The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers (7 page)

Read The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers Online

Authors: Boris Pasternak

On the tenth day after their return, when lessons were resumed after an interruption of over three weeks, Zhenya learned the rest from her tutor.

After lunch, the doctor packed his things and left; she asked him to say hello to the house where he had examined her in the spring, and to all the streets and the Kama. He expressed the hope that they wouldn't have to call him from Perm again. She accompanied him to the gate, the man who frightened her so much the morning after her return from the Defendovs, when Mama was asleep and she could not see her.

When she had asked the doctor what was wrong with Mama, he had started by reminding her of the night when her parents were at the theater. “After the show, they went out and the stallionâ”

“Vykormish?”

“Yes, if that's his name ... Vykormish started to lash out, reared up and trampled a passer-by.”

“Trampled him to death?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“And Mamaâ”

“Your Mama had a nervous shock.” He smiled and tried to explain his Latin phrase, “
partus praematurus
,” in such a way that she would understand.

“And then my little dead brother was born?”

“Who told you that? Yes.”

“Where? Here? Or was he already dead? No, don't tell me. Oh, how horrible! Now I understand. He was already dead, or else I would have heard him cry. I was reading into the night. I would have heard him. But when was he alive? Doctor, can such a thing be? I even went into the bedroom. He was dead. Definitely!”

What a piece of luck that she had made her observation at the Defendovs yesterday morning and that the horrible business in front of the theater happened the week before last. What a piece of luck that she recognized him yesterday. She thought confusedly that if she hadn't seen him, she would have definitely believed, after the doctor's story, that it was the lame man who had been trampled outside the theater.

And now the doctor was gone, after being their guest for such a long time, almost a member of the family. In the evening, the tutor came. It was washday. In the kitchen the linen was being put through the mangle. The hoar frost melted on the windowpanes, the garden came closer to the window, got tangled in the lace curtains, but reached as far as the table. The rumble of the mangle disturbed the conversation. Dikikh, like everybody else, thought she had changed. She noticed a change in him, too.

“Why are you so sad?”

“Do I look sad? Well, I have lost a friend.”

“So you are sad, too. So many dead peopleâand all of them so suddenly.” She sighed.

When he wanted to go on with the lesson, something inexplicable happened. Suddenly the girl began to think about how many people were dead, and the reassurance she had gained from the lamp in the room across from the Defendovs began to fade. “Wait! You were once in the tobacconist's shop, shortly before Negarat left. I saw you with somebody. Was that he?” She was afraid to say “Tsvetkov.”

Dikikh was startled by the inflection in her voice. He recalled the incident and remembered that he had, indeed, been there to buy some papers and to get the collected works of Turgenev for Mrs. Luvers. Yes, that's right, he had been there with the dead man.

She jerked convulsively and tears sprang into her eyes. But she had not found out the most important thing. When Dikikh then told her, between long pauses punctuated by the creaking of the mangle, what a splendid young fellow he had been, from such a good family, he lit a cigarette. Zhenya realized that only a small hesitation stood between what the teacher was saying and what the doctor had told her. And when he had spoken a few words more, among them the word “theater,” she gave a piercing scream and ran from the room.

Dikikh stood listening. There was no sound in the whole house beyond the rumbling of the mangle. He stood stiff as a stork, his neck stretched and one leg lifted to go to her aid. He went in search for the girl, believing there was no one at home and that she must have fainted. While he collided in the dark with strange objects of wood, wool and metal, Zhenya crouched in a corner and wept. He kept on searching and fumbling about, in his thoughts already lifting her unconscious body from the carpet, and winced when a tear-choked voice cried just beneath his elbow: “I'm here. Look out, there's a glass cabinet there. Wait for me in the schoolroom.

The curtains and the star-bright winter night outside the window reached to the floor, while at the bottom, buried to the waist in heaps of snow and dragging chains of branches over the snow, the dreaming trees lifted toward the bright light in the window. And somewhere beyond the wall, the mangle rumbled, working on bed sheets. “How can this excessive sensitivity be explained?” the teacher wondered. “Obviously the dead man had a special meaning for the girl. She's deeply upset.” He had explained periodical fractions to a child; but a grown girl, almost a young woman, had sent him into the schoolroom ... and all this in a single month? Obviously, the dead man had made a deep, inexpungible impression upon this young woman. Impressions of this kind have a name. How strange! He had given her lessons every second day and had noticed nothing. She was extremely brave, and he was deeply sorry for her. But when would she cry herself out and come in to him? Everyone was probably out. He felt genuine sympathy for her. It was a night to remember!

He was mistaken. The impression he had in mind had nothing to do with it. But he wasn't entirely wrong. The impression that was hiding behind all this in Zhenya's mind was indeed inexpungible. It was deeper even than he believed. The girl couldn't control this impression because it was important and vital to her; its importance lay in the fact that for the first time another human being had entered her life, the third person, without a name or with only a token name, who aroused neither hatred nor love, but what the Ten Commandments mean when they say: “Thou shalt not kill... . Thou shalt not steal... .” “Thou, individual and living one,” they say, “shalt not do to the unknown and the other what thou dost not wish done unto thyself.” Dikikh was much mistaken when he thought that impressions of this kind have a name. They have none.

Zhenya cried because she believed she was responsible for all this. After all, she had brought him into the family on the day she had seen him in the other people's garden. And after she had unnecessarily, uselessly and senselessly noticed him, she had met him time and again, always both directly and indirectly, and against all probability, like the last time.

When she saw the book Dikikh took from the shelf she puckered her brow and declared: “No, I won't answer questions today. Put it back, please. I'm sorry. Please forgive me.”

And without a word, the same hand thrust Lermontov back into the disorderly row of Russian classics.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Translated by I. Langnas

Cover design by Andrea Worthington

ISBN: 978-1-4976-7587-2

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