“He went to the war, something nobody demanded of him. He did it to free us from himself, from his imaginary burden. That was the beginning of his follies. With some youthful, misdirected vanity, he took offense at something in life that one doesn’t take offense at. He began to pout at the course of events, at history. He began to quarrel with it. And to this day he’s settling accounts with it. Hence his defiant extravagances. He’s headed for certain ruin because of that stupid ambition. Oh, if only I could save him!”
“How incredibly purely and deeply you love him! Go on, go on loving him. I’m not jealous of him, I won’t hinder you.”
15
Summer came and went imperceptibly. The doctor recovered. Temporarily, in expectation of his supposed departure for Moscow, he took three posts. The quickly progressing devaluation of money forced him to juggle several jobs.
The doctor rose at cockcrow, stepped out on Kupecheskaya, and went down it past the Giant picture house to the former printing shop of the Ural Cossack army, now renamed the Red Typesetter. At the corner of City Square, on the door of Administrative Affairs, he came upon a plaque reading “Claims Office.” He crossed the square diagonally and came to Malaya Buyanovka Street. Past the Stanhope factory, through the hospital backyard, he arrived at the dispensary of the Military Hospital—the place of his main job.
Half his way lay under the shady trees hanging over the street, past whimsical, mostly wooden little houses with steeply cocked roofs, lattice fences, wrought-iron gates, and carved platbands on the shutters.
Next to the dispensary, in the former hereditary garden of the merchant’s wife Goregliadova, stood a curious little house in old Russian taste. It was faced with faceted, glazed tiles, the triangular facets coming together to form a peak pointing outwards, as in ancient Moscow boyar mansions.
Three or four times in the ten-day week, Yuri Andreevich left the dispensary and went to the former Ligetti house on Staraya Myasskaya, to meetings of the Yuriatin regional health commission, which was housed there.
In a totally different, remote quarter stood the house donated to the town by Anfim’s father, Efim Samdevyatov, in memory of his late wife, who had died in childbed giving birth to Anfim. In that house the Institute of Gynecology and Obstetrics founded by Samdevyatov used to be located. Now it accommodated the Rosa Luxemburg5 accelerated course in medicine and surgery. Yuri Andreevich taught general pathology and several noncompulsory subjects there.
He came back from all these duties at night, worn out and hungry, to find Larissa Fyodorovna in the heat of household chores, at the stove or over a tub. In this prosaic and homely appearance, disheveled, with her sleeves rolled up and her skirts tucked up, she was almost frightening in her regal, breathtaking attractiveness, more so than if he were suddenly to find her about to go to a ball, standing taller, as if she had grown on her high heels, in an open, low-cut dress and wide, rustling skirts.
She cooked or did laundry and then with the remaining soapy water washed the floors in the house. Or, calm and less flushed, she ironed and mended her own, his, and Katenka’s linen. Or, having finished with the cooking, laundry, and tidying up, she gave lessons to Katenka. Or, burying herself in textbooks, she occupied herself with her own political reeducation, before going back to the newly reformed school as a teacher.
The closer this woman and girl were to him, the less he dared to see them as family, the stricter was the prohibition imposed upon his way of thinking by his duty to his family and his pain at being unfaithful to them. In this limitation there was nothing offensive for Lara and Katenka. On the contrary, this nonfamily way of feeling contained a whole world of respect, excluding casualness and excessive familiarity.
But this split was always tormenting and wounding, and Yuri Andreevich got used to it as one gets used to an unhealed, often reopening wound.
16
Two or three months passed like this. One day in October Yuri Andreevich said to Larissa Fyodorovna:
“You know, it seems I’ll have to quit my job. It’s the old, eternally repeated story. It starts out as if nothing could be better. ‘We’re always glad of honest work. And still more of thoughts, especially new ones. How can we not encourage them? Welcome. Work, struggle, seek.’
“But experience shows that what’s meant by thoughts is only their appearance, a verbal garnish for the glorification of the revolution and the powers that be. It’s tiresome and sickening. And I’m no master in that department.
“And in fact they’re probably right. Of course I’m not with them. But it’s hard for me to reconcile with the thought that they’re heroes, shining lights, and I’m a petty soul, who stands for darkness and the enslavement of men. Have you ever heard the name of Nikolai Vedenyapin?”
“Well, of course. Before I met you, and later, from what you’ve often told me. Simochka Tuntseva mentions him often. She’s his follower. But I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read his books. I don’t like works devoted entirely to philosophy. I think philosophy should be used sparingly as a seasoning for art and life. To be occupied with it alone is the same as eating horseradish by itself. But forgive me, I’ve distracted you with my stupid talk.”
“No, on the contrary. I agree with you. That way of thinking is very close to me. Yes, so, about my uncle. Maybe I’ve really been spoiled by his influence. But they themselves shout with one voice: a brilliant diagnostician, a brilliant diagnostician! And it’s true I’m rarely mistaken in determining an illness. But that is precisely their detested intuition, which is alleged to be my sin, an integral knowledge that includes the whole picture.
“I’m obsessed by the question of mimicry, the external adaptation of organisms to the color of their environment. Here, hidden in this adjustment of color, is the astonishing transition from the internal to the external.
“I ventured to touch on it in my lectures. And off it went! ‘Idealism, mysticism! Goethe’s
“I’ve got to quit. I’ll turn in my resignation from the health commission and the institute, and try to hang on at the hospital until they throw me out. I don’t want to frighten you, but at times I have the feeling that I’ll be arrested one of these days.”
“God forbid, Yurochka. Fortunately, we’re still far from that. But you’re right. It won’t hurt to be more careful. As far as I’ve noticed, each time this young power installs itself, it goes through several stages. In the beginning it’s the triumph of reason, the critical spirit, the struggle against prejudices.
“Then comes the second period. The dark forces of the ‘hangers-on,’ the sham sympathizers, gain the majority. Suspiciousness springs up, denunciations, intrigues, hatred. And you’re right, we’re at the beginning of the second phase.
