Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [283]
“Well, so, as I was saying, when the Red Army was approaching, mama sent for the signalman’s wife, Marfa, at the Nagornaya junction, three stops away from that town. I’ll explain right away. First the Nizovaya station, then the Nagornaya junction, then the Samsonovsky crossing. I see now how mama got to know the signalman’s wife. I think Marfa came to town to sell vegetables and deliver milk. Yes.
“And I’ll say this. It’s obvious there’s something I don’t know here. I think they tricked mama, told her something else. Described God knows what, it was just temporary, a couple of days, till the turmoil calmed down. And not for me to be in strangers’ hands forever. To be brought up forever. My mama couldn’t have given away her own child like that.
“Well, you know how they do with children. ‘Go to auntie, auntie will give you gingerbread, auntie’s nice, don’t be afraid of auntie.’ And how I cried and thrashed afterwards, how my child’s little heart was wrung, it’s better not to speak of it. I wanted to hang myself, I nearly went out of my mind in childhood. Because I was still little. They must have given Auntie Marfusha money for my keep, a lot of money.
“The farmstead at the post was a rich one, a cow and a horse, well, and of course all sorts of fowl, and a plot for a kitchen garden as big as you like, and free lodgings, needless to say, a signalman’s house, right by the tracks. From our parts below, the train could barely go up, had trouble making the climb, but from your Russian parts it went at high speed, had to put on the brakes. In autumn, when the forest thinned out, you could see the Nagornaya station like on a plate.
“The man himself, Uncle Vassily, I called daddy, peasantlike. He was a jolly and kind man, only much too gullible, and when he was under the influence, he ran off at the mouth—like they say, the hog told the sow, and the sow the whole town. He’d blurt out his whole soul to the first comer.
“But I could never get my tongue to call his wife mother. Whether because I couldn’t forget my own mama, or for some other reason, only this Auntie Marfusha was so scary. Yes. So I called the signalman’s wife Auntie Marfusha.
“Well, time went by. Years passed. How many, I don’t remember. I’d already started to run out to the trains with a flag. To unharness a horse or bring home a cow was no mystery to me. Auntie Marfusha taught me to spin. To say nothing of the cottage. To sweep the floor, to tidy up, or to cook something, to mix the dough, was nothing to me, I could do it all. Ah, yes, I forgot to tell you, I was also nanny to Petenka. Our Petenka had withered legs, he was just three, he lay there and couldn’t walk, so I was nanny to Petenka. And now so many years have gone by and it still gives me shivers, how Auntie Marfusha used to look sideways at my healthy legs, as if to say, why weren’t mine withered, it would be better if mine were withered and not Petenka’s, as if it was my evil eye that had spoiled Petenka, just think, what malice and darkness there are in the world.
“Listen, now, that was all just flowers, as they say, what comes next will make you gasp.
“It was the NEP then, and a thousand rubles were worth a kopeck. Vassily Afanasievich went down with the cow, got two bags of money—kerenki, they were called, ah, no, sorry—lemons, they were called lemons—got drunk, and went sounding off about his riches all over Nagornaya.
“I remember, it was a windy autumn day, the wind tore at the roof and knocked you off your feet, the locomotives couldn’t make it uphill, the wind was so against them. I see an old woman, a wanderer, come down the hill, the wind tearing at her skirt and kerchief.
“The wanderer walks up, groaning, clutching her stomach, asking to come inside. We put her on the bench—ohh, I can’t, she yells, I can’t, it’s stomach cramps, it’s the death of me. And she begs us, take me to the hospital, for Christ’s sake, you’ll be paid, I won’t stint on money. Daddy hitched