Ustinya knew a great many folk charms, and never stepped out without putting a spell against fire on the stove and whispering over the keyhole to keep the unclean spirit from slipping in while she was gone. She was a native of Zybushino. They said she was the daughter of the local sorcerer.
Ustinya could be silent for years, but once the first fit came and she burst out, there was no stopping her. Her passion was standing up for justice.
After the fall of the Zybushino republic, the executive committee of Meliuzeevo launched a campaign against the anarchic tendencies coming from there. Every evening on the platz peaceful and poorly attended meetings sprang up of themselves, to which the unoccupied Meliuzeevans would trickle in, as in past times they used to sit together in summer under the open sky by the gates of the fire station. The Meliuzeevo cultural committee encouraged these meetings and sent their own or visiting activists to them in the quality of guides for the discussion. They considered the talking deaf-mute the most crying absurdity of all the tales told about Zybushino, and referred to him especially often in their exposures. But the small artisans of Meliuzeevo, the soldiers’ wives, and the former servants of the nobility were of a different opinion. The talking deaf-mute did not seem to them the height of nonsense. They defended him.
Among the disjointed cries coming from the crowd in his defense, Ustinya’s voice was often heard. At first she did not dare to come forward; womanly modesty held her back. But, gradually plucking up courage, she began ever more boldly to attack the orators, whose opinions were not favored in Meliuzeevo. Thus inconspicuously she became a real speaker from the rostrum.
Through the open windows of the mansion, the monotonous hum of voices on the square could be heard, and on especially quiet evenings even fragments of some of the speeches. Often, when Ustinya spoke, Mademoiselle would run into the room, insist that those present listen, and, distorting the words, imitate her good-naturedly:
“Raspou! Raspou! Sar’s diamon! Zybush! Deaf-mute! Trease! Trease!”4
Mademoiselle was secretly proud of this sharp-tongued virago. The two women had a tender attachment to each other and grumbled at each other endlessly.
5
Yuri Andreevich was gradually preparing for departure, went to homes and offices where he had to say good-bye to someone, and obtained the necessary papers.
Just then a new commissar of that sector of the front stopped in town on his way to the army. The story went that he was still nothing but a boy.
Those were days of preparation for a major new offensive. There was an effort to achieve a change of morale in the mass of soldiers. The troops were tightened up. Military-revolutionary courts were established, and the recently abolished death penalty was reinstated.5
Before departure the doctor had to register with the commandant, whose duties in Meliuzeevo were fulfilled by the military superior—“the district,” as he was known for short.
Ordinarily there was jostling in his quarters. There was not room enough for the babel in the front hall and the yard, and it filled half the street in front of the office windows. It was impossible to push through to the desks. In the noise of hundreds of people, no one understood anything.
On that day there was no reception. In the empty and quiet offices, the clerks, displeased by the ever more complicated procedures, wrote silently, exchanging ironic glances. From the chief’s office came merry voices, as if, having unbuttoned their tunics, they were taking some cool refreshment.
Galiullin came out to the common room, saw Zhivago, and, with a movement of the whole torso, as if preparing to break into a run, invited the doctor to share in the animation that reigned inside.
The doctor had to go to the office anyway for the superior’s signature. He found everything there in the most artistic disorder.
The village sensation and hero of the day, the new commissar, instead of proceeding to his appointed goal, turned up there, in the office, which had no relation to the vital sections of headquarters or operative questions, turned up before the administrators of the military paper kingdom, stood before them, and held forth.
“And here is another of our stars,” said the district, introducing the doctor to the commissar, who did not even glance at him, totally absorbed in himself, while the district, changing his pose only in order to sign the paper the doctor held out to him, assumed it again and, with a courteous movement of the hand, showed Zhivago to the low, soft pouffe that stood in the middle of the room.
Of all those present, only the doctor settled himself in the study like a human being. The others sat one more oddly and casually than the other. The district, his head propped on his hand, reclined Pechorin-like6 at the desk; facing him, his assistant heaped himself up on a bolster of the couch, tucking his legs under as if riding sidesaddle. Galiullin sat astride a reversed chair, embracing the back and laying his head on it, while the young commissar first swung himself up by the arms into the embrasure of the windowsill, then jumped down from it, and, like a spinning top, never for a moment falling silent and moving all the time, paced the office with small, rapid steps. He talked nonstop. The subject was the Biriuchi deserters.
The rumors about the commissar proved true. He was thin and slender, a still quite unfledged youth, who burned like a little candle with the loftiest ideals. He was said to be from a good family, maybe even the son of a senator, and in February had been one of the first to lead his company to the State Duma.7 His last name was Gintze or Gintz; they pronounced it unclearly when he and the doctor were introduced. The commissar had a correct Petersburg enunciation, as distinct as could be, with a slight hint of the Baltic.
He wore a very tight field jacket. He was probably embarrassed at being so young, and, in order to seem older, he made a wry, peevish face and put on an affected stoop. For that he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding breeches and hunched his shoulders in their new, stiff epaulettes, which in fact gave his figure a simplified cavalryman’s look, so that it could have been drawn from shoulders to feet in two lines converging downwards.
“There’s a Cossack regiment stationed on the railway line several stops from here. Red, devoted. Call them in, the rebels will be surrounded, and that will be the end of it. The commander of the corps insists they should be speedily disarmed,” the district informed the commissar.
“Cossacks? Never!” the commissar flared up. “That’s some sort of 1905, some prerevolutionary reminiscence! Here we’re at opposite poles from you, here your generals have outsmarted themselves!”
“Nothing’s been done yet. It’s all just a plan, a suggestion.”
“We have an agreement with the military command not to interfere in operational instructions. I don’t cancel the Cossacks. Let it be. But I for my part will undertake the steps prompted by good sense. Do they have a bivouac there?”
“Hard to say. A camp, in any case. Fortified.”
“Excellent. I want to go to them. Show me this menace, these forest bandits. They may be rebels, even deserters, but they’re the people, gentlemen, that’s what you forget. And the people are children, you must know that, you must know their psychology. Here a special approach is needed. You must know how to touch their best, most sensitive strings, so that they begin to sound. I’ll go to them in their clearing and have a heart-to-heart talk with them. You’ll see in what exemplary order they return to their abandoned positions. Want to bet? You don’t believe me?”
“It’s doubtful. But God grant it.”
“I’ll tell them: ‘Brothers, look at me. See how I, an only son, the hope of the family, with no regrets, sacrificed my name, my position, my parents’ love, in order to gain freedom for you, the like of which no other people in the world enjoys. I did it, and so did many young men, to say nothing of the old guard of our glorious predecessors, of the hard-labor populists and the People’s Will Schlüsselburgers.8 Were we doing it for ourselves? Did we need that? You’re no longer rank-and-file soldiers as before, but warriors of the world’s first revolutionary army. Ask yourselves honestly, are you worthy of that lofty title? At a time when your motherland, bleeding profusely, makes a last effort to shake off the enemy that has twined around her like a hydra, you let yourselves be stupefied by a gang of obscure adventurers and turned into irresponsible riffraff, a mob of unbridled scoundrels, glutted with freedom, for whom whatever they’re given is always too little, just like that pig—sit him at a table and he’ll put his feet on it—oh, I’ll get to them, I’ll shame them!”