“Not true. I am glad. But where are our families?”
“They’re not in Varykino, and that’s a great blessing. As I supposed, Kamennodvorsky’s summer legends— remember those stupid rumors about the invasion of Varykino by some mysterious race of people?—have not been confirmed, but the place is completely deserted. Something seems to have happened there after all, and it’s very good that both families got away in good time. Let’s believe they’re safe. According to my intelligence, that’s the assumption of the few people left.”
“And Yuriatin? What’s going on there? Whose hands is it in?”
“Also something incongruous. Undoubtedly a mistake.”
“What, precisely?”
“Supposedly the Whites are still there. It’s absolutely absurd, a sheer impossibility. I’ll make that obvious to you right now.”
Liberius set up a new splinter and, folding a crumpled, tattered, large-scale map so that the right section showed and unnecessary parts were turned back, began to explain, pencil in hand.
“Look. In all these sectors the Whites have been driven back. Here, and here, and here, all around. Are you following attentively?”
“Yes.”
“They can’t be towards Yuriatin. Otherwise, with their communications cut, they’d inevitably fall into a trap. Their generals can’t fail to understand that, however giftless they are. You’re putting your coat on? Where are you going?”
“Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back. It smells of shag and wood fumes here. I don’t feel well. I’ll catch my breath outside.”
Climbing up and out of the dugout, the doctor used his mitten to brush the snow off the thick log placed by the entrance as a seat. He sat down on it, leaned forward, and, propping his head in both hands, fell to thinking. As if there had been no winter taiga, no forest camp, no eighteen months spent with the partisans. He forgot about them. Only his family stood there in his imagination. He made conjectures about them, one more terrible than the other.
Here is Tonya going across a field in a blizzard with Shurochka in her arms. She wraps him in a blanket, her feet sink into the snow, she barely manages to pull them out, and the snowstorm covers her, the wind throws her to the ground, she falls and gets up, too weak to stand on her legs, weakened and giving way under her. Oh, but he keeps forgetting, forgetting. She has two children, and she is nursing the younger one. Both her arms are taken up, like the refugee women of Chilimka who lost their minds from grief and a strain that was beyond their endurance.
Both her arms are taken up, and there is no one around who can help. No one knows where Shurochka’s papa is. He is far away, always far away, apart from them all his life, and is he a papa, are real papas like that? And where is her own father? Where is Alexander Alexandrovich? Where is Nyusha? Where are all the rest? Oh, better not to ask yourself these questions, better not to think, better not to go into it.
The doctor got up from the log, intending to go down into the dugout. Suddenly his thoughts took a different direction. He decided not to go back down to Liberius.
He had long ago stashed away some skis, a bag of rusks, and everything necessary for an escape. He had buried these things in the snow outside the guarded boundary of the camp, under a big silver fir, which he had also marked with a special notch to be sure. He headed there, down a footpath trampled in the snowdrifts. It was a clear night. A full moon was shining. The doctor knew where the guards were posted for the night and successfully avoided them. But by the clearing with the ice-covered rowan tree a sentry called to him from a distance and, standing straight on his skis as they gathered momentum, came gliding towards him.
“Stop or I’ll shoot! Who are you? Give the password.”
“What, are you out of your mind, brother? It’s me. Don’t you recognize me? I’m your Doctor Zhivago.”
“Sorry! Don’t be angry, Comrade Zhivak. I didn’t recognize you. But even though you’re Zhivak, I won’t let you go any further. Everything’s got to be done right.”
“Well, as you will. The password is ‘Red Siberia,’ and the response is ‘Down with the interventionists.’ ”
“That’s another story. Go wherever you like. Why the devil are you wandering about at night? Sick people?”
“I’m not sleepy, and I got thirsty. I thought I might stroll about and eat some snow. I saw this rowan tree with frozen berries on it. I wanted to go and chew some.”
“There’s a squire’s whim for you, to go berrying in winter. Three years we’ve been beating and beating, and haven’t beaten it out of you. No consciousness. Go get your rowan berries, oddball. What do I care?”
And, picking up more and more speed, the sentry went off, standing straight on his long, whistling skis, and moved away over the untouched snow further and further beyond the bare winter bushes, skimpy as balding heads. And the footpath the doctor was following brought him to the just-mentioned rowan tree.
It was half covered with snow, half with frozen leaves and berries, and it stretched out two snowy branches to meet him. He remembered Lara’s big white arms, rounded, generous, and, taking hold of the branches, he pulled the tree towards him. As if in a conscious answering movement, the rowan showered him with snow from head to foot. He was murmuring, not realizing what he was saying, and unaware of himself:
“I shall see you, my beauty, my princess, my dearest rowan tree, my own heart’s blood.”
The night was clear. The moon was shining. He made his way deeper into the taiga, to his secret silver fir, dug up his things, and left the camp.
OPPOSITE THE HOUSE WITH FIGURES
1
Bolshaya Kupecheskaya Street descended the crooked hill to Malaya Spasskaya and Novosvalochny. The houses and churches of the higher parts of the town peered down on it.
