Page "Boris Pasternak" Paragraph 59

According to Ivinskaya, People who arrived in Peredelkino early in the morning on the day of the funeral told us that militiamen, commanded by very senior officers, were already stationed at the approaches to the village.

Everybody who arrived by car a few hours later was made to get out and walk the last stretch.

The doors of the house, now without its master, were thrown wide open.

The apple trees were a mass of pink and white, and the lilac trees were in blossom.

Almost everybody wandering around was unknown to me.

As I walked by, people exchanged whispered remarks, and half turned to cast curious glances.

People were filing in through the veranda, past the coffin, and out at the front entrance.

The coffin, almost buried in flowers, had been put in the large room.

There were wreaths at the foot of it: from the Ivanovs, from Kornei Chukovski, and from the Litfund.

Leonidovich was in the formal dark-gray suit which had belonged to his father and which he liked more than any other.

He was handsome, young, with a face carved in marble.

To think he had reached the age of seventy, an age at which people die!