Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [95]
Then, putting together in his mind where he was from and in what parts he had been hunting, the doctor asked:
“Forgive my indiscretion, and you needn’t answer—but, tell me, did you have anything to do with the Zybushino republic and its creation?”
“But how do you … Excuse me … So you knew Blazheiko? … I did have, I did! Of course I did!” Pogorevshikh rattled out joyfully, laughing, swaying his whole body from side to side, and slapping himself furiously on the knees. And the phantasmagoria went on again.
Pogorevshikh said that Blazheiko had been a pretext for him and Zybushino an indifferent point for applying his own ideas. It was hard for Yuri Andreevich to follow his exposition of them. Pogorevshikh’s philosophy consisted half of the theses of anarchism and half of sheer hunter’s humbug.
In the imperturbable tone of an oracle, Pogorevshikh predicted ruinous shocks in the nearest future. Yuri Andreevich inwardly agreed that they might be inevitable, but the authoritative calm with which this unpleasant boy mouthed his predictions exasperated him.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he objected timorously. “That all may be so. But in my opinion it’s not the time for such risky experiments, in the midst of our chaos and breakdown, in the face of enemy pressure. The country must be allowed to come to its senses and catch its breath after one upheaval, before venturing upon another. We must wait for some calm and order, however relative.”
“That’s naïve,” said Pogorevshikh. “What you call breakdown is as normal a phenomenon as your much-praised and beloved order. Such destruction is a natural and preliminary part of a vaster constructive project. Society has not yet broken down enough. It must fall apart completely, and then the real revolutionary power will piece it back together on totally different principles.”
Yuri Andreevich felt ill at ease. He went out to the corridor.
The train, gathering speed, raced through the Moscow outskirts. Every moment, birch groves with dachas standing close together ran up to the windows and went racing by. Narrow, roofless platforms flew past, with summer residents, men and women, standing on them, who flew far off to one side in the cloud of dust raised by the train and twirled around as on a carousel. The train gave whistle after whistle, and the empty, pipelike, hollow forest echo breathlessly carried its whistles far away.
Suddenly, for the first time in all those days, Yuri Andreevich understood with full clarity where he was, what was happening to him, and what would meet him in a little more than an hour or two.
Three years of changes, uncertainty, marches, war, revolution, shocks, shootings, scenes of destruction, scenes of death, blown-up bridges, ruins, fires—all that suddenly turned into a vast empty place, devoid of content. The first true event after the long interruption was this giddy train ride towards his home, which was intact and still existed in the world, and where every little stone was dear to him. This was what life was, this was what experience was, this was what the seekers of adventure were after, this was what art had in view—coming to your dear ones, returning to yourself, the renewing of existence.
The woods ended. The train burst from leafy thickets into freedom. A sloped clearing went off into the distance on a wide hillock rising from a ravine. It was entirely covered lengthwise with rows of dark green potato plants. At the top of the clearing, at the end of the potato field, glass frames pulled from hothouses lay on the ground. Facing the clearing, behind the tail of the moving train, taking up half the sky, stood an enormous black-purple cloud. The rays of sun breaking from behind it spread wheel-like in all directions, catching at the hothouse frames on their way, flashing on their glass with an unbearable brilliance.
Suddenly out of the cloud a heavy mushroom rain16 poured down obliquely,