaintances. As a little girl, I often came to the courtyard where he grew up. Railroad workers lived in that house. In my childhood I saw poverty and labor close up. That makes my attitude towards the revolution different from yours. It’s closer to me. There’s much in it that is dear to me. And suddenly he becomes a colonel, this boy, the yard porter’s son. Or even a White general. I come from a civilian milieu and don’t know much about ranks. By training I’m a history teacher. Yes, that’s how it is, Zhivago. I helped many people. I went to him. We spoke of you. I have connections and protectors in all the governments, and griefs