Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [76]
How is it there with Katenka now? Poor little orphan (here she began to cry). Some very sharp changes have been noticeable recently. Not long ago there was a sacred duty to the motherland, military valor, lofty social feelings. But the war is lost, that’s the main calamity, and all the rest comes from that, everything is dethroned, nothing is sacred.
Suddenly everything has changed, the tone, the air; you don’t know how to think or whom to listen to. As if you’ve been led all your life like a little child, and suddenly you’re let out—go, learn to walk by yourself. And there’s no one around, no family, no authority. Then you’d like to trust the main thing, the force of life, or beauty, or truth, so that it’s them and not the overturned human principles that guide you, fully and without regret, more fully than it used to be in that peaceful, habitual life that has gone down and been abolished. But in her case—Lara would catch herself in time—this purpose, this unconditional thing will be Katenka. Now, without Patulechka, Lara is only a mother and will give all her forces to Katenka, the poor little orphan.
Yuri Andreevich learned from a letter that Gordon and Dudorov had released his book without his permission, that it had been praised and a great literary future was prophesied for him, and that it was very interesting and alarming in Moscow now, the latent vexation of the lower classes was growing, we were on the eve of something important, serious political events were approaching.
It was late at night. Yuri Andreevich was overcome by a terrible sleepiness. He dozed off intermittently and fancied that, after the day’s excitement, he could not fall asleep, that he was not asleep. Outside the window, the sleepy, sleepily breathing wind kept yawning and tossing. The wind wept and prattled: “Tonya, Shurochka, how I miss you, how I want to be home, at work!” And to the muttering of the wind, Yuri Andreevich slept, woke up, and fell asleep in a quick succession of happiness and suffering, impetuous and alarming, like this changing weather, like this unstable night.
Lara thought: “He showed so much care, preserving this memory, these poor things of Patulechka’s, and I’m such a pig, I didn’t even ask who he is or where he’s from.”
During the next morning’s round, to make up for her omission and smooth over the traces of her ingratitude, she asked Galiullin about it all and kept saying “oh” and “ah.”
“Lord, holy is Thy will! Twenty-eight Brestskaya Street, the Tiverzins, the revolutionary winter of 1905! Yusupka? No, I didn’t know Yusupka, or I don’t remember, forgive me. But that year, that year and that courtyard! It’s true, there really was such a courtyard and such a year!” Oh, how vividly she suddenly felt it all again! And the shooting then, and (God, how did it go?) “Christ’s opinion!” Oh, how strongly, how keenly you feel as a child, for the first time! “Forgive me, forgive me, what is your name, Lieutenant? Yes, yes, you already told me once. Thank you, oh, how I thank you, Osip Gimazetdinovich, what memories, what thoughts you’ve awakened in me!”
All day she went about with “that courtyard” in her soul, and kept sighing and reflecting almost aloud.
Just think, twenty-eight Brestskaya! And now there’s shooting again, but so much more terrible! This is no “the boys are shooting” for you. The boys have grown up, and they’re all here, as soldiers, all simple people from those courtyards and from villages like this one. Amazing! Amazing!
Rapping with their canes and crutches, invalids and non-bedridden patients from other wards came, ran, and hobbled into the room, and started shouting at the same time:
“An event of extraordinary importance. Disorder in the streets of