Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [60]
“That is totally unnecessary,” Lara retorted loudly and carelessly. “And generally it’s all pointless—correspondence, the Sahara, and all that. And don’t even think of visiting. With God’s help you’ll survive without us, we’re not such a rarity—right, Pasha? Maybe you’ll find somebody to replace your young friends.”
And totally forgetting whom she was talking with and about what, Lara remembered something and, hastily getting up, went behind the partition to the kitchen. There she dismantled the meat grinder and began stuffing the parts into the corners of the crate of dishes, layering them with tufts of straw. In the process she almost pricked her hand on a sharp splinter split from the edge.
While busy with that, she lost sight of the fact that she had guests, ceased to hear them, but they suddenly reminded her of themselves with a particularly loud burst of chatter behind the partition, and then Lara reflected on the diligence with which drunk people always like to imitate drunk people, and with all the more giftless and amateurish deliberateness the drunker they are.
At that moment quite another, special noise attracted her attention to the yard outside the open window. Lara drew the curtain and leaned out.
A hobbled horse was moving about the courtyard in halting leaps. It was an unknown horse and must have wandered into the yard by mistake. It was already completely light, but still long before sunrise. The sleeping and as if totally deserted city was sunk in the grayish purple coolness of early morning. Lara closed her eyes. God knows to what country remoteness and enchantment she was transported by this distinctive and quite incomparable stamping of shod horse hooves.
There was a ring from the stairway. Lara pricked up her ears. Someone left the table and went to open the door. It was Nadya! Lara rushed to meet her. Nadya had come straight from the train, fresh, bewitching, and as if all fragrant with Duplyanka lilies of the valley. The two friends stood there unable to speak a word, and only sobbed, embracing and all but choking each other.
Nadya brought Lara congratulations and wishes for a good journey from the whole household and a precious gift from her parents. She took from her bag a case wrapped in paper, unwrapped it, and, unclasping the lid, handed Lara a necklace of rare beauty.
There were ohs and ahs. One of the drunken guests, now somewhat sobered up, said:
“A pink jacinth. Yes, yes, pink, if you can believe it. A stone not inferior to the diamond.”
But Nadya insisted that they were yellow sapphires.
Seating her next to herself and giving her something to eat, Lara put the necklace near her place and could not tear her eyes from it. The stones, gathered into a little pile on the violet cushion of the case, burned iridescently, looking now like drops of moisture running together, now like a cluster of small grapes.
Some of those at the table had meanwhile managed to come to their senses. They again downed a glass to keep Nadya company. Nadya quickly got drunk.
The house soon turned into a sleeping kingdom. Most of the guests, anticipating the next day’s farewell at the station, stayed for the night. Half of them had long been snoring in various corners. Lara herself did not remember how she wound up fully dressed on the sofa beside the already sleeping Ira Lagodina.
Lara was awakened by a loud conversation just at her ear. They were the voices of some strangers who had come into the courtyard looking for the stray horse. Lara opened her eyes and was surprised. “How tireless this Pasha is, really, standing like a milepost in the middle of the room and endlessly poking about.” Just then the supposed Pasha turned his face to her, and she saw that it was not Pasha at all, but