Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [80]
Just then a new commissar of that sector of the front stopped in town on his way to the army. The story went that he was still nothing but a boy.
Those were days of preparation for a major new offensive. There was an effort to achieve a change of morale in the mass of soldiers. The troops were tightened up. Military-revolutionary courts were established, and the recently abolished death penalty was reinstated.5
Before departure the doctor had to register with the commandant, whose duties in Meliuzeevo were fulfilled by the military superior—“the district,” as he was known for short.
Ordinarily there was jostling in his quarters. There was not room enough for the babel in the front hall and the yard, and it filled half the street in front of the office windows. It was impossible to push through to the desks. In the noise of hundreds of people, no one understood anything.
On that day there was no reception. In the empty and quiet offices, the clerks, displeased by the ever more complicated procedures, wrote silently, exchanging ironic glances. From the chief’s office came merry voices, as if, having unbuttoned their tunics, they were taking some cool refreshment.
Galiullin came out to the common room, saw Zhivago, and, with a movement of the whole torso, as if preparing to break into a run, invited the doctor to share in the animation that reigned inside.
The doctor had to go to the office anyway for the superior’s signature. He found everything there in the most artistic disorder.
The village sensation and hero of the day, the new commissar, instead of proceeding to his appointed goal, turned up there, in the office, which had no relation to the vital sections of headquarters or operative questions, turned up before the administrators of the military paper kingdom, stood before them, and held forth.
“And here is another of our stars,” said the district, introducing the doctor to the commissar, who did not even glance at him, totally absorbed in himself, while the district, changing his pose only in order to sign the paper the doctor held out to him, assumed it again and, with a courteous movement of the hand, showed Zhivago to the low, soft pouffe that stood in the middle of the room.
Of all those present, only the doctor settled himself in the study like a human being. The others sat one more oddly and casually than the other. The district, his head propped on his hand, reclined Pechorin-like6 at the desk; facing him, his assistant heaped himself up on a bolster of the couch, tucking his legs under as if riding sidesaddle. Galiullin sat astride a reversed chair, embracing the back and laying his head on it, while the young commissar first swung himself up by the arms into the embrasure of the windowsill, then jumped down from it, and, like a spinning top, never for a moment falling silent and moving all the time, paced the office with small, rapid steps. He talked nonstop. The subject was the Biriuchi deserters.
The rumors about the commissar proved true. He was thin and slender, a still quite unfledged youth, who burned like a little candle with the loftiest ideals. He was said to be from a good family, maybe even the son of a senator, and in February had been one of the first to lead his company to the State Duma.7 His last name was Gintze or Gintz; they pronounced it unclearly when he and the doctor were introduced. The commissar had a correct Petersburg enunciation, as distinct as could be, with a slight hint of the Baltic.
He wore a very tight field jacket. He was probably embarrassed at being so young, and, in order to seem older, he made a wry, peevish face and put on an affected stoop. For that he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding breeches and hunched his shoulders in their new, stiff epaulettes, which in fact gave his figure a simplified cavalryman’s look, so that it could have been drawn from shoulders to feet in two lines converging downwards.
“There’s a Cossack regiment stationed on the railway line several stops from