J66
BQRIS
PASTERNAK
trom the depths of an Asian soul and, after righting the sleigh
with their shoulders, Mininbay and Gimazetdin leapt into their
seats. The sleigh shot forwards as though borne on wings and
plunged into the nearby forest. The open country, disheveled
and moaning, rose up behind it. It was glad to see the end of
the sleigh which disappeared without a trace among the trees
with branches like carpet-slippers, at the junction with the main
road to Chistopole and Kazan. Mininbay got off here and
wishing his master a good journey, vanished in the storm like
a
flurry of powdered snow. They sped on and on over the arrow–
straight highway.
"I asked her to come here with me," one of them thought,
breathing in the dampness of thawing fur. "I remember how
it was." A lot of tramcars had got stuck in front of the theater
and an anxious crowd was milling round the first one. . . . "The
performance has begun," the usher said in a confidential whisper
and, grey in
his
cloth uniform, he drew back the cloth curtain
separating the stills from the lighted cloakroom with its benches,
galoshes and posters. In the intermission (it went on longer than
usual) they walked round the foyer, peering sideways at the
mirrors and neither of them knew what to do with their hands
which were hot and red. "So there now; thinking it all over,"
she took a sip of seltzer-water, "I just don't know what to do
or how I should decide. So please don't be surprised if you hear
that I've gone to the front as a nurse. I shall enroll in a few days'
time." ... "Why don't you come with me to the Kama," he said.
She laughed.
The intermission had gone on so long because of the musicaJ
item at the beginning of the second act. It could not be
pl~yed
without an oboe, and the oboist was the unfortunate cause of
the tramcar stoppage in front of the theater. "He's badly hurt,"
people whispered to each other taking their places when the
painted hem of the curtain began to glow. "He was unconscious
when they pulled him from under the wheels," their friends told
