Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [98]
“No, you’re going too far! I think he’s simply drunk, and so he plays the buffoon, that’s all.”
“And tell me, when is he ever sober? Ah, to hell with him, really. My fear is that Sashenka may fall asleep again. If it weren’t for that typhus on the railways … Do you have lice?”
“I don’t think so. I traveled in comfort, like before the war. Though maybe I should wash a little? Slapdash, anyhow. And later more thoroughly. But where are you going? Why not through the drawing room? Do you go upstairs another way now?”
“Ah, yes! You don’t know anything. Papa and I thought and thought, and gave part of the downstairs to the Agricultural Academy. Otherwise in winter we won’t be able to heat it ourselves. And there’s more than enough room upstairs as well. We offered it to them. So far they haven’t accepted. They have all sorts of scientific rooms here, herbariums, seed collections. If only they don’t attract rats. It’s grain, after all. But so far they’ve kept the rooms neat. It’s now known as living space. This way, this way. How slow-witted you are! Around by the back stairs. Understand? Follow me, I’ll show you.”
“You did very well to give up the rooms. I worked in a hospital that was also stationed in a manor house. Endless suites, parquet intact in some places. Palm trees in tubs spread their fingers over the cots at night like phantoms. Seasoned soldiers, wounded in battle, would get frightened and cry out on waking up. Not quite normal ones, though—shell-shocked. The palm trees had to be taken away. I mean to say that there was, in fact, something unhealthy in the life of well-to-do people. No end of superfluity. Superfluous furniture and superfluous rooms in the houses, superfluous refinement of feelings, superfluous expressions. You did very well to make room. But it’s not enough. We must do more.”
“What have you got sticking out of that package? A bird’s beak, a duck’s head. How beautiful! A wild drake! Where did you get it? I can’t believe my eyes! These days it’s a whole fortune!”
“It was given to me on the train. A long story, I’ll tell you later. What’s your advice, shall I unwrap it and leave it in the kitchen?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll send Nyusha now to pluck it and gut it. There are predictions of all sorts of horrors towards winter—hunger, cold.”
“Yes, there’s talk about it everywhere. Just now I was looking out the window of the train and thinking. What can be higher than peace in the family and work? The rest isn’t in our power. It’s apparently true that there are misfortunes in store for many people. Some think of saving themselves in the south, in the Caucasus, of trying to get somewhere further away. That’s not in my rule book. A grown-up man must grit his teeth and share the fate of his native land. In my opinion, that’s obvious. You are a different matter. How I’d like to protect you from calamities, to send you to some safer place, to Finland or somewhere. But if we stand for half an hour on each step like this, we’ll never get upstairs.”
“Wait. Listen. There’s news. And what news! I forgot. Nikolai Nikolaevich has come.”
“What Nikolai Nikolaevich?”
“Uncle Kolya.”
“Tonya! It can’t be! How on earth?”
“Well, so it is. From Switzerland. In a roundabout way by London. Through Finland.”
“Tonya! You’re not joking? Have you seen him? Where is he? Can’t we get him here at once, this minute?”
“Such impatience! He’s outside the city in someone’s dacha. Promised to come back the day after tomorrow. He’s very changed, you’ll be disappointed. Got stuck and Bolshevized passing through Petersburg. Papa argues with him till he’s hoarse. But why, indeed, do we stop at every step? Come on. So you’ve also heard that there’s nothing good coming, only difficulties, dangers, uncertainty?”
“I think so myself. Well, what then. We’ll fight. It’s not necessarily the end for everybody. Let’s see how others do.”
“They say we’ll be without firewood, without water, without light. Money will be abolished. There will be no supplies. And again we’ve stopped.