Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [66]
Suddenly she understood that this was not the point at all. Unable to make sense of the particulars, she grasped the main thing. She perceived that Patulya was mistaken about her attitude towards him. He did not appreciate the maternal feeling that she had mixed all her life with her tenderness towards him, and he did not perceive that such love was greater than ordinary woman’s love.
She bit her lip, all shrunken inwardly, as if she had been beaten, and, saying nothing and silently swallowing her tears, set about preparing her husband for the road.
When he left, it seemed to her that the whole town became silent and that there was even a smaller number of crows flying in the sky. “Mistress, mistress,” Marfutka called out to her unsuccessfully. “Mama, mama,” Katenka prattled endlessly, tugging at her sleeve. This was the most serious defeat in her life. Her best, her brightest hopes had collapsed.
Through his letters from Siberia, Lara knew all about her husband. Things soon became clearer to him. He missed his wife and daughter very much. In a few months, Pavel Pavlovich graduated early as a second lieutenant and was just as unexpectedly assigned to active duty. He traveled with the utmost urgency far from Yuriatin and in Moscow had no time to see anyone.
His letters from the front began to come, more lively and not so sad as from the school in Omsk. Antipov wanted to distinguish himself, so that in reward for some military exploit or as the result of a slight wound he could ask for leave to see his family. The possibility of promotion presented itself. Following a recently accomplished breakthrough, which was later named for Brusilov, the army went on the offensive.9 Letters from Antipov ceased. At first that did not worry Lara. She explained Pasha’s silence by the unfolding military action and the impossibility of writing on the march.
In the fall the army’s advance came to a halt. The troops dug themselves in. But there was still no news from Antipov. Larissa Fyodorovna began to worry and made inquiries, first in Yuriatin and then by mail to Moscow and to the front, to the old field address of Pasha’s unit. No one knew anything, no reply came from anywhere.
Like many lady benefactresses in the district, from the beginning of the war Larissa Fyodorovna had helped as much as she could in the hospital set up in the community clinic of Yuriatin.
Now she began seriously to study the basics of medicine and passed an examination at the clinic to qualify as a nurse.
In that quality she asked for a six-month leave from her work at the school, left Marfutka in charge of the apartment in Yuriatin, and, taking Katenka with her, went to Moscow. There she installed her daughter with Lipochka, whose husband, the German subject Friesendank, along with other civilian prisoners, was interned in Ufa.
Convinced of the uselessness of her search from afar, Larissa Fyodorovna decided to transfer it to the scene of recent events. With that aim, she went to work as a nurse on a hospital train that was going through the town of Lisko to Mezo-Laborszh on the Hungarian border. That was the name of the place from which Pasha had written her his last letter.
8
A train-bathhouse, fitted out on donations from St. Tatiana’s committee for aid to the wounded,10 arrived in staff headquarters at the front. In the first-class carriage of the long train composed of short, ugly freight cars, visitors arrived, activists from Moscow with gifts for the soldiers and officers. Among them was Gordon. He had learned that the division infirmary in which, according to his information, his childhood friend Zhivago worked, was located in a nearby village.
Gordon obtained the necessary permission to circulate in the frontline zone, and, pass in hand, went to visit his friend in a wagon that was headed in that direction.
The driver, a Belorussian or Lithuanian, spoke Russian poorly.