It was in the black earth region.1 Over its roofs, like a swarm of locusts, hung the black dust raised by the troops and wagon trains that kept pouring through it. They moved from morning to evening in both directions, from the war and to the war, and it was impossible to say exactly whether it was still going on or was already over. Each day, endlessly, like mushrooms, new functions sprang up. And they were elected to them all. Himself, Lieutenant Galiullin, and the nurse Antipova, and a few more persons from their group, all of them inhabitants of big cities, well-informed and worldly-wise people. They filled posts in the town government, served as commissars in minor jobs in the army and in medical units, and looked upon these succeeding occupations as an outdoor amusement, like a game of tag. But more and more often they wanted to leave this tag and go home to their permanent occupations. Work often and actively threw Zhivago and Antipova together. 2 In the rain, the black dust in the town turned to a dark brown slush of a coffee color, which covered its mostly unpaved streets.
