Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [279]
“We weren’t married yet. In the summer of forty-one we gave each other our word that we would get married once the war was over. After that I moved about with the rest of the army. My unit was being endlessly transferred. What with these transfers, I lost sight of her. I never saw her again. I learned of her valiant deed and heroic death like everybody else. From newspapers and regimental orders. They say they’re going to set up a monument to her somewhere here. I’ve heard that General Zhivago, the brother of the late Yuri, is making the rounds of these parts, gathering information about her.”
“Forgive me for bringing her up in our conversation. It must be painful for you.”
“That’s not the point. But we keep babbling away. I don’t want to hinder you. Get undressed, go into the water, and do your work. And I’ll stretch out on the bank with a blade of grass in my teeth, I’ll chew and think, and maybe take a nap.”
A few minutes later, the conversation picked up again.
“Where did you learn to wash clothes like that?”
“From necessity. We had no luck. Of all the penal camps, we landed in the most terrible one. Few survived. Beginning from our arrival. The party was taken off the train. A snowy waste. A forest in the distance. Guards, rifles with lowered muzzles, German shepherds. Around that same time, new groups were driven in at various moments. They formed us into a wide polygon the size of the whole field, facing out, so as not to see each other. The order came: on your knees, and don’t look to the sides or you’ll be shot, and then began the endless, humiliating procedure of the roll call, which was drawn out for long hours. Kneeling down the whole time. Then we stood up, other parties were taken elsewhere, and we were told: ‘Here’s your camp. Settle in as you can.’ A snowy field under the open sky, a post in the middle, an inscription on the post: ‘Gulag 92 Y N 90’ and nothing more.”
“No, for us it was easier. We were lucky. I was serving my second term, which usually followed on the first. Besides, the article was different and so were the conditions. After my release, my rights were restored, as they were the first time, and I was again allowed to lecture at the university. And I was mobilized in the war with the full rights of a major, not in a penal unit like you.”
“Yes. A post with the number ‘Gulag 92 Y N 90’ and nothing else. At first we broke off laths for huts with our bare hands in the freezing cold. And, you won’t believe it, but we gradually built the place up for ourselves. We cut wood for shacks, surrounded ourselves with palings, set up punishment cells, watchtowers—all by ourselves. And we started logging. Tree felling. We felled trees. Eight of us would hitch ourselves to the sledge, load it with logs, sinking up to our chests in the snow. For a long time we didn’t know that war had broken out. They concealed it. And suddenly—an offer. Volunteer for penal battalions at the front and, if you chance to come out of the endless battles alive, you’ll all go free. And then attacks, attacks, miles of electrified barbed wire, mines, mortars, month after month under a hail of fire. It was not for nothing that in these companies we were known as ‘the condemned.’ We’d be mowed down to a man. How did I survive? How did I ever survive? But, imagine, that whole bloody hell was happiness compared to the horrors of the concentration camp, and not at all owing to the harsh conditions, but to something else entirely.”
“Yes, brother, you’ve drunk a bitter cup.”
“It wasn’t just washing clothes you could learn there, but anything you like.”
“An amazing thing. Not only compared to your convict’s portion, but in regard to the whole previous life of the thirties, even in freedom, even in the well-being of university activity, books, money, comfort, the war came as a cleansing storm, a gust of fresh air, a breath of deliverance.
“I think collectivization was a false, unsuccessful measure, and it was impossible to acknowledge the mistake. To conceal the failure, it was necessary to cure people, by every means of intimidation,