Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [42]
The voice of this mystery, stifling everything else, pursued Yura, interfering with his dissecting. But many other things in life interfered with him in the same way. He was used to it, and the distracting interference did not disturb him.
Yura thought well and wrote very well. Still in his high school years he dreamed of prose, of a book of biographies, in which he could place, in the form of hidden explosive clusters, the most astounding things of all he had managed to see and ponder. But he was too young for such a book, and so he made up for it by writing verses, as a painter might draw sketches all his life for a great painting he had in mind.
Yura forgave these verses the sin of their coming to be for the sake of their energy and originality. These two qualities, energy and originality, Yura considered representative of reality in the arts, which were pointless, idle, and unnecessary in all other respects.
Yura realized how much he owed to his uncle for the general qualities of his character.
Nikolai Nikolaevich was living in Lausanne. In the books he published there in Russian and in translation, he developed his long-standing notion of history as a second universe, erected by mankind in response to the phenomenon of death with the aid of the phenomena of time and memory. The soul of these books was a new understanding of Christianity, their direct consequence a new understanding of art.
Even more than on Yura, the circle of these notions had an effect on his friend. Under their influence, Misha Gordon chose philosophy as his specialty. In his department, he attended lectures on theology, and he even had thoughts of transferring later to the theological academy.
The uncle’s influence furthered Yura and liberated him, but it fettered Misha. Yura understood what role in Misha’s extreme enthusiasms was played by his origins. From cautious tactfulness, he did not try to talk Misha out of his strange projects. But he often wished to see an empirical Misha, much closer to life.
3
One evening at the end of November, Yura came home late from the university, very tired, having eaten nothing all day. He was told there had been a terrible alarm in the afternoon; Anna Ivanovna had had convulsions, several doctors had come, they had advised sending for a priest, but then the idea was dropped. Now it was better, she was conscious and asked them to send Yura to her without delay, as soon as he came home.
Yura obeyed and, without changing, went to the bedroom.
The room bore signs of the recent turmoil. With soundless movements, a nurse was rearranging something on the bedside table. Crumpled napkins and damp towels from compresses lay about. The water in the rinsing bowl was slightly pink from spat-up blood. In it lay glass ampoules with broken-off tips and waterlogged wads of cotton.
The sick woman was bathed in sweat and licked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. Her face was noticeably pinched compared with the morning, when Yura had last seen her.
“Haven’t they made a wrong diagnosis?” he thought. “There are all the signs of galloping pneumonia. This looks like the crisis.” Having greeted Anna Ivanovna and said something encouragingly empty, as people always do in such cases, he sent the nurse away. Taking Anna Ivanovna’s wrist to count her pulse, he slipped his other hand under his jacket for the stethoscope. Anna Ivanovna moved her head to indicate that it was unnecessary. Yura realized that she needed something else from him. Gathering her strength, Anna Ivanovna began to speak:
“See, they wanted to confess me … Death is hanging over me … Any moment it may … You’re afraid to have a tooth pulled, it hurts, you prepare yourself … But here it’s not a tooth, it’s all, all of you, all your life … snap, and it’s gone, as if with pincers … And what is it? Nobody knows … And I’m anxious and frightened.”
Anna Ivanovna fell silent. Tears ran down her cheeks. Yura said nothing. After a moment Anna