Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [57]
They rode in a hack through semidark lanes across the whole of Moscow, from the train station to the hotel. The street lamps, approaching and withdrawing, cast the shadow of their hunched cabby on the walls of the buildings. The shadow grew, grew, reached unnatural dimensions, covered the pavement and the roofs, then dropped away. And everything began again.
In the darkness overhead the forty-times-forty Moscow churches rang their bells, on the ground horse-drawn streetcars drove around clanging, but the gaudy shop windows and lights also deafened Lara, as if they, too, gave out a sound of their own, like the bells and wheels.
In the hotel room, she was stunned by an unbelievably huge watermelon on the table, Komarovsky’s welcoming gift in their new lodgings. The watermelon seemed to Lara a symbol of Komarovsky’s imperiousness and of his wealth. When Viktor Ippolitovich, with a stroke of the knife, split in two the loudly crunching, dark green, round marvel, with its ice-cold, sugary insides, Lara’s breath was taken away from fear, but she did not dare refuse. She forced herself to swallow the pink, fragrant pieces, which stuck in her throat from agitation.
And this timidity before the costly food and the nighttime capital was then repeated in her timidity before Komarovsky—the main solution to all that came after. But now he was unrecognizable. He demanded nothing, gave no reminders of himself, and did not even appear. And, keeping his distance, constantly offered his help in the noblest way.
Kologrivov’s visit was quite another matter. Lara was very glad to see Lavrenty Mikhailovich. Not because he was so tall and stately, but owing to the liveliness and talent he exuded, the guest took up half the room with himself, his sparkling eyes, and his intelligent smile. The room became crowded.
He sat by Lara’s bed rubbing his hands. When he was summoned to the council of ministers in Petersburg, he talked with the old dignitaries as if they were prankish schoolboys. But here before him lay a recent part of his domestic hearth, something like his own daughter, with whom, as with everyone at home, he exchanged glances and remarks only in passing and fleetingly (this constituted the distinctive charm of the brief, expressive communications, both sides knew that). He could not treat Lara gravely and indifferently, like a grown-up. He did not know how to talk with her so as not to offend her, and so he said, smiling to her, as to a child:
“What’s this you’re up to, my dearest? Who needs these melodramas?” He fell silent and started examining the damp spots on the ceiling and wallpaper. Then, shaking his head reproachfully, he went on: “An exhibition is opening in Düsseldorf, an international one—of painting, sculpture, and gardening. I’m going. Your place is a bit damp. How long do you intend to hang between heaven and earth? There’s not much elbow room here, God knows. This Voitessa, just between us, is perfect trash. I know her. Move. Enough lolling about. You’ve been sick and there’s an end to it. Time to get up. Move to another room, go back to your studies, finish school. There’s an artist I know. He’s going to Turkestan for two years. His studio is divided up by partitions, and, strictly speaking, it’s a whole little apartment. It seems he’s prepared to leave it, together with the furnishings, in good hands. Would you like me to arrange it? And there’s also this. Let me talk business. I’ve long been meaning, it’s my sacred duty … Since Lipa … Here’s a small sum, a bonus for her graduation … No, let me, let me … No, I beg you, don’t be stubborn … No, excuse me, please.”
And, on leaving, he forced her, despite her objections, tears, and even something like a scuffle, to accept from him a bank check for ten thousand.
On recovering, Lara moved to the new hearth so praised by Kologrivov. The place was right next to the Smolensk market. The apartment was on the upper floor of a small, two-story