Doctor Zhivago

Part Sixteen

EPILOGUE

1

In the summer of 1943, after the breakthrough on the Kursk bulge and the liberation of Orel,¹ Gordon, recently promoted to second lieutenant, and Major Dudorov were returning separately to their common army unit, the first from a service trip to Moscow, the second from a three-day leave there.

They met on the way back and spent the night in Chern, a little town, devastated but not completely destroyed, like most of the settlements in that “desert zone” wiped off the face of the earth by the retreating enemy.

Amidst the town’s ruins, heaps of broken brick and finely pulverized gravel, the two men found an undamaged hayloft, where they made their lair for the night.

They could not sleep. They spent the whole night talking. At dawn, around three in the morning, the dozing Dudorov was awakened by Gordon’s pottering about. With awkward movements, bobbing and waddling in the soft hay as if in water, he was gathering some underthings into a bundle, and then, just as clumsily, began sliding down the hay pile to the doorway of the loft on his way out.

“What are you getting ready for? It’s still early.”

“I’m going to the river. I want to do me some laundry.”

“That’s crazy. We’ll be in our own unit by evening; the linen girl Tanka will give you a change of underwear. What’s the rush?”

“I don’t want to put it off. I’ve been sweating, haven’t changed for too long. The morning’s hot. I’ll rinse it quickly, wring it out well, it’ll dry instantly in the sun. I’ll bathe and change.”

“All the same, you know, it doesn’t look good. You must agree, you’re an officer, after all.”

“It’s early. Everybody around is asleep. I’ll do it somewhere behind a bush. Nobody will see. And you sleep, don’t talk. You’ll drive sleep away.”

“I won’t sleep any more as it is. I’ll go with you.”

And they went to the river, past the white stone ruins, already scorching hot in the just-risen sun. In the middle of the former streets, on the ground, directly in the hot sun, sweaty, snoring, flushed people slept. They were mostly locals, old men, women, and children, left without a roof over their heads—rarely, solitary Red Army soldiers who had lagged behind their units and were catching up with them. Gordon and Dudorov, watching their feet so as not to step on them, walked carefully among the sleepers.

“Talk softly, or we’ll wake up the town, and then it’s good-bye to my laundry.”

And they continued their last night’s conversation in low voices.

2

“What river is this?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Probably the Zusha.”

“No, it’s not the Zusha. It’s some other.”

“Well, then I don’t know.”

“It was on the Zusha that it all happened. With Christina.”

“Yes, but in a different place. Somewhere downstream. They say the Church has canonized her a saint.”

“There was a stone building there that acquired the name of ‘The Stable.’ In fact it was the stable of a collective farm stud, a common noun that became historical. An old one, with thick walls. The Germans fortified it and turned it into an impregnable fortress. The whole neighborhood was exposed to fire from it, and that slowed our advance. The stable had to be taken. Christina, in a miracle of courage and resourcefulness, penetrated the German camp, blew up the stable, was taken alive and hanged.”

“Why Christina Orletsova, and not Dudorova?”

“We weren’t married yet. In the summer of forty-one we gave each other our word that we would get married once the war was over. After that I moved about with the rest of the army. My unit was being endlessly transferred. What with these transfers, I lost sight of her. I never saw her again. I learned of her valiant deed and heroic death like everybody else. From newspapers and regimental orders. They say they’re going to set up a monument to her somewhere here. I’ve heard that General Zhivago, the brother of the late Yuri, is making the rounds of these parts, gathering information about her.”

“Forgive me for bringing her up in our conversation. It must be painful for you.”

“That’s not the point. But we keep babbling away. I don’t want to hinder you. Get undressed, go into the water, and do your work. And I’ll stretch out on the bank with a blade of grass in my teeth, I’ll chew and think, and maybe take a nap.”

A few minutes later, the conversation picked up again.

“Where did you learn to wash clothes like that?”

“From necessity. We had no luck. Of all the penal camps, we landed in the most terrible one. Few survived. Beginning from our arrival. The party was taken off the train. A snowy waste. A forest in the distance. Guards, rifles with lowered muzzles, German shepherds. Around that same time, new groups were driven in at various moments. They formed us into a wide polygon the size of the whole field, facing out, so as not to see each other. The order came: on your knees, and don’t look to the sides or you’ll be shot, and then began the endless, humiliating procedure of the roll call, which was drawn out for long hours. Kneeling down the whole time. Then we stood up, other parties were taken elsewhere, and we were told: ‘Here’s your camp. Settle in as you can.’ A snowy field under the open sky, a post in the middle, an inscription on the post: ‘Gulag 92 Y N 90’ and nothing more.”

“No, for us it was easier. We were lucky. I was serving my second term, which usually followed on the first. Besides, the article was different and so were the conditions. After my release, my rights were restored, as they were the first time, and I was again allowed to lecture at the university. And I was mobilized in the war with the full rights of a major, not in a penal unit like you.”

“Yes. A post with the number ‘Gulag 92 Y N 90’ and nothing else. At first we broke off laths for huts with our bare hands in the freezing cold. And, you won’t believe it, but we gradually built the place up for ourselves. We cut wood for shacks, surrounded ourselves with palings, set up punishment cells, watchtowers—all by ourselves. And we started logging. Tree felling. We felled trees. Eight of us would hitch ourselves to the sledge, load it with logs, sinking up to our chests in the snow. For a long time we didn’t know that war had broken out. They concealed it. And suddenly—an offer. Volunteer for penal battalions at the front and, if you chance to come out of the endless battles alive, you’ll all go free. And then attacks, attacks, miles of electrified barbed wire, mines, mortars, month after month under a hail of fire. It was not for nothing that in these companies we were known as ‘the condemned.’ We’d be mowed down to a man. How did I survive? How did I ever survive? But, imagine, that whole bloody hell was happiness compared to the horrors of the concentration camp, and not at all owing to the harsh conditions, but to something else entirely.”

“Yes, brother, you’ve drunk a bitter cup.”

“It wasn’t just washing clothes you could learn there, but anything you like.”

“An amazing thing. Not only compared to your convict’s portion, but in regard to the whole previous life of the thirties, even in freedom, even in the well-being of university activity, books, money, comfort, the war came as a cleansing storm, a gust of fresh air, a breath of deliverance.

“I think collectivization was a false, unsuccessful measure, and it was impossible to acknowledge the mistake. To conceal the failure, it was necessary to cure people, by every means of intimidation, of the habit of judging and thinking, and force them to see the nonexistent and prove what was contrary to evidence. Hence the unprecedented cruelty of the Ezhovshchina, the promulgation of a constitution not meant to be applied, the introduction of elections not based on the principle of choice.²

“And when the war broke out, its real horrors, real danger, and the threat of real death were beneficial in comparison with the inhuman reign of fiction, and brought relief, because they limited the magic power of the dead letter.

“Not only people in your situation, at forced labor, but decidedly everybody, in the rear and at the front, breathed more freely, with a full breast, and threw themselves rapturously, with a feeling of true happiness, into the crucible of the fierce fight, deadly and salutary.

“The war is a special link in the chain of revolutionary decades. The action of causes that lay directly in the nature of the upheaval came to an end.

“The indirect results began to tell, the fruits of the fruits, the consequences of the consequences. A tempering of character derived from calamity, nonindulgence, heroism, readiness for the great, the desperate, the unprecedented. These are fantastic, stunning qualities, and they constitute the moral flower of the generation.

“These observations fill me with a feeling of happiness, in spite of the martyr’s death of Christina, of my wounds, of our losses, of all this high, bloody price of the war. The light of self-sacrifice that shines on her end and on the life of each of us helps me to endure the pain of Orletsova’s death.

“Just when you, poor fellow, were enduring your countless tortures, I was released. At that time, Orletsova was studying history at the university. The nature of her scholarly interests placed her under my guidance. Much earlier, after my first term in the camps, when she was still a child, I had paid attention to this remarkable girl. While Yuri was still alive, remember, I told you about her. Well, so now she turned up among my auditors.

“The custom of students publicly criticizing teachers had just come into fashion then. Orletsova fervently threw herself into it. God only knows why she picked on me so ferociously. Her attacks were so persistent, bellicose, and unjust that other students in the department occasionally rose up and defended me. Orletsova was a remarkable satirist. Under an imaginary name, in which everybody recognized me, she mocked me to her heart’s content in a wall newspaper. Suddenly, by complete chance, it turned out that this deep-rooted hostility was a form of camouflage for a young love, strong, hidden, and long-standing. I had always felt the same.

“We spent a wonderful summer in forty-one, the first year of the war, just on the eve of it and soon after it was declared. Several young students, boys and girls, and she among them, had settled in a summer place outside Moscow, where my unit was later stationed. Our friendship began and took its course in the circumstances of their military training, the forming of suburban militia units, Christina’s training as a parachutist, the repulsing of the first German air raids by night from the rooftops of Moscow. I’ve already told you that we celebrated our engagement there and were soon parted by the beginning of my displacements. I never saw her again.³

“When there were signs of a favorable change in our affairs, and the Germans began to surrender by the thousand, I was transferred, after two wounds and two stays in the hospital, from the anti-aircraft artillery to seventh division headquarters, where there was a demand for people with a knowledge of foreign languages, and where I insisted that you, too, should be sent, after I fished you up as if from the bottom of the sea.”

“The linen girl Tanya knew Orletsova well. They met at the front and were friends. She told many stories about Christina. This Tanya has the same manner of smiling with her whole face as Yuri had, have you noticed? For a moment, the turned-up nose and angular cheekbones disappear, and the face becomes attractive, pretty. It’s one and the same type, very widespread among us.”

“I know what you’re talking about. Maybe so. I hadn’t paid attention.”

“What a barbaric, ugly name, Tanka Bezocheredeva, ‘Tanka Out-of-Turn.’ In any case it’s not a surname, it’s something invented, distorted. What do you think?”

“She did explain it. She was a homeless child, of unknown parents. Probably somewhere in the depths of Russia, where the language is still pure and unsullied, she was called Bezotchaya, meaning ‘without father.’ Street kids, for whom this derivation was incomprehensible, and who get everything from hearing and distort it, remade the designation in their own way, closer to their actual vulgar parlance.”

3

It was not long after the night Gordon and Dudorov spent in Chern and their nighttime conversation there. Overtaking the army in the town of Karachevo, which had been razed to its foundations, the friends found some rear units that were following the main forces.

The clear and calm weather of the hot autumn had settled in for more than a month without interruption. Bathed in the heat of the cloudless blue sky, the fertile black soil of Brynshchina, the blessed region between Orel and Bryansk, was burnished to a chocolate-coffee color by the play of sunlight.

The town was cut by a straight main street that merged with the high road. On one side of it lay collapsed houses, turned by mines into heaps of building rubble, and the uprooted, splintered, and charred trees of orchards flattened to the ground. On the other side, across the road, stretched empty lots, probably little built upon to begin with, before the town’s destruction, and spared more by the fire and powder blasts because there was nothing there to destroy.

On the formerly built-up side, the shelterless citizens poked in the piles of still-smoldering ashes, digging things up and carrying them to one place from the far corners of the burned-down site. Others hastily burrowed into dugouts and sliced layers of earth so as to cover the upper parts of their dwellings with sod.

On the opposite, unbuilt side there were white tents, a crowd of trucks and horse-drawn wagons of various second-line services, field hospitals strayed from their division headquarters, confused units of every sort of depot, commissariat, supply dump, lost and looking for each other. There, too, relieving themselves, snatching something to eat, sleeping, and then trudging further west, were companies of skinny, ill-nourished adolescent draftees in gray forage caps and heavy gray coats, with wasted, sallow faces, bloodless from dysentery.

The town, blown up and half reduced to ashes, went on burning and exploding in the distance, where timed charges had been planted. Now and then men digging in their gardens interrupted their work, stopped by a trembling of the ground under their feet, straightened their bent backs, leaned on the handles of their spades and, turning their heads in the direction of the blast, rested, looking off that way for a long time.

There, first in pillars and fountains, then in lazy, ponderous swellings, the gray, black, brick-red and smokily flaming clouds of airborne trash ascended into the sky, thinned out, spread into plumes, scattered, and settled back down to earth. And the workers took up their work again.

One of the clearings on the unbuilt side was bordered with bushes and covered completely by the shade of the old trees growing there. The clearing was fenced off from the rest of the world by this vegetation, like a covered courtyard standing by itself and immersed in cool twilight.

In the clearing, the linen girl Tanya, with two or three persons from her regiment and several self-invited fellow travelers, as well as Gordon and Dudorov, had been waiting since morning for a truck sent for Tanya and the regimental property she was in charge of. It was stowed in several boxes piled up in the clearing. Tatiana kept an eye on them and did not move a step away, but the others also stayed close to the boxes, so as not to miss the possibility of leaving when it presented itself.

The wait had lasted a long time, more than five hours. The waiting people had nothing to do. They were listening to the incessant chatter of the garrulous girl, who had seen a lot. She had just told them about her meeting with Major General Zhivago.

“That’s right. Yesterday. Brought in person to the general. Major General Zhivago. He was passing through here and made inquiries about Christina, asked questions. Of eyewitnesses who knew her personally. They pointed me out. Said I was her friend. He summoned me. So I’m summoned, brought to him. Not scary at all. Nothing special, just like everybody else. Slant-eyed, dark. So what I knew, I laid out. He listened, said thank you. And you yourself, he says, where from and what sort? I, naturally, hemmed and hawed and nay-sayed him. What’s there to boast of? A homeless child. And so on. You know it yourselves. Correctional institutions, vagrancy. But he won’t hear of it, go ahead, he says, don’t be embarrassed, there’s no shame in it. So I said the first timid word or two, then more, he nods away, I got bolder. And I do have things to tell. If you heard, you wouldn’t believe it, you’d say—she’s making it up. Well, it was the same with him. Once I finished, he got up and paced up and down the cottage. You don’t say, he says, what wonders. Well, here’s the thing, he says. I’ve got no time now. But I’ll find you, don’t worry, I’ll find you and summon you again. I simply never thought I’d hear such things. I won’t leave you like this, he says. I’ll have to clarify a thing or two, various details. And then, he says, for all I know I may yet put myself down as your uncle, promote you to a general’s niece. And send you to study in any school you like. By God, it’s true. Such a jolly leg-puller.”

Just then a long, empty cart with high sides, such as is used in Poland and western Russia for transporting sheaves, drove into the clearing. The pair of horses hitched to the shafts was driven by a serviceman, a furleit in the old terminology, a soldier of the cavalry train. He drove into the clearing, jumped down from the box, and started unhitching the horses. Everyone except Tatiana and a few soldiers surrounded the driver, begging him not to unhitch and to drive them where they told him—not for free, of course. The soldier protested, because he had no right to dispose of the horses and cart and had to obey the orders he had been given. He led the unhitched horses somewhere and never came back again. Everyone who had been sitting on the ground got up and went to sit in the empty cart, which was left in the clearing. Tatiana’s story, interrupted by the appearance of the cart and the negotiations with the driver, was taken up again.

“What did you tell the general?” asked Gordon. “Repeat it for us, if you can.”

“Sure, why not?”

And she told them her horrible story.

4

“And it’s true I’ve got things to tell. I’m not from simple folk, I was told. Either other people told me, or I tucked it away in my heart, only I heard that my mama, Raissa Komarova, was the wife of a Russian minister, Comrade Komarov, who was hiding in White Mongolia. He wasn’t my father, wasn’t my kin, you can only suppose, this same Komarov. Well, of course, I’m an uneducated girl, grew up an orphan, with no father or mother. It may seem funny to you that I say it, well, I’m only saying what I know, you’ve got to put yourselves in my position.

“Yes. So, it all happened, what I’m going to tell you now, beyond Krushitsy, at the other end of Siberia, beyond Cossack country, closer to the Chinese border. When we—our Red Army, that is—started approaching the main town of the Whites, this same Komarov the minister put mama and all their family on a special reserved train and had it take them away, because mama was forever frightened and didn’t dare take a step without him.

“And he didn’t even know about me, Komarov didn’t. Didn’t know there was anybody like me in the world. Mama produced me during a long absence and was scared to death that somebody might let it slip to him. He terribly disliked having children around, and shouted and stamped his feet that it was all just filth in the house and a big bother. I can’t stand it, he shouted.

“Well, so, as I was saying, when the Red Army was approaching, mama sent for the signalman’s wife, Marfa, at the Nagornaya junction, three stops away from that town. I’ll explain right away. First the Nizovaya station, then the Nagornaya junction, then the Samsonovsky crossing. I see now how mama got to know the signalman’s wife. I think Marfa came to town to sell vegetables and deliver milk. Yes.

“And I’ll say this. It’s obvious there’s something I don’t know here. I think they tricked mama, told her something else. Described God knows what, it was just temporary, a couple of days, till the turmoil calmed down. And not for me to be in strangers’ hands forever. To be brought up forever. My mama couldn’t have given away her own child like that.

“Well, you know how they do with children. ‘Go to auntie, auntie will give you gingerbread, auntie’s nice, don’t be afraid of auntie.’ And how I cried and thrashed afterwards, how my child’s little heart was wrung, it’s better not to speak of it. I wanted to hang myself, I nearly went out of my mind in childhood. Because I was still little. They must have given Auntie Marfusha money for my keep, a lot of money.

“The farmstead at the post was a rich one, a cow and a horse, well, and of course all sorts of fowl, and a plot for a kitchen garden as big as you like, and free lodgings, needless to say, a signalman’s house, right by the tracks. From our parts below, the train could barely go up, had trouble making the climb, but from your Russian parts it went at high speed, had to put on the brakes. In autumn, when the forest thinned out, you could see the Nagornaya station like on a plate.

“The man himself, Uncle Vassily, I called daddy, peasantlike. He was a jolly and kind man, only much too gullible, and when he was under the influence, he ran off at the mouth—like they say, the hog told the sow, and the sow the whole town. He’d blurt out his whole soul to the first comer.

“But I could never get my tongue to call his wife mother. Whether because I couldn’t forget my own mama, or for some other reason, only this Auntie Marfusha was so scary. Yes. So I called the signalman’s wife Auntie Marfusha.

“Well, time went by. Years passed. How many, I don’t remember. I’d already started to run out to the trains with a flag. To unharness a horse or bring home a cow was no mystery to me. Auntie Marfusha taught me to spin. To say nothing of the cottage. To sweep the floor, to tidy up, or to cook something, to mix the dough, was nothing to me, I could do it all. Ah, yes, I forgot to tell you, I was also nanny to Petenka. Our Petenka had withered legs, he was just three, he lay there and couldn’t walk, so I was nanny to Petenka. And now so many years have gone by and it still gives me shivers, how Auntie Marfusha used to look sideways at my healthy legs, as if to say, why weren’t mine withered, it would be better if mine were withered and not Petenka’s, as if it was my evil eye that had spoiled Petenka, just think, what malice and darkness there are in the world.

“Listen, now, that was all just flowers, as they say, what comes next will make you gasp.

“It was the NEP then, and a thousand rubles were worth a kopeck. Vassily Afanasievich went down with the cow, got two bags of money—kerenki, they were called, ah, no, sorry—lemons, they were called lemons—got drunk, and went sounding off about his riches all over Nagornaya.

“I remember, it was a windy autumn day, the wind tore at the roof and knocked you off your feet, the locomotives couldn’t make it uphill, the wind was so against them. I see an old woman, a wanderer, come down the hill, the wind tearing at her skirt and kerchief.

“The wanderer walks up, groaning, clutching her stomach, asking to come inside. We put her on the bench—ohh, I can’t, she yells, I can’t, it’s stomach cramps, it’s the death of me. And she begs us, take me to the hospital, for Christ’s sake, you’ll be paid, I won’t stint on money. Daddy hitched up Udaloy, put the old woman on the cart, and drove to the zemstvo hospital, ten miles from the railway line.

“After a time, maybe long, maybe short, Auntie Marfusha and I went to bed, we hear Udaloy neighing under the window and our own cart driving into the yard. It was a bit early for that. So. Auntie Marfusha lit a lamp, threw on a bed jacket, and, not waiting for daddy to knock, lifted the latch.

“She lifts the latch, and there’s no daddy on the doorstep, but a stranger, a dark and scary muzhik, and he says: ‘Show me,’ he says, ‘where the money for the cow is. I took care of your husband in the forest,’ he says, ‘but I’ll spare you, woman, if you tell me where the money is. And if you don’t tell, you know what’ll happen, don’t blame me. You’d better not dawdle. I’ve got no time to hang around.’

“Oh, saints alive, dear comrades, what a state we were in, put yourselves in our position! We tremble, more dead than alive, can’t speak from fright, such a horror! First of all, he’s murdered Vassily Afanasievich, he says so, cut him down with an axe. Secondly, we’re alone in the house with a robber, we’ve got a robber here, it’s clear he’s a robber.

“Here, obviously, Auntie Marfusha went right off her head, her heart broke for her husband. But we had to hold out, not show anything.

“Auntie Marfusha started by throwing herself at his feet. Have mercy, she says, don’t destroy us, I have no idea about this money, what are you talking about, it’s the first I hear of it. But the cursed fellow wasn’t so simple as to be handled just by talk. And suddenly the thought popped into her head how to outwit him. ‘Well, all right,’ she says, ‘have it your way. The cash,’ she says, ‘is down below. I’ll open the trapdoor, and you,’ she says, ‘can go down.’ But the devil sees through her cleverness. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s your house, you hunt it up. Go yourself,’ he says. ‘Whether it’s down below or on the roof, as long as I get the money. Only,’ he says, ‘remember, don’t try to cheat me, tricks go down bad with me.’

“And she to him: ‘Good heavens, don’t be so suspicious. I’d gladly go, but I’m too clumsy. Better,’ she says, ‘if I stand on the top step and hold the light for you. Don’t be afraid, for your assurance I’ll send my daughter down with you’—me, that is.

“Oh, saints alive, dear comrades, think for yourselves what I felt when I heard that! Well, I thought, that’s it. My eyes went dim, I felt I was falling, my legs gave way under me.

“But again the villain wouldn’t be played for a fool, he looked at the two of us out of the corner of his eye, squinted, twisted his whole mouth and bared his teeth, meaning, there’s no way you’re going to trick me. He saw she didn’t care about me, so I wasn’t her own blood, and he grabbed Petenka with one hand, and with the other opened the trapdoor—‘give me light,’ he says, and with Petenka he goes down the ladder into the cellar.

“And I think Auntie Marfusha was already balmy then, didn’t understand anything, was already touched in the head. As soon as the villain went down below with Petenka, she slammed the lid, that is, the trapdoor, back in place and locked it, and started moving a heavy trunk onto it, nodding to me, help, I can’t do it, it’s too heavy. She moved it, and sat herself down on the trunk, overjoyed, fool that she was. Just as she sat down on the trunk, the robber started shouting from inside, and there was a bang-bang under the floor, meaning you’d better let me out, or I’ll finish off your Petenka right now. We couldn’t make out the words through the thick boards, but the sense wasn’t in the words. He roared worse than a beast of the forest, to put fear into us with his big voice. Yes, he shouts, now it’ll be the end of your Petenka. But she doesn’t understand a thing. She sits and laughs and winks at me. Shout away, every dog has his day, but I’m sitting on the trunk and the key’s clutched in my fist. I try to get at Auntie Marfusha this way and that. I shout in her ear, push her, want to dump her off the trunk. We must open the trapdoor and save Petenka. Too much for me! Could I do anything against her?

“So he beats on the floor, he beats, time goes by, and she sits on the trunk rolling her eyes and doesn’t listen.

“After a while—oh, saints alive, oh, dear saints alive, the things I’ve seen and suffered in my life, but I don’t remember any such horror, all my life long I’ll hear Petenka’s pitiful little voice—Petenka, that angelic little soul, crying and moaning from underground—he just bit him to death, the fiend.

“Well, what am I to do, what am I to do now, I think, what am I to do with the half-crazed old woman and this murderous robber? And time’s going by. I only just thought it when I heard Udaloy neighing outside the window, he was standing there hitched up all the while. Yes. Udaloy neighed as if he wanted to say, come on, Tanyusha, let’s gallop off quickly to some good people and ask for help. I look out, it’s already getting light. Have it your way, Udaloy, I think, thanks for the suggestion—you’re right, let’s run for it. And I only just thought it when, hah, I hear, it’s like somebody’s talking to me again from the forest: ‘Wait, Tanyusha, don’t rush, we’ll handle this matter differently.’ And again I’m not alone in the forest. Like a cock singing out something I knew, a familiar engine whistle called to me from below, I knew this engine by its whistle, it was always standing in Nagornaya under steam, it was called a pusher, to push freight trains up the hill, but this was a mixed train, it went by every night at that time—so I hear the familiar engine calling me from below. I hear it and my heart leaps. Can it be, I think, that I’m out of my mind like Auntie Marfusha, since a living creature and a speechless machine talk to me in clear Russian language?

“Well, why stand thinking, the train was already close, there was no time to think. I grabbed the lantern, because it still wasn’t very light, and rushed like mad to the tracks, swinging the lantern back and forth.

“Well, what more can I say? I stopped the train, thanks to its being slowed down by the wind, well, simply speaking, it was creeping along. I stopped the train, the engineer I knew, he stuck himself out the window of his cabin, asked something; I didn’t hear what he asked on account of the wind. I shout to the engineer, the railway post’s been attacked, there’s been murder and robbery, the robber’s in the house, do something, comrade uncle, we need urgent help. And as I was saying it, Red Army soldiers got out of the cars onto the tracks one after another, it was a military train, the soldiers came down the tracks, said: ‘What’s the matter?’—wondering what the story was, why the train had been stopped in the forest on a steep hill at night.

“They learned about it all, dragged the robber from the cellar, he squealed in a high voice, higher than Petenka’s, have mercy, good people, he said, don’t kill me, I won’t do it again. They dragged him to the tracks, tied his legs and arms to the rails, and ran the train over him alive—lynch law.

“I didn’t go to the house for my clothes, it was so scary. I begged—dear uncles, take me on the train. They took me with them on the train and drove off. Afterwards, it’s no lie, I went around half the world, foreign and our own, with homeless children, I’ve been everywhere. Such freedom, such happiness I got to know, after the woes of my childhood! But, true, there was all sorts of trouble and sin. That was all later, I’ll tell about it some other time. But then a railway worker from the train went to the signalman’s house to take charge of the government property and give orders about Auntie Marfusha, to arrange her life. They say she later died insane in the madhouse. But others say she got better and came out.”

Long after hearing all that, Gordon and Dudorov were silently pacing up and down on the grass. Then a truck arrived, turning awkwardly and cumbersomely from the road into the clearing. The boxes were loaded onto the truck. Gordon said:

“You realize who this linen girl Tanya is?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Evgraf will look after her.” Then, pausing briefly, he added: “It has already been so several times in history. What was conceived as ideal and lofty became coarse and material. So Greece turned into Rome, so the Russian enlightenment turned into the Russian revolution. Take Blok’s ‘We, the children of Russia’s terrible years,’⁴ and you’ll see the difference in epochs. When Blok said that, it was to be understood in a metaphorical sense, figuratively. The children were not children, but sons, offspring, the intelligentsia, and the terrors were not terrible, but providential, apocalyptic, and those are two different things. But now all that was metaphorical has become literal, and the children are children, and the terrors are terrifying—there lies the difference.”

5

Five or ten years went by, and one quiet summer evening they were sitting again, Gordon and Dudorov, somewhere high up by an open window over the boundless evening Moscow. They were leafing through the notebook of Yuri’s writings put together by Evgraf, which they had read many times and half of which they knew by heart. As they read, they exchanged observations and abandoned themselves to reflections. Midway through their reading it grew dark, they had difficulty making out the print and had to light the lamp.

And Moscow below and in the distance, the native city of the author and of half of what had befallen him, Moscow now seemed to them, not the place of these events, but the main heroine of a long story, which they had reached the end of that evening, with the notebook in their hands.

Though the brightening and liberation they had expected after the war did not come with victory, as had been thought, even so, the portents of freedom were in the air all through the postwar years, constituting their only historical content.

To the aging friends at the window it seemed that this freedom of the soul had come, that precisely on that evening the future had settled down tangibly in the streets below, that they themselves had entered into that future and henceforth found themselves in it. A happy, tender sense of peace about this holy city and about the whole earth, about the participants in this story who had lived till that evening and about their children, filled them and enveloped them in an inaudible music of happiness, which spread far around. And it was as if the book in their hands knew it all and lent their feelings support and confirmation.