Doctor Zhivago (58 page)

The army wife Kubarikha was putting a spell on a sick cow belonging to Pamphil’s wife, Agafya Fotievna, known as Palykha or, in simple speech, Fatevna. The cow had been taken from the herd and put in the bushes, tied to a tree by the horns. The cow’s owner sat by its front legs on a stump, and by the hind legs, on a milking stool, sat the sorceress.

The rest of the countless herd was crowded into a small clearing. The dark forest stood around it in a wall of triangular firs, tall as the hills, which seemed to sit on the ground on the fat behinds of their broadly spread lower branches.

In Siberia they raised a certain prize-winning Swiss breed. Almost all of the same colors, black with white spots, the cows were no less exhausted than the people by the privations, the long marches, the unbearable crowding. Squeezed together side by side, they were going crazy from the crush. In their stupefaction, they forgot their sex and, bellowing, climbed onto one another like bulls, straining to drag up the heavy weight of their udders. The heifers they covered up, raising their tails, tore away from underneath them and, breaking down bushes and branches, ran towards the thicket, where old shepherds and herdsboys rushed shouting after them.

And, as if locked into the tight circle outlined by the treetops in the winter sky, the snowy black and white clouds over the forest clearing crowded just as stormily and chaotically, rearing and piling up on each other.

The curious, standing in a bunch further off, annoyed the wisewoman. She looked them up and down with an unkindly glance. But
it was beneath her dignity to admit that they were hampering her. Her artistic vanity stopped her. And she made it look as if she did not notice them. The doctor observed her from the back rows, hidden from her.

It was the first time he had taken a good look at her. She was wearing her inevitable British forage cap and gray-green interventionist greatcoat with the lapels casually turned back. However, with the haughty features of suppressed passion, which gave a youthful blackness to the eyes and eyebrows of this no-longer-young woman, the extent of her indifference to what she was or was not wearing was clearly written on her face.

But the appearance of Pamphil’s wife astonished Yuri Andreevich. He barely recognized her. She had aged terribly in a few days. Her bulging eyes were ready to pop from their sockets. On her neck, stretched like a shaft, a swollen vein throbbed. That was what her secret fears had done to her.

“She gives no milk, my dear,” said Agafya. “I thought she was in between, but no, it’s long since time for milk, but she’s still milkless.”

“In between, hah! Look, there’s an anthrax sore on her teat. I’ll give you some herbal ointment to rub in. And, needless to say, I’ll whisper in her ear.”

“I’ve got another trouble—my husband.”

“I can put a charm on him to stop him playing around. It can be done. He’ll stick to you, there’ll be no tearing him off. Tell me your third trouble.”

“He doesn’t play around. It’d be good if he did. The trouble’s just the opposite, that he clings to me and the children with all his might, his soul pines for us. I know what he thinks. He thinks they’ll separate the camps, and we’ll be sent the other way. Basalygo’s men will lay hands on us, and he won’t be there to protect us. They’ll torture us and laugh at our torments. I know his thoughts. He may do something to himself.”

“I’ll think on it. We’ll quench your grief. Tell me your third trouble.”

“There is no third. It’s just the cow and my husband.”

“You’re poor in troubles, mother! See how merciful God is to you. Couldn’t find your like with a candle in daylight. Two sorrows on your poor little head, and one of them’s a pitying husband. What’ll you give for the cow? And I’ll start reciting.”

“What do you want?”

“A loaf of bread and your husband.”

People burst out laughing around them.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Well, if that’s too much, I’ll knock off the bread. We’ll settle on the husband alone.”

The laughter around them increased tenfold.

“What’s the name? Not the husband’s, the cow’s.”

“Beauty.”

“Half the herd here is called Beauty. Well, all right. God bless us.”

And she began to recite a spell on the cow. At first her sorcery really had to do with cattle. Then she got carried away and gave Agafya a whole lesson
in magic and its use. Yuri Andreevich listened spellbound to this delirious tissue, as he had once listened to the flowery babble of the driver Vakkh, when they came from European Russia to Siberia.

The army wife was saying:

“Auntie Morgesya, come be our guest. Not tomorrow but today, take the sickness away. Frumpkin, mumpkin, away with the lumpkin. Beauty, don’t flinch, you’ll tip over the bench. Forget your bad dream and give us a stream. Witchery, twitchery, stir your kettles, scrape off the scab and throw it in the nettles. Sharp as a sword is the wisewoman’s word.

“You’ve got to know everything, Agafyushka, biddings, forbiddings, spells for avoiding, spells for defending. You look now and think it’s the forest. But it’s the unclean powers coming to meet the angelic host, just like ours with Basalygo’s.

“Or, for instance, look where I’m pointing. Not there, my dear. Look with your eyes, not with the back of your head, look where I point my finger. There, there. What do you think it is? You think it’s the wind twisty-twining one birch branch around another? You think it’s a bird decided to build a nest? As if it was. That’s a real devilish thing. It’s a water nymph making a wreath for her daughter. She heard people going by and left off. Got scared. At night she’ll finish plaiting it, you’ll see.

“Or, again, take your red banner. What do you think? You think it’s a flag? And yet, see, it’s not a flag at all, it’s the plaguie-girl’s fetching raspberry kerchief—fetching, I say, and why is it fetching? To wave and wink at the young lads, to fetch young lads for the slaughter, for death, to inflict the plague on them. And you believed it was a flag—come to me, prolety and poorlety of all lands.

“Now you’ve got to know everything, Mother Agafya, everything, everything, and I mean everything. What bird, what stone, what herb. A bird, now, for instance—that bird there would be a fairy-starling. That animal there would be a badger.

“Now, for instance, if you’ve a mind to make love to somebody, just say so. I’ll cast a pining spell on anybody you like. Your chief here, the Forester, if you like, or Kolchak, or Ivan Tsarevich.
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You think I’m boasting, lying? But I’m not lying. Well, look, listen. Winter will come, the blizzard will send whirlwinds thronging over the fields, it will spin up pillars. And into that snowy pillar, into that snow-whirl I’ll stick a knife for you, plunge it into the snow up to the hilt, and pull it out of the snow all red with blood. Have you ever seen such a thing? Eh? And you thought I was lying. And how is it, tell me, that blood can come from a stormy whirl? Isn’t it just wind, air, snowy powder? But the fact is, my pet, that the storm is not wind, it’s a changeling
she-werewolf that’s lost her young one, and searches for him in the field, and weeps because she can’t find him. And my knife will go into her. That’s why the blood. And with this knife I’ll cut out the footprint of anybody you like, and take it and sew it to your hem with silk. And be it Kolchak, or Strelnikov, or some new tsar, he’ll follow in your tracks wherever you go. And you thought I was lying, you thought—come to me, barefooty and prolety of all lands.

“Or else, for instance, stones fall from the sky now, fall like rain. A man steps out of his house and stones fall on him. Or some have seen horsemen riding in the sky, the horses touching the rooftops with their hooves. Or there were magicians in olden times would discover: this woman’s got grain in her, or honey, or marten fur. And the knights in armor would bare the woman’s shoulder, like opening a coffer, and with a sword take from her shoulder blade a measure of wheat, or a squirrel, or a honeycomb.”

A great and powerful feeling is sometimes met with in the world. There is always an admixture of pity in it. The object of our adoration seems the more the victim to us, the more we love. In some men compassion for a woman goes beyond all conceivable limits. Their responsiveness places her in unrealizable positions, not to be found in the world, existing only in imagination, and on account of her they are jealous of the surrounding air, of the laws of nature, of the millennia that went by before her.

Yuri Andreevich was educated enough to suspect in the sorceress’s last words the beginning of some chronicle, the Novgorod or the Ipatyev,
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which layers of distortion had rendered apocryphal. For centuries they had been mangled by witch doctors and storytellers, who transmitted them orally from generation to generation. Still earlier they had been confused and garbled by scribes.

Why, then, did the tyranny of the legend fascinate him so? Why did he react to the unintelligible nonsense, to the senseless fable, as if it were a statement of reality?

Lara’s left shoulder had been opened. As a key is put into the secret door of an iron safe built into a closet, her shoulder blade had been unlocked by the turn of a sword. In the depths of the revealed inner cavity, the secrets kept by her soul appeared. Strange towns she had visited, strange streets, strange houses, strange expanses drew out in ribbons, in unwinding skeins of ribbons, ribbons spilling out in bundles.

Oh, how he loved her! How beautiful she was! Just as he had always thought and dreamed, as he had needed! But in what, in which side of her? In anything that could be named or singled out by examination? Oh, no, no! But in that incomparably simple and impetuous line with which the
Creator had outlined her entirely at one stroke, from top to bottom, and in that divine contour had handed her to his soul, like a just-bathed child tightly wrapped in linen.

But now where is he and how is it with him? Forest, Siberia, partisans. They are surrounded, and he will share the common lot. What devilry, what fantasy! And again things grew dim in Yuri Andreevich’s eyes and head. Everything swam before him. At that moment, instead of the expected snow, rain began to drizzle. Like a poster on an enormous length of fabric stretched over a city street, there hung in the air from one side of the forest clearing to the other the diffuse, greatly magnified phantom of an astonishing, adored head. And the head wept, and the increasing rain kissed it and poured over it.

“Go,” the sorceress said to Agafya, “I’ve put a spell on your cow, she’ll get well. Pray to the Mother of God. For she is the chamber of light and the book of the living word.”
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Fighting was going on at the western border of the taiga. But the taiga was so immense that it all seemed to be playing out at the far confines of the state, and the camp lost in its thicket was so populous that, however many of its men went to fight, still more always remained, and it was never empty.

The noise of the distant battle barely reached the thick of the camp. Suddenly several shots rang out in the forest. They followed each other in quick succession and all at once turned into rapid, disorderly gunfire. Those surprised in the place where the shooting was heard dashed off in all directions. Men from the camp reserves ran to their carts. Turmoil ensued. Everyone began to put themselves into military readiness.

Soon the turmoil died down. It turned out to be a false alarm. But now again people began streaming towards the place where the shooting had been. The crowd grew. New people joined those already there.

The crowd surrounded a bloody human stump that was lying on the ground. The mutilated man was still breathing. He had had his right arm and left leg chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, the wretch had managed to crawl to the camp. The chopped off arm and leg, terrible, bloody lumps, were tied to his back, as was a wooden plank with a long inscription which, among choice curses, said that this had been done in revenge for the atrocities of such-and-such Red detachment, to which the partisans of the Forest Brotherhood had no relation. Besides which, it was added that the same would be done to all of them, unless the
partisans submitted by the term stated and laid down their arms before the representatives of the troops of Vitsyn’s corps.

Bleeding profusely, faltering, with a weak voice and a thick tongue, losing consciousness every moment, the mangled, suffering man told of the tortures and ordeals
in the court-martial and punitive units to the rear of General Vitsyn. The hanging to which he had been condemned had been replaced, in the guise of mercy, by cutting off his arm and leg and sending him to the partisan camp to terrify them. He had been carried as far as the advance posts of the camp’s sentry line, then put on the ground and told to crawl by himself, while they urged him on from a distance by firing in the air.

The tortured man could barely move his lips. To make out his indistinct mumbling, they bent down and leaned over him to listen. He was saying:

“Watch out, brothers. He’s broken through you.”

“We’ve sent a covering detachment. There’s a big fight there. We’ll hold him.”

“A breakthrough. A breakthrough. He wants to do it unexpectedly. I know. Aie, I can’t go on, brothers. See, I’m losing blood, I’m spitting blood. It’s all over for me.”

“Lie there, catch your breath. Keep quiet. Don’t let him talk, you brutes! You see it’s bad for him.”

“He didn’t leave a living spot on me, the bloodsucker, the dog. You’ll bathe in your own blood for me, he says, tell me who you are. And how can I tell him, brothers, when I’m a real diselter if there ever was one. Yes. I went over from him to you.”

“You keep saying ‘him.’ Which of them worked on you like this?”

“Aie, brothers, my insides are on fire. Let me catch my breath a little. I’ll tell you right now. The ataman Bekeshin. Colonel Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You here in the forest don’t know anything. There’s groaning in the city. They boil iron out of living people. They cut living people up for straps. They drag you who knows where by the scruff of the neck. It’s pitch-dark. You feel around—it’s a cage, a railroad car. More than forty people in just their underwear. The cage keeps opening and a paw comes in. The first one it falls on. Out he goes. Same as a chicken to be slaughtered. By God. One gets hanged, another gets a bayonet, another gets interrogated. They beat you to a pulp, sprinkle salt on your wounds, pour boiling water over you. If you puke or shit your pants, they make you eat it. And what they do with little kids, with women—oh, Lord!”