Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [235]
This verbose reasoning on an intrusive subject that had no relation to them exasperated Larissa Fyodorovna. Driven to the point of exhaustion by the boredom of the prolonged visit, she resolutely held out her hand to Komarovsky in farewell and, without beating around the bush, said with unconcealed hostility:
“It’s late. Time for you to go. I want to sleep.”
“I hope you won’t be so inhospitable as to put me out at such an hour. I’m not sure I’ll find my way at night in a strange, unlit town.”
“You should have thought of that earlier and not gone on sitting. Nobody was keeping you.”
“Oh, why do you speak so sharply with me? You didn’t even ask whether I have anywhere to stay here.”
“Decidedly uninteresting. No doubt you can stick up for yourself. If you’re inviting yourself to spend the night, I won’t put you in our bedroom, where we sleep together with Katenka. And in the others there’ll be no dealing with the rats.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“Well, as you like.”
3
“What’s wrong, my angel? You haven’t slept for so many nights now, you don’t touch your food at the table, you go around as if in a daze. And you keep thinking, thinking. What’s haunting you? You shouldn’t give such free rein to troubling thoughts.”
“The hospital caretaker Izot was here again. He’s carrying on with a laundress in the house. So he stopped by to cheer me up. ‘A terrible secret,’ he says. ‘Your man can’t avoid the clink. He’ll be put away any day now, so be ready. And you, hapless girl, after him.’ ‘Where did you get that, Izot?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘you can count on it. People from the hexcom told me.’ ‘Hexcom,’ as you may have guessed, is his version of ‘excom,’ the executive committee.”
Larissa Fyodorovna and the doctor burst out laughing.
“He’s quite right. The danger is ripe and at our doorstep. We must disappear at once. The only question is where exactly. There’s no use thinking about going to Moscow. The preparations are too complicated, and they’ll attract attention. It has to be done hush-hush, so that nobody notices anything. You know what, my joy? I think we’ll avail ourselves of your idea. We have to drop from sight for a while. Let the place be Varykino. We’ll go there for two weeks, a month.”
“Thank you, my dearest, thank you. Oh, how glad I am! I realize how everything in you must go against such a decision. But I wasn’t talking about your house. Life in it would really be unthinkable for you. The sight of the empty rooms, the reproaches, the comparisons. As if I don’t understand? To build happiness on another’s suffering, to trample on what is dear and sacred to your heart. I could never accept such a sacrifice from you. But that’s not the point. Your house is such a ruin that it would hardly be possible to make the rooms fit to live in. I was sooner thinking of the Mikulitsyns’ abandoned place.”
“All that is true. Thank you for your sensitivity. But wait a minute. I keep wanting to ask and keep forgetting. Where is Komarovsky? Is he here, or has he already left? Since I quarreled with him and kicked him out, I’ve heard nothing more of him.”
“I don’t know anything either. But let him be. What do you want with him?”
“I keep coming back to the thought that we should have treated his suggestion differently. We’re not in the same position. You have a daughter to look after. Even if you wanted to perish with me, you’d have no right to allow yourself to do it.
“But let’s get back to Varykino. Naturally, to go to that wild backwoods in harsh winter, with no supplies, with no strength, with no hopes, is the maddest madness. But let’s be mad, my heart, if there’s nothing left us but madness. Let’s humble ourselves once more. Let’s beg Anfim to give us a horse. Let’s ask him, or not even him but the dealers who work for him, to lend us some flour and potatoes, as a debt not justifiable by any credit. Let