“I’m dead tired,” said Lara, sitting beside her husband. “Did you manage to do everything you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“And even so I’m feeling remarkably well. I’m happy. And you?”
“Me, too. I feel good. But that’s a long story.”
As an exception, Komarovsky was admitted to the young people’s party. At the end of the evening, he wanted to say that he would be orphaned after his young friends’ departure, that Moscow would become a desert for him, a Sahara, but he was so deeply moved that he sobbed and had to repeat the phrase interrupted by his agitation. He asked the Antipovs for permission to correspond with them and visit them in Yuriatin, their new place of residence, if he could not bear the separation.
“That is totally unnecessary,” Lara retorted loudly and carelessly. “And generally it’s all pointless—correspondence, the Sahara, and all that. And don’t even think of visiting. With God’s help you’ll survive without us, we’re not such a rarity—right, Pasha? Maybe you’ll find somebody to replace your young friends.”
And totally forgetting whom she was talking with and about what, Lara remembered something and, hastily getting up, went behind the partition to the kitchen. There she dismantled the meat grinder and began stuffing the parts into the corners of the crate of dishes, layering them with tufts of straw. In the process she almost pricked her hand on a sharp splinter split from the edge.
While busy with that, she lost sight of the fact that she had guests, ceased to hear them, but they suddenly reminded her of themselves with a particularly loud burst of chatter behind the partition, and then Lara reflected on the diligence with which drunk people always like to imitate drunk people, and with all the more giftless and amateurish deliberateness the drunker they are.
At that moment quite another, special noise attracted her attention to the yard outside the open window. Lara drew the curtain and leaned out.
A hobbled horse was moving about the courtyard in halting leaps. It was an unknown horse and must have wandered into the yard by mistake. It was already completely light, but still long before sunrise. The sleeping and as if totally deserted city was sunk in the grayish purple coolness of early morning. Lara closed her eyes. God knows to what country remoteness and enchantment she was transported by this distinctive and quite incomparable stamping of shod horse hooves.
There was a ring from the stairway. Lara pricked up her ears. Someone left the table and went to open the door. It was Nadya! Lara rushed to meet her. Nadya had come straight from the train, fresh, bewitching, and as if all fragrant with Duplyanka lilies of the valley. The two friends stood there unable to speak a word, and only sobbed, embracing and all but choking each other.
Nadya brought Lara congratulations and wishes for a good journey from the whole household and a precious gift from her parents. She took from her bag a case wrapped in paper, unwrapped it, and, unclasping the lid, handed Lara a necklace of rare beauty.
There were ohs and ahs. One of the drunken guests, now somewhat sobered up, said:
“A pink jacinth. Yes, yes, pink, if you can believe it. A stone not inferior to the diamond.”
But Nadya insisted that they were yellow sapphires.
Seating her next to herself and giving her something to eat, Lara put the necklace near her place and could not tear her eyes from it. The stones, gathered into a little pile on the violet cushion of the case, burned iridescently, looking now like drops of moisture running together, now like a cluster of small grapes.
Some of those at the table had meanwhile managed to come to their senses. They again downed a glass to keep Nadya company. Nadya quickly got drunk.
The house soon turned into a sleeping kingdom. Most of the guests, anticipating the next day’s farewell at the station, stayed for the night. Half of them had long been snoring in various corners. Lara herself did not remember how she wound up fully dressed on the sofa beside the already sleeping Ira Lagodina.
Lara was awakened by a loud conversation just at her ear. They were the voices of some strangers who had come into the courtyard looking for the stray horse. Lara opened her eyes and was surprised. “How tireless this Pasha is, really, standing like a milepost in the middle of the room and endlessly poking about.” Just then the supposed Pasha turned his face to her, and she saw that it was not Pasha at all, but some pockmarked horror with a scar cutting across his face from temple to chin. Then she realized that a thief, a robber, had gotten into her apartment and wanted to shout, but it turned out that she could not utter a sound. Suddenly she remembered the necklace and, raising herself stealthily on her elbow, looked furtively at the dinner table.
The necklace lay in its place amidst the bread crumbs and gnawed caramels, and the slow-witted malefactor did not notice it in the heap of leftovers, but only rummaged in the hamper of linens and disturbed the order of Lara’s packing. The tipsy and half-asleep Lara, dimly aware of the situation, felt especially grieved about her work. In indignation, she again wanted to shout and again was unable to open her mouth and move her tongue. Then she gave Ira Lagodina, who was sleeping beside her, a strong nudge of the knee in the pit of the stomach, and when she cried out from pain in a voice not her own, Lara shouted along with her. The thief dropped the bundle of stolen things and hurtled headlong out of the room. Some of the men jumped up, barely understanding what was happening, and rushed after him, but the robber’s trail was already cold.
The commotion that had taken place and the collective discussion of it served as a signal for everyone to get up. The last traces of Lara’s tipsiness vanished. Deaf to their entreaties to let them doze and lie about a little longer, Lara made all the sleepers get up, quickly gave them coffee, and sent them home until they were to meet again in the station at the moment of the train’s departure.
When they were all gone, the work went at a boil. With a quickness peculiar to her, Lara rushed from bundle to bundle, stuffing in pillows, tightening straps, and only begging Pasha and the porter’s wife not to hinder her by helping.
Everything got done properly and on time. The Antipovs were not late. The train set off smoothly, as if imitating the movement of the hats waved to them in farewell. When the waving ceased and from afar came a triple roaring of something (probably “hurrah”), the train picked up speed.
5
For the third day there was foul weather. It was the second autumn of the war. After the successes of the first year, the failures began. Brusilov’s Eighth Army, concentrated in the Carpathians, ready to descend from the passes and invade Hungary, was withdrawing instead, pulled back by a general retreat. We were evacuating Galicia, occupied during the first months of military action.5
Dr. Zhivago, who was formerly known as Yura, but whom people one after another now more often called by his name and patronymic, stood in the corridor of the maternity ward of the gynecological clinic, facing the door through which he had just brought his wife, Antonina Alexandrovna. He had taken his leave and was waiting for the midwife, so as to arrange with her how to inform him in case of need and how he could get in touch with her about Tonya’s health.