“You’re exaggerating. It’s still long before dark. It’s quite early. But let it be your way. Very well. Let’s stay. Only calm yourself. Look how agitated you are. Really, let’s unpack, take our coats off. Here Katenka says she’s hungry. We’ll have a bite to eat. You’re right, leaving today would be too unprepared, too sudden. Only don’t fret and don’t cry, for God’s sake. I’ll start the stove right now. But first, since the horse is harnessed and the sleigh is at the porch, I’ll go and fetch the last firewood from the Zhivagos’ shed, there’s not a stick left here. Don’t cry. I’ll be back soon.”
11
In the snow in front of the shed there were several circles of sleigh tracks from Yuri Andreevich’s former comings and turnings. The snow by the porch was trampled and littered from his carrying wood two days earlier.
The clouds that had covered the sky in the morning had scattered. It became clear. Cold. The Varykino park, which surrounded these parts at various distances, was close to the shed, as if in order to peer into the doctor’s face and remind him of something. The snow lay deep that winter, higher than the doorstep of the shed. It was as if the lintel lowered itself, the shed seemed to be hunched over. A slab of accumulated snow hung from the roof almost down to the doctor’s head, like the cap of a giant mushroom. Directly above the slope of the roof, its sharp end as if stuck into the snow, burning with a gray heat all around its semicircular outline, stood the young, just-born crescent moon.
Though it was daytime and quite light, the doctor had a feeling as if he were standing on a late evening in the dark, dense forest of his life. There was such gloom in his soul, so sad he felt. And the young moon, a foreboding of separation, an image of solitude, burned before him almost on the level of his face.
Yuri Andreevich was falling off his feet with fatigue. Flinging wood through the door of the shed into the sleigh, he seized fewer pieces at a time than he usually did. In such cold, to touch the icy logs with snow clinging to them was painful, even through mittens. His brisk movements did not warm him up. Something had stopped inside him and snapped. He roundly cursed his talentless fate and prayed to God to keep and safeguard the life of this wondrous beauty, sad, submissive, and simple-hearted. And the crescent moon went on standing over the shed, burning without heat and shining without light.
Suddenly the horse, turning in the direction she had been brought from, raised her head and neighed, first softly and timidly, then loudly and confidently.
“What’s she doing?” the doctor wondered. “Why on earth? It can’t be from fear. Horses don’t neigh from fear, what stupidity. She’s not such a fool as to give herself away to the wolves with her voice, if she can scent them. And so cheerfully. It must be in anticipation of home. She wants to go home. Wait, we’ll set off at once.”
In addition to the load of firewood, Yuri Andreevich took some chips from the shed for kindling and a big piece of birch bark that fell whole from a log, rolled up like a boot top. He covered the wood pile with a bast mat, tied it down with rope, and, striding beside the sleigh, drove it all back to the Mikulitsyns’ shed.
The horse neighed again, in response to the clear neigh of a horse somewhere in the distance, in the other direction. “Where is that from?” the doctor wondered, rousing himself. “We thought Varykino was deserted. It means we were mistaken.” It could not have entered his head that they had visitors, that the horse’s neighing was coming from the direction of the Mikulitsyns’ porch, from the garden. He led Savraska in a roundabout way through backyards, towards the outbuildings of the factory’s farmsteads, and from behind the hillocks, which hid the house, could not see the front part.
Without haste (why should he be in a hurry?), he dumped the firewood in the shed, unhitched the horse, left the sleigh in the shed, and led the horse to the cold, empty stable beside it. He put her in the right corner stall, where it was less drafty, and bringing several armloads of the remaining hay from the shed, piled it onto the slanted grating of the manger.
He walked towards the house with a troubled soul. By the porch stood a well-fed black stallion hitched to a very wide peasant sleigh with a comfortable body. An unfamiliar fellow in a fine jacket, as smooth and well-fed as the horse, strolled around the horse, patting him on the sides and examining his fetlocks.
Noise could be heard in the house. Unwilling to eavesdrop and unable to hear anything, Yuri Andreevich involuntarily slowed his pace and stood as if rooted to the spot. He could not make out the words, but he recognized the voices of Komarovsky, Lara, and Katenka. They were probably in the front room, by the entrance. Komarovsky was arguing with Lara, and, judging by the sound of her replies, she was agitated, weeping, and now sharply objected to him, now agreed with him. By some indefinable sign, Yuri Andreevich imagined that Komarovsky had just then brought the talk around precisely to him, presumably in the sense that he was an untrustworthy man (“a servant of two masters,” Yuri Andreevich fancied), that it was not clear who was dearer to him, his family or Lara, and that Lara could not rely on him, because by entrusting herself to him, she would be “chasing two hares and falling between two stools.” Yuri Andreevich went into the house.
In the front room, indeed, still in a floor-length fur coat, stood Komarovsky. Lara was holding Katenka by the collar of her coat, trying to pull it together and failing to get the hook through the eye. She was cross with the girl, shouting that she should stop fidgeting and struggling, while Katenka complained: “Gently, mama, you’re choking me.” They all stood dressed and ready to leave. When Yuri Andreevich came in, Lara and Viktor Ippolitovich rushed simultaneously to meet him.
“Where did you disappear to? We need you so much!”
“Greetings, Yuri Andreevich! Despite the rudenesses we exchanged last time, I’ve come again, as you see, without invitation.”
“Greetings, Viktor Ippolitovich.”
“Where did you disappear to for so long? Listen to what he says and decide quickly for yourself and me. There’s no time. We must hurry.”
“Why are we standing? Sit down, Viktor Ippolitovich. Where did I disappear to, Larochka? But you know I went to fetch wood, and then I saw to the horse. Viktor Ippolitovich, I beg you to sit down.”
“Aren’t you struck? How is it you don’t show any surprise? We were sorry that this man left and we hadn’t seized upon his offers, and now he’s here before you and you’re not surprised. But still more striking is his fresh news. Tell him, Viktor Ippolitovich.”
“I don’t know what Larissa Fyodorovna has in mind, but for my part I’ll say the following. I purposely spread the rumor that I had left, and stayed for a few more days, to give you and Larissa Fyodorovna time to rethink the questions we had touched upon and on mature reflection perhaps come to a less reckless decision.”
“But we can’t put it off any longer. Now is the most convenient time for leaving. Tomorrow morning—but better let Viktor Ippolitovich tell you himself.”
“One moment, Larochka. Excuse me, Viktor Ippolitovich. Why are we standing here in our coats? Let’s take them off and sit down. This is a serious conversation. We can’t do it harum-scarum. Forgive me, Viktor Ippolitovich.
