Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [65]
But Antipov was pretending to be asleep—he was not. He was having a fit of the insomnia that had recently become usual with him. He knew he was going to lie sleepless like that for another three or four hours. To walk himself to sleep and get rid of the tobacco smoke left by the guests, he quietly got up and, in his hat and fur coat over nothing but his underwear, went outside.
It was a clear autumn night with frost. Fragile sheets of ice crunched loudly under Antipov’s feet. The starry night, like a flame of burning alcohol, cast its wavering pale blue glow over the black earth with its clods of frozen mud.
The house in which the Antipovs lived was on the opposite side of town from the docks. It was the last house on the street. Beyond it the fields began. They were cut across by the railway. Near the line stood a guardhouse. There was a level crossing over the rails.
Antipov sat down on the overturned boat and looked at the stars. Thoughts he had become used to in recent years seized him with alarming force. He imagined that sooner or later he would have to think them through to the end and that it would be better to do it now.
This can’t go on any longer, he thought. But it all could have been foreseen earlier; he had noticed it too late. Why had she allowed him as a child to admire her so much? Why had she done whatever she wanted with him? Why had he not been wise enough to renounce her in time, when she herself had insisted on it in the winter before their marriage? Doesn’t he understand that she loved not him but her noble task in relation to him, her exploit personified? What is there in common between this inspired and praiseworthy mission and real family life? Worst of all is that he loves her to this day as strongly as ever. She is maddeningly beautiful. But maybe what he feels is also not love, but a grateful bewilderment before her beauty and magnanimity? Pah, just try sorting it out! Here the devil himself would break a leg.
What’s to be done in that case? Free Lara and Katenka from this sham? That’s even more important than to free himself. Yes, but how? Divorce? Drown himself? “Pah, how vile!” He became indignant. “I’ll never go and do such a thing! Then why mention these spectacular abominations even to myself?”
He looked at the stars as if asking their advice. They glimmered, densely and sparsely, big and small, blue and iridescent. Suddenly, eclipsing their glimmer, the courtyard with the house, the boat, and Antipov sitting on it were lit up by a sharp, darting light, as if someone were running from the field to the gate waving a burning torch. It was a military train, throwing puffs of yellow, flame-shot smoke into the sky, going through the crossing to the west, as countless numbers had done day and night for the last year.
Pavel Pavlovich smiled, got up from the boat, and went to bed. The desired way out had been found.
7
Larissa Fyodorovna was stunned and at first did not believe her ears when she learned of Pasha’s decision. “Absurd. Another whim,” she thought. “Pay no attention, and he’ll forget all about it himself.”
But it turned out that her husband’s preparations had already begun two weeks ago, the papers were in the recruiting office, there was a replacement at school, and from Omsk notification had come of his admission to the military school there. The time of his departure was near.
Lara howled like a peasant woman and, seizing Antipov’s hands, fell at his feet.
“Pasha, Pashenka,” she cried, “why are you leaving me and Katenka? Don’t do it! Don’t! It’s not too late. I’ll straighten it all out. And you haven’t even been seen properly by a doctor. With your heart. You’re ashamed? And aren’t you ashamed to sacrifice your family to some sort of madness? As a volunteer! All your life you’ve made fun of banal Rodka, and suddenly you’re envious! You want to rattle a saber, to play the officer. What’s wrong with you, Pasha,