Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [220]
“I won’t venture to give advice, but in your place, before setting out for your family, I’d find a job for a while, in your specialty of course, they value that, I’d go to our board of health, for example. It’s still in the old medical center.
“Otherwise, judge for yourself. The son of a Siberian millionaire who blew his brains out, your wife the daughter of a local industrialist and landowner. Was with the partisans and ran away. Whatever you say, that’s quitting the military-revolutionary ranks, it’s desertion. In no case should you stay out of things, with no legal status. My situation isn’t very firm either. And I’m also going to work, I’m joining the provincial education department. The ground’s burning under my feet, too.”
“How do you mean? What about Strelnikov?”
“It’s burning because of Strelnikov. I told you before how many enemies he had. The Red Army is victorious. Now the nonparty military, who were close to the top and know too much, are going to get it in the neck. And lucky if it’s in the neck and not in the back, so as to leave no traces. Among them, Pasha is in the first rank. He’s in great danger. He was in the Far East. I heard he escaped and is in hiding. They say he’s being sought. But enough about him. I don’t like to cry, and if I add even one more word about him, I can feel I’ll start howling.”
“You loved him, even now you still love him very much?”
“But I’m married to him, he’s my husband, Yurochka. He has a lofty, shining character. I’m deeply guilty before him. I didn’t do anything bad to him, it would be wrong to say so. But he’s of enormous importance, a man of great, great uprightness, and I’m trash, I’m nothing beside him. That’s my guilt. But enough of that, please. I’ll come back to it myself some other time, I promise. How wonderful your Tonya is! A Botticelli. I was there at her delivery. She and I became terribly close. But of that, too, some other time, I beg you. Yes, so, let’s the two of us find work. We’ll both go to work. Each month we’ll get billions in salary. Until the last coup, we were using Siberian money. It was abolished quite recently, and for a long time, all through your illness, we lived without currency. Yes. Just imagine. It’s hard to believe, but we somehow managed. Now a whole trainload of paper money has been delivered to the former treasury, about forty cars, they say, not less. It’s printed on big sheets in two colors, blue and red, like postage stamps, and divided into little squares. The blue ones are worth five million a square, the red ones ten million. They fade quickly, the printing is bad, the colors run.”
“I’ve seen that money. It was introduced just before we left Moscow.”
12
“What were you doing so long in Varykino? There’s nobody there, it’s empty. What kept you there?”
“Katenka and I were cleaning your house. I was afraid you’d stop there first thing. I didn’t want you to find your home in such a state.”
“What state? Messy, disorderly?”
“Disorder. Filth. I cleaned it.”
“How evasively monosyllabic. You’re not telling everything, you’re hiding something. But as you will, I won’t try to find out. Tell me about Tonya. How did they christen the girl?”
“Masha. In memory of your mother.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Let me do it sometime later. I told you, I can barely keep back my tears.”
“This Samdevyatov, the one who gave you the horse, is an interesting figure. What do you think?”
“Most interesting.”
“I know Anfim Efimovich very well. He was a friend of our house here, he helped us in these new places.”
“I know. He told me.”
“You’re friends, probably? He tries to be useful to you, too?”
“He simply showers me with kindnesses. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
“I can easily imagine. You’re probably in close, friendly relations, on simple terms? He’s probably making up to you for all he’s worth?”
“I’ll say. Relentlessly.”
“And you? Sorry. I’m overstepping the limits of the permissible. What right do I have to question you?