The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers by Boris Pasternak Page B

stand gleamed in fat and warmth. This glow and warmth entered the mouths that had been scoured with cheap rotgut. The fat burned their gullets. And on the way down, some of it escaped their wheezing lungs. Was it maybe this that warmed the street?
    Just as suddenly the street would become empty. Empty peasant sledges drove by, broad flat sledges with bearded men. They were sunk into their furs, which hugged their shoulders like clumsy bears. The sledges left behind sad wisps of hay and the sweet, slow-fading sound of distant sleigh-bells. The merchants disappeared at the turning behind a row of young birches, which from a distance looked like a long picket fence.
    Crows came here that had flown croaking over the Luvers’ house. But here they did not croak. They only let out a cry, beat their wings and perched on fences, until suddenly, as if by a sign, they flew to the trees and sat nudging one another on the bare branches. Then one feels, how late it is, how late it is in the whole wide world. So late no watch can tell the time.
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    Toward the end of the second week, on a Thursday, she saw him again quite early in the morning. Lisa’s bed was empty. When Zhenya woke up, she heard the garden gate click shut behind her. She got up and went to the window without making a light. It was still quite dark. In the sky, in the branches of the trees and in the movements of the dogs there seemed to be the same oppressive heaviness as yesterday. This dismal weather had now lasted three days and there seemed no force that could lift it from the softening snow, as one lifts a cast-iron kettle from a rough shelf.
    In the window opposite, a lamp was burning. Two bright bands of light fell beneath a horse and struck his shaggy fetlocks. Shadows glided over the snow, and then the sleeves of a ghost crossed his fur-covered arms, cast by the light flickering behind the curtain. The horse stood motionless, dreaming.
    Then she saw him. She recognized him immediately from his silhouette in the window. The lame man lifted up the lamp and went out with it. The two bands of light moved behind him, became shorter, then lengthened.
    The sleighs flashed into motion and even more suddenly stormed off into the darkness, as if they had gone to the steps in the rear of the house.
    Strange that Tsvetkov should find her here in the suburb.
    Soon the lamp reappeared and the light slid across the curtains; it began to move back again, until suddenly it came to a halt behind the curtain on the window sill, from which he had taken it.
    That was on Thursday. And on Friday they finally came to take her home.

9
    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 stallion—”
    â€œVykormish?”
    â€œYes, if that’s his name ... Vykormish started to lash out, reared up and trampled a passer-by.”
    â€œTrampled him to death?”
    â€œYes, unfortunately.”
    â€œAnd Mama—”
    â€œYour Mama had a nervous shock.” He smiled and tried to explain his Latin phrase, “ partus praematurus ,” in such a way that she would understand.
    â€œAnd then my little dead brother was born?”
    â€œWho told you that? Yes.”
    â€œWhere? Here? Or was he already dead? No, don’t tell me. Oh, how horrible! Now I