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

but they were still sitting in the dining room and urged the children, who had turned up late, to hurry. They did not scold them, for they themselves had eaten earlier than usual because they were going to the theater. Their mother was uncertain whether she wanted to go or not, and sat there looking depressed. Looking at her, Zhenya realized that she herself was anything but happy.
    Finally she opened the silly but rather sad book, and came back into the dining room to ask where the nutcake was. Her father looked at her mother and said nobody was forcing them to go and that they would probably do better to stay home.
    â€œNo, of course we’ll go,” said her mother. “I must have diversion, the doctor said so.”
    â€œWell, let’s make a decision.”
    â€œWhere is the nutcake?” Zhenya asked for the second time and was told that she ought to eat something else first—one didn’t start with nutcake. However, it was in the cupboard. As if Zhenya were a stranger in the house and didn’t know family habits, added her father. Then he turned to her mother and repeated, “Let’s make a decision.”
    â€œI have decided. We’re going.” Her mother smiled sadly at Zhenya and went out to dress. Seryozha broke his egg with a spoon. Hastily, like a very busy man, he reminded his father that the weather was rough, that there was a snowstorm, he should remember that; then he laughed. Something embarrassing was happening to his thawed-out nose. He wriggled in his chair and pulled a handkerchief out of his school uniform pants. He blew his nose the way his father had taught him—“without hurting your eardrums”—and said, “We saw Negarat’s friend on our way.”
    â€œEvans?” the father asked absent-mindedly.
    â€œWe don’t know that man,” Zhenya put in heatedly.
    â€œVika!” called a voice from the bedroom. Their father got up and went out.
    At the door Zhenya collided with Ulyasha, who was carrying a lighted lamp. Soon afterward she heard a door closing nearby. That would be Seryozha going to his room. Today he had surpassed himself—his sister liked it when the Akhmedianovs’ friend behaved like a real schoolboy, when it could be said of him that he was wearing a school uniform .
    Doors opened and shut. Rubbers stamped out. Finally, the master and mistress were gone... .
    The letter said she had never been touchy, and “if you want something, ask for it, as before,” and when the “dear sister,” laden with greetings and good wishes, had distinguished her from her numerous relatives, Ulyasha, who was called “Juliana” in the letter, thanked the young lady, turned down the lamp, took the letter, the ink bottle and the rest of the greasy paper and went out.
    Zhenya returned to her homework. She kept on dividing the number and put down one dividend after the other. There was no end in sight. The fraction in the quotient rose and rose.
    â€œSuddenly the measles return,” went through her head. “Today Dikikh said nothing about the infinite.” She felt that she had felt this way earlier today—she’d rather have slept or cried—but she didn’t recall what it was about or when it happened for she couldn’t think clearly any more. The howling outside the window was dying down. The snowstorm was gradually tapering off. Decimal fractions were something quite new to her. There was not enough room on the right. She decided to start again at the beginning, to write smaller, and this time check every term. The street became quiet once again. She was afraid she had forgotten the number she had “borrowed” from the next number and she couldn’t keep the product in her head. “The window won’t run away,” she thought and cast threes and sevens into the bottomless quotient. “I will hear them in time. It’s quiet now. They won’t come in