Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [263]
The doctor went around to various departments. He solicited for two causes: for the political rehabilitation of his family and their legal return to the motherland; and for a foreign passport for himself, with permission to go to Paris to fetch his wife and children.
Vasya was surprised at how lukewarm and limp this petitioning was. Yuri Andreevich was in too much of a hurry to establish ahead of time the failure of the efforts he made, announcing too confidently and almost with satisfaction the uselessness of any further attempts.
Vasya disapproved of the doctor more and more often. The latter did not take offense at his fair reproaches. But his relations with Vasya were deteriorating. Finally their friendship broke down and they parted ways. The doctor left Vasya the room they shared and moved to Flour Town, where the all-powerful Markel obtained for him the end of the Sventitskys’ former apartment. This end part consisted of the Sventitskys’ old out-of-use bathroom, a room with one window next to it, and a lopsided kitchen with a half-ruined and sagging back entrance. Yuri Andreevich moved there and after that abandoned medicine, grew unkempt, stopped seeing acquaintances, and started living in poverty.
6
It was a gray winter Sunday. The smoke from the chimneys did not rise in columns above the roofs, but seeped in black streams from the vent windows, through which, despite the prohibition, people continued to stick the iron pipes of their stoves. The city’s everyday life was still not settled. The inhabitants of Flour Town went about as unwashed slovens, suffered from boils, shivered, caught cold.
On the occasion of Sunday, the family of Markel Shchapov was all assembled.
The Shchapovs were having dinner at that same table on which, in the time of the distribution of bread by ration cards, in the mornings at dawn, they used to cut up the small bread coupons of all the tenants with scissors, sort them, count them, tie them in bundles or wrap them in paper by categories, and take them to the bakery, and then, on coming back, they would chop, cut, crumble, and weigh out the portions for the quarter’s inhabitants. Now all that had become a thing of the past. The rationing of provisions was replaced by other forms of accounting. Those sitting at the long table ate with appetite, smacking their lips, chewing and chomping.
Half of the porter’s lodge was taken up by the Russian stove towering in the middle, with the edge of a quilted coverlet hanging off its shelf.
On the front wall by the entrance there was a sink with a faucet for running water sticking out over it. There were benches along the sides of the lodge with chattels in sacks and trunks stuffed under them. The left side was occupied by the kitchen table. Over it, nailed to the wall, hung a cupboard for dishes.
The stove was burning. It was hot in the porter’s lodge. In front of the stove, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, stood Markel’s wife, Agafya Tikhonovna, using long, far-reaching tongs to move the pots in the oven closer together or further apart at need. Her sweaty face was alternately lit up by the breathing fire of the stove, then veiled by steam from the cooking. Having pushed the pots aside, she took from the depths a meat pie on an iron sheet, with one deft movement flipped it bottom side up, and pushed it back to brown for a moment. Yuri Andreevich came into the lodge with two buckets.
“Enjoy your meal.”
“Welcome to you! Sit down, be our guest.”
“Thank you, I’ve had my dinner.”
“We know your dinners. Sit down and eat something hot. Don’t scorn it. There are potatoes baked in a clay pot. A savory pie. Wheat kasha.”
“No, really, thank you. Forgive me, Markel, for coming so often