Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [207]
There was a smell of fragrant smoke in the dugout. It settled on the palate, tickled the nose and throat. The dugout was lighted by paper-thin splinters set in an iron trivet on a tripod. When one went out, the burnt end fell into a bowl of water underneath, and Liberius set up and lit a new one.
“See what I’m burning. We’re out of oil. The wood’s too dry. The splinter burns up quickly. Yes, there’s scurvy in the camp. You categorically refuse the veal? Scurvy. Where are you looking, doctor? Why don’t you gather the staff, shed light on the situation, give a lecture to the superiors about scurvy and the means of fighting it?”
“Don’t torment me, for God’s sake. Exactly what do you know about our families?”
“I’ve already told you that there’s no exact information about them. But I didn’t finish telling you what I know of the general military news. The civil war is over. Kolchak is utterly crushed. The Red Army is driving him down the railroad line, to the east, to throw him into the sea. Another part of the Red Army is hastening to join us, so that together we can start destroying his many scattered units in the rear. The south of Russia has been cleared. Why aren’t you glad? Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Not true. I am glad. But where are our families?”
“They’re not in Varykino, and that’s a great blessing. As I supposed, Kamennodvorsky’s summer legends—remember those stupid rumors about the invasion of Varykino by some mysterious race of people?—have not been confirmed, but the place is completely deserted. Something seems to have happened there after all, and it’s very good that both families got away in good time. Let’s believe they’re safe. According to my intelligence, that’s the assumption of the few people left.”
“And Yuriatin? What’s going on there? Whose hands is it in?”
“Also something incongruous. Undoubtedly a mistake.”
“What, precisely?”
“Supposedly the Whites are still there. It’s absolutely absurd, a sheer impossibility. I’ll make that obvious to you right now.”
Liberius set up a new splinter and, folding a crumpled, tattered, large-scale map so that the right section showed and unnecessary parts were turned back, began to explain, pencil in hand.
“Look. In all these sectors the Whites have been driven back. Here, and here, and here, all around. Are you following attentively?”
“Yes.”
“They can’t be towards Yuriatin. Otherwise, with their communications cut, they’d inevitably fall into a trap. Their generals can’t fail to understand that, however giftless they are. You’re putting your coat on? Where are you going?”
“Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back. It smells of shag and wood fumes here. I don’t feel well. I’ll catch my breath outside.”
Climbing up and out of the dugout, the doctor used his mitten to brush the snow off the thick log placed by the entrance as a seat. He sat down on it, leaned forward, and, propping his head in both hands, fell to thinking. As if there had been no winter taiga, no forest camp, no eighteen months spent with the partisans. He forgot about them. Only his family stood there in his imagination. He made conjectures about them, one more terrible than the other.
Here is Tonya going across a field in a blizzard with Shurochka in her arms. She wraps him in a blanket, her feet sink into the snow, she barely manages to pull them out, and the snowstorm covers her, the wind throws her to the ground, she falls and gets up, too weak to stand on her legs, weakened and giving way under her. Oh, but he keeps forgetting, forgetting. She has two children, and she is nursing the younger one. Both her arms are taken up, like the refugee women of Chilimka who lost