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By Root 1971 0

the mockery and bloodletting of so many utterly blameless old men, women, and children, so fine and so capable of good and of the heart’s communion! Why are the people-loving writers of all peoples so lazy and giftless? Why do the rulers of this people’s minds never go beyond the two easily accessible forms of world sorrow and ironizing wisdom? Why, faced with the risk of exploding from the irrevocability of their duty, as a steam boiler explodes from pressure, did they not disband this troop that fights and gets beaten nobody knows what for? Why didn’t they say: ‘Come to your senses. Enough. There’s no need for more. Don’t call yourselves by the old name. Don’t cling together, disperse. Be with everyone. You are the first and best Christians in the world. You are precisely that which you have been set against by the worst and weakest among you.”

13

The next day, coming to dinner, Zhivago said:

“So you couldn’t wait to leave, and now you’ve called it down on us. I can’t say, ‘You’re in luck,’ because what kind of luck is it that we’re pressed back or beaten again? The way east is free, and we’re being squeezed from the west. All army medical units are ordered to pack up. Tomorrow or the day after, we’ll be on our way. Where—nobody knows. And of course Mikhail Grigorievich’s laundry hasn’t been washed, has it, Karpenko. The eternal story. It’s that woman, that woman … but ask him what woman, he doesn’t know himself, the blockhead.”

He did not listen to what his medical orderly spun out to justify himself, and paid no attention to Gordon, who was upset that he had been wearing Zhivago’s linen and was leaving in his shirt. Zhivago went on.

“Ah, this camp life, these Gypsy wanderings. When we moved in here, none of it was to my liking—the stove was in the wrong place, the ceiling was low, it was dirty and stuffy. And now for the life of me I can’t remember where we were stationed before this. And it seems I could spend all my life here, looking at the stove in the corner, with sun on the tiles and the shadow of a roadside tree moving over it.”

They began unhurriedly to pack.

During the night they were awakened by noise and shouts, gunshots and running feet. There was a sinister glow over the village. Shadows flitted past the windows. The owners of the house woke up and began stirring behind the wall.

“Run out, Karpenko, ask what’s the cause of this bedlam,” said Yuri Andreevich.

Soon everything became known. Zhivago himself dressed hastily and went to the hospital to verify the rumors, which proved correct. The Germans had broken the resistance in this sector. The line of defense had moved closer to the village and kept getting closer. The village was under fire. The hospital and offices were quickly removed, without waiting for the order to evacuate. Everything was supposed to be finished before dawn.

“You’ll go with the first echelon. The carriage is leaving now, but I told them to wait for you. Well, good-bye. I’ll come with you and see that you get seated.”

They were running to the other end of the village, where the detachment was formed up. Running past the houses, they bent down and hid behind their projecting parts. Bullets hummed and whined in the street. From intersections with roads leading to the fields, they could see shrapnel exploding over them in umbrellas of flame.

“And what about you?” Gordon asked as they ran.

“I’ll come later. I must go home and get my things. I’ll be in the second party.”

They said good-bye at the village gate. The carriage and the several carts that made up the train set off, driving into each other and gradually forming a line. Yuri Andreevich waved to his departing friend. The flames of a burning barn lit them up.

Again trying to stay close to the cottages, under cover of their corners, Yuri Andreevich quickly headed back to his place. Two houses before his own porch, he was knocked off his feet by the blast of an explosion and wounded by a shrapnel bullet. Yuri Andreevich fell in the middle of the road, covered with blood, and lost consciousness.

14

The hospital in