Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [275]
“Right?”
“Surely.”
“Ah, I nearly forgot. You’ve asked me not to leave after the cremation. Very well. I promise. I won’t disappear. I’ll come back with you to this apartment and stay where you tell me to and for as long as necessary. We’ll start going through Yurochka’s manuscripts. I’ll help you. It’s true that I may be of use to you. That will be such a comfort to me! I feel all the nuances of his handwriting with my heart’s blood, with every fiber. Then I also have business with you, I may have need of you, right? It seems you’re a lawyer, or in any case have good knowledge of the existing practices, former and present. Besides, it’s so important to know which organization to address for which document. Not everybody knows these things, right? I’ll have need of your advice about one dreadful, oppressive thing. It has to do with a child. But I’ll tell you later, once we’re back from the crematorium. All my life I’ve been searching for somebody, right? Tell me, if in some imaginary case it was necessary to find the traces of a child, the traces of a child placed in the hands of strangers to be brought up, is there some sort of general, nationwide archive of existing children’s homes and have they made, have they undertaken a national census or registration of homeless children? But don’t answer me now, I beg you. Later, later. Oh, how frightening, how frightening! What a frightening thing life is, right? I don’t know how it will be later on, when my daughter comes, but for now I can stay in this apartment. Katyusha has shown extraordinary abilities, partly dramatic, but also musical, imitates everybody wonderfully and acts out whole scenes of her own invention, but, besides, she also sings whole parts of operas by ear—an astonishing child, right? I want to send her to the preparatory, beginning classes of a theater school or the Conservatory, wherever they take her, and place her in a boardinghouse, that’s why I’ve come without her now, to set everything up and then leave. One can’t tell everything, right? But about that later. And now I’m going to wait till my agitation calms down, I’ll be silent, collect my thoughts, try to drive my fears away. Besides, we’re keeping Yura’s family in the corridor a horribly long time. Twice I fancied there was knocking at the door. And there’s some movement, noise. Probably the people from the funeral organization have come. While I sit here and think, you open the door and let the public in. It’s time, right? Wait, wait. We need a little footstool beside the coffin, otherwise one can’t reach Yurochka. I tried on tiptoe, it was very difficult. Marina Markelovna and the children will need it. And besides, it’s required by the ritual. ‘And kiss me with the last kiss.’7 Oh, I can’t, I can’t. It’s so painful. Right?”
“I’ll let them all in presently. But first there’s this. You’ve said so many mysterious things and raised so many questions that evidently torment you, that it’s hard for me to answer you. One thing I want you to know. From the bottom of my heart, I willingly offer you my help in everything that worries you. And remember. Never, in any circumstances, must you despair. To hope and to act is our duty in misfortune. Inactive despair is a forgetting and failure of duty. I’ll now let the people in to take their leave. You’re right about the footstool. I’ll find one and bring it.”
But Antipova no longer heard him. She did not hear how Evgraf Zhivago opened the door to the room and the crowd from the corridor poured in through it, did not hear him talk with the funeral attendants and the chief mourners, did not hear the rustle of people’s movements, Marina’s sobbing, the men’s coughing, the women’s tears and cries.
The swirl of monotonous sounds lulled her and made her feel sick. She kept a firm grip on herself so as not to faint. Her heart was bursting, her head ached. Hanging her head, she immersed herself in surmises, considerations, recollections. She went into them, sank, was as if transported temporarily, for a few hours, to some future