Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [29]
When Nikolai Nikolaevich moved to Petersburg from the backwoods of the Volga region, he brought Yura to Moscow, to the family circles of the Vedenyapins, the Ostromyslenskys, the Selyavins, the Mikhaelises, the Sventitskys, and the Gromekos. At the beginning, Yura was settled with the scatterbrained old babbler Ostromyslensky, whom his relations simply called Fedka. Fedka privately cohabited with his ward, Motya, and therefore considered himself a shaker of the foundations, the champion of an idea. He did not justify the trust put in him and even turned out to be light-fingered, spending for his own benefit the money allotted for Yura’s upkeep. Yura was transferred to the professorial family of the Gromekos, where he remained to this day.
At the Gromekos’ Yura was surrounded by an enviably propitious atmosphere.
“They have a sort of triumvirate there,” thought Nikolai Nikolaevich, “Yura, his friend and schoolmate Gordon, and the daughter of the family, Tonya Gromeko. This triple alliance has read itself up on The Meaning of Love and The Kreutzer Sonata, and is mad about the preaching of chastity.”8
Adolescence has to pass through all the frenzies of purity. But they are overdoing it, they have gone beyond all reason.
They are terribly extravagant and childish. The realm of the sensual that troubles them so much, they for some reason call “vulgarity,” and they use this expression both aptly and inaptly. A very unfortunate choice of words! The “vulgar”—for them it is the voice of instinct, and pornographic literature, and the exploitation of women, and all but the entire world of the physical. They blush and blanch when they pronounce the word!
If I had been in Moscow, thought Nikolai Nikolaevich, I would not have let it go so far. Modesty is necessary, and within certain limits …
“Ah, Nil Feoktistovich! Come in, please,” he exclaimed and went to meet his visitor.
10
Into the room came a fat man in a gray shirt girded with a wide belt. He was wearing felt boots, and his trousers were baggy at the knees. He made the impression of a kindly fellow who lived in the clouds. On his nose a small pince-nez on a wide black ribbon bobbed angrily.
Divesting himself in the front hall, he had not finished the job. He had not taken off his scarf, the end of which dragged on the floor, and his round felt hat was still in his hands. These things hampered his movements and prevented Vyvolochnov not only from shaking Nikolai Nikolaevich’s hand, but even from greeting him verbally.
“Umm,” he grunted perplexedly, looking into all the corners.
“Put it wherever you like,” said Nikolai Nikolaevich, restoring to Vyvolochnov his gift of speech and his composure.
He was one of those followers of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy in whose heads the thoughts of the genius who had never known peace settled down to enjoy a long and cloudless repose and turned irremediably petty.
Vyvolochnov had come to ask Nikolai Nikolaevich to appear at a benefit for political exiles at some school.
“I’ve already lectured there.”
“At a benefit for political exiles?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to do it again.”
Nikolai Nikolaevich resisted at first but then agreed.
The object of the visit was exhausted. Nikolai Nikolaevich was not keeping Nil Feoktistovich. He could get up and leave. But it seemed improper to Vyvolochnov to leave so soon. It was necessary to say something lively and unforced in farewell. A strained and unpleasant conversation began.
“So you’ve become a decadent? Gone in for mysticism?”
“Why so?”
“A lost man. Remember the zemstvo?”
“Of course I do. We worked on the elections together.”
“We fought for village schools and teachers’ education. Remember?”
“Of course. Those were hot battles.”
“Afterwards I believe you went into public health and social welfare? Right?”
“For a while.”
“Mm—yes. And now it’s these fauns, nenuphars, ephebes, and ‘let’s be like the sun.’9 For the life