Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [45]
“Stop, mama, it’s not good for you,” Tonya warned. Yura seconded her.
“It’s nothing. Trifles. Yes, by the way, Egorovna let on that you’re not sure whether you should go to the Christmas party the day after tomorrow. I don’t want to hear any more of that foolishness! Shame on you. What kind of doctor are you after that, Yura? So, it’s settled. You’re going, with no further discussion. But let’s go back to Vakkh. This Vakkh was a blacksmith in his youth. He had his guts busted up in a fight. So he made himself new ones out of iron. What an odd fellow you are, Yura. As if I don’t understand. Of course, not literally. But that’s what people said.”
Anna Ivanovna coughed again, this time for much longer. The fit would not pass. She could not catch her breath.
Yura and Tonya rushed to her at the same moment. They stood shoulder to shoulder by her bed. Still coughing, Anna Ivanovna seized their touching hands in hers and held them united for a time. Then, regaining control of her voice and breath, she said:
“If I die, don’t part. You’re made for each other. Get married. There, I’ve betrothed you,” she added and burst into tears.
5
In the spring of 1906, before the start of her last year of high school, the six months of her liaison with Komarovsky had already gone beyond the limits of Lara’s endurance. He very skillfully took advantage of her despondency and, whenever he found it necessary, without letting it show, reminded her subtly and inconspicuously of her dishonor. These reminders threw Lara into that state of disarray which a sensualist requires of a woman. This disarray made Lara ever more captive to the sensual nightmare, which made her hair stand on end when she sobered up. The contradictions of the night’s madness were as inexplicable as black magic. Here everything was inside out and contrary to logic, sharp pain manifested itself in peals of silvery laughter, struggle and refusal signified consent, and the torturer’s hand was covered with kisses of gratitude.
It seemed there would be no end to it, but in spring, at one of the last classes of the school year, having reflected on how much more frequent this pestering would be in the summer, when there were no school studies, which were her last refuge against frequent meetings with Komarovsky, Lara quickly came to a decision that changed her life for a long time.
It was a hot morning, a thunderstorm was gathering. The classroom windows were open. The city was humming in the distance, always on the same note, like bees in an apiary. The shouts of playing children came from the courtyard. The grassy smell of earth and young greenery made your head ache, like the smell of vodka and pancakes in the week before Lent.3
The history teacher was telling about Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition.4 When he came to the landing at Fréjus, the sky turned black, cracked and split by lightning and thunder, and through the windows, along with the smell of freshness, columns of sand and dust burst into the room. Two class toadies rushed officiously to the corridor to call the janitor to shut the windows, and when they opened the door, the draft lifted the blotting paper from the notebooks on all the desks and blew it around the room.
The windows were shut. Dirty city rain mixed with dust poured down. Lara tore a page from her notebook and wrote to the girl sitting next to her at the desk, Nadya Kologrivova:
“Nadya, I must set up my life separately from mama. Help me to find well-paid lessons. You have many rich acquaintances.”
Nadya replied in the same way: