Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [260]
“We were on the train from Moscow with you, in the same car. Herded off to labor camp. Under convoy.”
It was Vasya Brykin. He fell down before the doctor, started kissing his hands, and wept.
The burned-down place turned out to be Vasya’s native village Veretenniki. His mother was no longer living. When the village was raided and burned down, Vasya hid in an underground cave where a stone had been cut out, but his mother thought Vasya had been taken to town, went mad with grief, and drowned herself in that same river Pelga on the bank of which the doctor and Vasya now sat conversing. Vasya’s sisters, Alenka and Arishka, according to unconfirmed information, were in another district, in an orphanage. The doctor took Vasya with him to Moscow. On the way he told Yuri Andreevich all sorts of horrors.
4
“That’s last autumn’s winter crop spilling out. We’d just sowed it when the disasters began. When Auntie Polya left. Do you remember Auntie Palasha?”
“No. I never knew her. Who is she?”
“What do you mean, you don’t know Pelageya Nilovna! She was on the train with us. Tyagunova. Open face, plump, white.”
“The one who kept braiding and unbraiding her hair?”
“The braids, the braids! Yes! That’s it. The braids!”
“Ah, I remember. Wait. I met her afterwards in Siberia, in some town, in the street.”
“You don’t say! Auntie Palasha?”
“What is it, Vasya? You’re shaking my hands like a madman. Watch out, you’ll tear them off. And you’re blushing like a young maiden.”
“Well, how is she? Tell me quickly, quickly.”
“She was safe and sound when I saw her. Told me about you. That she stayed with you or visited you, as I recall. But maybe I’ve forgotten or confused something.”
“Well, sure, sure! With us, with us! Mama loved her like her own sister. Quiet. Hardworking. Good with her hands. While she lived with us, we were in clover. They hounded her out of Veretenniki, gave her no peace with their slander.
“There was a muzhik in the village, Rotten Kharlam. He played up to Polya. A noseless telltale. She didn’t even look at him. He bore me a grudge for that. Said bad things about us, me and Polya. So she left. He wore us out. And then it started.
“A terrible murder took place hereabouts. A lonely widow was murdered at a forest farmstead over by Buiskoe. She lived alone near the forest. She went around in men’s boots with tabs and rubber straps. A fierce dog ran around the farmstead chained to a wire. Named Gorlan. The farming, the land, she managed by herself, without helpers. Then suddenly winter came when nobody was expecting it. Snow fell early. Before the widow had her potatoes dug out. She comes to Veretenniki. ‘Help me,’ she says, ‘I’ll give you a share, or pay you.’
“I volunteered to dig her potatoes. I come to her farmstead, and Kharlam’s already there. He invited himself before me. She didn’t tell me. Well, it was nothing to fight over. We set to work together. The worst weather for digging. Rain and snow, sleet, muck. We dug and dug, burned potato greens to dry the potatoes with warm smoke. Well, we dug them all out, she paid us off honestly. She let Kharlam go, but winked at me, meaning she had more business with me, I should come later or else stay.
“I came to her another time. ‘I don’t want my potatoes confiscated as surplus by the state,’ she said. ‘You’re a good lad,’ she said, ‘you won’t give me away, I know. See, I’m not hiding from you. I could dig a pit myself and bury them, but look what’s going on outside. It’s winter—too late to think about it. I can’t manage by myself. Dig a pit for me, you won’t regret it. We’ll dry it, fill it up.’
“I dug her a pit the way a hiding place should be, wider at the bottom, like a jug, the narrow neck up. We dried and warmed the pit with smoke, too. Right in the middle of a blizzard. We hid the potatoes good and proper, covered the pit with dirt. Done to a tee. I keep mum about the pit, sure enough. Don’t tell a living soul. Not even mama or my little sisters. God forbid!
“Well, so. Hardly a month went by—there was a robbery at the farmstead. People walking past from Buiskoe