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The night before he left there was a terrible storm. The roar of the gale merged with that of the downpour, which sometimes crashed straight onto the roofs and at other times drove down the street with the changing wind as if lashing its way step by step.
The peels of thunder followed each other uninterruptedly, producing a steady rumble. In the blaze of continual flashes of lightning the street vanished into the distance, and the bent trees seemed to be running la the same direction.
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 148.
PLACE: Melinzeievo, Russia
TIME: 1915-16
CIRCUMSTANCE: Zhivago as a doctor in an army hospital.
The wood echoed to the hoarse ringing of the saws; somewhere, very far away, a nightingale was trying out its voice, and at longer intervals a blackbird whistled as if blowing dust out of a flute. Even the engine steam rose into the sky warbling like milk boiling up on a nursery alcohol stove.
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 241.
PLACE: On the train between Moscow and the Urals.
TIME: Early spring 1917
CIRCUMSTANCE: The Zhivagos travelling to Varykino estate in the Urals, where they hope to live safer than in Moscow.
As the sun went down, the forest was filled with cold and darkness. It smelled of damp leaves. Swarms of mosquitoes hung in the air as still as buoys, humming sadly on a constant, highpitched note. They settled on his sweating face and neck, and he kept swatting them, his noisy slaps keeping time with the sounds of riding - the creaking of the saddle, the heavy thud of hoofs on the squelching mud, and the dry, crackling salvoes as the horse broke wind.
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 303.
PLACE: Russia, in the Urals.
TIME: Toward the end of World War I
CIRCUMSTANCE: Zhivago on his way home, just before he is being captured by partisans.
Invisible feet in felt boots, touching the ground softly with padded soles, yet making the snow screech angrily at each step, moved in all directions, while the hooded and fur-jacketed torsos belonging to them sailed separately through the upper air, like heavenly bodies.
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 371.
PLACE: A partisan camp in the Russian Taiga
TIME: Toward the end of the first World War
CIRCUMSTANCE: Zhivago is held as a captive.
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