Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak Read Free Book Online Page B

Voskoboinikov to push his meddling so far? He’s going to teach them!
    And this Nadya! If she’s fifteen, does that mean she has the right to turn up her nose and talk to him like a little boy? He’s going to show her! “I hate her,” he repeated to himself several times. “I’ll kill her! I’ll invite her for a boat ride and drown her.”
    Mama’s a good one, too. Of course, she tricked him and Voskoboinikov when she was leaving. She didn’t go to any Caucasus, she quite simply turned north at the first junction and is most calmly shooting at the police along with the students in Petersburg. While he has to rot alive in this stupid hole. But he would outwit them all. He’d drown Nadya, quit school, and run off to his father in Siberia to raise a rebellion.
    The edge of the pond was densely overgrown with water lilies. The boat cut into their thickness with a dry rustle. Where the growth was torn, the water of the pond showed like the juice of a watermelon in a triangular cutout.
    The boy and girl started picking water lilies. They both took hold of the same tough, rubbery stem, which refused to snap. It pulled them together. The children bumped heads. The boat was drawn to the bank as if by a hook. The stems became entangled and shortened; the white flowers withcenters bright as egg yolk and blood sank underwater, then emerged with water streaming from them.
    Nadya and Nika went on gathering flowers, heeling the boat over more and more and almost lying next to each other on the lowered side.
    “I’m sick of studying,” said Nika. “It’s time to begin life, to earn money, to go among people.”
    “And I was just going to ask you to explain quadratic equations to me. I’m so weak in algebra that it almost ended with me repeating the exam.”
    Nika sensed some sort of barb in these words. Well, of course, she was putting him in his place, reminding him of how young he still was. Quadratic equations! And they had not even caught a whiff of algebra yet.
    Without betraying how wounded he was, he asked with feigned indifference and realizing at the same moment how stupid it was:
    “When you grow up, who are you going to marry?”
    “Oh, that’s still so far off. Probably no one. I haven’t thought about it yet.”
    “Please don’t imagine I’m all that interested.”
    “Then why did you ask?”
    “You’re a fool.”
    They began to quarrel. Nika remembered his morning misogyny. He threatened Nadya that if she did not stop saying insolent things, he would drown her.
    “Just try,” said Nadya.
    He seized her around the waist. A fight started. They lost their balance and fell into the water.
    They both knew how to swim, but the water lilies caught at their arms and legs, and they could not yet feel the bottom. Finally, sinking into the ooze, they clambered out on the bank. Water poured in streams from their shoes and pockets. Nika was particularly tired.
    If this had happened still quite recently, no further back than that spring, then in the given situation, sitting together thoroughly soaked after such a crossing, they would surely have made noise, scolding or laughing.
    But now they were silent and barely breathed, crushed by the absurdity of what had happened. Nadya was indignant and protested silently, while Nika hurt all over, as if his arms and legs had been broken by a stick and his ribs caved in.
    Finally, like a grown-up, Nadya quietly murmured, “Madman!”—and he, in the same grown-up way, said, “Forgive me.”
    They began to walk up towards the house, leaving wet trails behind them like two water barrels. Their way led up the dusty slope, swarming withsnakes, not far from the place where Nika had seen a grass snake in the morning.
    Nika remembered the magic elation of the night, the dawn, and his morning omnipotence, when by his own will he had commanded nature. What should he order it to do now, he wondered. What did he want most of all? He fancied that he wanted most of all to fall into