Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), known outside Russia mostly
for his Nobel prize-winning novel Doctor Zhivago, was a poet,
writer and philosopher. Throughout his life, Pasternak struggled
with having to conform to the mainstream Soviet poetry, while
the freedom, individualism and depth of Reiner Maria Rilke
and Leo Tolstoy inspired him. A humanist, he wrote petitions
to fight the persecution of his fellow poets such as Anna
Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam. Pasternak died shortly after
being hounded by the press, other writers, and authorities
for winning the Nobel Prize in Western Europe.
Jenya Luver's Childhood is the beginning of an unfinished
novel worked that Pasternak worked on in 1917-1918. The novel
emphasizes what he considered to be key moments in every person's
life: the awakening of consciousness when one is three years
old; the initiation into 'maidenhood' of the adolescent girl;
falling in love for the first time; and the first occurrence
of death as the 'vaccine' of maturity. For Pasternak, the
girl's transformation from an 'ugly duckling' into a “little
woman” is a metaphor for an 'ordinary' person becoming a poet:
in his language, the word genius is almost synonymous to beauty.
The translator hopes that the excerpt offered here conveys
Pasternak’s treatment of going through life and emotion.
I
...Rarely does a grown-up know and hear that which creates,
repairs and sews him together. Life initiates very few people
into the way it works on them. It loves its business too much,
and when it is active, it speaks only to those who wish it
well and like its carpenter's toolbox. No one can help it,
but anyone can hurt life. How can one hurt it? Here is how.
If a tree is allowed to care for its own growth, it will let
its young shoots go in different directions, or venture entirely
into its root, or spend all of its resources on a single leaf,
because it will forget about the universe that should be an
example to it, and, having created a single thing out of a
thousand, the tree will multiply it by thousands.
And to avoid having thick bark from forming on one's soul,
to foster the soul's growth, to prevent the human being frown
mixing his stupidity into the arrangement of his immortal
essence, there are plenty of distractions that draw his shallow
curiosity from life. For life does not like working in his
presence and avoids the human by all means. All kinds of top-notch
religions are made for this purpose, and all generalized concepts,
and all of people's prejudices, and the brightest of them
all, the most entertaining prejudice–psychology.
The children have already come out of their primordial infancy.
The ideas of punishment, retribution, reward, and justice
have already penetrated their souls in small ways and have
been distracting their consciences, letting life give them
inner and outer beauty in ways it considered to be necessary
and weighty.
II
Miss Hawthorn would not leave done this. But during one of
her fits of tenderness for the children Mrs. Luvers spoke
curtly to the English governess without much of a reason and
then she disappeared from the house. Soon some sickly French
governess grew out of nowhere in her place. Afterwards, Jenya
could only remember that the French lady looked like a fly
and that no one liked her. Her name was entirely lost, and
Jenya could not tell among what syllables and sounds one could
find this name. She only remembered that the French lady first
shouted at her, and then took the scissors and cut out the
hair from the bloodied spot on the bear skin rug. It seemed
to her that now everyone would always shout at her, and that
her headache would never go away, and that she would never
understand the page in her favorite book blurring stupidly
in front of her eyes like a textbook in somnolence after dinner.
That day persisted for a frightfully long time. Mother wasn't
home that day. Jenya did not feel sorry about that. It seemed
to her that she was even happy about her absence.
Soon the long day was submerged by the verb forms passé
and futur antérieur, watering the hyacinths and strolling
along the Sibirskaya and Ohanskaya streets. It was so long
forgotten that she noticed and felt the expanse of the other
day, the second day in her life, only by the evening, while
reading next to a lamp, when the novel whose plot was developing
indolently led her to hundreds of most meaningless thoughts.
When she remembered that house in the Osinskaya Street afterwards,
she always saw the house as it was on that second long day,
at the end. The day was truly long. It was spring in the streets.
Ripening with awkwardness and ill-formed, spring in the Ural
mountains then bursts in with breadth and passion, in the
course of a single night, and with breadth and passion it
flows. The lamps only contrasted with the evening air. They
gave no light, but rather were swelling inside, like rotten
fruit, from the turbid and lightly colored brain fever that
was blowing into their stout night caps. The lamps were absent.
They showed up in places where they were supposed to be, on
the tables, and came down from the molded ceilings in the
rooms, where the girl was used to seeing them. However, the
lamps related less to the rooms than to the spring sky, to
which they seemed to be put closer for a purpose, like a warm
drink put next to a sick person's bed. The soul of the lamps
was outside, where the chattering of the servants swarmed
on the wet ground and where the dripping spring water congealed
into icicles at nightfall. That was where the lamps spent
their time in the evening. Mother and Father were out of town.
Actually, Mother was expected, it seemed, that day. This long
day or the coming ones. Yes, probably. Or, perhaps, she arrived
suddenly. It could be that, too.
Jenya started going to bed and saw that this day was long
for the same reason as the first one, and at first thought
of getting out the scissors and getting out those spots in
her nightgown and the sheet, but then she decided to take
the powder frown the French lady and rub the white into the
stains, and put her hand on the compact, when the governess
came in and hit her. The whole sin was concentrated in the
powder.
“She's putting on powder! This is the last thing I needed.”
Now the governess understood. She has noticed it for a long
time.
Jenya burst into tears because of the beating, the shouting
and her frustration, because, feeling not guilty of the crime
of which the French lady suspected her, she knew that she
had something that was–she felt so–much worse than her suspicions.
She had to–this need was so insistent that it made her numb,
echoed in her shins and temples–she had to hide it who knew
why, hide it at all cost, no matter how. Her joints ached
and welled up with the hypnotic need. Tedious and emaciating,
this hypnotism was the business of the girl's body that concealed
the meaning of all from her. Behaving like a criminal, the
body forced her to suspect this bleeding to be a kind of nauseating,
hideous evil, ''Menteuse!'' The only way out for her was to
deny everything, having stubbornly locked herself up in what
was the most disgusting part, which found itself somewhere
between the shame of ignorance and the disgrace of a street
fight. The only way out for her was to shudder, clenching
her teeth, and, swallowing her tears, cling to the wall. There
was no chance of jumping into the Kama because it was still
cold and the last plateaus of ice were moving around.
Neither she nor the French lady heard the doorbell right away.
The screaming went all into the deafness of the black and
brown bear skins, and when Mother came in, it was too late.
She saw her daughter in tears and the French lady flushed
with anger. She demanded that somebody explain to her what
was going on. The French lady announced bluntly that – not
Jenya, no – votre enfant – she said that her daughter had
been using powder and that she had noticed before and had
been suspecting her earlier. Mother did not let her finish
– her horror was unfeigned: the girl was not even thirteen.
“Jenya – you?... Lord almighty, what has this come to!'' (To
Mother it seemed at this moment that this word had a meaning,
as if she had known before that her daughter had been degrading
herself and sinking lower, and she did not order to correct
the situation at the right time–and now she sees her at such
a depth of disgrace. ''Jenya, tell me all the truth – beware
if you don't tell me!– what were you doing –'' with the powder
compact. Mrs. Luvers probably wanted to say: “with this object–”
and she snatched ''this object'' and brandished it in the
air.
''Mama, do not believe mademoiselle, I would never–'' and
she started crying.
But Mother heard wicked notes in this crying, notes that did
not exist, and she felt guilty and was horrified at herself
inside; she ought to, in her opinion, yes, she ought to, despite
her motherly nature, ''use instructive and benevolent measures”:
she decided not to surrender to compassion. She resolved to
wait until this torrent of tears that was wounding her so
much was shed.
So she sat down on the bed, resting her calm and empty glance
on the edge of a bookshelf. She emanated the smell of expensive
perfume. When her daughter came to, she started questioning
her anew. Jenya looked quickly at the window with her wet
eyes and sighed. The ice was moving around and probably making
a noise. A star was gleaming. Malleable and chilly, but without
a gloss, showing a matte finish, the deserted night was turning
black. Jenya looked away from the window. There was a menace
of impatience in mother's voice. The French lady was standing
near the wall, all seriousness and focused instructive measure.
In the manner of a military aide, her hand was resting on
the watch chain. Jenya glanced at the stars and the Kama again.
She made up her mind. Despite the cold, despite the ice. And–she
jumped off. Jumbling her words, strangely, shockingly she
told Mother about this. Mother let her finish speaking only
because she was struck by how much soul the child put into
this revelation. To understand was easy: she understood what
Jenya meant from the first words. No, no: she understood it
by how deeply the girl swallowed when she started speaking.
Mother listened, rejoicing, loving and pining away with tenderness
for this small, thin body. She longed to throw her arms around
her daughter and cry. But–instructive measures: she got up
from the bed and took the blanket off the sheets. She beckoned
her daughter and started stroking her head very slowly, sweetly,
''Good girl–'' she couldn't help muttering, stumbling over
her words as if in a tongue-twister. Loudly and massively,
size came to the window and turned away from them.
Jenya could not see the French lady. Tears were in her eyes,
Mother was there too–filling the whole room.
“Who makes the bed?”
The question was meaningless. The girl quivered. She started
to feel sorry for Grusha. Then something was said in French
that was familiar to her, but somehow in an unfamiliar language:
strict expressions. And then she was addressed, in a very
different voice:
“Jenya dearest, go to the dining room, child, I will come
there in a moment, too, and I will tell you what a marvelous
summer house we leased for you children... for me and Papa.”
The lamps were back, like in winter, at home, with the Luvers:
hot, diligent, loyal. Mother's marten boa frolicked across
the blue woolen tab1ecloth. ''The money has been won I will
stay at Mt. Blagodat wait for me until the end of the Holy
Week if–''; she could not read the rest: the telegram was
folded in the corner. Jenya sat down on the edge of the sofa,
tired and glad. She sat down well and modestly, exactly the
way she sat down after six months in the hallway of the Ekaterinburg
Gymnasium on the edge of a yellow, cold bench when, having
passed the oral exam with an A, she found out that she “may
god.”
In the morning, Mother told her what to do at these times
and that this was all right, that there was no need to worry
and that this would happen again many times. She named nothing
and explained nothing, but added that she now would prepare
her daughter for school herself because she would not travel
anymore.
The French lady was fired for negligence, having stayed with
the family for barely a month. When a cabbie was called for
her and she began going downstairs, she met the doctor who
was coming up. He answered her bow very ungraciously and did
not address her leaving; she guessed that he already knew
all that had happened; she frowned and shrugged her shoulders.
At the door stood the chambermaid who was waiting to let the
doctor in, and that is why in the vestibule where Jenya was,
the hubbub of people's steps and the hubbub of the resonant
stone remained longer than it ought to. Thus the story of
her first maiden maturity became imprinted in her memory;
the full resonance of the chirping morning street that slowed
down its steps at the staircase, entering the house with freshness;
the French lady, the chambermaid and the doctor, two criminal
women and one initiated man, cleansed, sanitized by the light,
the coolness and the sound of the staircase that seemed to
walk on its own, stomping its feet. TBJ
