Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [274]
“Please don’t disappear after the cremation, Larissa Fyodorovna. I have a great favor to ask of you. I don’t know where you’re staying. Don’t leave me in ignorance about where to find you. I want in the nearest future, tomorrow or the day after, to start going through my brother’s papers. I’ll need your help. You know so much, probably more than anyone else. You let drop in passing that it’s two days since you arrived from Irkutsk for a short stay in Moscow, and that you came up to this apartment by chance, knowing neither that my brother had been living here in recent months, nor what had happened here. Some of what you said I didn’t understand, and I’m not asking for explanations, but don’t disappear, I don’t know your address. It would be best to spend the few days devoted to sorting the manuscripts under the same roof, or not far from each other, maybe in two other rooms of the house. That could be arranged. I know the manager.”
“You say you didn’t understand me. What is there to understand? I arrived in Moscow, left my things at the checkroom, walked through the old Moscow without recognizing half of it—I’d forgotten. I walk and walk, go down Kuznetsky Most, up Kuznetsky Lane, and suddenly there’s something terribly familiar—Kamergersky Lane. My husband, Antipov, who was shot, rented a room here as a student, precisely this room where you and I are sitting. Well, I think, let’s have a look, maybe if I’m lucky the old owners are still alive. That there was no trace of them and everything was different, I learned later, the next day and today, gradually, from asking. But you were there, why am I telling you? I was thunderstruck, the street door was wide open, there were people in the room, a coffin, a dead man in the coffin. What dead man? I go in, go up to it, I thought—I’ve lost my mind, I’m dreaming. But you witnessed it all, right? Why am I telling you about it?”
“Wait, Larissa Fyodorovna, I must interrupt you. I’ve already told you that my brother and I did not suspect that so many amazing things were connected with this room. For example, that Antipov used to live in it. But still more amazing is an expression that just escaped you. I’ll tell you at once what it was—forgive me. At one time, at the beginning of the civil war, I heard much and often about Antipov, or Strelnikov in his military-revolutionary activity, almost every day in fact, and I saw him in person once or twice, without foreseeing how closely he would touch me one day for family reasons. But, excuse me, maybe I didn’t hear right, but I think you said, ‘Antipov, who was shot,’ in which case it’s a slip of the tongue. Surely you know that he shot himself?”
“There’s such a version going around, but I don’t believe it. Pavel Pavlovich was never a suicide.”
“But it’s completely trustworthy. Antipov shot himself in the little house from which, as my brother told me, you left for Yuriatin in order to continue on to Vladivostok. It happened soon after your departure with your daughter. My brother found him and buried him. Can it be that this information never reached you?”
“No. My information was different. So it’s true that he shot himself? Many people said so, but I didn’t believe it. In that same little house? It can’t be! What an important detail you’ve told me! Forgive me, but do you know whether he and Zhivago met? Did they talk?”
“According to the late Yuri, they had a long conversation.”
“Can it be true? Thank God. It’s better that way.” (Antipova slowly crossed herself.) “What an astounding, heaven-sent coincidence! Will you allow me to come back to it and ask you about all the details? Every little thing is precious to me here. But now I’m not able to. Right? I’m too agitated. I’ll be silent for a while, rest, collect my thoughts. Right?”
“Oh,