17
It became known that the train would leave in a few hours, even though it was late and night was approaching. Before its departure, Yuri Andreevich and Antonina Alexandrovna went for the last time to admire the beauty of the cleared line. There was no one on the tracks now. The doctor and his wife stood for a while, looked into the distance, exchanged two or three remarks, and turned back to their freight car.
On the way back they heard the angry, raucous cries of two quarreling women. They recognized them at once as the voices of Ogryzkova and Tyagunova. The two women were walking in the same direction as the doctor and his wife, from the head to the tail of the train, but along the opposite side of it, facing the station, while Yuri Andreevich and Antonina Alexandrovna were walking on the forest side. Between the two pairs, concealing them from each other, stretched the unbroken wall of cars. The women almost never came abreast of the doctor and Antonina Alexandrovna, but either got way ahead of them or lagged far behind.
Both were in great agitation. Their strength failed them every moment. As they went, their legs probably either sank deep in the snow or gave way under them, judging by their voices, which, owing to the unevenness of their gait, now rose to a shout, now fell to a whisper. Evidently, Tyagunova was chasing Ogryzkova and, overtaking her, may have brought her fists into play. She showered her rival with choice abuse, which, on the melodious lips of such a peahen and grande dame sounded a hundred times more shameless than coarse and unmusical male abuse.
“Ah, you whore, ah, you slattern,” shouted Tyagunova. “You can’t take a step but she’s there, swishing her skirts on the floor, goggling her eyes! So my oaf’s not enough for you, you bitch, you’ve got to gawk at a child’s soul, spreading your tail, you’ve got to corrupt a young one.”
“So it means you’re Vasenka’s lawful one, too?”
“I’ll show you who’s lawful, you gob, you plague! You won’t escape me alive, don’t lead me into sin!”
“Hey, hey, stop swinging! Keep your hands to yourself, hellcat! What do you want from me?”
“I want you to drop dead, you lousy trollop, mangy she-cat, shameless eyes!”
“There’s no talking about me. Sure, I’m a bitch and a she-cat, everybody knows that. But you, you’ve got you a title. Born in a ditch, married in a gateway, made pregnant by a rat, gave birth to a hedgehog … Help, help, good people! Aie, aie, she’ll do me to death, the murderous hag! Aie, save a poor girl, protect an orphan …”
“Quick, let’s go. I can’t listen, it’s disgusting,” Antonina Alexandrovna began hurrying her husband. “It won’t end well.”
18
Suddenly everything changed, the place and the weather. The plain ended, the road went between mountains, through hills and high country. The north wind that had blown all the time recently ceased. Warmth breathed from the south, as from a stove.
The forests here grew in terraces on the hillsides. When the path of the railway crossed them, the train first had to go up steeply, then change in the middle to a sloping descent. The train crept groaning into the dense forest and barely dragged itself along, like an old forester on foot leading a crowd of passengers who look around on all sides and observe everything.
But there was nothing to look at yet. In the depths of the forest there were sleep and peace, as in winter. Only rarely did some bushes and trees, with a rustle, free their lower branches from the gradually subsiding snow, as if taking off a yoke or unbuttoning a collar.
Yuri Andreevich was overcome by sleepiness. All those days he lay on his upper berth, slept, woke up, reflected, and listened. But as yet there was nothing to listen to.
19
While Yuri Andreevich slept his fill, spring thawed and melted all the masses of snow that had fallen on Moscow the day of their departure and had gone on falling throughout the journey; all the snow that they had spent three days digging and shoveling in Ust-Nemda and that lay in immense and thick layers over thousand-mile expanses.
At first the snow melted from inside, quietly and secretively. But when the Herculean labors were half done, it became impossible to conceal them any longer. The miracle came to light. Water ran from under the shifted shroud of snow and set up a clamor. Impassable forest thickets roused themselves. Everything in them awoke.
The water had room for a spree. It rushed down the cliffs, overflowed the ponds, flooded vast areas. The forest was soon filled with its noise, steam, and haze. Streams snaked their way through the thickets, getting mired down and sinking into the snow that cramped their movement, flowed hissing over the flat places, and dropped down, scattering in a watery spray. The earth could not absorb any more moisture. From a dizzying height, almost from the clouds, it was drunk up by the roots of age-old firs, at whose feet it was churned into puffs of brownish white foam, drying like beer foam on a drinker’s lips.
The intoxication of spring went to the sky’s head, and it grew bleary from fumes and covered itself with clouds. Low, feltlike clouds with drooping edges drifted over the forest, and warm cloudbursts, smelling of dirt and sweat, poured down through them, washing the last pieces of pierced, black, icy armor from the earth.
Yuri Andreevich woke up, pulled himself over to the square window, from which the frame had been removed, propped himself on his elbow, and began to listen.
20
With the approach of the mining region, the country became more populated, the stages shorter, the stations more frequent. The passengers changed less rarely. More people got on and off at small intermediate stops. Those who were traveling for shorter distances did not settle for long and did not go to sleep, but found places at night somewhere by the doors in the middle of the freight car, talked among themselves in low voices about local affairs, comprehensible only to them, and got off at the next junction or way station.
From some remarks dropped by the local public, who had replaced each other in the freight car over the past three days, Yuri Andreevich concluded that the Whites were gaining the upper hand in the north and either had taken or were about to take Yuriatin. Besides, if his hearing had not deceived him and it was not some namesake of his comrade in the Meliuzeevo hospital, the White forces in that direction were under the command of Galiullin, who was well-known to Yuri Andreevich.
Yuri Andreevich did not say a word to his family about this talk, so as not to upset them uselessly while the rumors remained unconfirmed.
21
Yuri Andreevich woke up at the beginning of the night from a vague feeling of happiness welling up in him, which was so strong that it roused him. The train was standing at some night stop. The station was surrounded by the glassy twilight of a white night. This bright darkness was saturated with something subtle and powerful. It bore witness to the vastness and openness of the place. It suggested that the junction was situated on a height with a wide and free horizon.
On the platform, talking softly, shadows went past the freight car with inaudible steps. That also touched Yuri Andreevich. He perceived in the careful steps and voices a respect for the hour of night and a concern for the sleepers on the train as might have been in the old days, before the war.
The doctor was mistaken. There was the same hubbub and stamping of boots on the platform as everywhere else. But there was a waterfall in the vicinity. Its breathing out of freshness and freedom extended the limits of the white night. It had filled the doctor with a feeling of happiness in his sleep. The constant, never ceasing noise of its falling water reigned over all the sounds at the junction and imparted to them a deceptive semblance of silence.
Not divining its presence, but lulled by the mysterious resilience of the air of the place, the doctor fell fast asleep again.