Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [69]
Galiullin had known Antipov since the time at Tiverzin’s. In 1905, when Pasha Antipov had lived for half a year with the Tiverzins, Yusupka had gone to see him and play with him on Sundays. He had seen Lara there once or twice then. After that he had heard nothing about them. When Pavel Pavlovich left Yuriatin and landed in their regiment, Galiullin was struck by the change that had come over his old friend. The bashful, laughter-prone, prissy prankster, who looked like a girl, had turned into a nervous, all-knowing, scornful hypochondriac. He was intelligent, very brave, taciturn, and sarcastic. At times, looking at him, Galiullin was ready to swear that he could see in Antipov’s heavy gaze, as in the depths of a window, some second person, a thought firmly embedded in him, a longing for his daughter or the face of his wife. Antipov seemed bewitched, as in a fairy tale. And now he was no more, and in Galiullin’s hands there remained Antipov’s papers and photographs and the mystery of his transformation.
Sooner or later Lara’s inquiries had to reach Galiullin. He was preparing to answer her. But it was a hot time. He felt unable to give her a proper answer. He wanted to prepare her for the coming blow. And so he kept postponing a long, detailed letter to her, until he heard that she herself was somewhere at the front, as a nurse. And now he did not know where to address a letter to her.
10
“Well? Will there be horses today?” Gordon would ask Dr. Zhivago when he came home in the afternoon to the Galician cottage they were living in.
“Horses, hah! And where will you go, if there’s no way forward or back? There’s terrible confusion all around. Nobody understands anything. In the south, we’ve encircled the Germans or broken through them in several places, and they say that in the process several of our scattered units got into a pocket, and in the north, the Germans have crossed the Sventa, which was considered impassable at that point. It’s their cavalry, up to a corps in number. They’re damaging railways, destroying depots, and, in my opinion, encircling us. Do you get the picture? And you say horses. Well, look lively, Karpenko, set the table and get a move on. What are we having today? Ah, calves’ feet. Splendid.”
The medical unit with the hospital and all its dependencies was scattered through the village, which by a miracle had gone unscathed. Its houses, with gleaming western-style, narrow, many-paned windows from wall to wall, were preserved to the last one.
It was Indian summer, the last days of a hot, golden autumn. During the day, the doctors and officers opened the windows, killed the flies that crawled in black swarms over the windowsills and low, white-papered ceilings, and, unbuttoning their tunics and field shirts, dripping with sweat, burned their tongues on hot cabbage soup or tea, and in the evenings squatted in front of the open stove, blowing on the dying coals under the damp firewood that refused to burn, and, their eyes tearful from the smoke, cursed their orderlies, who did not know how to heat a stove in human fashion.
It was a quiet night. Gordon and Zhivago lay facing each other on benches against the two opposite walls. Between them was the dinner table and a long, narrow window stretching from wall to wall. The room was overheated and filled with tobacco smoke. They opened the two end casements and breathed in the autumnal freshness of the night, which covered the glass with sweat.
As usual, they were talking, just as they had all those days and nights. As always, there was a pink glow on the horizon in the direction of the front, and when, into the steady growl of gunfire, which never ceased for a moment, there fell deeper, separately distinct and weighty blows, which seemed to shift the ground in the distance slightly to one side, Zhivago broke off the conversation out of respect for the sound, held the pause, and said: “That’s Bertha, a German sixteen-incher, there’s a ton of weight in the little thing,” and then went on with the conversation, forgetting what they had been talking about.