Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [78]
“But that you could reply to me like that frightens me in another way. If I gave you cause for such a reply, maybe I am indeed behaving ambiguously, and am therefore also to blame before this woman for misleading her, and will have to apologize to her. I will do so as soon as she comes back from making the round of several nearby villages. The zemstvo, which previously existed only in provinces and districts, is now being introduced on a lower level, in village neighborhoods. Antipova went to help her acquaintance, a woman who works as an instructor in these legislative innovations.
“It is remarkable that, living in the same house with Antipova, I am unaware to this day of where her room is, and I’ve never been interested in finding out.”
3
Two main roads went east and west from Meliuzeevo. One, a forest dirt road, led to Zybushino, a grain trading post, administratively subordinate to Meliuzeevo, but far ahead of it in all respects. The other, paved with gravel, was laid across swampy meadows that dried up in the summer and went to Biriuchi, a railway junction not far from Meliuzeevo.
That June in Zybushino the independent republic of Zybushino, which lasted for two weeks, was proclaimed by the local miller Blazheiko.
The republic was supported by deserters from the 212th infantry regiment, who, weapons in hand, abandoned their positions and came through Biriuchi to Zybushino at the moment of the coup.
The republic did not recognize the authority of the Provisional Government2 and separated itself from the rest of Russia. The sectarian Blazheiko, who as a young man had corresponded with Tolstoy, proclaimed a new thousand-year kingdom in Zybushino, communalized labor and property, and renamed the local administration an apostolate.
Zybushino had always been a source of legends and exaggerations. It stood in the deep forest, was mentioned in documents from the Time of Troubles,3 and in later times its environs swarmed with robbers. The prosperity of its merchants and the fantastic fertility of its soil were on everyone’s lips. Some of the beliefs, customs, and peculiarities of speech that distinguished this western sector of the front line came precisely from Zybushino.
Now the same sort of tall tales were told about Blazheiko’s chief assistant. It was maintained that he was deaf and dumb from birth, acquired the gift of speech under inspiration, and lost it again when the illumination expired.
In July the Zybushino republic fell. A unit loyal to the Provisional Government entered the place. The deserters were driven out of Zybushino and withdrew to Biriuchi.
There, beyond the tracks, for a few miles around, stood a cleared forest, with stumps sticking up overgrown with wild strawberry, stacks of old, undelivered firewood, half of which had been stolen, and the dilapidated mud huts of the seasonal woodcutters who had once worked there. It was here that the deserters lodged themselves.
4
The hospital in which the doctor had been a patient, and had then worked, and which he was now preparing to leave, was housed in the mansion of the countess Zhabrinskaya, which the owner had donated for the care of the wounded at the beginning of the war.
The two-story mansion occupied one of the best locations in Meliuzeevo. It stood at the intersection of the main street with the central square of the town, the so-called “platz,” on which soldiers formerly performed their drills and meetings now took place in the evenings.
Its position at the intersection gave the mansion good views on several sides. Besides the main street and the square, one could see the next-door neighbors’ yard—a poor provincial property, in no way different from a villager’s. One could also see the countess’s old garden behind the back wall of the house.
The mansion had never had any independent value for Countess Zhabrinskaya. Razdolnoe, a large estate in the district, belonged to her, and the house in town served only as a pied-à-terre for business