Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [176]
“Well, then that captured Hungarian doctor’s treatment did you good.”
“More poppycock with sugar on top. I’m telling you, there’s nobody left, everybody’s scattered. Kerenyi Lajos and the other Magyars wound up behind the demarcation line. They forced the dear fellow into service. Took him into the Red Army.”
“Anyhow, you’re overanxious about your health. Neurosis of the heart. A simple folk charm can work wonders here. Remember, the army wife whispered it away for you quite successfully. Like it was never there. What’s her name, that army wife? I forget.”
“No, you decidedly consider me an ignorant fool. You sing ‘Sentetyurikha’ about me behind my back, for all I know.”
“God forbid! It’s sinful to say such things, mama. Better remind me of the army wife’s name. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I won’t have any peace until I remember it.”
“She’s got more names than skirts. I don’t know which one you want. They call her Kubarikha, and Medvedikha, and Zlydarikha.6 And a dozen more nicknames. She’s not around anymore. The ball’s over, go look for wind in the clover. They locked up the servant of God in the Kezhem prison. For exterminating a fetus and for some sort of powders. But she, look you, rather than languish behind bars, buggered off from prison to somewhere in the Far East. I’m telling you, everybody’s scattered. Vlas Pakhomych, Teresha, Aunt Polya with her yielding heart. The only honest women left in the whole town are you and me—two fools, I’m not joking. And no medical help. If anything happens, it’s the end, call and nobody’ll hear you. They say there’s a celebrity from Moscow in Yuriatin, a professor, the son of a suicide, a Siberian merchant. While I was making up my mind to invite him, they set up twenty Red cordons on the road, there’s no room to sneeze. But now about something else. Go to bed, and I’ll try to lie down. The student Blazhein has turned your head. No use denying it. You won’t hide it anyway, you’re red as a lobster. Your wretched student is toiling over prints on a holy night, developing and printing my photographs. They don’t sleep themselves and won’t let others sleep. Their Tomik barks his head off for the whole town to hear. And the nasty crow is cawing in our apple tree, must be I’m not to sleep all night. Why are you offended, miss touch-me-not? Students are there for the girls to like them.”
6
“Why is the dog carrying on like that? We must go and see what’s the matter. He wouldn’t bark for nothing. Wait, Lidochka, blast you, shut up for a minute. We’ve got to clarify the situation. A posse may descend on us any minute. Don’t leave, Ustin. And you stay put, Sivobluy. They’ll get along without you.”
Not hearing the request to stop and wait a little, the representative from the center went on wearily in an oratorical patter:
“The bourgeois military power existing in Siberia by its politics of robbery, taxation, violence, executions, and torture should open the eyes of the deluded. It is hostile not only to the working class, but, by the essence of things, to all the laboring peasantry as well. The laboring peasantry of Siberia and the Urals should understand that only in union with the urban proletariat and the soldiers, in union with the Kirghiz and Buryat poor …”7
Finally he caught the fact that he was being interrupted and stopped, wiping his sweaty face, wearily lowered his puffy eyelids, and closed his eyes.
Those standing near him said in a half whisper:
“Rest a bit. Have a sip of water.”
The anxious partisan leader was told:
“What are you worried about? Everything’s all right. The signal lamp is in the window. The lookout, to put it picturesquely, devours space with his eyes. I think we can resume the lecturer’s talk. Speak, Comrade Lidochka.”
The interior of the big shed had been freed of firewood. In the cleared space an illegal meeting was going on. The firewood piled to the ceiling served to screen