Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [208]
Both her arms are taken up, and there is no one around who can help. No one knows where Shurochka’s papa is. He is far away, always far away, apart from them all his life, and is he a papa, are real papas like that? And where is her own father? Where is Alexander Alexandrovich? Where is Nyusha? Where are all the rest? Oh, better not to ask yourself these questions, better not to think, better not to go into it.
The doctor got up from the log, intending to go down into the dugout. Suddenly his thoughts took a different direction. He decided not to go back down to Liberius.
He had long ago stashed away some skis, a bag of rusks, and everything necessary for an escape. He had buried these things in the snow outside the guarded boundary of the camp, under a big silver fir, which he had also marked with a special notch to be sure. He headed there, down a footpath trampled in the snowdrifts. It was a clear night. A full moon was shining. The doctor knew where the guards were posted for the night and successfully avoided them. But by the clearing with the ice-covered rowan tree a sentry called to him from a distance and, standing straight on his skis as they gathered momentum, came gliding towards him.
“Stop or I’ll shoot! Who are you? Give the password.”
“What, are you out of your mind, brother? It’s me. Don’t you recognize me? I’m your Doctor Zhivago.”
“Sorry! Don’t be angry, Comrade Zhivak. I didn’t recognize you. But even though you’re Zhivak, I won’t let you go any further. Everything’s got to be done right.”
“Well, as you will. The password is ‘Red Siberia,’ and the response is ‘Down with the interventionists.’ ”
“That’s another story. Go wherever you like. Why the devil are you wandering about at night? Sick people?”
“I’m not sleepy, and I got thirsty. I thought I might stroll about and eat some snow. I saw this rowan tree with frozen berries on it. I wanted to go and chew some.”
“There’s a squire’s whim for you, to go berrying in winter. Three years we’ve been beating and beating, and haven’t beaten it out of you. No consciousness. Go get your rowan berries, oddball. What do I care?”
And, picking up more and more speed, the sentry went off, standing straight on his long, whistling skis, and moved away over the untouched snow further and further beyond the bare winter bushes, skimpy as balding heads. And the footpath the doctor was following brought him to the just-mentioned rowan tree.
It was half covered with snow, half with frozen leaves and berries, and it stretched out two snowy branches to meet him. He remembered Lara’s big white arms, rounded, generous, and, taking hold of the branches, he pulled the tree towards him. As if in a conscious answering movement, the rowan showered him with snow from head to foot. He was murmuring, not realizing what he was saying, and unaware of himself:
“I shall see you, my beauty, my princess, my dearest rowan tree, my own heart’s blood.”
The night was clear. The moon was shining. He made his way deeper into the taiga, to his secret silver fir, dug up his things, and left the camp.
Part Thirteen
OPPOSITE THE HOUSE WITH FIGURES
1
Bolshaya Kupecheskaya Street descended the crooked hill to Malaya Spasskaya and Novosvalochny. The houses and churches of the higher parts of the town peered down on it.
At the corner stood the dark gray house with figures. The huge quadrangular stones of its foundation, cut on a slant, were blackened with freshly pasted-up issues of government newspapers, government decrees and resolutions. Stopping for a long time on the sidewalk, small groups of passersby silently read this literature.
It was dry after the recent thaw. Turning cold. The frost was noticeably hardening. It was quite light at a time when, just recently, it would have been getting dark. Winter had recently departed. The emptiness of the vacated space was filled with light, which would not go away and lingered through the evenings. It stirred you, drew you into the distance, frightened and alerted