Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [202]
Kubarikha was half singing, half speaking:
A little hare was running over the white world,
Over the white world, aye, over the white snow.
He ran, little flop-ears, past a rowan tree,
He ran, little flop-ears, and complained to the rowan.
Me, I’m a hare, and my heart’s all timid,
My heart’s all timid, it’s so easily frightened.
I’m a hare and I’m scared of the wild beast’s track,
Of the wild beast’s track, of the hungry wolf’s belly.
Have pity on me, rowan bush,
Rowan bush, beautiful rowan tree.
Don’t give your beauty to the wicked enemy,
To the wicked enemy, to the wicked raven.
Strew your red berries in handfuls to the wind,
To the wind, over the white world, over the white snow,
Roll them, scatter them to the place I was born in,
To the last house there by the village gate,
To the last window there, aye, in the last room,
Where my little recluse has hidden away,
My dearest one, my longed-for one.
Speak into the ear of the one I long for
A hot word, an ardent word for me.
I languish in chains, a soldier-warrior,
I lose heart, a soldier, in this foreign land.
But I’ll escape yet from this bitter bondage,
Escape to my berry, to my beautiful one.3
7
The army wife Kubarikha was putting a spell on a sick cow belonging to Pamphil’s wife, Agafya Fotievna, known as Palykha or, in simple speech, Fatevna. The cow had been taken from the herd and put in the bushes, tied to a tree by the horns. The cow’s owner sat by its front legs on a stump, and by the hind legs, on a milking stool, sat the sorceress.
The rest of the countless herd was crowded into a small clearing. The dark forest stood around it in a wall of triangular firs, tall as the hills, which seemed to sit on the ground on the fat behinds of their broadly spread lower branches.
In Siberia they raised a certain prize-winning Swiss breed. Almost all of the same colors, black with white spots, the cows were no less exhausted than the people by the privations, the long marches, the unbearable crowding. Squeezed together side by side, they were going crazy from the crush. In their stupefaction, they forgot their sex and, bellowing, climbed onto one another like bulls, straining to drag up the heavy weight of their udders. The heifers they covered up, raising their tails, tore away from underneath them and, breaking down bushes and branches, ran towards the thicket, where old shepherds and herdsboys rushed shouting after them.
And, as if locked into the tight circle outlined by the treetops in the winter sky, the snowy black and white clouds over the forest clearing crowded just as stormily and chaotically, rearing and piling up on each other.
The curious, standing in a bunch further off, annoyed the wisewoman. She looked them up and down with an unkindly glance. But it was beneath her dignity to admit that they were hampering her. Her artistic vanity stopped her. And she made it look as if she did not notice them. The doctor observed her from the back rows, hidden from her.
It was the first time he had taken a good look at her. She was wearing her inevitable British forage cap and gray-green interventionist greatcoat with the lapels casually turned back. However, with the haughty features of suppressed passion, which gave a youthful blackness to the eyes and eyebrows of this no-longer-young woman, the extent of her indifference to what she was or was not wearing was clearly written on her face.
But the appearance of Pamphil’s wife astonished Yuri Andreevich. He barely recognized her. She had aged terribly in a few days. Her bulging eyes were ready to pop from their sockets. On her neck, stretched like a shaft, a swollen vein throbbed. That was what her secret fears had done to her.
“She gives no milk, my dear,” said Agafya. “I thought she was in between, but no, it’s long since time for milk, but she’s still milkless.”
“In between, hah! Look, there’s an anthrax sore on her teat. I’ll give you some herbal ointment to rub in. And, needless to say, I’ll whisper in her ear.”
“I’ve got another trouble—my husband.”