Boris Pasternak - The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes. These idiots, they can’t even drive a shoe nail properly.”

“Well…”

“Wait, I can’t find it… I know the lame man… Well, thank God!”

“Tom?”

“No, thank God. There’s a hole in the shoe lining, that’s what it is. I can’t help it now. Come on. Wait, I must brush my knees. All right, let’s go.

“I know him. He’s staying with the Akhmedianovs. A friend of Negarat. Remember? I told you about him. He entertains people. They drink all night and there is light in the windows. You remember—when I stayed the night with the Akhmedianovs, on Samuel’s birthday. He is one of those. You remember now?”

She remembered. She realized that she had been mistaken, that she hadn’t seen the lame man for the first time in Perm as she had thought. But she still felt as if she had seen him there. With this feeling nagging her, she explored her memory for everything she could remember from Perm, walking silently behind her brother. She made certain movements, took hold of something, made a turn and found herself in semidarkness among counters, boxes, shelves, servile bowings… and Seryozha was talking.

The bookseller, who also dealt in all kinds of tobacco, didn’t have the book they asked for. But he tried to mollify them by assuring them that the Turgenev they ordered had been sent out from Moscow and was on the way and he had just this minute spoken of it to Mr. Tsvetkov, their tutor. His ingeniousness and his mistake amused the children; they said good-by and left the store empty-handed.

As they were going out, Zhenya asked her brother, “Seryozha, I always forget. Do you know the street you can see from our woodpile?”

“No, I’ve never been there.”

“That’s not so. I’ve seen you there myself.”

“On the woodpile? No, you—”

“No, not on the logs, but in the street behind the Cherep-Savich garden.”

“Oh, you mean that! Yes, that’s right. Behind the garden, way back, beyond the sheds and firewood. Wait a minute. Is that our yard—that yard? Ours? That’s good. When I walk that way I always feel like climbing on the woodpile, and from there onto the storehouse. I’ve seen a ladder there. Is it really our yard?”

“Seryozha, will you show me the way there?”

“What? But if that’s our yard, why should I show it to you? You yourself—”

“Seryozha, you don’t understand again. I mean the street, but you’re talking about the yard. Show me how to get there. Will you show me, Seryozha?”

“I don’t understand you again. We’ll go there right now.

“Really?”

“Yes. And the coppersmith… at the corner?”

“Also the dusty street…”

“Yes, that’s just what you’re asking for. And the Cherep-Savich garden is at the end on the right. Don’t loiter, or we’ll be late for dinner. We’re having crayfish today.”

They spoke of other things. The Akhmedianovs had promised to show him how to solder a samovar. And in answer to her question about what solder was made of, it was a metal, like tin, quite dull. You used it to solder tins and repair kettles and the Akhmedianovs could do all sorts of things like that.

They had to hurry crossing the road or a coach would have held them up. Therefore they forgot, Zhenya her question about the little-used side street and Seryozha his promise to show it to her. They passed the door of the coppersmith’s shop, and when they breathed in the warm, fatty exhalation that is given off during the cleaning of copper handles and candlesticks, Zhenya suddenly remembered where she had seen the lame man and the three others and what they had done. A minute later, she knew that the Tsvetkov of whom the bookseller had spoken was the limping man.

Negarat left in the evening. Their father accompanied him to the train. He came back from the station late at night, and his arrival set off a loud, long-lasting hubbub in the porter’s lodge. Somebody came out with lanterns and called somebody else. It was raining buckets, and the geese, whom someone had let out, were cackling frantically.

A growly, shaky morning began. The wet, gray street bounced as if it were made of rubber. The nasty rain splashed mud, the coaches bounced on the paving stones and spit mud at pedestrians in overshoes.

Zhenya was returning home. Reverberations of the night’s row in the yard could still be heard in the morning; she was not allowed to use the coach. She had said she wanted to buy some hemp seed and went to see her friend on foot. But halfway there, she realized that she could not find her way from the business quarter to the Defendovs’ street and turned back. Then it also occurred to her that it was too early, Lisa would still be at school. She was wet to the skin and shivering. The wind grew stronger. But it grew no lighter. A cold, white light fell into the street and lay like leaves on the wet pavement. At the end of the square, behind the threebranched street lamp, dull, huddling clouds hurried in panic toward the town.

The man engaged in moving was either very untidy or impractical. The furniture from his modest workroom was not properly loaded on the cart, but was simply arranged in the same way it had stood in the room, and the castors on the armchairs which peeped from under the white covers glided over the planks as over a dancing floor with every jolt of the cart. The covers shimmered snow-white although they were soaked through. They hit the eye so glaringly that everything else took on their brightness: the paving stones pounded by the water, the shivering pools of water under the fences, the birds flying from the stables, the pieces of lead and even the fig tree in its bucket, which rocked to and fro and bowed clumsily from the cart to all the hurrying passers-by.

The cart was grotesque, and automatically attracted attention. A peasant was walking beside it. The cart listed sharply to one side and moved forward at a walking pace. And over all its groaning plunder hung the wet, leaden word “town”; it brought to life in the girl’s head a number of images as fleeting as the cold October brilliance which flew along the street and fell upon the water.

“He will catch a cold when he unpacks his things,” she thought of the unknown owner. And she imagined a man, any man, as he moved about, staggering and with uneven steps, arranging his belongings in his new lodging. She saw vividly in her imagination his gestures and movements, especially the way he took a rag, limped around the bucket and wiped the hoar frost from the leaves of the fig tree. And she saw him catching the sniffles, the shakes, a fever. He would certainly catch a cold. Zhenya imagined all this vividly. The cart rumbled down the hill, toward the Isset. Zhenya had to turn left.

It probably came from the heavy steps. The tea rose and fell in the glass on the bedside table. The slice of lemon floating in the tea rose and fell. The sun streaks on the carpet rocked to and fro. They swayed like columns, like rows of syrup bottles in shops with signboards showing a Turk smoking a pipe.

Showing a Turk… smoking… a pipe. Smoking… a pipe…

It probably came from the heavy steps. The sick girl went back to sleep.

Zhenya became ill the day after Negarat’s departure, the day she learned on her walk that Aksinya had given birth to a boy, the day she imagined, when she saw the furniture cart, that its owner was threatened with rheumatism. For two weeks she lay in fever, covered with perspiration, sprinkled all over with red pepper which burned her and glued her eyelids and the corners of her mouth together. The perspiration drove her to distraction, and the awareness of shapeless statues mingled with the feeling of being stung. As if the flame that caused her to swell had been poured into her by a summer wasp. As if the sting, a thin gray bristle, had remained stuck in her and she tried to get it out in all possible ways—sometimes from her violet cheekbones, sometimes from the inflamed shoulder that groaned under the nightdress, sometimes from other places.