Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [32]
13
“Ah, Emma Ernestovna, dearest, that’s of no importance. It’s tiresome.”
He was flinging things around on the carpet and sofa, cuffs and shirt fronts, and opening and closing the drawers of the chest, not understanding what he wanted.
He needed her desperately, and to see her that Sunday was impossible. He rushed about the room like a beast, unable to settle anywhere.
She was incomparable in her inspired loveliness. Her arms amazed one, as one can be astonished by a lofty way of thinking. Her shadow on the wallpaper of the hotel room seemed the silhouette of her uncorruption. The nightshirt stretched over her breasts was ingenuous and taut, like a piece of linen on an embroidery frame.
Komarovsky drummed his fingers on the windowpane in rhythm with the horses’ hoofs unhurriedly clattering over the asphalt of the street downstairs. “Lara”—he whispered and closed his eyes, and her head mentally appeared in his hands, her sleeping head with its eyelashes lowered, knowing not that it had been gazed at sleeplessly for hours on end. Her shock of hair, scattered in disorder over the pillow, stung Komarovsky’s eyes with the smoke of its beauty and penetrated his soul.
His Sunday stroll did not come off. Komarovsky went several steps down the sidewalk with Jack and stopped. He imagined Kuznetsky, Satanidi’s jokes, the stream of acquaintances he was going to meet. No, it was beyond his strength! How repugnant it had all become! Komarovsky turned back. The surprised dog rested his disapproving gaze on him from below and reluctantly trudged after him.
“What is this bedevilment?” he thought. “What does it all mean?” Was it awakened conscience, a feeling of pity or repentance? Or was it worry? No, he knew she was safe at home. Why, then, could he not get her out of his head!
Komarovsky went through the front door, went upstairs to the landing, and turned. There was a Venetian window with ornamental coats of arms in the corners of the glass. It cast colored reflections on the floor and the windowsill. Halfway up the next flight Komarovsky stopped.
Do not give in to this gnawing, martyrizing anguish! He is not a boy, he must realize how it would be for him if, from a means of diversion, this girl, his late friend’s daughter, this child, should turn into the object of his madness. Come to your senses! Be true to yourself, don’t change your habits. Otherwise everything will fly to pieces.
Komarovsky squeezed the wide banister with his hand until it hurt, closed his eyes for a moment, and, resolutely turning back, began to go downstairs. On the landing with the sun reflections he caught the adoring gaze of his bulldog. Jack was looking at him from below, raising his head like a slobbering old dwarf with sagging cheeks.
The dog did not like the girl, tore her stockings, growled and snarled at her. He was jealous of Lara, as if fearing that his master might get infected by her with something human.
“Ah, so that’s it! You’ve decided everything will be as before—Satanidi, the meanness, the jokes? Take that, then, take that, take that, take that!”
He started kicking the bulldog and beating him with his cane. Jack made his escape, howling and squealing, and, his behind twitching, hobbled up the stairs to scratch at the door and complain to Emma Ernestovna.
Days and weeks went by.
14
Oh, what a vicious circle it was! If Komarovsky’s irruption into Lara’s life had aroused only her revulsion, Lara would have rebelled and broken free. But things were not so simple.
The girl was flattered that a handsome, graying man who could have been her father, who was applauded in assemblies and written about in the newspapers, spent money and time on her, called her goddess, took her to theaters and concerts and, as they say, “improved her mind.”
And here she was still an immature schoolgirl in a brown dress, a secret participant in innocent school conspiracies and pranks. Komarovsky’s lovemaking somewhere in a carriage under the coachman’s nose or in the secluded back of a loge before the eyes of the whole theater fascinated her by its covert