Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [83]
From all sides, obscure little streets flowed into the square. Deep down them one could see decrepit, lopsided little houses. The mud was as impassable in these little streets as in a village. From the mud long fences of woven willow withes stuck up, looking like nets thrown into a pond or baskets for catching crayfish.
In the little houses, the glass in the frames of the open windows gleamed weak-sightedly. From the front gardens, sweaty, fair-haired corn reached into the rooms, its silks and tassels gleaming as if they were oiled. From behind the sagging wattle fences, pale, lean mallows gazed solitarily into the distance, looking like farm women whom the heat had driven out of the stuffy cottages in their nightshirts for a breath of fresh air.
The moonlit night was astounding, like mercy or the gift of clairvoyance, and suddenly, into the silence of this bright, scintillating fairy tale, the measured, clipped sounds of someone’s voice, familiar, as if just heard, began to fall. The voice was beautiful, fervent, and breathed conviction. The doctor listened and at once recognized who it was. It was the commissar Gintz. He was speaking on the square.
The local powers had probably asked him to support them with his authority, and he, with great feeling, was reproaching the Meliuzeevans for being disorganized, for succumbing too easily to the corrupting influence of the Bolsheviks, the real perpetrators, he insisted, of the Zybushino events. In the same spirit as he had spoken at the military superior’s, he reminded them of the cruel and powerful enemy and the hour of trial that had struck for the motherland. Midway through his speech, he began to be interrupted.
Requests not to interrupt the speaker alternated with shouts of disagreement. The expressions of protest became louder and more frequent. Someone who accompanied Gintz and for the moment took upon himself the task of chairman shouted that remarks from the audience were not allowed and called for order. Some demanded that a citizeness from the crowd be given the floor, others hissed and asked them not to interfere.
A woman was making her way through the crowd towards the upside-down box that served as a platform. She had no intention of getting onto the box, but having squeezed her way there, she stood beside it. The woman was known. Silence fell. The woman held the attention of the crowding people. It was Ustinya.
“Zybushino, you were saying, comrade commissar, and then concerning eyes, you were saying, we must have eyes and not fall into deception, and yet you yourself, I listened to you, only know how to carp at us with your Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, that’s all we hear from you.9 But that there’ll be no more war and everything will be like between brothers, that’s called God’s way and not the Mensheviks’, and that the mills and factories go to the poor, that again is not the Bolsheviks, but human pity. And the deaf-mute gets thrown in our faces without you, I’m sick of hearing it. What is he to you, really! Have you got something against him? That he went around mute all the time, and then suddenly up and spoke without asking anybody? Never saw the like, eh? Well, there’s been even better! That famous she-ass, for instance. ‘Balaam, Balaam,’ she says, ‘I ask you honestly, don’t go there, you’ll be sorry.’10 Well, sure enough, he didn’t listen and went. Like you saying, ‘A deaf-mute.’ He thinks, ‘Why listen to her—she’s an ass, an animal.’ He scorned the brute. And how he repented later. But you surely know how it ended.”
“How?” someone in the public became curious.
“All right!” barked Ustinya. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”
“No, that’s no good. Tell us how.” The same voice would not quiet down.
“How, how—you stick like a thistle! He turned into a pillar of salt.”
“Nice try, dearie! That was Lot. Lot’s wife,”11 shouts rang out. Everyone laughed. The chairman called the assembly to order. The doctor went to bed.
8
The next day he saw Antipova. He found her in the butler’s pantry. Before Larissa