“Nearly all the seven deadly sins. They disbanded their poor peasants’ committee, that’s one for you; they opposed the decree on supplying horses to the Red Army—and, notice, they’re all Tartars, horse people, that’s two; and they didn’t obey the order about the mobilization, that’s three—so you can see.”
“Yes, yes. It’s all clear, then. And for that they got it from the artillery?”
“Precisely.”
“From an armored train?”
“Naturally.”
“Regrettable. Deserving of pity. However, it’s none of our business.”
“Besides, it’s a thing of the past. But my news won’t gladden you any. You’ll be staying here for a day or two.”
“Stop joking. I’m not here for just anything at alclass="underline" I’ve got draft reinforcements for the front. I’m not used to standing around.”
“This is no joke. It’s a snowdrift, you’ll see for yourself. A blizzard raged for a week along this whole section. Buried it. And there’s nobody to shovel. Half the village has run away. I’ve set the rest to work, but they don’t manage.”
“Ah, confound you all! I’m finished, finished! Well, what to do now?”
“We’ll clear it somehow and you’ll go on.”
“Big drifts?”
“Not very, I wouldn’t say. For stretches. The blizzard went slantwise, at an angle to the tracks. The hardest part’s in the middle. There’s a mile and a half of hollow. We’ll really suffer there. The place is packed solid. But further on it’s not bad, taiga—the forest sheltered it. The same before the hollow, there’s an open stretch, nothing terrible. The wind blew it away.”
“Ah, devil take you all! What a nightmare! I’ll get the whole train on their feet, they can all help.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“Only don’t touch the sailors and the Red Army soldiers. There’s a whole trainload of labor conscripts. Along with freely traveling people, it’s as much as seven hundred.”
“That’s more than enough. As soon as the shovels are delivered, we’ll set them to it. There aren’t enough shovels. We’ve sent to the neighboring villages. There’ll be some.”
“God, what a disaster! Do you think we’ll manage?”
“Sure. Pull together, they say, and you take cities. It’s the railway. An artery. For pity’s sake.”
15
Clearing the line took three days. All the Zhivagos, including Nyusha, took an active part in it. This was the best time of their trip.
The country had something reserved, not fully told, about it. It gave off a breath of Pugachevism, in Pushkin’s perception of it, of Asiatic, Aksakovian description.5
The mysteriousness of the corner was completed by the destruction and by the reticence of the few remaining inhabitants, who were frightened, avoided the passengers on the train, and did not communicate with each other for fear of denunciations.
People were led out to work by categories, not all kinds simultaneously. The work area was cordoned off by the guards.
The line was cleared from both ends at once, by separate brigades set up in different places. Between the freed sections there remained to the very end piles of untouched snow, which separated the adjacent groups from each other. These piles were removed only at the last moment, once the clearing had been completed over the whole required stretch.
Clear, frosty days set in. They spent them in the open air, returning to the car only for the night. They worked in short shifts, which caused no fatigue, because there were too many workers and not enough shovels. The untiring work afforded nothing but pleasure.
The place where the Zhivagos went to dig was open, picturesque. The country at this point first descended to the east of the tracks, and then went up in an undulating slope as far as the horizon.
On a hill stood a solitary house, exposed on all sides. It was surrounded by a garden, which probably bushed out in the summer, but now its spare, frost-covered tracery did not protect the building.
The shroud of snow leveled and rounded everything. But, judging by the main irregularities of the slope, which it was unable to conceal with its drifts, in spring a brook, flowing into the pipe of the viaduct under the railway, probably ran from above down the meandering gully, now thickly covered by the deep snow, like a child hiding its head under the heap of a down coverlet.
Was anyone living in the house, or was it standing empty and falling to ruin, set down on a list by the local or district land committee? Where were its former inhabitants, and what had happened to them? Had they escaped abroad? Had they perished at the hands of the peasants? Or, having earned a good name, had they settled in the district town as educated experts? Had Strelnikov spared them, if they stayed until recently, or had they been included in his summary justice along with the kulaks?6
The house on the hill piqued his curiosity and kept mournfully silent. But questions were not asked then, and no one answered them. And the sun lit up the snowy smoothness with a blinding white brilliance. How regular were the pieces the shovel cut from it! What dry, diamond-like sparkles spilled from the cuts! How it reminded him of the far-off days of childhood, when, in a light-colored hood trimmed with braid and a lambskin coat with hooks tightly sewn into the black, curly wool, little Yura had cut pyramids and cubes, cream cakes, fortresses, and cave dwellings from the snow in the courtyard, which was just as blinding. Ah, how tasty it was to live in the world then, how delightful and delicious everything around him was!
But even this three-day life in the open air produced an impression of satiety. And not without reason. In the evening the workers were allotted hot, freshly baked white bread, brought from no one knew where, on no one knew whose orders. The bread had a delicious glazed crust that was cracked on the sides, and a thick, superbly browned bottom crust with little bits of coal baked into it.
16
They came to love the ruins of the station, as one can grow attached to a temporary shelter during an excursion in the snowy mountains. They kept the memory of its situation, the external appearance of the buildings, certain details of the damage.
They returned to the station in the evening, when the sun was setting. As if out of faithfulness to the past, it continued to set in the same place, behind the old birch that grew just by the telegraphist’s office window.
The outer wall at that place had collapsed inward and blocked up the room. But the cave-in had not harmed the back corner of the room, facing an intact window. There everything was preserved: the coffee-colored wallpaper, the tile stove with a round vent under a brass cover on a chain, and a list of the inventory in a black frame on the wall.
Having sunk to the ground, the sun, just as before the disaster, reached the tiles of the stove, lit up the coffee-colored wallpaper with a russet heat, and hung the shadows of birch branches on the wall like a woman’s shawl.
In another part of the building, there was a boarded-up door to a waiting room with an inscription of the following content, done probably in the first days of the February revolution or shortly before it:
“In view of medications and bandaging supplies, our respected patients are asked not to worry temporarily. For the reason observed, I am sealing the door, of which I hereby give notice. Senior medical assistant of Ust-Nemda so-and-so.”
When the last snow, which had been left in mounds between the cleared sections, was shoveled away, the whole railway opened out and became visible, straight, like an arrow flying off into the distance. Along the sides of it lay white heaps of cleared snow, bordered for the entire length by two walls of black pine forest.
As far as the eye could see, groups of people with shovels stood in various places along the rails. They were seeing each other in full muster for the first time and were surprised at their great numbers.