Doctor Zhivago Read Online Free PDF Page B

Duplyanka. It was very beautiful there, and the picturesqueness of the place also reminded him of his mother, who had loved nature and had often taken him on walks with her. Besides that, Yura was pleased that he would again meet Nika Dudorov, a high school boy who lived at Voskoboinikov’s and probably despised him for being two years younger, and who, when greeting him, pulled his hand down hard and bowed his head so low that the hair fell over his forehead, covering half his face.
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    “The vital nerve of the problem of pauperism,” Nikolai Nikolaevich read from the corrected manuscript.
    “I think it would be better to say ‘essence,’ ” Ivan Ivanovich said, and introduced the required correction into the proofs.
    They were working in the semidarkness of the glassed-in terrace. The eye could make out watering cans and gardening tools lying around in disorder. A raincoat was thrown over the back of a broken chair. In a corner stood rubber hip boots with dry mud stuck to them, their tops hanging down to the floor.
    “Meanwhile, the statistics of deaths and births show …” Nikolai Nikolaevich dictated.
    “We need to put in ‘for the year under review,’ ” Ivan Ivanovich said, and wrote it in.
    The terrace was slightly drafty. Pieces of granite lay on the pages of the brochure so that they would not fly away.
    When they finished, Nikolai Nikolaevich hurried to go home.
    “There’s a storm coming. We must be on our way.”
    “Don’t even think of it. I won’t let you. We’ll have tea now.”
    “I absolutely must be in town by evening.”
    “Nothing doing. I won’t hear of it.”
    The fumes of the lighted samovar came drifting from the garden, drowning the scent of nicotiana and heliotrope. Sour cream, berries, and cheesecakes were brought there from the cottage. Suddenly word came that Pavel had gone to bathe in the river and taken the horses with him for a bath. Nikolai Nikolaevich had to give in.
    “Let’s go to the bluff and sit on a bench while they set out tea,” Ivan Ivanovich suggested.
    Ivan Ivanovich, by right of friendship with the rich Kologrivov, occupied two rooms in the steward’s cottage. This little house with its adjoining garden stood in a dark, neglected part of the park with an old semicircular driveway. The driveway was thickly overgrown with grass. There was no movement on it now, and it was used only for hauling dirt and construction trash to the ravine, which served as a dry dump site. A man of progressive ideas and a millionaire who sympathized with revolution, Kologrivov himself was presently abroad with his wife. Only his daughters Nadya and Lipa were living on the estate, with their governess and a small staff of servants.
    The steward’s little garden was set off from the rest of the park, with its ponds and lawns and manor house, by a thick hedge of black viburnum. Ivan Ivanovich and Nikolai Nikolaevich skirted this growth from outside, and, as they walked, the sparrows that swarmed in the viburnum flew out in identical flocks at identical intervals. This filled the hedge with a monotonous noise, as if water were flowing along it through a pipe ahead of Ivan Ivanovich and Nikolai Nikolaevich.
    They walked past the greenhouse, the gardener’s quarters, and some stone ruins of unknown purpose. Their conversation got on to the new young forces in science and literature.
    “You come across talented people,” said Nikolai Nikolaevich. “But now various circles and associations are the fashion. Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness, whether it’s a faith in Soloviev, 6 or Kant, or Marx. Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently. Is there anything in the world that merits faithfulness? Such things are very few. I think we must be faithfulto immortality, that other, slightly stronger name for life. We must keep faith in immortality, we must be faithful to Christ! Ah, you’re wincing, poor fellow. Again you