Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [97]
“First of all, is everyone well?”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry. Everything’s all right. I wrote foolish things to you. Forgive me. But we’ll have to talk. Why didn’t you send a telegram? Markel will carry your things. Ah, I understand, you got alarmed because it wasn’t Egorovna who opened the door? Egorovna’s in the country.”
“And you’ve lost weight. But so young and slender! I’ll go and dismiss the cabby.”
“Egorovna went to get flour. The rest have been let go. Now there’s only one new girl, you don’t know her, Nyusha, to take care of Sashenka, and no one else. Everyone’s been told you’d be coming, they’re all impatient. Gordon, Dudorov, everyone.”
“How’s Sashenka?”
“He’s all right, thank God. He just woke up. If you hadn’t just come from the road, we could go to him now.”
“Is papa home?”
“Didn’t we write to you? He’s at the district duma from morning till late at night. As chairman. Yes, imagine. Did you pay the cabby? Markel! Markel!”
They were standing with the wicker hamper and suitcase in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the way, and the passersby, going around them, looked them up and down and gaped for a long time at the departing cab and the wide-open front door, waiting to see what would happen next.
Meanwhile Markel, in a waistcoat over a calico shirt, with his porter’s cap in his hand, came running from the gateway to his young masters, shouting as he ran:
“Heavens above, can it be Yurochka? Well, of course! Here he is, our little falcon! Yuri Andreevich, light of our lives, you haven’t forgotten us who pray for you, you’ve kindly come to visit your own fireside! And what do you all want? Eh? What’s there to see?” he snarled at the curious ones. “Move on, my worthies. Bugging your eyes out!”
“Hello, Markel, let me embrace you. Do put your cap on, you funny man. What’s the good news? How are your wife and daughters?”
“They’re doing all right. Growing apace. Thanks be for that. As for news—while you’ve been about your mighty deeds there, you see, we haven’t let things slide either. We’ve got such pot-housing and bedlant going on, it makes the devils sick, brother, can’t figure out what’s what! Streets not swept, houses and roofs not repaired, bellies clean as in Lent, without annexates and contributses.”1
“I’ll complain about you to Yuri Andreevich, Markel. He’s always like this, Yurochka. I can’t bear his stupid tone. And of course he’s trying hard for your sake, thinking to please you. But meanwhile he keeps his own counsel. Enough, enough, Markel, don’t justify yourself. You’re a shady person, Markel. It’s time you got smart. Seems you don’t live with grain dealers.”
When Markel had taken the things to the entryway and slammed the front door, he went on softly and confidingly:
“Antonina Alexandrovna’s cross with me, I could hear just now. And it’s always like that. You, Markel, she says, are all black inside, same as soot in the chimney. Now, she says, not just some little child, now maybe even pugs or lapdogs are learning a bit of sense. There’s no disputing that, of course, only, Yurochka, maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but there’s knowing people saw a book, some Mason cometh, a hundred and forty years it lay under a stone, and now such is my opinion, we’ve been sold, Yurochka, sold for a penny, for a copper penny, for a whiff of tobacco. Look, Antonina Alexandrovna won’t let me say a word, see, she’s waving me away again.”
“What else can I do? Well, all right. Put the things down and, thank you, you can go, Markel. If need be, Yuri Andreevich will send for you again.”
2
“Alone at last, and good riddance. Trust him, go ahead. It’s sheer clowning. With others he keeps playing the little fool, but in secret he’s got his knife sharpened