Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [178]
Next to his place on the floor sat his acquaintance, the forest hunter and trapper Svirid. Though Svirid did not live as a peasant, his earthy, soil-tilling essence showed through the opening of his dark broadcloth shirt, which he bunched up at the collar together with his cross and scraped and drove over his body, scratching his chest. He was a half-Buryat muzhik, amiable and illiterate, with hair that lay in flat strands, sparse mustaches, and a still more sparse beard of a few hairs. His face, puckering all the time in a sympathetic smile, looked aged because of its Mongolian features.
The lecturer, who was traveling around Siberia with military instructions from the Central Committee, wandered in his mind over the vast spaces he was still to cover. He regarded the majority of those present at the meeting with indifference. But, a revolutionary and lover of the people from early on, he looked with adoration at the young general who sat facing him. He not only forgave the boy all his rudeness, which the old man took for the voice of an ingrained, latent revolutionism, but regarded with admiration his casual sallies, as a woman in love may like the insolent unceremoniousness of her lord and master.
The partisan leader was Mikulitsyn’s son Liberius; the lecturer from the center was the former cooperative laborist Kostoed-Amursky, connected in the past with the Social Revolutionaries.8 Recently he had reconsidered his position, recognized the mistakenness of his platform, offered his repentance in several detailed declarations, and had not only been received into the Communist Party, but soon after joining it had been sent on such a responsible assignment.
Though by no means a military man, he had been entrusted with this assignment out of respect for his revolutionary record, for his ordeals and terms in prison, and also on the assumption that, as a former cooperator, he must be well acquainted with the mood of the peasant masses in rebellion-gripped western Siberia. And in the given matter, this supposed familiarity was more important than military knowledge.
The change of political convictions had made Kostoed unrecognizable. It had altered his appearance, movements, manners. No one remembered that he was ever bald and bearded in former times. But maybe it was all false? The party prescribed strict secrecy for him. His underground nicknames were Berendey and Comrade Lidochka.
When the noise raised by Vdovichenko’s untimely announcement of his agreement with the read-out points of the instructions subsided, Kostoed went on:
“With the aim of the fullest possible involvement of the growing movement of the peasant masses, it is necessary to establish connections immediately with all partisan detachments located in the area of the provincial committee.”
Further on, Kostoed spoke of arranging meeting places, passwords, ciphers, and means of communication. Then he again passed on to details.
“Inform the detachments of those points where the White institutions and organizations have supplies of arms, clothing, and food, where they keep large sums of money and the system of their keeping.
“There is need to work out in full detail the questions of the internal organization of the detachments, of leadership, of military-comradely discipline, of conspiracy, of the connection of the detachments with the outside world, of relations with the local populace, of the military-revolutionary field court, of the tactics of sabotage on enemy territory, such as the destruction of bridges, railway lines, steamboats, barges, stations, workshops and their technical equipment, the telegraph, mines, food supplies.”
Liberius listened, listened, and finally could not bear it. All this seemed like dilettantish nonsense to him, with no relation to reality. He said:
“A beautiful lecture. I’ll make note of it. Obviously, it must all be accepted without objection, so as not to lose the support of the Red Army.”
“Naturally.”
“But, blast it all, what am I to do with your childish little crib, my most excellent Lidochka, when my forces, consisting