The windows were shut. Dirty city rain mixed with dust poured down. Lara tore a page from her notebook and wrote to the girl sitting next to her at the desk, Nadya Kologrivova:
“Nadya, I must set up my life separately from mama. Help me to find well-paid lessons. You have many rich acquaintances.”
Nadya replied in the same way:
“We’re looking for a tutor for Lipa. Why don’t you come to us. That would be great! You know how papa and mama love you.”
6
For more than three years Lara lived with the Kologrivovs as if behind a stone wall. No attempts on her were made from anywhere, and even her mother and brother, from whom she felt greatly estranged, did not remind her of themselves.
Lavrenty Mikhailovich Kologrivov was a big entrepreneur, a practical man of the new fashion, talented and intelligent. He hated the moribund order with the double hatred of a fabulously wealthy man able to buy out the state treasury, and of a man from simple folk who had gone amazingly far. He hid fugitives from the law, hired lawyers to defend the accused in political trials, and, as the joke went, overthrew himself as a proprietor by subsidizing revolution and organizing strikes at his own factory. Lavrenty Mikhailovich was a crack shot and a passionate hunter, and in the winter of 1905 had gone on Sundays to the Silver Woods and Moose Island to teach militiamen how to shoot.
He was a remarkable man. Serafima Filippovna, his wife, was a worthy match for him. Lara felt an admiring respect for them both. Everyone in the house loved her like their own.
In the fourth year of Lara’s carefree life her brother Rodya came to see her on business. Swaying foppishly on his long legs and, for greater importance, pronouncing the words through his nose and drawing them out unnaturally, he told her that the graduating cadets of his class had collected some money for a farewell gift to the head of the school, had given it to Rodya, and had entrusted him with choosing and purchasing the gift. And that two days ago he had gambled away all the money to the last kopeck. Having said this, he dropped his whole lanky figure into an armchair and burst into tears.
Lara went cold when she heard it. Sobbing, Rodya continued:
“Yesterday I went to see Viktor Ippolitovich. He refused to talk with me about the subject, but said that if you wished … He said that, though you don’t love us all anymore, your power over him is still so great … Larochka … One word from you is enough … Do you understand what a disgrace it is and how it stains the honor of an officer’s uniform? … Go to him—what will it cost you?—ask him … You won’t have me wash away this embezzlement with my blood.”
“Wash away with blood … Honor of an officer’s uniform,” Lara repeated indignantly, pacing the room in agitation. “And I’m not a uniform, I have no honor, and you can do anything you like with me. Do you realize what you’re asking, did you grasp what he’s offering you? Year after year the Sisyphean labor of building, raising up, not getting enough sleep, and then this one comes, it’s all the same to him, he’ll snap his fingers, and it will all be blown to smithereens! Devil take you. Shoot yourself, if you like. What do I care? How much do you need?”
“Six hundred and ninety-some rubles—let’s round it off to seven hundred,” said Rodya, faltering slightly.
“Rodya! No, you’re out of your mind! Do you realize what you’re saying? You gambled away seven hundred rubles? Rodya! Rodya! Do you know how long it would take an ordinary person like me to knock together a sum like that by honest labor?”
After a slight pause she added in a cold, estranged voice:
“All right. I’ll try. Come tomorrow. And bring the revolver you were going to shoot yourself with. You’ll turn it over to me. With a good supply of cartridges, don’t forget.”
She got the money from Mr. Kologrivov.
7
Working at the Kologrivovs’ did not prevent Lara from finishing high school, entering the higher courses, studying successfully in them, and approaching graduation, which for her would come in the following year, 1912.
In the spring of 1911 her pupil Lipochka finished high school. She already had a fiance, the young engineer Friesendank, from a good and well-to-do family. Lipochka’s parents approved of her choice, but were against her marrying so early and advised her to wait. As a result, there were scenes. The spoiled and whimsical Lipochka, the family’s favorite, shouted at her father and mother, wept and stamped her feet.
In this rich home, where Lara was considered one of their own, they did not remember the debt she had incurred for Rodya and did not remind her of it.
Lara would have repaid this debt long ago, if she had not had permanent expenses, the destination of which she kept hidden.
In secret from Pasha, she sent money to his father, Antipov, who was living in exile, and helped his often ailing, peevish mother. Besides that, in still greater secrecy, she reduced the expenses of Pasha himself, paying some extra to his landlord for his room and board without his knowing it.
Pasha, who was slightly younger than Lara, loved her madly and obeyed her in everything. At her insistence, after finishing his progressive high school, he took additional Latin and Greek, in order to enter the university as a philologist. Lara’s dream was that in a year, after they passed the state examinations, she and Pasha would get married and go to teach, he in a boys’ high school and she in a girls’, in one of the provincial cities of the Urals.
Pasha lived in a room that Lara herself had found and rented for him from its quiet owners, in a newly built house on Kamergersky Lane, near the Art Theater.
In the summer of 1911, Lara visited Duplyanka for the last time with the Kologrivovs. She loved the place to distraction, more than the owners did themselves. That was well-known, and there existed a consensus concerning Lara on the occasion of these summer trips. When the hot and soot-blackened train that brought them continued on its way and, amid the boundless, stupefying, and fragrant silence that succeeded it, the excited Lara lost the gift of speech, they allowed her to go alone on foot to the estate, while the luggage was carried from the little station and put onto a cart, and the Duplyanka driver, the sleeves of his red shirt thrust through the armholes of his coachman’s vest, told the masters the local news of the past season as they got into the carriage.
Lara walked beside the rails along a path beaten down by wanderers and pilgrims and turned off on a track that led across a meadow to the forest. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, breathed in the intricately fragrant air of the vast space around her. It was dearer to her than a father and mother, better than a lover, and wiser than a book. For an instant the meaning of existence was again revealed to Lara. She was here—so she conceived—in
