Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [44]
She often sent for Yura and Tonya and for hours told them about her childhood, spent on her grandfather’s estate, Varykino, on the river Rynva in the Urals. Neither Yura nor Tonya had ever been there, but from Anna Ivanovna’s words, Yura could easily imagine those fifteen thousand acres of age-old, impenetrable forest, dark as night, pierced in two or three places, as if stabbing it with the knife of its meanders, by the swift river with its stony bottom and steep banks on the Krügers’ side.
In those days Yura and Tonya were having evening dress made for them for the first time in their lives—for Yura a two-piece black suit, and for Tonya an evening gown of light satin with a slightly open neck. They were going to wear these outfits for the first time on the twenty-seventh, at the traditional annual Christmas party at the Sventitskys’.
The orders from the men’s shop and the dressmaker were delivered on the same day. Yura and Tonya tried the new things on, remained pleased, and had no time to take them off again before Egorovna came from Anna Ivanovna and said that she was sending for them. As they were, in their new clothes, Yura and Tonya went to Anna Ivanovna.
When they appeared, she propped herself on her elbow, looked at them from the side, told them to turn around, and said:
“Very nice. Simply ravishing. I didn’t know they were ready. Now, Tonya, once more. No, never mind. It seemed to me that the basque was slightly puckered. Do you know why I sent for you? But first a few words about you, Yura.”
“I know, Anna Ivanovna. I myself asked them to show you that letter. You, like Nikolai Nikolaevich, think that I shouldn’t have renounced it. A moment’s patience. It’s bad for you to talk. I’ll explain everything to you at once. Though you know it all very well.
“And so, first. The case to do with the Zhivago inheritance exists for the sake of feeding lawyers and collecting court costs, but in reality there is no inheritance, there’s nothing but debts and entanglements, and the filth that floats to the surface along with it all. If it were possible to turn anything into money, do you think I would give it to the court and not make use of it myself? But the thing is that the case has been trumped up, and rather than rummage through it all, it was better to renounce my rights to the nonexistent property and yield it to several false rivals and envious impostors. Of the claims of a certain Madame Alice, who lives in Paris under the name Zhivago, I heard long ago. But new claimants have been added, and, I don’t know about you, but I discovered it all quite recently.
“It turns out that, while mama was still alive, father became enamored of a certain dreamer and madcap, Princess Stolbunova-Enrizzi. This person has a son by my father, he is now ten years old, his name is Evgraf.
“The princess is a recluse. She and her son live on unknown means without ever quitting her private house on the outskirts of Omsk. I was shown a photograph of the house. A handsome place with a five-window façade, single-pane windows, and stucco medallions along the cornice. And all the while recently I’ve been feeling as if this house is looking at me unkindly with its five windows across the thousands of miles separating European Russia from Siberia, and sooner or later will give me the evil eye. So what is it all to me: fictitious capital, artificially created rivals, their ill will and envy? Plus the lawyers.”
“All the same, you shouldn’t have renounced it,” Anna Ivanovna objected. “Do you know why I sent for you?” she repeated and at once went on: “I remembered his name. Remember, yesterday I told you about a forester. His name was Vakkh. Splendid, isn’t it? A dark forest horror, overgrown with beard up to his eyebrows, and—Vakkh! His face was disfigured, a bear mauled him, but he fought him off. They’re all like that there. With names like that. One syllable. So that it’s sonorous and vivid. Vakkh. Or Lupp. Or, say, Faust. Listen, listen. Sometimes they’d come and report something. There’d be some Avkt or Frol there, like a blast