PART ONE
ONE
The Five-O'Clock Express
On they went, singing "Rest Eternal, " and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing.
Passers-by made way for the procession, counted the wreaths, and crossed themselves. Some joined in out of curiosity and asked: "Who is being buried? " — "Zhivago," they were told. — "Oh, I see. That's what it is." — "It isn't him. It's his wife." — "Well, it comes to the same thing. May her soul rest in peace. It's a fine funeral."
The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the earth and everything that dwells therein." The priest, with the gesture of a cross, scattered earth over the body of Maria Nikolaievna. They sang "The souls of the righteous." Then a fearful bustle began. The coffin was closed, nailed, and lowered into the ground. Clods of earth rained on the lid as the grave was hurriedly filled by four spades. A little mound formed. A ten-year-old boy climbed on it. Only the state of stupor and insensibility which is gradually induced by all big funerals could have created the impression that he intended to speak over his mother's grave.
He raised his head and from his vantage point absently glanced about the bare autumn landscape and the domes of the monastery. His snub-nosed face became contorted and he stretched out his neck. If a wolf cub had done this, everyone would have thought that it was about to howl. The boy covered his face with his hands and burst into sobs. The wind bearing down on him lashed his hands and face with cold gusts of rain. A man in black with tightly fitting sleeves went up to the grave. This was Nikolai Nikolaievich Vedeniapin, the dead woman's brother and the uncle of the weeping boy; a former priest, he had been unfrocked at his own request. He went up to the boy and led him out of the graveyard.
2
They spent the night at the monastery, where Uncle Nikolai was given a room for old times' sake. It was on the eve of the Feast of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin. The next day they were supposed to travel south to a provincial town on the Volga where Uncle Nikolai worked for the publisher of the local progressive newspaper. They had bought their tickets and their things stood packed in the cell. The station was near by, and they could hear the plaintive hooting of engines shunting in the distance.
It grew very cold that evening. The two windows of the cell were at ground level and looked out on a corner of the neglected kitchen garden, a stretch of the main road with frozen puddles on it, and the part of the churchyard where Maria Nikolaievna had been buried earlier in the day. There was nothing in the kitchen garden except acacia bushes around the walls and a few beds of cabbages, wrinkled and blue with cold. With each blast of wind the leafless acacias danced as if possessed and then lay flat on the path.
During the night the boy, Yura, was wakened by a knocking at the window. The dark cell was mysteriously lit up by a flickering whiteness. With nothing on but his shirt, he ran to the window and pressed his face against the cold glass.
Outside there was no trace of the road, the graveyard, or the kitchen garden, nothing but the blizzard, the air smoking with snow. It was almost as if the snowstorm had caught sight of Yura and, conscious of its power to terrify, roared and howled, doing everything possible to impress him. Turning over and over in the sky, length after length of whiteness unwound over the earth and shrouded it. The blizzard was alone in the world; it had no rival.
When he climbed down from the window sill Yura's first impulse was to dress, run outside, and start doing something. He was afraid that the cabbage patch would be buried so that no one could dig it out and that his mother would helplessly sink deeper and deeper away from him into the ground.
Once more it ended in tears. His uncle woke up, spoke to him of Christ, and tried to comfort him, then yawned and stood thoughtfully by the window. Day was breaking. They began to dress.
