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13

When the secret train was formed and started backing into the station from behind the depot, all the people crowded on the lawn rushed to intercept the slowly moving cars. People came rolling off the hillocks like peas and ran up the embankment. Pushing each other aside, they leaped onto the buffers and footboards in motion, while others climbed through the windows and onto the roofs of the cars. The still-moving train was filled up in no time, and when it reached the platform it was jam packed and hung from top to bottom with passengers.

By a miracle, the doctor squeezed himself onto a rear platform and then, in a still more incomprehensible way, penetrated into the corridor of the car.

And in the corridor he remained throughout the entire trip, and got to Sukhinichi sitting on his things on the floor.

The storm clouds had long since dispersed. Over the fields flooded by the burning rays of the sun, the ceaseless chirring of grasshoppers rolled from end to end, drowning out the noise of the train’s movement.

The passengers standing at the windows blocked the light for all the others. They cast long shadows, folded double and triple on the floor, the benches, the partitions. The shadows did not fit into the car. They were pushed out the windows opposite and ran skipping along the other side of the embankment, together with the shadow of the whole rolling train.

All around people jabbered, bawled songs, cursed, and played cards. At the stops, the bedlam inside was joined by the noise of the crowd besieging the train from outside. The din of voices reached the deafening level of a sea storm. And, as at sea, in the middle of a stop there would suddenly fall an inexplicable silence. One could hear hurried steps on the platform along the whole length of the train, scurrying about and arguing by the baggage car, separate words spoken by people seeing someone off in the distance, the quiet clucking of hens, and the rustling of trees in the station’s front garden.

Then, like a telegram received on the way, or like greetings from Meliuzeevo, a fragrance floated through the window, familiar, as if addressed to Yuri Andreevich. It manifested itself with quiet superiority somewhere to one side and came from a height unusual for wild or garden flowers.

The doctor could not get to the window owing to the crush. But even without looking, he could see those trees in his imagination. They probably grew quite nearby, calmly reaching towards the roofs of the cars with their spreading branches, the foliage dusty from railroad commotion and thick as night, finely sprinkled with the waxy little stars of glimmering flower clusters.

This was repeated for the whole way. Everywhere there were noisy crowds. Everywhere there were blossoming lindens.

The ubiquitous wafting of this smell seemed to precede the northbound train, like a rumor spread to all junctions, watch houses, and little stations, which the travelers found everywhere, already established and confirmed.

14

At night in Sukhinichi an obliging porter of the old stamp took the doctor to some unlit tracks and put him through the rear door of a second-class car of some train that had just arrived and did not figure on the schedule.

The porter had no sooner opened the rear door with a pass key and thrown the doctor’s things onto the platform, than he had to face a brief fight with the conductor, who immediately wanted to get rid of them, but, mollified by Yuri Andreevich, he effaced himself and vanished into thin air.

The mysterious train was of special purpose and went rather quickly, with brief stops and some sort of guard. The cars were quite vacant.

The compartment Zhivago entered was brightly lit by a guttering candle on a little table, its flame wavering in the stream of air from a half-lowered window.

The candle belonged to the sole passenger in the compartment. He was a fair-haired youth, probably very tall, judging by his long arms and legs. They flexed extremely freely at the joints, like poorly fastened component parts of folding objects. The young man was sitting on the seat by the window, leaning back casually. When Zhivago appeared, he politely rose and changed his half-reclining position to a more appropriate sitting one.

Under his seat lay something like a floor rag. Suddenly the end of the rag moved and a flop-eared hound bustled herself up and came out. She sniffed Yuri Andreevich, looked him over, and started running from corner to corner of the compartment, her legs flexing as freely as her lanky master’s when he crossed them. Soon, at the latter’s command, she bustled herself back under the seat and assumed her former look of a crumpled floor-polishing cloth.

Only then did Yuri Andreevich notice a double-barreled shotgun in a case, a leather cartridge belt, and a game bag tightly stuffed with shot birds, hanging on hooks in the compartment.

The young man was a hunter.

He was distinguished by an extreme garrulousness and with an amiable smile hastened to get into conversation with the doctor. As he did so he looked the doctor in the mouth all the while, not figuratively but in the most direct sense.

The young man turned out to have an unpleasantly high voice, at its highest verging on a metallic falsetto. Another oddity: by all tokens a Russian, he pronounced one vowel, namely the u, in a most peculiar way. He softened it like the French u or the German ü. Moreover, this defective u was very hard for him to get out; he articulated its sound more loudly than all the others, straining terribly, with a slight shriek. Almost at the very beginning, he took Yuri Andreevich aback with the following phrase:

“Only yesterday morning I was shüting wüdcock.”

At moments, when he obviously watched himself more carefully, he overcame this irregularity, but he had only to forget himself and it would creep in again.

“What is this bedevilment?” thought Zhivago. “It’s something familiar, I’ve read about it. As a doctor, I ought to know, but it’s skipped my mind. Some phenomenon of the brain that provokes a speech defect. But this mewling is so funny, it’s hard to remain serious. Conversation is utterly impossible. I’d better climb up and get in bed.”

And so the doctor did. When he began to settle himself on the upper berth, the young man asked if he should put out the candle, which might bother Yuri Andreevich. The doctor gratefully accepted the offer. His neighbor put out the light. It became dark.

The window in the compartment was half lowered.

“Shouldn’t we close the window?” asked Yuri Andreevich. “Aren’t you afraid of thieves?”

His neighbor made no reply. Yuri Andreevich repeated the question very loudly, but again the man did not respond.

Then Yuri Andreevich lit a match so as to see what his neighbor was up to, whether he had left the compartment in such a brief space of time, or was asleep, which would be still more incredible.

But no, he was sitting open-eyed in his place and smiled when the doctor hung his head down.

The match went out. Yuri Andreevich lit another and by its light repeated for the third time what he wished to ascertain.

“Do as you think best,” the hunter answered at once. “I’ve got nothing worth stealing. However, it would be better not to close it. It’s stuffy.”

“Fancy that,” thought Zhivago. “The strange fellow’s apparently used to talking only in full light. And how clearly he pronounced it all just now, without his irregularities! Inconceivable to the mind!”