The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers by Boris Pasternak Read Free Book Online Page A

were made up of broken pieces of chalk, cheating, buckshot, rattling school benches, vulgar swearwords and red-cheeked, snub-nosed self-confidence. Seryozha befriended them in August. By the end of September the boy no longer had a character of his own. This was in the nature of things. To be a typical high school boy, and the type he later becomes, means to join the camp of the Akhmedianovs. And Seryozha wanted nothing more passionately than to be a typical high school boy. Luvers placed no obstacles in the way of his son’s friendships. He noticed no change in the boy, and had he noticed any, he would have ascribed it to adolescence. Besides, he had more serious worries. He had suspected for some time that he suffered from an incurable disease.

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    She was sad, but not for his sake, although everybody agreed how terribly annoying and awkward it must be. Negarat was too wise even for her parents, and all that the parents felt about foreigners transmitted itself indistinctly to the children, as to spoiled pets. Zhenya was sad only because things were no longer the same, because only three Belgians were left, because there was no longer so much laughter.
    On the evening Negarat told Mama he had to go to Dijon to do his military service, she was sitting, it so happened, at the table.
    â€œThen, you must be very young,” their mother said and there was sympathy in her voice. He sat with drooping head, and the conversation came to a dead stop. “Tomorrow we put in the winter windows,” Mrs. Luvers went on, and asked Negarat whether she should shut the window. He said it wasn’t necessary, in his country there were no winter windows.
    Their father came in soon afterward. He, too, offered expressions of regret when he heard the news. But before he uttered his laments, he asked in astonishment, “Dijon? Then you are not a Belgian?”
    â€œYes, I am a Belgian, but a French citizen.” And Negarat told the story of the emigration of his “two old folks” in such an interesting way, as if he were not their son, but with as much warmth as if he were reciting from a book about strangers.
    â€œExcuse my interrupting you,” said their mother. “Zhenya, please shut the window. Vika, tomorrow the windows must be sealed. Now please continue. This uncle of yours was a real scoundrel. Did he literally say that under oath?”
    â€œYes.” And he resumed his story. Then he began talking about his own affairs—the papers he had received yesterday by mail from his consulate. He noticed that Zhenya failed to grasp what it was all about, but was trying hard to understand. Carefully, in order not to wound her pride, he began to explain in detail what military service was all about.
    â€œYes, yes, I understand. I do understand,” Zhenya repeated gratefully and mechanically. “But why must you go so far away? Can’t you become a soldier here, and drill where everybody else drills?” In her imagination she saw the drill meadows that could be seen from the monastery hill. “Yes, yes, I understand. Oh, yes,” she reassured him.
    But the Luvers, who sat by, taking no part in this exchange, felt that the Belgian was simply stuffing the girl’s head with unnecessary detail and threw in lazy, oversimplified comments of their own. Then suddenly the moment came when Zhenya felt sorry for all those who, a long time ago or very recently, had been like Negarat, who had said good-by and taken an unknown route, which had been decreed by fate, in order to become soldiers here at Yekaterinburg, a completely strange place to them. The man had explained everything to her so well. Nobody had made it so clear to her before. The wall of indifference, the crumbling wall of concrete, fell away from before the picture of the white tents; the regiments disappeared and turned into a crowd of real people in soldiers’ uniforms, for whom she felt personally sorry the moment the new