White Guard 9780300148190

Table of contents :
Contents
Translator’s Note
Introduction Writing Judgment Day
WHITE GUARD
Part ONE
Part TWO
Part THREE

Citation preview

This page intentionally left blank

W H I T E G UA R D M I K HA I L BU L G A KOV

Translated from the Russian by

M A R IA N S C H WA RT Z With an Introduction by Evgeny Dobrenko

Yale University Press / New Haven & London

Translated from Mikhail Bulgakov, “Belaia gvardiia,” in Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh, edited by Lidiia Ianovskaia, vol. 1 (Kiev: Dnipro, 1989). Copyright © 2008 by Marian Schwartz. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Mary Valencia Set in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanas’evich, 1891–1940. [Belaia gvardiia. English] White guard / Mikhail Bulgakov ; translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz ; with an introduction by Evgeny Dobrenko. p. cm. isbn 978-0-300-12242-8 (alk. paper) 1. Ukraine—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Fiction. I. Schwartz, Marian. II. Dobrenko, E. A. (Evgenii Aleksandrovich). III. Title. pg3476.b78b513 2008 891.73'42—dc22 2007050389 isbn 978-0-300-15145-9 (alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Liubov’ Evgen’evna Bulgakova

A fine snow at first, suddenly it came in flakes. The wind howled. It was a snowstorm now. An instant later the dark sky had blended with the snowy sea. Everything disappeared. “Well, sir,” shouted the coachman, “looks bad. A blizzard!” Alexander Pushkin, The Captain’s Daughter . . . and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. Revelation 20:12

Contents

Translator’s Note

ix

Introduction by Evgeny Dobrenko White Guard

1

xv

This page intentionally left blank

Translator’s Note

With his first novel, White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov reached deep into the Russian language’s toolkit to tell a classic tale of two brothers and a sister caught in the upheaval of the Russian Civil War. The original text teems with imagistic sights and sounds, which not only give the page an exciting, experimental texture but form a web of connections. Recreating Bulgakov’s kaleidoscopic whirl is perhaps the most daunting task the translator faces. Coats, boots, hats—all manner of costume—jostle and cry out for attention. We see this visual profusion in individuals, small groups, street scenes, indeed, on every scale. Kiev at this very particular period saw military men of many backgrounds and loyalties: Russian and Ukrainian; nationalist and monarchist; officers, cadets, and students; soldiers returned from World War I; Hetman supporters and Petlyura men; urbanites and peasants; refugees from Moscow and Petrograd; Germans and other members of foreign

x

transl ator ’ s note

militaries. Because specific dress carried with it crucial social and political connotations, precision and clarity are particularly essential to the translation. Details as small as the several types of epaulets are highly significant, their presence or absence indicative of the ebb and flow of military fortunes. Following a general principle of maximizing the English reader’s comprehension, I have chosen to translate rather than to transliterate and then footnote specific terms, but there have to be exceptions. What is the translator to do with historical artifacts, such as military forces that existed only in a specific time and place, sometimes for less than a year? For example, I chose to keep haydamak—a term used to refer generally to a Ukrainian Cossack, but for the purposes of this book a member of an anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian cavalry detachment in 1918—but I did not distinguish among types of Cossacks or their military units for fear of introducing more confusion than knowledge. Most of the specific terms for items of clothing are likewise not meaningful in English, but as a nod to Bulgakov’s craft, and because its use is special and limited, I have kept the term sharovary—the characteristic wide trousers of the Ukrainian man’s national costume—which Bulgakov also uses to refer to a category of men, thereby elevating the term’s importance. White Guard offers many other types of bravura literary display. Stove graffiti is reproduced as it appeared physically on the stove, and there are other unusual layout elements, including lists, poetry, and military orders, all of which introduce graphic variety. Interiors are described in detail. We know whether lights are powered by kerosene, gas, or electricity. The level of topographic detail and loving attention paid to routes through Kiev bring intimacy to the reader’s appreciation of the city. Sometimes we know all about a character through his or her appearance without a name ever being attached. Set in contrast to this seething shape, movement, and color is the solid white

transl ator ’ s note

xi

snow and the freezing cold, which Bulgakov describes several times as “shaggy”—an odd but persistent choice. The omnipresent cold brings us to the sense of touch, which Bulgakov invokes constantly, with temperatures ranging from the bitter cold to Alexei Turbin’s dangerously high fever. Soldiers suffer the constant threat of frostbite and long for their warm barracks and train cars. In these conditions of severe cold, a bare-headed man is one whose hat has been taken away by force or who has rushed outside recklessly without it. Soldiers standing guard seem to fear falling asleep and freezing to death more than they do the enemy; in the last chapter, a sentry at the train station struggles mightily to avoid succumbing to the cold’s lure of sleep. Along these same lines but most challenging for the translator is Bulgakov’s use of sound. The author creates auditory chaos in crowd scenes, reproducing snatches of speech, slogans, and song. Onomatopoeia, some of it Bulgakov’s own invention, turns up over and over again. Instead of saying “the doorbell rang,” for example, he writes r-ring. He has the military field telephones singing like birds, so when one of them rings, he simply writes chirp. Each r-ring and chirp evokes the other scenes in which they appear, and the sounds become a kind of shorthand. Songs, anthems, and light verse appear and then reappear, usually in abbreviated form. All kinds of instruments—military (bugle), folk (torban), and cosmopolitan (piano)—are played (and each has its own onomatopoeia). When Petlyura’s forces enter Kiev, even his machine-guns are “singing.” Adding yet another auditory level, Bulgakov recreated the characteristic Kievan speech, a shifting combination of Russian and Ukrainian. The Turbins and their friends—most of the city, in fact—speak Russian, but the peasants speak Ukrainian, and a Russian-Ukrainian hybrid was commonly heard on Kiev’s streets at that time. People who ordinarily spoke Russian used Ukrainian to placate nationalists

xii

transl ator ’ s note

or imply political sympathies. The choices made as to when and where to use Ukrainian provide critical information about individuals and situations. The Ukrainian vocabulary is simple and limited; what is important is when Ukrainian is and isn’t spoken. For a Russian speaker, the Ukrainian is entirely understandable and poses no obstacle, so the English reader, too, should both understand and easily pass through those occurrences, which are many. To recreate the Ukrainian’s effect of otherness but not absolute foreignness, I have put the Ukrainian words in italics and quotation marks, since the words are always spoken. (Italics without quotation marks indicate thoughts.) Unusually (though typical of Bulgakov’s language in this novel), a number of startling sentences attribute action to what is “realistically” the wrong noun, primarily for poetic effect. In the very first chapter, it is the rooms of the Turbin apartment that have raised the Turbin children. In chapter 5, Vasilisa opens the door and the darkness looks in. In chapter 11, a four-story building leaps back as Nikolka passes. Priests’ ceremonial hats climb out of their cardboard boxes. In part three, when the robbers rap on Vasilisa’s walls to check for hiding places, Bulgakov says the wall does the rapping. The effect is arresting, and I have reproduced it here. Some of the translation issues raised are typical ones for Russian literature. I have kept (and footnoted at first appearance) the original units of measurement because there aren’t many of them, the units familiar to us would be jarringly anachronistic, and the story does not turn on our exact understanding of how long a verst, say, or an arshin is. I have translated the names of Kiev’s St. Vladimir’s (rather than Vladimirskaya) Hill but kept street (Alexeyevsky Slope) and village names (Krasny Traktir) in their Russian form because that is how they will be found on a map and because all street and village names could not be translated equally fully. I have not attempted to simplify the system of names because so many characters are referred to by just their last name; the few who retain their name and patro-

transl ator ’ s note

xiii

nymic, or even the occasional diminutive, will not likely confuse the reader. I have translated one schoolboy nickname, Carp, because it is delightful. All of which is to say that a terrific amount of significant detail went into the original Russian text and so must be reflected appropriately by the translation. The trick for the translator, as always, is to locate the fine line between what is and isn’t meaningful to the English reader and what does and doesn’t promote the author’s purposes. To help me make those judgment calls, I have had much intelligent advice for which I am grateful and which I would like to acknowledge. Edythe Haber’s scholarship on Bulgakov’s early writing led me to the definitive original text, edited by Lidiia Ianovskaia, and provided other invaluable insights into Bulgakov’s work. Evgeny Tkachuk interpreted the Ukrainian passages for me. Most of all, I had extensive advice and support from, and owe much to, Maria Ignatieva and Sergei Task. Marian Schwartz

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction Writing Judgment Day Evgeny Dobrenko

I

f the founder of Russian formalism Viktor Shklovsky (the prototype for the poet Mikhail Shpolyansky in Bulgakov’s novel White Guard) was right, and literature does in fact exist for the purpose of “estranging” (or “defamiliarizing”) everyday life, then great literature is foreordained to challenge the great banalities. Among such examples of ancient wisdom, no doubt, is the maxim about thundering guns and silent muses. It might be argued, however, that it is the thundering guns that beget literature. Indirectly, of course: they beget pain, and pain begets literature. The twentieth century was a century of great pain, and thus of great literature as well. At the very beginning of the “great and terrible Year of Our Lord 1918,” the young physician Mikhail Bulgakov returned to his native Kiev. In 1916, at the height of World War I, this young man had graduated with honors from the Kiev University medical school. Declared unfit for combat service, the future author of classic Russian literature

xvi

introduction

had been sent as a physician to the quite remote village of Nikolskoe. There he had worked as a general practitioner, surgeon, obstetrician, and oculist. From Nikolskoe, he had been transferred—a promotion of sorts—to the city hospital in Viazma, where he encountered the October Revolution. On his way home on December 31, 1917, the eve of the “great and terrible year,” Bulgakov wrote in a letter to his sister, Nadezhda Afanasievna Zemskaya: “I was just now sleeping and had a dream about Kiev, with its dear familiar faces, and I dreamed that someone was playing the piano. . . . Not long ago, in a train to Moscow and Saratov, I’d had occasion to see something, with my own eyes, that I’d rather not see again. I saw crowds of people breaking the train windows and saw them beating other people. I saw torn-down and scorched houses in Moscow. . . . I saw lines of hungry people by the shops, badgered and pitiful officers, and saw rag newspapers where they’d written about essentially one thing: about the blood being spilled in the south, and in the west, and in the east.”¹ But what did Bulgakov find in Kiev? In a 1923 essay, “The City of Kiev” (Kiev-Gorod), he wrote: “By the account of Kievans, they’ve had eighteen coups. . . . I can report with certainty that there have been fourteen, ten of which I personally experienced.” The coups differed from one another—some bloodless, some accompanied by executions and bloody pogroms, some quick and impetuous, others having protracted stubborn fighting in the streets. The kaleidoscopic changes of authority were almost all accompanied by pillaging, civilian deaths, and arbitrary rule. In some cases, the contenders held on to power for as much as half a year; in others, for just a few days. The imperial Russian government’s ineffectiveness in World War I had forced the tsar to abdicate in 1917. Following the February Revolution in that year the Provisional Government replaced the tsarist regime, but as a result of the October Revolution the Bolsheviks seized power, executing the tsar and his family, and the Russian Empire

introduction

xvii

collapsed. The Ukrainian Central Rada, or governing council, proclaimed Ukraine an autonomous republic, but meanwhile the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, still at war with Russia, drove out the Russian army and occupied Ukraine. The Germans supported a coup led by Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873–1945), who in April 1918 declared himself the Hetman of All Ukraine, a position he held until the following December, when, following the end of the war and the withdrawal of the German army, he was deposed and fled. It is here, in December 1918, that the novel White Guard begins, in a Ukraine damaged by World War I and engulfed in the Russian Civil War, with all of its confusion, violence, and chaos. As the novel unfolds, the Germans have mostly withdrawn and the hetman, essentially a German puppet, is under siege by Ukrainian nationalist and socialist forces led by Semyon Vasilievich Petlyura (1879–1926), who fought unsuccessfully for Ukraine’s independence following the Revolution of 1917. Petlyura’s nationalism made him an enemy of the Bolsheviks, and his socialist ideas made him an enemy of the Whites, who were opposed to the Communists. The Russian forces (both political and military) who became known as the Whites fought against the Red Army in the Civil War from 1918 to 1921. Their military arm was known as the White Army, or White Guard. Ideologically quite diverse, the Whites were not so much a single army as a confederation of counterrevolutionary forces loosely united by their anti-bolshevism, and to a lesser extent by the idea of preserving and restoring the Russian monarchy and Russian Empire, as well as by their anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism. After the events described in the novel, the Soviet army recaptured Ukraine, driving Petlyura out, and held Kiev in 1919 from February 6 until August 31. From August 31 until about December 16, forces under Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872–1947), a general in the imperial Russian army before the Revolution and one of the leaders of the Whites in the Civil War, were in charge. Then, from December

xviii

introduction

16 the Soviet government was back in the city until May 6, 1920, when it was occupied by the Poles, who on June 11 were forced out by the Red Army. Three centers of power, revealing the basic vectors of all the coups, had taken shape in Kiev: the military district headquarters (which included counterrevolutionaries, monarchists, and White Guards), the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Bolsheviks and other Communists), and the Ukrainian Central Rada (nationalist, independence-oriented, and Petlyurist). Of the many coups and changes of power in Ukraine, Bulgakov wrote in his essay from 1923: “The record has been broken . . . by Petlyura. He has shown up four times in Kiev, and they have driven him out four times.” Reds and Whites, Bolsheviks and anti-Communists, monarchists and democrats, Russian patriots and Ukrainian nationalists, Germans, Poles, forces from Russia’s wartime allies in the Triple Entente, Britain and France . . . the fighting went on endlessly. From the chaos of the Civil War, the theme of Bulgakov’s first novel was born. Following his initial effort, an immature play called The Turbin Brothers (Brat’ia Turbiny, 1919–1920) that he himself destroyed in 1921, Bulgakov wrote the novel White Guard (Belaia gvardiia) as the first part of a planned trilogy about the White movement. White Guard depicts this side of the conflict as seen through the eyes of the Turbin family—the siblings Alexei, Elena, and Nikolka—and their friends Myshlaevsky and Carp. Bulgakov wrote the novel in 1923–1924—very shortly after the Civil War had ended—and much of it was published serially in early 1925 in the literary journal Rossiia (Russia). Unexpectedly, however, the journal was shut down, so the last part of the novel was never published in it. Just after the first two parts of the novel were published, however, the Moscow Art Theater suggested to Bulgakov that he create a dramatization of the novel for the stage, which he accordingly did in 1925. The first two versions of the White Guard play, both indicted as “an

introduction

xix

apologia for the White Guards,” were rejected by Soviet censors. The final and third version—the one allowed to be produced at the theater—came to be called The Days of the Turbins (Dni Turbinykh). The show became a theater legend. Bulgakov’s play took on the same kind of status in Moscow Art Theater history that Anton Chekhov’s Seagull and Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths had had for the older generation. The theater’s director Vasilii Sakhnovsky wrote in 1934 that “The Turbins” had become a new Seagull for the next generation of artists of the Moscow Art Theater. The production enjoyed an unprecedented success: from 1926 through 1941, it had 987 performances.² (The Moscow Art Theater was, incidentally, Stalin’s favorite theater and The Days of the Turbins his favorite production: he saw it no fewer than twenty times.) The sensation caused by The Days of the Turbins was so great, the show was so important in the history of Soviet dramaturgy, and the Moscow Art Theater production had such serious political resonance that the unfinished novel was lost in the shadow of the play. In fact, many saw White Guard, which was practically unattainable until 1966 by anyone in Soviet Russia, as a mere prologue to, if indeed not a rough draft of, The Days of the Turbins. One leading Soviet theater critic, Konstantin Rudnitsky, wrote that the novel was merely a “test of the pen and talent” of Bulgakov: “What in White Guard had only been guessed at, what had been faintly visible in the very movement of the hesitant outlines of hurried, breathless prose, now appeared clearly in The Days of the Turbins, in the light of clear-cut thinking.”³ Though the success of The Days of the Turbins was beyond debate, there was room for differing opinions about the then-unfinished novel. Some commentators were ecstatic, like the poet Maximilian Voloshin, who in March 1925 wrote, “As the debut of a beginning writer, this novel can be compared only with the debuts of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.”⁴ But Shklovsky, who had every reason to dislike Bulgakov,

xx

introduction

though admitting his undeniable talent, asserted that he had used the ready-made images of other writers, and that the achievement of the novel was no greater than that of a “well-timed quotation.” Nonetheless, the onstage triumph of The Days of the Turbins inspired Bulgakov to work on a new play that would continue the plot about the Civil War that he had conceived. Thus was born Flight (Beg, 1926–1928), which depicted the end of the White movement: pictures of the last desperate battles, irreversible flight, and evacuation from the Crimea, of spiritual catastrophe and social breakdown, and of bitter emigration, the return of some to their homelands and the death of others. Only after The Days of the Turbins became such a hit and the production of Flight was banned, and after rejecting the idea of a trilogy, did Bulgakov again undertake to finish his novel. All of this could not, of course, fail to show up in the last part of White Guard. Between 1924 and 1929, Bulgakov changed his compositional ideas and the principle he had conceived for choosing the material for the trilogy of novels, and the focus of his exposition changed as well. The ideas for the plays and the novel became so interwoven that much of what he had conceived for the trilogy found its realization in the plays, and what had been discovered for the stage was realized in the last part of the novel. In the end of the trilogy, for example, Myshlaevsky was supposed to join the Red Army, which would have corresponded to both the moderation of his and Alexei Turbin’s political stances in The Days of the Turbins and to the fates of the heroes of Flight. One cannot definitely say whether the author proceeded from the novel to the plays, or in reverse, since many of the play’s plotlines were present in the first version of the novel. In the last version of the play (as in the first version of the novel), Alexei Turbin was a soldier, not a physician, and he was killed in the school building. Many who have written about the novel have remarked about a certain unfinished quality that it has. Nevertheless, the novel is not

introduction

xxi

unfinished: rather, it has an open ending. The completion of the plotline of the trilogy that never took shape, however, is in the plays. Thus the plays are not a background for the novel, but rather compose with it a single whole, both conceptually and chronologically, predominantly in a personal and biographical sense. The novel, like the plays, is thoroughly autobiographical. Critics and literary historians have long since discovered the prototypes of practically all the characters in White Guard, even the most peripheral ones, as well as all the events from Bulgakov’s life that are reflected in the novel, down to even the most marginal of them. Bulgakov stated that he loved his first novel more than all of his other work. And, in truth, Bulgakov’s creative work is autobiographical through and through: the conflicts in the early short stories, in Notes of a Young Doctor and Notes on the Cuffs; the peripeteias of Molière in The Cabal of Hypocrites and of the characters in Theater Novel; the sufferings of the Master in The Master and Margarita; and so on. Notwithstanding, there was a very special threshold of truth, a very special nerve, and a very special pain, in White Guard. Revolution singed Bulgakov once and for all. It made him a writer. When the book was finally published in its entirety in the Soviet Union, during the last glimmers of the Khrushchev thaw, Soviet critics undertook no small efforts to have it fitted into the Soviet canon. The forewords that accompanied the novel, written in the “ideologically correct key,” misinterpreted its meaning: the book, as one of these critics put it, “exposed the spiritual poverty, corruption, and anti-national essence of the counterrevolution’s bosses. It depicts the tragedy of the situation of the intelligentsia, dressed in officer tunics and cadet overcoats, of people roped into anti-national dealings by virtue of their past, by virtue of their class and worldly connections.”⁵ According to Konstantin Simonov, “the main purpose of the book is to expose the falsity and the moral, ideological, and human bankruptcy of the entire so-called ‘Whites movement’ in Russia.”⁶ But the

xxii

introduction

ideological “escort” these writers provided was the inevitable price that had to be paid for the novel to reach the reader. The crude lie in the Soviet interpretations was, as is easily seen, in the logical reduction of Bulgakov’s political position, and in the simplification of the incredibly complex novelistic idea, which was to a large extent not made entirely clear even by the author himself. Bulgakov’s essay “The City of Kiev” began thus: In spring, the gardens would start blooming with white flowers, the Tsar’s Garden would be clothed in verdure, and the sun would force its way into all the windows and set them ablaze. But the Dnieper! And the sunsets! And the Vydubetsky Monastery up on the slopes! The sea of green ran down, terraced, to the multicolored, caressing Dnieper. Thick dark-blue nights over the water, the electric cross of St. Vladimir suspended above . . . In a word, a beautiful city, a happy city. The mother of Russian cities. But these were legendary times, the times when a cheerful young generation lived in the gardens of the most beautiful city of our Motherland. It was then that in the hearts of this generation a conviction had arisen that all their lives would go along in white light, quietly and calmly, with sunrises and sunsets, the Dnieper and Kreshchatik Street, sunny streets in summer and in winter a big-flaked caressing snow that was not cold, not harsh . . . . . . but it turned out to be quite the opposite. The legendary times came to an abrupt end, and history intruded, suddenly and menacingly.

But even in history, the characters continue to live in, as it were, a dual dimension. On one hand, the real-life Kiev is full of perils: it is frightening to live in, and people fear to go out on its streets, where they may be pursued, robbed, or even killed. On the other hand, the City (as it is called in White Guard) is not only a reality—it is a daydream. It is always the same legend: spread out above the Dnieper, the City, “marvelous in the cold and fog,” sparkles with “electric globes . . . like precious stones.” The gardens lie “silent and peaceful, weighed under

introduction

xxiii

by untouched white snow.” Above the steep slopes of the Dnieper rises the statue of Vladimir the Baptizer, above which a white cross sparkles. The City is marvelous both in winter when “white and shaggy December” comes and in summer when in its flowering gardens the City shines “like a pearl in turquoise.” It is just this kind of wondrous city-as-recollection that Alexei Turbin sees in his dream. As is always the case in Russia, the legend is beautiful. History is terrible. “This is such a dreadful time that has befallen us,” Nikolka Turbin muses. It was not the first time that it had “befallen.” White Guard reads like a book about the perpetual theme of Russian history—a book about Russian Troubles. The Turbins’ days go by in history, but their spiritual life is in a beautiful, agreeable legend. And it is just this legendary, beautiful aspect of their life that is dear to Bulgakov. To live in history is always disagreeable. In Russian history, it is unbearable. And if the position taken by the author in the novel is not always precise, and quite a lot in the events described is problematic even for Bulgakov himself, then it is only because history is too dreadful and the legend too enchanting. Despite the author’s apparently clear attitude toward the characters, White Guard is by no means a novel of answers. It is rather a novel of oppositions that allow us to approximate not so much the essence of the author’s position (which changes from time to time and is rather contradictory) as the essence of the issues raised in the novel and the contradictions revealed in it, which are much more valuable than the later Soviet and anti-Soviet ideologically packaged answers. The central opposition of the novel is city versus countryside: the city as the center of civilization, and the peasantry and the steppe as the embodiment of barbarianism. In this respect, Bulgakov was similar—paradoxical as it seems—to his literary and ideological opponents, above all to Gorky and Isaac Babel. The difference is merely that Gorky saw the proletariat and the intelligentsia as key to the future of

xxiv

introduction

the city, while Bulgakov had no regard whatsoever for the proletariat (and, accordingly, for Bolsheviks). And Babel’s position was alien to Bulgakov, since he discerned in it not only a class enmity but also a national enmity that he did not share as a Russian nationalist. The “nuances” were of fundamental significance, and they inevitably made Bulgakov’s position and his attitude toward the active forces in the Revolution inconsistent. What Bulgakov refused to accept were the direct links among the hetman he hated, Petlyura, the Bolsheviks, and Russian history itself, as the history of the realization of the Great Russia project—always at the cost of oppression and destruction of the little man, at the cost of denying him the right to freedom. The heroes’ high-minded blindness prevents them from seeing that the main enemy is not the Germans, Hetman Skoropadsky, Petlyura, or the Bolsheviks, but rather the Russian state itself, founded upon an age-old contempt for the individual and for freedom—the main spark that set off “Russian rebellion.” Russia was the only state founded simultaneously upon European values and Eastern despotism. Hence the permanent identity crisis of Russia, which felt itself simultaneously both European and Asian. Granted, there are class distinctions in any state, but in no other state have they been so profound that they shaped two separate nations. No other state ever held almost ninety percent of its own population in slavery for centuries. The main problem that remains unsettled is: How does one remain honorable (and Bulgakov’s favorite characters talk endlessly about honor) when living in a state founded upon dishonor, on police corruption, ubiquitous theft, and violation of individual dignity? How can one be an honorable person and yet wish to preserve this state of affairs? It is not surprising, then, that over the entire course of Russian history, destructive explosions of popular anger have alternated with debilitated—but no less destructive—passivity, as the state destroys the very fabric of society by denying the rights of the overwhelming

introduction

xxv

majority of its own people and stealing their hopes for a better future. In this light, revolution is just as integral a part of Russian history and political culture as is tyranny, and its direct products were the Petlyura men and Bolsheviks who manipulated the benighted peasant masses. Under conditions like these, any revolution is doomed to turn into its opposite—reaction. In the Russian Revolution, for example, we could expect to see mainly the reaction of the patriarchal feudal society to the challenges of modernization. However, the victory of the countryside and the peasant masses over the westernized city turned out to be a Pyrrhic one, since it threw the already backward country into the backwoods of civilization. Petlyura-style nationalism differs from European nationalism in that the latter aimed to strengthen the national state in the name of modernization and progress, while the Petlyura (and later Soviet) variety fulfilled directly opposite functions and had no constructive, civilizing content, being instead a particularly destructive phenomenon—the expression of a nation’s frustration at having failed to come together. This failure, in Bulgakov’s opinion, was also due to the fact that this nation did not exist (he saw nothing in it but comical rustic bandura players and petty bourgeois who suddenly “remembered” their Ukrainian-ness and began to speak in broken Ukrainian); or else because the nation was not ready for statehood (which offered nothing except bloody pogroms); or else because its aspirations to statehood were historically and politically unjustified. Ultimately, Kiev was for Bulgakov a Russian city. Historically, it was in fact the “mother of Russian cities,” the cradle of Russian statehood, and the capital of ancient Kievan Rus. Bulgakov’s refusal to recognize the rights of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian aspirations in Kiev was even demographically justified: in 1917, more than half the population of Kiev was Russian, followed by Jews (about twenty percent), and only then Ukrainians (a little more than sixteen percent),

xxvi

introduction

with a significant Polish minority (almost a tenth of the population).⁷ But who remembers today that even Prague, for instance, was at that time a German-speaking city? In the newly proclaimed Ukrainian state, many eastern and southern cities (among them such first-rate cultural and industrial centers as Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Kharkov, Iuzovka, Ekaterinoslav, and Lugansk) had never been Ukrainian at all. One should also consider that western Ukraine (the primary base of present-day Ukrainian nationalism) was once part of Poland. All of this made the aspirations toward Ukrainian “independence” highly questionable. Ukraine began where the city ended, and Bulgakov considered the city the basis of culture and civilization. Ukraine in Bulgakov’s world is “the steppe”—culturally barren, not creating anything, and capable only of barbarian destruction. The Ukrainian national elites understood this perfectly when, as early as the 1920s, they demanded that Stalin ban The Days of the Turbins because, ostensibly, “the Whites movement is praised” in it. But in fact it was because the attempt to create a Ukrainian “state” was depicted by Bulgakov as a bloody operetta. Bulgakov presents the tension between Kiev and the steppe (which in the novel is framed as the opposition between the City and Ukraine) as an endless historical dispute that began as early as the times of the Kievan state. The triumphant public prayer service and the parade of Petlyura men entering the City can be viewed in precisely this historical context: “Cripples and paupers displayed the sores on their blue shins, shook their heads as if they had a tic or paralysis, rolled their white eyes back, pretending to be blind. Tugging at souls, rending hearts, reminding people of poverty, deception, despair, and the futile wildness of the steppes, the cursed lyres creaked like wheels, moaned, and howled in the crush.” The “poverty, deception, despair, and the futile wildness of the steppes” constitute the main threat to civilization and to its center, the City. Still, no matter how much we might pity this citadel of civilization in a sea of barbarianism, the motto inscribed on

introduction

xxvii

museum buildings, “For the Enlightenment of the Russian People,” was always in Russia nothing more than a motto: the cultural elites of Russia lived not only at the expense of the poverty and wildness of the steppe, but also—behind their cream-colored curtains—in naive ignorance of the insecurity of their own existence and of the fact that below the flowering slopes of Great Russia there seethed a dreadful lava that more than once had boiled up onto these slopes and covered the noblemen’s nests of the Turbins with its lifeless ash. Is it surprising, then, that the motif of flight would occur throughout the novel? Everyone flees in it: scoundrels and decent people, monarchists and Petlyura men, soldiers and prostitutes, poets and bankers, Germans and Ukrainian nationalists. From Petersburg and Moscow to Kiev, from Kiev to Odessa, from Odessa to the Crimea, to the Don, and from there (in the play Flight) to Turkey and Europe. First they flee under the protection of the hetman and the Germans, then the hetman and the Germans themselves flee under pressure from Petlyura, then Petlyura’s men flee from the threat of the Bolsheviks. After his defeat, Petlyura himself fled ultimately to Paris, where he was assassinated in 1926. Running becomes a recurrent metaphor for surviving the Revolution. One might say that the Revolution is flight. To a significant extent, the Revolution was the result of Russia’s flight from modernization and, as it so happened, just another flight from history. Indeed, the whole history of Russia was one of flight from the nightmare of modernization, which demanded more and more freedoms. Yet again, Russia had faced the necessity of both spiritual liberation and economic liberation, the creation of a real market with the concomitant realization of the economic potential of increasingly more population groups, the consolidation of the positions of new classes, and, as a result, the expansion of civil rights and political freedoms. So, after the “bloody operetta” of the Civil War, it finally embarked on a path of conservative modernization, that is, of the kind of modernization that

xxviii

introduction

leads to consolidation of the state through suppression of individual freedoms. In the ravaged peasant country, modernization could not materialize as a multilateral, profound restructuring of the entire social body, but instead became a synonym for merely industrial and technological progress, which easily combined with the preservation of the ancient social, economic, cultural, and political status quo. In White Guard, one can read Bulgakov’s profound shock at the Revolution, once he had seen its real face. He wrote, without his characteristic irony, “Owing to the extraordinary grandiosity of the Revolution, it would be impossible to write a lampoon on it.”⁸ One might counter that Bulgakov in fact spent his whole life as a writer writing such lampoons—otherwise, what are Diaboliad, A Dog’s Heart, The Fatal Eggs, The Crimson Island, and Theatrical Novel? Indeed, his contemporary critics accused him of this. But the critics were wrong. And, paradoxically, so was Bulgakov himself: it was actually impossible to write a lampoon of the Russian Revolution because the Russian Revolution itself was a lampoon of socialism, and bolshevism was a lampoon of Marxism. Virtually all of Russian history is the history of such revolutions and the lampoons (“operettas”) they engendered. Some of them were bloody; some were comparatively bloodless, like the most recent one, which produced a lampoon of democracy. But every time Russia tried to throw off the odious state, it sank into chaos, and therefore returned to “order” and once again plunged into the stifling world of an oppressive police state that holds its own people in contempt. In March 1930, Bulgakov formulated a sort of political credo, in his famous “Letter to the Government,” which is astounding for its tragic and confessional tone and its boldness. In this letter, he writes about his “profound skepticism as regards the revolutionary process that is occurring in my backward country” and his “beloved Great Evolution” that he contrasts to this process.⁹ The problem, however, is that it is impossible to simultaneously

introduction

xxix

love both Russia and Great Evolution. With Russian political culture as a base, only bloody excess or dismal slavery is possible. Both of these possibilities evoke in the intelligentsia man Bulgakov a profound repugnance that by rights he should ascribe to the real Russia rather than to the Russia he had invented. But there is a realm in which the Russian intelligentsia have always escaped from Russian reality. This peaceful harbor is Russian culture. Many critics have written that White Guard is a novel of disillusionment, a drama of lost illusions and ideals. But all of nineteenthcentury Russian literature was a literature of disillusionment—from Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov to Nikolai Gogol and Chekhov. The theme of total slavery in Russia was central to it: “Sordid Russia is a country of slaves, a country of masters,” wrote Lermontov; and Nikolai Chernyshevsky added, “From top to bottom, everyone is a slave.” The characters of White Guard seek in their reality, but do not find, the beautiful legend—the kind Russian soul and the Christian country that created a great culture—nothing of which they in any way can discern in the brutality of the Revolution or in the paroxysms of the death struggle of the tyrannical state. In writing about this novel, critics usually talk about honor, duty, and monarchism, and about literary reminiscences and historical allusions; but they fail to pinpoint the main character of this historical drama—the Russian state itself. In fact, everything that happens in the novel is just another manifestation of the death throes of this state. This is present in the novel, though perhaps invisibly, and manifests itself in practically every discussion about duty and honor. Do the heroes of White Guard really have a duty to this state? To the state that is represented by the hetman’s villainous treachery, the cynicism of the White commanders, and the cowardice and baseness of the generals and staff? The state has collapsed, Bulgakov suggests, but Russia has not died. The author believes that Russia can survive without its brutal state. He interprets the state’s total betrayal of its

xxx

introduction

best sons as a problem of individual moral choice (to be made by the honorable Turbins, Nai-Turses, and Malyshevs, or the dishonorable Talbergs and hetmans). For this reason, he cannot logically combine the present time with history by putting morality between them. But the answer is that Russia will be alive as long as the Russian state is alive. And as long as this state is alive, no matter what its political structure is called—monarchy, Soviet power, or “sovereign democracy”—it will produce slavery. But as long as slavery is alive, this state will blow itself up again and again—or else blow up its own liberators. The main enemy of the officers so dear to Bulgakov’s heart are by no means Petlyura’s men or the Bolsheviks, but rather the headquarters staff. Almost everyone in the novel “rain[s] down indecent curses on the headquarters staff.” These staff members are talentless (“There was no end to the staff officers. No one knew a damn thing, naturally”). Even the staff officers exclusively spend their time arranging their own personal dealings and “saving their own hides,” like Talberg does. In point of fact, the blame for catastrophe is laid on them: “headquarters betrayed us”; “the criminal generals and headquarters scoundrels deserved death”; “your headquarters gang should be drowned in the latrine.” Phrases like “headquarters scoundrels,” “headquarters no-goods,” “those wretches at headquarters,” occur at every turn. So the readiness of one of the characters to “shoot some staff officer” is quite understandable. Headquarters, as presented in the novel, is essentially an irresponsible bureaucratic structure that cynically despises its own functions and betrays the people entrusted to it, leading those people to their deaths. How is it that some officers are honorable human beings who set a high price on their duty, and some are completely amoral “scoundrels”? By showing one of them (Elena’s husband, Talberg) in closeup and by making him a German who is devoid of the very concept

introduction

xxxi

of honor, Bulgakov merely retreated from the dreadful answer: the criminal “headquarters staff ”—no-goods, scoundrels, and wretches— are in fact the Russian state (essentially, the last remnant of it) as it is portrayed in the novel. But if the Russian state is in fact the treacherous headquarters staff, then whom (or what) can this state betray—is it not itself? That is just the point—it is not itself. One is reminded of an aphorism by Alexander Herzen, one of the main Russian (ironically, also of German descent) dissidents of the nineteenth century, who fled to England: Herzen said that the state had encamped in Russia like an army of occupation. It would be difficult to find a better corroboration of this idea than Bulgakov’s novel. The headquarters-state behaves just like the occupying German army, betraying and sentencing to death the best sons of Russia, who, like Bulgakov, tragically fail to see the criminal nature of this state and are ready to fight to the death for it. But what is Russia without this state, which had for centuries transformed Russians (and with them, all the other nationalities of the empire) into mute slaves? Historically, the Russian intelligentsia had been alienated from the oppressive state, but not from “the dreams of the people.” Bulgakov’s position is somewhat different: although he understands the nature of Russian rebellion, and the reason for it, he is nonetheless not inclined to pay particular attention to the “voice of the people.” In the Civil War conditions, the intelligentsia as the holder of honor and of the “spiritual principles” of the nation turns out to be defenseless, because, in fact, these “principles” belong to a nation that is far from real: the real “nation” consists of nationalists and Petlyura men grown brutal, of the people (the “god-bearing people” that the intelligentsia idolized and idealized), and, finally, of the state itself, which the members of the intelligentsia hated and which hated them but saved them from the popular mob, having at the same time the

xxxii

introduction

most profound contempt for both (and Bulgakov prefers not to dwell on this last point). The intelligentsia had no foundation and its members were therefore defenseless. This is their tragedy, but it is also the tragedy of Russia, never succeeding in becoming a nation (or rather, being a “nation” devoid of its own “spiritual principles”). It is significant that the Petlyura men’s entry into Kiev, and their retreat from it, was accompanied by the murder of Jews. While Petlyura was in power as the Ukrainian head of state, from 1919 to 1920, massive pogroms took place in Ukraine, with between thirty-five thousand and fifty thousand Jewish civilians killed. This tragic composition also has profound meaning: perceived as “alien” to the national “spiritual principles” of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, and other Europeans, the Jews continue to pay with their own blood for the spiritual maturation of these others, that is, for their transformation into responsible and spiritually mature nations. Meanwhile, the foundations of the former life collapse, and everywhere flows the blood in which the nation still failed to be born. It is no coincidence that Kiev in this work is simply called “the City.” It is the City that is contrasted to what, for Bulgakov, Ukraine is—the “countryside,” that “mysterious area” that seethes with hatred. This hatred has a national (Ukrainian) face, but in truth it is not even a class hatred: it is more accurately a historical hatred. It is the hatred of a perpetually backward, retreating, patriarchal world, a world that is stagnant, connected to the land, tribe, and clan, slavish, resentful of its own inability to modernize, and living off its hatred for the City, which has grown bourgeois and is reaping the fruits of modernization. But this is also the hatred that had accumulated for centuries in the cauldron of the Russian Empire and that was now shattered by the Revolution. It is not only the hatred in the countryside, for the occupiers, that is seething. In the City, too, hatred is seething, hatred of the Bolsheviks:

introduction

xxxiii

They hated the Bolsheviks. Not with a face-to-face hatred, when the hater wants to start a fight and kill, but a cowardly, twitching hatred, from around the corner, from the darkness. They hated at night as they dropped off to sleep in vague alarm, in the daytime in the restaurants as they read the newspapers which described the Bolsheviks shooting officers and bankers in the back of the head with their Mausers and tradesmen in Moscow selling horsemeat infected with glanders. They all hated—the merchants, bankers, industrialists, attorneys, actors, landlords, demimondaines, Duma deputies, engineers, doctors, and writers.

Officers and cadets, the heroes of Bulgakov’s novel who embodied the old order in the eyes of the “popular masses” (thus “the shudder of hatred at the words ‘Russian officers’”), hated too: Hundreds of ensigns and second lieutenants, the former students like Stepanov—Carp—whom war and revolution had thrown for a loop, and corporals, also former students but finished with university for good. . . . In their worn greatcoats, their wounds as yet unhealed, with the dark traces of epaulets torn off, they arrived in the City and slept with their families or other people’s families on chairs, using their greatcoats for blankets, drank vodka, rushed about, filed petitions, and seethed darkly. It was these last who hated the Bolsheviks with a direct, burning hatred, the kind that might prompt them to fight.

As a matter of fact, the central tragedy of White Guard is that of subjectively honorable people who end up too blinded by their own notions of honor and duty to see not only the inanity but also the dishonor of defending this state (let us emphasize that in the Civil War, it was not a question of defending the country, but precisely of defending the state!). The tragedy of the White movement was that subjectively honorable people undertook the unjust cause of defending a shameful moribund regime that was destroying everything surrounding it. But on a larger scale, the tragedy of the Revolution was that a new regime was unable to be born in a “country of slaves.” What the Bolsheviks brought was far more frightening than the corrupt Ro-

xxxiv

introduction

manov dynasty, but given the foundation of a Russian political culture fertilized by a thousand years of slavery, no other regime could have emerged, and the modernization so needed by the country could not have been achieved in any other way. Bulgakov’s novel is about the tragedy of the intelligentsia. The Turbins, after all, were a typical intelligentsia family: physicians, military men, students. Theirs was a world of “homey” things, old books tattered by much reading, and hospitality; it was always full of people, animated conversations, and good old friends. Bulgakov describes this world of things painstakingly: This tile stove, as well as the old red velvet furniture, the beds with the shiny knobs, the worn carpets—parti-colored and crimson, with Alexei Mikhailovich holding a falcon on his arm, or with Louis XIV lolling in a garden paradise on the banks of a silky lake, and Turkish carpets with the marvelous flourishes on an Oriental ground that had haunted little Nikolka in the delirium of scarlet fever—the bronze lamp under its shade, the world’s best shelves of books, which smelt like mysterious old chocolate, with Natasha Rostova and the Captain’s Daughter, and the gilded cups, silver, portraits, and hangings—all seven full and dusty rooms that had raised the young Turbins.

It is no accident that people in the novel cling to things: in them, they see steadiness, stability, and the safe home front. But this world of home, warmth, and coziness is under threat. Russia is a cold and uncomfortable country. Its world, like the world of war, is inhospitable. It guarantees stability to no one. Founded upon slavery, it lives from one outbreak of “senseless and ruthless Russian rebellion” to another. And in between these outbreaks, a slavish passivity holds sway. Bulgakov’s favorite characters are tragic individuals—wholehearted, resolute, strong, brave, proud, and honorable people who end up as victims of the deceit and treachery of those for whom they do battle. They are in favor of preserving old customs, tranquility, and settled traditions. They are against revolution and social reorganiza-

introduction

xxxv

tion, and even more against civil war. But, calling themselves monarchists, they are ready to fight to the death for their convictions. As people of duty, they are ready to fight for faithfulness to an oath. For an oath made to a state that has betrayed them, a state that never took concern for its subjects, but that had always been merely a force of repression, suppression, and enslavement, a monarchy whose entire history was that of inability to modernize, a history of transforming the overwhelming majority of the people of its own country into slaves, dooming the country to backwardness and poverty. These people want to defend Russia, but when the Russian state has once again fallen apart, it turns out that there is no “Russia”—the social fabric has rotted through and fallen into pieces. The worn carpets, the Pushkin books on the dresser, and the gilded cups have all remained. The illusions of coziness, homeyness, and social stability have all remained, as has the mythology of Russian culture. Yet again, the state that betrayed its defenders has ended up in the hands of crafty slaves, who tear it to pieces and do not see anything in the objects so dear to the hearts of Bulgakov’s heroes but their value on the secondhand-goods market. So what are honor and dishonor (yet another key opposition in the novel) in a country where two different nations with different codes of honor are at war? The man of honor, Alexei Turbin, cannot agree with the devil that pursues Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, the one who declares the incompatibility of the Russian man with the concept of honor. The problem is that the “Russian people”—Alexei Turbin and the Petlyura man, Nai-Turs and the hetman, and Malyshev and Talberg—are united only in name. Paradoxically, the representative of the Russian intelligentsia, Alexei Turbin, does not represent “the Russian people.” The intelligentsia and the people are two different nations, living in a single country and linked perhaps only by a common language—and even that language betrays them in a difficult moment. The opposition of honor and dishonor turns on the opposition of

xxxvi

introduction

history and morality: historically, the Whites’ cause is doomed, but it is justified morally. Is an opposition like this correct? In a broader sense, the real question is whether history can be replaced with morality. Nowhere else in the novel do the two codes of honor manifest themselves more clearly than in the numerous descriptions of flight. Are there actually two forms of flight presented in the novel? One (Talberg’s and the hetman’s) that is traitorous and transgressive of ethical, family, and social norms, and another that is flight for survival when fighting is of no avail? It seems that Bulgakov sees a clear boundary between these. But in reality there is no such boundary: Talberg and the hetman flee, saving their lives, because they had more information at their disposal and thus understood the futility of fighting earlier than Nai-Turs and Malyshev did. Under the real conditions of war, moral considerations can be relative. The problem of flight and return is central to the novel. Bulgakov has been accused, although unjustly, of being part of the “Change of Landmarks” (smenovekhovstvo) movement, which was a widespread school of thought in the intelligentsia circles that understood the futility of fighting against the Bolsheviks and the multitudes of peasants supporting them. The adherents of this movement foresaw (quite accurately) that the Bolsheviks, once they assumed power, would degenerate and reject the internationalist utopia, and would not build any kind of communism but instead would return to the cycle of Russian history: that is, they would establish “order” by recreating the same authoritarian police state, would as it were restore the ruined empire (“Great Russia”), would realize the industrial modernization so needed by the country, and, to the accompaniment of revolutionary slogans, would return to the original patriarchal Russian values. Therefore it was necessary to stop opposing the Bolsheviks and go into their service. The “change of landmarks” was essentially an ideological justification of what Talberg embodied in the novel. Thus, to the accompaniment of patriotic slogans, the “landmark changers” not

introduction

xxxvii

only swore an oath to the new holders of power, but also agreed to serve them, because life goes on. The debate (which has been going on for many decades) about what exactly Bulgakov’s position was, how he resolved this dilemma, and on whose side he was, is endless. White Guard is interesting for the fact that in it (as opposed to Bulgakov’s brilliant satirical works) the author had not yet totally defined himself in terms of his political predilections—the Revolution’s destruction of the “noblemen’s nests,” and the upheaval that took place as a result of it, were still too recent and traumatic for Bulgakov, and had not yet become “the past” for him. Under pressure from the censors, Bulgakov was forced to define his position and to make the character of Alexei Turbin in The Days of the Turbins voice an idea about the end of the White movement in quite definite terms. Addressing the officers and soldiers getting ready to go to the Don, he warns them, “The people aren’t with us. They’re against us. So we’re done for. Doomed! We’re finished!” Not only Turbin, but also the courageous Myshlaevsky, recognizes the power of the Bolsheviks, which he sees in the people’s support for them: There’s a swarm of peasants behind the Bolsheviks. . . . And with what can I stand up to all of them? Pants with piping on them? They can’t see the piping anyway. . . . Now they’re grabbing bullets. . . . Red Guards in the front, like a wall, and in the back, speculators and all kinds of riffraff with the hetman—and me in the middle? Your humble servant! No, I’m sick of playing a piece of furniture. Let them mobilize! At least I’ll know that I’ll be serving in the Russian army. The people aren’t with us. The people are against us. Alex was right!

We might conjecture that in a situation wherein all values are collapsing, the “Whites’ cause” that Bulgakov’s heroes are ready to serve is the only thing that preserves any moral content for them. Thus the monarchism of the Turbins (and of the overwhelming majority of

xxxviii

introduction

characters representing the Russian elites) is not so much a political phenomenon as a sociocultural one: the collapse of the monarchy makes the Turbins’ world vulnerable, it brings destruction to the harmonious and hierarchical whole—to the Home and Family, to the chief values still holding up civilization. The logical replacement of the social with the moral, of history with ethics, is a romantic attempt at redemption. In the first version of the novel, the ending reads like this: Above the Dnieper, Vladimir’s midnight cross rose from the sinful, bloodied, snowy earth to the black and gloomy heights. From a distance its crossbar seemed to disappear and merge with its vertical, transforming the cross into a sharp, menacing sword. But this isn’t frightening. All this will pass. The sufferings, agonies, blood, hunger, and wholesale death. The sword will go away, but the stars will remain when even the shadows of our bodies and our affairs are long gone from this earth. There is not a man who does not know this. So why do we not want peace, and why are we reluctant to turn our gaze to these stars? Why?

In a later version, “peace” disappeared, and, as one scholar has written, “then it was no longer so evident that Bulgakov was polemicizing here with the famous words of the Gospel of Matthew, ‘I have come not to bring peace, but a sword’” (this polemic would arise again in The Master and Margarita).¹⁰ But was Bulgakov really such a pacifist? On one hand, he defends the home, life, and stability. On the other, his sympathies and antipathies touching the “Russian internecine war” are quite definite. He has profound contempt for both Petlyura men and Bolsheviks, and he sees both Petlyura and Trotsky as manipulators of the mob’s base instincts. But he shows no less contempt for the “headquarters nogoods,” the Talbergs and the officers carousing in the cafés. He sees both the futility of mob rule and chaos and the inability of the former social system to save the country. The problem is that he does not want to see the link between them, because if such a connection emerges,

introduction

xxxix

the last—moral—foundations of the White movement will collapse. Then only the last foothold remains, expressed in the opposition of two complexes of principles: home, light, warmth, and peace versus war, violence, and cruelty. “Unbeknownst to himself man had erected his towers, his alarms and weaponry, for but one purpose—to safeguard man’s tranquility and hearth. That was why he fought, and to be honest, there never was any other reason to fight.” These are the wounded Alexei Turbin’s thoughts. But no matter how much the heroes of White Guard try to hide from the blizzards raging outside the windows with the creamcolored curtains, the true storm of history bursts into the home; it is more dangerous than any blizzard of snow, destroying everything, tearing down the cozy curtains, knocking out windows and flinging the doors meant to defend the home wide open. This is the onslaught of the end of biography, the end of the personal, about which Osip Mandelstam wrote: social catastrophe pulls personal destinies into the dreadful funnel of history, and private life turns into a minute particle of the somehow disintegrating, sinking, vague, and often alien destiny of enormous Russia. In opposition to both the Turbins’ home on the Dnieper slope and the City stands the world—snow-covered fields, Russia, Moscow. Indeed, it is from there, the north, that “the blizzard kept howling.” Some biographers maintain that Bulgakov started writing White Guard from the second part, that during his first stage of work on the novel, “the image of war, and not the image of home, was predominant in his conception.”¹¹ In other words, the work was conceived as an epic novel about the Civil War and not as a family novel, the model of which is represented in Russian literature by Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Nonetheless, Bulgakov constantly makes reference to War and Peace and to Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter. As Edythe Haber keenly observed, the references to these two works are intended to emphasize the Turbins’ monarchism: “[They] are, significantly, his-

xl

introduction

torical novels, in which tsars—Alexander I and Catherine the Great, respectively—play prominent roles. Both works take place at times of national crisis and conclude with harmony and order restored—the monarch secure on the throne and family happiness achieved by the heroes.”¹² Generally, the references to three classic Russian authors (Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky) that permeate the entire fabric of the novel connect this fabric structurally through literary allusions. The novel is a hybrid of the family novel and national epic, like Tolstoy’s work; ideologically, it is connected to Dostoevsky through nationalism, and historically, to Pushkin, through his concept of history. Despite this, the novel is written with a virtuosic modernist technique that allows Bulgakov to combine the ideal of classical integrity with the realia of the Revolution’s explosions. But the overtones in the novel are not only literary: they are particularly historical as well. The Captain’s Daughter, for instance, which treats a “senseless and ruthless Russian rebellion,” as it were introduces the muzhiks’ “fierce hatred” as it flares up in the times of its character Pugachev. In White Guard, too, wrath is caused by centuries of oppression and social injustice, is enormously destructive, and consumes the country in its fire of hatred. But in the book’s epigraph, one reads also a motif of guilt, atonement, and requital. The tragic biblical beginning of the novel (“Great was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918, the second since the Revolution had begun”) continues the epigraph, which directly refers to the theme of the Last Judgment: “And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” The apocalyptic theme resounds incessantly in the novel, repeated in the first chapter in the ominous quotation from the ancient book that Father Alexander holds in his hands. This theme is in the fear of the future. It is in the songs the elders sing during the church service honoring Petlyura. And so on,

introduction

xli

until the very end of the novel, when the poet Rusakov bends over the old book to read, and right down to Alexei Turbin’s dream in which he talks with the Apostle Peter. The easiest reading of this theme is as a symbol that Bulgakov himself is the chronicler of those “works” according to which “the dead [will be] judged.” But there is also an unexpected aspect to this apocalyptic theme. The most unsympathetic character in the novel, Talberg, who called everything that happened in the City in 1917 an “operetta,” turned out to be right. The tragic paradox of Russian history goes generally like this: what the people of this country perceive to be a dreadful judgment, as well as their hopes for purification and a way out of the endless cycle of tyranny and slavery (1917, 1956, and 1987, in the twentieth century alone), all just returns to its normal course, and becomes deceit and “operetta.” An Apocalypse in operetta mode. Should we then be surprised that these people—drawn against their will by the whirlwind of this tragic social cancan and finding themselves on the stage of Russian history—simply have no time to turn their gaze to the stars? Translated by Jesse M. Savage notes 1. Quoted in V. B. Petrov, “Po prigovoru istorii (Istorizm p’esy M. A. Bulgakova ‘Beg’),” Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Bulgakova (Tomsk, 1991), p. 104. 2. Quoted in remarks by Konstantin Rudnitsky in Mikhail Bulgakov, P’esy (Moscow, 1962), p. 467. 3. Konstantin Rudnitsky, Spektakli raznykh let (Moscow, 1974), p. 230. 4. Quoted in Sergei Ermolinsky, Iz zapisok raznykh let: Mikhail Bulgakov. Nikolai Zabolotskii (Moscow, 1990), p. 25. 5. Konstantin Simonov, “O trekh romanakh Mikhaila Bulgakova,” in Mikhail Bulgakov, Belaia gvardiia; Teatral’nyi roman; Master i Margarita (Moscow, 1973), p. 5. 6. Viktor Pertsov, “Zhizn’; Mirovozzrenie; Khudozhnik,” Literaturnaia gazeta (August 30, 1967), p. 4.

xlii

introduction

7. For more on the national and ethnic composition of Kiev in modern times, see Michael Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917 (Princeton, 1993). 8. S. Lianders, “Russkii pisatel’ ne mozhet zhit’ bez Rodiny: Materialy tvorcheskoi biografii M. Bulgakova,” Voprosy literatury, no. 9 (1966), p. 138. 9. Marietta Chudakova, Zhizneopisanie Mikhaila Bulgakova (Moscow, 1988), p. 436. 10. B. V. Sokolov, Bulgakov (Moscow, 1988), pp. 65–66. 11. Lidiia Ianovskaia, Tvorcheskii put’ Mikhaila Bulgakova (Moscow, 1983), p. 106. 12. Edythe Haber, Mikhail Bulgakov: The Early Years (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 81– 82.

W H I T E G UA R D

This page intentionally left blank

Part

ON E

1

G

reat was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918, the second since the Revolution had begun. Sun had been abundant in the summer, snow in the winter, and two stars had risen particularly high in the sky: Venus, the Evening Star; and Mars, red and quivering. But in years of peace and blood alike the days shoot by like arrows, and in the hard frost the young Turbins had not noticed the onset of shaggy white December. Oh, Father Frost, sparkling with snow and happiness! Mama, radiant queen! Where are you now? A year after her daughter Elena married Captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, and the same week her elder son Alexei Vasilievich Turbin, following difficult campaigns, military service, and misfortunes, returned to Ukraine, to the City, to the family nest, a white coffin with his mother’s body was carried down steep Alexeyevsky Slope toward

4

white guard

Podol and the little Church of St. Nicholas the Good, on the Embankment. When they held their mother’s burial service it was May and the cherry trees and acacias were splayed solid across the lancet windows. Father Alexander, stumbling in his grief and confusion, shone and sparkled in the golden lights, and the deacon, his face and neck purple, clothed in beaten gold to the tips of his squeaky welted boots, darkly murmured the church’s parting words to the mother who was abandoning her children. Alexei, Elena, Talberg, and Anyuta, who had grown up in the Turbin home, and Nikolka, who was thunderstruck by her death and who had a lock of hair hanging over his right brow, stood at the foot of the old brown icon of St. Nicholas. Nikolka’s blue eyes, which flanked his long, avian nose, looked on, distraught, crushed. From time to time he glanced up at the icon screen, at the altar’s vault drowning in the gloom, where God, that sad, enigmatic old man, loomed and winked. Why this wrong? This injustice? What was the point of taking his mother away just when they had finally been reunited and known relief? God offered no answer as he flew off into the black, crannied sky, and Nikolka himself still did not know that everything that happened was always as it should be and only for the best. The service was over. They walked out onto the booming flagstones of the church porch and escorted their mother all the way across the vast city to the cemetery where their father already lay under a black marble cross. And they buried their mother. Oh my . . . oh my. . . . Years before her death, at 13 Alexeyevsky Slope, the tile stove in the dining room had warmed and raised little Elena, older Alexei, and little baby Nikolka. How often they had read the “Shipwright of Saardam” by its expanse of blazing tile, the clock would play a gavotte, and in late December there was the scent of pine, and candles of different

part one

5

colors burned on green boughs. In answer to the gavotte of the bronze clock in their mother’s bedroom, which was now Elena’s, the black tower clock on the dining-room wall would chime. Their father had bought it long ago, in a day when women still wore silly leg-o’-mutton sleeves. Sleeves like that were long gone now, and time had flashed by like a spark; their professor father had died and they were all grown; but the tower clock remained as ever, striking its chimes. Everyone was so used to it that, had it mysteriously gone missing from the wall, they would have been as sad as if a cherished voice had died, leaving an empty place you could never fill. Fortunately, though, the clock was quite immortal, as immortal as the Shipwright of Saardam and the Dutch tile stove, which resembled a wise crag and radiated life and heat in the darkest of hours. This tile stove, as well as the old red velvet furniture, the beds with the shiny knobs, the worn carpets—parti-colored and crimson, with Alexei Mikhailovich¹ holding a falcon on his arm, or with Louis XIV lolling in a garden paradise on the banks of a silky lake, and Turkish carpets with the marvelous flourishes on an Oriental ground that had haunted little Nikolka in the delirium of scarlet fever—the bronze lamp under its shade, the world’s best shelves of books, which smelt like mysterious old chocolate, with Natasha Rostova and the Captain’s Daughter,² and the gilded cups, silver, portraits, and hangings—all seven full and dusty rooms that had raised the young Turbins, all this, in her darkest hour, the mother had left to her children, and as she gasped for air and weakened, she clutched the arm of Elena, who was weeping, and implored her, “Live . . . in friendship.” But how were they to live? How? Alexei Vasilievich Turbin, the eldest—a young doctor—was 1. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629–1676). 2. The heroines of Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Alexander Pushkin’s eponymous story, respectively.

6

white guard

twenty-eight. Elena was twenty-four. Her husband, Captain Talberg, was thirty-one; Nikolka seventeen and a half. Life had pulled them up short just as it was dawning. The storm had begun to blow from the north long ago and continued to rage, and the longer it went, the worse it got. The eldest Turbin had returned to his native city after the first blow had struck the hills above the Dnieper. One assumed it would end any day and the life written about in the chocolate books resume, but not only was it not resuming, all around them everything was becoming more and more frightening. In the north, the blizzard kept howling, and here, under their feet, the earth’s belly, alarmed, rumbled forlornly and growled. The year 1918 was rushing to a close, and each day it was even more terrible and bristly. Walls would tumble, the frightened falcon would fly from the white sleeve, the light would go out in the bronze lamp, and the Captain’s Daughter would be burned in the stove. The mother told her children, “Live.” But in store for them was suffering and death. One day, at dusk, soon after their mother’s funeral, Alexei Turbin went to see Father Alexander and said, “Yes, we now know sadness, Father Alexander. It’s hard to forget Mama, and this is such a dark hour now. The main thing is, you see I’ve only just returned. I thought we would set things aright, and now . . .” He stopped, and sitting by the table, at dusk, he stared off into the distance, lost in thought. The branches in the churchyard hid the priest’s modest little house. It was as if a mysterious, tangled, springtime forest began on the other side of this cramped, book-filled study’s wall. The City was noisy but in a muffled, evening way, and there was the scent of lilac. “What can you do, what can you do?” the priest mumbled shyly. (He was always shy when he had to talk to people.) “It is God’s will.”

part one

7

“Might this all end someday? Will it be better after that?” Turbin asked no one in particular. The priest stirred in his chair. “This is a dark, dark hour, that is true,” he murmured. “But one must not lose heart.” Then all of a sudden he freed his white hand from his dark cassock sleeve, placed it on a stack of books, and opened the top one to where he had inserted a colorfully embroidered bookmark. “You must not allow yourself to lose heart.” He spoke shyly but with much conviction. “Losing heart is a great sin. Although it seems to me that there are trials yet to come. Yes, to be sure, great trials,” he spoke with gathering confidence. “Lately, you know, I have been spending all my time over my books, in my specialty of course, theology mostly.” He lifted the book up so that the last light from the window fell on the page, and he read: “And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.”³

2

A

nd so it was a white and shaggy December, which was quickly approaching the halfway mark. Christmas could already be felt reflected on the snowy streets. The year 1918 would soon be at an end. Above the two-story building at no. 13, a marvelous structure (on the street side, the Turbins’ apartment was on the second floor; on the cozy little sloping back yard, the first), in the garden that clung to the steep hillside, all the branches on the trees looked web-footed and drooped. Snow lay in drifts on the hill and sprinkled the garden shed—an outsized sugar loaf. The house was topped by a White gen3. Revelation 16:4. All biblical quotations are from the King James Version.

8

white guard

eral’s tall hat, and on the lower floor (the first on the street side and the basement into the yard, under the Turbins’ veranda) feeble yellow lights shone on the disagreeable Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich—engineer, coward, and bourgeois—while upstairs the light in the Turbin windows was strong and cheerful. At dusk, Alexei and Nikolka went to the shed for firewood. “Well, there’s not a hell of a lot of firewood. More was stolen today. Look.” A blue cone burst from Nikolka’s flashlight, and in it you could plainly see that planks had been torn off the wall and hastily nailed back from the outside. “Wouldn’t I just like to shoot those devils! By God! You know what? Why don’t we sit here and keep watch tonight? I know it’s the cobblers from no. 11. Such blackguards they are! They have more firewood than we do.” “Oh, forget them. Let’s go. Take this.” The rusty lock sang out, the brothers got a dusting, and they hauled the wood off. By nine o’clock you couldn’t begin to touch the Saardam tiles. On its blinding surface the wonderful stove bore the following historic inscriptions and drawings, done in India ink at various times in 1918 by Nikolka’s hand and replete with the most profound meaning and significance: If people tell you the allies are rushing to our rescue, don’t believe them. The allies are bastards. He’s a Bolshevik sympathizer. A drawing: Momus’s ugly face. The caption: “Uhlan Leonid Yurievich.” Terrible rumors rumbling, Bands of Reds are coming!

part one

9

A drawing in paint: a head with a drooping mustache and a Cossack hat with a blue tail. The caption: “Beat Petlyura!”

Written by Elena and her brothers’ dear and very old childhood friends—Myshlaevsky, Carp, and Shervinsky—in paint, India and black ink, and cherry juice: Elena Vasilievna loves us true. Some not very; some for sure. Lenochka, I got a ticket for Aida. Dress circle no. 8, on the right. On May 12th, 1918, I fell in love. You’re fat and ugly. After words like that, I’d shoot myself. (Drawing of quite a lifelike Browning.) Long live Russia! Long live the autocracy! June. Barcarolle. Well does Russia remember, The battle of Borodino.

Printed, in Nikolka’s hand: I hereby order outsiders not to write on the stove under pain of execution for any comrade and incarceration. Podol District Commissar. Ladies’, men’s, and women’s tailor Abram Pruzhiner. January 30th, 1918

The decorated tiles were blazing hot, the black clock was running just as it had thirty years before: tick tock. The elder Turbin, cleanshaven, fair-haired, looking rather older and somber since October 25th, 1917, wearing his tunic with the large pockets, his navy blue riding breeches, and soft slippers, had assumed his favorite pose—

10

white guard

with his feet in the chair. On the stool at his feet was Nikolka with his forelock, his legs stretched nearly to the sideboard. The dining room was small. On his feet he wore buckled boots. Nikolka’s friend, the guitar, tenderly and softly: th-rum. A vague sort of th-rum because, you see, right now plainly nothing was for certain. The City was awash in alarm, unease, and uncertainty. On Nikolka’s shoulders were a corporal’s epaulets with white stripes and on his left sleeve a sharply angled tricolor chevron. (First Brigade, Infantry, Third Section. Formed four days before, in view of events now in progress.) All these events notwithstanding, in the dining room it was marvelous, as a matter of fact. Hot and cozy, the cream curtains drawn. The heat warmed the brothers, making them languorous. The elder dropped his book and then reached for it. “Come now, play ‘The Surveyors.’” Th-rum-ta-tum. . . . Thrum-ta-tum-ta-tum . . . See the boots in fashion, Note the caps so fine, The engineer cadets now Are marching down the line!

The elder began to hum along. His eyes were grim but a tiny flame had ignited in them, and in his veins there was heat. Take it easy, gentlemen, very easy. Welcome, summer people, Gents and ladies all, . . .

The guitar was playing at a march, the company was pouring from the strings, the engineers were marching. Hup! Hup! Nikolka’s eyes were remembering: The academy. Its chipped Alexander columns, its cannons. The cadets crawling on their bellies from window to window and firing. The machine-guns in the windows.

part one

11

A swarm of soldiers had laid siege to the academy, or at least a uniformed swarm. What could you do? General Bogoroditsky panicked and surrendered, surrendered with his cadets. A disgrace. Welcome, summer people, Gents and ladies all, Our surveys all were started Many days ago.

Nikolka’s eyes clouded over. A sultry column of heat over the deep-red Ukrainian fields. Dustpowdered companies of cadets marching in the dust. We saw that, all that, and now it is no more. The disgrace. Drat. Elena pulled back the hangings, and they could see her coppery head in the dark opening. She cast a gentle glance at her brothers and a very, very uneasy one at the clock. Which was understandable. Indeed, where was Talberg? Their sister was worried. She wanted to conceal her worry and so was about to join in her brothers’ singing when suddenly she stopped and raised a finger. “Wait. Do you hear that?” The company broke off on all seven strings: Stop! All three listened closely and were convinced of it: cannons. Heavy, distant, and muffled. There it was again: boom. Nikolka put down his guitar and rose quickly; Alexei stood up after him, groaning. The parlor-cum-sitting room was pitch dark. Nikolka bumped into a chair. Outside was a real-life opera, The Night Before Christmas, complete with snow and tiny lights. Trembling and flickering. Nikolka peered out the window. The heat and the academy had vanished; his eyes strained to hear. Where was it? He shrugged his corporal shoulders. “Damn if I know. I get the impression they might be shooting outside Svyatoshino. Which is odd. They can’t be that close.” Alexei was in the darkness, but Elena was closer to the window,

12

white guard

and he could see her eyes, black and frightened. What did it mean that Talberg still wasn’t there? The elder felt her agitation and therefore said nothing, though he very much wanted to. In Svyatoshino. There could be no doubt of that. Firing, twelve versts⁴ from the city, no farther. What the hell? Nikolka reached for the latch and pressed his other hand against the glass as if he were about to push on it and climb out, and his nose flattened. “I’d like to go there. Find out what’s happening.” “Right, you’re all they need.” Elena spoke anxiously. This was a disaster. Her husband was supposed to have been back this afternoon at three o’clock at the very latest—Do you hear? The very latest—and it was now ten. They returned to the dining room in silence. The guitar was gloomily silent. Nikolka brought the samovar from the kitchen, and it sang ominously and spat. On the table were cups with delicate flowers on the outside and gold on the inside, the special ones shaped like figured columns. When their mother, Anna Vladimirovna, was alive, this was the family’s best service, but the children had put it into everyday use. Despite the gunnery and all this idleness, anxiety, and foolishness, the tablecloth was white and starched. This was because of Elena, who could not have it otherwise, and because of Anyuta, who had grown up in the Turbins’ home. The floors gleamed, and even now, in December, there were blue hydrangeas and two somber, sultry roses on the table, in a matte columnar vase, asserting the beauty and permanence of life, even though there was a cunning enemy on the approaches to the City who might very well smash the beautiful snowy City and trample the shards of tranquility under his heels. Flowers. The flowers were an offering from Elena’s loyal admirer, Guards Lieu4. The verst was a standard unit of distance at the time, approximately a kilometer.

part one

13

tenant Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky, a good friend of the salesgirl at the famous La Marquise confectionary shop, and a good friend of the salesgirl at the cozy Fleurs de Nice florist. In the hydrangeas’ shadow was a saucer with dark blue designs and a few slices of sausage, butter in a glass butter dish, and in the Fraget biscuit dish, a long loaf of bread. It would have been lovely to have a bite to eat and drink some tea had it not been for these somber facts. Oh my . . . oh my. . . . A colorful knitted rooster rode astride the teapot. The samovar’s gleaming side reflected three distorted Turbin faces, and Nikolka’s cheeks in it were like Momus’s. Elena’s eyes were full of longing, and her tresses, coated with a coppery fire, hung forlorn. Talberg was stuck somewhere in his train with the Hetman’s money and he had ruined the evening. God only knew whether something might have happened to him, certainly nothing good. Her brothers were chewing their sandwiches listlessly. In front of Elena were her cold cup and The Gentleman from San Francisco.⁵ Her bleary eyes looked at the words without seeing them: “. . . the gloom, the ocean, and the storm.” Elena wasn’t reading. Finally Nikolka couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’d like to know why they’re firing so close by. After all, it can’t be that—” He stopped himself and his image jumped in the samovar. A pause. The hand was slipping past the tenth minute and—tick tock— approaching ten-fifteen. “They’re firing because the Germans are scoundrels,” the elder brother suddenly muttered. Elena looked up at the clock and asked, “They wouldn’t abandon us to the tyranny of fate, would they?” Her voice was miserable. 5. A novel by Ivan Bunin.

14

white guard

As if on command, the brothers turned their heads and began to lie. “We don’t know anything for certain,” said Nikolka, and he took a bite of sausage. “That’s just what I said, mmm . . . admittedly. It’s just rumors.” “No, it’s not just rumors,” Elena replied stubbornly. “It’s not a rumor, it’s true. I saw Shcheglova today, and she said two German regiments had withdrawn outside Borodyanka.” “Nonsense.” “Think about it,” the elder began. “Could the Germans conceivably allow that blackguard to come anywhere near the city? Think about it, eh? I personally can’t imagine them getting along for a minute. It’s totally absurd. The Germans and Petlyura. Even they call him a bandit. It’s absurd.” “Oh, you don’t know what you’re saying. I know the Germans now. I’ve already seen a few wearing red armbands. And a drunken corporal with some female. A drunken female at that.” “Well, and so what? There can be isolated instances of degeneracy even in the German army.” “So, you don’t think Petlyura will come in?” “Hmm. . . . I don’t think that can happen.” “Absolument pas. Pour me another cup of tea, please. You mustn’t worry. Keep perfectly calm, as the saying goes.” “But Lord, where is Sergei? I’m certain their train has been attacked and—” “And what? Why must you go imagining things? That line is quite free, you know.” “Then why isn’t he here?” “My God! You know perfectly well what that kind of traveling is like. They’ve probably had to wait four hours at every station.” “Revolutionary travel. Ride an hour, wait for two.”

part one

15

Elena sighed heavily, looked at the clock, paused, and then started in again. “Lord, oh Lord! If the Germans hadn’t behaved so despicably, everything would be fine. Two of their regiments would be enough to crush that Petlyura of yours like a fly. No, I see the Germans are playing some despicable double game. And just where are our vaunted allies? Ooh, those no-good . . . They promised. They promised.” The samovar, silent until then, suddenly sang out, and some charcoal, dusted in gray ash, dropped onto the tray. The brothers couldn’t help but look at the stove. The answer—well, there it was, if you please: “The allies are bastards.” When the hand reached the quarter-hour the clock gave a solid wheeze and struck, once, and immediately the clock was answered by a delicate, modulated ringing in the vestibule ceiling. “Thank God, here’s Sergei,” the elder brother said happily. “It’s Talberg all right,” Nikolka confirmed, and he ran to open up. Elena’s color returned and she rose. But it wasn’t Talberg at all. Three doors rattled, and Nikolka’s astonished voice was heard on the stairs. A voice in reply. Studded soles and a rifle butt started clambering up the stairs behind the voices. The door to the vestibule let in the cold, and Alexei and Elena were confronted by a tall, broad-shouldered figure in a full-length greatcoat and khaki epaulets with three first lieutenant’s stars drawn on in inkpencil. His hood was covered with hoar-frost, and his heavy rifle with its rusty bayonet filled the entire entry. “Hello,” the figure sang out in a hoarse tenor and pulled at the hood with stiff fingers. “Vitya!” Nikolka helped the figure unknot his lacing and the hood fell back. Behind the hood was the brim of an officer’s cap with its darkened

16

white guard

insignia, and above the huge shoulders appeared the head of Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky. It was a very good-looking head, a strange kind of good-looking, both sad and attractive, that spoke of breeding and degeneracy. His good looks were in his bold eyes, which were each a different color and had long lashes. His nose was aquiline, his lips proud, his brow white and unblemished, without distinguishing marks. But one corner of his mouth drooped sadly, and his chin was hewn slightly askew, as if the sculptor who had modeled this noble face had got the wild idea of pinching off a scrap of clay and leaving this manly face with a small, uneven, feminine chin. “Where have you come from?” “Yes, where?” “Take it easy,” replied Myshlaevsky weakly. “Don’t break it. There’s a bottle of vodka in it.” Nikolka hung up the heavy greatcoat carefully; out of its pocket peeked a bottle’s neck wrapped in a scrap of newspaper. Then he hung up the heavy Mauser in its wooden holster, knocking the antler coat rack in the process. Only then did Myshlaevsky turn to face Elena, kiss her hand, and say, “From Krasny Traktir. Lena, may I spend the night? I won’t make it home.” “My God, of course.” Suddenly Myshlaevsky groaned and tried to blow on his fingers, but his lips would not obey. His white eyebrows and the hoar-whitened velvet ribbon that was his trimmed mustache began to melt, wetting his face. The elder Turbin unbuttoned Myshlaevsky’s tunic and ran his finger down the seam as he pulled out the dirty shirt. “Well, naturally. . . . Lots. You’re crawling with them.” “See here!” Frightened, Elena sprang into action, forgetting about Talberg for the moment. “Nikolka, there’s firewood in the kitchen. Run light the water heater. Oh my, what a disaster, I let Anyuta go home. Alexei, remove his tunic, quickly.” In the dining room by the stove, Myshlaevsky began groaning

part one

17

loudly and collapsed onto a chair. Elena bustled about, jangling keys. Turbin and Nikolka knelt and pulled off Myshlaevsky’s tight, foppish boots with buckles at the calf. “Easy now. Easy.” They unwound his nasty, stained foot wrappings, under which were violet silk stockings. Nikolka immediately set the tunic out on the cold veranda to let the lice die. Myshlaevsky, wearing a very dirty cambric shirt crisscrossed by black suspenders and navy blue breeches with foot straps, was now thin and dark, sick, and wretched. He started slapping and rubbing his blue palms on the tile stove. Terrib . . . rum . . . , Bands . . . com . . . . . . May . . . love . . .

“What blackguards they are!” exclaimed Turbin. “Why couldn’t they have given you felt boots and sheepskin jackets?” “Felt boo-oots!” Lamenting, Myshlaevsky mimicked him. “Felt!” In the warmth, searing pain suddenly knifed through his hands and feet. Hearing Elena’s steps fall silent in the kitchen, Myshlaevsky exclaimed furiously and tearfully, “Botched!” He collapsed, growling and writhing, and pointing at his stockings he moaned, “Take them off! Take them off!” There was the sickly smell of methylated spirits, a mound of snow was melting in a basin, and Lieutenant Myshlaevsky had become instantly drunk from a wineglass of vodka and couldn’t see straight. “Don’t tell me they’re going to have to amputate. Lord . . .” He rocked bitterly in his chair. “Don’t talk like that, please. It’s all right. Yes, your big toe’s frostbitten. It is. But it will pass. And this will pass.” Nikolka squatted and began pulling on clean black stockings, and Myshlaevsky’s stiff, wooden hands slipped into the sleeves of a terry robe. Patches of crimson bloomed on his cheeks, and squirming, in

18

white guard

clean linen and the terry robe, frozen Lieutenant Myshlaevsky relaxed and began to revive. Obscenities and curses bounced around the room like hail on a windowsill. He glowered, rained down indecent curses on the headquarters staff in their first-class cars, at some Colonel Shchetkin, the cold, Petlyura and the Germans, and the snowstorm, and concluded by berating the Hetman of All Ukraine himself in the foulest, crudest possible language. Alexei and Nikolka watched the lieutenant’s teeth chatter as he warmed up and from time to time would exclaim, “You don’t say!” “Some Hetman! Damn him!” Myshlaevsky snarled. “And the Horse Guards? In the palace! Eh? They drove us out in what we were wearing. Eh? Twenty-four hours in the cold and snow. Lord! I thought we were all going to die. Damn! A hundred sazhens⁶ between officers. You call that a line? We were lucky not to be slaughtered like chickens!” “Wait a minute,” asked Turbin, shaken by the invective. “Tell me who was there, at Traktir!” “Pfah!” Myshlaevsky’s hand flew up. “You wouldn’t understand! You know how many of us there were at Traktir? Forty men. That whore Colonel Shchetkin comes and says”—Myshlaevsky scrunched up his face, trying to depict the detested Colonel Shchetkin, and started speaking in a repulsive, reedy, effete voice—“‘Officers, all the City’s hopes are on you. Justify the trust placed in you by the dying mother of Russian cities and, should the enemy appear, move to the offensive. God is with us! In six hours I’ll relieve you. But I’m asking you to conserve your bullets.’” Myshlaevsky resumed in his ordinary voice. “And he and his aide slipped away in his car. It was as dark as his a—. . . . And the cold. Like needles.” “Lord, that’s who was there? Petlyura couldn’t have been at Traktir, could he?” 6. One sazhen equals approximately two meters.

part one

19

“Hell if I know! Believe me, by morning we were nearly out of our minds. We started waiting for our relief at midnight. We couldn’t feel our hands or feet. No relief. We couldn’t light fires, obviously, because a village was two versts off, and Traktir just one. At night you imagine the field stirring and them creeping up. So, I’m thinking, what are we going to do? What? You shoulder your rifle and think, Should I fire or not? It’s tempting. We stood there howling like wolves. You shout and someone somewhere down the line shouts back. Finally, I burrowed into the snow, dug out a grave with my rifle butt, sat down, and tried not to fall asleep. Fall asleep and you’re a goner. Just before dawn I gave in and felt myself begin to doze off. You know what saved me? Machine-gun fire. At dawn, I heard them start in about three versts away! And imagine, I had no desire to get up. Well, then I heard a cannon start booming. I got up, and it was as if my feet each weighed a ton, and I thought, ‘Congratulations, Petlyura’s come calling.’ The line tightened up a little and we called back and forth to each other. We decided that if anything happened we’d cluster together, shoot our way out, and head for town. If they killed us, they killed us. At least we’d be together. And just imagine—it stopped. In the morning we started running to Traktir three at a time to warm up. You know when our relief arrived? At two o’clock this afternoon. Two hundred cadets from the First Brigade. And imagine, they were beautifully dressed in fur hats and felt boots, and they had a machine-gun squad with them. Colonel Nai-Turs brought them.” “Aha! He’s one of ours! Ours!” exclaimed Nikolka. “Wait up, isn’t he a Belgrade hussar?” asked Turbin. “Yes, he is. You know, they took one look at us and were horrified. ‘We thought there were two companies of you here, with machineguns. How did you ever hold out?’ “It turned out those machine-guns—they’d been fallen upon at Serebryanka just before dawn by a band of about a thousand men, who led the attack. What luck they didn’t know there was a line there

20

white guard

like ours, or else you can imagine, in the morning the entire horde might have paid the City a visit. What luck they could communicate with Post-Volynsk. They let them know, and some battery over there hit them with shrapnel. Well, that cooled their ardor, understandably. They didn’t follow through on their attack and absconded the hell away.” “But who were they? Was it really Petlyura? That can’t be.” “Who the hell knows. I think it was some local icon-kissers straight out of Dostoevsky! Those bastards!” “Good God!” “Right,” said Myshlaevsky huskily, sucking on a cigarette. “We were relieved, glory be to God. Let’s count. Thirty-eight men. Congratulations—two froze to death. God damn it all. Two had to be carried away. To have their legs amputated.” “What? To death?” “What did you think? One cadet and one officer. But in Popelyukha, that’s near Traktir, we made out even better. Lieutenant Krasin and I went there to pick up a sledge to carry the men with frostbite. You would have thought the village had died; there’s wasn’t a soul around. We look and finally some old man crawls out wearing a sheepskin coat and using a staff. Imagine, he took one look at us and rejoiced. That made me uneasy straight away. What’s going on, I thought? What is this icon-kissing idiot doing welcoming me? ‘Lads . . . lads,’ he said, so I answered him in the same unctuous voice. ‘Hey there, old man. Come get us a sledge.’ And he answers, ‘Don’t have one. Damn officers drove all the sledges off to Post.’ Then I winked at Krasin and asked, ‘Damn officers? I see. And where have all your lads gone off to? ’ And the old man blurts out, ‘Run off to Petlyura.’ How do you like that? He was too blind to tell we had epaulets under our hoods and took us for Petlyura’s men. Well, then I lost my temper, you understand. It was cold. I flew into a rage and grabbed that old man by his shirt-front so that his soul nearly leaped from his chest and shouted, ‘Ran off to

part one

21

Petlyura, eh? How about I shoot you on the spot, and then you’ll find out how men run off to Petlyura! I’m going to have you running off to Kingdom Come, you wretch!’ Well then, naturally, this sainted tiller of the soil, this sower of seed and guardian of the earth”—Myshlaevsky unloosed a torrent of terrible profanity—“saw the light pretty quickly. Naturally, he bowed down at my feet and bawled, ‘Oh, your worship, forgive me, old man that I am, for being such a fool, so blind, I’ll give you horses, and right away, just don’t kill me!’ He found us horses and a sledge. “Well, it was dusk by the time we arrived in Post. What was going on there was beyond belief. I counted four batteries on the tracks, not deployed because there wasn’t any ammunition. But there was no end to the staff officers. No one knew a damn thing, naturally. Worst of all, there wasn’t anywhere to put the dead! They finally found a firstaid wagon, and—can you believe it?—they tried refusing to accept the dead. They didn’t want to accept them. ‘You have to take them to the City.’ That was when we got brutal. Krasin was ready to shoot some staff officer who’d said, ‘That’s Petlyura’s ways for you,’ but he slipped away. It was night before we finally found Shchetkin’s railroad car. First class. Electricity. And what do you think? Some lackey, some orderly type, is standing there and won’t let us in. Eh? ‘He’s asleep,’ he says. ‘My orders are not to let anyone in.’ Well, I pressed him to the wall with my rifle butt. All our men were in an uproar. Men spilled out of every compartment like peas. Shchetkin climbed out and started fawning over us. ‘Oh, my God! Well, of course. Right away. Hey, orderlies, some cabbage soup and brandy. We’ll find beds for you right away. C-complete rest. This is heroism. Oh, what a loss, but what can you do? The casualties. I was so worried.’ You could smell the brandy on him a verst away. Ah!” Myshlaevsky suddenly yawned and began to nod. He muttered, as if he were asleep, “They gave our detachment a car with a stove. . . . Oh! But they did me a bad turn. Obviously they’d decided to get rid of me after that uproar. ‘I’m

22

white guard

sending you to town, lieutenant. To General Kartuzov’s headquarters. Report to him.’ Hah! I got on the locomotive . . . freezing . . . Tamara’s Castle . . . vodka . . .” Myshlaevsky’s cigarette dropped from his mouth. He flopped back and immediately began to snore. “That’s incredible,” said Nikolka, dismayed. “Where’s Elena?” the elder brother asked, concerned. “We need to give him a sheet. Take him to get washed.” At that moment Elena was crying in the room past the kitchen, where behind the calico curtain, in the water heater with the zinc basin, a flame flickered in dry birch chips. The hoarse little kitchen clock struck eleven. And she imagined Talberg dead. Of course, the train with the money had been attacked, the convoy killed off, and there was blood and brains on the snow. Elena sat in the semi-dark with the flame shining through her rumpled crown of hair and tears running down her cheeks. He was dead. Dead. Then a delicate little bell fluttered and filled the whole apartment. Elena swept through the kitchen, through the dark library, and into the dining room, where the lights were brighter. The black clock chimed and proceeded to tick apace. But Nikolka and his older brother got very quiet very quickly after their first outburst of joy, which had been more for Elena’s sake anyway. The wedge-shaped epaulets of the Hetman’s war ministry on Talberg’s shoulders had a nasty effect on the brothers. Actually, well before the epaulets, almost since Elena’s wedding day, a crack had formed in the vessel of the Turbin life, and the good water had leaked through it imperceptibly. The vessel had run dry. The main reason for this, very likely, was to be found in the two-layered eyes of Staff Captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg. Oh my. . . . Be that as it may, right now the first layer could be read clearly. That top layer held simple human delight at the warmth, light, and

part one

23

safety. But go a little deeper and there was clear anxiety, which Talberg had brought with him. The deeper layer was hidden, of course, as always. In any event, nothing was reflected in Sergei Ivanovich’s figure. His belt was wide and firmly buckled. The white tips of both his graduation pins—from the academy and the university—gleamed steadily. His sunburned figure turned from side to side under the black clock like an automaton. Talberg was thoroughly chilled, but he was smiling benevolently upon one and all. And his benevolence reflected his anxiety. Nikolka, sniffing his long nose, was the first to notice this. Talberg, drawing out his words, recounted slowly and merrily how someone—no one knew who!—had attacked the train he’d been escorting, which was transporting money to the provinces, near Borodyanka, forty versts from the City. Elena grimaced in horror and pressed herself to his pins. The brothers again exclaimed, “Well, well,” and Myshlaevsky snored like the dead, baring his three gold crowns. “Who were they? Petlyura?” “Well, if it had been Petlyura,” said Talberg condescendingly and at the same time smiling anxiously, “I’d hardly be here chatting with . . . er . . . with you. I don’t know who it was. Cossack hirelings maybe. They burst into the cars waving their rifles and shouting, ‘Whose convoy is this?’ I answered, ‘The Cossacks.’ They hemmed and hawed and then I heard the command: ‘Off with you, lads!’ And they all disappeared. I think they were searching for officers, and they probably thought it was an officers’ convoy, not a Ukrainian one.” Talberg cast an expressive sidelong look at Nikolka’s chevron, glanced at the clock, and added unexpectedly, “Elena, let’s go have a word.” Elena hurried out after him to the Talberg half, to the bedroom where on the wall above the bed a falcon perched on a white sleeve, where a green lamp glowed softly on Elena’s writing desk, and on the mahogany night-table bronze shepherds stood on the pediment of a clock, which played a gavotte every three hours.

24

white guard

It took an unbelievable effort for Nikolka to awaken Myshlaevsky, who, staggering all the way, twice crashed into doors as he grabbed for them and fell asleep in the tub. Nikolka stood watch by his side, to make sure he didn’t drown. The elder Turbin, not knowing why himself, went into the dark sitting room, leaned against the window, and listened. Once again, far away, dully, as if through cotton wool, cannons boomed harmlessly, intermittently, and far away. Copper-haired Elena became old and ugly at a stroke. Her eyes were red. Arms hanging, she listened dolefully to Talberg, who loomed over her like an officer on parade and spoke implacably. “Elena, there’s nothing else we can do.” Then Elena, reconciled to the inevitable, said this: “Of course, I understand. Certainly, you’re right. In five or six days, right? The situation may yet change for the better.” This put Talberg in an awkward position. He even wiped his perpetual, patent smile off his face, which had aged, and each line betrayed his thoroughly made up mind. Elena . . . Elena. Oh, fickle, feeble hope. In five days . . . perhaps six. Talberg said, “I have to go immediately. The train is leaving at one in the morning.” Half an hour later everything in the falcon room had been torn up. The suitcase on the floor and its inner flap were opened wide. Thin and stern, wrinkles at her lips, Elena was silently folding shirts, undergarments, and sheets into the suitcase. Talberg, kneeling by the bottom drawer of his dresser, was fumbling with the key. But afterward . . . afterward the room was hateful, like any room that has known the chaos of packing, and even worse, where the shade has been removed from the lamp. Never. Never remove a shade from a lamp! Shades are sacred. Never run from danger and into the unknown like a fleeing rat. Doze by the lampshade and read. Let the storm rage. Wait for them to come to you. Talberg was running away. He stood tall, trampling on scraps of

part one

25

paper, by the heavy buckled suitcase, wearing his greatcoat and his neat black fur cap with his slate blue Hetman insignia and his belted saber. The train was waiting on the long-distance track at Municipal Station No. 1—without its locomotive as yet, like a caterpillar without its head. The train was made up of nine cars and had blindingly white electric light. General von Bussow’s staff was departing for Germany at one o’clock in the morning. They were taking Talberg, who had found some connections. The Hetman’s ministry was a foolish and vulgar operetta (Talberg liked to express himself trivially but forcefully), as was the Hetman himself, actually. Especially vulgar in that . . . “You must understand”—a whisper—“the Germans are abandoning the Hetman to the tyranny of fate, and it is very, very likely that Petlyura will enter the City. In essence, Petlyura has healthy roots. The peasant masses are on Petlyura’s side in this movement, and that, you know . . .” Oh, Elena knew! Elena knew all too well. In March of 1917 Talberg had been the first—the first, you understand—to arrive at the military academy with a wide red armband on his sleeve. This was in the very first days, when all the other officers in the City, at the news out of Petersburg, hardened to brick and vanished down dark passageways where no sound could reach them. As a member of the Revolutionary Military Committee, none other than Talberg had arrested the famous General Petrov. When toward the end of that famous year so many marvelous and bizarre events took place in the City, which had given birth to men who had no leather boots but who did have sharovary⁷ peeking out from under their gray soldier’s greatcoats, and these men were asserting that they would not leave the City for the front in any case because there was nothing for them to do at the front, so they would stay here, in the City, for this was their City, a Ukrainian city, 7. The characteristic wide trousers of the Ukrainian man’s national costume.

26

white guard

not a Russian city by any means, Talberg became irritated and stated dryly that this was a vulgar operetta and not what was wanted. And to a certain extent he was right. It had indeed become an operetta—not an ordinary one, rather one involving great bloodshed. In no time the men in sharovary had been driven from the City by gray, irregular regiments that had emerged from the forests somewhere, from the plain that led to Moscow. Talberg had said that the men in sharovary were adventurers, but their roots were in Moscow, even if those roots were Bolshevik. One day in March, though, the Germans entered the city in gray ranks, wearing rusty metal bowls, which protected their heads from shrapnel, while the hussars went around in those shaggy fur caps and on the kind of horses that, one look at them and Talberg understood where their roots lay. After a few heavy blows from German cannons outside the City, the Muscovites slipped away beyond the blue-gray forests to eat carrion, and the men in sharovary dragged themselves back, in the Germans’ wake. This was a great surprise. Talberg smiled, embarrassed, but was not afraid of anything because under the Germans the sharovary kept a low profile, didn’t dare kill anyone, and themselves even walked through the streets with a certain wariness, like hesitant guests. Talberg said they had no roots, and for a couple of months he did not serve at all. Nikolka Turbin smiled one day when he walked into Talberg’s room. Talberg was sitting writing out grammar exercises on a large sheet of paper, and in front of him lay a slim little book printed on cheap gray paper: Ignaty Perpillo, Ukrainian Grammar. In April of 1918, at Easter, the globes of dim electric light were buzzing cheerily in the circus, which was black to the dome with people. Talberg was standing in the arena in good spirits, like a military column, counting the show of hands. The sharovary were finished. There would be a Ukraine, but a Hetman Ukraine. They were electing a Hetman of All Ukraine.

part one

27

“We’ve staved off the bloody Moscow operetta,” said Talberg. He made a brilliant show at home in his curious Hetman uniform, on the backdrop of their dear old wallpaper. The clock choked contemptuously—tick tock—and more water spilled from the vessel. Nikolka and Alexei had nothing to say to Talberg. It would have been very hard to talk in any case because any discussion of politics made Talberg so angry, especially in those instances when Nikolka would begin quite tactlessly, “How can that be, Seryozha, if in March you said . . .” Talberg would immediately bare his widely spaced but large white upper teeth, yellow flecks would appear in his eyes, and he would begin to lose his temper. Thus, discussions went out of fashion of their own accord. Yes, an operetta. Elena knew what this word meant on those puffy Baltic lips. But now the operetta was threatening something bad, not for the sharovary this time, or the Muscovites, or some Ivan Ivanovich, rather it was threatening Sergei Ivanovich Talberg himself. Each man has his own star, so it’s not surprising that in the Middle Ages court astrologists compiled horoscopes in an attempt to predict the future. Oh, how wise they were! So you see, Sergei Ivanovich Talberg had a misbegotten, unlucky star. Talberg would have been fine had everything gone forward in a set straight line, but at that time in the City events were not following a straight line. They zigged and zagged, and in vain did Sergei Ivanovich attempt to guess what was going to happen. He couldn’t. Far away still, a hundred and fifty, maybe even two hundred, versts from the City, on tracks illuminated by a white light, was a saloon-car where a clean-shaven man was rattling around like a kernel in its husk, dictating to his clerks and aides in a strange language that even Perpillo himself would have been hard pressed to decipher. Woe be to Talberg should this man ever come to the City— and he might! Woe. Everyone knows that issue of the News, as well as the name of Captain Talberg, who had voted for the Hetman. The issue included an article attributed to Sergei Ivanovich’s pen, and in

28

white guard

the article these words: “Petlyura is an adventurer who threatens to destroy the land with his operetta.” “Elena, you yourself must realize I can’t take you wandering into the unknown. Isn’t that so?” Elena made not a sound in reply. She was too proud. “I think that, unencumbered, I’ll be able to make my way across Romania to the Crimea and then the Don. Von Bussow has promised me assistance. They value me. The German occupation has turned into an operetta. The Germans are already on their way out.” He whispered. “By my calculations, Petlyura is on the verge of collapse as well. The real power is coming from the Don. And you know, it’s not really a choice for me not to be there when the army of law and order is forming. Not being there would mean destroying my career. After all, you do know that Denikin was the commander of my battalion. I’m certain that before three months are out—May at the very latest—we shall enter the City. You have nothing to fear. They wouldn’t touch you in any case and, well, in a pinch you do have a passport in your maiden name. I’ll ask Alexei to make sure no harm comes to you.” Elena regained her senses. “Wait a moment,” she said. “Shouldn’t we warn my brothers immediately that the Germans are about to betray us?” Talberg blushed deeply. “Of course, of course, I shall, certainly. Actually, you can tell them yourself. Although that changes very little really.” A strange feeling flickered in Elena, but there was no time to indulge in its contemplation. Talberg was already kissing his wife, and there was a moment when his two-story eyes were filled with but one thing—tenderness. Elena broke down and shed a few tears, but softly, very softly. She was a strong woman, Anna Vladimirovna’s daughter, after all. Then came the farewell to her brothers in the sitting room. A rosy glow flared up in the bronze lamp and bathed that entire corner. The upright piano bared its homey white teeth and also the Faust

part one

29

score at the place where black note-hooks marched in thick black formation and motley, red-bearded Valentin sang: For my sister’s sake, I beg of you, Have pity, oh, have pity! You must protect her.

In that instant even Talberg, who did not come by sentimental feelings naturally, was reminded of the dark chords and tattered pages of the immortal Faust. Oh my, oh my. . . . Never again would Talberg hear the cavatina about God the Almighty, or hear Elena accompany Shervinsky! Still, when the Turbins and Talberg were no longer among the living, the keys would sound once again, motley Valentin would step out toward the footlights, perfume would fill the boxes, and women would play the accompaniment at home, bathed in light, because Faust, like the Shipwright of Saardam, was indeed immortal. Talberg told them everything right there by the piano. The brothers maintained a polite silence, trying not to raise their eyebrows—the younger out of pride, the elder because he was spineless. Talberg’s voice shook. “You must look after Elena.” The top layer of Talberg’s eyes watched them entreatingly and anxiously. He hesitated, glanced distractedly at his pocket watch, and said uneasily, “It’s time.” Elena drew her husband close by the neck, made the sign of the cross over him hastily and clumsily, and kissed him. Talberg poked both brothers with the bristles of his clipped black mustache. Looking into his wallet, Talberg nervously checked the stack of documents, counted the Ukrainian banknotes and German marks in the meager compartment, and smiling, tensely smiling and turning on his heels, left. Bzzz . . . bzzz . . . the overhead light in the vestibule, then the suitcase bumping on the stairs. Elena hung from the banister to get one last glimpse of his hood’s sharp peak. At one o’clock in the morning, an armored car, gray as a toad,

30

white guard

departed from track no. 5, emerging from the darkness, walled off by graveyards of empty freight cars, accelerating from a standstill to a great rattling speed and radiating red heat from its ash pit, and let out a savage wail. It raced eight versts in seven minutes, pulled into the hubbub, clatter, rumble, and streetlamps of Post-Volynsk, and without lingering, switched from the main line, and boldly, fearing absolutely no one, headed for the German border, arousing a vague hope and pride in the hearts of the frozen cadets and officers writhing in their heated cars and standing guard near Post itself. Following behind it, ten minutes later, a passenger train with a huge locomotive passed through Post, its dozens of windows glowing. Lumpish, massive German sentries wrapped to the eyes appeared briefly on the platforms and so did their broad black bayonets. The switchmen, hunched in the cold, watched the long Pullmans wobble on the turns and the windows throw shafts of light on the switchmen. Then it all disappeared and the cadets’ hearts were filled with envy, anger, and alarm. “Ooh, the bastards!” came a wail somewhere near the switch, and a smarting blizzard flew at the heated cars. That night, Post was buried in snow. But in the third car back from the locomotive, in a compartment upholstered in stripes, smiling politely and ingratiatingly, Talberg sat opposite a German lieutenant and spoke German. “O, ja,” the fat lieutenant interjected from time to time, while he chewed on his cigar. Once the lieutenant fell asleep, the doors in all the compartments were shut, and the warm, brightly lit car was filled with the monotonous rumble of the track, Talberg went out into the passageway, drew back the pale curtain with the transparent letters “S.W.R.R.,” and for a long time stared into the gloom. Sparks jumped up randomly, as did snow, and up ahead the locomotive pulled and wailed so ominously, so nastily, that even Talberg was undone.

part one

31

3

I

n that nighttime hour, in the downstairs apartment of the landlord, the engineer Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, there was absolute silence disturbed only by a mouse in the small dining room from time to time. The mouse was gnawing away, very busily, at an old rind of cheese in the sideboard, cursing the stinginess of the engineer’s wife, Vanda Mikhailovna. That hag Vanda, a scrawny, jealous woman, was sound asleep in the dark of her bedroom in her chilly and damp apartment. The engineer himself was trying to stay awake in his cramped, curtained, book-filled, and because of this extremely cozy little study. The floor lamp, which depicted an Egyptian queen and was covered by a green flowered shade, colored the whole room gently and mysteriously, and the engineer himself was mysterious in his deep leather armchair. The mystery and ambiguity of those shaky times was expressed above all in the fact that the man in the armchair was not Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich at all but Vasilisa. That is, he called himself Lisovich, and many people he dealt with called him Vasily Ivanovich, but only to his face. Behind his back, in the third person, no one called the engineer anything but Vasilisa. This had come about because since January of 1918, when the miracles so clearly began in the city, the homeowner had changed his neat signature and instead of a decisive “V. Lisovich,” for fear of some future accountability, began to write “Vas. Lis.” on forms, reports, certificates, orders, and ration cards. When Vasily Ivanovich himself handed Nikolka a sugar ration card on January 18th, 1918, instead of sugar Nikolka received a terrible blow in the back from a rock on Kreshchatik and was spitting up blood for two days. (A shell had exploded directly over the fearless people in the sugar line.) When he came home, hugging the walls and green in the face, Nikolka nonetheless smiled so as not to frighten Elena, spat up a full basin of blood spots, and to Elena’s wail, “Lord! What on earth is this?” he replied, “This is Vasilisa’s sugar, God damn

32

white guard

him!” whereupon he turned white and collapsed on his side. Nikolka arose two days later, and Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich was no more. First the householders at no. 13, but then beyond their building, throughout the city, people started calling the engineer Vasilisa, and only the owner of that feminine name introduced himself as House Committee Chairman Lisovich. Convinced that the street had quieted down for the night, not hearing even the rare creak of sleigh runners, and listening closely to the whistling coming from his wife’s bedroom, Vasilisa headed for the vestibule, carefully checked the locks, bolt, chain, and latch, and returned to his little study. From the drawer of his massive desk he took four shiny safety pins. Then he tiptoed out into the darkness and returned with a sheet and blanket. He listened again and even put his finger to his lips. He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and took a jar of paste, a neat roll of wallpaper, and scissors off the shelf. Then he peered out the window and, shielding his eyes with his hand, took a good look at the street. He hung the sheet halfway across the lefthand window and the blanket over the right with the help of the safety pins, taking pains to make sure there weren’t any gaps. He took a chair, climbed onto it, and rummaged around above the top shelf of books, ran a pen-knife along the wallpaper vertically, and then making a right angle to the side, slipped his knife under the slit to reveal a small neat hiding place, two bricks wide, which he had prepared the night before. He moved the little door—a thin sheet of zinc—aside, climbed down, glanced fearfully at the windows, and checked the sheet. Peeking out from the back of the bottom drawer, which opened with a double jingling turn of the key, was a sealed package wrapped in newspaper and neatly criss-crossed with string. Vasilisa stashed it in the hiding place and shut the little door. He spent a long time cutting strips in the red cloth until he had what he needed. Pasted on, they lay over the slit so neatly it was a joy to behold: half-bouquet to half-bouquet, square

part one

33

to square. When the engineer climbed down from the chair, he was convinced there was no sign of the hiding place on the wall. Vasilisa rubbed his palms with glee, quickly crumpled up the leftover wallpaper and burned it in the stove, stirred the ashes, and hid the paste. On the dark, deserted street, a ragged, wolfish gray figure climbed down from a branch of an acacia without making a sound. He had been sitting there for half an hour, suffering in the cold but avidly observing—through a treacherous gap above the top edge of the sheet—the work of the engineer, who had brought this misfortune down upon himself in fact by hanging the sheet on the painted green window. Springing down into a snowdrift, the figure retreated up the street and then with his wolfish gait vanished down side streets, and the blizzard, darkness, and snowdrifts consumed and swept away all traces of him. It was night. Vasilisa was in his armchair. In the green shadow he was the spitting image of Taras Bulba.⁸ Mustache pointed down and full—who gave a damn if the name was Vasilisa—this was a man! Some gentle rustling in the drawers, and on the red cloth in front of Vasilisa appeared stacks of oblong banknotes—green play money, and written on it in Ukrainian: State Bank Note 50 Rubles Worth 3 Credit Notes

Depicted on the money were two villagers, a man with a drooping mustache and armed with a spade and a woman with a scythe. On the reverse, in an oval frame, the ruddy faces of the same two peasants, enlarged. Here, too, was the dangling mustache, Ukrainian fashion. And above it all a warning: 8. Taras Bulba is a short historical novel by Nikolai Gogol about an old Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap.

34

white guard Forgery is punishable by imprisonment

and a confident signature: State Bank Director Lebid-Yurchik

A bronze equestrian Alexander II in a tousled iron froth of sidewhiskers, on horseback, cast an irritated glance at Lebid-Yurchik’s work of art and a kindly one at the lamp-queen. An official wearing the Order of St. Stanislav—an ancestor of Vasilisa, painted in oils— looked down from the wall at the banknotes, horrified. The spines of Goncharov and Dostoevsky gleamed softly in the green light, and the gold and black cavalrymen that were Brockhaus-Efron stood in a mighty rank. It was cozy. His five-percent bond was safe in the hiding place under the wallpaper, where he had also placed fifteen Catherines, nine Peters, ten Nicholas I’s, three diamond rings, a brooch, one Order of St. Anna and two of St. Stanislav. Hiding place no. 2 had twenty Catherines, ten Peters, twenty-five silver spoons, a gold watch and chain, three cigarette cases (“To our dear colleague,” though Vasilisa did not smoke), fifty gold ten-ruble coins, salt cellars, a silver chest with service for six and a silver tea strainer (the large hiding place in the shed, two paces straight ahead from the door, a pace to the left, and a pace from the chalk mark on the log in the wall). Everything was in Einem’s biscuit tins, which were wrapped in oilcloth, the seams tarred, two arshins⁹ deep. A third hiding place was the attic: half an arshin to the northwest of the stovepipe, under a beam in the fire-clay: sugar tongs, 183 gold ten-ruble coins, and bonds with a face value of twenty-five thousand. Lebid-Yurchik was for current expenses. 9. A Russian measure, approximately twenty-eight inches, or seventy-one centimeters.

part one

35

Vasilisa looked over his shoulder, as he always did when he was counting his money, and licked his finger. His face became divinely inspired. Then suddenly he turned pale. “Counterfeit, counterfeit,” he growled angrily, shaking his head. “Such a shame, isn’t it?” Vasilisa’s blue eyes filled with a lethal sadness. One in the third bundle. Two in the fourth, two in the sixth, and in the ninth, three notes that were certainly like the ones Lebid-Yurchik was threatening to imprison him for. One hundred thirteen notes in all, and on eight, one glance and you could see blatant signs of forgery. The peasant was somber when he was supposed to be gay, the secret quotation mark and colon were missing next to the sheaf, and the paper was better than Lebid’s. Vasilisa held one up to the light and Lebid shone through from the back like the obvious forgery it was. “I’ll give the cabbie one tomorrow night”—Vasilisa was talking to himself—“I’m going to market anyway, naturally.” He carefully set aside the forgeries intended for the cabbie and the market and hid a bundle behind the jangling lock. He shuddered. Steps ran across the ceiling overhead, and laughter and muffled voices shattered the deathly silence. Vasilisa said to Alexander II, “Kindly notice. I never have any peace and quiet.” Upstairs the noise died down. Vasilisa yawned, stroked his stringy mustache, took down the blanket and sheet from the windows, and lit a small lamp in the sitting room, where the gramophone’s horn glowed dully. Ten minutes later the apartment was in total darkness. Vasilisa was sleeping next to his wife in their damp bedroom, which smelled of mice, mustiness, and grumpy, drowsy boredom. And there, in Vasilisa’s dreams, Lebid-Yurchik arrived on horseback and the Tushinsky Thieves—whoever they were—discovered the hiding place with their skeleton keys. A jack of hearts climbed onto a chair, spat at Vasilisa’s mustache, and shot him point-blank. In a cold sweat, Vasilisa screamed and jumped up, and the first thing he heard was the mouse

36

white guard

and its family laboring in the dining room over the paper cone of crackers, and then a guitar strum of unusual tenderness through the ceiling and rugs, and laughter. Above his ceiling, a voice of uncommon power and passion sang out and the guitar took off at a march. “The only way is to turn them out of the apartment.” Vasilisa began tossing and turning in the sheets. “This is unthinkable. I have no peace day or night.” Marching and singing, The Guards School cadets!

“Although, actually, if anything should happen . . . True, these are terrible times. Who else you’re going to let in is a mystery, and here we have officers. If anything happens there’s at least some defense. Shoo!” Vasilisa shouted at the furious mouse. The guitar . . . the guitar . . . the guitar. . . . Four lights in the dining room chandelier. Banners of blue smoke. Cream curtains shutting the glassed veranda off tight. You couldn’t hear the clock. On the white of the tablecloth fresh bouquets of hothouse roses, three bottles of vodka, and slender bottles of German white wine. Lafitte glasses, apples in sparkling cut-glass bowls, lemon slices, crumbs, more crumbs, tea . . . On the armchair, a crumpled page from the humor magazine Crazy Fool. A haze swirled in their heads, bearing them off first in one direction to a golden island of groundless joy and then hurtling them into a cloudy swell of alarm. In the haze they saw disjointed words: Never sit on a hedgehog without your pants!

“There’s a cheerful bastard. . . . But the cannons are quiet. Damn, what a wit I am! Vodka, vodka and haze.” Tara-ta-tam! The guitar.

part one

37

Don’t leave the melon in the sun, The Americans already won.

Somewhere behind the smoke curtain, Myshlaevsky burst out laughing. He was drunk. Breitman’s jokes are bad but funny, So where’s the Senegalese company?

“Where indeed? In fact? Where are they?” a befuddled Myshlaevsky inquired. A sheep had a baby on the pediment. Rodzyanko’s going to be the president.

“But talented, the scoundrels. What can you do!” Elena, whom they had not let collect her wits since Talberg’s departure—white wine doesn’t make the pain go away altogether but merely dulls it—Elena was in the chairman’s seat, at the short end of the table, in an armchair. At the opposite end was Myshlaevsky, shaggy, pale, wearing a robe, his face blotchy from vodka and insane exhaustion. His eyes were red-rimmed due to the severe cold and terror he’d endured, the vodka, and rage. On one long side of the table were Alexei and Nikolka, and on the other, Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky, formerly a first lieutenant in the Life Guards, uhlan regiment, now an aide-de-camp to Prince Belorukov, and next to him Second Lieutenant Fyodor Nikolaevich Stepanov, gunner, known by his Alexander Gymnasium nickname—Carp. Short, sturdily built, and indeed very much resembling a carp, Carp had run into Shervinsky at the Turbins’ front door, approximately twenty minutes after Talberg’s departure. Both had shown up with bottles. Shervinsky’s bundle had four bottles of white wine; Carp’s, two of vodka. In addition, Shervinsky was laden with a colossal bouquet tightly wrapped in three layers of paper—roses for Elena

38

white guard

Vasilievna, it goes without saying. Carp told him the news right there at the door: he was wearing gold cannons on his epaulets. His patience had run out and everyone should go fight because not a rat’s ass had ever come of studying at the university, and if Petlyura crept up on the City, it sure as hell never would. Everyone should go, and gunners should join the mortar battalion. The commanding officer was Colonel Malyshev, and it was a wonderful battalion that was actually called the student battalion. Carp was in despair that Myshlaevsky had joined that idiotic brigade. It was foolish, being in such a rush to play the hero. And who the hell knew where he was now? He might even have been killed outside the City. But in fact Myshlaevsky was here, upstairs! Golden Elena, in the semi-dark of her bedroom, in front of the oval mirror framed by silver leaves, hastily powdered her face and came out to accept the roses. Hurrah! Everyone was here. Carp’s gold cannons on his crumpled epaulets were no match as a uniform for Shervinsky’s pale cavalry epaulets and pressed navy breeches. Delight danced in short Shervinsky’s shameless eyes at the news of Talberg’s disappearance. The little uhlan immediately felt he was in his best voice ever, and the rosy sitting room filled with a truly stupendous hurricane of sound. Shervinsky sang an epithalamion to Hymenaeus, and oh, how he sang! Yes, it may well be that nothing in the world matters compared to a voice like Shervinsky’s. Certainly now there were headquarters, this idiotic war, the Bolsheviks, and Petlyura, and duty, but afterward, when everything went back to normal, he would abandon military service, despite his Petersburg connections—and you know his connections—and oh ho!—onto the stage. He was going to sing at La Scala and the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow when they hanged the Bolsheviks from the streetlamps on Theater Square. Countess Lendrikova had fallen in love with him in Zhmerinka because when he sang the epithalamion he hit an A instead of an F and held it for five measures. When he said “five,” Shervinsky himself hung his head a little

part one

39

and looked around in dismay, as if someone rather than he himself had said this. “Yes, well, five. All right, then, let’s have our supper.” And there were the banners, the smoke. . . . “So where are the Senegalese companies? Answer me that, staff officer, answer me that. Dear Elena, drink your wine, my dear, drink. Everything will work out for the best. He did the right thing by leaving. He’ll make his way to the Don and return with Denikin’s army.” “Enough!” Shervinsky jangled. “Enough. Permit me to announce some important news. Today I myself saw Serbian billeting officers on Kreshchatik, and the day after tomorrow, the day after that at the latest, two Serbian regiments will enter the City.” “Listen, is that true?” Shervinsky’s face turned red. “Hm, that’s odd. If I said I saw it, that question seems out of line.” “Two regiments . . . all well and good but . . .” “Fine, then be so kind as to hear me out. The prince himself told me today that transport ships are already unloading at the port of Odessa. The Greeks and two battalions of Senegalese have arrived. We only have to hold out for a week—and then we can spit on the Germans.” “Traitors!” “Well, if that’s true, then we should capture Petlyura and hang him! Just hang him!” “I’d shoot him with my own hands.” “Another drop for everyone. To your health, gentlemen!” One more and they were quite fuzzy. Fuzzy, gentlemen. Nikolka, who had drunk three glasses, ran to his room for a handkerchief and in the vestibule (when no one can see, you can be yourself) he leaned up against the coat rack. Shervinsky’s curved saber with the gleaming gold hilt. A gift from a Persian prince. A Damascus blade. And even if

40

white guard

it wasn’t a prince’s gift or a Damascus blade, it certainly was handsome and expensive. The grim Mauser in its holster on the straps, Carp’s Steyr, with its burnished steel muzzle. Nikolka pressed close to the holster’s cold wood, fingered the Mauser’s predatory nose, and nearly wept with excitement. He wanted to fight right now, this minute, there, beyond Post, on the snowy fields. He felt so ashamed! And awkward. Here there was vodka and warmth; there, gloom, a storm, a blizzard, and cadets freezing. What were they thinking there at headquarters? The brigade wasn’t prepared, the students weren’t trained, and the Senegalese still hadn’t arrived. They were probably as black as boots. But damn it all, wouldn’t they freeze to death here? Weren’t they used to a hot climate? “I would take your Hetman,” the elder Turbin shouted, “and hang him first for what he’s done to this dear Ukraine of ours! Long live free Ukraine from Kiev to Berlin!! He’s been mocking the Russian officers for six months, mocking us all. Who forbade the formation of a Russian army? The Hetman. Who terrorized the Russian population with this awful language, which doesn’t even exist? The Hetman. Who unleashed all this scum with the tails on their heads? The Hetman. And now that they’ve let the horse out of the barn they’ve started forming a Russian army? The enemy is two steps away, and they want brigades and headquarters? Watch out, oh, watch out!” “You’re sowing panic,” Carp said coolly. Turbin exploded. “Me? Panic? You just don’t want to understand me. I’m not sowing panic at all, I want to let out everything that’s been seething inside me. Panic? Don’t worry. Tomorrow, I’ve already decided, I’m going straight to that battalion, and if your Malyshev doesn’t take me on as a medical officer, I’m going to go as an ordinary private. I’m fed up! I’m not sowing panic”—but a piece of pickle got caught in his throat and sent him into a fit of coughing and choking, and Nikolka started pounding on his back.

part one

41

“Well done!” Carp ratified what he’d said by pounding on the table. “To hell with privates. We’ll make you a doctor.” “Tomorrow we’ll all crawl over there together,” muttered a drunk Myshlaevsky. “Together. The entire Alexander Gymnasium. Hurrah!” “He’s a bastard,” Turbin continued with hatred. “After all, even he doesn’t speak that damnable language. Eh? The day before yesterday I was asking that rascal Dr. Kuritsky, who, don’t you know, has forgotten how to speak Russian since last November. He even spells his name the Ukrainian way. So I asked him, ‘How do you say “cat” in Ukrainian?’ He answers, ‘Kit.’ I said, ‘But “kit” means “whale.” So how do you say “whale”?’ He stopped, goggled at me, and was silent. Now he won’t speak to me.” Nikolka cackled and said, “They can’t have the word ‘kit’ because there aren’t any whales in Ukraine, but in Russia there are lots. There are whales in the White Sea.” “Mobilization,” Turbin continued with venom. “It’s a shame you didn’t see what went on yesterday at the police stations. All the speculators knew about the mobilization three days before the order. Isn’t that terrific? And each one has a hernia, each one has a right lung apex, and anyone who doesn’t is simply gone, might as well have fallen through the earth. And that, brothers, is an ominous sign. If they’re whispering in the coffeehouses before mobilization and none of them is joining up, then we’re in a bad way! Oh, the rat! The rat! If he’d started forming officer corps in April instead of playing out this ugly Ukrainianization comedy, we could have taken Moscow. You have to realize that here, in the City, he could have assembled an army of fifty thousand—and what an army. Top-notch, the very best, because all the cadets, all the university and gymnasium students, the officers— and there are thousands in the City—everyone would have joined and gladly. Not only would there have been no trace of Petlyura in Little Russia, but we would have swatted Trotsky like a fly in Moscow. The

42

white guard

moment was right. You know they say people are eating cats there. The son of a bitch could have saved Russia.” Turbin broke out in spots, and the words flew from his mouth with a fine spray of spit. His eyes were burning. “You . . . you . . . you ought to be minister of defense, not a doctor, really,” Carp began. He was smiling ironically, but he’d liked Turbin’s speech. It lit a fire in him. “Alexei is indispensable at rallies. A born speaker,” said Nikolka. “Nikolka, I’ve already told you twice that you’re no wit,” replied Turbin. “Just drink your wine.” “You must understand,” Carp began. “The Germans wouldn’t let us form an army because they were afraid of it.” “That’s not true!” Turbin exclaimed thinly. “If you have a head on your shoulders you can always reason with the Hetman. We ought to have explained to the Germans that we posed no threat to them. It’s over. We lost the war! Now we have something more terrible than war, or the Germans, or anything in the world. We have Trotsky. Here’s what we should have told the Germans: Need sugar, grain? Take it, gobble it up, feed your soldiers. Choke on it, only help us. Let us form an army. After all, it would be to your advantage. We’ll help you maintain order in Ukraine, so our icon-kissers don’t catch the Moscow disease. If there were a Russian army in the City right now, we would block off Moscow with a steel wall. As for Petlyura—” Turbin started coughing furiously. “Stop!” Shervinsky stood up. “Wait. I must speak in the Hetman’s defense. It’s true, mistakes were made, but the Hetman had the right idea. Oh, he’s a diplomat. The Ukrainian land, there are elements here that would like to natter in that talk of theirs. So let them!” “Five percent, while ninety-five are Russians!” “That’s true. But they would play the role of . . . er . . . er . . . permanent unrest, as the prince says. That’s why they had to be placated.

part one

43

Afterward the Hetman would have done exactly what you’re saying: a Russian army, and that’s that. Satisfied?” Shervinsky gestured solemnly in some vague direction. “Tricolors are already flying on Vladimirskaya Street.” “They’re a little late with their flags!” “Mm, yes. Quite true. They are a little late, but the prince is sure the mistake can be corrected.” “I hope so. I sincerely wish it.” Turbin turned to the icon of the Virgin Mary in the corner and crossed himself. “This was the plan,” Shervinsky spoke resonantly and solemnly. “When the war ended, the Germans would have picked themselves up and pitched in against the Bolsheviks. After Moscow was occupied, the Hetman would have formally laid Ukraine at the feet of His Imperial Highness Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich.” At this announcement, the silence of the grave fell over the dining room. Grief-stricken, Nikolka turned white. “The emperor has been murdered,” he whispered. “You mean Nikolai Alexandrovich?” asked Turbin, thunderstruck, and Myshlaevsky coughed and looked away, at his neighbor’s glass. Clearly he’d been going at it steadily and had now drunk more than he could hold. Elena dropped her head in her hands and looked at the uhlan in horror. But Shervinsky was not particularly drunk. He raised his hand and said powerfully, “Don’t get ahead of yourselves. Just listen. However, I would ask the officers”—Nikolka turned red, then white—“not to repeat what I’m about to say. Well, do you know what happened at Kaiser Wilhelm’s palace when the Hetman’s suite was presented to him?” “We have no idea,” Carp reported with interest. “Well, I do.”

44

white guard

“Bah! He knows everything,” Myshlaevsky marveled. “Why don’t you go—” “Gentlemen! Let him speak.” “Kaiser Wilhelm addressed the suite very graciously and then said, ‘Now I shall say farewell, gentlemen. In the future you will be speaking with’—and a curtain was drawn back and our sovereign walked into the hall. He said, ‘Go to Ukraine, gentlemen, and form your units. When the moment is right, I shall personally stand at the army’s head and lead you into Russia’s heart, Moscow.’ And he wept.” Shervinsky scanned the whole company brightly, downed his glass of wine, and winced. Ten eyes were fixed on him, and silence reigned until he sat down and took a bite of ham. “Listen, that’s just a legend,” said Turbin, frowning sympathetically. “I’ve heard that story before.” “They’ve all been murdered,” said Myshlaevsky, “the tsar, and the tsarina, and the heir.” Shervinsky glanced at the stove, took a deep breath, and spoke: “You’re wrong not to believe it. The news of His Imperial Majesty’s death—” “Is somewhat exaggerated,” quipped Myshlaevsky in his stupor. Elena shuddered angrily and emerged from her fog. “Vitya, you should be ashamed. You’re an officer.” Myshlaevsky plunged back into his haze. “—was cooked up by the Bolsheviks themselves. The sovereign was saved with the help of his loyal tutor . . . that is, I’m sorry, the heir’s tutor, Monsieur Gilliard, and a few officers, who brought him out . . . er . . . to Asia. From there they went to Singapore and by sea to Europe. So you see now the sovereign is Kaiser Wilhelm’s guest.” “But didn’t they throw Wilhelm out as well?” began Carp. “They’re both the guests of Denmark, and with them is the sovereign’s most august mother, Maria Fyodorovna. If you don’t believe me, then here: the prince told me so himself.”

part one

45

Nikolka’s heart moaned, thoroughly undone. He wanted to believe. “If that’s true,” he suddenly began enthusiastically, and he jumped up, wiping the sweat from his brow, “I propose a toast. To the health of His Imperial Majesty!” His glass sparkled and faceted golden arrows skewered the German white wine. Spurs jangled against chairs. Myshlaevsky rose, swaying and holding on to the table. Elena rose. Her golden crescent had come unwound, and locks of hair hung at her temples. “Fine! Fine! Even if he is dead,” she cried out, broken and hoarse. “I don’t care. I’m drinking. I’m drinking.” “He’ll never, never be forgiven his abdication at the Dno station. Never. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve now been taught a bitter lesson and know that only the monarchy can save Russia. So, if the emperor is dead, long live the emperor!” Turbin shouted, and he raised his glass. “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” The triple roar ran through the dining room. Downstairs Vasilisa leapt up in a cold sweat. In his sleep he had given a heart-rending shriek and awakened Vanda Mikhailovna. “My God . . . my . . . my . . .” Vanda murmured, clutching his nightshirt. “What’s going on? It’s three o’clock in the morning!” Vasilisa shrieked, weeping, addressing the black ceiling. “Now I am going to complain!” Vanda started whimpering. And suddenly both froze. From up above, clearly, leaking through the ceiling, came a thick, unctuous wave, and above it dominated a powerful, ringing baritone: . . . strong, majestic, Reign in glory . . .¹⁰ 10. From “God Save the Tsar,” the Russian tsarist national anthem.

46

white guard

Vasilisa’s heart stopped and a shudder even ran through his legs. Clumsily wagging his tongue, he muttered, “No. They must be out of their minds. They could get us in so much trouble we’ll never get disentangled. The anthem has been banned! My God, what are they doing? Outside! They can be heard outside!” But Vanda had already dropped back like a stone and was fast asleep. Vasilisa did not go back to sleep until the last chord drifted down amid a dull roar and shouting. “There is only one choice in Mother Russia—Orthodoxy and autocracy!” shouted Myshlaevsky, swaying. “Right!” “I went to see Paul the First . . . a week ago,” mumbled Myshlaevsky, weaving, “and when the actor spoke those words, I couldn’t stop myself from shouting, ‘Right you are!’ And what do you think, everyone around me applauded. And just some bastard in the dress circle shouted, ‘Idiot!’” “Y-yids,” Carp, drunk, exclaimed gloomily. Fog. Fog. Fog. Tick tock . . . tick tock. . . . It made no sense to be drinking vodka, or wine either at this point, because it got inside you and came right back out. In the narrow ravine of the little W.C., where a lamp flickered and danced on the ceiling as if bewitched, everything was blurry and spinning. Pale Myshlaevsky was vomiting in agony. Turbin, himself drunk, and ghastly, his cheek twitching and his hair plastered to his brow, was holding Myshlaevsky up. “Ugh . . .” At last Myshlaevsky moaned, pushed back from the basin, miserably rolled his dimming eyes, and went limp in Turbin’s arms, like an emptied sack. “Nikolka,” someone’s voice penetrated the zones of smoke and black. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that Turbin realized the voice was his own. “Nikolka!” he repeated. The lavatory’s white wall swung aside and turned green. “My God, my God, this is so disgusting, so

part one

47

awful. Never, I swear, never again am I going to mix vodka and wine. Nikol . . .” “Ugh,” groaned Myshlaevsky, lowering himself to the floor. The black fissure expanded and in it appeared Nikolka’s head and chevron. “Nikol . . . help me, take him. Take him like this, by the arm.” “Tsk . . . tsk. . . . Oh my,” murmured Nikolka, shaking his head sympathetically, and he girded himself. The lifeless body dangled, the legs shuffled, going in opposite directions, and the head lolled as if attached by a string. Tick tock. The clock slipped down the wall and back up again. The pretty flowers on the teacups danced in nosegays. Elena’s face was hot and splotchy, and a lock of hair danced above her right eyebrow. “Yes. Lay him down.” “You could at least wrap his robe up. It’s a little embarrassing, me being here. Crazy fools. You don’t know how to drink. Vitya! Vitya! What’s the matter with you? Vitya.” “Quit it. It won’t help. Nikolka, listen to me. In my study, on the shelf, there’s a vial that says ‘Liquor ammonii,’ but the corner’s torn off, damn it, see . . . it smells like methylated spirits.” “Right away. Oh my.” “And you, doctor, you’re a fine one.” “All right, all right.” “What? No pulse?” “No, this is nothing, it’ll pass.” “A basin! A basin!” “A basin, please.” “A-a-a-ah.” “Oh you!” The awful liquid ammonia hit hard. Carp and Elena opened Myshlaevsky’s mouth. Nikolka supported him, and twice Turbin poured the cloudy white liquid into his mouth.

48

white guard

“Argh . . . ugh . . . bah . . .” “Some snow, some snow.” “My God. You just had to go and . . .” A wet washcloth lay on his forehead and dripped onto the sheets. Beneath the washcloth you could see the bloodshot whites of his eyes rolling under his swollen eyelids and the dark blue shadows beside his aquiline nose. For a quarter of an hour, elbowing each other, bustling about, they tended to the vanquished officer until he opened his eyes and rasped, “Oh, leave me be.” “All right, he can sleep here.” The lights were on in every room, and people were walking about getting ready for bed. “Leonid Yurievich, you may sleep here, in Nikolka’s room.” “Yes, ma’am.” Shervinsky, coppery red but still cheerful, clicked his spurs and bowed, showing the part in his hair. Elena’s white hands flitted over the pillows on the sofa. “Don’t put yourself to any trouble. I’ll do it.” “You move away. Why are you tugging on that pillow? I don’t need your help.” “Allow me to kiss your hand.” “On what occasion?” “In gratitude for the trouble you’ve gone to.” “I can do without that for now. Nikolka, you’re in your room on the bed. Well, how is he?” “Fine, he went to sleep it off.” Two couches were made up in the room before Nikolka’s. Behind two bookcases set close together, full of books. Which is how the room had acquired its name in the professor’s family—the library. They put out the lights. They put them out in the library, Nikolka’s room, and the dining room. Through the narrow gap between the

part one

49

draperies that hung leading into the dining room, a strip of dark red light came from Elena’s bedroom. The light tired her, so she had covered the lamp that stood on the bedside table with her crimson hood. Once upon a time Elena had worn that hood to the theater in the evening, her arms, furs, and lips fragrant with perfume, her face lightly and gently powdered, and Elena had looked out from the hood’s box the way Liza did in The Queen of Spades.¹¹ But the hood had worn out, quickly and oddly, that one last year; the drawstrings had raveled and dulled, and the ribbons had frayed. Like Liza in The Queen of Spades, copper-haired Elena sat on her made-up bed in her robe, her hands resting on her knees. Her feet were bare and plunged into her old worn bearskin. Her short-lived intoxication was over, and a tremendous black melancholy enveloped Elena’s head like a hood. From the next room, muffled, through the door and the shifted dresser, came Nikolka’s light whistling and Shervinsky’s vibrant, robust snore. From the library, the silence of the lifeless Myshlaevsky and of Carp. Alone, Elena had no more need to restrain herself and so was having a conversation under her breath, sometimes pausing, barely moving her lips, with the light-filled hood and the two black patches that were her windows. “He left.” She mumbled, squinted her dry eyes, and began to think. Her thoughts were incomprehensible even to her. He had left, and at a moment like this. But really, he was such a sensible man and had done very well in leaving. After all, it was for the best. “But at a moment like this,” murmured Elena, and she sighed deeply. “What kind of a man is he?” You’d think she was the one who had fallen in love and foisted herself on him. And now this extraordinary 11. A novella by Alexander Pushkin, later the basis for an opera by Tchaikovsky.

50

white guard

sadness in the loneliness of her room, next to these windows, which today seemed sepulchral. But neither now, nor the whole time—eighteen months—she had lived with this man had she felt the most important thing without which even such a brilliant marriage between beautiful, copper-haired, golden Elena and the general staff careerist, a marriage complete with cloak hoods, perfume, and spurs, and unencumbered—without children—could in any case survive. Marriage with a cautious, Baltic, General Staff kind of man. “What kind of a man is he? What is that important something missing, that has left my heart so empty?” “I know, I know,” Elena told herself. “It’s respect. You know, Seryozha, I have no respect for you,” she said significantly to the red hood and raised her finger. And while horrified at what she’d said, she was also horrified at her loneliness and wished he were there that very minute. Even without respect, without that important something, if only he were here in this trying moment. He had left. And the brothers had embraced him. Was that really necessary? Although, please, what am I saying? What else could they have done? Held him back? Not for anything. Maybe it would be easier in this trying moment without him, so don’t, whatever you do, don’t hold him back. There’s no point anyway. Let him go. Yes, they had embraced, but deep down they hated him. By God. You keep lying to yourself, and lying, but the moment you think about it, it’s quite clear—they hate him. Nikolka, he’s kinder, but the elder . . . Although, no. Alyosha is kind, too, but I think he hates him more. Lord, what am I thinking? Seryozha, what am I thinking about you? What if you get cut off? He would have to stay there, while I would be here. “My husband,” she said, and she sighed and began untying her robe. “My husband.” The hood listened with interest, its cheeks suffused with a thick red light. It asked, “But what kind of a man is your husband?” 6

part one

51

“He’s a scoundrel. That’s all!” Turbin told himself when he was alone a room and a hall away from Elena. Elena’s thoughts had been conveyed to him and had been consuming him for several minutes. “A scoundrel, and I am truly spineless. If I didn’t drive him off, then at least I should have turned away in silence. He can go to hell. Not even because he’s a scoundrel because he abandoned Elena at such a moment. Ultimately that’s small change, rubbish, it’s because of something else. What, though? Damn, yes, I understand him through and through. Oh, he’s a wretch without the slightest concept of honor! I don’t care what he says, he’s nothing but a windbag. And this is an officer of the Russian military academy! This should be the best Russia has to offer.” The apartment was silent. The strip that fell from Elena’s bedroom went out. She fell asleep, and her thoughts faded away, but Turbin agonized for a long time in his little room, at his little desk. The vodka and German wine had done him a bad turn. He was sitting and gazing with bloodshot eyes at a page of the first book that had come to hand, and reading it, he kept returning senselessly to the same thing: “To a Russian, honor is nothing but a superfluous burden.” Only right before dawn did he undress and fall asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed a short nightmare in garishly checked trousers that said jeeringly, “Never sit on a hedgehog without your pants! . . . Holy Mother Russia is a country of wood, poor and dangerous, and to a Russian, honor is nothing but a superfluous burden.” “Oh you!” Turbin shouted in his dream. “You viper, I’ll get you.” Still asleep, Turbin reached into his desk drawer for his Browning. Sleepy, he got it out and was going to fire at the nightmare and chase after him when the nightmare dissipated. Two hours of foggy, black, dreamless sleep passed, and as it was starting to grow light, palely and gently, out the windows of his room, which let onto the glassed-in veranda, Turbin dreamed of the City.

52

white guard

4

L

ike a many-tiered honeycomb, the City lived a noisy, billowing life, marvelous in the cold and fog in the hills above the Dnieper. For days on end, smoke corkscrewed skyward from countless chimneys. The streets issued a light smoke, and the tremendous packed snow creaked. The buildings towered at five, six, and seven stories. In the daytime, their windows were black, but at night they shone in rows in the dark blue heights. Chains of electric globes stretching farther than the eye could see hung high on the hooks of long gray poles, shining like precious stones. In the daytime, the streetcars with their soft yellow straw seats, on the foreign example, sped along with a pleasant steady hum. Cabbies drove up and down the hills, shouting out, and dark collars—silver and black fur—lent intrigue and beauty to women’s faces. The gardens were silent and peaceful, weighed under by untouched white snow. There were more gardens in the City than in any other city in the world. Huge swaths of them spread everywhere with their paths, chestnuts, ravines, maples, and lindens. The gardens stood out vividly on the beautiful hills that hung above the Dnieper, and the eternal Imperial Garden reigned, rising in terraces, extending, at times dappled with millions of sun patches, at times in gentle twilight. The parapet’s rotted black beams did not block the route directly to the precipices, which were at a dizzying height. Sheer walls lashed by storms had fallen onto distant lower terraces, which extended farther and farther, wider and wider, merging into riverside groves above the road that wound along the bank of the great river, and the dark, ice-bound ribbon retreated off into the smoke, where even from the city’s heights human eyes could not see as far as the gray rapids, the Zaporozhian Sich, Chersones, and the distant sea.

part one

53

In winter, as in no other city in the world, a calm fell over the streets and lanes and the upper City, over the hills and the lower City, which sprawled out at a bend in the frozen Dnieper, and all the mechanical noise retreated into the stone buildings, which softened and muffled its growl. All the City’s energy amassed over the sunny and stormy summer spilled out in light. At four o’clock in the afternoon lights went on in building windows, in round electric globes, in the gas streetlamps, in the house lights and flame-red rooms, and in the solid glass windows of the power plants, which led people to thoughts of humanity’s terrible and empty future, in those solid windows where you could see machines tirelessly turning their desperate wheels, shattering the earth’s very foundation to its roots. The City played, overflowed with light, lit up, and danced, flickering all through the night until morning, when it died out and wrapped itself in smoke and haze. But the electric white cross in the hands of the gigantic St. Vladimir on St. Vladimir’s Hill shimmered best of all and could be seen from far away, and often in the summer, in the dark haze, in the tangled twists and turns of old man river, from the osier bed, boats saw it and by its light found their way to the City and its docks. In the winter the cross shone in the thick black of the heavens and reigned coldly and calmly over the dark sloping distances of the Moscow shore, where two huge bridges crossed. One, the Nikolaevsky, a heavy suspension bridge leading to the settlement on the opposite bank; the other tall and arrow-shaped, which trains rushed across from somewhere very far away where mysterious Moscow had pitched its colorful cap. So here it was, the winter of 1918. The life of the City was bizarre and unnatural, a life that might very well never be repeated in the twentieth century. Behind their stone walls all the apartments were crammed. Their original, long-time inhabitants squeezed and squeezed in to

54

white guard

make room for the new arrivals who had streamed into the City willynilly. They arrived over that very same arrow-shaped bridge as the warm, enigmatic, blue-gray smoke. Gray-haired bankers and their wives had fled, as had smooth operators who had left their trusty assistants in Moscow with orders not to lose contact with that new world being born in the Kingdom of Muscovy, and also landlords who had abandoned their homes to loyal secret stewards, as well as industrialists, merchants, attorneys, and public figures. Journalists had fled, from Moscow and Petersburg, venal, greedy cowards. Demimondaines. Virtuous ladies from aristocratic families. Their gentle daughters. Pale Petersburg debauchees with lips painted carmine red. Secretaries to department directors fled and so did passive young sodomites. Princes and skinflints fled, poets and usurers, gendarmes and actresses from the imperial theaters. This entire mass squeezed through the gap and held its course for the City. All spring, ever since the Hetman’s election, the City had been filling up with new arrivals. They slept in apartments on sofas and chairs. They dined in large companies at tables in luxurious apartments. Innumerable shops opened selling comestibles and engaged in trade until late in the night, as did cafés where coffee was served and you could buy a woman, and there were new theaters of miniatures on whose boards increasingly famous actors who had fled the two capitals entertained and amused the public. The famous Violet Negro theater opened, as did the majestic Ashes Club (poets, directors, actors, artists) on Nikolaevskaya Street, where plates clattered until dawn’s early light. New newspapers started coming out immediately, and the best pens in Russia began writing satirical articles for them in which they reviled the Bolsheviks. Cabbies hauled fares from restaurant to restaurant for days on end, and at night string music played in the cabarets and tobacco smoke, and faces of unearthly beauty shone on white, emaciated prostitutes hopped up on cocaine.

part one

55

The City swelled, expanded, and oozed like bread dough from its crock. Gaming clubs murmured until dawn. Here gambled individuals from Petersburg and the City, as did prominent and proud German lieutenants and majors whom the Russians feared and respected. Arabs from the Moscow clubs gambled, as did landed Ukrainian Russian gentlemen already hanging by a thread. At Maxim’s, an enchanting, pudgy Romanian’s violin sang like a nightingale, and his eyes were marvelous, sorrowful and melancholy, with bluish whites, his hair like velvet. The lamps, shaded by Gypsy shawls, cast two lights, a white electric light downward, but an orange light up and to the sides. The ceiling spilled the starlight of powder blue silk, and in the blue booths large diamonds flashed and copper-red Siberian furs glistened. There was the smell of scorched coffee, sweat, liquor, and French perfume. That entire summer of 1918, blustery daredevils in quilted caftans shuffled down Nikolaevskaya, and automobiles cast their beams abreast till dawn. Flower forests crowded shop windows, smoked salmon with golden fat hung in planks, and bottles of that splendid champagne Abrau sealed with the two-headed eagle shimmered darkly. All summer long, new people kept pressing in: gristly white faces with graying stubble; tenor soloists with brilliantly polished boots and insolent eyes; pince-nezed members of the State Duma; and whores with sonorous names. Billiards players took sluts shopping to buy lipstick and ladies’ cambric panties with outlandish slits. They bought the girls nail polish. People sent letters through the sole safety valve, troubled Poland (no one had any earthly idea, by the way, what was going on there or what this new country, Poland, was like), to Germany, the great country of honest Teutons, requesting visas and transferring money, sensing that they might have to travel even farther, where the terrible fighting and thunder of Bolshevik regiments could never under any circumstance reach. They dreamed of France and Paris, and they

56

white guard

grieved at how very hard, nearly impossible, it was to get there. They grieved even more at those frightening and not entirely clear thoughts that came to them suddenly on sleepless nights on other people’s sofas. And what if? . . . what if ? . . . what if that iron cordon should break? And the gray masses should rush in. Oh, the horror. Thoughts like this came when far off, very far off, they could hear the soft thudding of cannons. Outside the City there was shooting throughout that brilliant hot summer for some reason, while the metallic Germans kept the peace here, there, and everywhere, and while in the City itself muffled shots were heard constantly from the outskirts: rat-a-tat. Who was firing on whom, no one knew. It happened at night. During the daytime things calmed down, and occasionally people saw a regiment of German hussars march down the main street, Kreshchatik, or down Vladimirskaya. And was it ever a regiment! Shaggy caps above proud faces, scaly straps gripping chiseled chins, copperred mustache tips shooting upward. Horses in squadrons, mature and copper-red, in tight formation, four abreast, and the gray-blue tunics on the bristly riders resembled the iron uniforms on their bulky German leaders in the monuments of Berlin. Seeing them, people rejoiced and calmed down and said to the Bolsheviks so far away, gloatingly baring their teeth behind the barbedwire border: “Go on, poke your nose out!” They hated the Bolsheviks. Not with a face-to-face hatred, when the hater wants to start a fight and kill, but a cowardly, twitching hatred, from around the corner, from the darkness. They hated at night as they dropped off to sleep in vague alarm, in the daytime in the restaurants as they read the newspapers which described the Bolsheviks shooting officers and bankers in the back of the head with their Mausers and tradesmen in Moscow selling horsemeat infected with glanders. They all hated—the merchants, bankers, industrialists,

part one

57

attorneys, actors, landlords, demimondaines, Duma deputies, engineers, doctors, and writers. There were also officers. They too had fled from the north and the west—the former front—and they had all headed for the City, a great many of them, more and more all the time. Risking their life because it was hardest for them, being destitute and bearing the indelible stamp of their profession, to obtain false documents and cross the border. Nonetheless they did make their way to the City, their gazes hunted, lice-ridden and unshaven, minus their epaulets, and begin to adapt to the place in order to eat and live. Among them were old natives of this City who had come back from the war to their familiar nests with the same thought as Alexei Turbin—to rest, and rest some more, and begin afresh, not a military life but a normal human life—and there were hundreds and hundreds of strangers who could not remain in Petersburg or Moscow. Some—the cuirassiers, Horse Guards, Cavalry Guards, and Guard Hussars—easily floated to the top of the troubled City’s cloudy foam. The Hetman’s convoy wore fantastic epaulets, and the Hetman’s tables sat up to two hundred greasy-haired men flashing rotten yellow teeth with gold fillings. Anyone who couldn’t find a place in the convoy was found a place in restaurants and hotel rooms by shady but expensive fur coats with beaver collars who lived in carved oak apartments in Lipki, the best part of the City. Others—army staff captains from defunct and dismantled regiments, army hussars returned from battle like Colonel Nai-Turs, the hundreds of ensigns and second lieutenants, the former students like Stepanov—Carp—whom war and revolution had thrown for a loop, and corporals, also former students but finished with university for good, like Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky. In their worn greatcoats, their wounds as yet unhealed, with the dark traces of epaulets torn off, they arrived in the City and slept with their families or other people’s families on chairs, using their greatcoats for blankets, drank vodka,

58

white guard

rushed about, filed petitions, and seethed darkly. It was these last who hated the Bolsheviks with a direct, burning hatred, the kind that might prompt them to fight. There were cadets. When the revolution began four military academies remained—one engineering, one artillery, and two infantry. They closed and collapsed in a thunder of soldiers shooting and throwing out on the streets the crippled, newly graduated gymnasium students, newly matriculated university students, who were neither children nor adults, neither soldiers nor civilians, but boys like seventeen-yearold Nikolka Turbin. “This is all well and good, of course, and the Hetman rules over all. But my God, I still don’t know, nor will I ever, in all likelihood, to the end of my days, what this singular potentate with a title better suited to the seventeenth century than the twentieth, represents.” “What sort of a man is he, Alexei Vasilievich?” “A Horse Guard, a general, a very rich large landowner, and his name is Pavel Petrovich . . .” By some bizarre mockery of fate and history, the Hetman’s election, held in April of that famous year, had taken place in a circus. This will doubtless give future historians abundant material for humor. Citizens, especially residents of the City who had already experienced the first outbursts of internecine strife, were not only not interested in humor, they weren’t interested in any thoughts whatsoever. The election was held with stunning swiftness, thank God. The Hetman ascended the throne, which was marvelous. Just so there was meat and bread at the markets, no gunfire on the streets and, for the sake of the sovereign himself, no Bolsheviks, and the common folk didn’t loot. And, well, all this did come to pass, more or less, under the Hetman, and to a significant extent, actually. At least the Muscovites and Petersburgers who had taken refuge here, as well as most of the

part one

59

City’s residents, though they did laugh at the Hetman’s strange country, which they, like Captain Talberg, called an operetta, a kingdom of make-believe, the Hetman was sincerely praised . . . and . . . “I hope this lasts forever.” But whether this could last forever no one could say, not even the Hetman himself. Indeed. The problem was that the City was the City, and it had its police (the Varta), a ministry, even an army, and newspapers of various names, but what was going on around them, in the real Ukraine, which was bigger than France and had tens of millions of people in it—no one knew that. They didn’t know, they didn’t know anything, not just about remote places but even—and this will sound ridiculous—about villages fifty versts from the City itself. They didn’t know, but they hated with all their heart. And when disturbing news reached them from mysterious provinces that bore the name of a village about how the Germans were robbing the peasants and punishing them mercilessly, firing on them with machine-guns, not only did not a single voice of indignation ring out in defense of the Ukrainian peasants but more than once, under silk lampshades in drawing rooms, teeth were bared wolfishly and muttering could be heard: “That’s what they deserve! That and more! I’d do even worse. They’re going to remember their revolution. The Germans will teach them. The Germans didn’t want to teach their own so let them try it out on foreigners!” “Oh, that talk of yours is so unwise, so unwise.” “What do you mean, Alexei Vasilievich! You know what scoundrels they are. Utterly wild animals. Fine. The Germans will show them.” “The Germans!” “The Germans!” And everywhere: “The Germans!”

60

white guard

“The Germans!” Fine, here we have the Germans; and there, beyond the distant cordon and the blue-gray forests, the Bolsheviks. Just these two forces.

5

B

ut then, quite unexpectedly, a third force appeared on the big chessboard. Thus a bad and incompetent player, in an attempt to block an intimidating partner with a rank of pawns (the Germans in their helmets really did look very much like pawns), groups his officers around a toy king. But the opponent’s crafty queen suddenly finds a path off to the side, passes to the rear, and starts smashing the pawns and knights from the rear and declaring terrifying checks, meanwhile coming up behind the queen is a swift, light bishop—an officer. The knights race up, zigzagging craftily, and now, the weak and miserable player perishes: it’s checkmate for his wooden king. All this came to pass swiftly but not immediately, and what did come was foreshadowed by certain signs. One day, in the month of May, when the City awoke shining, like a pearl in turquoise, and the sun rolled out to light up the Hetman’s kingdom, when the citizens were already moving about like ants on their little affairs and the sleepy clerks were starting to open the clattering shutters in their stores, a frightening and sinister sound rolled over the City. It was unprecedented in timbre—neither cannon nor thunder—but so powerful that many windows flew open and all the glass rattled. Then the sound came again, passed anew through the entire upper City, and rolled down in waves to the lower City—Podol— and across the beautiful blue Dnieper toward the Moscow expanses. The City’s inhabitants woke up, and there was tumult in the streets. The tumult spread instantly, for people ran from the upper City—Pechorsk—disheveled, bloodied people howling and wailing. The sound

part one

61

was heard a third time as well, and such that the windows in Pechorsk buildings started caving in with a crash and the ground shook underfoot. Many people here saw women fleeing in just their slips and screaming in terrible voices. Soon after, people learned where the sound had come from—Bald Mountain, outside the City, directly above the Dnieper, where huge caches of ammunition and powder were stored. There had been an explosion at Bald Mountain. The City spent the next five days in the horror of anticipation that poison gases would leak from Bald Mountain. But the blows stopped, the gases did not leak, the bloodied people disappeared, and the City once again looked peaceful in all its parts, with the exception of a small corner of Pechorsk where a few buildings had collapsed. It goes without saying that the German command ordered a thorough investigation, and it goes without saying that the City never did learn anything regarding the explosion’s causes. People said different things. “French spies caused the explosion.” “No, Bolshevik spies caused the explosion.” Eventually people simply forgot about the explosion. The second sign came that summer, when the City was full of dusty, lush greenery, as the City thundered and roared and German lieutenants drank a sea of seltzer. The second sign was indeed appalling. In broad daylight, on Nikolaevskaya Street, right where the cabbies waited, none other than Field Marshal Eichhorn, commanderin-chief of the German army in Ukraine, an inviolable and proud general, terrible in his might, the proconsul of Kaiser Wilhelm himself, was assassinated. Assassinated by a worker, naturally, who was, naturally, a socialist. Twenty-four hours after the Teuton’s death the Germans hanged not only the murderer himself but even the cabbie

62

white guard

who had driven him to the site of the incident. True, this did not do anything to resurrect the famous general, but it did give intelligent people remarkable ideas concerning what was happening. Thus, one evening, gasping by an open window and unbuttoning his silk tussore shirt, Vasilisa sat over a cup of tea with lemon and spoke to Alexei Vasilievich Turbin in a secretive whisper. “Comparing all these events, I can’t help but conclude that we are living in an extremely unstable time. I think something is coming loose under the Germans.” Vasilisa rubbed his stubby fingers together in the air. “Think about it. Eichhorn. And where did it happen? Eh?” Vasilisa’s eyes bugged out. Turbin listened gloomily, his cheek twitched gloomily, and he left. Yet another omen appeared the following morning, to Vasilisa himself directly. Very early, when the nice sun had just sent its cheerful ray into the gloomy vault leading from the yard to Vasilisa’s apartment, he looked out and saw a sign in the sunbeam. It was unprecedented in the glow of its thirty years, in the glint of the necklaces on its imperial Catherine the Great neck, in its slender bare feet, and in its firm, swaying bosom. The vision’s teeth sparkled, and its eyelashes cast a violet shadow on her cheeks. “Fifty today,” said the sign in a siren’s voice, pointing to the milk can. “What are you doing, Yavdokha?” cried Vasilisa plaintively. “Have you no shame? Forty the day before yesterday, forty-five yesterday, fifty today. It can’t go on like this.” “What am I supposed to do? It’s all so expensive,” the siren answered. “There’s talk at the market it’ll be a hundred.” Her teeth flashed again. For a moment Vasilisa forgot about the fifty, and the hundred, and everything else, and a sweet and audacious chill ran through his belly. The same sweet chill that passed through Vasilisa’s belly every time the beautiful vision in the sunbeam ap-

part one

63

peared before him. (Vasilisa arose before his spouse.) He forgot about everything and for some reason imagined a clearing in the forest and the scent of pine. Oh my, oh my . . . “Look, Yavdokha,” said Vasilisa, licking his lips and squinting. (Had his wife come out?) “You’ve gotten out of hand with this revolution. Watch out, or the Germans’ll teach you a lesson.” Should I give her a slap on the shoulder or not? Vasilisa agonized and hesitated. A broad ribbon of alabaster milk fell and foamed in the pitcher. “Whatever they teach us, we’ll unteach them,” replied the omen suddenly. And it shone. It shone, it rattled its can, it rocked its yoke, and like a sunbeam inside a sunbeam, began ascending from the vault into the sunny yard. Oh, those legs! Vasilisa moaned silently. At that moment his wife’s voice reached him, and when he turned around Vasilisa bumped into her. “Who are you talking to?” asked his wife, casting an eye upward. “Yavdokha,” replied Vasilisa nonchalantly. “Imagine, milk today is fifty.” “What?” exclaimed Vanda Mikhailovna. “That’s an outrage! What cheek! The peasants are completely mad. Yavdokha! Yavdokha!” she shouted, poking her head out the window. “Yavdokha!” But the vision had vanished and did not return. Vasilisa looked closely at his wife’s bent torso, yellow hair, bony elbows, and chapped legs, and suddenly the idea of living in the world made him so sick to his stomach that he nearly spat at Vanda’s hem. But he restrained himself, sighed deeply, and went into the cool semidark of their rooms, unsure himself what precisely was weighing on him. Maybe it was Vanda—he had suddenly seen her and her yellow collarbone jutting forward like shafts—or maybe it was an awkwardness at what the seductive vision had said. “Unteach them? Huh? How do you like that?” Vasilisa muttered to himself. “Oh, I can’t stand these markets! No, what do you say to

64

white guard

that? If they ever stop being afraid of the Germans . . . we’re done for. Unteach them. Eh? But her teeth were luscious.” Suddenly, in the darkness, Yavdokha appeared before him naked, for some reason, like a witch on a mountain. “What cheek. Unteach them? But that bosom.” This was all so breathtaking that Vasilisa felt ill and went to splash cold water on his face. In this way, imperceptibly, as always, autumn crept up. Ripe, golden August was followed by bright, dusty September, and in September there wasn’t just a sign but the event itself, though at first glance it seemed quite insignificant. To be specific, one bright September evening, a document signed by the appropriate Hetman authorities arrived at the municipal prison ordering them to release from cell no. 666 the criminal held in said cell. That was all. That was all! But this document—no doubt about it!—was the cause of these disasters and misfortunes, these campaigns, bloodshed, fires and pogroms, this despair and horror! Oh! Oh! Oh! The released prisoner bore the most ordinary and unremarkable name—Semyon Vasilievich Petlyura. He himself affected the French version of his name—Simon—and so did the city’s newspapers between December 1918 and February 1919. Simon’s past was buried in the deepest obscurity. People said he had supposedly been a bookkeeper. “No, an accounts clerk.” “No, a university student.” At the corner of Kreshchatik and Nikolaevskaya Street there was a large and elegant store selling tobacco goods. Its rectangular sign depicted very well a coffee-colored Turk wearing a fez and smoking a hookah. The Turk’s feet were in soft tan slippers with curled toes. So you see, there were those who swore that they had seen Simon in this very store quite recently, standing elegantly behind the counter,

part one

65

selling tobacco goods from the factory of Solomon Kogen. But there were also those who said, “Nothing of the kind. He was a representative of the Union of Municipalities.” “Not the Union of Municipalities, the zemstvo union,”¹² replied a third. “A typical zemstvo hussar.” Still others (newcomers), closing their eyes to help themselves remember, muttered, “Let me think . . . just let me . . .” And they told stories about how ten years ago . . . no, I’m wrong, eleven . . . they saw him walking down Malaya Bronnaya Street in Moscow one evening with a guitar wrapped in black sarcenet tucked under his arm. They even added that he’d been on his way to a party with his compatriots, which was why he had the guitar in the sarcenet. That he had been on his way to a fine, interesting party with some cheerful, rosy-cheeked girl students from home, with plum brandy brought directly from their abundant Ukraine, with songs and the wonderful Grits. . . . Oh, do not go . . .

Then they started getting tripped up on their descriptions of his appearance and mixing up their dates and places. “You say he’s clean-shaven?” “No, I think . . . wait . . . yes, he does have a beard.” “Wait . . . you mean he’s from Moscow?” “Oh no, he’s a university student . . . he was . . .” “Nothing of the kind. Ivan Ivanovich knows him. He was a schoolteacher in Tarashcha.” “To hell with that. Maybe he wasn’t even walking down Bronnaya. Moscow’s a big city, and there’s fog, and frost, and shadows on Bronnaya. . . . Some guitar . . . a Turk in the sun . . . a hookah . . . a guitar— 12. The zemstvo was a form of local government instituted during the great liberal reforms of Alexander II in the nineteenth century.

66

white guard

br-rum th-rum . . . hazy and foggy. . . . oh, very foggy and frightening all around.” . . . Marching and singing . . .

They were marching. They were marching past the bloody shadows, visions were running, young girls’ tousled braids, prison, gunfire and frost, and Vladimir’s midnight cross. Marching and singing, The Guard School cadets . . . Bugles and kettle-drums, Cymbals crash.

The torbans were rattling, a nightingale was screeching like a steel screw, they were mowing people down with their muzzleloaders, and the black-hatted cavalry rode and rode on its spirited horses. A prophetic dream was rattling, rolling toward Alexei Turbin’s bed. Turbin was asleep, pale, a lock of his hair soaking wet because he was warm, and the pink lamp was burning. The whole house was asleep. Carp’s snore from the library, Shervinsky’s whistle from Nikolka’s room. . . . A blur . . . night. . . . Dostoevsky lay on the floor by Alexei’s bed unfinished, and the Demons were jeering, speaking desperate words. . . . Elena was sleeping quietly. “Well, here’s what I can tell you. There was no such person. There wasn’t! There was no such Simon in the world. No Turk, no guitar under a cast iron streetlamp on Bronnaya, no zemstvo union . . . not a damn bit of it. It’s just a myth born in Ukraine in the fog of the terrible year of 1918.” There was something else as well—fierce hatred. There were four hundred thousand Germans, and around them four times forty times four hundred thousand peasants with scythes who were burning with unslaked malice. Oh so much had accumulated in those hearts: the blows of the lieutenants’ riding crops across their faces; the rapid

part one

67

shrapnel fire at the unbowed villages; the backs striped by the muzzleloaders of the Hetman’s Cossacks; and the notes on scraps of paper in the handwriting of majors and lieutenants of the German army: “Pay the Russian pig 25 marks for the pig I bought from him.”

And the good-natured, contemptuous laughter aimed at anyone who took a note like that to the Teutons’ headquarters in the City. The requisitioned horses, the confiscated grain, the fat-faced landowners who returned to their estates under the Hetman—and the shudder of hatred at the words “Russian officers.” That’s what there was. There were also rumors about the land reform the Hetman intended to carry out. Alas! Not until November 1918, when the cannons started booming outside the City, did intelligent people, including Vasilisa, guess that the peasants hated this very same Hetman as they would a rabid dog—

and there were the peasants’ thoughts about how they didn’t need any reform from those bastard lords. What they needed was the reform peasants had always dreamed of: —All land to the peasants. —one hundred desyatinas¹³ for every man. —Neither hide nor hair of any landowners. —A proper deed officially stamped and sealed for every one of these hundred desyatinas granting ownership in perpetuity, ownership to pass from grandfather to father, from father to son, to grandson, and so on. —No rabble coming from the City to demand grain. It’s peasant grain, and we’re not giving it to anyone, and what we don’t eat we’ll bury in the ground. —Kerosene delivered from the City. 13. The desyatina was a land measure equivalent to approximately three acres.

68

white guard

“Well, their revered Hetman couldn’t carry out a reform like that. Damn if anyone ever could.” There were dispiriting rumors that only the Bolsheviks could deal with the onslaught of Hetman and Germans, but the Bolsheviks had their own onslaught—of Yids and commissars. “Those Ukrainian peasants have a bitter lot! With no salvation in sight!” There were tens of thousands of men back from the war who knew how to shoot. “It was the officers themselves had taught them on orders from above!” Hundreds of thousands of rifles buried in the ground, hidden in threshing barns and rooms and never turned in, despite the rough and ready German courts-martial, the muzzleloader thrashings, and the firing of shrapnel, the millions of cartridges in the same ground, and the three-inch guns in every fifth village, the machine-guns in every second, the caches of ammunition in every little town, and the armories filled with greatcoats and sheepskin hats. In these same little towns, the schoolteachers, medics, smallholders, Ukrainian seminarians whom destiny had made ensigns, the hale and hearty sons of beekeepers, staff captains with Ukrainian surnames—everyone spoke Ukrainian, everyone was in love with a magical Ukraine they imagined free of Polish lords and Moscow officers. And then there were the thousands of former Ukrainian prisoners back from Galicia. And this in addition to the tens of thousands of peasants? Oh ho! That is what there was. But the prisoner and guitar . . . Terrible rumors rumbling, Bands of Reds are coming!

Br-rum . . . th-rum. . . . Oh my, Nikolka, oh my. The Turk, the zemstvo hussar, Simon. There was no such person.

part one

69

There wasn’t. It was ridiculous, a legend, a mirage. It was just a word that combined unslaked fury, and the thirst for peasant vengeance, and the hopes of these loyal sons of hot, sun-drenched Ukraine who hated Moscow, be it Bolshevik, tsarist, or anything else. In vain did wise Vasilisa, clutching his head, exclaim that famous November, “Quos vult perdere, dementat!”¹⁴ He cursed the Hetman for releasing Petlyura from the filthy municipal prison. “This is all hogwash. If it weren’t him, it would be someone else. If it weren’t someone else, it would be someone else still.” All the various signs came to an end, and events ensued. The second event was not so negligible as the release of some mythical person from prison. Oh no! It was so magnificent that mankind will probably be talking about it for a hundred years to come. Gallic cocks in red trousers, in the distant European west, were pecking the fat iron Germans half to death. It was an appalling spectacle: cocks in Phrygian caps with their affected screeching flying at the armored Teutons and ripping out hunks of their flesh and armor. The Germans had fought desperately, driving their broad bayonets into the feathered breasts and gnawing them with their teeth, but they could not hold out and the Germans—the Germans!—had sued for mercy. The next event was closely connected to and stemmed from this, like an effect from a cause. The whole world, stunned and shaken, learned that the man whose name and corkscrew mustache, like sixinch nails, were known throughout the world and who must have been metal through and through, without the least traces of wood, had been cast down. Cast down into the ashes. He had ceased to be Kaiser. Then a dark horror passed like a wind through every mind in the City. They had seen, with their own eyes, the German lieutenants fading and the nap of their blue-gray uniforms turning into suspi14. Whosoever He wishes to destroy, He shall first drive him mad (Latin).— Author.

70

white guard

ciously worn hopsack. And this had happened right here, before their very eyes, in hours, in the space of a very few hours their eyes paled, the vibrant light in the lieutenants’ monocled windows went out, and the poverty of holes and want began peering out of those broad glass discs. That was when a current pierced the brains of the smartest of those with their hard tan suitcases and luscious women who had jumped the Bolsheviks’ barbed-wire fence and come to the City. They realized that fate had linked them to the vanquished, and their hearts were filled with dread. “The Germans have been beaten,” said the vermin. “We’re beaten,” said the smart vermin. The City’s inhabitants realized the same thing. Only someone who has himself been beaten knows what that word means! It’s like an evening in a home where the electric lights are out. It’s like a room where green mold, full of diseased life, is climbing the wallpaper. It’s like demon children with rickets, like rancid vegetable oil, like obscenities sworn by women’s voices in the dark. In short, it was like death. This was the end. The Germans were abandoning Ukraine. That meant some would flee and others would welcome the new, astonishing, unwelcome guests to the City. Some would probably have to die. Those who fled would not die, so who would? “Dying isn’t child’s play,” said Colonel Nai-Turs, who could not break himself of burring his words, suddenly appearing from out of nowhere before the sleeping Alexei Turbin. He was wearing an odd uniform: a shiny helmet on his head, his body in chain mail, and he was leaning on a long sword of a kind no army has used since the Crusades. A heavenly radiance followed Nai like a cloud. “Are you in heaven, colonel?” asked Turbin, feeling a delicious flutter that no one ever experiences awake.

part one “Yes, I am,” replied Nai-Turs in a pure and utterly clear voice, like the brook in the city’s woods. “How strange, how strange,” began Turbin. “I thought that heaven was, you know . . . humanity’s dream. And what an odd uniform. May I ask, colonel, are you still an officer in heaven?” “He’s in the Crusaders’ brigade now, doctor,” replied Cavalry Sergeant-Major Zhilin, who was known to have been mowed down by machine-gun fire in the Vilensk sector with his squadron of Belgrade hussars in 1916. The sergeant-major loomed like a huge knight, and his chain mail scattered light. His coarse features, which Dr. Turbin remembered perfectly, having bandaged Zhilin’s mortal wound himself, were now unrecognizable, and the sergeant-major’s eyes were exactly like Nai-Turs’s—pure, bottomless, and lit from within. In his murky heart of hearts, Alexei Turbin loved women’s eyes more than anything in the world. Oh, the Lord God had created a plaything—women’s eyes! But they were no match for the sergeant-major’s. “How are you?” Dr. Turbin asked with curiosity and inexplicable joy. “How can it be, you’re in heaven with boots and spurs? You mean in the end you have horses, wagons, lances?” “Believe what I say, doctor,” Zhilin the sergeant-major boomed in a low cello voice, looking straight into his eyes with a blue gaze that warmed Turbin’s heart, “we went straight there as a squadron, mounted. We have our accordion back. It’s a little awkward, of course. You know, it’s clean there, church floors.” “And so?” Turbin was amazed. “So the Apostle Peter is there. An old man, a civilian, but imposing and well-mannered. I report in, naturally: ‘Somehow, the Second Squadron of Belgrade Hussars has successfully entered heaven. Now where should we go?’ So I’m reporting in, but I’m thinking”—the sergeant-major coughed modestly into his fist— “I’m wondering whether the Apostle Peter is going to tell us to go to hell. Because, as you know, that’s where, with horses, and”— the sergeant-major scratched the back of his head, embarrassed— “I’m telling you in confidence, there were these women who came up to us en route. I’m telling the apostle this while I’m winking at my platoon, as if to say, chuck the women out for now, and then we’ll see. Let them sit over there for now, behind the clouds, until

71

72

white guard the facts are clear. Apostle Peter has his good qualities, you know, even if he is pretty familiar. He gives me the eye, and I see he’s seen the women on the wagons. Everyone knows, the kerchiefs they wear are bright, you can see them a verst off. The jig’s up, I think. A pile of them for the whole squadron. “‘Aha,’ he says, ‘what did you do, bring women?’ And he shakes his head. “‘Yes, sir,’ I say, ‘but,’ I say, ‘don’t you be worrying about that, we’ll go beat them off, right away, apostle, sir.’ “‘No,’ he says, ‘as long as you’re here, you can quit your beating!’ “Eh? What was I supposed to do? He’s a good-natured old fellow. You realize, doctor, a squadron can’t march without women.” The sergeant-major winked slyly. “That is true,” Alexei Vasilievich, looking down, had to agree. Someone’s eyes, black, black eyes, and moles on her right cheek, her dull right cheek, glittered vaguely in the sleepy darkness. Turbin gave an embarrassed cough, and the sergeant-major continued. “Well then, now it’s him talking—let’s report. He went away, came back, and reports, ‘Fine, we’ll get you settled.’ And we knew such joy, I can’t put it into words. There was just this one tiny hitch. ‘You’re going to have to wait,’ the Apostle Peter said. But we waited less than a minute. I look and he rides up”—the sergeantmajor pointed to the silent, proud Nai-Turs, who had vanished without a trace from the dream into the dark of the unknown. “Our squadron commander galloping on the Rebel of Tushino. And behind him, lagging behind a little, a cadet I didn’t know, with the infantry.” At this the sergeant-major squinted at Turbin and looked down for a moment, as if he were trying to hide something from the doctor—not something sad, no, on the contrary, a joyous, glorious secret—then he pulled himself together and went on. “Peter shielded his eyes and said, ‘That’s all for now,’ he says, and now the door is open, ‘and if you please,’ he says, ‘to the right by threes.’”

Suddenly he heard, in his dream,

part one

73

Dunka, Dunka, Dunka! Dunya, little berry mine,—

a chorus of iron voices, and an Italian accordion began to play. “Watch underfoot!” the platoon commanders began shouting in different voices. Oh, Dunya, Dunya, Dunya, Dun! Love me, Dunya, do,—

and the chorus died down in the distance. “With women? You got in that way?” exclaimed Turbin. The sergeant-major burst into excited laughter and waved his arms in delight. “God in heaven, doctor. There’s room there, room farther than the eye can see. And clean. . . . Based on a preliminary turn, I’d say you could fit another five corps, with reserve squadrons. What am I saying? Not five—ten! Near us there were mansions—gracious, you couldn’t even see the ceilings! So I said, ‘Allow me to ask,’ I said, ‘Who is all this for?’ Because it’s original: red stars, red clouds, everything awash in the crimson of our trousers. ‘This,’ says Apostle Peter, ‘is for the Bolsheviks coming from Perekop.’” “What Perekop?” asked Turbin, vainly straining his poor earthly mind. “You see, Your Worship, they do know everything in advance. In 1920, when they try to take Perekop, the Bolsheviks are laid low by the thousands. So they were probably getting the place ready to receive them.” “The Bolsheviks?” Turbin’s soul was perplexed. “You’re mixing something up, Zhilin. That can’t be. They won’t let them in.” “Doctor, that’s what I thought, too. I was confused and asked the Lord God—” “God? Zhilin!” “Don’t you doubt it, doctor, I’m telling the truth, I’ve got no reason to lie. I had quite a few conversations myself.” “What’s he like?”

74

white guard Zhilin’s eyes emitted rays of light, and the features of his face sharpened proudly. “For the life of me, I can’t explain. His face is all shining, but I can’t tell you what it’s like. Sometimes you look and a chill runs through you. You imagine He looks just like you. This fear runs through you, and you think, What is this? And then it’s fine, you move away. It’s a changeable face. Oh, and the way He speaks, it’s such joy, such joy. As if a blue light were just about to pass through. . . . Hmm. . . . No, not blue”—the sergeant-major paused to think—“I can’t know. Through you and a thousand versts farther. So here I am reporting. ‘How can it be, Lord,’ I say, ‘your priests are saying the Bolsheviks are going to hell, aren’t they? So what’s this, I say? They don’t believe in you, and look what quarters you have ready to cheer them.’ “‘So what if they don’t believe?’ He asks. “‘The true God,’ I say, and I’m afraid myself, you know, imagine words like that to God! But I look and He’s smiling. What’s this? I think. Fool, I’m reporting to Him when He knows better than I do. Though I wonder why He would say such a thing. “And He says, ‘So they don’t believe,’ He says. ‘What can you do? So be it. I don’t care one way or another. You shouldn’t either. And the same goes for them, too,’ He says. ‘Because there’s no gain or loss to me from your faith. One man believes and another doesn’t, but all your actions are identical. At each other’s throats, and as for the quarters, Zhilin, you have to understand that as far as I’m concerned, Zhilin, all of you are identical—men killed on a battlefield. This is what you have to understand, Zhilin, though not everyone will. And anyway, Zhilin,’ He says, ‘don’t get worked up over these kinds of questions. Have a good time.’ “Perfectly explained, eh, doctor? ‘And the priests?’ I say. At that He makes a gesture and says, ‘Zhilin,’ He says, ‘you’d do well not mentioning the priests to me. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. There are no fools on earth to compare with your priests. I’ll tell you a secret, Zhilin. They’re not priests, they’re a disgrace.’ “‘Yes,’ I say, ‘get rid of them altogether, Lord! Why should you feed those spongers?’ “‘I feel sorry for them, Zhilin. There’s the rub,’ He says.” The glow around Zhilin turned blue, and an inexplicable joy

part one

75

filled the sleeping man’s heart. Reaching out toward the shining sergeant-major, he moaned in his sleep. “Zhilin, Zhilin, can’t I be a doctor in your brigade?” Zhilin waved his hand encouragingly and nodded his head blandly. Then he began moving away and left Alexei Vasilievich, who woke up, and in front of him, instead of Zhilin, was the square of the dawning window already a little pale. The doctor wiped his whole face with his hand and realized he was in tears. He sighed at length in the morning dusk, but soon after fell back into a sleep that flowed evenly now, dreamlessly.

Oh no, death did not tarry. It started down Ukraine’s autumn and then winter roads together with the dry, blowing snow. Its machineguns rattled in copses. You couldn’t see death itself, but a blatant, ugly peasant fury came before. It sped through the storms and cold, in bast shoes full of holes, with straw in its bare, lolling head, and howled. It carried the giant cudgel essential to any undertaking in Mother Russia. Red roosters¹⁵ fluttered about. Then a Jewish tavern keeper appeared in the crimson sunset, hanged by his genitals. And a vision was observed in the handsome Polish capital of Warsaw: Henryk Sienkiewicz appeared in a cloud and smirked venomously. This was followed by what can only be called outright deviltry, distended and bubbling. The priests rang the bells in the green domes of their uneasy little churches, while next door, in the schools, where the windows had been smashed out by rifle bullets, they sang revolutionary songs. A specter started down the roads—an old man, Degtyarenko, full of fragrant homebrew and terrible words, punishing words, that combined on his dark lips into something extraordinarily reminiscent of a declaration of the rights of man and citizen. Then this same Degtyarenko the prophet was lying on the ground, wailing, and men with red ribbons on their chest were thrashing him with their muzzleloaders. The cleverest mind would go insane at this innuendo: if it’s red ribbons, 15. “Red rooster” is a slang term for arson.

76

white guard

then a muzzleloader is out of the question, and if it’s a muzzleloader then red ribbons are. You could suffocate in a country and time like this. To hell with it all! It’s a myth. The myth of Petlyura. There was no such person. It’s a myth, a myth as remarkable as but much less pretty than the myth of Napoleon, who never existed, either. Something else happened. This peasant rage had to be lured down a road, for the wide world was so magically arranged that no matter how far that rage ran, fate would bring it to the same crossroads. It’s very simple. If there’s upheaval, then the men for it will be found. And so Colonel Toropets appeared from somewhere. No less than the Austrian army, it turned out. “You’re kidding.” “I assure you.” Then the writer Vinnichenko, who was famous for two things, his novels and the fact that the moment a magic wave dragged him to the surface of the desperate Ukrainian sea in early 1918, St. Petersburg’s satirical journals did not hesitate a second before calling him a traitor. “And rightly so.” “Oh, I don’t know about that. And then there’s that very mysterious prisoner from the municipal prison.” Back in September, no one in the City could have imagined what three men possessing the talent of turning up at the right time, even in such an insignificant place as Belaya Tserkov, could construct. By October, people had strong guesses, and trains lit with hundreds of lights started leaving Municipal Station No. 1 for a new, still wideopen hatch through newborn Poland and on to Germany. Telegrams flew. Diamonds left, as did darting eyes, parts in hair, and money. They rushed to the south as well, to the south, to Odessa by the sea. By the

part one

77

month of November—alas!—everyone already knew very much for certain. One word: “Petlyura!” “Petlyura!” “Petlyura!”

leapt from the walls, from the dreary wire communiqués. It dripped into your morning coffee from the pages of your newspaper, quickly transforming the divine tropical beverage in your mouth into the most revolting slops. It roamed over people’s tongues and was tapped out in Morse code by telegraph operators’ fingers. Miracles had already begun in the City in connection with this puzzling word, which the Germans pronounced their own way: “Peturra.” Individual German soldiers who had acquired the nasty habit of roaming the outskirts began disappearing at night. They would disappear in the night and in the daytime it would turn out they’d been murdered. So German patrols started making night-time rounds wearing their barber basins. They made the rounds and their lanterns shone—don’t make trouble! But no lanterns could scatter the pea soup simmering in people’s minds. Wilhelm. Wilhelm. Yesterday three Germans were killed. My God, the Germans are leaving, did you know? The workers arrested Trotsky in Moscow! Some sons of bitches stopped a train outside Borodyanka and robbed it clean. Petlyura sent an embassy to Paris. Wilhelm again. Black Senegalese in Odessa. An odd, mysterious name—Consul Enno. Odessa. Odessa. General Denikin. Wilhelm again. The Germans would leave and the French would come. “The Bolsheviks are coming, old man!” “A plague on you for saying so, old man!” The Germans have a machine with an arrow. They place it on the ground and the arrow points to where the weapons are buried. It’s a

78

white guard

trick. Petlyura sent an embassy to the Bolsheviks. That’s an even better trick. Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. Peturra. No one, not a soul knew what this Peturra was trying to set up in Ukraine, but everyone knew for sure that he was secretive and faceless (although, actually, from time to time the newspapers ran a photo of whatever Catholic prelate came to their offices, a different one each time, with the caption: Simon Petlyura),

and was hoping to conquer Ukraine, and in order to do so he was on his way to capture the City.

6

M

adame Anjou’s shop, Le Chic Parisien, was located in a large multi-storied building, right on the first floor, in the City’s center, on Teatralnaya Street, which passes behind the opera theater. Three steps led from the street through a glass door and into the shop, and on either side of the glass door there were two windows hung with dusty lace curtains. No one knew where Madame Anjou herself had gone or why her premises were being used for purposes that were anything but commercial. A colorful lady’s hat was painted on the lefthand window with the words “Le Chic Parisien” in gold; and behind the glass of the right-hand window a large poster on yellow cardboard had two crossed Sevastopol cannons on it, like the ones on gunners’ epaulets, and above them an inscription: You may not be a hero but it’s your duty to volunteer.

And beneath the cannons: Volunteers for the Mortar Battalion sign up here. See the Commanding Officer.

part one

79

Parked by the shop entrance was a sputtering, exhaust-stained motorcycle with a sidecar. The door, on a spring, was constantly slamming shut, and each time it opened, a magnificent little bell rang overhead—rrring-rr-ring—recalling the happier times recently past of Madame Anjou. Turbin, Myshlaevsky, and Carp arose almost simultaneously after their night of drinking and, to their own surprise, with perfectly clear heads, but rather late, around noon. Nikolka and Shervinsky were already gone. Very early, Nikolka had tied up a mysterious red bundle, given a little groan—oh my, oh my—and set off to join his brigade, while Shervinsky had left just recently to report to headquarters. Myshlaevsky, stripped to the waist in Anyuta’s room behind the kitchen, where the water pump and bathtub were behind a curtain, let a stream of icy water run down his neck, back, and head, exclaiming in horror and delight. “Oof! That’s it! Terrific!” And he drenched everything within a two-arshin radius. Then he dried himself with a terry towel, dressed, slicked his hair down with brilliantine, combed it, and said to Turbin, “Alyosha . . . er . . . be a pal and let me wear your spurs. I can’t stop back home, and I don’t want to show up without spurs.” “In my study, take them, in my right-hand desk drawer.” Myshlaevsky went to the study, fiddled around there, jingled the key, and went out. Black-eyed Anyuta, who had returned that morning from visiting her aunt, was whisking a feather duster over the armchairs. Myshlaevsky coughed, glanced sideways at the door, made his direct path a winding one, with a detour, and said softly, “Hello, Anyuta.” “I’ll tell Elena Vasilievna,” Anyuta promptly whispered, mechanically and without reflection, and she shut her eyes like a man condemned over whom the executioner was already brandishing his blade.

80

white guard

“Silly thing.” Turbin unexpectedly looked in at the door. His face was venomous. “Vitya, examining her broom, are you? Well. It’s beautiful. Shouldn’t you be on your way? And you, Anyuta, bear in mind that if he says he’ll marry you, don’t believe him, because he won’t.” “My God, can’t I say hello to someone?” Myshlaevsky turned deep red from the undeserved insult, stuck out his chest, and jangled his spurs out of the sitting room. In the dining room he approached the grand, copper-haired Elena, his eyes darting nervously. “And a very good morning to you, beautiful Lena. Er . . .” A low, hoarse baritone came out of Myshlaevsky instead of his steely tenor. “Beautiful Lena,” he exclaimed warmly, “don’t be angry. I love you and you love me. Pay no attention to my rudeness last night. Lena, you don’t really think I’m a scoundrel, do you?” With these words he wrapped his arms around Elena and kissed both her cheeks. In the sitting room, the feather duster fell with a soft thud. Strange things were always happening to Anyuta whenever Lieutenant Myshlaevsky showed up at the Turbin apartment. Household objects began dropping from Anyuta’s hands. Knives cascaded down if it was in the kitchen, and saucers scattered from the sideboard; Anyuta became distracted, ran to the vestibule for no reason, and busied herself with the galoshes, wiping them with a rag until the short spurs dropped all the way to his heels jangled and the crooked chin, square shoulders, and navy breeches appeared. Then Anyuta would shut her eyes and exit sideways through the tight, cunning gap. And immediately in the sitting room she would drop her broom and, lost in thought, stare off in the distance, through the patterned curtains, at the overcast sky. “Vitya, Vitya,” said Elena, shaking her head, which looked like a polished crown for the stage, “I look at you, and you’re a healthy fel-

part one

81

low, so why did you weaken so yesterday? Sit down, have some tea, maybe you’ll feel better.” “Oh, Lena, my God, you look marvelous today. Your robe suits you, I swear on my honor,” said Myshlaevsky ingratiatingly, casting light, quick glances at the mirrored depths of the sideboard. “Carp, look at what a wonderful robe. The perfect green. No, it’s too fine.” “Very handsome, Elena Vasilievna,” replied Carp gravely and sincerely. “It’s the electric,” explained Elena. “Vitya, tell me straight away, what do you want?” “You see, beautiful Lena, after yesterday’s story I might get a migraine, and you can’t fight a migraine.” “All right, in the sideboard.” “Yes indeed . . . One glass . . . Better than any headache tablets.” With a grimace full of suffering, Myshlaevsky knocked back two shots of vodka and took a bite of yesterday’s limp pickle. After that he announced that he felt like a new man and expressed a desire for some tea with lemon. “Lena,” said Turbin rather hoarsely, “don’t worry or wait for me. I’m going out to sign up and then I’ll come home. Don’t worry about military actions. We’re going to stay in the City and repulse this nice Ukrainian president—the bastard.” “Mightn’t they send you somewhere?” Carp made a reassuring gesture. “Don’t worry, Elena Vasilievna. First of all, I must tell you that the battalion can’t possibly be ready in less than two weeks; we still don’t have horses or ammunition. And when it is ready, we’ll undoubtedly remain in the City. The entire army being raised now will certainly be garrisoned in the City. Perhaps in the future, if there’s an advance on Moscow . . .” “But if and when that happens . . . Er . . .” “We’ll have to join up with Denikin first.”

82

white guard

“If you’re trying to reassure me, gentlemen, you’re wasting your time. I’m not afraid of anything. On the contrary, I approve.” Elena spoke boldly indeed, but her eyes held her practical mundane worry. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.¹⁶ “Anyuta!” she shouted. “Dear, Viktor Viktorovich’s linen is on the veranda. Take it, child, give it a good brushing, and then launder it immediately.” Short, sturdy, blue-eyed Carp had the most calming effect of all on Elena. Confident Carp, in his reddish-brown tunic, was perfectly composed as he smoked and squinted. They said their goodbyes in the vestibule. “Well, may the Lord watch over you,” said Elena sternly, and she made the sign of the cross over Turbin. Thus had she made the cross over both Carp and Myshlaevsky. Myshlaevsky had embraced her, but Carp, tightly belted around the broad waist of his overcoat, blushed and tenderly kissed both her hands. “Colonel,” said Carp, lightly clicking his spurs and saluting. “Permission to report.” The colonel was sitting behind a small desk in a low green boudoir chair on a stage-like platform in the right-hand side of the shop. Stacks of blue cardboard boxes with “Madame Anjou, Ladies’ Hats” printed on them towered behind him, partly blocking the light from the dusty lace-hung window. The colonel was holding a pen and was in fact a lieutenant colonel, not a colonel, wearing broad gold epaulets with two stripes and three stars and crossed gold cannons. The colonel was just slightly older than Turbin himself—thirty, thirty-two at most. His face, well-fed and smoothly shaven, was adorned with a black mustache trimmed in the American fashion. His extremely lively and clever eyes were obviously tired but attentive nonetheless. 16. Matthew 6:13.

part one

83

Around the colonel reigned primordial chaos. Two paces away a fire crackled in a small black stove with angled black pipes leading behind a partition, where they got lost in the back of the shop; occasionally some kind of black liquid dripped. Both on the stage and in the rest of the shop, the floor leading to the back was scattered with scraps of paper and red and green fabric. High up, right above the colonel’s head, a typewriter chattered like an uneasy bird, and when Turbin looked up he saw it singing behind the railings that hung directly under the shop ceiling. You could see someone’s legs and backside in navy riding breeches jutting out behind the railings, but he had no head because the ceiling cut it off. A second typewriter was clattering away in the left-hand side of the shop, in an obscure pit, where a volunteer’s bright epaulets and blond head could be seen but not his hands or feet. Many faces flashed around the colonel, as did gold cannon epaulets. A yellow box containing telephones and wires loomed, and homemade bombs with wooden handles, which looked like home canning, and a few coiled machine-gun belts were piled up beside the cardboard boxes. There was a treadle sewing machine at the colonel’s left elbow, and the muzzle of his machine-gun poked out near his right foot. In the semi-darkness in back, behind a curtain on a shiny rod, someone’s voice was straining, evidently into the telephone. “Yes . . . yes . . . speaking. Yes, yes. Yes, speaking.” Rr-ring, went a little bell. Chirp, sang a gentle little bird somewhere in the pit, where a young basso murmured, “A battalion . . . yes, sir . . . yes . . . yes.” “I’m listening,” the colonel told Carp. “Colonel, allow me to introduce to you Lieutenant Viktor Myshlaevsky and Dr. Turbin. Lieutenant Myshlaevsky is now in the Second Infantry Brigade, in the ranks, and would like to transfer to your battalion in his specialty. Dr. Turbin is requesting appointment as battalion doctor.” Having said all this, Carp lowered his hand from his visor and

84

white guard

Myshlaevsky saluted. Damn. I should have worn my uniform, thought Turbin irritably, feeling uncomfortable without a cap, like some dunce, in his black coat and astrakhan collar. The colonel’s eyes ran over the doctor and moved on to Myshlaevsky’s greatcoat and face. “So,” he said. “This is very good. Where did you serve, lieutenant?” “The N Heavy Artillery Battalion, colonel,” Myshlaevsky replied, thus indicating his status during the German war. “Heavy artillery? This is very good indeed. Hell if I know why they stuck artillery officers in the infantry. It’s a mess.” “Not at all, colonel,” replied Myshlaevsky, clearing his unruly voice with a light cough. “I was the one who volunteered, in view of the fact that there was an urgent need to act outside Post-Volynsk. Now that the regiment is up to strength, though . . .” “I approve. Highly. Fine,” said the colonel and he did indeed look into Myshlaevsky’s eyes with high approval. “I’m pleased to meet you. And so, ah yes, doctor. You would like to join us? Hmm. . . .” Turbin inclined his head silently, so as not to answer “Yes, sir” in his astrakhan collar. “Hmm. . . .” The colonel looked out the window. “You know, it’s a fine idea, of course. Especially since in a few days we may . . . Yes.” He stopped short, squinted briefly, and said in a lowered voice, “Only . . . how can I put this . . . you see, there’s still a question, doctor. . . . Social theories and . . . er . . . are you a socialist? Aren’t you? Like all intellectuals?” The colonel’s eyes darted to the side, and his entire figure, his lips and sweet voice, expressed the liveliest hope that Dr. Turbin was indeed a socialist and nothing less. “Our battalion is called the student battalion, after all.” The colonel smiled cordially, without showing his eyes. “Of course, it’s rather sentimental, but I myself come out of the university, you know.” Turbin was extremely disappointed and surprised. Damn. What

part one

85

was Carp trying to tell him? At that moment he felt Carp somewhere near his right shoulder, and without looking he realized Carp was trying desperately to tell him something, but exactly what he couldn’t tell. Turbin’s cheek twitched and he blurted out, “Unfortunately, I’m not a socialist. I’m a monarchist. And I must tell you, I can’t stand even the word ‘socialist.’ And of all the socialists, I hate Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky most of all.” A sound flew from Carp’s mouth in back, behind Turbin’s right shoulder. It will be a shame to part with Carp and Vitya, thought Turbin, but to hell with this socialist battalion. The colonel’s little eyes surfaced for an instant and a spark and gleam flashed in them. He gestured as if politely requesting Turbin to close his mouth, and spoke. “This is sad. Hmm . . . very sad. . . . The revolution’s gains and so on. . . . I have orders from above to avoid recruiting monarchist elements in view of the fact that the population . . . restraint is essential, you see. Moreover, the Hetman, with whom we are so closely and directly linked, as you know . . . it’s sad . . . sad.” Meanwhile, not only did the colonel’s voice express no sadness whatsoever, on the contrary, it sounded quite pleased, and his eyes utterly belied what he was saying. Aha, thought Turbin significantly. I’m an idiot, and this colonel’s no fool. A career officer, likely, to judge from his face, but that’s all right. “I don’t know what I should do . . . you see, at the present time”— the colonel lingered over “present”—“yes, at the present time, I’m telling you, our immediate task is to defend the City and the Hetman from Petlyura’s bands and possibly from the Bolsheviks. And then, well, then we’ll see. May I ask where you served before this, doctor?” “In 1915, when I graduated from the university I worked without pay in a venereological clinic, then as a junior medical officer in the

86

white guard

Belgrade Hussar Regiment, then as an attending physician on a field hospital train. At present I’ve been demobilized and am engaged in private practice.” “Cadet!” exclaimed the colonel. “Ask the senior officer to come in.” Someone’s head vanished into the pit and then a young officer appeared before the colonel, swarthy, lively, and steadfast. He was wearing a round astrakhan-rimmed cap with a crimson top criss-crossed with braid and a long gray greatcoat, à la Myshlaevsky, tightly belted, and a revolver. His crushed gold epaulets showed he was a staff captain. “Captain Studzinsky,” the colonel addressed him. “Be so good as to send a request to headquarters regarding the immediate transfer to me of lieutenant . . . uh . . .” “Myshlaevsky,” said Myshlaevsky, saluting. “Myshlaevsky, in his specialty, from the Second Brigade. And also regarding the doctor . . . uh? . . .” “Turbin.” “I have great need of Turbin as battalion medical officer. Request his immediate assignment.” “Yes sir, colonel,” replied the officer, putting the stress on the wrong syllable, and he saluted. A Pole, thought Turbin. “You, lieutenant, do not have to return to your detachment.” This was to Myshlaevsky. “The colonel will take the fourth platoon.” This to the officer. “Yes sir, colonel.” “Yes sir, colonel.” “And you, doctor, are as of this moment in service. I suggest you report today, in an hour, to the parade ground at the Alexander Gymnasium.” “Yes sir, colonel.”

part one

87

“Issue the doctor a uniform immediately.” “Yes sir.” “Yes sir, yes sir!” shouted the basso in the pit. “Do you hear? No. I’m telling you no. . . . No, I’m telling you!” came a shout from behind the partition. Rr-ring . . . Chirp . . . chirp, sang the bird in the pit. “Hear me?” “Freedom Gazette! Freedom Gazette! The new daily, Freedom Gazette!” shouted a newsboy with a woman’s kerchief tied over his cap. “Petlyura Demoralized. Black Troops Land in Odessa. Freedom Gazette! ” Turbin was able to stop at home in that hour. Silver epaulets emerged from the depths of a desk drawer in Turbin’s small study adjoining the sitting room, where there were white curtains on the glass balcony doors, a desk with books and a writing set, shelves with vials of medicines and instruments, and a couch made up with clean linens. It was threadbare and rather crowded but cozy. “Lena dear, if for some reason I’m late today and anyone comes, tell them I’m not having hours. I don’t have any regular patients. Quickly, child.” Elena was hastily sewing on the epaulets, having pulled back his shirt collar. She had sewn the second pair, field-service green with a black stripe, onto his greatcoat. A few minutes later Turbin ran out the front door and glanced at the white plaque: Doctor A. V. Turbin Venereological Diseases and Syphilis 606–914 Hours from 4 to 6

He pasted on a correction—“from 5 to 7”—and ran up Alexeyevsky Slope.

88

white guard

“Freedom Gazette!” Turbin stopped, bought one from the newsboy, and opened the paper as he walked: Nonpartisan democratic newspaper Daily December 13th, 1918 Foreign trade issues and, in particular, trade with Germany, compel us . . .

“Just tell me where. My hands are freezing.” According to a report from our correspondent, negotiations are under way in Odessa over landing two battalions of black colonial troops. Consul Enno cannot permit Petlyura . . .

“Son of a bitch, boy!” Deserters who showed up yesterday at our headquarters in Post-Volynsk have reported mounting demoralization in the ranks of Petlyura’s bands. The day before yesterday, a mounted regiment in the Korosten area opened fire on an infantry regiment of Cossack riflemen. A strong desire for peace has been observed in Petlyura’s bands. Evidently, Petlyura’s escapade is on its way to rack and ruin. According to a report from the same deserter, Colonel Bolbotun has mutinied against Petlyura and absconded with his regiment and four guns. Bolbotun is inclined to join the Hetman. The peasants hate Petlyura because of his requisitions. The mobilization announced to the villages has had no success whatsoever. The peasants are rejecting it en masse, hiding in the forests.

“Let’s suppose . . . oh, this damn cold . . . Sorry.” “Friend, why are you pushing? You should read your papers at home.” “Sorry.” We have always said that Petlyura’s escapade . . .

part one

89

“What a scoundrel! Oh you, you scoundrels.” Any man who’s not a wolf, any man who’s decent Is joining the volunteer regiment . . .

“Ivan Ivanovich, why are you so out of sorts today?” “Oh, my wife’s caught the Petlyura bug. She pulled a Bolbotun on me this morning.” The witticism actually changed the expression on Turbin’s face. He crumpled the newspaper up angrily and threw it on the sidewalk. He listened. Ka-boom, sang the cannons. A boom came from the earth’s belly, somewhere outside of town. “What the hell?” Turbin turned around sharply, picked up the crumpled paper, smoothed it out, and reread the first page carefully: In the Irpen area our scouts have clashed with individual groups of Petlyura’s bandits. All’s quiet in the Serebryansk sector. No changes at Krasny Traktir. In the Boyarka sector a regiment of the Hetman’s Cossacks has dispersed a band of 1,500 men in a spirited attack. Two men were taken prisoner.

Grr . . . grr . . . grr. . . . Boom . . . boom . . . boom, snarled the mousy gray winter expanses off to the southwest. Turbin suddenly opened his mouth and turned pale. Mechanically, he jammed the newspaper into his pocket. The crowd crawling from the avenue and up Vladimirskaya Street was thick. Many people wearing black coats were walking right in the street. Women flitted by on the sidewalks. A cavalryman from the Hetman’s Varta rode along as if he were in charge. His fullgrown horse was flicking its ears, looking left and right, and dancing sideways. The rider’s ugly face was distraught. From time to time he would shout something, flicking his whip to maintain order, but no

90

white guard

one paid his shouts any mind. In the crowd, in the front rows, flashed the priests’ gold chasubles and beards, and their gonfalon fluttered. Little boys came running from all directions. “Gazette!” the newsboy shouted, and he headed for the crowd. Some cooks in white flat-topped toques ran out of the netherworld of the Metropol restaurant. The crowd spread over the snow like ink over paper. Long yellow boxes swayed above the crowd. When the first came even with Turbin, he examined the rough charcoal inscription on its side: Ensign Yutsevich

On the next: Ensign Ivanov

On the third: Ensign Orlov

Suddenly a wail went up in the crowd. A gray-haired woman, her hat knocked back on her head, stumbling and dropping her bundles on the ground, was cutting through the crowd from the sidewalk. “What is this? Vanya?” her voice quavered. Someone turned pale and ran to one side. One peasant woman wailed, followed by another. “Jesus Christ Almighty!” people were muttering behind Turbin. Someone was pushing on his back and breathing down his neck. “Lord . . . the end times are here. What, are they slitting people’s throats? And what’s this . . .” “I don’t know anything better than seeing something like this.” “What? What? What? What? What happened? Who are they burying?” “Vanya!” the wail went up in the crowd.

part one

91

“It’s the officers who were cut down at Popelyukha,” a voice muttered hurriedly, breathless to be the first to tell. “They advanced to Popelyukha and the whole detachment made camp, but in the night peasants and Petlyura men surrounded them and cut them down, one and all. One and all. . . . They gouged out their eyes and carved their epaulets right into their shoulders. Mutilated them and good.” “That’s it, is it? Good God.” Ensign Korovin Ensign Gerdt

the yellow coffins floated by. “So it’s come to this. Just think.” “Internecine fighting.” “How can this be?” “People say they fell asleep.” “They got what was coming to them.” A dark voice suddenly whistled in the crowd behind Turbin, and he saw red. Faces and caps quickly flashed by. Turbin stuck his hand pincer-like between two necks and grabbed the voice by the sleeve of his black coat. The man turned around, horrified. “What did you say?” Turbin hissed, and he immediately loosened his grip. “Please, officer,” replied the voice, quaking. “I didn’t say anything. Not a word. What are you doing?” the voice bobbled. The man’s duckbill nose turned white, and Turbin realized his error immediately. He’d grabbed the wrong person. Under that duckbill was a face of exceptional nobility. That face could not have said a word, and its round little eyes were rolling in fright. Turbin let go his sleeve and in a cold fury sent his gaze prowling among the caps, napes, and collars seething around him. His left hand was ready to grab something, and his right was resting on the grip of the Browning in his pocket. The priests’ mournful singing was float-

92

white guard

ing past, and next to him, sobbing, a woman in a kerchief was wailing lamentations. There was absolutely no one to grab; the voice might as well have fallen through the earth. The last coffin floated by Ensign Morskoi

and a sledge sped past. “Gazette!” a husky alto sliced right under Turbin’s ear. Turbin pulled out his crumpled paper, and in a daze, twice jabbed it at the newsboy’s face, grinding his teeth as he said, “Take your gazette. Take it. Take your damned gazette!” His frenzy did not end at this. The newsboy dropped his papers, slipped, and landed in a snowdrift. Instantly his face screwed up with crocodile tears, but his eyes filled with hatred that was anything but fake, indeed the fiercest sort. “Hey . . . what’re you . . . why me?” he whimpered, trying to cry and fumbling in the snow. Someone’s face thrust at Turbin but was afraid to say anything. Feeling how shameful and stupid it all was, Turbin ducked his head, turned on his heel, and ran past a gas streetlamp, past the white side of the huge round museum building, past dug-up holes filled with bricks and covered with a layer of snow to the big familiar parade ground—the garden at the Alexander Gymnasium. From the street he heard, “Gazette! The democratic daily!” One hundred eighty windows and four stories encircled the giant chamber, Turbin’s dear old gymnasium. Turbin had spent eight years here, and for eight years at springtime class changes he had run across this parade ground, and winters, when classes were full of stuffy dust and the cold, ponderous snow of the winter semester lay on the parade ground, he looked at that parade ground from his window. For eight years the brick chamber had raised and taught Turbin and the younger boys—Carp and Myshlaevsky. It was eight years ago exactly that Turbin had last seen the gym-

part one

93

nasium’s garden. Fear made his heart sink inexplicably. Suddenly a black cloud seemed to have blocked out the sky and a whirlwind to have swooped down and wiped out his whole life, the way a terrible wave wipes out a jetty. Oh, those eight years of study! So much of it was stupid and sad and desperate for a young boy’s soul, but so much was full of joy. Gray day, gray day, gray day, ut consecutivum, Caius Julius Caesar, a failing grade in cosmography and a lifelong hatred for astronomy ever since the day of that failing grade. But then there was spring, spring and the din in the rooms, the gymnasium girls on the avenue in their green pinafores, the chestnut trees and May, and most of all, the eternal beacon ahead—university, which meant a life of freedom. Do you realize what university means? Sunsets on the Dnieper, freedom, money, power, fame. Now all that was past. The perpetually enigmatic eyes of his teachers, and the terrifying pools, which he still dreamed about, that kept losing water but never drained, and the complicated discussions about how Lensky differed from Onegin and how disgraceful Socrates was, and when the Order of Jesuits was founded and Pompey disembarked, and someone else, too, and how people kept disembarking for two thousand years—and still were. That was the least of it. After eight years of gymnasium, apart from the pools, there had been the anatomy theater corpses, the white wards, the operating rooms’ glassy silence, and then the three years of jolting in the saddle, strangers’ wounds, the humiliation and suffering—the accursed pool of war. And here he had disembarked at the same place, on the same parade ground, in the same garden. He crossed the parade ground vaguely ill and run down, clutching the Browning in his pocket, running for no earthly reason or purpose. Probably to protect the very life—the future—he had agonized about over those pools and those damn people, some of whom were going from point A to point B and others toward them from point B to point A.

94

white guard

The black windows displayed the most utter and gloomy calm. At first glance you could tell this was a deadly calm. Odd that in the center of a city, in the midst of collapse, turmoil, and commotion, there was a lifeless, four-decker ship that had once carried tens of thousands of lives out to open sea. No one seemed to be watching over it now; there was no sound, no movement in the windows or along the walls covered in Nicholas-era yellow paint. There was a virgin layer of snow on the roofs, and snow capped the chestnuts’ crowns and spread evenly over the parade ground. Just a few diverging paths showed that people had tromped across very recently. Most of all, not only did no one know, but no one cared. What had become of it all? Who was studying in this ship now? And if they weren’t, why not? Where was the watchman? Why did frightening, snub-nosed mortars jut out from the rank of chestnuts by the fence separating the inner front garden from the main door? Why was there an armory in the gymnasium? Whose was it? What was it for? No one knew this, just as no one knew where Madame Anjou had gone or why bombs lay next to empty hatboxes in her shop. “Unlimber!” shouted a voice. The mortars stirred and began creeping forward. Two hundred or so men stirred, ran across, squatted, and jumped up around the huge iron wheels. Tan sheepskin jackets, gray greatcoats and sheepskin hats, military caps, khaki caps, and blue student caps flashed by in a blur. When Turbin crossed the grandiose parade grounds, there were four mortars in a rank, their maws looking at him. The hasty training exercise near the mortars was over, and the battalion’s motley formation of recruits had formed two ranks. “Captain!” Myshlaevsky’s voice sang out. “The platoon is ready.” Studzinsky appeared before the ranks, stepped back, and shouted, “Left face! March!”

part one

95

The rank crunched and swayed, trampling the snow out of step, and moved off. Many familiar and typical student faces flashed by Turbin. At the head of the third platoon he glimpsed Carp. Still not knowing where they were going or why, Turbin crunched alongside the platoon. Carp slipped out of the rank, concerned, and walking backward, began counting off, “Left! Left! Hup! Hup!” The rank snaked into the black maw of the gymnasium’s basement entrance, and the maw swallowed up row after row. Inside, the gymnasium was even ghastlier and gloomier than outside. The echo of the martial step quickly roused the building’s stone silence and feeble twilight. Sounds began flying under the vaulted ceiling, as if demons had awakened. A rustle and squeak could be heard through the heavy step—this was the disturbed rats scattering into their dark nooks and crannies. The column passed through the interminable dark basement hallways paved in brick and came to a large hall where light dribbled through the narrow slits of the barred windows and the ghastly cobwebs. A hellish rumbling of hammers broke the silence. Steel-banded wooden cartridge boxes were being opened and endless belts removed along with cake-shaped Lewis gun magazines. Machine-guns came out, black and gray, like sinister mosquitoes. Screws clattered, pincers tore, a saw was cutting something in the corner, whistling. The cadets were taking out stacks of cold fur hats, greatcoats in iron folds, stiff belts, and canvas pouches and flasks. “Look lively,” Studzinsky’s voice was heard. Half a dozen officers in dull gold epaulets were circling like club moss on water. Myshlaevsky’s lusty tenor was belting out something. “Doctor!” Studzinsky shouted out from the darkness. “Be so kind as to take command of the medics and give them their instructions.” Immediately, two students materialized in front of Turbin. One of

96

white guard

them, short and excited, wore a red cross on the sleeve of his student greatcoat. The other wore a gray greatcoat and his tall fur hat had slipped down over his eyes, so that he was constantly adjusting it with his fingers. “The boxes of medicine are over there,” said Turbin. “Take shoulder pouches out of them and bring me the doctor’s instrument bag. Issue each gunner two individual packets and explain briefly how to open them in case of need.” Myshlaevsky’s head rose above the swarming gray assemblage. He climbed onto a box, waved his rifle, shot the bolt, loaded the cartridge clip with a crack, and then, aiming out the window, slamming and aiming, slamming and aiming, he showered the cadets with ejected cartridges. After this the basement started clattering like a factory. Banging and slamming, the cadets loaded their rifles. “If you don’t know how, take it easy,” sang Myshlaevsky. “Cadets, explain it to the students.” Pouches and flasks on straps were passed over heads. And a miracle happened. That motley crew in coats of many colors was transformed into a compact, homogeneous stratum over which a bristle of bayonets rose, waving and stirring discordantly, like a spiky brush. “Officers, come see me,” Studzinsky’s voice rang out somewhere. In the darkness of the corridor, to the soft, sonorous sound of spurs, Studzinsky spoke in a low voice. “Impressions?” The spurs stamped. Myshlaevsky, carelessly and deftly poking his fingertips into his hatband, took a step toward the staff captain and said, “I have fifteen men in my platoon who have no idea what a rifle is. It’s tough.” Gazing vaguely upward, where the last meager light was pouring modestly and grayly through the window, for inspiration, Studzinsky said, “Their mood?”

part one

97

Again Myshlaevsky spoke. “Mm . . . well . . . The coffins spoiled things. Upset the green students. It had a bad effect on them. They saw through the grillwork.” Studzinsky aimed his black, insistent eyes at him. “Do something to improve their mood.” The spurs clattered and dispersed. “Cadet Pavlovsky!” Myshlaevsky thundered in the armory, like Radames in Aida. “Pavlovsky . . . sky! . . . sky! . . . sky!” the armory answered in a stony echo amid the roar of cadet voices. “Here, sir!” “Alexei Academy?” “Yes, sir, colonel.” “All right then, get a song going that’s got some pep to it. So Petlyura drops dead, damn his hide.” A single voice, high and clear, rose to the stony vaults: A gunner I was born . . .

A tenor somewhere in the thick of bayonets replied: And my family’s my brigade . . .

The entire student mass gave a shudder, picked up the tune quickly by ear, and suddenly in a spontaneous bass chorale, firing like a cannon echo, the entire armory exploded: Baptized in a hail of bullets, And bound in the angry velvet Of gunfire, gunfire, gunfire. . . .

There was ringing in men’s ears, in the cartridge boxes, the somber windows, and men’s heads, and dusty glasses left on sloping windowsills shook and rattled:

98

white guard Gun crews rocked me, Guard ropes circled me asleep.

Studzinsky snatched two pink-cheeked ensigns from the crowd of greatcoats, bayonets, and machine-guns and hurriedly whispered an order: “The vestibule . . . tear down the muslin. Step lively.” And the ensigns dashed off. Marching and singing, The Guard School cadets . . . Bugles and kettle-drums, Cymbals crash!

The empty stone box that was the gymnasium now roared and howled in a terrifying march, and the rats sat in their deep holes, horror-struck. “Hup! Hup!” Carp’s piercing shout cut through. “Pick it up!” shouted Myshlaevsky, his voice cleared. “Alexei Academy men, who are you burying?” The rank, no longer a disjointed gray caterpillar, but— Milliners! Cooks! Laundresses! Maids! They watch the cadets as they march away!

bristling with bayonets, it flocked down the corridor, and the floor sagged and bowed under the crunch of feet. The caterpillar marched down the endless corridor and up to the second floor, to the huge, light-filled glass dome, where the front rows started going crazy. Astride a thoroughbred argamak covered with a monogrammed imperial saddlecloth, rearing the argamak, beaming, his whiteplumed tricorn cocked at an angle, a bald and gleaming Alexander flew out at the gunners. Sending them smile after smile filled with cunning charm, Alexander flourished his broadsword and with the blade pointed out the Borodino regiments to the cadets. The fields of Borodino were blanketed in piles of shot, and a black cloud of bayonets covered the distance in the two-sazhen-high canvas.

part one

99

. . . and didn’t the . . . armies battle?

“So they say . . .” Pavlovsky rang out. Yes, and what battles they were!

rumbled the basses. Remembered well by Russians all, That day at Borodino.

There was Alexander, dazzling, racing heavenward, and the torn muslin that had covered him for an entire year lay in a heap at his horse’s hooves. “Don’t you see Emperor Alexander the Blessed? Straighten up! Hup. Hup. Left. Left!” Myshlaevsky hollered, and the caterpillar climbed, besieging the staircase with the heavy tread of the Alexander infantry. The battalion made a left-face past Napoleon’s conqueror into the immense assembly hall with its two tiers of windows, stopped singing, and formed packed ranks, bayonets bristling. A pale somber light reigned in the hall, and ghastly pale patches—the huge, fully draped portraits of the last tsars—looked out from the piers. Studzinsky stepped back and glanced at his watch. At that moment a cadet ran in and whispered something to him. “The battalion commander,” those nearby heard. Studzinsky gestured to the officers, who dashed through the ranks straightening them out. Studzinsky went out in the corridor to meet the commander. His spurs jangling, Colonel Malyshev mounted the staircase to the hall door and turned to squint at Alexander. A curved Caucasian saber with a cherry-red sword knot bounced against his left hip. He was wearing a lush black velvet cap and a full-length greatcoat with a long slit in back. His face was troubled. Studzinsky hurried up to him and stopped, saluting.

100

white guard

Malyshev asked, “Are they outfitted?” “Yes sir. All your orders have been carried out.” “Well, how are they?” “They’ll fight. But they have absolutely no experience. Out of a hundred and twenty cadets, eighty are students who don’t know how to hold a rifle.” A shadow crossed Malyshev’s face. He waited. “Our great luck is that some fine officers have come our way,” continued Studzinsky, “especially this new one, Myshlaevsky. We’ll manage somehow.” “Good. Well, here’s the thing. After my review, try your best to send the battalion home, except for the officers and a guard of sixty of your best and most experienced cadets, who you will keep, armed, in the armory to defend the building. Tomorrow morning at seven the entire battalion must be here on parade.” Studzinsky was flabbergasted, and his eyes opened wide at the colonel in most improper fashion. His jaw dropped. “Colonel . . .” In his agitation, Studzinsky stressed all the words as in Polish, “permission to report. This is impossible. The only way to maintain this barely battle-ready battalion is to keep them here overnight.” Then and there, and very quickly, the colonel discovered a new quality—the most magnificent way of being angry. His neck and cheeks turned crimson, and his eyes burned. “Captain,” he began in a nasty voice. “I am going to order you put on salary not as a senior officer but as an instructor lecturing battalion commanders, something I would find quite distasteful because I thought I had in you an experienced senior officer, not a civilian professor. Get this straight. I don’t need your lectures. I’m asking you not to give me any advice! Listen and note. Once you’ve taken note— do it!”

part one

101

At this they both puffed up at each other. Studzinsky’s neck and cheeks turned samovar copper, and his lips trembled. He managed to squeak out, “Yes sir, colonel.” “Then, listen. Send them home. Order them to get some sleep and send them off without weapons. But tomorrow they’re to appear on parade at seven o’clock. Don’t send them off just like that. Have them go in small groups, not in the wagons, and without epaulets, so their splendor doesn’t attract the attention of idlers.” A ray of understanding flashed in Studzinsky’s eyes, and the insult faded. “Yes sir, colonel.” At that the colonel changed abruptly. “Alexander Bronislavovich, I’ve known you for some time as an experienced, battle-hardened officer. But don’t you know me as well? No offense taken, right? There’s no place for insult at a time like this. I spoke harshly. Forget it, after all, you . . .” Studzinsky flushed the deepest red. “Just so, colonel. It’s my fault.” “That’s just fine then. Waste no time in dispersing them. In short, everyone here tomorrow. Tomorrow things will be clearer. In any event, let me say at the outset, zero attention to the mortars, and bear in mind there won’t be any horses or shells either. Starting tomorrow morning there’ll be gunfire and then more gunfire. By noon tomorrow I want your battalion firing like a prize regiment. And grenades for all experienced cadets. Is that clear now?” The gloomiest of shadows fell over Studzinsky. He listened tensely. “Colonel, permission to ask a question.” “I know what you’re going to ask. No need. I’ll answer myself: It’s vile. I’ve seen worse, but rarely. Is that clear now?” “Yes sir!”

102

white guard

“Well, here’s the thing”—Malyshev’s voice dropped dramatically—“I have no desire to stay on in this stone sack on a dubious night and, if something happens, bury two hundred boys, a hundred and twenty of whom don’t even know how to shoot!” Studzinsky said nothing. “All right then. About the rest this evening. We’ll have time. Get back to your battalion.” And they entered the hall. “Attention! Officers!” shouted Studzinsky. “Good day, gunners!” Behind Malyshev, like an anxious director, Studzinsky waved his arm, and the bristly gray wall bellowed so loudly the windows rattled. “T’yer health, sir . . . colonel.” Malyshev cheerfully surveyed the ranks, lowered his salute, and spoke. “Splendid! Gunners! I’m not going to waste words. I’ve never spoken at rallies and don’t know how to give speeches, so I’ll be brief. We’re going to beat Petlyura, that son of a bitch, and rest assured, we will. Among you are men from the Vladimir, Konstantin, and Alexei academies, who have never once disgraced our eagles. Many of you are graduates of this distinguished gymnasium. Its old walls are watching you. And I hope you will not make them blush. Gunners of the Mortar Battalion! We shall defend our great City in the hour of the bandit’s assault. If we roll out our six-inchers against this dear president, there won’t be anything left of him but his underpants, damn his rotten soul to hell!” “Ha ha!” the bristly mass responded, overwhelmed by the vividness of the colonel’s expressions. “Gunners, give it your all!” Studzinsky again, like a director in the wings, waved his arm, frightened, and again the gathering brought down layers of dust with

part one

103

their hollering, their thundering echo: “Hurrah! Long live . . . ! Hurrah!” Ten minutes later in the assembly hall, as on the field at Borodino, hundreds of rifles were stacked up. Two guards stood black at either end of the dusty plain, which was overgrown with bayonets. Somewhere in the distance, downstairs, the steps of hastily dispersing novice gunners tromped around and out, as ordered. In the corridors something iron rumbled and knocked, and officers shouted; Studzinsky himself was posting the sentries. Then a bugle suddenly sang out in the corridors. Its ragged, stagnant notes, full of blatant alarm and bravura, flew through the gymnasium and cracked the menace. The cadet was standing in the corridor above the stairwell, which was bordered by two flights of stairs to the vestibule, his cheeks puffed out. The worn ribbons of the Order of St. George hung from the tarnished brass horn. Myshlaevsky, his feet spread like a compass, was standing in front of the bugler teaching and testing him. “Don’t blow so hard. Now, like this, like this. Blow, blow. Mother of God, it’s no use. All right, sound the alarm.” Ta-ta-tam-ta-tam—blew the bugler, filling the rats with horror and despair. Twilight had crept abruptly into the two-tiered hall. Malyshev and Turbin faced a floor stacked with rifles. Malyshev gave the doctor a gloomy look but then immediately arranged his face in an affable smile. “Well now, doctor. How is it going? Is the medical section all in order?” “Yes, sir, colonel.” “Doctor, you may go home. And release your medics. But make sure they report here tomorrow morning at seven, with the others. And you . . .” Malyshev paused and squinted. “I would ask you to be

104

white guard

here tomorrow at two in the afternoon. You are dismissed until then.” Malyshev thought a moment. “And something else. There’s no need to wear your epaulets just yet.” Malyshev hesitated. “Our plans do not include attracting undue attention. In short, I’m asking you to come here tomorrow at two o’clock.” “Yes sir, colonel.” Turbin marked time. Malyshev pulled out his cigarette case and offered him a cigarette. Turbin lit a match in response. Two tiny red stars began to burn, making it immediately clear how much darker it had become. Malyshev looked up uneasily at the electric lights’ matte white globes and then went out into the corridor. “Lieutenant Myshlaevsky. Please come here. Here’s the thing. I’m entrusting the building’s electric lighting to you completely. Do your best to have it working as soon as possible. Be so kind as to have enough control over it that you can turn it on or off from anywhere at any moment. Responsibility for the lighting is entirely yours.” Myshlaevsky saluted and turned sharply on his heel. The bugler gave a squeak and stopped. His spurs clinking—tap tap tap—Myshlaevsky slid down the front staircase so quickly he appeared to be on skates. A minute later there was a thunderous pounding of fists and shouts of command somewhere downstairs. And in response, by the front entrance at the end of the broad vestibule with sloping walls, the light blazed on, reflecting faintly on Alexander’s portrait. Malyshev was so pleased his lips parted and he turned to Turbin. “If that’s not the damnedest thing. There’s an officer for you. Have you ever?” Down below, a small figure appeared on the staircase and slowly climbed the steps. When it made the turn on the first landing, both Malyshev and Turbin, who were hanging from the railing, took a good look. The figure was walking on sore, decrepit legs, and his white head was bobbing. The figure was wearing a broad double-breasted jacket

part one

105

with silver buttons and green tabs. A large key was sticking out of his lurching hands. Myshlaevsky was coming up behind him and shouting from time to time. “Step lively, old man! Step lively! You’re crawling like a louse on a tightrope!” “Your . . . your . . .” the old man mumbled as he shuffled along. Carp, another tall officer behind him, then two cadets, and finally a sharp-nosed machine-gun emerged from the gloom on the landing. The figure stumbled back in horror, bent over, and bent over some more until he was bowing to the waist to the machine-gun. “Your honor,” he mumbled. Upstairs, his hands trembling, fumbling in the semi-darkness, the figure opened a rectangular box on the wall, revealing a white patch. The old man stuck his hand in, clicked something, and instantly the vestibule’s upper landing, the door to the assembly hall, and the corridor were flooded with light. The darkness turned and fled instantly to the ends of the corridor. Myshlaevsky took possession of the key, stuck his hand in the box, and started playing, clicking the black switches. The light, so blinding that it was actually pink, would flash on and then disappear. The globes in the hall would blaze on and go out. Suddenly the two globes at the ends of the corridor lit up, and the darkness took a tumble and slipped away completely. “How about that? Hey!” exclaimed Myshlaevsky. “It’s out,” voices below replied from the vestibule pit. “It’s on! It’s lit!” they shouted below. After playing to his heart’s content, Myshlaevsky kept the hall, the corridor, and the reflector above Alexander lit, locked the box, and deposited the key in his pocket. “Move along, old man. Go to bed,” he spoke reassuringly. “Everything’s perfectly all right.”

106

white guard

The old man blinked his half-blind eyes guiltily. “But what about the key? The key . . . your honor. . . . What about it? Will you be keeping it?” “Yes, I’ll be keeping it. That’s exactly right.” The old man shook a little more and slowly began to leave. “Cadet!” A fat, ruddy-faced cadet dropped his gun by the box with a clatter and froze. “Allow the battalion commander, the senior officer, and me unimpeded access to the box. No one else. If necessary, on orders from one of those three, break into the box, but carefully, so there’s no possibility of damaging the panel.” “Yes sir, lieutenant.” Myshlaevsky drew even with Turbin and whispered, “Did you see . . . Maxim?” “Lord, yes, I did,” whispered Turbin. The battalion commander appeared at the assembly hall door, and thousands of lights played on his sword’s silver engraving. He beckoned to Myshlaevsky and said, “There now, lieutenant, I’m pleased you ended up in our battalion. Excellent job.” “I try to do my best, colonel.” “You can also get the heating going for us here, in the assembly hall, to warm up the cadet shifts. I’ll take care of the rest myself. I’ll feed you and get some vodka, small quantities but enough to keep warm.” Myshlaevsky smiled at the colonel in the most pleasant way and coughed impressively. Turbin wasn’t listening anymore. He leaned over the balustrade, his eyes riveted on the white-haired figure until he disappeared below. A vain longing overwhelmed Turbin. Right there, by that cold balustrade, a memory came to him with exceptional clarity.

part one

107

. . . A crowd of gymnasium boys of all ages, utterly delighted, was flocking down this very same corridor. Thickset Maxim, the school’s old porter, was doing his utmost to pull aside two dark figures at the head of the wonderful procession. “Go on, go on,” he muttered, “go on and admire Mr. Turbin and Mr. Myshlaevsky on the occasion of our honorable trustee’s happy visit. They will be pleased. Won’t they just be wonderfully pleased!” One had to think Maxim’s last words held the most cutting irony. Only someone with degenerate taste could enjoy this insight about Messrs. Turbin and Myshlaevsky, especially at this happy hour of the trustee’s visit. Mr. Myshlaevsky, locked in Maxim’s left arm, had a slanting gash in his upper lip and his left sleeve was hanging by a thread. Mr. Turbin, locked in Maxim’s right arm, had no belt and all his buttons had popped off not only his shirt but even his trouser fly, so that Mr. Turbin’s actual body and linen were open to view in the most outrageous manner. “Let us go, good kind Maxim,” begged Turbin and Myshlaevsky, turning the dying gazes on their bloodied faces to Maxim in turn. “Hurrah! Drag him out, Saint Max!” the excited gymnasium boys shouted from behind. “There’s no law says you can get away with beating up second-year boys!”

Oh my God, my God! There had been sunshine then, noise and thunder. And Maxim wasn’t anything like he is now—white-haired, pathetic, and underfed. Maxim had had a black shoebrush of hair with just a few gray hairs, Maxim had had steel pincers, not hands, and a medal around his neck the size of a carriage wheel. Ah, the wheel, the wheel. You’re going from village B, you make n turns, and there you are in stony desolation. God, what cold. We have to defend it now. But defend what? The desolation? The echoing steps? Are you going to save this dying building with your Borodino regiments, Alexander? Come to life and lead them off the canvas! They would beat Petlyura.

108

white guard

Turbin’s legs bore him downstairs of their own accord. He felt like shouting out “Maxim!” but then he slowed until he came to a complete halt. He pictured Maxim downstairs, in his little basement apartment, where the watchman lived. He was probably quaking by the stove and had forgotten all about it and was on the verge of tears. Here, too, they were up to their necks in sorrow. A pox on it all. Enough sentimentalizing. They had sentimentalized their lives away. Enough. Nonetheless, once he had dismissed the medics, he found himself in an empty, twilit classroom. The blackboards looked like charcoal patches on the walls. The desks were lined up in rows. He couldn’t help himself, he lifted a lid and took a seat. It was hard, cumbersome, awkward. The blackboard was so close. Yes, I swear, I swear, this is the very classroom, or maybe the next one, because out the window is the same view of the City. There’s the dying black edifice of the university. The avenue like an arrow in white lights, the building-boxes, the gaps of darkness, the walls, the heavenly heights. Outside was a true-life opera of The Night Before Christmas—snow and lights trembling and flickering. I’d like to know why they’re shooting in Svyatoshino. And harmlessly, in the distance, the cannons going boom, boom, as if firing into cotton wool. “Enough.” Turbin lowered the desk lid, went out into the corridor, past the sentries, through the vestibule, and into the street. There was a machine-gun at the front entrance. Very few people were on the street, and snow was falling hard. The colonel had a busy night. He made numerous trips between the gymnasium and Madame Anjou’s two steps away. By midnight the machinery was working well and going full blast. In the gymnasium, the incandescent bulbs in the globes were softly sputtering, shedding

part one

109

a rosy light. The assembly hall was much warmer because all evening and all night a fire had been roaring in the old stoves in the hall’s library bays. The cadets under Myshlaevsky’s command used issues of Notes of the Fatherland and Readers Library from 1863 to light the white stoves and then, axes thundering, fed old desks into them all night long. Studzinsky and Myshlaevsky took two glasses of alcohol (the colonel had kept his promise and supplied it in sufficient quantities to warm up, specifically, half a bucket) and, spelling each other, slept for two hours at a time side by side with the cadets, on their greatcoats by the stoves. Crimson fires and shadows played on their faces. Then they would get up and go from sentry to sentry, all night, checking the posts. Carp and the gunner cadets stood guard by the exits to the garden. Four cadets in sheepskin coats stood by the fat-faced mortars, changing shift hourly. The stove was as hot as hell at Madame Anjou’s, and the flues rattled and roared. One of the cadets stood guard at the door, not taking his eyes off the motorcycle by the entrance, and five cadets slept like the dead in the shop, having spread out their greatcoats. By one in the morning, the colonel was finally settled in at Madame Anjou’s. He was yawning but still not going to bed as he kept having to answer the telephone. At two in the morning, a motorcycle drove up, whining, and out of it climbed a soldier in a gray greatcoat. “Let him in. He’s here to see me.” The man handed the colonel a large bundle wrapped in a sheet and tied with cord. The colonel himself stashed it in a small closet in a bay of the shop, which he secured with a hanging lock. The gray man drove off on his motorcycle, and the colonel went to the gallery, where he spread out his greatcoat and put a pile of rags under his head, lay down, and after ordering the cadet on guard to wake him at exactly six-thirty, fell asleep.

110

white guard

7

I

n the dead of night, a coal-black darkness fell over the terraces of the best place in the world, St. Vladimir’s Hill. The brick lanes and pathways were hidden under a plump, endless layer of untrodden snow. Neither a single soul in the City nor a single foot had disturbed the multi-tiered tract this winter. Who would climb the Hill at night, and at a time like this? It was much too frightening. Even a brave man wouldn’t. Not that there was anything there to do. There was just one illuminated spot, where iron black Vladimir had been standing on a ponderous, imposing pedestal for a hundred years holding a threesazhen cross upright. Every evening, the moment twilight wrapped around the snowdrifts, slopes, and terraces, the cross would light up and shine all night. It could be seen from far away, a good forty versts in the black distances leading toward Moscow. But the pale electric light here illuminated only a little and as it struck the pedestal’s dark green side, ripping the balustrade and a piece of the iron fence edging the middle terrace from the darkness. That’s all. But it went on and on! Pitch darkness. Trees in the darkness, bizarre, like chandeliers in muslin, capped with snow, and snowdrifts neck deep all around. Horrible. No one would drag themselves here, and understandably so. Even the most courageous of men. Most of all, there was no reason to. Things were very different in the City. It was an anxious night, a portentous night in time of war. The streetlamps were burning like beads. The Germans slept, but with half an eye open. In the very darkest lane a blue cone was suddenly born. “Halt!” Crunch. Crunch. . . . Helmeted infantry were creeping up the middle of the street. Black ear flaps. Crunch. Rifles in hand, not over their shoulders. There was no joking with the Germans as long as . . .

part one

111

No matter what, you had to take the Germans seriously. They were like dung-beetles. “Document!” “Halt!” A lantern cone. “Hey!” Here came a heavy black polished automobile with four headlights. Not an ordinary automobile because behind the mirrored coach came a convoy at an easy trot—eight riders. But the Germans didn’t care. They shouted at the auto, “Halt!” “Where are you going? Who are you? What’s your business?” “It’s the commander, Cavalry General Belorukov.” Well, that was a different matter, naturally. If you please. In the coach windows, deep inside, a pale mustached face. A blurry gleam on the shoulders of the general’s greatcoat. And the German helmets saluted. True, deep down they didn’t care whether it was General Belorukov, or Petlyura, or a Zulu marshal in this lousy country. Nonetheless. Live with the Zulus, howl like a Zulu. The helmets saluted. International courtesy, as they say. It was a portentous night in time of war. Beams of light fell from the windows at Madame Anjou’s. Beams fell on ladies’ hats, corsets, knickers, and Sevastopol cannons.¹⁷ A cadet, freezing cold, paced back and forth like a pendulum, tracing the imperial monogram with his bayonet. And there, in the Alexander Gymnasium, the globes shed light fit for a ball. Fortified with vodka in an amount sufficient, Myshlaevsky made his rounds, glancing at Alexander the Blessed and checking the switch box. The mood in the gymnasium was fairly cheerful and brave. After all, there were eight machine-guns and cadets at the sentry posts—cadets, not students! And they would fight, you know. 17. “Sevastopol cannons” refers to the prerevolutionary emblem for the artillery.

112

white guard

Myshlaevsky’s eyes were red as a rabbit’s. A rabbit that had had very little sleep, a lot of vodka, and plenty of worry that night. It was still easy to deal with their worry in the City. If you were clean, go ahead, take a walk. True, they would stop you half a dozen times. But if you had your documents, on your way, please. It’s surprising you’re out and about tonight, but on your way. But who would climb the Hill? Utter foolishness. It was windy there, too, on the heights. Walk down the snowy lanes and you’d start hearing voices from hell. If someone did climb the Hill, then it would have to be some utter outcast who no matter what the government, when he was among people, felt like a wolf in a pack of dogs. A perfect misérable, like in Hugo. The kind of man who shouldn’t show his face in the City, and if he did, then it would be at his own risk. Slip between patrols and you’re lucky; get caught, don’t be angry. Anyone who did end up on the Hill would have to be sincerely pitied as a human being. You wouldn’t wish this even on a dog. The icy wind. Spend five minutes there and you’ll be asking to go home. “What’s that? Five hours? Damn! We’ll freeze!” Most of all, there’s no way to the upper City past the scenic view and water tower because, as you could see, Prince Belorukov had his headquarters on Mikhailovsky Lane, in the monastery. And every other minute there were either automobiles and a convoy, or trucks with machine-guns, or . . . “Damn officers! To hell with ’em!” Patrols, patrols, patrols. It was pointless even to think about crossing the terraces to the lower City—to Podol—because on Alexandrovskaya Street, which winds around the base of the Hill, first of all, there was a string of streetlamps, and secondly, the Germans—Damn them! Patrol after patrol! Maybe just before dawn. Because we’ll freeze before morning

part one

113

comes. An icy wind—hoo-oo—was traversing the lanes, and human voices seemed to be muttering in the snowdrifts by the iron fence. “We’ll freeze, Kirpaty!” “Hang in there, Nemolyaka, hang in there. The patrols’ll keep it up ’til morning and then fall asleep. We’ll sneak through to the Embankment and warm up at Sychikha’s.” The darkness rustled along the iron fence, and it looked like three black shadows were drawing closer to the parapet, craning their necks, and looking down at where Alexandrovskaya Street was in plain view. Now it was silent, now it was empty, but two blue cones could suddenly run out and German vehicles could race by, or the black petals of helmets could appear with their short sharp shadows. And all in plain view. One shadow split off on the Hill, and its keen, wolfish voice was hoarse: “Hey . . . Nemolyaka, let’s risk it! We can go and maybe sneak through.” All was not well on the Hill. All was not well in the palace, either, as you can imagine. The strange bustle in the palace was indecent at night. An old servant with sidewhiskers scurried across the hall with the tasteless gilded chairs and across the glossy parquet. Somewhere in the distance there was a staccato electric bell and the jangling of someone’s spurs. In the bedroom, mirrors in dull crowned frames reflected a bizarre, unnatural scene. A skinny, gray-haired man with a trimmed mustache on a cleanshaven, parchment face and wearing a rich Circassian coat with a silver cartridge holder was rushing this way and that by the mirrors. Moving alongside him were three German and two Russian officers. One wore a Circassian coat, like the central figure himself, another a tunic and riding breeches, which revealed their Horse Guards origin, but wedge-shaped Hetman epaulets. They were helping the bare-

114

white guard

faced man change clothes. The Circassian coat, sharovary, and polished boots were removed. They dressed the man in the uniform of a German major so that he was now no better or worse than hundreds of other majors. Then the door opened, the dusty palace drapes were pulled back, and one more person was let in wearing the uniform of a medical officer in the German army. He had brought along a large heap of packets, which he opened, and with able hands he tightly bandaged the head of the newborn German major in such a way that only his foxy right eye and delicate mouth, which gave a glimpse of gold and platinum crowns, still showed. The indecent nighttime bustle in the palace continued a while longer. Certain officers who had been lounging in the hall with the clumsy chairs and in the adjoining hall were told in German by a Teuton who came out that Major von Schratt had accidentally shot himself in the neck while loading his revolver and that he now needed to be sent urgently to a German hospital. A telephone rang somewhere, and a little bird sang somewhere, too—chirp! After this, a noiseless German van with a red cross on it drove up to the palace’s side entrance, passing through wrought-iron lancet gates, and the mysterious Major von Schratt, wrapped in gauze and muffled up in his greatcoat, was carried out on a stretcher and placed in the special van, whose rear door had been pushed back. The vehicle left, bellowing once while turning as it drove through the gates. The bustle and unease continued in the palace until morning, lights burned in the portrait galleries and gilded halls, the telephone rang often, the servants’ faces became rather impudent, and merry lights began to play in their eyes. In a small narrow room on the first floor of the palace, a man wearing the uniform of an artillery colonel stood by the telephone. He cautiously shut the door to the small, whitewashed, utterly un-palacelike telephone room and only then picked up the receiver. He asked the sleepless young lady at the station to give him number 212. When

part one

115

he got it, he said, “Merci,” knitting his brow sternly and uneasily, and asked in an intimate, muffled voice, “Is this mortar battalion headquarters?” Alas! Colonel Malyshev did not get to sleep until six-thirty as he had hoped. At four in the morning the bird in Madame Anjou’s shop sang out with extraordinary insistence, and the cadet on duty was forced to rouse the colonel. The colonel awoke with remarkable speed and was immediately thinking sharply, as if he had not been asleep at all. A motorcyclist took him off somewhere at a little after four, and when the colonel returned to Madame Anjou’s a little before five, he knit his brow uneasily and sternly in scowling military thought, just like the colonel in the palace telephone room who had summoned the mortar battalion. At seven o’clock, on the Borodino field illuminated by the pink globes, the same long caterpillar that had climbed the staircase toward Alexander’s portrait was present, huddled against the predawn cold, droning and mumbling. Staff Captain Studzinsky was standing slightly off to one side in a group of officers but not talking. It was strange, but his eyes held the same vaguely suspicious flicker of alarm as Colonel Malyshev’s had since four o’clock that morning. But anyone who had seen the colonel and staff captain that famous night could have said immediately and confidently where the difference lay. Studzinsky’s eyes held the alarm of presentiment; Malyshev’s that specific alarm when everything is perfectly clear, understood, and rotten. Stuck in the cuff of Studzinsky’s greatcoat was a long list of the battalion’s gunners. Studzinsky had just called the roll and determined that twenty men were missing. Therefore the list bore the trace of rough action by the staff captain’s fingers; it was crumpled. Smoke curled in the chilly assembly hall. Some among the officers were smoking.

116

white guard

On the dot of seven o’clock, Colonel Malyshev appeared before the ranks and, as on the previous day, was greeted in the hall by a welcoming roar. The colonel, as on the previous day, was belted with his silver saber, but for various reasons a thousand fires did not play on the silver blade. On the colonel’s right hip rested his revolver in its holster, and this holster was unfastened, probably due to Malyshev’s uncharacteristic absent-mindedness. The colonel stood before the battalion, placed his gloved left hand on his saber’s hilt and his ungloved right hand lightly on his holster as he uttered the following words. “I order the officers and gunners of the mortar regiment to listen closely to what I am about to say! Last night drastic and sudden changes occurred in our situation, in the army’s situation, and, I would say, in the state’s situation in Ukraine. Therefore I am announcing to you that the battalion has been disbanded! I suggest that each of you remove any distinguishing marks and take anything here in the armory each of you wants and can carry on his person, disperse to your homes, take cover there, lie low, and await a summons from me!” He paused, thereby emphasizing even more the absolute and total silence in the hall. Even the lights stopped sputtering. All eyes in the gunners’ and officers’ groups were focused on one point in the assembly hall: the colonel’s trimmed mustache. He began again: “This summons will come from me the moment there is any change in the situation. I must tell you, though, that hopes of this are few. Right now even I don’t know how the situation will fall out, but I think the best each of you . . . er”—the colonel suddenly shouted out the next two words—“the best!—you can expect is to be sent to the Don. So I’m ordering the entire battalion, with the exception of the officers and those cadets who stood guard last night, to disperse to their homes immediately!” “What? What! How’s that? Why?” rustled through the entire mass,

part one

117

and the bayonets in it sank. There were glimpses of distraught faces, and somewhere in the ranks a few delighted eyes. Staff Captain Studzinsky took a step forward from the officers’ group. He was bluish white and squinting. He took a few steps toward Colonel Malyshev and then looked back at the officers. Myshlaevsky was looking not at him but still at Colonel Malyshev’s mustache, moreover he looked as if he would like to curse in the vilest obscenities, as was his wont. Carp awkwardly put his arms akimbo and blinked. And the inappropriate, damaging word “arrest!” suddenly rustled through a separate small group of young ensigns. “What’s this? How’s that?” was heard in a deepish voice among the rank of cadets. “Arrest!” “Treason!” Suddenly Studzinsky took an inspired glance at the globe shining overhead, looked at his holster’s handle, and cried out, “First platoon!” The front row broke ranks at the end, gray figures stepped out from it, and there was a bizarre disturbance. “Colonel!” said Studzinsky in a perfectly husky voice. “You are under arrest.” “Arrest him!” one of the ensigns suddenly shouted out hysterically and resonantly, and he moved toward the colonel. “One moment, gentlemen!” Carp, who was thinking slowly but solidly, exclaimed. Myshlaevsky jumped hand over fist from the group, grabbed the expansive ensign by the sleeve of his greatcoat, and yanked him back. “Let me go, lieutenant!” exclaimed the ensign, his mouth twitching darkly. “Quiet!” shouted the colonel’s extremely confident voice. True, his mouth was twitching as much as the ensign’s, and also true, his face

118

white guard

had broken out in red splotches, but his eyes held more confidence than there was in the entire officers group put together. Everyone stopped. “Quiet!” repeated the colonel. “I order you to remain where you are and listen!” Silence reigned, and Myshlaevsky’s gaze became very guarded, as if some thought had gone racing through his mind and he was awaiting from the colonel important and even more interesting things than those already reported. “Yes, yes,” the colonel began, his cheek twitching. “Yes, I’d be a fine one if I went into battle with the troops the Lord God sent me. A fine one indeed! But what is forgivable in a volunteer student, a young cadet, and at most an ensign is in no way forgivable in you, a staff captain!” At this, the colonel flung a look of exceptional harshness at Studzinsky. The colonel’s eyes addressing Studzinsky held dancing sparks of genuine irritation. Silence reigned once again. “So, you see, now,” continued the colonel, “I’ve never been much of one for meetings, but I can see now it’s come to that. So let’s have a meeting! So, you see, now, it’s true, your attempt to arrest your commander reveals fine patriots in you, but it also shows that you . . . officers, how can I put it? You’re inexperienced! In short, I don’t have the time, but I assure you,” emphasized the colonel ominously and significantly, “neither do you. The question is, who do you mean to defend?” Silence. “I’m asking you, Who do you mean to defend?” repeated the colonel menacingly. With sparks of tremendous and warm interest, Myshlaevsky stepped out from the group, saluted, and said, “It is our duty to defend the Hetman, colonel.” His eyes looked at the colonel brightly and boldly.

part one

119

“The Hetman?” the colonel asked. “Excellent. Battalion, attention!” he suddenly barked in such a way that the regiment instinctively shuddered. “Listen to me! Today at approximately four o’clock in the morning, the Hetman shamefully abandoned us all to the tyranny of fate. He fled! He fled like the supreme rat and coward he is! Today, an hour after the Hetman, Cavalry General Belorukov, our army commander, fled to the same place as the Hetman, that is, a German train. In less than a few hours we will be witnesses to a catastrophe, and men like you who were deceived and dragged into this adventure are going to be slaughtered like dogs. Listen to me. On the approaches to the city, Petlyura has an army of more than a hundred thousand, and tomorrow—what am I saying, not tomorrow, today”—the colonel pointed to the window, where the blanket over the city was already turning blue—“the isolated and broken units of unlucky officers and cadets abandoned by headquarters no-goods and those two scoundrels, who should be hanged, will meet the beautifully armed troops of Petlyura, who outnumber them twenty-fold. Listen to me, my boys!” Colonel Malyshev, who was not old enough to be the father but only the older brother to everyone standing under the bayonets, exclaimed in a voice that suddenly broke. “Listen to me! I am a regular officer who went through the war with the Germans, to which Staff Captain Studzinsky is witness, and I take the blame and responsibility for everything! Everything! I’m warning you! I’m sending you home! Is that clear?” he shouted. “Yes. . . . uh . . . uh huh,” replied the mass, and their bayonets began to sway. Then a cadet in the second rank burst into loud, convulsive sobs. Staff Captain Studzinsky, quite unexpectedly for the entire battalion, and probably for himself as well, made a strange, unofficer-like gesture as he touched his gloved hands to his eyes, whereupon the battalion roll fell to the floor, and he began to weep. Then, catching it from him, many other cadets started sobbing, the

120

white guard

ranks immediately fell apart, and the voice of Radames-Myshlaevsky, carrying over the cacophony, barked to the bugler, “Cadet Pavlovsky! Sound the retreat!” “Colonel, permission to burn down the gymnasium building,” said Myshlaevsky, looking at the colonel brightly. “Permission denied,” Malyshev responded politely and calmly. “Colonel,” said Myshlaevsky warmly. “Petlyura will get the armory, the weapons, and most of all”—Myshlaevsky pointed to the door where in the vestibule above the staircase they could see Alexander’s head. “Yes, he will,” the colonel confirmed politely. “But how can we, colonel?” Malyshev turned to Myshlaevsky, looking at him closely, and said the following. “Lieutenant, in three hours Petlyura will get hundreds of living lives, and the one thing I regret is that I cannot lay down my own life, or even yours, which is more precious, naturally, to prevent their death. I would ask you not to speak to me anymore of portraits, cannons, or rifles.” “Colonel,” said Studzinsky, stopping in front of Malyshev. “For myself and in the name of the officers I pushed into this outrageous ploy, I beg of you to accept our apologies.” “I accept,” replied the colonel politely. When the morning fog began to disperse over the City, the snubnosed mortars stood by the Alexander parade ground minus their couplings; rifles and machine-guns, disassembled and broken down, had been tossed into hiding places in the attic. In the snow, in pits, and in hiding places in the cellars, mountains of cartridges had been tossed, and the globes no longer gave off light in the assembly hall and

part one

121

corridors. The white switchboard had been smashed by cadet bayonets on Myshlaevsky’s command. In the windows there was a perfect blue. In that blue, two men, the last to leave, lingered on the landing—Myshlaevsky and Carp. “Did the commander warn Alexei?” Myshlaevsky asked Carp with concern. “Of course, the commander warned him. You saw he didn’t come, didn’t you?” replied Carp. “Do you think we can get to the Turbins’ this afternoon?” “No, not this afternoon, we’ll have to make ourselves scarce. . . . Let’s go back to my apartment.” In the windows there was blue, but outside it was growing pale, and the fog was lifting, dispersing.

This page intentionally left blank

Part

T WO

8

Y

es, you could see the fog. Needles of frost, like shaggy paws, no moon, dark, and then the predawn snow, far outside the City the domes of blue churches scattered with gold-leaf stars, and, in the bottomless heights above the city, Vladimir’s cross, which shone until the dawn that arrived from the Moscow bank of the Dnieper. By morning the cross had gone out. So had the lights over the land. But the day did not blaze up particularly and promised to be gray, with an impenetrable curtain hanging not very high above Ukraine. Colonel Kozyr-Leshko woke up fifteen versts from the City precisely at dawn, when the sour, steamy little light slipped through the small myopic window of his hut in Popelyukha. Kozyr’s awakening coincided with one phrase: “The order of battle.” At first he imagined he had dreamed it in his cozy dream and he actually tried to thrust it away, like a cold word. But the words swelled

124

white guard

and crept into the hut along with the disgusting red pimples on his orderly’s face and the crumpled envelope. By the little window, Kozyr took a map out of his pouch with the mica and netting and found Borkhuny on it, found Bely Gai beyond Borkhuny, followed with his nail the bend in the road, which was strewn with bushes, like flies, on either side, and then the big black dot—the City. There was the stink of shag tobacco from the possessor of the red pimples, who thought it was all right to smoke in front of Kozyr as well and that the war would be none the worse off as a result, and who smoked the same strong, inferior sort of tobacco as Kozyr himself. Kozyr was going to have to fight now. He took a cheerful view of this, yawned widely, and buckled his complicated harness, crossing the straps over his shoulders. He had slept in his greatcoat that night, not even removing his spurs. The old woman was bustling about with a pitcher of milk. Kozyr never drank milk and was not about to start now. Her boys crept in. One of them, the smallest, crawled over a bench with his buck-naked backside, creeping toward Kozyr’s Mauser. He didn’t get very far, though, before Kozyr strapped the Mauser on himself. His whole life up until 1914 Kozyr had been a village schoolteacher. In 1914 he found himself at war in a dragoon regiment and by 1917 had been made an officer. The dawn under the little window on December 14th, 1918, found Kozyr a colonel in Petlyura’s army, and no one in the world (Kozyr himself least of all) could have said how this had happened. But it had happened because for him, Kozyr, war was a calling and teaching merely one big and long mistake. Thus, actually, does it most often happen in our lives. Someone can do something a full twenty years—lecture on Roman law, for instance—and in the twenty-first suddenly realize that Roman law is neither here nor there, that he doesn’t even understand or like it, and in fact he is a subtle gardener and burns with a passion for flowers. One can’t help but think that this must be due to the imperfection of our social order, under

part t wo

125

which people quite often find their proper place only toward the end of life. Kozyr found his at age forty-five. Before then he had been a bad teacher, cruel and tedious. “You there, tell the lads to get out of those huts and go to their horses,” said Kozyr, and he tightened the creaking belt across his girth. The little white huts in Popelyukha were sending up smoke as Colonel Kozyr’s troop of four hundred sabers rode out. In the ranks, tobacco smoke rose above the troop, and the fifteen-hand stallion under Kozyr stepped nervously. The transport wagons creaked and lagged half a verst behind the regiment. The regiment rocked in their saddles, and just past Popelyukha a bi-color pennant was deployed at the head of the mounted column—a blue strip and a yellow strip of fabric on a pole. Kozyr couldn’t stand tea and preferred a swallow of vodka in the morning to anything else in the world. He liked imperial vodka, which no one had seen in four years but under the Hetman had reappeared throughout Ukraine. The vodka poured out of the small gray flask and into Kozyr’s veins like a cheerful flame. Vodka also went through the ranks from mess tins taken from the warehouse at Belaya Tserkov, and once it had, a three-row concertina struck up at the head of the column and a falsetto began: “A garden past a garden, A pretty garden green . . .”

And the basses in the fifth rank burst in: “Where a pretty girl was plowing Behind an ox as red as blood. She plowed and plowed, she plowed, Until she could not shout again. And a fiddle-playing Cossack Came to plow for her instead.”

126

white guard

Hweet . . . tk-tk! Hweet, tk-tk! The rider carrying the pennant began whistling and clicking his tongue like a merry nightingale. Lances began to sway, and pointy fur caps, complete with braid and tassels, as black as the grave, shook. The snow crunched under a thousand shod hooves. A joyful torban struck up. “That’s it! No frowning, lads,” said Kozyr approvingly. And the nightingale wound whistling over the snowy Ukrainian fields. They passed through Bely Gai, the curtain of fog was drawn back, and the roads turned black, rustled, crunched. At a crossroads near Gai, they let ranks of infantry fifteen-hundred strong pass. The men in the front rows were wearing identical navy blue jerkins of durable German cloth, and they were thinner of face, more animated, and bore their rifles ably—Galicians. In the back ranks marched men dressed in full-length hospital robes belted with tan straps. On all their heads patched German helmets swayed over fur caps. Their iron studs trod the snow. They were turning the white roads to the City black. “Hail!” shouted the passing infantry at the yellow pennant. “Hail!” echoed Gai’s copses. This “hail!” was echoed by guns to the rear and left. Colonel Toropets, commander of the support troops, had sent two batteries toward the City’s forests in the night. The guns had formed a semi-circle in the sea of snow and begun their bombardment with the dawn. The six-inchers woke up the snow-covered, ship-like pines with waves of thunder. Twice their blows missed the large settlement of PushchaVoditsa, though they blew out all the windows in the snow-bound houses in four clearings at once. Several pines were reduced to splinters and yielded fountains of snow many sazhens deep. Afterward, though, there wasn’t a sound in Pushcha. It was as if the woods were dozing, and only the squirrels gadded about, upset, rubbing their paws against the hundred-year-old trunks. After this the two batteries were removed from outside Pushcha and proceeded to the right flank. They

part t wo

127

crossed vast plow lands, an isolated wood, turned down a narrow road until they reached a fork, and then were deployed within sight of the City. Since early morning, high-bursting shrapnel had been exploding on Podgorodnyaya and Savskaya and in Kurenevka, on the City’s outskirts. In the low, snow-filled sky, there was a steady rattling as if someone were playing. The inhabitants of the little houses there had been sitting in their cellars since morning, and in the early dawn you could see lines of cadets chilled to the bone crossing to somewhere closer to the City’s heart. Actually, the cannons fell quiet soon enough and were replaced by merry, rattling gunfire off to the outskirts in the north. Then that too stopped. Support troops commander Toropets’s train was waiting on a siding about five versts from the lifeless village of Svyatoshino, which was buried in snow and deafened by all the thudding and crashing, deep in the forest. The lights had not gone out in the six train cars all night, and all night the telephone on the siding had been ringing and the field telephones had been chirping in Colonel Toropets’s threadbare car. When the snowy day had completely lit up the area, the cannons began thundering up ahead along the rail line leading from Svyatoshino to Post-Volynsk, the little birds began singing in their yellow boxes, and skinny, tightly wound Toropets told his aide, Khudyakovsky, “We’ve taken Svyatoshino. Please be so kind, sir, as to inquire whether they are going to let us redirect to Svyatoshino.” Toropets’s train had started moving slowly between the walls of timber and was now close to where the rail line crossed a major highway that pierced the City like an arrow. Here, in his car, Colonel Toropets began implementing the plan he had worked out over two sleepless nights in this very same bedbug-ridden car no. 4173. The City woke up in the fog to find itself besieged on all sides. In the north from the City’s forest and plow lands, in the west from captured Svyatoshino, in the southwest from ill-fated Post-Volynsk,

128

white guard

in the south past the groves, cemeteries, pastures, and cleared areas ringed by the railroad, and everywhere down paths and tracks and, impetuously, simply along the snowy plain, the black cavalry crawled and jangled along, the heavy cannons creaked, and Petlyura’s infantry, weary after a month’s delay, marched and got bogged down in the snow. In a saloon car with a well-trod carpet, soft gentle cocks sang out incessantly, and the telephone operators Franko and Garas, who had not slept all night, were growing stupid. Cheep . . . chirp! “Hello!” Chirp . . . cheep! Toropets’s plan was cunning. Cunning too was black-browed, clean-shaven, tightly wound Colonel Toropets. Not for nothing had he sent two batteries up to the City’s forest, not for nothing had he rumbled in the frosty air and smashed the streetcar line to shaggy Pushcha-Voditsa. Not for nothing had he then moved in machineguns from the direction of the plow lands, drawing them closer to the left flank. Toropets was hoping to mislead the City’s defenders into thinking that he, Toropets, was going to take the City from his, Toropets’s, left flank (from the north), from Kurenevka on the outskirts, in order to draw the City’s army in that direction, whereas he was actually going to strike the City head on, straight down the BrestLitovsk highway from Svyatoshino and, moreover, from the extreme right flank, from the south, from the direction of Demievka. So it was by way of executing Toropets’s plan that units from Petlyura’s forces were moving down the roads from the left flank to the right and Kozyr-Leshko’s glorious black-lanced regiment was marching to a whistle and concertina with its sergeant-majors at the head. “Hail!” shouted Gai’s copses. “Hail!” They approached, leaving Gai to one side, and when they had crossed a corduroy bridge over the railroad bed, they saw the City. It was still warm from sleep, and above it curled either fog or smoke. Standing in his stirrups, Kozyr looked through his Zeiss field glasses

part t wo

129

toward where the roofs of the multi-storied buildings and the domes of old Hagia Sofia loomed. On Kozyr’s right hand, the fighting was already under way. A couple of versts off, the cannons were thumping and the machineguns rattling. There, Petlyura’s infantry was dashing in files toward Post-Volynsk, and in files the sparse, motley White Guard infantry, badly shattered by the heavy fire, was pushing off from Post. The City. A low, heavy sky. A corner. The tiny houses on the outskirts and the occasional greatcoat. “They just broadcast that an agreement had been reached with Petlyura to let all Russian units take their arms and go to the Don to join Denikin.” “So?” Cannons . . . cannons . . . boom . . . boom-boom-boom. Right then a machine-gun let up a howl. There was despair and disbelief in one cadet’s voice: “But now doesn’t that mean we need to cease resistance?” And sadness in another’s: “Who the hell knows!” Colonel Shchetkin had not been at headquarters since morning, and he had not because headquarters no longer existed. On the night of the fourteenth, Shchetkin’s staff had retreated, to Municipal Station No. 1, and he had spent that night in the Rose of Istanbul Hotel, at the telegraph office itself. There, that night, Shchetkin’s telephone bird did sing out from time to time, but by morning it had gone silent. And by morning Colonel Shchetkin’s two aides had vanished without a trace. An hour after that, Shchetkin himself, after rummaging through the papers in the drawers for something and ripping something to shreds, had walked out of the filthy Rose wearing not his gray greatcoat with the epaulets but a shaggy civilian coat and a porkpie hat. Where they had come from, he had no idea.

130

white guard

Taking a cab a block away from the Rose, Shchetkin the civilian headed for a cramped, well-furnished apartment in Lipki, rang the bell, kissed a plump golden blonde, and followed her into their private bedroom. He whispered straight into the blonde’s eyes, which were round with horror, “It’s all over! Lord, I’m tired.” Colonel Shchetkin went into the alcove and there fell asleep after a cup of black coffee that the golden blonde had made with her own hands. The First Brigade cadets knew nothing of this. Such a pity! If they had, inspiration might have struck and instead of hovering under the shrapnel sky at Post-Volynsk they might have headed for the cozy apartment in Lipki and dragged sleepy Colonel Shchetkin out, and when they had, hanged him from the streetlamp directly opposite the nice apartment with that special golden someone. That would have been good to do, but they didn’t do it because they neither knew nor understood a thing. Not that anyone understood anything in the City, nor were they likely to in the near future. In fact, the City had the steely—although by now, it was true, somewhat undermined—Germans; the City had the thin, mustache-less fox of a Hetman (that morning very few knew about the injury to the mysterious Major von Schratt’s neck); the City had His Excellency Prince Belorukov; the City had General Kartuzov, who was forming brigades to defend the Mother of Russian Cities; the City had headquarters telephones which in spite of everything were ringing and singing (no one yet knew that the scattering had begun that morning); and the City was thick with rifle straps. In the City, there was fury at the word “Petlyura,” and just in today’s issue of The Gazette the mischievous Petersburg journalists were ridiculing him; and the City had cadets walking about, and over there, near the Karavaevsky dachas, a motley lance cavalry was whistling like a nightin-

part t wo

131

gale, and the wild haydamaks¹ were crossing from the left flank to the right at an easy gallop. If they were whistling at five versts, then one wonders what the Hetman was counting on. After all, they would be whistling for his soul! And oh, they would. . . . Would the Germans defend him? But then why were the oafish Germans smiling indifferently in their trimmed German mustaches at the Fastov station as echelon after echelon of Petlyura’s units passed them by? Was there some agreement with Petlyura to let them enter the City peacefully? But then why the hell were the White officers’ cannons firing on Petlyura? No, what went on in the City the afternoon of December 14th was beyond anyone’s understanding. Headquarters telephones were ringing, though less and less often, certainly. Less and less! Less and less! Rrrrr!

Cheep! “What’s happening there?” Cheep! “Send bullets to the colonel . . .” “To Stepanov . . .” “To Ivanov . . .” “Antonov!” “Stratonov!”

“To the Don. We should go to the Don, boys. Things aren’t working out here at all.” 1. Ukrainian Cossacks. Here, members of an anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian cavalry detachment in 1918.

132

white guard

Cheep! “Oh, headquarters can go to hell!” “To the Don!” Less and less, and by noon, barely at all. All around the City, first here, then there, the din would swell and then break off. But at noon, despite the din, the City was still living something resembling an ordinary life. Shops were open and doing business. Lots of pedestrians were rushing down the sidewalks, doors were slamming, and the streetcar was running, clattering away. It was at noon that a merry machine-gun began to play its music from Pechorsk. The Pechorsk hills reflected the staccato thunder, which flew to the City’s center. My, that was very close! What’s going on? Pedestrians would stop and start sniffing the air. And here and there the sidewalks thinned out immediately. What on earth? Rrrrrrrrrr-rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat! Rrrrrrrr! “Who’s that?” “What do you mean, who? Don’t you know, you ninny? It’s Colonel Bolbotun.” Yes, someone here was mutinying against Petlyura! Colonel Bolbotun, tired of executing the difficult general headquarters notion of Colonel Toropets, had decided to take matters into his own hands. Bolbotun’s riders beyond the cemetery, in the very south, a stone’s throw from the wise, snowy Dnieper, were freezing. So was Bolbotun. So Bolbotun raised his riding crop and his mounted regiment set out to the right in threes, strung out along the road, and approached the railroad track that tightly girded the City’s outskirts. No one met Bolbotun here. Six Bolbotun machine-guns began wailing and rumbling throughout the isolated settlement of Nizhnyaya Telichka. In a flash Bolbotun cut the rail line and stopped a passenger

part t wo

133

train that had just passed through the switches at the railroad bridge bringing the City a fresh portion of Muscovites and Petersburgers with their luscious women and shaggy dogs. The train went berserk, but Bolbotun had no time to deal with little dogs at that moment. The frightened crews of the freight trains from Municipal Station No. 2, the freight station, had started for Station No. 1, the passenger station, and the shunting engines were whistling, but Bolbotun’s bullets set up a surprise hail on the roofs of the little houses on Svyatotroitskaya Street. So Bolbotun entered the City, and he marched down the street. He marched unimpeded all the way to the military academy, sending mounted scouts down all the side streets. Bolbotun finally encountered something near the chipping, colonnaded building of the Nicholas I Military Academy. Here Bolbotun was greeted by a machine-gun and scant fire from clusters of skirmishers. In Bolbotun’s lead platoon, in the first company, the Cossack Butsenko was killed, five were wounded, and two horses broke legs. Bolbotun hesitated briefly. For some reason he thought he had God knows what forces opposing him. Whereas in fact it was thirty cadets and four officers with a single machine-gun saluting the colonel in the blue hat. On Bolbotun’s command, his ranks rushed forward, lay down, took cover, and began exchanging fire with the cadets. Pechorsk filled with thunder, its echo hammered at the walls, and the neighborhood around Millionnaya Street boiled away like a kettle. Immediately, Bolbotun’s actions reverberated throughout the City. Iron shutters came crashing down on Elizavetinskaya, Vinogradnaya, and Levashovskaya streets. Cheerful shops went blind. The sidewalks emptied instantly and echoed in an unsheltering way. Janitors shut their gates hand over fist. They reverberated in the center of the City, too. The cocks in the headquarters telephones fell silent. The battery was chirping to battalion headquarters. Why the hell

134

white guard

wasn’t anyone answering! A brigade was chirping in the ears of the garrison commander, trying to get something. But the voice was mumbling nonsense in reply. “Are your officers wearing their epaulets?” “What’s this all about?” “Bah!” “Bah!” “Send a detachment to Pechorsk immediately!” “What’s this all about?” “Bah!” Creeping through the streets was Bolbotun, Bolbotun, Bolbotun, Bolbotun. How did people learn it was Bolbotun and not someone else? No one knows, but they did. Maybe it was because since noon, among the pedestrians and the city’s usual layabouts, men had appeared in coats with astrakhan collars. They walked around and darted in and out. Their mustaches pointed down, like worms, like in the picture of Lebid-Yurchik. Cadets and gold-epauletted officers were followed by long, persistent stares. People whispered: “That Bolbotun’s come to town.” They whispered this without any regret. On the contrary, in their eyes you could read a distinct, “Hail!” “Hail! Hail! Hail! Hail!” said the Pechorsk hills. People were spewing drivel: “Bolbotun is Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich.” “Oh no, Bolbotun is Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich.” “Bolbotun is plain Bolbotun.” “There’s going to be a Jewish pogrom.” “Oh no, they’re wearing red armbands.” “You should hurry home.” “Bolbotun’s against Petlyura.” “Oh no, he’s for the Bolsheviks.”

part t wo

135

“Not at all, he’s for the tsar, but without officers.” “Did the Hetman run away?” “Really? Really? Really? Really? Really? Really?” “Bah!” Bolbotun’s scouts, led by company commander Galanba, marched down Millionnaya Street, but there wasn’t a soul on Millionnaya Street. And here, all of a sudden, imagine, an entry opened and none other than the well-known contractor Yakov Grigorievich Feldman ran straight toward five mounted and tailed haydamaks. Have you lost your mind, Yakov Grigorievich? What made you go outside when things like this were going on here? Indeed, Yakov Grigorievich did look as if he had lost his mind. His seal-fur hat sat on the very back of his head and his coat was unbuttoned. Even his eyes were wandering. Yakov Grigorievich had good reason to lose his mind. No sooner had the clattering begun at the military academy than a groan came from the light-filled bedroom of Yakov Grigorievich’s wife. It came again and died down. “Oh no!” Yakov Grigorievich answered the groan, looked out the window, and was convinced that things outside were very bad. Rumbling and desolation all around. But the groaning was getting louder and cut Yakov Grigorievich’s heart like a knife. A stooped old woman, Yakov Grigorievich’s mama, emerged from the bedroom and cried, “Yasha! Don’t you realize? It’s time!” Yakov Grigorievich’s thoughts all zeroed in on a single goal: the corner of Millionnaya Street near the vacant lot where a rusty gilt sign hung on a corner building: E. T. Shadurskaya Midwife

136

white guard

Millionnaya was fairly dangerous, even if it was a cross-street, and they were firing down it from Pechorsk Square toward Kievsky Slope. If only he could scoot across. If only . . . With his cap on the back of his head and terror in his eyes, Yakov Grigorievich Feldman hugged the walls. “Halt! Where are you going?” Galanba leaned over his saddle. Feldman’s face went dark and his eyes began darting. The haydamaks’ braided green tails danced in his eyes. “Sirs, I’m a peaceful citizen. My wife is giving birth. I need the midwife.” “Midwife? Then why are you hugging the wall? Eh? Kike!” “Sirs, I . . .” A whip snaked across his sealskin collar and neck. Hellish pain. Feldman screamed. He was white now, not dark, and he imagined his wife’s face between the Cossack tails. “Papers!” Feldman pulled out his wallet, opened it, took out the top paper, suddenly began to shake, and only then remembered. Oh my God, my God! What had he done? What did you pull out, Yakov Grigorievich? How could you remember that kind of detail running out of the house when the first groan comes from your wife’s bedroom? Oh, woe to Feldman! Galanba snapped up the document. It was just a thin piece of paper with a seal, but that page held Feldman’s death. The bearer of this document, Mr. Yakov Grigorievich Feldman, is entitled to free passage in and out of the City on affairs connected with provisioning the armored units of the City garrison, and also to move about the city after twelve o’clock midnight. Chief of Supply Services Major General Illarionov Adjutant First Lieutenant Leshchinsky

part t wo

137

Feldman had supplied General Kartuzov with fatback and with petrolatum for his weapons. Lord, work a miracle! “Lieutenant, sir, that’s the wrong document! . . . Please . . .” “No, this is right,” said Galanba, and he chuckled diabolically. “Don’t you worry, we’re literate, we’ll read it.” Lord! Work a miracle! Eleven thousand rubles. Take it all. Just give me my life! Please! Sh’ma Yisroel! No miracle. It was good that Feldman died an easy death. Lieutenant Galanba was in a hurry. So he lopped off Feldman’s head with his saber.

9

A

fter losing seven Cossacks dead, nine wounded, and seven horses, Colonel Bolbotun covered the half-verst from Pechorsk Square to Reznikovskaya Street and there halted once again. Reinforcements had joined the retreating cadet line. They had one tank. The clumsy gray tortoise with gun towers was crawling down Moskovskaya Street and three times struck Pechorsk with a comet’s tail, making a sound like dry leaves (a three-incher). Bolbotun was there in a flash, the horse-holders led the horses into a side street, Bolbotun’s regiment broke into lines and dropped back a little toward Pechorsk Square, and a listless duel ensued. The tortoise blocked Moskovskaya Street and thundered every once in a while. The sounds were answered by a sparse crackle from skirmishers near the mouth of Suvorovskaya Street. There, in the snow, lay a line that had retreated from Pechorsk Square under Bolbotun’s fire, and its reinforcement, which had come about like this: Rrrrrrrrr-ing. “First Detachment?” “Yes, I’m listening.”

138

white guard

“Send two companies of officers to Pechorsk immediately.” “Yes sir.” Rrrring . . . tk . . . tk . . . tk . . . tk . . . So the reinforcement reached Pechorsk—fourteen officers, three cadets, one student, and one actor from the miniatures theater. Alas. One meager line was, of course, not enough. Even with one tortoise for reinforcement. They would have needed at least four. And it can be said with confidence that had they approached, Colonel Bolbotun would have been forced to quit Pechorsk. But they hadn’t. And they hadn’t because in the Hetman’s armored battalion, which consisted of four superb vehicles, the commander of the second vehicle was none other than Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky, the famous ensign who had been given the Cross of St. George on May 1917 by Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky himself. Mikhail Semyonovich was swarthy and clean-shaven and had velvety side-whiskers, and he bore an extraordinary resemblance to Evgeny Onegin. The entire City had come to know Mikhail Semyonovich immediately upon his arrival from St. Petersburg. Mikhail Semyonovich was known as a superb reader of his own poem, “The Drops of Saturn,” at the Ashes Club and as the very excellent organizer of poets and chairman of the city’s order of poets, the Magnetic Triolet. Besides this, Mikhail Semyonovich had no equals as a speaker, and besides this he drove both military vehicles and a kind of civilian one, and besides this he kept a ballerina from the opera theater, Musya Ford, and one other lady whose name Mikhail Semyonovich, gentleman that he was, revealed to no one. He had a great deal of money and generously lent it out to members of the Magnetic Triolet; he drank white wine, played chemin-de-fer, bought a painting, “Venetian Woman Bathing,” spent his nights on Kreshchatik, his mornings at the Café Bilboquet,

part t wo

139

his afternoons in his comfortable room in the best hotel, the Continental, his evenings at the Ashes, and at dawn was writing a scholarly work, “The Intuitive in Gogol.” The Hetman’s City died a few hours earlier than it should have precisely because on the evening of December 2nd, 1918, at the Ashes, Mikhail Semyonovich had told Stepanov, Sheier, Slonykh, and Cheremshin (the Magnetic Triolet’s lead group) the following: “They’re all blackguards. The Hetman and Petlyura both. But Petlyura, along with everything else, is in favor of pogroms. Although that’s not even the main thing. It’s been so long since I’ve thrown a bomb, I’m bored.” At the conclusion of dinner at the Ashes, for which Mikhail Semyonovich paid, he, Mikhail Semyonovich, wearing an expensive fur coat with a beaver collar and a top hat, was escorted by the entire Magnetic Triolet and a fifth man, a tipsy someone in a mohair coat. Shpolyansky knew only a little about him. First of all, he had syphilis, secondly, he had written some atheistic poems that Mikhail Semyonovich, who had considerable literary connections, had placed in a Moscow miscellany, and thirdly, he, Rusakov, was the son of a librarian. The man with syphilis was crying onto his mohair under a Kreshchatik electric streetlamp. Clutching Shpolyansky’s beaver cuffs he said, “Shpolyansky, of everyone in this city, which is rotting away just like me, you’re the strongest. You’re so fine you can even be forgiven your awful resemblance to Onegin! Listen, Shpolyansky, it’s indecent, looking like Onegin. You seem too healthy. You don’t have that noble rottenness that would make you a truly outstanding man of our era. Here I am, rotting away and proud of it. You’re too healthy, but you’re as strong as a propeller, so propel yourself there! Propel yourself upward! That’s the way.” And the syphilitic showed how it should be done. Wrapping his

140

white guard

arms around the streetlamp, he actually wound himself up it, somehow making himself as long and thin as a grass-snake. Prostitutes walked by wearing green, red, black, and white little hats, as pretty as dolls, and murmured gaily to the propeller, “Got a snootful? How’s about it?” Very far away, the cannons were firing, and Mikhail Semyonovich really did look like Onegin in the snow that was swirling in the electric light. “Go to bed,” he told the syphilitic propeller, turning his face slightly so he wouldn’t cough on him. “Go on.” He poked the mohaircoated chest with the tips of his fingers. His black rabbit-skin gloves touched the worn cheviot, and the eyes of the poked man were positively glassy. They parted ways. Mikhail Semyonovich called a cab, shouted, “Malo-Provalnaya,” and drove away, while the mohair coat, tottering, set off on foot for his room in Podol. In the librarian’s apartment, that night, in Podol, in front of the mirror, holding a lighted candle, the mohair’s owner stood stripped to the waist. Fear leapt in his eyes like a demon, his hands were trembling, and the syphilitic was talking, and his lips were quivering like a child’s. “My God, my God, my God. It’s horrible, horrible. Oh, this night! I’m so unhappy. After all, Sheier was with me, and here he is healthy, and he didn’t get infected because he’s a lucky man. Should I go and kill that Lelka? But what’s the point? Who can explain to me what the point is? Oh Lord, Lord. I’m twenty-four, and I could, I could . . . In fifteen years, less maybe, my pupils will be different, and I’ll have bent legs, and then insane idiotic speeches, and then—I’m a damp, decaying corpse.” His skinny body stripped to the waist was reflected in the dusty pier glass, the candle guttered in his upheld hand, and on his chest you

part t wo

141

could see a fine starry rash. Tears were pouring uncontrollably down the sick man’s cheeks, and his body was quaking and swaying. “I ought to shoot myself. But I don’t have the nerve. My God, why would I lie? Why would I lie to you, my reflection?” He took a slim volume from the drawer of a lady’s writing desk. It had been printed on crummy gray paper. On its cover, in red letters: Phantomists—Futurists Poems by M. Shpolyansky B. Fridman V. Sharkevich I. Rusakov Moscow, 1918

The poor sick man opened the book to page 13 and saw the familiar lines: Gods’ Gully by Iv. Rusakov Sprawled in the sky, A smoky gully, Like a beast sucking its paw, A papa, great and real, A shaggy bear, God. In his den, His gully, Kill God. In prayer obscene I greet The crimson sound Of gods at war.

“Aargh.” Gritting his teeth, the sick man groaned in pain. “Argh,” he repeated in his unrelenting agony.

142

white guard

His face distorted, he suddenly spat at the poem on the page, flung the book to the floor, and then dropped to his knees. Crossing himself with small, trembling crosses, bowing and touching his cold forehead to the dusty parquet, he began to pray, raising his gaze to the dreary black window. “Lord, forgive me and have mercy on me for writing these awful words. But why are you so cruel? Why? I know you have punished me. Oh, how terribly you have punished me! Just look at my skin. I swear to you by all the saints, everyone dear to me in this world, on my dear departed mother’s memory, I have been punished enough. I believe in you! I believe with my soul, my body, every fiber of my mind. I believe and turn to you and you alone, because there is no one anywhere on earth who can help me. All my hopes are in you, no one else. Forgive me, and make it so the medicines help me! Forgive me for deciding you didn’t exist. If it weren’t for you, I’d be a pathetic, mangy dog without hope. But I’m a man and strong only because you exist and I can pray to you for help at any time. And I believe you will hear my prayers, forgive me, and heal me. Heal me, oh Lord, and forget the awful things I wrote in a fit of insanity, drunk, hopped up on cocaine. Don’t let me rot away and I swear I’ll be a man again. Strengthen my powers, rid me of the cocaine, rid me of my weakness of spirit, and rid me of Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky!” The candle had burned down and the room was cold. As morning approached the sick man’s skin became covered with tiny blisters, and the sick man’s soul was substantially eased. Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky, on the other hand, spent the rest of the night on Malo-Provalnaya Street in a large room with a low ceiling and an old portrait from the 1840s with dull epaulets touched by time. Jacketless, wearing just his white zephyr shirt under a beautiful deep-notched black vest, Mikhail Semyonovich sat on a narrow settee and to a woman with a pale, matte face spoke these words:

part t wo

143

“Well, Yulia, I’ve made my final decision and I’m joining up with that bastard—the Hetman—in the armored battalion.” Whereupon the woman, wrapped in a fluffy gray shawl, having been ravished and crushed by the passionate Onegin’s kisses half an hour before, replied thusly: “I’m very sorry, but I have never understood your plans and never will.” Mikhail Semyonovich picked up his snifter of aromatic brandy from the little table in front of the settee and said, “Nor need you.” Two days after this conversation, Mikhail Semyonovich had been transformed. Instead of a top hat, he was wearing a flat service cap with officer insignia, and instead of his civilian clothes a knee-length fur coat with crumpled khaki epaulets. He had on gauntlets and gaiters, like Marcel in Les Huguenots. All of Mikhail Semyonovich, from head to toe, was smeared in engine grease (even his face) and also soot for some reason. Once, and that was on December 9th, two armored cars went into battle outside the City, and it must be said that they were extraordinarily successful. They crawled twenty versts or so down the highway, and after the first strikes from their threeinchers and the whine of machine-guns, Petlyura’s lines fled. Ensign Strashkevich, a ruddy enthusiast and commander of the fourth armored car, swore to Mikhail Semyonovich that if they had been sent in at the same time, the four armored cars alone could have defended the City. This conversation took place on the evening of the 9th, and on the 11th, when he was with Shchur, Kopylov, and some others (gunlayers, two drivers, and a mechanic), Shpolyansky, officer of the day, spoke in the twilight: “You know, my friends, to be frank, the big question is whether we’re doing the right thing defending this Hetman. In his hands we’re nothing but an expensive and dangerous toy helping him spread the blackest reaction. Who knows? Maybe the clash between Petlyura and

144

white guard

the Hetman is historically indicated, and out of it a third historical force must be born, maybe the only correct one.” His listeners adored Mikhail Semyonovich for the same reason they adored him at the Ashes, his exceptional eloquence. “What force is that?” asked Kopylov, puffing away at his handrolled cig. Shchur, a smart, sturdy blond, squinted craftily and gave his companions a wink in a northeasterly direction. The group talked a little longer and dispersed. On the evening of December 12th, this same tight-knit group had a second talk with Mikhail Semyonovich behind the vehicle sheds. The subject of this talk remains obscure, but it is well known that on the eve of December 14th, when Shchur, Kopylov, and snub-nosed Petrukhin were on duty in the battalion sheds, Mikhail Semyonovich showed up at a shed carrying a large package in wrapping paper. Shchur, the sentry, let him into the shed, where a lousy little lamp burned dull and red, and Kopylov winked rather familiarly at the sack and asked, “Sugar?” “Uh huh,” replied Mikhail Semyonovich. A lantern looked into the shed next to the cars, blinking its eye, and Mikhail Semyonovich, preoccupied, worked alongside the mechanic readying them for the next day’s action. The reason: a document held by the battalion commander, Captain Pleshko: “14 December, 800 hours, advance on Pechorsk with four armored cars.” The joint efforts of Mikhail Semyonovich and the mechanic to ready the cars for battle yielded some odd results. Three vehicles that had been perfectly healthy the night before (the fourth was in battle under Strashkevich’s command) on the morning of December 14th would not budge, as if they’d been paralyzed. No one could figure out what had happened to them. Some kind of dirt had settled in the carburetor, and no matter how much they blew it out with tire pumps, nothing helped. In the morning there was a pitiful confusion

part t wo

145

with lanterns in the hazy dawn alongside the three vehicles. Captain Pleshko was pale and kept looking over his shoulder, like a wolf, and demanding the mechanic. That was when the disasters started. The mechanic had disappeared. It turned out that, contrary to all rules, his whereabouts in the battalion were completely unknown. It was rumored that the mechanic had suddenly come down with typhus. This was at eight o’clock, and at eight-thirty Captain Pleshko suffered a second blow. Ensign Shpolyansky, who had left at four in the morning for Pechorsk, after the trouble with the armored cars, on a motorcycle driven by Shchur, had failed to return. Only Shchur returned, and he told a sad story. The motorcycle had stopped in at Verkhnyaya Telichka, and Shchur had tried in vain to talk Ensign Shpolyansky out of doing anything reckless. Said Shpolyansky, known to the entire battalion for his exceptional courage, left Shchur, took his carbine and hand grenade, and set off alone into the dark toward the rail bed to scout it out. Shchur heard shots. Shchur was quite certain that the enemy’s advance patrol had dropped in at Telichka, come across Shpolyansky, and, naturally, killed him in an unequal fight. Shchur waited two hours for the ensign, although he had been ordered to wait just one and after that to return to the battalion so as not to subject himself and official motorcycle no. 8175 to danger. Captain Pleshko was even paler after Shchur’s story. The little birds in the telephone from the headquarters of the Hetman and General Kartuzov sang out continuously demanding the armored cars’ departure. At nine o’clock, the ruddy enthusiast Strashkevich returned in the fourth vehicle from his positions and some of his ruddiness was transferred to the battalion commander’s cheeks. The enthusiast drove the vehicle to Pechorsk, where, as has already been said, it blocked Suvorovskaya Street. At ten in the morning, Pleshko’s paleness was a constant. Two gun-layers, two drivers, and one machine-gunner had vanished without a trace. All attempts to move the armored cars had been fruitless.

146

white guard

Shchur, who had left on the motorcycle on Captain Pleshko’s orders, had not returned from his position. Nor had the motorcycle, naturally, because it couldn’t come back by itself! The birds in the telephones were starting to issue threats. As the day brightened, there were more miracles in the battalion. Gunners Duvan and Maltsev disappeared as did a couple of machine-gunners. The armored cars took on a puzzling, neglected look as screws, keys, and even pails lay scattered alongside. And at noon, at noon the battalion commander, Captain Pleshko himself, disappeared.

10

S

trange reshufflings and transfers—some arising spontaneously in battle, some connected with the arrival of orderlies and the chirping of headquarters telephones—had for three whole days led Colonel Nai-Turs’s unit through drifts and mounds of snow outside the City, the full distance from Krasny Traktir to Serebryanka in the south and to Post-Volynsk in the southwest. On the evening of December 13th he led the unit back to the City, to a side street and an abandoned barracks where half the windows had been smashed out. Colonel Nai-Turs’s unit had suffered an odd fate. Everyone who saw it was struck by its felt boots. At the outset of the last three days it had had about a hundred fifty cadets and three ensigns. Reporting to Major General Blokhin in the first few days of December, the head of the First Brigade was a swarthy, clean-shaven cavalryman of average height and mournful eyes who wore the epaulets of a hussar colonel and introduced himself as Colonel NaiTurs, former commander of the former Belgrade Hussar Regiment, Second Squadron. Nai-Turs’s mournful eyes were such that everyone who encountered Nai-Turs with the worn St. George’s ribbon on his miserable soldier’s greatcoat listened to the limping colonel with ut-

part t wo

147

most attention. After a brief conversation with Nai, Major General Blokhin charged him with forming a second section of the brigade with the idea of completing it by December 13th. Amazingly, the formation was complete on December 10th, and on December 10th Colonel Nai-Turs, unusually stingy with words in general, tersely reported to Major General Blokhin, who was being pulled on every side by little headquarters birds, that he, Nai-Turs, could advance with his cadets, but under the nonnegotiable condition that he be given fur caps and felt boots for the entire detachment of one hundred and fifty men, without which he, Nai-Turs, considered war quite impossible. General Blokhin heard out the burring, laconic colonel and gladly wrote out a chit for him to the supply department but warned the colonel that this chit would probably not get him anything in less than a week because there was the most incredible idiocy, disorder, and goings-on in the supply sections and at headquarters. Burring Nai-Turs took the chit, tugged at his trimmed left mustache, as was his habit, and turning his head to neither the right nor the left (he couldn’t because his neck had been fused after an injury, and if he had to look to the side he turned his entire torso), he left Major General Blokhin’s office. At the brigade’s base on Lvovskaya Street, Nai-Turs picked up ten cadets (for some reason with their rifles) and two carts and headed out with them for the supply section. At the supply section, which was housed in a fine mansion on Bulvarno-Kudryavskaya Street, in a comfy little office with a map of Russia and a portrait of Alexandra Fyodorovna left over from the days of the Red Cross hanging on the wall, Colonel Nai-Turs was met by Lieutenant General Makushin, a short, oddly pink-cheeked man wearing a gray double-breasted jacket with his very clean linen peeking out, all of which lent him an extraordinary resemblance to Milyutin, Alexander II’s minister. Tearing himself away from the telephone, in a childish voice

148

white guard

like a clay whistle, the general inquired of Nai, “What do you want, colonel?” “We’re moving out immediately,” replied Nai laconically and added, burring, “I’m asking for felt boots and fur hats for two hundred men immediately.” “Hm,” said the general, pursing his lips and pressing Nai’s request in his hands. “You see, colonel, we can’t give them to you today. Today we’re compiling an inventory of the units’ supplies. I’d ask you to send this in a few days from now. I can’t give you that many anyway.” He placed Nai-Turs’s chit in a visible place under a paperweight shaped like a naked woman. “The felt boots,” replied Nai in a monotone and he squinted and looked at where the tips of his boots were. “What’s that?” The general was flabbergasted and stared at the colonel in amazement. “Give me the felt boots immediately.” “What? How’s this?” The general’s eyes opened very wide. Nai turned to the door, opened it, and shouted down the mansion’s heated corridor, “Hey, platoon!” The general turned a light gray shade of pale, re-aimed his eyes from Nai’s face to the telephone, from there to the icon of the Virgin Mary in the corner, and then back at Nai’s face. There was a thundering and tromping in the corridor, and the red bands around the peakless caps of the Alexei Academy cadets and their black bayonets flashed in the doorway. The general half-rose from his soft chair. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. This is mutiny.” “Write the requisition, Your Excellency,” said Nai, burring. “We’re out of time, we advance in an hour. They say the enemy is just outside the city.” “How’s that? What on earth?” “Step lively,” said Nai in a funereal voice.

part t wo

149

Drawing his head into his shoulders and staring goggle-eyed, the general pulled the chit out from under the woman and with a twitching hand scratched in the corner, splattering ink: “Issue as written.” Nai took the chit, stuck it in his cuff, and told the cadets, who had left footprints on the carpet, “Load up the boots. Quickly.” Tromping and thundering, the cadets began exiting, but Nai held back. The general, turning crimson, said to him, “I’m going to call staff headquarters now and bring charges of treason against you in a courtmartial. This is beyond belief.” “Try,” replied Nai, and he swallowed his saliva, “just try. For the sake of curiosity, just try.” He reached for the butt peaking out of his unfastened holster. The general broke out in blotches and fell mute. “Ring up, you stupid old man,” said Nai with sudden warmth, “and I’ll ring you in the head with this Colt. You’ll be pushing up daisies.” The general sat back down. Crimson folds crawled up his neck but his face remained gray. Nai turned and exited. For a few minutes the general sat in his leather armchair, then he crossed himself facing the icon, picked up the receiver, lifted it to his ear, heard the muffled and intimate “Station”—and suddenly felt the burring hussar’s funereal eyes on him, replaced the receiver, and looked out the window. He saw the cadets busy in the yard carrying gray bundles of felt boots out a shed’s black door. The ugly face of the quartermaster-sergeant, who was positively thunderstruck, stood out on the dark background. He was holding the chit. Nai was standing by a cart, his feet spread, observing. With a limp hand the general picked up the fresh newspaper from his desk, opened it, and on the first page read: There have been clashes near the Irpen River with enemy patrols trying to penetrate toward Svyatoshino.

threw down the paper, and said aloud, “I curse the day and hour I got myself into this.”

150

white guard

The door opened and in walked a captain who looked like a tailless polecat—the supply chief ’s assistant. He looked expressively at the general’s red folds over his collar and spoke: “Permission to report, general, sir.” “Look here, Vladimir Fyodorovich,” the general interrupted, short of breath, his gaze wandering sadly, “I’ve been feeling unwell . . . an attack of . . . hmm . . . I’m going home now, so please be so kind as to take over for me here.” “Yes sir,” replied the polecat, regarding him curiously. “What are your orders? The fourth brigade and the mountain cavalry want felt boots. Did you give permission to issue two hundred pair?” “Yes. Yes!” replied the general in a penetrating voice. “Yes, I did. I did! Me! I gave permission! They have an exception! They’re moving out right away. Yes. To their positions. Yes!” Flickers of curiosity played in the polecat’s eyes. “Four hundred pair in all.” “What am I supposed to do? What?” exclaimed the general hoarsely. “Can I sire them or something? Sire felt boots? Sire them? If anyone asks—give them, give them, give them!” Five minutes later, General Makushin was taken home in a cab. On the night of the thirteenth, the dead barracks on Brest-Litovsky Lane came to life. In the huge slush-filled assembly hall an electric light burned on the wall between the windows (that afternoon the cadets had hung them on lamps and poles, running ropes of some kind). One hundred fifty rifles stood in stacks, and the cadets were sleeping side by side on their dirty bunks. Nai-Turs was sitting at a wobbly wooden table heaped with bread crusts, pots of cold soup dregs, pouches, and wallpaper, over a colored map of the City. A little kitchen lamp cast a clump of light on the densely drawn paper, on which the Dnieper looked like a many-branched and dry blue tree. At about two in the morning, Nai became impossibly tired.

part t wo

151

He sniffed and leaned over the map several times, as if trying to get a clearer view of something on it. Finally he exclaimed quietly, “Cadet?” “Here, sir,” was the response near the door, and a cadet scuffled toward the lamp in his felt boots. “I’m going to lie down now,” burred Nai, “but you wake me in three hours. If there’s a telephone message, wake Ensign Zhagov, and depending on its content, he may or may not wake me.” There were no messages. That night, headquarters did not disturb Nai’s detachment at all. The detachment moved out at dawn with three machine-guns and three carts and strung out along the road. The little houses on the outskirts looked like they had died. But when the detachment advanced to Politekhnicheskaya Street, which was very broad, it encountered movement. Vans flashed by, rumbling in the very early dawn, and occasional gray fur caps made their way. All this was headed back to the City and it skirted Nai’s unit rather skittishly. The dawn was slow and steady, and above the gardens of ordinary dachas the fog rose and spread over the trampled and beaten road. From this dawn until three in the afternoon, Nai was on Politekhnicheskaya because in the afternoon a cadet finally did arrive from his signal crew in a fourth cart and brought him a penciled note from headquarters: Guard Politekhnicheskaya and, if the enemy appears, join battle.

Nai-Turs saw this enemy for the first time at three o’clock, when to the left, in the distance, on the war ministry’s snow-covered parade ground, a number of riders appeared. This was Colonel Kozyr-Leshko, who, following Colonel Toropets’s order of battle, was attempting to reach the road and from there penetrate to the heart of the City. Actually, up until the very approach to Politekhnicheskaya, Kozyr-Leshko had not encountered any resistance whatsoever and had not attacked the City but simply entered it, entered it victoriously and expansively,

152

white guard

knowing full well that his regiment was followed by a unit of mounted haydamaks under Colonel Sosnenko, two Blue Division regiments, a regiment of Cossack riflemen, and six batteries. When the mounted points showed up on the parade ground, shrapnel began exploding high overhead like cranes, in a dense sky that promised snow. The mounted points assembled into a ribbon-file, occupying the road’s full breadth, and started to swell, increase in number, and sweep toward Nai-Turs. A rumble of breechblocks ran through the line of cadets, Nai took out his whistle, gave a piercing whistle, and shouted, “Straight at the cavalry! Salvos . . . fire!” A spark passed through the gray rank of the lines, and the cadets sent the first salvo against Kozyr. Three times after this the canvas was riven from the sky to the walls of the Polytechnic Institute, and three times, reacting with a lashing thunder, Nai-Turs’s battalion fired. The black cavalry ribbons in the distance broke, disintegrated, and disappeared from the road. This was when something happened to Nai. Actually, no one in the detachment had ever once seen Nai frightened, and now it seemed to the cadets that Nai had seen something dangerous somewhere in the sky, or perhaps heard something in the distance. In short, Nai ordered them to drop back toward the City. One platoon remained and, with a rolling rumble, struck the road, providing cover for the retreating detachments. Then it fled as well. So they ran for two versts, limping slightly and waking the great road with their echo, until they reached the intersection with that same Brest-Litovsky Lane where they had spent the previous night. The intersection was utterly lifeless, with not a soul in sight. Here Nai pulled out three cadets and gave them orders. “Run to Polevaya and Borshchagovskaya streets and find out where our units are and what’s happening to them. If you run into any vans or carts, or any other means of conveyance retreating in a disorderly

part t wo

153

fashion, seize them. Should you encounter resistance, threaten to use your weapon, and then do it.” The cadets ran back and to the left and took cover, while up ahead bullets suddenly started coming from somewhere and striking the detachment. They rapped on the roofs, started coming faster, and in the lines a cadet fell face down in the snow and dyed it with his blood. After him another groaned and fell back, struck by a machine-gun. Nai’s lines strung out and sent rapid and continuous fire rumbling down the road, magically locating the enemy’s obscured lines as they rose from the ground. Injured cadets were picked up and bandaged with white gauze. Nai’s temples knotted. He kept turning his torso more and more often trying to look far down his flanks, and even from his face you could tell he was impatiently awaiting the cadets he had sent out. At last they ran up, panting like driven hounds, whistling and wheezing. Nai pricked up his ears and his face darkened. The first cadet reached Nai, stood in front of him, and said, gasping, “Colonel, there aren’t any of our units not just on Shulyavka but anywhere.” He caught his breath. “We have machine-gun fire in the rear and the enemy cavalry just went a long ways down Shulyavka, as if they were entering the City.” At that second the cadet’s words were drowned out by Nai’s deafening whistle. Three carts dashed out into Brest-Litovsky Lane with a rumble, rattled down it, and from there down Fonarny, rolling over the potholes. The carts were carrying the two injured cadets, fifteen armed and healthy ones, and just three machine-guns. That was all the carts could hold. Nai-Turs turned to face his lines and in his stentorian burr gave the cadets a strange command they had never heard before. Meanwhile, the First Infantry Detachment, Third Section, numbering twenty-eight cadets, was languishing in the damaged but wellheated building of the former barracks on Lvovskaya Street. What

154

white guard

was most interesting about this languor was the fact that the commander of these languishing men was none other than Nikolka Turbin. The section commander, Staff Captain Bezrukov, and his two aides—ensigns who had left for headquarters this morning—had not returned. Nikolka, a lance corporal and the most senior, was loafing around the barracks, walking over to the telephone from time to time and looking at it. Thus matters stood until three o’clock in the afternoon. The cadets’ faces had eventually become dreary. Oh my . . . oh my . . . At three o’clock the field telephone started chirping. “Is this the brigade’s third section?” “Yes.” “Call your commander to the telephone.” “Who is speaking?” “Headquarters.” “The commander has not returned.” “Who is this?” “Corporal Turbin.” “Are you the senior officer?” “Yes sir.” “Lead your detachment into action immediately.” So Nikolka led his twenty-eight men out and down the street. Alexei Vasilievich slept the sleep of the dead until two o’clock in the afternoon. He awoke as if he’d been doused with water, looked at the clock on his chair, saw it was ten minutes until two, and started rushing around the room. Alexei Vasilievich pulled on his felt boots, stuffed his pockets with matches, his cigarette case, a handkerchief, his Browning and two cartridge clips, rushing and forgetting first one thing then another, tugged his greatcoat a little tighter, then remembered something but hesitated—he thought it shameful and cowardly but he did it anyway—and took his civilian physician identity papers

part t wo

155

out of his desk. He turned them over in his hands and decided he would take them along, but at that moment Elena called out to him and he left them on his desk. “Listen, Elena,” said Turbin, tugging at his belt, nervous. His heart sank with a bad premonition, and he suffered at the thought of Elena left alone in the large empty apartment with Anyuta. “Don’t do anything. You mustn’t go anywhere. As for me, you have to assume nothing’s going to happen. The battalion’s not going beyond the City outskirts, and I’ll be somewhere in a safe place. May God protect Nikolka as well. This morning I heard the situation was rather more serious, but maybe we’ll beat back Petlyura. Farewell, then, farewell.” Elena paced around the deserted sitting room alone, from the piano, where colorful Valentin stood right where he had been, not put away, to Alexei’s study door, and back. The parquet creaked underfoot. Her face was a study in misery. At the corner of his winding street and Vladimirskaya, Turbin tried to hire a cabbie who agreed to take him but, wheezing gloomily, named an outrageous sum and obviously wasn’t going to back down. Gritting his teeth, Turbin got into the sledge and started for the museum. It was freezing cold. Deep down, Alexei Vasilievich was very worried. He rode and listened to the distant machine-gun fire that reached him in bursts from somewhere near the Polytechnic Institute and apparently in the direction of the train station. Turbin was thinking about what that might mean (Turbin had slept through Bolbotun’s midday visit), and turning his head looked at the sidewalks and the sizable, albeit both troubled and chaotic, traffic. “St . . . stop,” said an inebriated voice. “What is the meaning of this?” asked Turbin angrily. The cabbie pulled so hard on the reins, Turbin was nearly thrown to his knees. A very red face was swaying near the shaft, holding the

156

white guard

reins, and pulling himself along them toward the seat. Crumpled ensign epaulets shone on his short tanned fur coat. An arshin away, Turbin was splashed with the heavy smell of rotgut liquor and onions. The ensign’s rifle was swaying in his arms. “T-t-turn . . . uh . . . uh . . . around,” said the red-faced drunk. “Un . . . unload the passenger.” He suddenly found the word “passenger” funny and giggled. “What is the meaning of this?” repeated Turbin angrily. “Can’t you see who’s riding? I’m on my way to the assembly point. I’m asking you to leave the cab alone. Drive!” “No, don’t drive,” the red-faced drunk said ominously and only then, blinking, did he notice Turbin’s epaulets. “Oh, a doctor, well, let’s go. I’ll get in.” “It’s not on our way. Drive!” “You c-can’t.” “Drive!” The cabbie drew his head into his shoulders and was about to tug on the reins but thought better of it. Turning around he cast a dark and fearful glance at the red man, who had suddenly been distracted by an empty cab, which tried to get away but failed. The red man raised his rifle in both arms and threatened him. The cabbie froze, and the red man, stumbling and hiccupping, wove his way toward him. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone for five hundred,” the cabbie muttered darkly, whipping his nag’s croup. “He shoots you in the back and what’ll that get you?” Turbin was sullenly silent. What a pig. Men like that are a disgrace to the whole cause, he thought darkly. The intersection by the opera theater seethed with bustle and movement. Right in the middle, on the streetcar line, there was a machinegun guarded by a small, freezing cadet wearing a black greatcoat and earflaps and another cadet in a gray one. Passers-by clung to the side-

part t wo

157

walk in clusters, like flies, curiously examining the machine-gun. At the pharmacy on the corner, in sight of the museum, Turbin let the cabbie go. “Add something on, your honor,” said the cabbie darkly and insistently. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have done it. Look what’s going on!” “Enough.” “Why have they gotten children mixed up in this?” a woman’s voice was heard. Only then, by the museum, did Turbin see the crowd of armed men, which was heaving and thickening. Machine-guns flashed obscurely between greatcoat hems on the sidewalk. And then a machinegun on Pechorsk started an exuberant tattoo. Bam . . . bam . . . bam . . . bam . . . bam. . . . I see there’s already some kind of idiocy going on, thought Turbin distraught, and picking up the pace, he headed across the intersection for the museum. “Am I really late? What a scandal. People might think I’ve run away.” Ensigns, cadets, and very rarely soldiers were uneasy, seething, and running to and fro near the museum’s large entrance and the broken side gates leading to the parade ground of the Alexander Gymnasium. The doors’ enormous windows shuddered by the minute, the doors groaned, and armed, crumpled, and agitated cadets were running into the round white building of the museum, whose pediment boasted an inscription in gold: For the Enlightenment of the Russian People.

“My God!” Turbin cried out involuntarily. “They’re gone.” The mortars squinted silently at Turbin and stood, alone and abandoned, precisely where they had the day before. “I don’t understand. What does this mean?” Not knowing why himself, Turbin ran across the parade ground to

158

white guard

the cannons. They loomed up as he covered ground and watched Turbin menacingly. Here was the farthest one. Turbin halted and froze. It had no coupling. He ran back quickly across the parade ground and dashed back into the street. Here the crowd was seething even more, many voices were shouting at once, and bayonets were poking up and leaping. “We should wait for Kartuzov! That’s what!” exclaimed a ringing, worried voice. An ensign crossed Turbin’s path, and he saw that he was carrying a tan saddle with dangling stirrups on his back. “It’s for the Polish Legion.” “But where is that?” “Who the hell knows?” “Everyone into the museum! Everyone into the museum!” “To the Don!” The ensign suddenly stopped and dropped the saddle on the sidewalk. “To hell with ’em! They can all rot!” he howled furiously. “Oh, headquarters!” He turned his head and shook his fists at someone. It’s a disaster. Now I understand. But here’s the horror of it: they must have left as infantry. Yes, yes. Undoubtedly. Petlyura likely approached unexpectedly. There aren’t any horses so they left with their rifles but without the cannons. Oh, my God. I’ve got to get to Anjou’s. Maybe I can learn something there. In fact, it’s more than likely, since someone must still be there, right? Turbin slipped out of the swirling confusion and ignoring everything else ran back toward the opera theater. A dry gust of wind flew down the asphalt path edging the theater and rustled the edges of the torn posters on the theater wall, near the dark-windowed side entrance. Carmen. Carmen. Here was Anjou’s. No cannons in the windows and no gold epau-

part t wo

159

lets, either. A fiery, rubbery sheen was trembling and shimmering in the windows. A fire? The door rattled but did not yield when Turbin tried it. Turbin knocked cautiously. He knocked again. A gray figure flashed on the other side of the door’s glass and opened it and Turbin found himself inside the shop. Dumbfounded, Turbin stared at the stranger, who was wearing a black student overcoat and a motheaten civilian cap with ear flaps pulled down over the crown of his head. The face was oddly familiar but seemed disfigured in some way, distorted. The stove was howling furiously, consuming sheets of paper. The whole floor was scattered with paper. The figure who had let Turbin in without explaining anything immediately looked from him to the stove and squatted, and crimson flecks played on his face. Malyshev? Yes, Colonel Malyshev. Turbin had recognized him. The colonel’s mustache was gone. That place was now smooth and blue, clean-shaven. With a broad sweep of his arm, Malyshev raked paper from the floor and stuffed it into the stove. Aha. “What’s this? Is it all over?” asked Turbin dully. “Yes,” replied the colonel tersely, and he jumped up, rushed to the table, scanned it carefully, slammed drawers a few times pulling them out and pushing them in, quickly bent over, picked up the last stack of paper on the floor and stuffed it into the stove. Only then did he turn to face Turbin and add with cool irony, “We’ve done our fighting. Enough!” He reached inside his coat, quickly pulled out his wallet, checked the documents inside, tore a few in half crosswise, and threw them into the stove. Meanwhile Turbin was staring at him. Malyshev didn’t look like a colonel anymore. Before Turbin was a rather sturdy student, an amateur actor with puffy raspberry lips. “Doctor? What’s the matter with you?” Malyshev pointed to Tur-

160

white guard

bin’s shoulders in distress. “Take those off immediately. What are you doing? Where have you come from? Don’t you know anything?” “I was late, colonel,” began Turbin. Malyshev smiled merrily. Then the smile slid from his face and he shook his head guiltily and anxiously, saying, “Oh my God, and I was the one who put you in this spot! I set this time. You obviously haven’t left your house today. Well, all right. There’s no point talking about it now. To be brief, remove your epaulets immediately and run. Hide.” “What’s going on? What’s going on, tell me, for the love of God!” “Going on?” echoed Malyshev with cheerful irony. “What’s going on is that Petlyura is in the City. On Pechorsk, if not Kreshchatik by now. The City has been taken.” Malyshev suddenly bared his teeth, squinted, and began again not like some amateur actor but like the old Malyshev. “Headquarters betrayed us. We should have scattered this morning. Fortunately, thanks to some good men, I found out everything last night and managed to disperse the battalion. Doctor, there’s no time to think. Remove your epaulets!” “But over there, in the museum, the museum . . .” Malyshev’s face darkened. “None of my business,” he replied darkly. “None of my business! Nothing is my business now. I was just there, shouting, warning, begging them to scatter. There’s nothing else I can do. I saved all my men. I didn’t send them to the slaughter! Or to disgrace!” Malyshev began shouting hysterically. Obviously something had been heating up and snapped and he could no longer contain himself. “Well, generals!” He made a fist and a threatening gesture. His face turned beet-red. Just then a machine-gun wailed from somewhere high up and seemed to shake the large building adjacent. Malyshev shuddered but immediately regained his composure. “Well then, doctor, I’ll be on my way! Farewell. Run! Not into the street but this way, through the back door, and then the alleys. That way’s still open. Quickly.”

part t wo

161

Malyshev shook the dumbstruck Turbin’s hand, turned on his heel, and ran through a dark gap behind the partition. And immediately the shop was quiet. So was the machine-gun outside. Loneliness ensued. Paper was burning in the stove. Malyshev’s exclamations notwithstanding, Turbin walked listlessly and slowly toward the door. He groped for the latch, dropped it in the loop, and returned to the stove. Notwithstanding the exclamations, Turbin was acting unhurriedly, on listless legs, with listless, crumpled thoughts. The precarious fire was devouring the paper, and the stove’s mouth changed from cheerful flames to a quiet red, and all at once the shop went dark. The shelves clung to the walls in the gray shadows. Turbin surveyed them and thought listlessly that Madame Anjou’s still smelt of perfume. A faint, gentle smell, but nonetheless. The thoughts in Turbin’s head tangled into a shapeless heap, and for a while, he looked mindlessly at the spot where the shaven colonel had disappeared. Then, in the silence, the ball gradually unwound, and the most important and colorful end slipped out: Petlyura was here. “Peturra, Peturra,” repeated Turbin very softly, and he chuckled without knowing why. He walked over to the mirror in the pier, which was covered with a layer of taffeta-like dust. The last of the paper burned up, and the last red tongue of flame taunted him a little and then went out. Twilight set in. “Petlyura. That’s crazy. Truly, this country is utterly lost,” muttered Turbin in the shop twilight, but then he came to his senses. “What am I doing here daydreaming? What if they descend on this place?” Then he got busy, as Malyshev had before his departure, and began tearing off his epaulets. The threads ripped and he was left holding two tarnished silver stripes from his tunic and the two other green ones from his greatcoat. Turbin looked at them, turned them over, and was about to pocket them as a memento but thought better of it, realized that would be dangerous, and decided to burn them. There was no shortage of fuel, even if Malyshev had set fire to all the documents.

162

white guard

Turbin gathered a pile of silk scraps off the floor, stuffed them into the stove, and lit it. Once again, monsters roamed the walls and floor, and once again Madame Anjou’s establishment came to life, for a little while. In the flame the silver stripes warped, blistered, darkened, and finally writhed. A truly important question arose in Turbin’s mind. What should he do with the door? Leave it latched shut or open? What if one of the volunteers, like Turbin, left behind, should come here for shelter? Otherwise there’d be nowhere to hide! Turbin unlatched it. Then he was scorched by a thought: What about his identity papers? He grabbed one pocket and then the other, but they weren’t there. Indeed! He had forgotten them. Oh, this was a scandal! What if you ran into them? A gray greatcoat. They’d ask who he was. A doctor? Then prove it! My damned absent-mindedness! Quickly, whispered a voice inside him. Without another thought, Turbin rushed to the back of the shop following the route Malyshev had taken, through a small door, into a dark hallway, and from there through the back door and into the alley.

11

O

beying the telephone voice, Corporal Nikolai Turbin led his twenty-eight cadets all the way across the City, following orders. This led Turbin and his cadets to an utterly dead intersection. It had no life to it whatsoever but it did have a lot of rumbling. All around— in the sky, on the roofs, atop the walls—machine-guns were thundering. This was obviously where the enemy ought to be because this was the last, final point indicated by the telephone voice. But no enemy had shown up yet, and Nikolka was somewhat confused as to what

part t wo

163

he should do now. His cadets, who were a little pale but nonetheless brave, like their commander, spread out in a line on the snowy street, and gunner Ivashin squatted alongside his machine-gun at the sidewalk curb. The cadets looked cautiously into the distance, lifting their heads from the ground, and waited for what was actually going to happen. Their leader was filled with so many ponderous and significant thoughts that he actually stooped over and turned pale. Their leader was struck, first of all, by the absence of anything the voice had promised. Here, at the intersection, Nikolka was supposed to have found a detachment of the Third Brigade and “reinforced it.” There was no detachment. Neither hide nor hair of one. Secondly, Nikolka was struck by the fact that from time to time he could hear machine-gun firing not just up ahead but to the left and even, actually, slightly to the rear. Thirdly, he was afraid of getting scared and kept checking up on himself. Not afraid? No, not afraid, a brisk voice inside his head replied, and Nikolka, out of pride that he had proved brave, turned even paler. Pride shifted to thoughts of how, if they killed him, Nikolka, he would be buried to music. Very simply. A white brocade coffin would sail down the street, and in the coffin would be Corporal Turbin, killed in action, with his waxy noble face, and it was too bad they weren’t giving out crosses now, otherwise he’d certainly have a cross on his chest and a St. George ribbon. Old women would stand by the gates. “Who are they burying, dear?” “Corporal Turbin.” “Oh, what a handsome man.” And the music. You know, it’s nice to die in action. Just so you don’t suffer. His thoughts of music and ribbons took some of the edge off his nervous anticipation of the enemy, who evidently wasn’t obeying the telephone voice and had no thought of showing up. “We’ll wait here,” Nikolka told the cadets, trying to make his voice sound a little more confident, but it didn’t because what he had found

164

white guard

was not quite the way it ought to have been. Actually, it was rather silly. Where was the detachment? Where was the enemy? Wasn’t it odd that they were firing to his rear? The leader and his host waited. In the cross-street leading from the intersection to the Brest-Litovsk highway, shots suddenly rang out, and gray figures in mad flight scattered down the lane. They were running straight for Nikolka’s cadets, and their rifles were pointing in different directions. Did they go around? thundered in Nikolka’s head, and he cast about, not knowing what command to give. A moment later, though, he saw the patches of gold on the shoulders of some of the running men and realized they were on his side. Tall, heavy, sweaty in flight, the Konstantin Military Academy cadets in their fur caps would abruptly halt, drop to one knee, and with a pale flash, issue two salvos down the street, in the direction they were running from. Then they leapt up, threw down their rifles, and raced across the intersection, past Nikolka’s detachment. On their way they tore off their epaulets, pouches, and belts and abandoned them in the trampled snow. A tall, gray, heavy cadet drew even with Nikolka, turned his head toward Nikolka’s detachment, and in a loud voice, gasping for air, shouted, “Run, run with us! Save yourself if you can!” Nikolka’s cadets began rising, dumbstruck, in their lines. Nikolka was stupefied, but at the same moment he took himself in hand and thought lightning quick, Here’s the moment I could be a hero, and he shouted in his penetrating voice, “Don’t you dare get up! Obey my orders!” What are they doing? thought Nikolka frenziedly. The Konstantin cadets—there were about twenty of them—slipped away from the intersection without their weapons and scattered down the cross-street, Fonarny Lane, and some of them rushed through the first big gates. The iron doors rumbled frightfully, and their boots

part t wo

165

tramped up the echoing stairwell. A second cluster went through the next gates. That left just five, who picked up their pace and ran straight down Fonarny and vanished in the distance. Finally the last to flee dashed into the intersection, pale golden epaulets on his shoulders. Nikolka’s sharpened gaze instantly recognized in him the commander of the First Brigade, Second Section, Colonel Nai-Turs. “Colonel!” Nikolka cried out to him, confused and at the same time pleased. “Your cadets are fleeing in panic.” And at this something outrageous happened. Nai-Turs ran into the trampled intersection wearing a greatcoat tucked under on both sides, like French infantry. A crumpled service cap sat way back on his head, held on by a strap under his chin. In his right hand Nai-Turs held a Colt and his open holster was bumping and slapping him on the hip. His stubbly face was formidable, his eyes were squinting, and now, close up, you could clearly see the hussar zigzags on his shoulders. Nai-Turs ran right up to Nikolka and with a wave of his free left hand tore first the left and then the right epaulet off Nikolka. The high-grade waxed threads snapped, and the right epaulet took a little fabric with it. Nikolka was so badly shaken, he was convinced then and there of what remarkably strong hands Nai-Turs had. Nikolka sat down hard on something soft, and this something soft jumped out from under him with a howl and turned out to be the gunner Ivashin. Then the cadets’ twisted faces started dancing around him and everything went to hell in a handbasket. The only reason Nikolka did not go insane at that moment was that he didn’t have time to, so swift were Colonel Nai-Turs’s actions. Turning to face the broken platoon, he screamed his command in his highly unusual, burring voice. Nikolka thought superstitiously that a voice like that could no doubt be heard at ten versts, all over the city. “Cadets! Obey my orders. Rip off your epaulets, insignia, and pouches and throw away your weapons! Take Fonarny Lane and then

166

white guard

the back alleys to Razyezhaya and Podol! Podol! Rip up your documents on the way, hide, scatter, and drive everyone along the way with you!” Then, waving his Colt, Nai-Turs let out a screech like a cavalry bugle. “Down Fonarny! Fonarny only! Lie low in your homes! The fighting’s over! On the double!” For a few seconds the platoon stood there, stunned. Then the cadets turned white as a sheet. Ivashin tore off his epaulets in front of Nikolka, pouches flew onto the snow, and rifles rattled down the sidewalk’s icy mound. Thirty seconds later, cartridge bags, belts, and someone’s tattered cap were lying in the intersection. The cadets were running away, down Fonarny Lane, flying into the alleys that led to Razyezhaya Street. Nai-Turs jammed the Colt into his holster, leapt toward the machine-gun near the sidewalk, crouched, sat, pointed his nose in the direction he had come from, and with his left hand adjusted the belt. Turning toward Nikolka from his squat, he thundered frantically, “Have you gone deaf? Run!” A strange drunken ecstasy rose from somewhere around Nikolka’s belly, and his mouth went suddenly dry. “I don’t want to, colonel,” he replied in a rough voice. Then he squatted and grabbed the belt with both hands and fed it into the machine-gun. In the distance, several mounted figures suddenly galloped out from where the remainder of Nai-Turs’s detachment had fled. You could vaguely tell that the horses under them were dancing, playfully, and that the men were holding the blades of their cavalry swords. NaiTurs cocked the trigger and the machine-gun sent out a burst of fire— rat-tat-tat—stopped, fired again, and then kept it up for a long time. All the roofs on the buildings were seething now on the right and the left. The mounted figures were joined by a few more, but then one of

part t wo

167

them peeled off. Another horse reared at the window of a building, making it seem terribly long, reaching nearly to the second floor, and a few riders disappeared altogether. Then, in a flash, all the remaining riders disappeared, as if they had fallen through the earth. Nai-Turs released the trigger and shook his fist at the sky, moreover his eyes filled with light, and he screamed, “My boys! My boys! Those wretches at headquarters!” He turned toward Nikolka and shouted in a voice that seemed to Nikolka like the sound of a gentle cavalry bugle. “Clear out, stupid boy! I’m telling you, clear out!” He shot a glance behind him and saw that all the cadets had vanished, then he looked from the intersection into the distance, to the street parallel to the Brest-Litovsk road, and cried out in pain and fury, “God damn it all!” Nikolka then turned and saw far away, still far away on Kadetskaya Street, next to the puny, snow-covered boulevard, dark ranks appearing and dropping to the ground. Then the sign right above the heads of Nai-Turs and Nikolka at the corner of Fonarny Lane— Berta Yakovlevna Printz-Metall Dentist

—slammed and glass rained down behind the gates. Nikolka saw chunks of plaster jumping and leaping on the sidewalk. Nikolka fixed his questioning gaze on Colonel Nai-Turs, wanting to know how to interpret those distant ranks and this plaster. Colonel Nai-Turs did something strange. He hopped on one leg and swung the other, as if in a waltz, and in ballroom style bared a misplaced smile. Then Colonel Nai-Turs was lying at Nikolka’s feet. A black fog drew over Nikolka’s mind. He squatted and, surprising himself, sobbing dryly, without tears, started pulling the colonel by the shoulders, trying to get him up. Then he saw blood pouring through the colonel’s left sleeve and his eyes rolling back in his head.

168

white guard

“Colonel, colonel.” “Cor-pral,” said Nai-Turs, then blood poured out of his mouth and onto his chin, and his voice started to give out drop by drop, weakening with every word. “Quit playing the hero, damn it, I’m dying. MaloProvalnaya . . .” He didn’t explain anything more. His jaw started working, exactly three times, and convulsively, as if Nai were choking, and then it stopped, and the colonel was as heavy as a sack of flour. Is this how people die? thought Nikolka. This can’t be. He was just alive. Battle isn’t frightening, I saw that. For some reason they haven’t hit me. Den . . . . . . tist—

rattled a second time overhead, and more glass broke somewhere. Could he just be unconscious? thought Nikolka foolishly in his confusion, and he pulled on the colonel. But he couldn’t possibly lift him. Am I frightened? thought Nikolka and he felt scared out of his wits. Why? Why? thought Nikolka, and right away he realized that he was frightened because he was sad and alone, that if Colonel Nai-Turs were on his feet right now he wouldn’t be frightened at all. But Colonel NaiTurs was perfectly still. He wasn’t giving any more orders, or paying any attention to the big red pool spreading next to his sleeve, or to the plaster crazily breaking off and crumbling on the building ledges. Nikolka was frightened because he was utterly alone. No horsemen were galloping up, on one hand, but everyone was obviously against Nikolka, and he was the last one; he was utterly alone. This being alone is what drove Nikolka from the intersection. He crawled on his belly, arm over arm, moreover with the right elbow because he was clutching Nai-Turs’s Colt. Terror itself would set in two paces from the corner. That was when they would hit your leg, so that you couldn’t crawl away, and Petlyura’s men would ride up and hack you to death with

part t wo

169

their swords. It’s horrible when you’re lying there and they’re hacking away at you. I’ll fire if the Colt has bullets. Only a pace and a half to go . . . go on, go on . . . there . . . and Nikolka was around the corner on Fonarny Lane. Amazing, it’s truly amazing they didn’t get me. A miracle really. The Lord God’s miracle, thought Nikolka, rising. There’s a miracle for you. Now I’ve seen it for myself—a miracle. Notre Dame de Paris. Victor Hugo. What’s happening to Elena now? And Alexei? Clearly, if men are tearing off their epaulets, there must have been a disaster. Covered to the neck in snow, Nikolka jumped up, stuck the Colt in his greatcoat pocket, and flew down the lane. The first gates on his right gaped open, and Nikolka ran into an echoing stairwell and out into a gloomy, foul-smelling yard with red brick outbuildings on his right and a woodshed on his left, figured that the way out was in the middle, and ran headlong in that direction, slipping, and straight into a man in a sheepskin coat. No doubt about it. A red beard and tiny eyes dripping with hatred. A snub-nosed Nero in a sheepskin cap. The man grabbed Nikolka with his left hand, as if he were playing a funny game, and with his right latched onto Nikolka’s left arm and twisted it behind his back. Nikolka was momentarily stunned. My God. He’s grabbed me, he hates me! A Petlyura man. “You rabble you!” Redbeard shouted hoarsely and he started panting. “Where are you going? Halt!” Then he started yelling. “Hold him, hold him. Hold the cadet. Got rid of your strap, so you thought nobody’d recognize you, you bastard? Hold him!” Nikolka was consumed with rage from head to toe. He sat down abruptly, all at once, so the half-belt on his greatcoat broke. He turned around and with unnatural strength flew out of Redbeard’s hands. For a second he couldn’t see him because he had his back turned, but then he turned around and saw him again. Redbeard had no weapon. He wasn’t even a soldier; he was a janitor. Fury flew across Nikolka’s eyes like a solid red blanket and was replaced by extraordinary confidence.

170

white guard

The wind and cold flew into Nikolka’s hot mouth because he was baring his teeth like a wolf cub. Nikolka flung his hand holding the Colt out of his pocket, thinking, If only I have bullets I’ll kill the viper. He didn’t recognize his own voice, so alien and terrifying was it. “I’ll kill you, you viper!” Nikolka’s voice was hoarse. He fingered the fanciful Colt and instantly realized he’d forgotten how to fire it. The redheaded janitor, seeing that Nikolka was armed, fell to his knees in despair and horror and let up a howl that instantly transformed him from a Nero to a snake. “Oh! Your honor! Your . . .” Nikolka would have fired, but the Colt wouldn’t. Not loaded. Drat! thought Nikolka like the wind. The janitor shielding himself with his hand and retreating, fell back from his knees into a squat and gave a heart-rending wail that destroyed Nikolka. Not knowing what to do to shut that huge maw in the copper beard, Nikolka, desperate over his nonfiring revolver, like a fighting cock, jumped the janitor and struck him hard in the teeth with the Colt’s handle, risking shooting himself. Nikolka’s fury evaporated. The janitor jumped to his feet and ran from Nikolka into the same stairwell Nikolka had come from. Out of his mind with fear, the janitor was no longer wailing but running, slipping on the ice and stumbling. He turned around once, and Nikolka saw that half his beard was red. Then he vanished. Nikolka ran down some stairs, past the shed, toward the gates to Razyezhaya, where he gave way to despair. It’s over. I’m too late. I’m trapped. Lord, and it won’t fire. He shook the large bolt and lock in vain and fell still. There was nothing he could do. The redheaded janitor, the moment Nai-Turs’s cadets had run by, had locked the gates to Razyezhaya, and Nikolka was faced with an absolutely insurmountable barrier—a solid steel wall, smooth all the way to the top. Nikolka turned, looked at the sky, which was very low and dense, and saw a flimsy black staircase on the firewall that went right to the roof of the four-story building. Should I climb it? he thought, and at that he idiotically recalled a colorful

part t wo

171

scene where Nat Pinkerton wearing his yellow jacket and a red mask climbed the same kind of stairs. Oh, Nat Pinkerton, and America. But what if I climb up? Then what? I’ll be sitting on the roof like an idiot while the janitor summons Petlyura’s men. That Nero would betray me. I knocked his teeth out. He’ll never forgive that! Indeed, Nikolka heard the janitor’s desperate howls of summons coming from the gates onto Fonarny Lane—“This way! This way!”— and the pounding of hoofs. Nikolka realized that Petlyura’s cavalry had sprung into the City from the flank. They were already in Fonarny Lane. That’s just what Nai-Turs had been shouting. You couldn’t go back to Fonarny. He had figured all this out, though how, he didn’t know, by the time he found himself on the woodpile beside the shed, next to the adjoining building’s wall. Iced-over logs rolled underfoot, and Nikolka hobbled, fell, tore his trousers, reached the wall, looked over it and saw an identical yard. So identical that he expected his redheaded Nero to leap out again in his sheepskin. But no one did. A terrible stab of pain went through his belly and the small of his back. Nikolka sat on the ground and that very second his Colt jumped in his hand and fired deafeningly. Nikolka was amazed but then figured out what had happened. The safety was on, and I just moved it. How odd. Damn. Here, too, the gates to Razyezhaya were shut tight. That meant going back to the wall. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any firewood there. Nikolka put the safety back on and stuck the revolver in his pocket. He climbed over a pile of broken bricks and then, like a fly, up a sheer wall, placing the tips of his boots into holes so small they wouldn’t have fit a kopek in peacetime. He tore his nails, bloodied his fingers, and scraped himself on the wall. Lying on top of it face down, he heard a deafening whistle in the first yard and Nero’s voice, and in this, the third yard, in a darkened window on the second floor, a woman’s horrified face looked at him and instantly disappeared. Falling from the second wall, he reckoned quite well and fell in a snow-

172

white guard

drift; still, something in his neck twisted and cracked in his skull. Feeling a ringing in his head and a flashing in his eyes, Nikolka ran toward the gates. Oh, the rejoicing! It was locked, too, but what nonsense! An openwork gate. Nikolka climbed it like a fireman, crawled over, dropped down, and found himself on Razyezhaya Street. He saw that it was totally empty, not a soul there. I’ll take ten seconds to catch my breath, no more, or my heart will burst, thought Nikolka, and he swallowed the scorching air. Right . . . my documents. Nikolka took a packet of greasy identity papers from the pocket of his shirt and tore them up. They flew to the winds, like snow. Behind him, from the direction of the intersection where he’d left Nai-Turs, he heard a machine-gun start to rattle, and it was answered by machine-guns and rifle salvos ahead of Nikolka, from there, from the City. There you had it. The City had been taken. There was fighting in the City. Disaster. Still trying to catch his breath, Nikolka brushed the snow off with both hands. Get rid of the Colt? Nai-Turs’s Colt? No, not for anything. Maybe he’d slip through. They couldn’t be everywhere at once, after all, could they? With a heavy sigh and feeling his legs much weakened and rubbery, Nikolka ran down deserted Razyezhaya and safely reached an intersection off which two streets forked: Lubochitskaya, leading to Podol; and Lovskaya, which meandered toward the City’s center. Here he saw a pool of blood near a pedestal, and manure, two abandoned rifles, and a dark blue student cap. Nikolka threw off his fur hat and put on the cap. It was too small for him and gave him an ugly, devilmay-care, civilian look. A tramp who had been thrown out of gymnasium. Nikolka peered cautiously around the corner down Lovskaya, where very far away he saw the dancing cavalry with the dark blue patches on their fur hats. There was some trouble there and guns popping off. He took Lubochitskaya, where, for the first time, he saw a live person. Some lady was running down the opposite sidewalk, and

part t wo

173

her hat with its black feather sat at an angle. Dangling from her arms was a gray sack in which a desperate cock was clawing to get out and crying for the whole street to hear: “Peturra, Peturra.” Through a hole in the paper cone in the lady’s left hand, carrots were dropping to the sidewalk. The lady was exclaiming and crying as she rushed at the wall. Some bourgeois slid by like the wind, crossed himself in every direction, and shouted, “Jesus Christ! Volodka, Volodka! Petlyura’s coming!” At the end of Lubochitskaya many people were already scurrying and bustling about and running for the gates. Some man in a black coat went mad with terror, tore for the gates, stuck his cane through the grill, and broke it off with a crack. Meanwhile time was flying and all of a sudden it was twilight and so when Nikolka ran from Lubochitskaya to Volsky Slope an electric streetlamp on the corner flared up and started buzzing. A shutter slammed in a shop, hiding the colorful boxes labeled “soap powder.” A cabbie had upset his sledge into a snowdrift as he turned the corner and was whipping his nag brutally. A four-story building with three entrances leapt back as it passed Nikolka, and in all three the doors were constantly flinging open, and someone in a seal collar slipped past Nikolka and yelled at the gates: “Peter! Peter! Have you lost your mind? Shut them! Shut the gates!” A door banged in the entryway and he could hear a woman’s booming voice shout on the dark staircase, “Petlyura’s coming. Petlyura!” The farther Nikolka ran toward Podol, where Nai-Turs had said he would be safe, the more people were flying, and fussing, and rushing through the streets, but the fear was less, and not everyone was running in the same direction as Nikolka; some were rushing toward him. Right at the descent to Podol, from the entrance to a large gray

174

white guard

stone building, a little cadet solemnly emerged wearing a gray greatcoat with white epaulets with a gold “V” on them. The little cadet had a button nose. His eyes darted from side to side, and a large rifle was strapped on his back. Passers-by scurried along, looked in horror at the armed cadet, and ran off. But the cadet stood on the sidewalk, listened to the firing in the upper City with a significant and exploratory look, sniffed the air, and looked like he was about to go somewhere. Nikolka aborted his journey, moved across the sidewalk, pinned the little cadet with his chest, and said in a whisper, “Throw away your rifle and hide this instant.” The little cadet shuddered, looked scared, and took a step back, but then he gripped his rifle menacingly. Using the tried and true method, pressing and pressing, Nikolka pushed him into the entry and there, between the two doors, tried to impress it upon him: “I’m telling you to hide. I’m a cadet. It’s a disaster. Petlyura has taken the City.” “What do you mean he’s taken it?” asked the cadet and his jaw dropped, moreover he apparently was missing one tooth on the left side. “This is what I mean,” replied Nikolka, and he gestured toward the upper City, adding, “Hear that? That’s Petlyura’s cavalry in the streets. I barely saved myself. Run home, hide your rifle, and warn everyone.” The cadet stiffened and Nikolka left him there like that, in the entry, because he had no time for talk with someone so slow-witted. In Podol the alarm was not as great, but there was commotion, and quite a lot of it. Pedestrians were picking up their pace and often craning their necks, listening closely, and very often cooks would scamper up out of entries and gates, hastily wrapped in gray shawls. There was a constant seething of machine-guns coming from the upper City. But in this twilight hour of December 14th, nowhere, neither far away nor close by, did you hear cannons.

part t wo

175

Nikolka’s journey was long. By the time he crossed Podol, twilight had completely engulfed the frosty streets, and a major fall of soft snow, which flew in patches of light near the streetlamps, had eased the bustle and alarm. Through its sparse net, lights flickered, and shops and stores shone cheerfully, but not all; some were already dark. It was beginning to stick more and more on the surface. When Nikolka reached the beginning of his street, steep Alexeyevsky Slope, and began climbing it, he noticed a scene by the gates of no. 7: two little boys in gray knit jackets and knit caps had just gone sledding down the slope. One of them, small and round like a ball, covered with snow, was sitting and laughing. The other, who was a little older, slender and grave, was untangling a knot in the rope. A fellow in a sheepskin coat was standing by the gates picking his nose. The shooting was getting louder. It had flared up there, above, in all kinds of places. “Vaska, Vaska, boy did I clunk my rear on the curb!” shouted the little one. They’re sledding so peacefully, thought Nikolka in amazement, and he asked the young man in a kind voice, “Tell me, who is that firing up above?” The fellow took his finger out of his nose, thought it over, and said in a nasal voice, “Our side’s smashing the damn officers.” Nikolka frowned at him and mechanically fingered the Colt’s handle in his pocket. The older boy spoke up angrily. “They’ll take care of those officers. They’ve got it coming. There’re eight hundred of ’em for the whole City but they haven’t done anything. Petlyura came, and he’s got a million troops.” He turned and dragged his sled away. The cream-colored curtain between the veranda and the small dining room was thrown open immediately. The clock . . . tick tock. . . .

176

white guard

“Is Alexei back?” Nikolka asked Elena. “No,” she replied, and she wept. It was dark. Dark throughout the apartment. Only a lamp in the kitchen. Anyuta was sitting there crying, her elbows resting on the table. Over Alexei Vasilievich, naturally. Firewood was blazing in the stove in Elena’s room. Patches of light would jump out through the damper and dance hotly on the floor. Elena was sitting on a stool, having shed all the tears she had over Alexei, her fist propping up her cheek, and Nikolka was on the floor at her feet in a fiery red patch, his legs extended like scissors. Bolbotun . . . the colonel. This afternoon at the Shcheglovs’ they’d been saying that he was none other than Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. Here in the semi-dark and the fire’s glow, all was despair. Why cry over Alexei? Crying certainly wasn’t going to help. He’d been killed, without a doubt. That was clear. They didn’t take prisoners. If he hadn’t come, that meant he and his battalion had been caught and he’d been killed. The horror was that Petlyura, or so people said, had eight hundred thousand select troops, the best. They’d deceived us and sent us to our death. Where had that terrible army come from? Woven together out of the frosty fog in the needly blue and twilight air. A terrible country was Ukraine! Foggy . . . foggy. . . . Elena rose and reached out. “A pox on the Germans. A pox on them. If God doesn’t punish them, that means He has no justice. Is it possible they won’t answer for this? They must. They must suffer just as we have.” She stubbornly repeated “just as we have” as if it were an incantation. Crimson played on her face and neck and her vacant eyes were black with hatred. Nikolka, his legs spread, was reduced to despair and sadness by these cries.

part t wo

177

“Mightn’t he still be alive?” he asked meekly. “He is a doctor, after all. Even if he was captured, maybe they would take him prisoner and not kill him.” “If they’ll eat cats, they’ll kill each other, just as we have,” said Elena ringingly and shaking her fingers hatefully at the fire. Oh my, oh my . . . Bolbotun couldn’t be a grand duke. There can’t be eight hundred thousand troops, let alone a million. . . . Actually, it’s a fog. This is such a dreadful time that has befallen us. Talberg was the smart one, it turns out, leaving in the nick of time. The fire was dancing on the floor. We’ve had peaceful times and marvelous countries, you see. For instance, Paris and Louis with the little pictures on his hat, and Claupin Troulefou crawled and warmed himself in a fire like that. And even he, poor man, was fine. Nowhere was there ever such a vile snake as that red-haired Nero janitor. Everyone hates us, of course, but he’s a downright jackal. Twisting my arm behind my back. Just then, cannons boomed outside. Nikolka jumped up and started rushing around. “Did you hear that? Did you? Did you? Could it be the Germans? Could it be the allies coming to our aid? Who is it? After all, they can’t fire on the City if they’ve already taken it.” Elena folded her arms across her chest and said, “Nikol, I’m not letting you out in any case. I’m not. I beg of you not to go anywhere. Don’t be crazy.” “I’d just go as far as the little square by St. Andrei’s Church and look and listen from there. I could see all of Podol from there, after all.” “Fine, go. If you can leave me alone at a moment like this, then go.” Nikolka was embarrassed. “Well, then I’ll just go out in the yard and listen.”

178

white guard

“I’m right with you.” “Lenochka, what if Alexei comes back and we don’t hear the front doorbell?” “You’re right we wouldn’t. That would be your fault, too.” “Well, then, Lenochka, I give you my word of honor that I won’t step foot out of the yard.” “Word of honor?” “Word of honor.” “You won’t go past the gate? You won’t climb the hill? You’ll stand in the yard?” “Word of honor.” “Go.” On December 14th, 1918, the thickest of snows fell and blanketed the City. And these strange, surprising cannons fired at nine o’clock in the evening. They fired for all of fifteen minutes. The snow was melting under Nikolka’s collar, and he was fighting the temptation to climb the snowy heights. From there he could have seen not only Podol but some of the upper City as well, the seminary, the hundreds of rows of lights in the taller buildings, and the hills and the little houses on them where kerosene lamps flickered in the windows. But no one should break his word of honor because then you can’t live with yourself. That’s what Nikolka thought. At every ominous and distant rumble he prayed like this, “God, grant . . .” But the cannons fell silent. Those were our cannons, thought Nikolka sorrowfully. Returning from the gate, he glanced in the Shcheglovs’ window. A pretty white curtain had been turned back in the annex window and he could see Maria Petrovna bathing Petka. Petka was sitting naked in the washtub and crying soundlessly because soap had dripped in his eyes. Maria Petrovna was squeezing a sponge out over Petka. Linen hung on a line, and above the linen Maria Petrovna’s large shadow walked around and

part t wo

179

leaned over. The Shcheglovs’ seemed so cozy and warm to Nikolka, whereas he was cold in his unbuttoned greatcoat. In the deep snows, about eight versts from the City’s outskirts, to the north, at a post abandoned by its guard and heaped with white snow, sat a staff captain. On a small table lay a crust of bread, the field telephone, and a tiny three-wick lamp with a sooty hurricane glass. The fire was burning down in the stove. The captain was short, had a long sharp nose, and was wearing a greatcoat with a large collar. He was pinching and breaking off crust with his left hand and pressing the telephone’s buttons with his right. But the telephone appeared to be dead and did not respond. Around the captain, for five versts or so, there was nothing but darkness and in it, a thick snowstorm. There were drifts of snow. Another hour passed, and the staff captain gave up on the telephone. At about nine in the evening, he gave a snort and said, out loud for some reason, “I’m going to lose my mind. Basically, I ought to shoot myself.” And as if in reply, the telephone sang out. “Is this no. 6 battery?” asked a distant voice. “Yes, yes,” replied the captain with unbridled joy. The alarmed voice far away was overjoyed but muffled. “Immediately open fire on the boundary area”—the muffled voice croaked far away on the other end of the line—“. . . a barrage.” The voice cut off. “I think—” And at that the voice cut off again. “Yes, I’m listening, I’m listening,” the captain shouted into the receiver, desperately baring his teeth. There was a long pause. “I can’t open fire,” said the captain into the receiver, sensing perfectly well that he was speaking into a total void, but he couldn’t not speak. “My entire crew and three ensigns ran away. I’m alone in the battery. Tell Post.” The staff captain sat there another hour and then went outside. It was snowing very hard. The four somber and terrible cannons were

180

white guard

already covered in snow, and crests had already started to sweep up the muzzles and couplings. The snow was spinning and twirling, and the captain cast about like a blind man in the storm’s cold shriek. He cast about like that, blinded, for a long time, until he managed to remove the first coupling by feel, in the snowy darkness. He was about to toss it down the well behind the guard post but thought better of it and instead returned to the guard post. He went out three more times and removed all four couplings from the weapons and hid them in the hatch in the floor where the potatoes were stored. Then he went into the darkness, first blowing out the lamp. He walked for a couple of hours, tramping through the snow, utterly invisible and dark, until he reached the road that led to the City. Here and there streetlamps burned dimly on the road. Under the first of these lamps horsemen with tails on their heads killed him with their sabers and took his boots and watch. The same voice spoke in the receiver six versts to the west of the guard post, in a dugout. “Open . . . fire on the boundary area immediately. I think the enemy has passed between us headed for the City.” “Are you listening? Are you listening?” came the reply from the dugout. “Find out in Post—” And the line went completely dead. Without listening, the voice croaked in the receiver in reply. “On the double at the boundary area . . . and cavalry—” Then it went dead. Three officers and three cadets wearing sheepskin coats crawled out of a dugout carrying lanterns. A fourth officer and two cadets stood next to the guns near a lamp that the storm was trying to blow out. Five minutes later, the cannons began jumping and firing terrifyingly into the darkness. They filled the entire area for fifteen versts around with a mighty rumble that reached 13 Alexeyevsky Slope. Lord, grant . . .

part t wo

181

A cavalry company, spinning in the storm, leapt out of the darkness from behind the lamps and slaughtered all the cadets and the four officers. The commander, who had stayed in the dugout by the telephone, shot himself in the mouth. The commander’s last words were: “Headquarters bastards. I understand the Bolsheviks all too well.” That night, Nikolka lit the high lamp in his corner room and carved a large cross on his door and a crooked inscription beneath it with his penknife: Col. Turs, 14 Dec. 1918, 4 p.m.

He had left off the “Nai” for conspiracy’s sake, in case Petlyura’s men came and conducted a search. He didn’t want to sleep because he didn’t want to miss the bell. He knocked on Elena’s wall and said, “You go to sleep. I’m not going to.” Immediately after that he conked out, fully dressed, on his bed. Elena lay awake till dawn, listening and listening for the bell to ring. But it didn’t, and her older brother Alexei was missing. A tired, broken man needs his sleep, and though it was eleven o’clock, he was still sleeping, and sleeping in such an original fashion, let me tell you! His boots were bothering him, his belt was digging into his waist, his collar was choking him, and a nightmare had sunk its claws into his chest. Nikolka had flopped down on his back, he was red in the face, and a whistling was coming from his throat. A whistling! There was snow and a spider web. The spider web was surrounding him, damn it! The main thing was to get through that spider web, or else the cursed thing would grow and grow and climb up to his face. And who knew, it might envelop you so you couldn’t get out! And you’d suffocate, just like that. On the other side of the spider web was the purest snow, as

182

white guard

much as you wanted, entire ravines full. That was what he had to get to, that snow, and quickly, because someone’s voice seemed to be sighing somewhere, “Nikol!” And then, imagine, some lively bird became trapped in the spider web and started pecking . . . Hweet hweet! Teekateeka, teeka-teeka! Hweet hweet! Drat! He couldn’t see it, but there was whistling close by, and someone was bemoaning his fate, and again the voice: “Nik! Nik! Nikolka!” “Oh my!” croaked Nikolka, and he tore the spider web apart and quickly sat up, tousled, disheveled, his badge on his side. His fair hair stuck straight up, as if someone had been ruffling it for a long time. “Who is it? Who is it?” asked Nikolka in horror, bewildered. “Who. who, who, who, who, who, yes! Yes! Yes! Hweet! Tweet! Hweet!” replied the spider web, and a mournful voice, full of private tears, said, “Yes, with her lover!” Horrified, Nikolka pressed up against the wall and stared at the vision, which was wearing a brown tunic, brown riding breeches, and boots with tan jockey cuffs. Its eyes, dull and mournful, gazed from deep orbits in an incredibly large, closely trimmed head. It was undoubtedly young, this vision, but the skin on its face was an old man’s, grayish, and its teeth were crooked and yellow. The vision was holding a large cage with a black cloth thrown over it and an unsealed blue letter. I haven’t woken up yet, Nikolka imagined, and he took a swipe with his hand, trying to tear the vision apart, like a spider web, but his fingers jammed painfully in the cage’s ribs. The bird in the black cage went berserk and started shrieking and whistling and rattling. “Nikolka!” Elena’s worried voice shouted to him from somewhere very far away. Lord Jesus, thought Nikolka. No, I’ve woken up, but I went mad immediately, and I know why—combat fatigue. My God! And I’m seeing this nonsense. And my fingers? Lord! Alexei isn’t back. That’s it. He isn’t back. They’ve killed him. Oh no, oh no.

part t wo

183

“With her lover,” said the vision in a tragic voice, “on the very same sofa where I recited poetry to her.” The vision turned toward the door, evidently toward some listener, but then fixed straight on Nikolka. “Yes, the very same sofa. Now they’re sitting and embracing, after the promissory notes for seventy-five thousand I signed without a moment’s hesitation, like a gentleman. For a gentleman I was and shall always remain. Let them embrace!” Oh no, thought Nikolka. His eyes opened wide and a chill went up his spine. “Actually, I’m sorry,” said the vision, which was emerging gradually from the shaky, drowsy fog and turning into a real live body. “You probably don’t quite understand. So if you like, here’s the letter. It will explain everything to you. As a gentleman, I shall not hide my disgrace from anyone.” With these words the stranger handed Nikolka the blue letter. Quite mad, Nikolka took it and began reading the large, widely spaced, and agitated writing, moving his lips. Written without any date on the gentle blue page was the following: My dear, dear Lenochka, I know your good heart and send this directly to you because you are like family. Actually, I sent you a telegram. He will tell you everything, poor boy. Lariosik has suffered a terrible blow, and for a long time I was afraid he would not survive it. Milochka Rubtsova, whom he married a year ago, as you know, turned out to be a snake in the grass! Shelter him, I beg of you, and comfort him as you so well know how. I will transfer his allowance to you regularly. Zhitomir has become hateful to him, as I fully understand. Actually, I will not write more. I am too upset and the hospital train is about to leave. He’ll tell you everything himself. I kiss you and Seryozha as well.

This was followed by an indecipherable signature. “I brought my bird with me,” said the stranger, sighing. “A bird is

184

white guard

man’s best friend. True, many people consider a bird superfluous in a home, but I can say just one thing. At least a bird won’t do anyone ill.” Nikolka liked this last sentence a lot. Without trying to understand anything, he timidly scratched his forehead with the incomprehensible letter and dropped his feet from the bed, thinking, Would it be improper to ask his name? What an extraordinary thing to happen. “Is it a canary?” he asked. “But what a canary!” replied the stranger ecstatically. “Actually, it’s not just any canary, it’s a male canary. In Zhitomir I have fifteen like it. I took them to my mama’s, so she can feed them. The scoundrel would probably have broken their necks. He hates birds. May I set it on your desk for now?” “Please,” replied Nikolka. “You’re from Zhitomir?” “Well yes,” replied the stranger, “and imagine the coincidence. I arrived at the same time as your brother.” “What brother?” “What do you mean what brother? Your brother arrived at the same time as I did,” replied the stranger in surprise. “What brother?” exclaimed Nikolka plaintively. “What brother? From Zhitomir?” “Your older brother.” Elena’s voice was shouting out distinctly in the drawing room. “Nikolka! Nikolka! Illarion Larionich! Wake him up! Please, wake him!” Treek, hweet, hweet, treek! the bird bawled. Nikolka dropped the blue letter and shot like a bullet through the library into the dining room and there stopped, his arms spread wide. Alexei Turbin, wearing someone else’s black coat with a torn lining and someone else’s black trousers, was lying motionless on the sofa

part t wo

185

under the clock. His face was pale, bluishly pale, and his teeth were chattering. Elena was fussing over him, her robe had fallen open, and you could see her black stockings and the lace of her undergarments. She was grabbing at the buttons on Turbin’s chest, then at his hands, shouting, “Nikol! Nikol!” A few minutes later, his student cap pushed back on his head and his gray greatcoat unbuttoned, Nikolka was running, panting heavily, up Alexeyevsky Slope and muttering, “What if he’s not there? My God, the story with the tan cuffs! But we can’t call Kuritsky under any circumstance, that’s quite clear. . . . Kit and Cat.” The bird was pecking deafeningly in his head. Kit, cat, kit, cat!! An hour later there was a basin full of a watery red fluid on the dining room floor as well as wads of torn red gauze and white shards of china that the stranger with the tan cuffs had knocked off the sideboard while getting a glass. Everyone hurried back and forth over the shards, crunching. Turbin, pale but no longer blue, was lying on his back as before with his head on a pillow. He had regained consciousness and was trying to say something, but the doctor with the pointy beard, rolled-up sleeves, and gold pince-nez leaned over him and said as he wiped his bloody arms with gauze, “Keep quiet, colleague.” Anyuta, white as chalk, her eyes wide, and Elena, tousled, copperhaired, were lifting Turbin and removing his blood- and water-soaked shirt with the torn sleeve. “You can cut the rest. There’s nothing to save,” said the pointybearded man. They cut the shirt Turbin was wearing with scissors and removed it in pieces, baring his skinny, yellowish body and his left arm, which was bandaged to the shoulder. The ends of a splint poked out above and below the bandage. Nikolka was kneeling, cautiously undoing the buttons, and removing Turbin’s trousers. “Undress him completely and straight to bed,” said the wedge-

186

white guard

bearded basso. Anyuta poured water on his hands from a pitcher and flakes of soap dropped into the basin. The stranger was standing off to one side, taking no part in the crush and commotion, just looking bitterly at the broken dishes, or, blushing, at the disheveled Elena, whose robe had come completely open. The stranger’s eyes were wet with tears. Everyone helped carry Turbin out of the dining room and into his room, including the stranger. He put his arms under Turbin’s knees and carried his legs. In the sitting room, Elena held out money to the doctor, who pushed it aside. “My God, what are you doing?” he said. “From a doctor? There’s a much more important question here. Essentially, he should go to the hospital.” “I can’t,” Turbin’s weak voice reached them. “I can’t . . . hospital . . .” “Keep quiet, colleague,” responded the doctor. “We’ll manage without you. Yes, naturally, I understand. The devil knows what’s going on in the City now.” He nodded toward the window. “Hm . . . indeed, he’s right. He can’t. Well then, keep him home. I’ll be back this evening.” “Is it dangerous, doctor?” said Elena with concern. The doctor stared at the parquet as if the diagnosis were in the gleaming yellow, coughed, and twisting his beard, replied. “The bone is intact. Hm . . . the major vessels are unaffected, as is the nerve. But it will fester. Bits of wool from the coat got into the wound. A fever. . . .” After forcing out these incomprehensible thought snatches, the doctor raised his voice and said confidently, “Complete rest. Morphine, if he is suffering, I’ll give him the injection myself this evening. He can have liquids. Clear bouillon is fine. Don’t let him talk too much.” “Doctor, doctor, I beg of you. He asks you please not to tell anyone.”

part t wo

187

The doctor cast a sidelong glance, gloomy and profound, at Elena, and grumbled, “Yes, that I understand. How did this happen?” Elena could only heave a restrained sigh and shrug. “Fine,” muttered the doctor, and he lumbered toward the front door, sideways, like a bear.

This page intentionally left blank

Part

THREE

12

I

n Turbin’s small bedroom, the dark curtains had been lowered on the two windows that looked out on the glassed-in veranda. Dusk filled the room, where Elena’s head shone. The whitish spot on the pillow—Turbin’s face and neck—shone back at her. A cord snaked from the socket toward the chair, where a shaded pink lamp burned, and day turned into night. Turbin signaled to Elena to shut the door. “Warn Anyuta immediately not to talk.” “I know, I know. You mustn’t speak, Alyosha, it’s too much.” “I know that. I’ll be quiet. What if I lose my arm!” “Stop that, Alyosha. Lie still. Should we keep that lady’s coat for now?” “Yes. Don’t let Nikolka even consider taking it back. If anyone were to see . . . Hear me? For God’s sake, don’t let him go anywhere.”

190

white guard

“Let’s hope she is well,” said Elena sincerely and tenderly. “There, you see? And they say there are no good people in the world.” Faint color came to the wounded man’s temples, and his eyes drilled into the low white ceiling, then he shifted them to Elena, frowned, and asked, “But who is this tadpole here?” Elena leaned into the pink beam of light and shrugged. “You see, well, he showed up just before you did, a couple of minutes before at most—he’s Seryozha’s nephew from Zhitomir. You’ve heard the name: Surzhansky. Larion. You know, the famous Lariosik.” “And?” “And he came to us with a letter. There was some drama or other there. He’d just begun telling the story when she brought you here.” “Some kind of bird, God knows what.” With laughter and horror in her eyes, Elena leaned toward the bed. “The bird’s the least of it! He’s actually asking to stay with us. I really don’t know what to do.” “Stay?” “Well, yes. Only keep still and don’t stir, I implore you, Alyosha. His mother begs us and writes, after all this is the one and only Lariosik, her idol. Never in my life have I seen such a booby as this Lariosik. He started out by breaking all our china. The dark blue service. There are only two plates left. “So there you have it. I just don’t know what to do.” Their whispering could be heard for a long time in the pink shadow. At a remove the muffled voices of Nikolka and the unexpected guest were heard behind the doors and draperies. Elena was wringing her hands, imploring Alexei to speak less. They heard a crackling in the dining room; an overwrought Anyuta was sweeping up the blue service. At last it was decided in a whisper. In view of the fact that God knew what was going to happen in the City now and that they might very well come to requisition rooms, and in view of the fact that they

part three

191

had no money and Lariosik would be paid for, they would let Lariosik stay. But require him to observe the rules of Turbin life. As for the bird—they would give it a chance. If the bird proved intolerable in the house, they would demand he remove it but keep its owner. As for the service, in view of the fact that Elena, of course, would not say a word and that it was all too boorish and narrow-minded, they would consign the service to oblivion. They would put Lariosik in the library, set up a bed for him there with a sprung mattress and a little table. Elena went out into the dining room. Lariosik was standing in a mournful pose, his head hanging, looking at the spot where the stack of twelve plates had once rested on the sideboard. His muddy blue eyes expressed abject sorrow. Nikolka was standing facing Lariosik, his mouth open, listening to his speeches. Nikolka’s eyes were filled with intense curiosity. “There is no leather in Zhitomir,” Lariosik was saying perplexedly. “Understand? None at all. Not the kind of leather I’m used to wearing. I put out a call to all the shoemakers, offering them any money, but there just isn’t any. So I had to—” Seeing Elena, Lariosik turned pale, shifted from one foot to the other, and looking down for some reason at the emerald tassels of her robe, began as follows: “Elena Vasilievna, I will go to the shops this minute and put out a call and you’ll have a service today. I don’t know what else I can say. How can I make it up to you? I should certainly be killed over the service. I’m a miserable failure,” he addressed Nikolka. And to Elena he continued, “I’ll go to the shops right away.” “I beg of you, don’t go to any shops, especially since they’re all closed, naturally. And anyway, don’t you know what’s going on here in the City?” “How can I not know!” exclaimed Lariosik. “I came with the hospital train, as you know from the telegram.”

192

white guard

“What telegram?” asked Elena. “We never received any telegram.” “What?” Lariosik opened his wide mouth. “You didn’t? Aha!” And he turned to Nikolka. “Now I see why you looked at me with such surprise. But please, Mama sent you a sixty-three-word telegram.” “Sixty-three words!” Nikolka marveled. “What a pity. Telegrams travel so poorly now, after all. Or rather, they don’t travel at all.” “What’s going to happen now?” Lariosik grieved. “Will you let me stay?” He looked around helplessly, and from his eyes he could tell right away that he liked it at the Turbins’ very much and he didn’t want to go anywhere. “It’s all settled,” replied Elena and she nodded graciously. “We agree. Stay and get settled. You can see our misfortune here.” Lariosik grieved even more. His eyes clouded over with tears. “Elena Vasilievna,” he said with feeling. “Please ask anything of me. You know, I can go without sleep for several nights in a row.” “Thank you. Thank you very much.” “And now”—Lariosik turned to Nikolka—“might I trouble you for some scissors?” Nikolka, tousled from surprise and interest, flew off somewhere and returned with scissors. Lariosik attacked his tunic button, blinked, and again turned to Nikolka. “Actually, I’m sorry, may I use your room for a minute?” In Nikolka’s room, Lariosik removed his tunic, revealing an incredibly dirty shirt, armed himself with the scissors, ripped open the tunic’s tattered black lining, and out of it pulled a fat bundle of green and yellow money. He bore this bundle solemnly into the dining room and set it on the table in front of Elena, saying, “Here, Elena Vasilievna. Allow me to give you the money for my upkeep right now.” “Why such haste?” asked Elena, blushing. “This could all be done after—” Lariosik protested heatedly.

part three

193

“No, no, Elena Vasilievna. Please, you must take it right away. Have mercy. At such a difficult moment money is always keenly needed. I understand that quite well!” He unwrapped the bundle, and out of it fell a picture of some woman. Quick as lightning, Lariosik picked it up and hid it in his pocket with a sigh. “It will be better with you. What do I need? To buy cigarettes and birdseed for my canary.” For a moment Elena forgot Alexei’s wound and a pleasant gleam shone in her eyes, so solid and appropriate were Lariosik’s actions. I see he’s not the booby I took him for at first, she thought. He’s polite and thoughtful, just a little odd. It’s a terrible pity about the service. What a character, thought Nikolka. Lariosik’s miraculous appearance crowded out his sorrowful thoughts. “Here’s eight thousand,” said Lariosik, moving a stack that looked like an onion omelet across the table. If it’s not enough, we’ll tally it up and I’ll bring out more right away.” “No, no, later, that’s excellent,” replied Elena. “Here’s what you should do. I’ll ask Anyuta right now to warm the water for you so you can bathe. But tell me, how did you get here, how did you get through? I don’t understand.” Elena squeezed the money and hid it in the big pocket of her robe. Lariosik’s eyes filled with horror at the memory. “It was a nightmare!” he exclaimed, folding his hands like a Catholic in prayer. “For nine days . . . no, I’m wrong, ten was it? Just a minute. Sunday, well yes, Monday . . . it took me eleven days to get here from Zhitomir!” “Eleven days!” exclaimed Nikolka. “See?” for some reason he addressed Elena reproachfully. “Yes, eleven. When I left, the train was the Hetman’s, but along the way it turned into Petlyura’s. And then, as we were pulling into the station, you see, well, they, Lord, I forgot . . . anyway . . . they wanted to shoot me on the spot. Imagine! Petlyura’s men showed up with their tails.”

194

white guard

“Blue ones?” asked Nikolka curiously. “Red ones . . . yes, red ones. And they shouted, ‘Climb down! We’re going to shoot you on the spot!’ They’d decided I was an officer and hiding in the hospital train. But I had protection. Mama knows Dr. Kuritsky.” “Kuritsky?” exclaimed Nikolka significantly. “Oho! Cat and kit. We know him.” Kit, cat, kit, cat, the bird softly echoed behind the doors. “Yes, him. He was the one who got the train for us in Zhitomir. My God! I started praying to God then and there. I’m done for, I thought! And you know what? The bird saved me. I said I wasn’t an officer. I was a scientist, a bird breeder, and I showed them my bird. And you know, one of them slapped me on the back of my head and said, very rudely, ‘Move along, you stupid bird breeder.’ What insolence! I would have killed him, as a gentleman, but you understand—” “Ele . . . ,” came softly from Turbin’s bedroom. Elena turned quickly and without waiting to hear the rest, rushed to him. On December 15th, according to the calendar, the sun goes down at three-thirty in the afternoon. Twilight therefore had been running through the apartment since three. But at three o’clock in the afternoon, the hands on Elena’s face indicated the lowest, hardest hour in life—five-thirty. Both hands passed over the sad wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and reached downward toward her chin. In her eyes was the beginning of melancholy and the resolve to fight this disaster. On Nikolka’s face it was a prickly and awkward twelve-forty because Nikolka’s mind was filled with chaos and confusion elicited by the important and enigmatic words “Malo-Provalnaya”—the words uttered by the man who had died at the battle intersection yesterday, words which had to be cleared up in the next few days at the

part three

195

latest. Chaos and difficulties had come into the Turbins’ life, too, with the significant landing, out of a clear blue sky, of the mysterious and interesting Lariosik and with an outrageous and grand event: Petlyura had taken the City. That very same Petlyura and—understand this!— the very same City. And what was going to happen there now was beyond even the most developed human mind’s comprehension or imagination. It was perfectly clear that yesterday had been a horrible fiasco—all of our side had been slaughtered, caught unawares. Their blood would undoubtedly cry out to heaven. That was the first thing. The criminal generals and headquarters scoundrels deserved death. That was the second. But apart from the horror, burning interest was mounting as well. What in fact was going to happen? How would the seven hundred thousand people here, in the City, live under the authority of the enigmatic individual who bore that terrible and ugly name—Petlyura? What kind of a man was he? Why? Actually, all this was overshadowed by the most important, the bloodiest . . . oh my . . . the most horrendous thing, I’ll tell you. Indeed, nothing was known, it was true, but more than likely both Myshlaevsky and Carp could be assumed dead and gone. Nikolka was smashing ice with a hatchet on the slippery, greasy table. The chunks of ice either split off with a crack or slipped out from under the hatchet and jumped all over the kitchen. Nikolka’s fingers were growing numb. An ice bag with a silvery cap lay near to hand. “Malo . . . Provalnaya,” Nikolka moved his lips and in his mind flashed images of Nai-Turs, red-headed Nero, and Myshlaevsky. And the moment the last image, in its slashed greatcoat, penetrated Nikolka’s thoughts, the face of Anyuta bustling over the hot stove, in a sorrowful daze and disarray, said more and more clearly that it was four twenty-five—the hour of depression and sorrow. Were his different-colored eyes whole? Would his long stride and the jingle of his spurs ever be heard again?

196

white guard

“Bring the ice,” said Elena as she opened the door to the kitchen. “Right away,” Nikolka responded hurriedly, screwed the cap on, and rushed off. “Anyuta, dear,” began Elena, “mind you don’t say a word to anyone about Alexei Vasilievich being wounded. There’ll be trouble if they find out he fought against them, God forbid.” “I understand, Elena Vasilievna. Don’t worry!” Anyuta looked at Elena with wide, troubled eyes. “Holy Mother, what is going on in the city! Over there on Borichevy Tok, I was walking along, and two men were lying there without their boots. There was so much blood! People were standing around gawking. Someone said the two officers had been killed. They were just lying there, without their hats. My legs started to buckle so I ran away and nearly dropped my basket.” A shudder ran through Anyuta’s shoulders, as if she were cold, and then she remembered something, whereupon the skillets slipped from her hands and onto the floor. “Hush! Hush! For God’s sake!” implored Elena, rubbing her hands. At three in the afternoon the hands on Lariosik’s gray face said it was exactly twelve—the peak of energy and strength. Both hands met at noon, stuck together and poking up like sharp swords. After the disaster that had shaken Lariosik’s gentle soul in Zhitomir, after the terrible eleven-day journey on the hospital train and his strong impressions, Lariosik was extremely happy to be staying with the Turbins. Why exactly Lariosik could not have explained because he had not even clarified it precisely for himself. The beautiful Elena seemed extraordinarily worthy of respect and attention. He liked Nikolka as well. Wishing to emphasize this, Lariosik seized a moment when Nikolka had stopped darting in and out of Alexei’s room and began helping him set up and move the narrow cot in the library. “You have a very open face, very winning,” said Lariosik politely,

part three

197

and he got so lost in that open face he didn’t notice that he had folded up the complicated, rattling bed, pinching Nikolka’s hand in the fold. The pain was so intense that Nikolka howled—a muffled howl, but so powerful that Elena ran in, rustling. Nikolka was marshaling all his strength not to scream; large tears were falling helplessly from his eyes. Elena and Lariosik grabbed the folded automatic bed and tugged in opposite directions for a long time trying to free Nikolka’s hand, which was turning blue. Lariosik himself nearly cried when it came out, crushed and striped red. “My God!” he said, twisting his already sorrowful face. “What’s wrong with me? I’m such a jinx! Does it hurt a lot? Forgive me, for God’s sake.” Nikolka rushed into the kitchen silently, and there, at his instruction, Anyuta opened the tap and released a stream of cold water on his hand. After the clever patent bed had been unclicked and unfolded and it was clear that no real harm had been done to Nikolka’s hand, Lariosik was again overcome by a pleasant, quiet joy because of the books. In addition to his passion and love for birds, he also had a passion for books. Here, on the open, multi-tiered shelves, stood treasures in close ranks. Green and red, gold-stamped, in tan covers and black folders, books gazed down upon Lariosik from all four walls. The bed had been unfolded and made up long ago and alongside it was a chair with a towel hanging on its back, and on its seat, among all the masculine essentials—a soap box, cigarettes, matches, watch—the mysterious woman’s picture had been propped up, but Lariosik was still in the library, either journeying around the book-covered walls or squatting by the lower tiers, looking at the bindings with greedy eyes and not knowing what to choose first—The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club or an 1871 issue of The Russian Herald. His hands said it was midnight. But in their dwelling, instead of dusk, it was sadness that kept ad-

198

white guard

vancing. Therefore the clock did not strike twelve times; the hands stood upright in silence, like a gleaming sword wrapped in a flag of mourning. To blame for the mourning, to blame for the disparity in the lifeclocks of all the faces firmly attached to the dusty old Turbin coziness, was a slim column of mercury. At three o’clock, in Turbin’s bedroom, it read 39.6. Elena turned pale and was about to shake it down, but Turbin turned his head, cast his eyes on it, and insisted, albeit weakly, “Show me.” Silently, reluctantly, Elena handed him the thermometer. Turbin took a look and sighed heavily and deeply. At five o’clock he was lying with the cold gray bag on his head, and the crushed ice in the bag was melting and sloshing. His face was a little pinker, and his eyes were flashing and looked much improved. “Thirty-nine point six. Great,” he said, licking his dry, cracked lips from time to time. “So. . . . Anything might happen. But in any case my practice is closed. For a long time to come. I hope the arm can be saved because without my arm—” “Alyosha, be still, please,” begged Elena, pulling the blanket over his shoulders. So Turbin was still and shut his eyes. A dry, stinging fever reached from his wound all the way to his armpit and spread through his body. Sometimes it filled his entire chest and muddled his head, while his feet turned numb with cold. By evening, when the lamps had been lit everywhere and dinner for the three—Elena, Nikolka, and Lariosik—had passed long since in silence and worry, the column of mercury, swelling and growing, like magic, from the dense silver ball, had climbed and reached the 40.2 mark. Then the worry and sadness in the rosy bedroom suddenly began to melt and dissolve. Sadness had come like a gray lump and spread on his blanket, and now it had turned into yellow cords that drifted like seaweed in water. Forgotten was his practice and his fear of what was going to happen because this seaweed had filled everything. The raging pain at the top and in the left part of his chest dulled and fell still. The fever was replaced by

part three

199

cold. Sometimes the burning candle in his chest became a knife of ice, gnawing at his lung. Then Turbin would shake his head and throw off the ice bag and creep farther under the blanket. The pain in his wound was twisting out of its buffering case and starting to torment him to such a degree that the injured man couldn’t keep himself from uttering dry, weak words of complaint. When the little knife disappeared and ceded its place again to the burning candle, fever then filled his body, the sheets, his whole cramped cave under the blanket, and the injured man would say, “I’m thirsty.” First Nikolka’s, then Elena’s, then Lariosik’s face would appear in the haze, lean toward him, and listen. Everyone’s eyes had become terribly alike, scowling and angry. The hands on Nikolka’s face immediately drew together and like Elena’s said it was exactly five-thirty. Nikolka kept going out into the dining room every other minute—for some reason that night the light was dim and uneasy—and looking at the clock. Tick . . . tock—the clock ticked angrily and admonitorily, with a huskiness to it, and its hands said it was first nine, then nine-fifteen, then nine-thirty. “Oh my,” Nikolka would sigh and he would wander, like a sleepy fly, from the dining room, through the vestibule, past Turbin’s bedroom and into the sitting room, and from there into the study, where he would pull back the white curtains and look out the balcony door. For all anyone knows, the doctor might turn coward and not come, he thought. The street, crooked and steep, was more deserted than it had been all these days but nonetheless not as horrible. Hired sledges went by every so often, creaking a little. But rarely. Nikolka kept imagining he might have to go get him. And he thought about how to prevail upon Elena. “If he doesn’t come by nine-thirty, I’ll go myself with Larion Larionovich and you’ll stay here to watch over Alyosha,” said Elena. “Quiet, please. . . . You have to understand. . . . You have the face of a cadet. . . . And we’ll give Lariosik Alyosha’s plain coat. They won’t bother him if he’s with a lady.”

200

white guard

Lariosik was anxious to express his readiness to sacrifice himself and go alone and went to put on the civilian clothing. The knife was quite gone, but the fever was intensifying, made worse by the typhus, and several times in his fever the figure of someone that was not quite clear and completely extraneous to the Turbins’ life appeared. It was wearing gray. “Oh, you must know he turned a somersault. The gray man?” Turbin suddenly spoke distinctly and sternly, looking attentively at Elena. “I don’t like that. Basically, we’re all birds of course. You should put them in the storeroom, where it’s warm, and they would come to their senses there.” “What do you mean, Alyosha?” asked Elena in fright, leaning toward him and feeling the warmth from Turbin’s face on her own. “A bird? What bird?” In the plain black coat, Lariosik was hunched and broad-shouldered and he had his tan boot tops hidden under his trousers. He was frightened and his eyes were darting plaintively. On tiptoe, balancing, he ran out of the bedroom through the vestibule and into the dining room, and then turned into the library and into Nikolka’s room, where he rushed at the cage on the desk, waving his arms broadly, and threw the black cloth over it. Not that this was necessary, because the bird had long been asleep in its corner, folded into a clump of feathers, and was perfectly quiet, oblivious to any alarms. Lariosik firmly shut the door to the library and the door from the library to the dining room. “It’s nasty . . . oh, so nasty,” said Turbin uneasily, looking in the corner. “I shouldn’t have fired at him. Listen to me.” He started to free his good arm from under the blanket. “The best thing is to invite him here and have him explain what he was doing aiming like that, like a fool. I take all the blame, of course. All is lost, and so foolishly.” “Yes, yes,” Nikolka spoke gravely, and Elena hung her head. Turbin became agitated and tried to get up but he was struck down by the

part three

201

intense pain and began to moan. Then he said darkly, “Get rid of it, then!” “Should I take it into the kitchen? Actually, I’ve covered her and she’s not making any noise,” Lariosik whispered anxiously to Elena. Elena waved him off. “No, no, that’s not it.” Nikolka stepped purposefully into the dining room. His hair was tousled and he looked at the dial: the clock said it was nearly ten. An anxious Anyuta came through the door into the dining room. “Tell me, how is Alexei Vasilievich?” she asked. “He’s raving,” replied Nikolka with a deep sigh. “Oh my God, no,” whispered Anyuta. “Why hasn’t the doctor come?” Nikolka looked at her and went back to the bedroom. He pressed close to Elena’s ear and began trying to persuade her. “It’s up to you, but I can go fetch him. If he’s not there, we’ll have to call someone else. It’s ten o’clock. It’s perfectly calm outside.” “Let’s wait until ten-thirty,” whispered Elena in reply, her head swaying and her hands wrapped up in her scarf. “It would be odd to call someone else. I know he’ll come.” At ten-thirty, a heavy, clumsy, thick mortar took up residence in the narrow bedroom. What the hell! Staying here made absolutely no sense. The mortar filled everything from wall to wall, so that the left wheel pressed up against his bed. You couldn’t stay there, you had to crawl between the heavy spokes, and then bend over and squeeze through the second, right-hand wheel, and that was with your kit, and God knows how much you had hanging from your left arm. It was dragging your arm down, cutting under your arm like a tow rope. You couldn’t take the mortar out of the bedroom so the whole apartment became a mortar room, according to orders, and the muddle-headed Colonel Malyshev, and the now muddle-headed Elena, looking out from behind the wheels, couldn’t do anything to get rid of the gun or

202

white guard

at least move the patient himself to other, tolerable conditions of existence, where there weren’t any mortars. The apartment itself, because of that cold, heavy, damnable thing, had become a roadside inn. The doorbell rang so often . . . r-ring . . . and people were showing up to call. Colonel Malyshev flashed by, as clumsy as a Lapp, wearing his cap with earflaps and his gold epaulets and toting a sheaf of papers. Turbin shouted after him, and Malyshev disappeared down the cannon muzzle, only to be replaced by Nikolka, fussy, incoherent, and silly in his stubbornness. Nikolka was giving him something to drink, but not something cold, a twisting stream from a fountain, but disgusting warm water poured from a cooking pot. “Ugh. That’s awful. Stop it,” muttered Turbin. This frightened Nikolka, and he raised his eyebrows, but he was stubborn and clumsy. Several times Elena became the dark and superfluous Lariosik, Seryozha’s nephew, and when she went back to being copper-headed Elena, she ran her fingers along his forehead, which brought him very little relief. Elena’s hands, usually warm and deft, now felt like a rake; they scraped idiotically and did all those unwanted, irritating things that poison life for a peaceful man in a damned arsenal. Elena could scarcely be the reason for the pole on which Turbin’s shot torso had been planted. Not only that—what was the matter with her?—she was sitting on the end of that pole, which was starting to rotate under her weight, nauseatingly. Just try to live with a round pole stuck into your body! No, they were unbearable! And as loudly as he could, though it came out softly, Turbin called out, “Yulia!” Yulia did not emerge from her old-fashioned room with the gold epaulets in the 1840s portrait, however; she did not hear the sick man’s call. And the gray figures who had started pacing around the apartment and the bedroom, like the Turbins themselves, would have tormented the poor sick man altogether had a fat man in gold eyeglasses—a persistent and very capable man—not arrived. In honor

part three

203

of his appearance another light was added in the bedroom—the light from a flickering stearin candle in a heavy old black candlestick. The candle was either flickering on the table or moving around Turbin, and above it the disgraceful Lariosik passed across the wall, resembling a bat with its wings cut off. The candle tipped, causing the white stearin to gutter. The small bedroom was filled with the heavy smell of iodine, alcohol, and ether. On the table arose a chaos of shiny little boxes with lights in nickel-plated mirrors and heaps of absorbent cotton—theatrical Christmas snow. The fat, gold man with the warm hands gave Turbin a miraculous injection in his healthy arm, and a few minutes later the gray figures stopped misbehaving. The mortar was moved out on the veranda, and through the window, which was curtained, its black muzzle didn’t seem nearly so frightening. Breathing got easier because the enormous wheel had gone away and there was no need to crawl between its spokes. The candle went out, the angular, coalblack Larion—Lariosik Surzhansky from Zhitomir—vanished from the wall, and Nikolka’s face started making more sense and was not as annoyingly stubborn, maybe because its clock hands, thanks to hope in the art of the fat gold man, had moved apart and were not hanging so adamantly and desperately on his pointy chin. The time moved back from five-thirty to four-forty, and although the clock in the dining room disagreed with this, and persistently sent its hands ever forward, those hands were now moving without their crotchety hoarseness, and it struck in a pure solid baritone, as before—tock! And the tower clock, like the toy fortresses of Louis XIV’s magnificent Gauls, struck—bong! It’s midnight. Listen. Midnight. Listen. It struck admonitorily, and men’s halberds clinked a pleasant, silvery clink. Guards were patrolling and protecting, for unbeknownst to himself man had erected his towers, his alarms and weaponry, for but one purpose—to safeguard man’s tranquility and hearth. That was why he fought, and to be honest, there never was any other reason to fight. Only in the hearth of tranquility would Yulia, a self-centered and

204

white guard

depraved but seductive woman, agree to appear. And she did appear, her leg in a black stocking, the edge of her black fur-trimmed boot flashed by on the light brick stairs, and her hasty knock and rustle was answered by a gavotte that splashed like bells from where Louis XIV was luxuriating in his sky-blue garden on the lake’s shore, intoxicated by his own fame and the presence of enchanting, colorfully dressed women. At midnight, Nikolka undertook a very important and, of course, utterly timely task. First of all, he brought a dirty damp rag from the kitchen, and the Shipwright of Saardam lost the words from his chest: Long live Russia . . . Long live the autocracy! Down with Petlyura!

Then, with Lariosik’s fervent participation, even more important work was done. Alyosha’s Browning, two magazines, and a box of cartridges for it were deftly and silently removed from Turbin’s desk. Nikolka checked it and determined that of the seven cartridges, his older brother had fired six somewhere. “Well done,” whispered Nikolka. Of course, there could be no question of Lariosik being a traitor. An intelligent person in general, and a gentleman who had signed bills of exchange for seventy-five thousand and sent sixty-three-word telegrams in particular, could not possibly take Petlyura’s side. NaiTurs’s Colt and Alyosha’s Browning were wiped in proper fashion with machine oil and kerosene. Like Nikolka, Lariosik rolled up his sleeves and helped grease and put everything away in a tall tin that caramels had come in. The work was done hastily, for every decent man who had been in the revolution knew full well that all governments con-

part three

205

duct their searches between two-thirty and six-fifteen in the morning in the winter and between twelve midnight and four in the morning in the summer. The work was delayed, nonetheless, because Lariosik, while familiarizing himself with the mechanism of the ten-round Colt system, put the magazine in the handle the wrong way around, and extracting it took quite a lot of effort and a great deal of grease. Moreover, a second and unexpected obstacle arose: the box with the revolvers stored in it as well as Nikolka’s and Alexei’s epaulets, and Alexei’s chevron and photo of the Tsarevich Alexei, the box, which was lined with a layer of waxed paper and on the outside covered with sticky strips of electrical insulation, would not fit through the small hinged window pane. The problem, then, was how to hide it! Not everyone is an idiot like Vasilisa. Nikolka had thought about how to hide it that afternoon. The wall of no. 13 came close to the wall of neighboring no. 11, almost abutting it. There was no more than an arshin between them. That wall of no. 13 had only three windows—one from Nikolka’s corner room and two from the library next to him, which were utterly unnecessary (it was dark anyway)—and downstairs there was a small, nearly blind little window covered with a grating, in Vasilisa’s storeroom, while the wall in neighboring no. 11 was perfectly blank. Imagine a magnificent gap an arshin wide, dark and invisible even from the street, inaccessible from the courtyard to everyone except perhaps the occasional little boy. It was indeed when he was a little boy that Nikolka, while playing robbers, had crawled into it and stumbled onto a pile of bricks, and he remembered very well that a series of spikes on the wall of no. 13 stretched all the way to the roof. Previously, before no. 11 existed, these spikes had probably held a fire escape, which had subsequently been removed. The spikes, however, remained. Sticking his hand out the little pane this evening, Nikolka felt around and found a spike in under two seconds. That was clear and simple. But now the

206

white guard

box, triple-crossed and tied with marvelous cord, so-called cane cord, complete with a loop in it ready-made, would not fit through the window pane. “Clearly we’re going to have to open the entire window,” said Nikolka as he climbed down from the windowsill. Giving Nikolka’s intelligence and resourcefulness its due, Lariosik set about unsealing the window. This strenuous effort took at least half an hour; the swollen frames did not want to open. Eventually, however, they were able to open first one and then the other, moreover, on Lariosik’s side a long-winding crack appeared in the glass. “Put out the light!” commanded Nikolka. The light went out, and a horrific frost gushed into the room. Nikolka climbed halfway out into the black, icy-cold space and hooked the upper loop on a spike. The box hung marvelously on the two-arshin spike. There was no way anyone could see it from the street because no. 13’s firewall approached the street obliquely rather than at a right angle, and because the tailor shop’s sign hung so high. The only way you could see it was if you crawled into the gap. But no one would do that before spring because tremendous snowdrifts had swept in from the courtyard, and from the street there was a wonderful fence. Most of all, what was ideal was that you could monitor it without opening the window. Stick your arm out the hinged pane and that was it: you could strum the cord like a guitar. Excellent. The light went on again, and smearing the sealant Anyuta had left over from the autumn on the windowsill, Nikolka resealed the window. Even if by some miracle it was found, he was always ready to reply, “Excuse me? Whose box is that? Ah, revolvers . . . and the tsarevich? “Not at all. I have no idea, nor do I wish to. The devil knows who hung it there! They must have climbed down from the roof and hung it. Aren’t there plenty of people around? There you have it. We’re peaceful people. No tsareviches here.”

part three

207

“Ideally done, I swear to God,” said Lariosik. Of course ideally! The thing was close at hand while at the same time outside the apartment. It was three in the morning. Evidently no one was coming that night. Elena, heavy-lidded, tiptoed out to the dining room. Nikolka was supposed to spell her. Nikolka from three to six, and Lariosik from six to nine. They spoke in a whisper. “So that’s it: typhus,” whispered Elena. “Bear in mind that Vanda stopped by today and asked what was wrong with Alexei Vasilievich. I said it might be typhus. She probably didn’t believe me, and her eyes were darting around like crazy. She kept asking how we were doing and where was everyone and had anyone been wounded. Not a peep about the wound.” “Oh no”—Nikolka even gestured for emphasis—“Vasilisa is a coward the likes of which the world has never seen! If anything happened he would blab to anyone that Alexei had been wounded, just to inoculate himself.” “The scoundrel,” said Lariosik. “That’s vile!” Turbin lay in total darkness. His face after the injection was utterly calm, its features now sharp and refined. A soothing poison was coursing through his blood, protecting him. The gray figures had stopped giving orders as if it were their home and had dispersed on their own affairs and taken the gun away altogether. Anyone who appeared, even a complete outsider, would behave properly and try to connect with the people and things whose legitimate place had always been in the Turbins’ apartment. Once Colonel Malyshev appeared and sat in the armchair, but he smiled as if to say that everything was fine and for the best, and he didn’t mutter ominously and sinisterly or stuff the room with paper. True, he did burn documents, but he didn’t dare touch Turbin’s diploma or his photo of his mother, and he did the

208

white guard

burning in a pleasant, pure blue alcohol fire, which was a calming fire because it was usually followed by an injection. The bell to Madame Anjou’s rang often. R-ring, said Turbin, intending to convey the sound of the bell to the person sitting in the armchair, and sitting there in turn were Nikolka, then a stranger with the eyes of a Mongol (he didn’t dare kick up a fuss due to the injection), then the mournful Maxim, gray-haired and trembling. R-ring. The wounded man spoke in a kindly way and constructed a moving picture out of the flexible shadows, an agonizing and difficult picture but one that ultimately arrived at an unusual, joyful, and painful conclusion. The clock was racing, the hour hand in the dining room was spinning, and when on the white dial the short broad hand approached five, he began to doze off. Occasionally Turbin would stir, open his squinting eyes, and mutter incomprehensibly: “Up the stairs, up the stairs, I won’t make it up the stairs, I’m getting weak, I’ll fall. But her feet are quick . . . boots . . . through the snow. You’ll leave footprints . . . wolves. R-ring . . . r-ring.”

13

R

-ring. Turbin had last heard that ringing as he fled through the dark exit from the shop of the sweetly perfumed Madame Anjou, whose whereabouts were now unknown. A bell. Someone had just turned up at the shop. Maybe someone like Turbin himself—lost, left behind, one of their own, or perhaps one of the others—his pursuers. In any case, there was no going back to the shop. That would be pointless heroism. Slippery steps brought Turbin into a yard. There he heard shots rattling quite clearly and close by, somewhere on the street that led down like a broad slide toward Kreshchatik, if not right by the museum. At this it became clear that he had wasted time on sad thoughts

part three

209

in the twilit shop and that Malyshev had been quite right advising him to be quick. His heart was pounding with fear. Turbin took a look around and determined that the long and endlessly tall yellow box of a building that sheltered Madame Anjou’s jutted out into a huge yard, which stretched all the way to a low wall separating it from the adjoining property of the railway administration. Squinting, Turbin looked over his shoulder and set out across the deserted lot, straight for that wall, in which, to Turbin’s great surprise, there was a gate, which was not locked. Through it he ended up in that revolting administration yard. He disliked the look of the administration building’s stupid holes, and he had the distinct feeling that the building was entirely abandoned. Under an echoing archway that cut through the building, the doctor followed an asphalt path to the street. The old clock on the tower of the building across the way said exactly four o’clock. It was just beginning to grow dark. The street was quite empty. Turbin looked around gloomily, hounded by a premonition, and moved not up but down, toward where the Golden Gates loomed, sprinkled with snow in the slushy square. A single pedestrian in a black coat ran toward Turbin with a frightened look on his face and then disappeared. Empty streets in general make a frightening impression, and here in addition, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he had an agonizing, gnawing premonition. Scowling to help overcome his indecision— after all, he did have to get going since you can’t fly home through the air—Turbin turned up his overcoat collar and set off. Right then he realized that what was in part so agonizing was that the guns were suddenly silent. For the last two weeks they had been booming all around him continuously, and now silence filled the sky. On the other hand, in the City, especially there, below, on Kreshchatik, clusters of shots were fired intermittently. Turbin should have turned away from the Golden Gates immediately and gone down the side street, and there, hugging St. Sofia’s, made his way home very quietly,

210

white guard

by the side streets, to Alexeyevsky Slope. Had Turbin done this, his life would have taken a completely different turn, but this is not what Turbin did. There is a force that sometimes makes you look down from a precipice in the mountains. You’re drawn to the chill, to the precipice. In just this way he was drawn to the museum. He absolutely had to see what was going on there, if only from a distance. Instead of turning away, Turbin took ten extra steps and came out on Vladimirskaya Street. Right then he heard a cry of alarm inside and a little boy’s voice whispering very distinctly, “Run!” Turbin turned his head to the right and looked off in the distance, toward the museum. He could see a section of its white side, its frowning domes, and small black figures flashing far away. He couldn’t see anything more after all. Grayish men wearing soldier’s overcoats came bearing down on him, scattered the full width of the street, down Proreznaya, from Kreshchatik, which was covered in a distant, frosty haze. They were close, about thirty paces away. Instantly he realized that they had been running for a long time and the running had exhausted them. Turbin figured out—not with his eyes but with an inexplicable shift of the heart—that they were Petlyura men. Caught, Malyshev’s voice said distinctly in the pit of Turbin’s stomach. Then several seconds dropped out of Turbin’s life, and what happened during them he didn’t know. He only regained his senses around the corner, on Vladimirskaya Street, his head drawn into his shoulders, on feet that were carrying him rapidly from the fateful corner of Proreznaya where the La Marquise confectionary shop was. “All right, all right, a little more . . . a little more. . . .” His blood was pounding in his temples. If only there’d be a little silence behind him. To turn into the blade of a knife or to cling to a wall. All right. . . . But the silence ended— violated by the utterly inevitable. “Halt!” shouted a husky voice at Turbin’s cold spine.

part three

211

So—something snapped in the pit of his stomach. “Halt!” the voice repeated sternly. Turbin looked back and actually did stop for a moment because he had the brief, crazy notion of pretending he was a peaceful citizen. As if to say, I’m just minding my own business. Leave me be. His pursuer was about fifteen paces away and was hastily shouldering his rifle. Only then did the doctor turn around, and amazement grew in his pursuer’s eyes, which looked to the doctor like slanting Mongol eyes. The other man tore around the corner and jerked his rifle-bolt. The stupefaction on the first man’s face was replaced by an incomprehensible, ill-omened joy. “Hey!” he shouted. “Look, Petro, an officer!” The expression on his face at this was just as if he, the hunter, had suddenly seen a hare by the side of the road. What the hell? How do they know? the thought came crashing down in Turbin’s head like a hammer. The second one’s rifle turned into nothing but a tiny black hole, no bigger than a coin. Then Turbin felt himself become an arrow on Vladimirskaya Street and he thought his felt boots would be the death of him. There was a crack in the air, a sputtering, from above and behind—chk-chk. “Halt! Halt . . . Grab him!” A crack. “Grab that officer!” And all Vladimirskaya began thundering and hooting. Two more merry cracks ripped the air. All you have to do is chase someone while firing at him for him to turn into a wise wolf. A wise animal instinct takes over from his weak and, in the most difficult instances, superfluous mind. Looking back, wolf-fashion, as he ran flat out for the corner of Malo-Provalnaya Street, Turbin saw the little black hole behind him clothe itself in a perfect ring of pale fire, and picking up the pace, he turned onto MaloProvalnaya, for the second time in these five minutes taking a drastic turn in his life.

212

white guard

Instinct told him they would chase him down hard, spare no effort, and catch him, and when they did—it was quite inevitable—kill him. Kill him because he had run, because he had a revolver and not a single document in his pocket, and because he was wearing a gray overcoat. They would kill him because at a run they would miss once, they would miss twice, but the third time they would hit him. The third time for sure. Antiquity knew all about the third time. That meant he was done for. Another thirty seconds and his felt boots would be the death of him. It was quite inalterable, and since it was, his fear jumped straight through his entire body and feet right into the ground. But through his feet, his fury returned, like ice water, and came out of his mouth like boiling water as he ran. Now Turbin glanced around as he ran, just like a wolf. The two gray men, and the third behind him, dashed around the corner of Vladimirskaya and all three flashed in succession. Slowing, Turbin bared his teeth and fired at them three times without aiming. He picked up the pace again and saw dimly ahead a fragile black shadow flash right by the walls near a drainpipe, and he felt someone drag him by the left armpit like wooden pincers, which made his body start to run oddly, slantwise, sideways, lopsided. Turning around once again, he took his time and unleashed three bullets and forced himself to stop at the sixth shot. The seventh is for me. Copper-haired Elena and Nikolka. It’s over. They’re going to torture me. They’ll cut off my epaulets. The seventh is for me. Rushing sideways he felt something strange. He felt the revolver’s weight in his right hand, but his left felt heavy. He really did have to stop. He was out of air anyway and nothing more was going to come of this. Turbin raced all the way to the turn in that most fantastic street in the world, disappeared around the turn, and had a brief respite. Beyond that it was hopeless. The gate was locked tight, the gates of the edifice over there were locked, that over there was locked. He remem-

part three

213

bered a funny idiotic saying: “Don’t lose hope, friend, till you hit rock bottom.” That was when he saw her. A miracle, in the dark, mossy wall surrounding the snowy pattern of trees in the garden. She was half leaning over that wall and, like in a melodrama, reaching out, her eyes shining, wide with terror, and crying out: “Officer! Over here! Over here!” In his slightly slippery felt boots, breathing the hot air raggedly through his open mouth Turbin ran slowly toward the rescuing arms and following them slipped through a narrow gap in the gate in the black wooden wall. Immediately, everything changed. In the hands of the woman in black the gate caught in the wall and the latch slammed shut. The woman’s eyes were right next to Turbin’s. In them he vaguely read determination, action, and blackness. “Run this way. Follow me,” whispered the woman, and she turned and ran down a narrow brick path. Turbin ran after her very slowly. Shed walls flashed by on his left, and the woman turned. On his right there was a white, multi-tiered, fairytale garden. A low fence right under his nose, and the woman went through a second little gate; Turbin, panting, followed. She slammed the gate shut and before him flashed a leg, very slender, in a black stocking, her hem flapped, and the woman’s legs bore her lightly up the brick stairs. His sense of hearing attenuated, Turbin heard the street and his pursuers left somewhere behind, running. Any second and they would leap around the turn and find him. She would have saved me, she would have, thought Turbin, but I don’t think I’ll make it . . . my heart. Suddenly he fell on his left knee and left arm at the very end of the stairs. Everything was spinning a little around him. The woman leaned over and grabbed Turbin under his right arm. “Come on. Just a little farther!” she exclaimed, and with her trembling left hand she opened a third low gate, dragged the stumbling

214

white guard

Turbin along by the arm, and ran down the alley. What a labyrinth . . . you’d think it was on purpose, thought Turbin very vaguely, and he found himself in a white garden, but this was somewhere high up and far from fateful Provalnaya. He felt the woman pulling him, and his left side and arm were very warm, but his whole body was cold and his icy heart was barely stirring. She would have saved me, but this really is the end—the very end. . . . My legs are giving out. He saw blurry clumps of virgin, untouched lilac, under the snow, a door, glass lanterns on old shelters blanketed with snow. He also heard the jingle of a key. The woman was there the whole time, by his right side, straining, pulling Turbin along behind her to the lantern. Then through a second key jingle into a gloom filled with an old, lived-in smell. In the gloom, overhead, a light burned very dimly, and the floor skidded underfoot to the left. Sudden poison green blotches with a fire rim flew past his eyes to the right, and in the total darkness his heart was immediately eased. There were several worn gold knobs in the dim and disturbing light. A vibrant chill flowed over his chest, thanks to there being more air, and in his left arm there was a pernicious, moist, and lifeless warmth. That’s what it all boils down to. I’m wounded. Turbin realized he was lying on the floor, his head pressing painfully against something hard and uncomfortable. The gold knobs in front of his face meant a trunk. The chill was such, you couldn’t catch your breath—it poured and gushed like water. “For God’s sake,” a weak, chesty voice said overhead. “Swallow, swallow. Are you breathing? What should I do now?” The glass struck his teeth, and with a gurgle Turbin swallowed the very cold water. Now he saw the fair curls and the very black eyes up close. Sitting on her heels, the woman put the glass on the floor, and with her hands gently around the back of his head, began lifting Turbin.

part three

215

Is my heart beating? he thought. I guess I’m reviving. Maybe there’s not so much blood. I have to fight this. His heart was beating, but it was tremulous and quick, and tied up in knots with an endless thread, and Turbin said weakly, “No. Tear everything away with anything you like, but tie it off with a tourniquet this minute.” Trying hard to understand, she opened her eyes wide, understood, jumped up, and ran to the cupboard and tossed out a pile of fabric. Biting his lip, Turbin thought, Oh, there’s no spot on the floor, so there must not be too much blood, fortunately. Twisting around, with her help, he got out of his overcoat and sat up, trying to ignore his dizziness. She started removing his tunic. “Scissors,” said Turbin. He was having trouble speaking. He was out of breath. She disappeared with a sweep of her black silk hem and in the doorway tore off her hat and coat. Returning, she squatted and, using the scissors, which gnawed dully and agonizingly at his sleeve, which was already soaked and heavy with blood, ripped it up and freed Turbin. She made short work of his shirt. His entire left sleeve was soaked through, and his side was deep red as well. Now it was dripping on the floor. “Be bolder about it.” The shirt came off in strips, and Turbin, white-faced, naked and yellow to the waist, smeared with blood, and wanting to live, would not let himself fall a second time and so clenched his teeth and with his right hand shook his left shoulder, saying through his teeth, “Thank God, the bone is intact. Tear off a strip of cloth or get a bandage.” “I have a bandage!” she cried joyfully and weakly. She disappeared and returned, tearing open the package and saying, “There’s no one else here, no one. I’m all alone.” She sat back down. Turbin saw the wound. It was a small hole in his upper arm, close to the inside, where the arm rests against the body. A thin stream of blood was oozing from it.

216

white guard

“Is there one in the back?” he asked very brokenly, laconically, instinctively husbanding his vital spirit. “Yes,” she replied with a fright. “Tie it higher . . . there . . . you’re saving me.” He was stabbed with a pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and rings of greenery, overlapping, weaving together, danced in the front hall. Turbin bit his lower lip. She pulled, he helped with his teeth and right arm, and in this way a burning knot above the wound entwined his arm. The blood stopped immediately. This is how the woman moved him. He got to his knees and threw his right arm over her shoulder. Then she helped him stand on his weak, trembling legs and led him, supporting his full weight. Around him he saw the dark shadows of full dusk in a very low-ceilinged, oldfashioned room. When she sat him down on something soft and dusty, the lamp at her side flared up under a cherry red cloth. He examined the patterns in the velvet and the hem of the framed double-breasted frockcoat and yellow gold epaulet on the wall. Holding her hands out to Turbin and breathing heavily from the agitation and effort, she said, “I have brandy. Do you need some? Brandy?” He answered, “Immediately.” And he collapsed on his right elbow. The brandy seemed to help at least. Turbin did not think he was going to die, and he would endure the pain gnawing and slicing at his shoulder. Kneeling, the woman bandaged his injured arm and then dropped lower to his feet and pulled off his felt boots. Then she brought a pillow and a long Japanese robe decorated with strange wonderful bouquets; it gave off the sweet scent of days gone by. “Lie down,” she said. He lay down obediently, she threw the robe over him and a blanket over that and stood by the narrow couch, staring into his face.

part three

217

He said, “You . . . you’re a remarkable woman.” Then a pause. “I’ll lie here a little while until my strength returns. Then I’ll get up and go home. Please bear with me a little longer.” Fear and despair crept into his heart. “What about Elena? My God, my God. And Nikolka. What did Nikolka die for? He must be dead.” She pointed silently to the small low window hung with a tasseled curtain. That was when he distinctly heard, far away and clearly, the pops of gunfire. “They’ll kill you now, you can be sure of that,” she said. “Then . . . I’m afraid for you . . . putting you on the spot. What if they come . . . the revolver . . . the blood . . . there in my greatcoat.” He licked his dry lips. His head was spinning lightly from the loss of blood and the brandy. The woman’s face looked frightened. She became thoughtful. “No,” she said decisively. “No, if they were going to find you they’d already be here. This is such a labyrinth, no one could follow your tracks. We ran across three gardens. But we do have to clean you up this minute.” He heard the splash of water, the rustling of fabric, and a knocking in the cupboard. She returned holding the Browning by the handle with two fingers, as if it were hot, and asked, “Is it loaded?” Freeing his good arm from under the blanket, Turbin felt the safety and replied, “Carry it confidently, but by the handle.” She came back again and said, embarrassed, “Just in case they do show up after all . . . You have to take off your breeches. You’ll be lying here, and I’ll say you’re my sick husband.” Frowning and grimacing, he began undoing his buttons. She approached decisively, knelt, and reached under the blanket to pull out the breeches by their foot straps and took them away. She was gone for a long time, during which he saw the arch. As a matter of fact, it was two rooms. The ceilings were so low that if a grown man stood on

218

white guard

tiptoe he could touch them. There, well past the arch, it was dark, but the side of an old piano was shiny from varnish, and something else was shiny as well—the flowers of a rubber plant, apparently. And here was that edge of an epaulet in the frame. My God, just like olden times! The epaulets riveted him. A peaceful light shone from the tallow candle in the candlestick. There had been a world, and now that world had been killed off. There was no bringing back those years. Farther back were windows, low and small, and a window on the side. What was this strange little house? She was alone. Who was she? She’d saved him. No peace. They were shooting there. . . . She came in loaded down with firewood, which she let crash in the corner by the stove. “What are you doing? Why?” he asked angrily. “I had to stoke it in any case,” she replied, and he glimpsed a smile in her eyes. “I do the stoking myself.” “Come here,” Turbin asked her softly. “The thing is, I never thanked you for all you’ve . . . done . . . and how”—he reached out and took her fingers, and she meekly moved closer and he kissed her thin wrist twice. Her face softened, as if the shadow of alarm had slipped away, and at that moment her eyes were extraordinarily beautiful. “If it hadn’t been for you,” continued Turbin, “they probably would have killed me.” “Of course,” she replied, “of course. As it is, you killed one of them.” Turbin raised his head a little. “I did?” he asked, feeling weak and dizzy again. “Oh yes.” She nodded graciously and looked at Turbin with fear and curiosity. “I was so frightened. They nearly shot me as well.” She shuddered. “How did I kill him?”

part three

219

“Well, they jumped out and you started firing and the first one came crashing down. Well, you may have just wounded him. But you’re brave. I thought I would faint. You ran a ways, fired at them, and ran some more. You must be a captain, is that right?” “What made did you decide I was an officer? What made you shout ‘Officer!’ at me?” Her eyes flashed. “I thought you must be since you had your insignia on your fur hat. Why else take such a risk?” “Insignia? Oh my God . . . I . . . I . . .” He remembered the ringing and the dusty mirror. “I took everything off . . . and forgot the insignia! I’m not an officer,” he said, “I’m an army doctor. My name is Alexei Vasilievich Turbin. May I ask who you are?” “I’m Yulia Alexandrovna Reiss.” “Why are you alone?” She replied tensely and averted her eyes. “My husband isn’t here now. He left. His mother, too. I’m on my own.” She paused and then added, “It’s cold here. Brrr. I’ll put some wood on right away.” The firewood burned in the stove, and at the same time so did his brutal headache. The wound was silent; everything had concentrated in his head. It started at the left temple, then spread across the top and back of his head. A vein clenched over his left eyebrow and sent rings of taut, desperate pain in all directions. Reiss knelt by the stove and fiddled at the fire with the poker. In agony, first opening, then closing his eyes, Turbin saw her head thrown back, shielded from the heat by her white wrist, and her utterly indeterminate hair, either ash blond run through with fire, or else golden, though her eyes and eyebrows were coal-black. He couldn’t decide whether this irregular profile and hooked nose were beautiful. You couldn’t tell what was in her eyes. Fear, worry, and maybe even some flaw, he thought. . . . Yes, a flaw.

220

white guard

When she sat like that and the wave of heat passed over her, she was marvelous and appealing. His savior. For many hours that night, long after the stove had cooled and the heat had begun in his arm and head, someone kept screwing a heated hot nail into the top of his head trying to destroy his brain. “I have a fever,” Turbin repeated dryly and soundlessly, and he tried to persuade himself: “I have to get up in the morning and make my way home.” The nail was destroying his brain and eventually destroyed any thought of Elena, Nikolka, home, or Petlyura. Now—he didn’t care. Peturra . . . Peturra. . . . All that was left was for the pain to stop. Deep into the night, Reiss came in wearing soft, fur-trimmed slippers and sat down beside him, and once again, winding his arm around her neck and going limp, he walked through the small rooms. Before this she had gathered her courage and said to him, “You must get up if you can. Pay no attention to me. I’ll help you. Then you can lie down for the night. That is, if you can.” He replied, “No, I’ll go. Only you must help me.” She led him to a small door in this mysterious little house and led him back the same way. As he lay down, his teeth chattering with cold and feeling his head tighten and relax, he said, “I swear, I’ll never forget you for this. Go to bed.” “Be still. I’m going to stroke your head,” she replied. Then all the dull and evil pain streamed out of his head and poured off his temples into her soft hands, then down them and down her body—and onto the floor, which was covered with a soft dusty rug, where it died. The pain was replaced by a steady, cloying fever that flowed through his entire body. His arm went numb and became as heavy as pig iron, so he didn’t move it but just closed his eyes and let the fever have its way. How long he lay there he couldn’t have said. Perhaps five minutes, perhaps many hours. In any case, it seemed to him he could lie like that for all eternity, in the fire. When he opened

part three

221

his eyes, quietly, so as not to startle the woman sitting beside him, he saw the same scene: the lamp burning steadily, weakly, under its red shade, shedding a peaceful light, and the woman’s profile sleepless beside him. Her lips jutted petulantly, and she was looking out the window. Floating in his fever, Turbin stirred and reached for her. “Come closer,” he said. His voice was dry, weak, and high. She turned toward him and her eyes looked guarded and deepened in the shadows. Turbin threw his right arm around her neck, pulled her toward him, and kissed her on the lips. It felt like he had touched something sweet and cool. The woman was not surprised at Turbin’s action. She only gazed more searchingly into his face. Then she spoke. “Oh my, what a fever you have. What ever shall we do? I should call a doctor, but how can I?” “No need,” replied Turbin quietly. “I don’t need a doctor. Tomorrow I’ll get up and go home.” “I’m so frightened that something bad will happen to you,” she whispered. “How will I help you then? Has the bleeding stopped?” She touched his bandaged arm so lightly he couldn’t feel it. “No, don’t be frightened, nothing bad will happen to me. Go to bed.” “No,” she replied and she stroked his arm. “It’s a fever,” she repeated. He couldn’t help himself. He put his arm around her again and drew her toward him. She did not resist. He drew her until she was no longer leaning but lying against him. At this he felt the vital and clear warmth of her body through his painful fever. “Lie there and don’t move,” she whispered, “and I’ll stroke your head.” She stretched out alongside him, and he felt the touch of her knees. She began running her hand from his temple to his hair. It felt so good that all he could think of was how to keep from falling asleep.

222

white guard

But fall asleep he did. He slept for a long time, steadily and sweetly. When he woke up, he found he was floating in a boat on a hot river, that all his pain had disappeared, and outside the night was slowly growing brighter. Not just in the little house but all over the world and throughout the City there was total silence. A thin blue light poured glassily through the gaps in the curtains. The woman, warmed and sad, was sleeping next to Turbin. He went back to sleep. In the morning, at about nine o’clock, a passing cabbie picked up two fares near an empty Malo-Provalnaya—a man in a black coat, very pale, and a woman. The woman, carefully supporting the man, who was clutching her sleeve, took him to Alexeyevsky Slope. There was no traffic on it—except for a cabbie at the entrance to no. 13 who had just let off an odd visitor with a suitcase, bundle, and cage.

14

T

hey had turned up. No one had been shot, and they had turned up the very next evening. “It’s him,” echoed in Anyuta’s breast, and her heart leapt like Lariosik’s bird. They knocked cautiously from the courtyard at the snowcovered window of the Turbin kitchen. Anyuta peered out the window and examined his face. It was him, but without his mustache. Him. Anyuta smoothed her black hair with both hands, opened the door to the inner porch and then from there to the snowy courtyard, and Myshlaevsky was incredibly close. A student’s coat with an astrakhan collar and a service cap. The mustache was gone. But she recognized the eyes perfectly, even in the half-dark of the porch. He was shorter, too. With a trembling hand, Anyuta threw back the latch and the yard disappeared, as did the bands of light from the kitchen, because Myshlaevsky’s coat enveloped Anyuta, and a very familiar voice whispered,

part three

223

“Hello, sweet Anyuta. You’ll catch your death of cold. Is anyone in the kitchen, Anyuta?” “No,” not remembering what he said, and also whispering her reply for some reason. A kiss, and his lips were sweet, she thought in the sweetest of rhapsodies, and she whispered, “Viktor Viktorovich, let me go. Elena—” “What does Elena have to do with this?” the voice, which smelled of cologne and tobacco, whispered reproachfully. “What’s the matter, sweet Anyuta?” “Viktor Viktorovich, let me go. I’ll scream, as God is my witness,” said Anyuta passionately and she put her arms around Myshlaevsky’s neck. “Something bad has happened. Alexei Vasilievich was wounded.” The boa released her instantly. “What do you mean wounded? What about Nikol?” “Nikol is alive and well, but Alexei Vasilievich was wounded.” A strip of light from the kitchen, the door. In the dining room, Elena, when she saw Myshlaevsky, burst into tears and said, “Vitka, you’re alive. Thank God. We’ve got—” She sobbed and pointed at Turbin’s door. “A fever of forty . . . a nasty wound.” “Mother of God,” replied Myshlaevsky, pushing his cap all the way back on his head, “how did this ever happen to him?” He turned to the figure by the table bent over a bottle and some shiny boxes. “Are you a doctor, if I may ask?” “No, unfortunately,” replied the doleful, dreary voice, “I’m not. Allow me to introduce myself. Larion Surzhansky.” The sitting room. The door to the front hall was locked and the drapery drawn so the noise and voices wouldn’t reach Turbin. The

224

white guard

pointy beard in the gold pince-nez, another young man, clean-shaven, and finally an old and intelligent gray-haired man in a heavy fur coat and a tall fur hat, a professor, Turbin’s own teacher, had emerged from Turbin’s bedroom and just left. Elena had seen them out, and her face was stony. They had said, “Typhus, it’s typhus,” inviting disaster. “Not just a wound, but typhus.” And the mercury at forty and . . . “Yulia.” A flushed fever in the bedroom. Silence, and in the silence his mumbling about some stairs and a bell. R-ring. “How do you do, kind master,” said Myshlaevsky in a venomous whisper, assuming a broad stance. Shervinsky, beet-red, looked away. His black suit fit him irreproachably; he was wearing marvelous linen and a bow tie; on his feet were polished boots. “Artist, Kramskoi Opera Studio.” His identification was in his pocket. “Why don’t you have your epaulets?” continued Myshlaevsky. “Russian flags are flying on Vladimirskaya. Two battalions of Senegalese in the port of Odessa and Serbian billeting officers. ‘Go to Ukraine, officers, and form your units.’ Why you son of a—” “Why are you doing this?” replied Shervinsky. “Is it my fault? What do I have to do with this? They nearly killed me. I was the last to leave headquarters, exactly at noon, when enemy lines appeared from the direction of Pechorsk.” “You’re a hero,” Myshlaevsky commented, “but I hope that His Honor, the commander-in-chief, managed to leave before that. Just like His Excellency, the Hetman . . . the mother-. . . . I flatter myself with the hope that he is somewhere safe. The homeland needs their lives. By the way, could you tell me precisely where they are?” “Why do you need to know?” “This is why.” Myshlaevsky made a fist with his right hand and smashed it into the palm of his left. “If I ever get my hands on His

part three

225

Honor and His Excellency, I’ll take one by the left leg and the other by the right, twist them, and slam their heads on the pavement until I get tired of it. Your headquarters gang should be drowned in a latrine.” Shervinsky turned red. “Still, you should be a little more circumspect, if you would,” he began. “A little easier on me. Bear in mind that the prince abandoned headquarters. Two of his aides went with him and the rest were abandoned to their fate.” “You know, a thousand of our men are sitting in the museum right now. They’re hungry and they have machine-guns. Petlyura’s men are going to crush them like bedbugs. Did you know they killed Colonel Nai? He alone—” “Leave me alone, if you don’t mind!” shouted Shervinsky, seriously angry. “What is this tone of yours? I’m as much an officer as you!” “All right, gentlemen, quit it.” Carp stepped in between Myshlaevsky and Shervinsky. “This is a perfectly idiotic conversation. Really, why are you taking this out on him? Let’s quit it. It doesn’t lead anywhere.” “Quiet, quiet,” whispered Nikolka sorrowfully. “He’ll hear.” This disconcerted Myshlaevsky, who backed down. “Don’t worry, I’m a baritone. I was just . . . You have to understand.” “It is rather odd.” “Please, gentlemen, a little quieter.” Nikolka pricked up his ears and tapped the floor with his foot. Everyone listened. Downstairs, voices were coming from Vasilisa’s apartment. They could vaguely hear Vasilisa laughing gaily and rather hysterically, it seemed. As if in response, Vanda shouted something merrily and ringingly. Then it got quiet. After a little while the muffled voices started droning. “Well, this is rather astonishing,” said Nikolka thoughtfully. “Vasi-

226

white guard

lisa has visitors. Visitors. And at a time like this. It really is the end of the world.” “Yes, your Vasilisa’s a character,” concurred Myshlaevsky. It was around midnight when Turbin fell asleep, after a shot of morphine, and Elena settled down in the armchair by his bed. A council of war was being held in the sitting room. It was decided that everyone would stay for the night. First of all, walking around at night made no sense, even with good papers. Secondly, it was better for Elena because they could be there to help. And most of all, at a dicey time like this it was definitely better to be a guest somewhere rather than at home. In addition—and this was the main thing—there was nothing they could do. Here at least they could have a game of vint. “Do you play?” Myshlaevsky asked Lariosik. Lariosik blushed, got flustered, and blurted out that he did but very very badly. If they promised not to swear at him, the way the tax assessors had in Zhitomir. . . . He’d been put through hell, but here, with Elena Vasilievna, he was coming back to life because she was an absolutely extraordinary person, Elena Vasilievna, and it was warm and cozy in the apartment, and the cream curtains on all the windows were especially wonderful, and thanks to them you felt cut off from the outside world. And oh, that outside world, you had to agree, was dirty, bloody, and senseless. “May I inquire whether you write verse?” asked Myshlaevsky, examining Lariosik closely. “Yes,” said Lariosik modestly, blushing. “I see. . . . Forgive me, I interrupted you. So, senseless, you say. Go on, please.” “Yes, senseless, and our wounded souls seek peace behind cream curtains just like these.” “Well, you know, as for peace, I don’t know how it is there in Zhito-

part three

227

mir, but here in the City I don’t think you’re going to find any. Be sure to wet your whistle well, or you’ll be plenty dusty. Are there candles? Excellent. In that case we’ll put you down for the dummy hand. A fivesome makes for a quiet game.” “And Nikolka’s game is deathly quiet,” interjected Carp. “Oh go on, Fedya. Who lost the farm last time? You were the one who revoked. Why slander him?” “The blue Petlyura card.” “One really should live behind cream curtains. For some reason everyone laughs at poets.” “God forbid. You mustn’t take my question the wrong way. I have nothing against poets. True, I don’t read poetry—” “Or any other kind of book, with the exception of the artillery manual and the first fifteen pages of Roman law. War began on page sixteen, so he quit.” “He’s lying. Don’t listen to him. Your name and patronymic— Larion Ivanovich?” Lariosik explained that he was Larion Larionovich but that he liked this entire company so well—it was more a friendly family than a company really—that he would like it very much if they would call him by his first name, Larion, without any patronymic. Assuming no one had anything against it, of course. “Seems a likeable fellow,” the restrained Carp whispered to Shervinsky. “All right then, let’s move on. Why on earth . . . He’s lying, if you’d like to know. I’ve read War and Peace. There’s a real book for you. I read it all the way to the end, and with pleasure. And why? Because it was written by an artillery officer and not some dunderhead. Do you have a ten? You’re with me. Carp and Shervinsky. Nikolka, sit out.” “For God’s sake, just don’t swear at me,” pleaded Lariosik rather nervously. “It’s going to be fine. Really. What are we, savages? I can see that

228

white guard

you have some desperate tax assessors there in Zhitomir if they put such a scare in you. We play a sober game here.” “Please, rest assured,” responded Shervinsky as he took his seat. “Two spades. Yes, there was a writer, Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, a lieutenant in the artillery. Too bad he gave up the service. Pass. He would have made it to general. Actually, he did have an estate. The boredom just might drive you to writing a novel. Not a damn thing to do in winter. On an estate it’s easy. No trump.” “Three diamonds,” said Lariosik shyly. “Pass,” responded Carp. “What do you mean? You play beautifully. They should be praising you, not swearing at you. Well, if it’s three diamonds, then let’s say— four spades. I’d be happy to go to an estate now.” “Four diamonds,” Nikolka hinted to Lariosik, peeking at his cards. “Four? Pass.” “Pass.” In the candles’ flickering stearin light and the cigarette smoke, the nervous Lariosik took one. Myshlaevsky fired cards at each partner as if they were rifle cartridges. “A low spade,” he announced, and he encouraged Lariosik. “Good job.” The cards flew from Myshlaevsky’s hands without a sound, like maple leaves. Shervinsky threw his down neatly. Carp—out of luck— scathingly. Lariosik, sighing, carefully laid them out as if they were identity papers. “King-queen, we’ve seen that before,” said Carp. Myshlaevsky suddenly flushed crimson, threw his cards on the table, and opening his eyes wide at Lariosik, furious, bellowed, “Why the devil did you trump my queen? Larion?” “That’s a good one. Ha ha!” Carp gloated. “One down!” There was a terrible uproar at the green table, and the candle flames

part three

229

started swaying. Nikolka, sputtering and waving his arms, rushed to close the door and pull the drapes. “I thought Fyodor Nikolaevich had a king,” said Lariosik, mortified. “How could you think that?” Myshlaevsky tried not to shout, which meant a hoarse sound flew from his throat, making him even more terrifying, “If you took it with your own hands and sent it to me? Eh? That’s the damnedest”—Myshlaevsky turned to them all—“that’s the . . . He’s looking for peace, right? And trumping your partner— you call that peace? It’s a counting game! You have to use your brains. This isn’t poetry!” “Hold on. Maybe, Carp—” “Maybe what? Maybe balderdash. I’m sorry, maybe they play like that in Zhitomir, but I don’t know what the hell it is! Don’t be angry, but Pushkin or Lomonosov may have written poetry, but they would never have pulled a stunt like this . . . or Nadson, for instance.” “Keep it down. Why attack him? It could happen to anyone.” “I knew it,” muttered Lariosik. “I have no luck.” “Stop. St—” And all at once there was total silence. Far away, in the kitchen, behind many doors, the bell rang. They waited. They heard the sound of heels, the doors opened, and Anyuta appeared. Elena’s head flashed by in the front hall. Myshlaevsky drummed on the cloth and said, “Isn’t this a little early? Eh?” “Yes, it is,” responded Nikolka, who considered himself a specialist in the matter of searches. “Shall I go open it?” asked Anyuta nervously. “No, Anna Timofeyevna,” replied Myshlaevsky, “wait a little.” Groaning, he rose from his chair. “I think I’d better open up. Don’t put yourself out.” “We’ll go together,” said Carp. “Well,” began Myshlaevsky, and suddenly he looked exactly as if

230

white guard

he were standing in front of a platoon. “Right. I think all is in order there. The doctor and typhus and so on. You, Lena, are his sister. Carp, you’ll pass for a doctor—a medical student. Quick, to the bedroom. Pick up a syringe there. We’ve got lots. All right, then.” The ringing kept up impatiently, Anyuta twitched, and everyone became even graver. “No rush,” said Myshlaevsky, and he took a small black revolver out of his back pants pocket. It looked like a toy. “There’s no call for that,” said Shervinsky, his face darkening. “I’m surprised at you. You might try being a little more cautious. How could you walk down the street with that?” “Have no fear,” replied Myshlaevsky gravely and courteously. “We’ll manage. Hold on, Nikolka, and dawdle near the back door or the hinged window. If it’s Petlyura’s archangels, I’ll cough and you ditch it, but so we can find it later. It’s an expensive thing, it went to Warsaw with me. Are you all right?” “Rest assured,” replied specialist Nikolka sternly and proudly, taking possession of the revolver. “And so.” Myshlaevsky poked Shervinsky in the chest and said, “The singer came to visit, Carp is a doctor, Nikolka’s the brother, and Lariosik is the student boarder. Do you have identification?” “I have a tsarist passport,” said Lariosik, turning pale, “and Kharkov student identity papers.” “Stash the tsarist papers and show your student’s.” Lariosik snatched at the drapery and then ran off. “All the rest is nonsense. The women,” continued Myshlaevsky, “does everyone have identification? Nothing unwanted in your pockets? Hey, Larion! Ask him if he has a gun.” “Hey, Larion!” Nikolka responded in the dining room. “What about a gun?” “No, God forbid,” Lariosik responded from somewhere. The bell rang again, desperate, long, and impatient.

part three

231

“Well, the Lord’s blessing on us all,” said Myshlaevsky, and he advanced. Carp vanished into Turbin’s bedroom. “We’ve laid out solitaire,” said Shervinsky, and he blew out the candles. There were three doors to the Turbins’ apartment. The first from the front hall to the staircase; the second, a glass door, which closed off the Turbins’ domain. Downstairs, beyond the glass door, was a cold dark front door, with a side entrance leading to the Lisoviches’ apartment, and the corridor was closed off by a final door to the street. The door was rattling, and Myshlaevsky shouted down, “Who’s there?” Above and behind him on the stairs he felt silhouettes. A muffled voice at the door pleaded, “You ring and ring. Is Talberg-Turbina there? Telegram for her. Open up.” Sure, flashed through Myshlaevsky’s mind, and he coughed painfully. One silhouette behind him on the stairs vanished. Myshlaevsky cautiously threw the bolt, turned the key, and opened the door, leaving it on the chain. “Give me the telegram,” he said, standing sideways to the door, so that it was covering him. An arm in gray poked through and handed him a small envelope. A stunned Myshlaevsky saw that it was indeed a telegram. “Sign,” said the voice behind the door darkly. Myshlaevsky took a look and saw there was only one person outside. “Anyuta, Anyuta!” cried Myshlaevsky boldly, recovered from his bronchitis. “Get me a pencil.” Instead of Anyuta, Carp ran down and gave him one. On a scrap of paper torn from the rectangle Myshlaevsky scrawled, “Tur,” and whispered to Carp, “Give me twenty-five.” The door slammed and locked shut. A stunned Myshlaevsky and Carp went upstairs. Absolutely every-

232

white guard

one had gathered. Elena unfolded the rectangle and mechanically read the words out loud: “Lariosik has suffered terrible misfortune stop Operetta actor Lipsky—” “My God,” exclaimed a beet-red Lariosik. “That’s it!” “Sixty-three words,” gasped Nikolka admiringly. “Look, it’s written all over.” “Lord!” exclaimed Elena. “What on earth is this? Oh, forgive me, Larion, for starting to read it aloud. I completely forgot about her.” “What’s all this?” asked Myshlaevsky. “His wife left him,” Nikolka whispered in his ear. “A dreadful scandal.” A terrible rumble flew through the glass door and into the apartment, like a landslide. Anyuta screamed. Elena turned pale and leaned against the wall. The rumble was so monstrous, terrible, and incongruous that even Myshlaevsky’s face changed expression. Shervinsky, who was pale himself, caught Elena. A moan came from Turbin’s bedroom. “The doors!” cried Elena. Myshlaevsky ran down the stairs, abandoning his strategic plan, followed by Carp, Shervinsky, and Lariosik, who was scared to death. “This is worse,” muttered Myshlaevsky. A solitary black silhouette shot up behind the glass door and the rumbling stopped abruptly. “Who’s there?” thundered Myshlaevsky, as if he were at the armory. “For God’s sake . . . for God’s sake. . . . Open up. It’s me, Lisovich. Lisovich!” the silhouette shouted. “It’s me, Lisovich. Lisovich.” Vasilisa was terrified. His hair was sticking up in a circle around his shiny pink bald spot. His tie was hanging to one side, and the hem of his jacket was dangling like the doors of a cupboard forced open. Vasilisa’s eyes were crazed and muddy, like a poisoning victim. He

part three

233

appeared on the last step, suddenly swayed, and collapsed in Myshlaevsky’s arms. Myshlaevsky caught him and barely held on, dropping back against the staircase and shouting hoarsely, distraughtly, “Carp! Some water!”

15

I

t was evening, getting on toward eleven o’clock. In view of events, the street, which had never been very busy, emptied out even earlier than usual. It was snowing lightly and tiny flakes were flying steadily outside, and the acacia branches next to the sidewalk, which in the summer darkened the Turbins’ windows, hung even lower under their crests of snow. It had started after the midday meal, and a nasty, dark evening followed with untoward events and a sinking heart. The electricity for some reason had come on only at half power, and Vanda had fed them brains for dinner downstairs. Brains are awful food at best, but prepared by Vanda they were unbearable. There was soup as well, before the brains, to which Vanda added vegetable oil, and Vasilisa, sullen, rose from the table with the agonizing feeling that he hadn’t had his dinner at all. In the evening, there was so much to see to, and all of it was unpleasant and difficult. In the dining room, the dining table had been turned legs up and the bundle of Lebid-Yurchiks lay on the floor. “You’re a fool,” Vasilisa told his wife. Vanda’s expression changed and she replied, “I knew you were a lout a long time ago, but lately your behavior beats all.” Vasilisa was dying to slap her across the face as hard as he could and make her fly back and hit the corner of the sideboard. And then hit her again and again until this goddamned, bony creature shut up and admitted she was beaten. It was he, Vasilisa, who was being tor-

234

white guard

mented, after all, he, ultimately, who was working like an ox, and he demanded—demanded!—that he be obeyed at home. Vasilisa gritted his teeth and held his ground, and his attack on Vanda was not nearly as innocuous as one might think. “Do what I say,” said Vasilisa through his teeth. “Don’t you realize they could move the sideboard over? And then what? This, on the other hand, would never occur to anyone. Everyone in the city is doing it.” Vanda obeyed him, and together they set about their work, pinning banknotes to the underside of the table. Soon the table’s entire underside was bedecked like an ingenious silk carpet. Groaning, Vasilisa felt the blood rush to his face as he stood up and cast an eye over the money field. “It’s inconvenient,” said Vanda. “If we need money, we have to turn the table over.” “And so you will. Your arms won’t fall off,” replied Vasilisa hoarsely. “Better to turn the table over than lose everything. Have you heard what’s going on in the city? It’s worse than the Bolsheviks. They say there are mass searches under way and they’re still looking for officers.” At eleven o’clock, Vanda brought the samovar in from the kitchen and turned all the lights off in the apartment. She took a paper bag with stale bread and a piece of green cheese out of the sideboard. A light bulb hanging over the table in one of the chandelier’s three tiers shed a dim red light from its partially heated filaments. Vasilisa was chewing on a piece of a white roll, and the green cheese irritated him to tears, like a nagging toothache. At every bite, a loathsome powder sprinkled not into his mouth but on his jacket and tie. Unaware of what was bothering him, Vasilisa frowned as he watched Vanda chew. “I’m amazed at how easily they got away with it,” said Vanda, turning her gaze to the ceiling. “I was sure one of them would be killed.

part three

235

But no, they all came back, and now the apartment is full of officers again.” At any other time, Vanda’s words would have made no impression on Vasilisa whatsoever, but now, when he was utterly sick at heart, they seemed unbearably vulgar. “I’m amazed at you,” he replied, looking aside so as not to get upset. “You know full well that essentially they acted properly. Someone had to defend the city from those”—Vasilisa’s voice dropped—“blackguards. Not only that, you shouldn’t think they got off scot-free. I think he . . .” Vanda fixed her eyes on him and nodded. “I figured that out myself right away. He was wounded, naturally.” “That means there’s nothing to gloat about. ‘Got away with it,’ indeed.” Vanda licked her lips. “I’m not gloating, I’m just saying they got away with it and I’m wondering what if, God forbid, they show up and ask you as house committee chairman who is that you have upstairs? Were they with the Hetman? What are you going to say?” Vasilisa scowled and squinted. “I might say he’s a doctor. Ultimately, how do I know? How?” “That’s just it, how.” At “how” the bell rang in the vestibule. The blood drained from Vasilisa’s face, and Vanda turned her sinewy neck. Vasilisa sniffed, rose from his chair, and said, “You know what? Maybe I’ll run up to the Turbins’ now and ask them to come down.” Vanda did not have time to reply because that minute the ringing was repeated. “Oh, my God,” prayed Vasilisa anxiously. “No, we have to go.” Vanda gave him a frightened look and followed him. They opened the door from the apartment to the common hallway. Vasilisa went

236

white guard

out into the hall, where there was a blast of cold air, and Vanda’s angular face, with its anxious, wide-open eyes, peeked out. Overhead, for the third time, the electricity in the shining bell crackled importunately. For an instant Vasilisa considered knocking at the Turbins’ glass doors. One of them would have come out and it wouldn’t have been so frightening. He was afraid to do even that. What if they’d said, “What are you knocking for? Eh? Afraid of something?” Not only that, it’s true, he had the feeble hope that it might be someone else, not them. “Who’s there?” asked Vasilisa weakly at the door. Immediately the keyhole responded at Vasilisa’s belly in a husky voice, and the bell above Vanda rang again and again. “Open up,” shouted the keyhole. “From headquarters. Don’t go away or we’ll shoot through the door.” “Oh, my God,” Vanda breathed out. With lifeless hands, Vasilisa threw the bolt and the heavy hook and didn’t even remember removing the chain. “Hurry up,” said the keyhole crudely. The darkness outside looked at Vasilisa with a corner of gray sky, a corner of acacias, and snowflakes. Three men walked in, but it seemed to Vasilisa that there were many more. “May I ask why you’re here?” “It’s a search,” replied the first to enter in a wolfish voice, and he advanced straight toward Vasilisa. The hallway took a turn and in the lit doorway Vanda’s face seemed harshly powdered. “Then pardon me,” Vasilisa’s voice sounded pale and colorless, “might you have a warrant? I am a peaceful resident. I don’t know why you’ve come to my home. I don’t have anything.” Vasilisa had a burning urge to say it in Ukrainian, so he did: “I don’t have anything.” “We’ll just see about that,” replied the first man. As if in a dream, Vasilisa moved under the press of the men going

part three

237

through the door, and Vasilisa saw them, as if in a dream. Everything about the first man was wolfish, or at least so Vasilisa thought: his face was narrow, his eyes small and deep-set, his skin gray, his mustache jutted out in clumps, and his unshaven cheeks fell into dry furrows. He squinted oddly, frowned, and then and there, even in that narrow space, he managed to demonstrate that his was the nonhuman, loping gait of a creature accustomed to snow and grass. He spoke a strange and incorrect language—a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian words—a language familiar to inhabitants of the City who had spent time in Podol, on the banks of the Dnieper, where in the summer the wharf ’s winches whistled and spun and in the summer ragged men unloaded melons from barges. The wolf was wearing a tall fur hat that had a scrap of dark blue fabric decorated with gold braid hanging off one side. The second man was a giant and filled Vasilisa’s front hall nearly to the ceiling. He was ruddy with the full and happy ruddiness of a woman, and young, and there was nothing growing on his cheeks. He wore a rumpled cap with moth-eaten earflaps on his head, a gray greatcoat on his shoulders, and terrible, nasty, down-at-the-heel boots on his disproportionately small feet. The third had a broken nose eaten away on one side by a decaying scab and a lip that had been stitched up and then disfigured by the scar. He was wearing an old officer’s cap with a red brim and the trace of an insignia, an old-fashioned double-breasted soldier’s uniform with brass buttons that had turned green, black trousers, and bast shoes over thick gray government-issue stockings. In the light of the lamp his face was streaked with two colors—waxy yellow and purple—and his eyes were martyrishly dark. “Let’s see, let’s see,” repeated the wolf. “Here’s the warrant.” With these words he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and thrust it at Vasilisa. One of his eyes

238

white guard

struck at Vasilisa’s heart, and the other, the left one, gave a quick, piercing sideways glance at the trunks in the vestibule. The crumpled piece of paper, folded into fourths, bore a stamp: Headquarters First Cossack Company

and written in indelible ink in a large, slanting scrawl: Orders to conduct a search at the residence of Vasily Lisovich, 13 Alexeyevsky Slope. Refusal to comply is punishable by execution. Chief of Staff Protsenko Adjutant Miklun

In the lower left-hand corner there was an illegible blue stamp. The nosegays on the wallpaper were dancing before Vasilisa’s eyes, and while the wolf was taking the paper back he said, “Come in, please, but I don’t have anything.” The wolf pulled a black Browning smeared with machine oil out of his pocket and pointed it at Vasilisa. Vanda cried softly, “Oh!” A Colt, gleaming with machine oil, long and impetuous, appeared in the disfigured man’s hand. Vasilisa bent his knees and dropped slightly, making himself shorter. For some reason the electricity flashed on bright white and cheerful. “Who’s in the apartment?” asked the wolf huskily. “No one,” replied Vasilisa, his lips white. “I’m his wife.” “All right, lads, look around, but make it quick,” the wolf ’s voice was hoarse as he turned to his companions. “We don’t have much time.” The giant immediately shook the chest like a box, and the disfigured man slipped over to the stove. The revolvers were hidden away. The disfigured man rapped the wall with his fists, and the knocking opened the damper so that a meager warmth blew from the small black door.

part three

239

“Guns?” asked the wolf. “Word of honor . . . merciful heavens, what guns?” “We don’t have any,” confirmed Vanda’s shadow in a single breath. “You’d be better off telling me, or didn’t you see the part about execution? ” said the wolf impressively. “Honest to God! Where would I get one?” A green lamp was burning in the study, and Alexander II, outraged to the depths of his iron soul, glanced at the three men. In the green of his study Vasilisa knew for the first time in his life what it felt like to be about to faint, when your head spins ominously. All three went after the wallpaper straight away. The giant swept stacks of books off the shelf as if they were toys, row after row, and six hands felt along the walls, tapping. Tap . . . tap—the wall rapped flatly. Tap—all of a sudden the box in the hiding place responded. Glee shone in lupine eyes. “What did I tell you?” he whispered inaudibly. The giant ripped the leather on the armchair with his heavy feet and rose nearly to the ceiling, where something cracked and broke in the giant’s fingers and he tore the box out of the wall. The paper-wrapped package was in the wolf ’s hands. Vasilisa staggered and leaned against the wall. The wolf began nodding his head. He nodded for a long time, looking at the half-dead Vasilisa. “What’s the matter with you, you pest?” he said bitterly. “What’s the matter with you? ‘I don’t have anything, I don’t.’ You miserable bastard. You said you didn’t, and all the time you had coins sealed in the wall? I should kill you!” “Don’t say that!” cried Vanda. Something terrible happened to Vasilisa that made him suddenly burst into convulsive laughter, and this laughter was horrific because there was horror dancing in Vasilisa’s blue eyes, and it was only his lips, nose, and cheeks that were laughing.

240

white guard

“But there’s been no decree, sirs. It’s just some banknotes and a few odds and ends. Very little money. Hard-earned. Tsarist money’s been abolished now anyway.” Vasilisa was talking and looking at the wolf as if it gave him some weird pleasure. “I ought to arrest you,” said the wolf as a point of information, and he shook the packet and stuck it in the bottomless pocket of his torn greatcoat. “All right, lads, see to the boxes.” Out of the boxes, which Vasilisa himself opened, came piles of documents, seals, stamps, photos, pens, and cigarette cases. Papers littered the green carpet and the red tablecloth. Papers fell, rustling, to the floor. The monster overturned the wastebasket. In the sitting room they tapped the walls listlessly—reluctantly, it seemed. The giant pulled back the carpet and stamped the floor, leaving elaborate footprints that looked like they’d been burned in. The electricity, which had gone on as night fell, blazed away, and the gramophone bell shone. Vasilisa followed the three men, dragging and scuffing his feet. A dull calm had overtaken Vasilisa, and his thoughts flowed quite smoothly. The bedroom was instant chaos. Blankets and sheets stuck out of the mirrored armoire, bulging, and the mattress stood up on end. Suddenly the giant stopped, beamed shyly, and looked down. Out from under the disturbed bed peeked Vasilisa’s new kidskin boots with the polished tips. The giant grinned and gave Vasilisa a shy look. “What nice shoes,” he said in a delicate voice, “but meanwhile what if they don’t fit me?” Before Vasilisa could think what to tell him, the giant bent over and tenderly picked up the boots. Vasilisa shuddered. “Those are kidskin, gentlemen,” he said, unaware of what he was saying. The wolf turned to face him and a bitter fury flashed in his slanted eyes. “Quiet, louse,” he said somberly. “Quiet!” he repeated, suddenly

part three

241

irritated. “You should be thanking us for not shooting you as a thief and a bandit, and for your hidden treasures. Be quiet,” he went on, advancing on the utterly pale Vasilisa, his eyes flashing ominously. “You piled things up, stuffed your fat face, like a pig, and you see what good men are wearing? See? His feet are all frozen and torn up, he’s been rotting in the trenches for you, while you sat in your apartment playing your gramophone. You mother-”—the urge to smack Vasilisa on the ear flashed in his eyes but he pulled his arm back. Vanda shouted, “What are you thinking?” The wolf didn’t dare strike house chairman Vasilisa so he just shoved him in the chest with his fist. A pale Vasilisa staggered back, feeling a sharp pain and sadness in his chest from the sharp fist’s blow. There’s the revolution for you, he thought in his neat pink head. A fine revolution. They all should have been hanged, but now it’s too late. “Vasilko, put the boots on,” the wolf kindly addressed the giant, who sat down on the sprung mattress and threw off his worn-down shoes. The boots wouldn’t go on over his thick gray stockings. “Give the Cossack some stockings,” the wolf addressed Vanda sternly. She immediately dropped down to the lower drawer of the yellow armoire and pulled out some stockings. The giant threw off his gray stockings, revealing red toes and black corns, and pulled on the thin stockings. He could barely get the boots on, and the lace on the left snapped off. Ecstatic, smiling like a child, the giant pulled the remaining lace tight and stood up. And immediately it was as if the strain snapped among these five strange people who had been proceeding step by step through the apartment. There was a simplicity now. The disfigured man took one look at the giant’s boots and suddenly grabbed Vasilisa’s pants off the hook where they were hanging, next to the wash basin. The wolf looked around suspiciously at Vasilisa once more to see whether he was going to say anything, but Vasilisa and Vanda said nothing, and their faces were identically white and their eyes huge. The bedroom now looked like the corner of a clothing shop. The dis-

242

white guard

figured man was standing in just his striped, tattered underpants examining the pants in the light. “Expensive goods, cheviot,” he said nasally, and he sat down in the dark blue armchair and started putting them on. The wolf exchanged his soiled vest for Vasilisa’s gray jacket and, moreover, gave Vasilisa back some papers, saying, “Some papers, take them, sir, you might need them.” From a table he picked up a glass clock shaped like a globe in which the handsome Roman numerals were fat and black. The wolf pulled on his greatcoat. Under it you could hear the clock ticking away. “Clocks are useful. Having no clock is like having no hands,” the wolf told the disfigured man, feeling increasingly kindly disposed toward Vasilisa. “At night you can look and see what time it is. An irreplaceable thing.” Then all three got moving and went back through the sitting room to the study. Vasilisa and Vanda walked behind them side by side, in silence. In the study the wolf, squinting, considered something and then told Vasilisa, “Give us a receipt, sir.” (Some thought was weighing on him, and he furrowed his brow like an accordion.) “What’s that?” whispered Vasilisa. “A receipt saying you gave us these things,” explained the wolf, looking down. Vasilisa’s face changed completely and his cheeks turned pink. “But what . . . I . . .” He felt like shouting, “What do you mean, a receipt from me on top of everything else?” But those words did not come out. Others did. “You . . . you’re the ones who should be giving me a receipt, so to speak.” “I ought to kill you,” replied the wolf spitefully and thoughtfully, “kill you like a dog. You bloodsucker you. I know what you’re thinking. I know. If you had the power you’d crush us like bugs. I can see, no good’ll come of you. Lads, up against the wall with him. I’m going to do him . . .”

part three

243

He lost his temper and nervously pushed Vasilisa up against the wall, grabbing him by the throat so that Vasilisa turned instantly red. “No!” screamed Vanda in horror, and she grabbed the wolf ’s arm. “What are you doing? Please. . . . Vasya, write it, write it.” The wolf let go of the engineer’s throat and his collar snapped back with a crackle. Vasilisa didn’t even notice how he ended up sitting in the chair. His hands were shaking. He tore a piece of paper off a pad and licked his pen. Silence fell, and in the silence you could hear the glass clock ticking in the wolf ’s pocket. “What should I write?” asked Vasilisa in a weak, hoarse voice. The wolf pondered and blinked. “Write . . . by order of Cossack Company Headquarters . . . items . . . items . . . in the amount . . . in total was given . . .” “In the a—” croaked Vasilisa and then immediately fell silent. “. . . given during a search. And I have no complaints. Signed . . .” At this Vasilisa collected his last shreds of spirit and asked, looking away, “Who to?” The wolf looked at Vasilisa suspiciously but held his irritation in check and just sighed. “Write: received . . . received in total by Nemolyak”—he stopped to think and looked at the ugly one—“Kirpaty and Hetman Uragan.” Staring uneasily at the paper, Vasilisa wrote under his dictation. He signed as demanded but instead of his signature put a shaky “Vasilis” and handed the paper to the wolf, who took it and began examining it. At that moment, far away on the stairs above, glass doors slammed and Myshlaevsky’s steps and booming voice could be heard. The wolf ’s expression changed dramatically. It darkened. His companions stirred. The wolf turned red and exclaimed softly, “Hush!” He pulled the Browning out of his pocket and aimed it at Vasilisa, who smiled like a martyr. Steps and shouting were heard past the doors in the hallway. Then they could hear the bolt, latch, and chain rattle.

244

white guard

They were locking the door. More steps ran by and a man’s laughter reached them. After that the glass door slammed, the dying steps went upstairs, and everything quieted down. The monster went out into the front hall, leaned up toward the door, and listened. When he came back, he and the wolf exchanged meaningful glances and that was it. Jostling, they started out to the front hall. There, in the front hall, the giant wiggled his toes in the rather tight boots and said, “It’ll be cold.” He put on Vasilisa’s galoshes. The wolf turned toward Vasilisa and began in a gentle voice, his eyes darting, “Here’s the thing, sir. You keep quiet about us being here. If you rat us out, our lads’ll kill you. Don’t leave the apartment before morning or you’ll regret it.” “We’re sorry,” said the broken nose with the nasal voice. The ruddy giant didn’t say anything, he just looked shyly at Vasilisa and, out of the corner of his eye, gleefully, at his shiny galoshes. They went out Vasilisa’s door and down the hall to the street door, on tiptoe for some reason, and fast, jostling. The bolts rattled, the dark sky peeked in, and Vasilisa threw the bolt with his cold hands. His head was spinning and for a moment he thought he was dreaming. His heart sank immediately and then started beating faster and faster. Vanda was sobbing in the front hall. She had collapsed onto the trunk and hit her head against the wall, and big fat tears were streaming down her face. “My God! What on earth was that? My God. My God, Vasya. In broad daylight. What is going on?” Vasilisa was shaking like a leaf in front of her, and his face was twisted. “Vasya!” exclaimed Vanda. “You know, that wasn’t any headquarters or regiment. Vasya! Those were robbers!” “I figured that out for myself,” muttered Vasilisa, shrugging in despair.

part three

245

“Lord Almighty!” exclaimed Vanda. “We need to run this minute, file a complaint this minute, catch them. Catch them! Mother of God! All our things! Everything! Everything! If only someone, someone . . .” A shudder ran through her and she slid from the trunk to the floor, covering her face with her hands. Her hair was disheveled and her blouse had come undone in back. “But where? Where?” asked Vasilisa. “My God! To headquarters! To the Varta! Lodge a complaint. Quickly. What on earth is this?” Vasilisa hesitated and then suddenly rushed out the door. He flew at the glass barrier and raised a din. Everyone except Shervinsky and Elena crowded into Vasilisa’s apartment. Lariosik, pale, stood in the doorway. Myshlaevsky, his legs spread, surveyed the down-at-the-heels shoes and rags abandoned by the mysterious visitors and turned to Vasilisa. “They’re as good as lost. They were robbers. You should thank God you’re still breathing. To be honest, I’m amazed you got off so lightly.” “My God! What they did to us!” said Vanda. “They threatened to kill me.” “Be thankful they didn’t follow through on the threat. I’ve never seen anything like it.” “Neatly done,” confirmed Carp quietly. “What should I do now?” asked Vasilisa, his voice faltering. “Run and complain? But where? For God’s sake, Viktor Viktorovich, advise me.” Myshlaevsky grunted and thought. “I don’t advise you to take your complaint anywhere,” he said. “First of all, they won’t catch them. That’s one.” He bent down a finger. “Second . . .” “Vasya, remember, they said they’d kill you if you complained.”

246

white guard

“Oh, that’s rot.” Myshlaevsky frowned. “No one’s going to kill him, but I’m telling you, they won’t catch them, not that there’s anyone to do any catching now, and two”—he bent a second finger—“you’d have to declare what they took—tsarist money, you say. Well, sir, if you go to that headquarters of theirs or anywhere else and tell them, for all you know they’ll come and conduct a second search here.” “That is possible, very possible,” confirmed the eminent specialist Nikolka. Vasilisa, disheveled and drenched with water after fainting, hung his head, Vanda started weeping softly, leaning against the lintel, and everyone felt sorry for them. Lariosik sighed heavily by the door and rolled his blurred eyes. “There you have it, everyone has his woes,” he whispered. “What were they armed with?” asked Nikolka. “My God. Two had revolvers, and the third . . . Vasya, did the third not have anything?” “Two had revolvers,” confirmed Vasilisa weakly. “What kind? You didn’t notice?” added Nikolka pragmatically. “I just don’t know,” replied Vasilisa, sighing. “I don’t know the systems. One was big and black and the other was small and black with a little chain.” “Yes, a little chain.” Vanda sighed. Nikolka frowned and looked at Vasilisa out of the corner of his eye, like a bird. He marked time and then stirred uneasily and rushed headlong for the door. Lariosik trudged after him. Before Lariosik could reach the dining room, he heard the sound of glass breaking and a howl coming from Nikolka’s room. Lariosik rushed to him. The light was burning brightly in Nikolka’s room, a blast of cold air was coming through the open pane, and a huge hole gaped that Nikolka had made with his knees as he had fallen in despair from the windowsill. Nikolka’s eyes were wandering.

part three

247

“How can that be?” exclaimed Lariosik, his hands in the air. “That truly is witchcraft!” Nikolka rushed out of the room, dashed across the library, through the kitchen, and past a stunned Anyuta, who shouted, “Nikol, Nikol, where are you going without your cap? Lord, has something else happened?” He dashed across the porch and into the courtyard. Crossing herself, Anyuta latched the porch shut, ran to the kitchen, and peered out the window, but Nikolka was immediately lost from view. He turned sharply to the left, ran down, and halted in front of a snowdrift that blocked the entrance to the gap between the walls. The snowdrift was quite untouched. “I don’t understand,” muttered Nikolka in despair and he bravely plunged into the snowdrift. He thought he would suffocate. For a long time he pushed snow aside, spitting and snorting, finally broke through the snow barrier, and, completely white, crawled into the outrageous gap, looked up and saw above, where the light was falling from the fateful window of his room, the spikes’ black heads and their sharp dense shadows—but the box was gone. With a last hope that the rope might have broken, Nikolka knelt down over and over and rummaged around among the broken bricks. The box was gone. At this a bright light shone around Nikolka’s head. “Aha!” he cried and he crawled on, toward the fence that blocked the gap from the street. When he got there he felt around, the boards moved aside, and there was a big hole onto the black street. Now it was clear. They had moved the boards away leading to the gap. They were here and even, yes, I see, they were planning to crawl into Vasilisa’s through the storeroom, but there was a grill on the window. Completely white, Nikolka entered the kitchen in silence. “Lord, at least let me brush you off,” exclaimed Anyuta. “Get away from me, for God’s sake,” replied Nikolka and he went

248

white guard

into the rooms, wiping his stiff hands on his pants. “Larion, punch me in the face,” he turned to Lariosik, who blinked, then rolled his eyes and said, “What’s the matter with you Nikolasha? Why so desperate?” Timidly, he patted Nikolka on the back and knocked the snow off with his sleeve. “To say nothing of the fact that Alyosha’s going to tear my head off if, God willing, he ever recovers,” continued Nikolka. “But the main thing is that it was Nai-Turs’s Colt! I wish they’d killed me instead, by God! This is God punishing me for making fun of Vasilisa. I feel sorry for Vasilisa, but you see, that was the revolver they used on him. Although, actually, he’d be easy enough to rob without any revolver at all. That’s the kind of person he is. Oh my. That’s the way it is. Get some paper, Larion. Let’s seal up the window.” That night, Nikolka, Myshlaevsky, and Lariosik crawled through the gap with nails, an ax, and a hammer. The gap was barricaded with short boards. Nikolka himself hammered long, fat nails in like a maniac, so their points poked out in back. Later, on the veranda, they walked around with candles and then Nikolka, Myshlaevsky, and Lariosik climbed through the cold storeroom to the attic. There, above the apartment, they swarmed everywhere with a sinister tread, bending between hot water pipes and through linens, and stopped up the dormer window. When he learned of the attic expedition, Vasilisa revealed a lively interest and joined in as well, crawling between the beams and approving all of Myshlaevsky’s actions. “What a pity you didn’t let us know somehow. You should have sent Vanda Mikhailovna to us by the back door,” said Nikolka, dripping stearin from the candle. “Well, brother, that’s not such a great idea,” responded Myshlaevsky. “Once they were in the apartment, my friend, the issue was pretty

part three

249

much moot. Don’t you think they would have defended themselves? And how! Before you set foot in the apartment you’d have had a bullet in the belly. A fine corpse you’d make. Now, not letting them in in the first place, that’s a very different matter.” “They threatened to shoot through the door, Viktor Viktorovich,” said Vasilisa heatedly. “They never would have done that,” replied Myshlaevsky, pounding his hammer. “On no account. It would have drawn the whole street.” Later that night, Carp was luxuriating in the Lisoviches’ apartment as if he were Louis XIV. This had been preceded by the following conversation. “Don’t worry, they won’t come today,” said Myshlaevsky. “No, no, no,” Vanda and Vasilisa responded on the stairs, interrupting each other. “We beg you, entreat you or Fyodor Nikolaevich, we entreat you! What would it cost you? Vanda Mikhailovna will give you your tea. We’ll make up a comfortable bed. We beg of you, and tomorrow, too. Please, without a man in the apartment!” “I’d never be able to fall asleep,” confirmed Vanda, wrapping herself up in a downy shawl. “I’ve got some nice brandy. We can warm ourselves,” said Vasilisa in a surprisingly devil-may-care voice. “Go on, Carp,” said Myshlaevsky. As a consequence, Carp was luxuriating. The brains and soup with vegetable oil, as might be expected, had merely been symptoms of that loathsome disease of parsimony with which Vasilisa had infected his wife. In fact, the apartment’s depths concealed treasures known to Vanda alone. A jar of marinated mushrooms appeared on the diningroom table along with veal, cherry preserves, and some glorious Shustov brandy, the real thing, with the bell. Carp demanded a glass for Vanda Mikhailovna and poured her some.

250

white guard

“Not a full one, not a full one,” exclaimed Vanda. Vasilisa gave up in despair, submitting to Carp, and drank one glass. “Don’t you forget, Vasya, it’s bad for you,” said Vanda tenderly. After Carp’s authoritative explanation that absolutely no one could be harmed by brandy and that they even gave it to anemics in their milk, Vasilisa had a second glass, and his cheeks turned rosy and his forehead began to perspire. Carp drank five glasses, ending up in very good spirits. If you fattened her up, she wouldn’t be so bad at all, he thought, looking at Vanda. Then Carp praised the arrangement of the Lisoviches’ apartment and discussed the plan for signaling the Turbins’ apartment: one bell from the kitchen, the other from the front hall. Anything at all and ring up. And please, were Myshlaevsky to come out and open the door, it would be an entirely different matter. Carp praised the apartment highly. It was cozy, and well furnished, and had only one fault—it was cold. That night Vasilisa himself carried in some firewood and stoked the stove in the sitting room with his own hands. Carp undressed and lay on an ottoman between two splendid sheets and felt very cozy and fine. Vasilisa came over to him in shirtsleeves and suspenders, sat down on a chair, and said, “If you’re not too sleepy, would you mind having a little chat with me?” The stove had burned down, and Vasilisa, round, calmed, sat in the armchair, breathed deeply, and said, “Here’s how it is, Fyodor Nikolaevich. Everything I earned by the sweat of my brow went into those scoundrels’ pockets in a single night . . . by force. Don’t you be thinking I’ve rejected the revolution. Oh no, I am perfectly aware of the historical circumstances that led to all this.” A crimson reflection played on Vasilisa’s face and his suspender clasps. In a marvelous state of brandy-induced relaxation, Carp kept

part three

251

drifting off while trying to maintain an expression of polite attention. “But you have to agree. Here in Russia, in our country, which is undoubtedly the most backward, the revolution has degenerated into a popular uprising of the worst sort. Look at what’s going on. In two years’ time we’ve lost any basis in the law and any minimal protection of our rights as human beings and citizens. The English say . . .” “Right, the English . . . naturally,” mumbled Carp, and he felt a soft wall beginning to rise between him and Vasilisa. “. . . Forget about ‘your home is your castle’ when you can’t even be guaranteed safety in your own apartment behind seven locks that a gang like the one that came here today won’t take away not only your property but your life, too, for all you know!” “We’ll get those signals and shutters in place,” replied Carp, not very successfully, in his sleepy voice. “But really, Fyodor Nikolaevich! Really, dear sir, this is not just a matter of signaling! You can’t stop the kind of collapse and degeneracy that have made their nest now in men’s souls with mere signals. Forgive me, signals are a special case, but say they break down?” “We’ll fix it,” replied a happy Carp. “But you can’t build your whole life on signals and whatever revolvers you have there. That’s not even the point. I’m speaking in general, generalizing the instance, so to speak. The point is that the most important thing—respect for property—has disappeared. And if that’s the case, it’s all over. If that’s the case, we’re done for. I’m a convinced democrat by nature and a man of the people myself. My father was an ordinary foreman on the railroad. Everything you see here, everything those swindlers stole from me today, it was all earned and made with my hands alone. Believe me, I’ve never stood guard over the old regime. On the contrary, I’ll tell you a secret, I’m a Constitutional Democrat, but now that I’ve seen with my own eyes what all this can

252

white guard

lead to, I swear to you, I now have the sinister belief that only one thing can save us.” From somewhere out of the soft shroud that engulfed Carp, a whisper reached him. “Autocracy. Yes. The nastiest dictatorship you can imagine. Autocracy.” My, he’s fat, thought a blissful Carp. “Yes, autocracy’s a cunning thing. Mmm,” he said through the cotton wool. “Oh yes, blah blah blah—habeas corpus—yes . . . blah blah blah . . . Oh yes, blah blah,” the voice muttered through the cotton wool. “Oh yes . . . blah blah blah . . . they shouldn’t think that such a state of affairs can last long, yes . . . blah blah blah . . . and they exclaim ‘Long live!’ No! This won’t live long, and it’s ridiculous to think it will.” “The Ivangorod Fortress,” a dead commandant in a tall fur hat suddenly interrupted Vasilisa. “Long live . . . !” “And Ardagan and Kars,” confirmed Carp in his haze, “Long live . . . !” Vasilisa’s feeble laughter reached him from a long ways off. “Long live . . . !” the voices sang out gleefully in Carp’s head.

16 Long live, long live Lo-o-ong lo-o-ong live . . .

Ten basses from the renowned Tolmashevsky Choir rose up. Lo-o-ong lo-o-ong live . . .

Crystal sopranos swelled. Long . . . Long . . . Long . . .

dissolving into a soprano, the choir spiraling up into the very dome. “Look! Look! It’s Petlyura himself!”

part three

253

“Look, Ivan.” “You dolt. Petlyura’s on the square by now.” Hundreds of heads in the gallery piled on top of one another, crushing one another, hanging from the balustrade between the ancient columns adorned with blackened frescoes. Whirling, excited, pressing, crushing one another, people climbed toward the balustrade, trying to peer into the cathedral’s abyss, but hundreds of heads were already hanging like yellow apples in a dense, triple tier. In the abyss swung a stifling thousand-head wave, and hovering above it, burning hot, was sweat and steam, incense smoke, the residue from hundreds of candles, and the soot from the heavy chain-hung lamps. A ponderous blue-gray curtain creaked as it crawled on its rings and blocked off the curving, ancient wrought-iron holy gates, as dark and gloomy as the whole of gloomy St. Sophia’s. In the church chandeliers, fiery candle-tails flickered, danced, and reached up in a smoky thread. Gasping for air. There was an incredible commotion in the side altar. Golden chasubles poured through the side altar doors and over the worn granite flagstones, their stoles flapping. Purple kamelaukions climbed out of round cardboard boxes, and gonfalons, swaying, came down from the walls. The awe-inspiring basso of Archdeacon Serebryakov growled somewhere in the thick of it. A chasuble, headless and armless, hovered, hunched, over the crowd, then plunged into it, and then one sleeve of a quilted cassock went up, and then the other. People were waving checkered kerchiefs and twisting them into plaits. “Father Arkady, wrap your cheeks up better. The frost is fierce. Please, let me help you.” The gonfalons bowed in the doorway like defeated banners, brown faces and mysterious golden words floated by, and trains brushed the floor. “Make way.” “Father, but where are you going?”

254

white guard

“Manka! They’ll crush—” “What’s this about?” (a bass, a whisper) “The Ukrainian People’s Republic?” “Hell if I know” (a whisper). “If it’s not a priest, then it’s a father.” “Careful . . .” Long live !!!—

The choir rang out, swelling throughout the cathedral. Fat, crimson Tolmashevsky put out the melting wax candle and slipped his tuning fork into his pocket. The choir, wearing brown floor-length robes with gold braid—the little flaxen heads, so flaxen they appeared bald, of the sopranos rocking, and the horsy heads of the basses jiggling their Adam’s apples—streamed from the dark, gloomy gallery. Like an avalanche, from every stairwell, thicker and thicker, crushing one another, the crowd began seething in whirlpools, ever louder and noisier. Surplices swept out of a side altar, heads bound as if for a toothache, with distraught eyes, and wearing purple, toylike cardboard caps. Father Arkady, the cathedral’s dean, a short, frail man, who had hoisted his mitre, sparkling with gems, above his checkered gray scarf, minced along with the flow. The father’s eyes were desperate, and his puny little beard was trembling. “There’s going to be a procession. Get moving, Mitka.” “You be quiet! Where are you going? You’ll crush the priests.” “There’s a path been left for them.” “Orthodox people! A child has been crushed.” “I don’t understand.” “If you don’t understand, then you should go home. You have no business here.” “Someone picked my pocket!” “Naturally, they’re socialists. Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? What do the priests have to do with this?”

part three

255

“Excuse me.” “Give the priests a blue one and they’d say a mass for the devil.” “We should go to the market right now and loot the Jew shops. That’s the ticket.” “I don’t speak that language of yours.” “A woman’s being crushed! Crushed!” “Aargh! Aargh!” They were coming from the colonnaded side areas, from the gallery, step by step, shoulder to shoulder, with nowhere to turn, nowhere to move, carried and spun toward the doors. Brown holy men from some forgotten age, with their fat ankles, dancing and playing pipes, hurried by in the old frescoes on the walls. The half-choked crowd, drunk on the carbon dioxide, smoke, and incense, was borne through the passages amid the rustling and rumbling. Time and again women’s quick, pained cries flared up in the crush. Pickpockets in black mufflers worked with concentration and effort, their skilled, virtuosic hands moving through the tight clusters of pressed human flesh. Thousands of feet were crunching, and the crowd was whispering, murmuring. “Oh my Lord . . .” “Jesus Christ. Mother of God, Holy Mary . . .” “I’m not happy I came. What’s going on here?” “I hope they crush you to death, pig.” “My watch, please, my silver watch, brothers. I bought it yesterday.” “Looks like they’ve said their last mass.” “What language did you say it in, dear fathers? I don’t understand.” “God’s language, ma’am.” “That’s strictly forbidden. The Moscow tongue has been banned.” “And just what is this, may I ask? Aren’t we allowed to speak our native, Orthodox language?”

256

white guard

“They pulled my earrings out with the posts. Tore off half my ear!” “Hold that Bolshevik, Cossacks! Spy! Bolshevik spy!” “This isn’t Russia, good man.” “Oh my God, the pigtails. . . . Look, in the braid, Marusya.” “I . . . feel . . . bad.” “The woman feels bad.” “Everyone feels bad, mother. The people all feel very bad. My eye, you’re poking my eye. Don’t shove. You’ve gone crazy, anathemas!” “Get out! Go back to Russia! Get out of Ukraine!” “Ivan Ivanovich, the police should have details here by now. Remember, how it was, at the celebration in nineteen and twelve? Oh ho!” “You’d have Bloody Nicholas back? We know, we know all about the kinds of thoughts you have in your head.” “Get away from me, for Christ’s sake. I’m not bothering you.” “Lord, I hope I get out of here soon. I need a drop of fresh air.” “I won’t make it. I’m going to die.” The crowd was spun and tossed, flogged hard and shoved through the main entrance, caps were dropped, people were droning and crossing themselves. The procession, silver and gold, now crushed and maddened, and followed by the choir, flew out a second side entrance, where two windows were instantly knocked out. Gold patches floated in the black jumble, kamelaukions and mitres jutted up, gonfalons bent down through the windows, then straightened up, and floated along upright. There was a powerful frost. The city puffed smoke. The cathedral square, trampled by thousands of feet, crunched ringingly and without letup. Frosty smoke wound through the cold air and rose toward the bell tower. The heavy bell in St. Sophia’s main bell tower was droning, trying to drown out this terrible, howling confusion. The little bells were yapping, pealing, without harmony or form, breaking in on

part three

257

each other, as if Satan had climbed the bell tower, as if the devil himself were wearing the chasuble and entertaining himself by creating this din. In the black slits of the many-storied bell tower, which once had greeted the slant-eyed Tatars with its bells, one could see the small bells thrashing about, howling like fierce dogs on chains. The frost crunched and smoked. The soul melted and was released to repent, and the people spilled out across the cathedral square, black as black can be. In spite of the ferocious cold, monks, with heads bared, either bald, like ripe melons, or covered with thick orange hair, were sitting cross-legged, lining the stone path leading to the great stairwell of St. Sophia’s bell tower and singing in their nasal voices. Blind balladeers touched hearts with a despairing song of Judgment Day. Their torn boxes lay bottoms-down, greasy rubles fell like leaves, and battered coins looked up from the boxes. Oh, when the end time comes to a close, And Judgment Day draws nigh . . .

Strange, heart-nipping songs floated from the crunching earth, ripped vilely, squeakily, from yellow-toothed banduras with crooked necks. “My brothers, my sisters, gaze upon my misery. Give, for the sake of Christ, that mercy be yours.” “Run to the square, Fedosei Petrovich, or we’ll be late.” “There’s going to be a public prayer.” “A procession.” “A public prayer for the gift of victory and for the nation’s Ukrainian army to overcome revolutionary arms.” “Pardon me, but what victories and overcoming? They’ve already won.” “They can still win!” “There’s going to be a procession.”

258

white guard

“Where’s it going?” “To Moscow.” “Which Moscow?” “The usual one.” “Our arms are too short.” “What did you say? Repeat that! What did you say? Lads, listen to what he said!” “I didn’t say anything!” “Hold him, hold him! Thief! Hold him!” “Run out those gates, Marusya. We can’t get through here. They say Petlyura’s on the square. Let’s have a look at Petlyura.” “Fool, Petlyura’s in the church.” “You’re the fool. They say he’s riding a white horse.” “Hail Petlyura! And to the Ukrainian People’s Republic! Hail!” Dong . . . dong . . . dong. . . . Dong-dong-dong. . . . Bang-a-bong. Dong-bong-bong—the bells were in a frenzy. “Gaze upon this orphan, Orthodox citizens, good people. . . . For a blind man. . . . A poor man. . . .” A legless man, swarthy, his backside covered in leather, like a broken beetle, slid between people’s legs, grabbing at the trampled snow with his mittens. Cripples and paupers displayed the sores on their blue shins, shook their heads as if they had a tic or paralysis, and rolled their white eyes back, pretending to be blind. Tugging at souls, rending hearts, reminding people of poverty, deception, despair, and the futile wildness of the steppes, the cursed lyres creaked like wheels, moaned, and howled in the crush. “Come back, little orphan, or you’ll stray too far.” Ragged, trembling old women holding canes thrust their sere, parchment hands forward and wailed. “Pretty as a picture! God grant you health!” “Great lady, have pity on an old woman, a miserable orphan.” “Darlings, dearies, the Lord God will not abandon you.”

part three

259

Sluts on thick soles, nouveaux riches in caps with earflaps, peasants in sheepskin caps, rosy-cheeked young women, retired officials with the dusty traces of insignias, elderly women with bellies that jutted out like promontories, nimble children, Cossacks in greatcoats and caps with tails and crowns colored blue, red, green, or magenta, with braid, gold and silver, with gold tassels from coffin corners, they spilled through the cathedral square like a black sea, and the church doors kept shedding new waves. The air had a spicy smell, the procession swallowed its forces, regrouped, and straightened out, and bared heads in checkered kerchiefs, mitres and kamelaukions, deacons’ disheveled manes, monks’ calottes, pointy crosses on gilded staffs, gonfalons of Christ the Savior and the Virgin Mary and Child flowed in a symmetrical rank and order, as did gonfalons carved, forged, gilded, and crimson with fringed canvases inscribed with Slavonic characters. Either a gray cloud with the belly of a snake was pouring through the city or else raging, muddy rivers were flowing through the old streets—or else myriad Petlyura troops were marching to the square of St. Sophia for review. First to go, having rent the frost with a blast of trumpets, crashed the shining cymbals, and cut across the black river of humanity, was the Blue Division in close ranks. Next, dressed in blue jerkins and blue-topped astrakhan caps dashingly cocked, came the Galicians. Two bicolor standards atilt between bared sabers floated in the trail of a dense band of trumpets, and behind the standards, steadily crushing the crystalline snow, the ranks rattled smartly, dressed in sturdy, albeit German, cloth. The first battalion was followed by swarthy men in long coats belted with straps and with helmets on their heads; a brown thicket of bayonets crept toward the parade ground like a spiky cloud. Frayed regiments of Cossack riflemen marched in untold force. There were companies of haydamaks, foot soldiers, company after

260

white guard

company, and dancing high above, in the gaps between battalions, came gallant regimental and company commanders in the saddle. Bold marches, triumphant and trumpeting, howled gold in this river of color. Behind the infantry, at an easy trot, bouncing lightly in their saddles, rode the cavalry regiments. Their tall, crumpled, cocked hats with blue, green, and red crowns and gold tassels blindingly sliced the eyes of the excited crowd. Lances looped onto right arms bounced like needles. Gaily clattering staffs flicked amid the cavalry ranks, and the horses of the commanders and buglers burst forth, ahead of the bugle wail. Jovial and round as a ball, Bolbotun rode ahead of his Cossack company, offering his low brow, gleaming with grease, and his pudgy happy cheeks to the frost. His chestnut mare, looking to the side with a bloody eye, chewing its bit, dribbling foam, and rearing, time and again trying to shake off Bolbotun’s tremendous weight, clattered as it stamped its feet, and the colonel, rattling his scabbard and twisting his saber, lightly spurred her massive, nervous sides. “For our headmen are with us, with us like brothers!”

Pouring out their song, the dashing haydamaks sang and bounced at a trot, and their colorful topknots blew about. Riding by, letting its riddled yellow and blue standard blow about and its accordion thunder, was the regiment of swarthy, pointymustached Colonel Kozyr-Leshko, who himself rode a huge horse. The colonel was in a bad mood, and he squinted and lashed his stallion’s croup with his whip. The colonel had reason to be angry. NaiTurs’s salvos had struck at Kozyr’s best platoons on the Brest-Litovsk road that foggy morning, and his regiment trotted onto the square with its ranks compact because thinned. Behind Kozyr came the dashing, unbowed, swarthy-faced,

part three

261

mounted Mazeppa Company. The name of the famous Hetman, who had nearly destroyed the Emperor Peter at Poltava, gleamed in gold letters on blue silk. The crowd erased the buildings’ gray and yellow walls like a cloud. The crowd bulged and climbed on pedestals, and little boys scrambled up lamp poles and sat on the crosspieces, dotted the roofs, whistled, and shouted, “Hurrah! Hurrah!” “Hail! Hail!” people shouted from the sidewalks. Flat round faces crowded at balcony doors and windows. Balancing, cabbies climbed onto their sledge boxes and waved their whips. “People said they were bandits. There’s bandits for you. Hurrah!” “Hail Petlyura! Hail to our Leader!” “Hurrah!” “Manya, look, look! It’s Petlyura himself. Look, on the gray! What a handsome man.” “Not at all, madam. That’s a colonel.” “Is it really? Then where’s Petlyura?” “Petlyura’s at the palace receiving the French envoys from Odessa.” “Good man, have you lost your mind? What envoys?” “They say Petlyura, Peter Vasilievich Petlyura” (in a whisper) “is in Paris. So, have you seen him?” “There’s bandits for you. A million troops.” “But where is Petlyura? My dears, where is Petlyura? All we want is a peek.” “Petlyura, dear lady, is reviewing the troops on the square right now.” “Not at all. Petlyura is in Berlin being presented to the president on the occasion of concluding an alliance.” “What president? Don’t go spreading provocations, good man.” “The Berlin president. On the occasion of the republic’s . . .”

262

white guard

“Did you see? Did you? So impressive . . . Went down Rylsky Lane in a coach. Six horses.” “Sorry, you mean they believe in the clergy?” “I’m not saying they do or don’t. I’m saying he rode by, that’s all. Make what you like of it.” “The fact is the priests are serving mass right now.” “It’s stronger with the priests.” “Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. . . .” Frightening, heavy wheels thundered, limbers rumbled, and an endless ribbon of artillery followed the ten mounted Cossack units. Fat, snub-nosed mortars were borne along, and slender howitzers rolled. A servant girl sat on the limbers, cheerful, well-fed, and triumphant, and wagon boys rode sedately, placidly. Powerful, well-fed, impressively crouped steeds, straining and stretching, and peasant horses that looked like pregnant bedbugs but were accustomed to work came along pulling the six-inchers. The light mountain cavalry rumbled by lightly, and their small guns bounced along, surrounded by dashing horsemen. “Oh my . . . oh my . . . there you have your fifteen thousand. What lies they told us. Fifteen . . . the bandit . . . degeneracy. . . . Lord, too many to count. Another battery . . . and another and another.” The crowd kept crushing Nikolka so he tucked his avian nose into the collar of his student greatcoat and finally climbed into a wall niche, where he held on tight. A cheerful woman in felt boots was already in the niche and told Nikolka cheerfully, “Hold on to me, sir, and I’ll hold on to the brick, or else we’ll fall.” “Thank you,” wheezed Nikolka sadly in his hoary collar. “I’ll hold on to the hook.” “Where’s Petlyura himself?” the loquacious woman rattled on. “Oh, I want to see Petlyura. They say he’s handsome past the telling.” “Yes,” groaned Nikolka vaguely in his sheepskin fur, “past the telling. Another battery . . . Oh, hell . . . Well, now I understand.”

part three

263

“They say he rode by in an automobile. There. Did you see?” “He’s in Vinnitsa,” replied Nikolka in a dry, funereal voice, wiggling his frozen toes in his boots. Why the hell didn’t I put on felt boots? What cold. “Look, look, Petlyura.” “That’s not Petlyura, it’s the Varta chief.” “Petlyura has his residence in Belaya Tserkov. Now Belaya Tserkov will be the capital.” “Aren’t they coming to the City, dare I ask?” “All in good time.” “Yes, yes, yes.” Clang, clang, clang. Muffled claps from Turkish drums scudded off St. Sophia’s square, while four terrifying tank cars were already crawling down the street, their machine-guns threatening from embrasures, their heavy towers swaying. But the ruddy enthusiast Strashkevich wasn’t inside anymore. He was lying, still uncollected and by no means ruddy, rather a dirty waxy yellow, immobile Strashkevich on Pechorsk, in Mariinsky Park, just past the gates. Strashkevich had a little hole in his forehead and another, clotted over, behind his ear. The enthusiast’s bare feet were sticking out of the snow, and the enthusiast’s glassy eyes were staring straight at the sky, through the bare maple branches. It was very quiet all around, not a living soul in the park, and hardly anyone on the street. The music didn’t reach here from old St. Sophia’s, therefore the enthusiast’s face was perfectly calm. The tank cars, droning, breaking through the crowd, swam in a stream to where Bogdan Khmelnitsky sat and pointed his mace, black in the sky, to the northeast. The bell was still floating like a dense oily wave over the city’s snowy hills and rooftops, the drum was banging, banging in the crowd, and little boys, in a frenzy of wild, happy excitement, were climbing up to black Bogdan’s hooves. Trucks were already rumbling through the streets, their chains creaking, and young girls

264

white guard

wearing crowns of straw and homespun skirts peeking out under their sheepskins and lads in blue sharovary under their sheepskins were riding on the running boards, singing harmoniously and faintly. But right then a salvo thundered in Rylsky Lane. Before the salvo, women’s wails had spun like a snowstorm in the crowd. Someone started running, wailing, “Oh, woe is me!” Someone’s voice shouted, broken, furious, rushed, a little hoarse: “I know them. Grab them! Officers. Officers. Officers. . . . I saw them in epaulets!” From the platoon of the Tenth Rada Cavalry, which had been waiting its turn to enter the square, lads rushed out and cut through the crowd to grab someone. Women screamed. Weakly, Captain Pleshko, who had been caught by the arms, shouted hysterically, “I’m not an officer. Not at all. Not at all. What do you mean? I’m a bank clerk.” They grabbed someone next to him, and he, white-faced, squirmed in silence. Then the crowd surged down the side street, as if from a split sack, crushing one another. The public fled, horror-struck. The spot was swept perfectly white except for just one spot—somebody’s abandoned cap. There was a flash and a crack on the side street, and Captain Pleshko, who had denied it three times, paid for being curious about military parades. He lay by the front garden of the St. Sophia residence on his back, his arms flung wide, while the other man, also silent, fell at his feet face down on the sidewalk. Right then the cymbals crashed from the corner of the square, again the people surged and roared, and the band began to thunder. A triumphant voice pierced the air: “Quick march!” And rank after rank, their tasseled braids gleaming, the Tenth Rada Cavalry stepped out. All of a sudden, the gray backdrop in the gap between the domes broke and a sudden sun appeared in the murky gloom. The sun was bigger than anyone in Ukraine had ever seen it, and completely red,

part three

265

like pure blood. Bands of coagulated blood and ichor spread evenly and far from the ball that was trying so hard to shine through the curtain of clouds. The sun painted St. Sophia’s main dome in blood, and on its square lay a strange shadow that turned Bogdan purple, and the crowd of restless people even blacker, even denser, even more panicked. Gray men belted with dashing straps and bayonets could be seen climbing the stairs up Bogdan’s crag and trying to knock off the inscription on the black granite. But the bayonets slid off the granite ineffectually. Prancing Bogdan fiercely pulled his horse from the crag, as he tried to fly away from those hanging on and weighing down its hooves. His face, aimed directly at the red ball, was fierce, and he continued to point his mace into the distance. At that moment, hands lifted a man up above the droning, dispersing crowd opposite Bogdan, on the fountain’s slippery frozen basin. He was wearing a dark coat with a fur collar and despite the cold had removed his cap and was holding it in his hands. The square was droning and seething as before, like an anthill, but the bell tower at St. Sophia’s was still, and the music had scattered in various directions down the frosty streets. A huge crowd was teeming at the fountain’s base. “Petka, Petka. Who’s that you’ve lifted up?” “Seems like, Petlyura.” “Petlyura’s giving a speech.” “Stop your lying. . . . It’s an ordinary speaker.” “Marusya, the speaker. Look. Look!” “They’re reading a proclamation.” “No, they’re going to read the Universal.” “Long live free Ukraine!” The lifted man gazed, inspired, over the thousand-head crowd to where the sun’s disk had crept out more and more visibly and gilded the crosses with a thick red gold and then, with a sweep of his arm, he shouted faintly, “Hail to the people!”

266

white guard

“Petlyura. . . . Petlyura.” “What Petlyura? Are you crazy?” “Why is Petlyura climbing the fountain?” “Petlyura’s in Kharkov.” “Petlyura just entered the palace for a banquet.” “Quit your yapping, there aren’t going to be any banquets.” “Hail to the people!” repeated the man, and immediately a lock of his fair hair escaped and dropped to his forehead. “Quiet!” The voice of the fair-haired man had grown stronger and could be heard clearly over the murmuring and crunching of feet, over the droning and hum, over the distant drums. “See Petlyura?” “Sure, just now.” “Lucky man. What’s he like?” “A black mustache, like Wilhelm, and a helmet. Hey, there he is, there he is! Look, look, Maria Fyodorovna! Look, look! There he goes.” “Don’t create a provocation! That’s the Fire Department chief.” “My dear lady, Petlyura is in Belgium.” “Why did he go to Belgium?” “To make an alliance with the allies.” “Oh no. He and his escort went to parliament.” “Why?” “For the oath.” “He’s going to swear an oath?” “Why should he? They should swear an oath to him.” “Well, I’d rather die” (a whisper) “than swear an oath.” “You don’t have to. They don’t bother the women.” “They bother the Yids, that’s the truth.” “And the officers. They’re going to spill all their guts.” “And the landowners. Down with them!”

part three

267

“Quiet!” With a strange melancholy and decisiveness in his eyes at the same time, the fair-haired man pointed at the sun. “Did you hear, citizens, brothers and comrades?” he began. “The Cossacks singing, ‘For our headmen are with us, with us like brothers.’ With us. They’re with us!” The man took his cap and slapped his chest, upon which there was a red bow, like an enormous wave. “With us. For those headmen come from the people, they were born with them, and they’ll die with them. They froze in the snow with us in the siege of the City, and now they have courageously captured it, and now the red banner is flying over those buildings.” “Hurrah!” “What red? What do you mean? It’s yellow and blue.” “The Bolsheviks have the same red one.” “Quiet! Hail!” “His Ukrainian’s bad.” “Comrades! You now face a new task, to lift up and strengthen the new independent Republic, for the happiness of all laboring elements— the workers and the peasants—for only those who have spilled their fresh blood and sweat on our homeland have the right to own it!” “Right! Hail!” “You hear him call us ‘comrades’? Will wonders never cease.” “Quiet.” “And so, dear citizens, let us swear here in this joyful hour of the people’s victory”—the speaker’s eyes began to shine, and he kept pointing more and more excitedly toward the thick sky and there were fewer and fewer Ukrainian words in his speech—“and let us give an oath, that we will not lay down our arms until the red banner—the symbol of freedom—waves over all the workers of the world.” “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! . . . Inter—” “Vaska, shut up. Are you stupid all of a sudden?” “Shchur, what do you mean, quiet!”

268

white guard

“By God, Mikhail Semyonovich, I can’t help myself. Get up . . . you damn . . .” His black Onegin-style side-whiskers were concealed by his thick beaver collar, and all you could see were his eyes glittering uneasily in the direction of an excited cyclist who had been crushed in the crowd, his eyes oddly resembling the eyes of the dead Ensign Shpolyansky, who died on the night of December 13th. A tan-gloved hand reached out and squeezed Shchur’s arm. “All right. All right, I won’t,” muttered Shchur, his eyes boring into the fair-haired man. And he, who now had mastery over himself and the masses in the nearest rows, shouted, “Long live the Soviets of Workers, Peasants, and Cossack Deputies. Long live—” Suddenly the sun went out, and a shadow fell on St. Sophia’s and its domes; Bogdan’s face was sharply delineated and so was the man’s. You could see the fair puff jumping on his brow. “Aah, aah,” murmured the crowd. “. . . the Soviets of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies. Proletarians of all countries, unite . . .” “What? What’s that? Hail!” In the back rows several male and one ringing high-pitched voice had begun to sing, “When I die, bury me . . .”¹ “Hurrah!” came victorious shouts. Suddenly a maelstrom flared up yet elsewhere. “Grab him! Grab him!” a cracked, spiteful, and whining male voice cried out. “Grab him! It’s a provocation. Bolshevik! Muscovite! Grab him! Did you hear what he said?” Someone’s hands clapped in the air. The speaker made a sideways 1. The first line of “My Testament,” a famous poem by Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian national poet.

part three

269

dash, and his legs and belly disappeared, and then his head, now covered with his cap. “Grab him!” a second reedy tenor shouted in response to the first. “The speaker’s an imposter. Take him, lads, take him, people.” “Ha ha ha! Stop! Who is it? Who did they catch? Who? That’s not anyone!” The owner of the reedy voice ran up to the fountain, gesturing as if he were trying to catch a big slippery fish. But muddle-headed Shchur in his tanned sheepskin jacket and three-eared cap was spinning in front of him and screaming, “Grab him!” Then suddenly he barked, “Wait, brothers, my watch’s been stolen!” A woman’s foot had been crushed and she was screaming in a terrible voice. “Whose watch? Where? You’re lying, you can’t get away!” Someone behind the owner of the reedy voice grabbed him by the waist and held on tight, and at that minute a large cold palm gave his nose and lips a hefty slap. “Oof!” exclaimed the reedy voice and he turned deathly white and could feel that his head was bare, that he had lost his cap. At that instant he felt another infernally painful slap and someone howled to the skies, “There he is, the thief, the marvikher,² the son of a bitch. Get him!” “What are you doing?” wailed the reedy voice. “Why are you hitting me? I’m not the one. I’m not the one! It’s the Bolshevik you need to get!” he wailed. “Oh my God, my God, Marusya, let’s get out of here right away. What’s this going on?” In the crowd by the fountain, people were caught up in the raging maelstrom and were beating someone, and someone was wailing, and people were scattering, and most of all, the speaker had slipped away 2. Yiddish for “pickpocket.”

270

white guard

and slipped away so miraculously and magically, it was if he had fallen straight through the earth. Someone was carried out of the maelstrom, and actually, he wasn’t the right one because the imposter speaker was wearing a black cap and this one had jumped out wearing a tall fur hat. Three minutes later the maelstrom quieted spontaneously, as if it had never happened, because they lifted the new speaker to the fountain’s edge and little by little a crowd of nearly two thousand crept up on all sides to listen. In the white side street near the small garden, already abandoned by the curious public, which was flooding behind the dispersed troops, the easily amused Shchur could not restrain himself and plopped down on the sidewalk. “Oh, I can’t stand it,” he roared, grabbing his belly. The laughter cascaded from him, and his white teeth sparkled. “I’m going to die of laughter, like a dog. The way they beat him, Jesus Christ!” “Don’t get too comfortable, Shchur,” said his companion, the stranger in the beaver collar, the spitting image of Shpolyansky, the famous dead ensign and chairman of the Magnetic Triolet. “Just a second, just a second,” Shchur fussed as he got to his feet. “Give me a cigarette, Mikhail Semyonovich,” said Shchur’s second companion, a tall man in a black coat. He cocked his tall fur hat on the back of his head, and a lock of fair hair fell on his brow. He was breathing heavily and panting as if he were hot in this cold. “What? Too much for you?” asked the stranger gently, and he turned back the hem of his coat and pulled out a small gold cigarette case. He offered the fair-haired man a tipless German cigarette, which he lit, shielding the match flame with his hand, and only when he had exhaled the smoke, spoke. “Whew!” Then all three moved quickly, turned the corner, and vanished. Two student figures quickly left the square and went down a side street. One was short, sturdy, and neat and wore shiny rubber galoshes.

part three

271

The other was tall and broad-shouldered with long compass legs and a giant’s stride. Both had their collars turned up to the brim of their caps, and the tall one even had his shaved mouth covered with a muffler—small wonder, given the cold. Both figures turned their heads as if on command, glanced at the body of Captain Pleshko and the other lying face down, his knees spread to the sides, and without uttering a sound, walked on by. Later, when the students turned off Rylsky onto Zhitomirskaya Street, the tall one turned to the short one and said in a hoarse tenor, “Did you see what I saw? Did you, I ask?” The short one didn’t answer but gave a jerk and moaned as if he suddenly had a toothache. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” continued the tall one, walking with a sweeping stride. “I’m going to remember that.” The short one walked behind him in silence. “Thank you for the lesson. Well, if I ever run into that blackguard . . . the Hetman”—his wheezing could be heard under the muffler— “I’m going to”—and the tall one released a terrible string of nonstop invective. They came out on Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya Street, where the pair’s path was blocked by the procession headed toward the Old Town police station and firehouse. The route to it from the square was essentially straight and simple, but Vladimirskaya was still blocked by cavalry that hadn’t been able to get away from the parade ground, so the procession made a detour, like everyone else. The procession was discovered by a flock of little boys, who ran and leaped at the rear, whistling piercingly. Then came a man with eyes darting in horror and sorrow, wearing an unbuttoned, torn kneelength overcoat but no hat. His face was bloodied and tears were streaming from his eyes. The unbuttoned man kept opening his wide mouth and exclaiming in a reedy but utterly hoarse voice, mixing Russian and Ukrainian words:

272

white guard

“You have no right! I’m a famous Ukrainian poet. My name is Gorbolaz. I wrote an anthology of Ukrainian poetry. I’m going to complain to the president of the Rada and the minister. This is indescribable!” “Beat him, the bastard, the pickpocket,” came the shouts from the sidewalks. “I tried to detain the Bolshevik provocateur,” shouted the bloodied man, desperately straining and turning in all directions. “What, what, what is it?” came the rumble from the sidewalks. “What happened?” “Someone tried to kill Petlyura.” “Well?” “He fired at our leader, the son of a bitch.” “But he’s a Ukrainian.” “He’s a scoundrel, not a Ukrainian,” someone’s bass voice muttered. “Picked someone’s pocket.” The boys whistled contemptuously. “What is this? By what right?” “We’ve caught the Bolshevik provocateur. Kill him on the spot, the carrion.” The agitated crowd crept up behind the bloodied man, a tail of gold braid flashed on his tall hat, and you could see the tips of two rifles. Someone wearing a taut, colorful belt was swaggering alongside the bloodied man and from time to time, when the bloodied man shouted especially loudly, mechanically punched him in the neck. Then the afflicted prisoner, having snatched at something beyond his grasp, would quiet down and start sobbing stormily, but silently. The two students let the procession pass. After it receded, the tall one took the short one by the arm and whispered in a gloating voice, “Serves him right, serves him right. What a relief. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Carp, those Bolsheviks are fine fellows. Fine fellows, I swear. That’s the way to work! Did you see how smoothly they sent

part three

273

that speaker packing? And they’ve got nerve. That’s what I like about them, their nerve, damn them.” The short one said softly, “If I don’t have a drink right now I might hang myself.” “That’s a thought. Definitely a thought,” the tall one confirmed animatedly. “How much for you?” “Two hundred.” “A hundred fifty for me. Let’s stop by Tamarka’s and get a hundred fifty.” “It’s closed.” “She’ll open up.” The two turned down Vladimirskaya and walked until they reached a two-story building with a sign, “Grocery,” and next to it, “Wine Cellar: Tamara’s Castle.” Diving down the steps, the pair knocked cautiously at the double glass door.

17

T

he goal Nikolka had been cherishing these past three days, as events rained down on the family like stones, the goal linked with the enigmatic last words of the man spread-eagled in the snow— Nikolka had reached this goal. But doing so had meant chasing around town the entire day before the review, visiting at least nine addresses. And many times in this running around Nikolka had lost the spirit’s presence and fallen, and got back up, and despite everything succeeded. At the very edge of town, on Litovskaya Street, in a tiny house, he found a member of the brigade’s second section, who told him Nai’s address and full name. For a couple of hours Nikolka fought the stormy waves of people, as he tried to cross St. Sophia’s square. But it was simply unimaginable—he couldn’t! Then the freezing Nikolka lost about half an hour

274

white guard

trying to fight his way out of the tight pincers and return to his starting point, St. Michael’s monastery. From there, Nikolka tried to go down Kostelnaya, making a major detour, and get to Kreshchatik, go downhill, and from there by roundabout, lower routes to MaloProvalnaya. And that turned out to be impossible! Up Kostelnaya, like the densest snake, troops were marching toward the review, as they were everywhere. That was when Nikolka made an even bigger and more extensive detour, finding himself all alone on St. Vladimir’s Hill. Nikolka ran across the terraces and paths, between the walls of white snow, pressing forward. He ended at an open space where there wasn’t quite as much snow. From the terraces, in the sea of snow, he could see the Imperial Gardens on the hills opposite and farther on, to the left, the endless Chernigov plains in utter winter serenity across the Dnieper River, which was white and imposing in its winter banks. There was peace and utter calm, but Nikolka wasn’t interested in calm. Battling the snow, he kept crossing terrace after terrace and only occasionally wondered at how the snow had already been trampled here and there, that there were footprints, which meant men roamed the hill in winter, too. Finally, Nikolka descended a path and sighed with relief when he saw there were no troops on Kreshchatik. He raced for the cherished, long-sought place: 21 Malo-Provalnaya Street. Such was the address Nikolka had obtained, and this unrecorded address was firmly etched in Nikolka’s mind. Nikolka was nervous and shy. Whom and how best to ask? It’s all a mystery. He rang at the door to the annex sheltering in the garden’s first tier. For a long time no one answered, but at last, steps shuffled and the door cracked opened on the chain. A woman’s face in a pincenez looked out and asked sternly from the front hall’s darkness, “What do you want?”

part three

275

“May I ask, does the Nai-Turs family live here?” The woman’s face became quite ungracious and sullen, and her lenses flashed. “There aren’t any Turs here,” said the woman in a low voice. Nikolka turned red with embarrassment and despair. “This is apartment five.” “Well yes,” replied the woman reluctantly and suspiciously. “Just tell me what you want.” “I was told the Turs family lived here.” The face looked out a little farther and searched the garden with her eyes, trying to discover whether there was anyone else behind Nikolka. Now Nikolka could see the lady’s full, double chin. “So? What do you want? Tell me.” Nikolka sighed, looked over his shoulder, and said, “I’m here about Felix Felixovich. I have news.” Her face changed dramatically. The woman blinked and asked, “Who are you?” “A student.” “Wait here.” The door slammed and her steps died down. Half a minute later heels clattered behind the door, which opened all the way to let in Nikolka. Light reached the front hall from the sitting room, and Nikolka could make out the edge of a soft, fluffy armchair and then the lady in the pince-nez. Nikolka removed his cap and immediately found himself facing another short, withered lady with traces of faded beauty in her face. From certain minor, elusive features—perhaps the temples, perhaps the color of her hair—Nikolka figured out that this was Nai’s mother and he was horrified. How could he tell her? The lady shot a stubborn, flashing gaze at him, putting Nikolka at even more of a loss. Someone else appeared at his side, someone young and also bearing quite a resemblance, he thought. “Well, tell us,” said the mother stubbornly.

276

white guard

Nikolka crumpled his cap, raised his eyes to the lady, and spoke: “I . . . I . . .” The withered lady—the mother—aimed her black and, it seemed to him, hate-filled gaze at Nikolka and suddenly screamed so resoundingly that the window in the door behind Nikolka echoed. “Felix has been killed!” She made fists and waved them in front of Nikolka’s face, screaming, “They’ve killed him. Irina, did you hear that? They’ve killed Felix!” Nikolka was so frightened he saw spots before his eyes and he thought desperately, I didn’t even say anything. My God! The fat woman in the pince-nez instantly slammed the door shut behind Nikolka. Then quickly, very quickly, she hurried over to the withered lady, grabbed her by the shoulders, and whispered hurriedly, “Come, Maria Frantsevna, come, my dear, calm down.” She leaned toward Nikolka and asked, “Is there any chance this isn’t true? Lord! Tell us. Is it really true?” There was nothing Nikolka could say. He just looked straight ahead in despair and again glimpsed the edge of the chair. “Quiet, Maria Frantsevna, quiet, my dear. For the love of God. People will hear. It’s God’s will,” murmured the fat woman. Nai-Turs’s mother collapsed face down and screamed, “Four years! Four years! I’ve been waiting and waiting. Waiting!” At this the young woman behind Nikolka’s shoulder rushed to her mother and caught her. Nikolka should have helped, but all of a sudden he burst into stormy, uncontrollable sobs and couldn’t stop. The windows were hung with curtains, and it was half dark and perfectly silent in the sitting room, which reeked of medicine. The silence was finally broken by the young woman, the sister. She turned away from the window and approached Nikolka. Nikolka

part three

277

stood up from the chair, still holding his cap, which he couldn’t bear to be separated from in these horrible circumstances. The sister mechanically fixed a curl of her black hair, grimaced, and asked, “How did he die?” “He died,” replied Nikolka in his very best voice, “he died, you know, a hero. A real hero. He made all the cadets leave in time, at the very last moment, while he himself ”—Nikolka wept as he told the story—“while he himself provided cover. I was very nearly killed alongside him. We were hit by machine-gun fire.” Nikolka was weeping and telling his story at the same time. “We . . . only the two of us were left, and he tried to drive me away and swore at me and fired the machine-gun. The cavalry attacked on all sides because they had laid a trap for us. Literally on all sides.” “What if they only wounded him?” “No,” replied Nikolka firmly, and he began wiping his eyes, nose, and mouth with his filthy handkerchief. “No, they killed him. I checked him myself. He had a bullet in his head and one in his chest.” It grew even darker, and not a sound came from the next room because Maria Frantsevna was silent, and in the sitting room, the three of them had huddled together and were whispering: Nai’s sister Irina; the fat woman in the pince-nez, who owned the apartment, Lidia Pavlovna, as Nikolka learned; and Nikolka himself. “I don’t have any money with me,” whispered Nikolka. “If you need it, I can run back for money right now and then we can go.” “I’ll give you some money right now,” droned Lidia Pavlovna. “Money doesn’t matter. But for the love of God, young man, you have to get him. Irina, not a word to her about where or what he’s doing. I just don’t know what to do.” “I’m coming along,” whispered Irina, “and we’ll get him. You’ll say he’s in the barracks and you need permission to see him.”

278

white guard

“All right, fine. That’s fine. Just fine.” The fat woman immediately minced into the adjoining room, and her voice could be heard from there, whispering, coaxing. “Maria Frantsevna, please lie there, for the love of Christ. They’re going to go now and find out all there is to know. This cadet told us he’s lying in the barracks.” “On the cots?” asked the resonant and, as again seemed to Nikolka, hate-filled voice. “What are you saying, Maria Frantsevna? He’s in the chapel, the chapel.” “Maybe he’s lying at the intersection and dogs are gnawing at him.” “Oh, Maria Frantsevna, don’t go on like that. Lie there quietly, I beg of you.” “Mama has been out of her mind these last three days,” whispered Nai’s sister, and again she tossed back the rebellious lock of hair and looked somewhere far past Nikolka. “But actually, none of that matters now.” “I’m going with them,” came from the next room. The sister shuddered for an instant and ran to her. “Mama, Mama, you can’t go. You can’t. The cadet refuses to go to the trouble if you come. He could be arrested. Lie there. Lie there, I beg of you.” “Oh Irina, Irina, Irina, Irina,” was heard from the next room. “They’ve killed him, killed him, and what are you doing? What? You, Irina. . . . What am I going to do now that they’ve killed Felix? Killed him. And he’s lying in the snow. Do you think—” And the sobbing started in all over again, and the bed creaked, and the landlady’s voice was heard. “Come, Maria Frantsevna, come, poor woman, be strong, be strong.”

part three

279

“Oh, Lord, Lord,” said the young woman and she ran quickly across the sitting room. Feeling horror and despair, Nikolka thought in confusion, What if we don’t find him? What then? At the most horrible of doorways, where despite the cold there was already a terrible heavy smell, Nikolka stopped and said, “Maybe you should sit here. Or . . . Or the smell is so bad you might get sick.” Irina looked at the green door, then at Nikolka, and replied, “No, I’m going with you.” Nikolka pulled on the heavy door’s handle and they walked in. At first it was dark. Then endless rows of empty racks appeared briefly. Overhead hung a dim lamp. Nikolka turned with trepidation to his companion, but she was fine, she was walking next to him and only her face was pale and she was frowning. Frowning in a way that reminded Nikolka of Nai-Turs, actually, a fleeting resemblance. Nai had had an iron face, plain and manly; whereas this girl was a beauty, not like a Russian beauty but a foreigner perhaps. An amazing, remarkable young woman. That smell, which Nikolka had so feared, was everywhere. The floors smelled of it, the walls, the wooden racks. The smell was so horrible, you could actually see it. The walls looked greasy and sticky, the racks shiny, the floors greasy, and the air thick and substantial. It smelled of rotting flesh. Actually, you got used to the smell itself very quickly, but it was better not to look too closely or to think. The main thing was not to think or else you’d find out very quickly what nausea means. A student in a coat appeared briefly and then disappeared. Behind the racks, on the left, a door creaked open and a man wearing boots came out. Nikolka looked at him and quickly averted his eyes so as not to see his jacket, which was shiny, like the racks. The man’s hands were shiny as well. “What do you want?” asked the man sternly.

280

white guard

“We’ve come on business,” began Nikolka. “We need to see the supervisor. We have to find a dead man. He’s likely to be here, isn’t he?” “Which dead man?” asked the man, and he gave him a sullen look. “Right here on the street, three days ago, he was killed.” “Aha, a cadet or an officer, probably. Some haydamaks fell, too. Who is he?” Nikolka was afraid to say that Nai-Turs was in fact an officer, so he put it this way. “Well, yes, he was killed, too.” “He was an officer, mobilized by the Hetman,” said Irina. “NaiTurs.” And she took a step toward the man. The man obviously didn’t care who Nai-Turs was. He looked sideways at Irina and replied, coughing and spitting on the floor. “I don’t know what to tell you. Our activities are over, and we don’t have anyone in the rooms. The other guards are gone. Searching is hard. Very hard. Because the bodies have been moved to the lower storerooms. It’s hard, very hard.” Irina Nai opened her purse, took out a banknote, and handed it to the guard. Nikolka turned away, afraid that an honest guard would protest. But this guard didn’t. “Thank you, young lady,” he said and he livened up. “We can find him. You just need permission. If the professor allows it, you can collect the body.” “And where is the professor?” asked Nikolka. “He’s here, only he’s busy. I don’t know . . . should I tell him?” “Please, please tell him immediately,” asked Nikolka. “I’ll recognize him immediately, the dead man.” “I can tell him,” said the guard, and he led them away. They went up the stairs to a hallway where the smell was even worse. Then down

part three

281

a hall, then left, and the smell abated, and it got brighter because the hall had a glass roof. Here the doors to the right and left were white. The guard stopped at one of them, knocked, then removed his cap, and walked in. It was quiet in the hall, and light filtered through the glass. In the far corner twilight was falling. The guard came out and said, “Come in.” Nikolka went in and Irina Nai followed. Nikolka removed his cap and the first thing he did was examine the black spots on the shiny blinds in the large room and the patch of terribly bright light that fell on the desk and, in that patch, the black beard and haggard, wrinkled face and hooked nose. Then, depressed, he looked around at the walls. In the semi-darkness the endless shelves gleamed, and he thought he saw monsters on them, dark and yellow, like terrible Chinese figures. In the back he also saw a tall man in a priestly leather apron and black gloves who was leaning over a long table where microscopes ranged like cannons, their mirrors and gold shining in the light of the lowered lamp under the green shade. “What do you want?” asked the professor. From the haggard face and beard, Nikolka realized this was the professor and that the priest was someone lesser, an assistant of some kind. Nikolka coughed, still looking at the sharp patch coming from the lamp, which was oddly bent and bright, and at other things—the fingers yellow from tobacco, and the horrible, repulsive object lying in front of the professor—a human neck and chin, consisting of veins and tendons stuck and hung with many shiny hooks and scissors. “Are you relatives?” asked the professor. He had a muffled voice that matched his haggard face and that beard. He looked up and squinted at Irina Nai, at her fur coat and pretty boots. “I’m his sister,” said Nai, trying not to look at what the professor had in front of him.

282

white guard

“There, you see, Sergei Nikolaevich, how hard it is with this? It’s not the first case, either. Yes, he may still be here. Didn’t they take the bodies into the workroom?” “Possibly,” responded the tall man and he tossed an instrument aside. “Fyodor!” shouted the professor. “No, you . . . you can’t go in there. I’ll go,” said Nikolka shyly. “It’s too much for you, young lady,” confirmed the guard. “Here,” he added. “You can wait here.” Nikolka took him aside, gave him two more banknotes, and asked him to find the young lady a clean stool. The guard, puffing on his hot shag tobacco, brought a stool from the room with the green lamp and skeletons. “You’re not a doctor, are you, sir? Doctors get used to it right away.” And opening the big door he flicked the switch. The globe went on overhead, under the glass ceiling. A heavy smell came from the room. There were white rows of zinc tables. They were bare, and somewhere water was dripping into a basin. Underfoot, the stone floor echoed. Nikolka, beleaguered by the smell, which had lingered here for centuries, probably, walked, trying not to think. He and the guard went out through doors at the other end of the room into a very dark hall, where the guard lit a small lamp, and then they went a little farther. The guard moved aside a heavy bolt, opened an iron door, and flicked another switch. Nikolka felt a blast of cold. Huge cylinders stood in the corners of the black room stacked to the top, so that they bulged, and they were full of bits and pieces of human flesh, scraps of skin, fingers, and pieces of shattered bone. Nikolka turned away, swallowed his saliva, and the guard said to him, “Take a whiff, sir.” Nikolka shut his eyes and greedily inhaled the unbearable pain—a whiff of sal ammoniac from a vial.

part three

283

As if in a kind of dream, Nikolka, screwing up his eyes, saw a light flare in Fyodor’s pipe and smelled the sweet aroma of the hot tobacco. Fyodor fussed with the lock on the elevator grille for a long time, opened it, and he and Nikolka stepped onto the platform. Fyodor jerked the handle, and the platform descended, creaking. An icy chill wafted up from below. The platform stopped. They entered a large storeroom. Nikolka vaguely saw something he had never seen before. Naked human bodies were stacked like logs, one on top of the other, emitting an unbearable stench that suffocated you in spite of the sal ammoniac. The soles of their feet, rigid or relaxed, jutted out. Women’s heads lay with mussed and tousled hair, and their breasts were crushed, creased, and bruised. “Well, now we’ll be turning them over, and you can take a look,” said the guard, leaning over. He grabbed a woman’s body by the leg, and because she was slick, she slipped easily to the floor and landed with a thud. To Nikolka she was terribly beautiful, like a witch, and sticky. Her eyes were open and looked straight at Fyodor. Nikolka had a hard time not looking at the scar that wrapped around her like a red ribbon so he turned aside. He was nauseated, and his head spun at the thought that he was going to have to turn over all the layers in this stack of sticky bodies. “You can stop,” he told Fyodor weakly, and he put the vial back in his pocket. “There he is. I found him. He’s on top. There. Over there.” Fyodor immediately moved over, working to keep his balance and not slip on the floor. He grabbed Nai-Turs by the head and gave him a good tug. A flat-chested, broad-hipped woman lay face down on Nai’s belly, and in her hair, like a shard of glass, a cheap forgotten comb shone dimly at the back of her head. Fyodor deftly pulled it out as he went, stuck it in his apron pocket, and picked Nai up under the arms. His head lolled back as it came off the stack, his pointy, unshaven chin jutted upward, and one arm slipped off.

284

white guard

Fyodor didn’t toss Nai the way he’d tossed the woman. Rather, gently, under the arms, bending the already relaxed body, he turned him around so that Nai’s feet raked the floor and he was facing Nikolka. “Take a look. Is this him? We don’t want any mistake.” Nikolka looked straight into Nai’s eyes, and Nai’s open glassy eyes looked back blankly. His left cheek had a barely noticeable trace of green, and across his chest and belly broad dark patches of what was probably blood had spread and congealed. “That’s him,” said Nikolka. Fyodor again dragged Nai under the arms onto the elevator platform and lowered him to Nikolka’s feet. The dead man flung his arms out again and stuck his chin up. Fyodor got in, moved the handle, and the platform ascended. That same night in the chapel, everything went just as Nikolka had hoped, and his conscience was perfectly clear, albeit sad and somber. In the bare, gloomy chapel at the anatomical theater, it had grown light. The lid had been shut on the coffin of some unknown man in the corner, but this heavy, unpleasant, and frightening neighbor corpse did not disturb Nai’s peace. Nai himself was much happier and had cheered up in his coffin. Nai had been washed by the pleased and talkative guards. Nai was clean in his tunic without his epaulets. Nai had a wreath on his brow and three lights at the head of his coffin. Most of all, Nai wore his colorful St. George’s ribbon, which Nikolka had put on his cold, clammy chest, under his shirt, with his own hands. Nai’s old mother turned her trembling head from the three lights to Nikolka and said to him, “My son. You have my thanks.” This made Nikolka cry again so he left the chapel for the snow. All around, above the anatomical theater’s yard, it was night, with snow, stars like crosses, and the white Milky Way.

part three

285

18

T

urbin began dying on the afternoon of December 22nd. The day was rather overcast and white and infused with the glimmer of Christmas, which was two days off. This glimmer was felt especially in the shine of the sitting room’s parquet floor, which had been polished by the joint efforts of Anyuta, Nikolka, and Lariosik, who had shuffled over it the night before, not making a sound. The lampshades, which had been cleaned by Anyuta’s own hands, also breathed Christmas. And finally, there was the scent of pine needles, and greenery brightened the corner near colorful Valentin, who had seemingly been forgotten forever above the exposed piano keys. For my sister’s sake, . . .

Elena emerged from Turbin’s door at about noon, her step not quite steady, and passed silently through the dining room, where Carp, Myshlaevsky, and Lariosik sat in total silence. None of them stirred as she passed, afraid of her face. Elena closed the door to her room, and the heavy drapery immediately fell still. Myshlaevsky shifted in his chair. “Look,” he began in a hoarse whisper. “The commander did everything fine, but he didn’t do so well by Alyosha.” Carp and Lariosik added nothing to this. Lariosik blinked, and violet shadows spread over his cheeks. “Damn,” added Myshlaevsky, who rose and, swaying, made it to the door, then stopped in indecision, turned, and winked at Elena’s door. “Listen, boys, you keep an eye on . . . Or else . . .” He hesitated and then went into the library, where his steps died. A little while later his voice reached them and also some strange whimpering sounds from Nikolka’s room. “Nikol’s crying,” whispered Lariosik in a desperate voice, and he sighed and tiptoed up to Elena’s door, leaned over to look through

286

white guard

the keyhole, but saw nothing. He looked back helplessly at Carp and started making hand signals, beckoning to him silently. Carp went up to the door and wavered but then nonetheless tapped softly at the door with his nail a few times and said quietly, “Elena Vasilievna, Elena Vasilievna.” “Oh, don’t you be afraid,” Elena’s slightly muffled voice reached them from behind the door. “And don’t come in.” Carp shrank back and so did Lariosik. They both returned to their seats—chairs by the Saardam stove—and fell silent. In Alexei’s room there was nothing for Turbin or anyone closely and intimately connected to Turbin to do. As it was, the three men made it crowded in there: that golden-eyed bear; the other young man, clean-shaven and slender, who looked more like a guards officer than a physician; and, finally, the third, the gray-haired professor. His art had revealed the unhappy news to him and the Turbin family right away, as soon as he had appeared on December 16th. He understood everything and said at the time that Turbin had typhus. And immediately the deep wound under his left arm seemed less important. Only an hour ago he and Elena had come out into the sitting room and there, to her importunate question, the question from her dry eyes, trembling lips, and loosened curls as well as her tongue, said that there was little hope and added, looking into Elena’s eyes, with the eyes of a very, very experienced man who therefore pitied everyone, “Very little.” Everyone well knew what that meant, as did Elena, that there was no hope whatsoever, which meant Turbin was dying. After this, Elena went into her brother’s bedroom and stood there for a long time, gazing at his face, and at that moment herself realized full well that this meant there was no hope. Even without possessing the art of the good, gray-haired old man, one could know that Dr. Alexei Turbin was dying. He lay there, still shedding heat, but that heat was now shaky and unstable and on the verge of dissipating. His face had already begun

part three

287

to reveal odd waxy tinges, and his nose had changed, sharpened, and a line of hopelessness was drawn right at the hook in his nose, which was now especially prominent. Elena’s feet were cold, and she felt a vague melancholy in the bedroom’s thick, purulent, camphorous air. This passed quickly, however. Something lay like a stone in Turbin’s chest, so he was breathing with a whistle, sucking the sticky stream of air that wouldn’t go as far as his chest through his bared teeth. He had lost consciousness long ago, and he neither saw nor understood what was going on around him. Elena stood there and watched. The professor touched her arm and whispered, “You go on, Elena Vasilievna. We’ll take care of everything.” Elena obeyed and left immediately. But the professor did nothing more. He removed his coat, wiped his hands with moist cotton balls, and took another look at Turbin’s face. A blue shadow was thickening at the folds of his lips and nose. “Hopeless,” he said very softly into the clean-shaven professor’s ear. “You, Dr. Brodovich, please stay with him.” “Camphor?” asked Brodovich in a whisper. “Yes, yes.” “By injection?” “No.” He looked out the window and paused. “Three grams all at once. And more often.” He paused again and added, “Call me in the event of an unfortunate outcome”—the professor whispered these words very cautiously so that even through the veil of delirium and haze Turbin would not perceive them—“at the clinic. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll be back immediately after my lecture.” From one year to the next, for as long as the Turbins could remember, the icon lamps had been lit at dusk on December 24th, and in the evening the warm, flickering lights were lit on the green pine boughs

288

white guard

in the sitting room. But now the perfidious gunshot wound and the wheezing typhus had swept all this aside and confused life and speeded up both life and the light from the icon lamp. Shutting the door to the dining room, Elena approached her bedside table, picked up the matches there, climbed on the chair, and lit the light in the heavy lamp hanging by a chain in front of the old, heavily framed icon. When the flame had matured and warmed, the crown above the Virgin’s swarthy face became golden and her eyes welcoming. Her head, tilted to one side, gazed at Elena. In the two squares of the windows it was a white, soundless December day, and in the corner the lithe flame suited the holiday eve. Elena climbed down from the chair, threw the scarf from her shoulders, and dropped to her knees. She moved the edge of the carpet aside, freeing up an area of the glossy parquet for herself, and silently made her first bow to the ground. Myshlaevsky walked through the dining room with puffy-lidded Nikolka behind him. They had just been in Turbin’s room. Returning to the dining room, Nikolka told his companions, “He’s dying.” And he took a breath. “Here’s the thing,” began Myshlaevsky. “Shouldn’t we call a priest? Eh, Nikol? I don’t think he should . . . without confession . . .” “We have to talk to Lena,” replied Nikolka fearfully. “How can we without her? There’s something going on with her.” “What does the doctor say?” asked Carp. “What can he say? There’s nothing more to say,” said Myshlaevsky hoarsely. For a long time they whispered urgently, and they could hear the pale, teary Lariosik sighing. They went in to see Dr. Brodovich again. He stepped out into the front hall, lit a cigarette, and whispered that these were the death throes and that, naturally, they could call a priest, that he didn’t care either way because the patient was unconscious anyway and it would do him no harm. “A silent confession.”

part three

289

They whispered and whispered but could not make up their minds, so they knocked at Elena’s door and her answer through the door was muffled: “Go away for now. . . . I’ll come out later.” So they went away. Elena, on her knees, looked up at the notched crown above the blackened face with the clear eyes and, reaching out, whispered, “This is too much grief you’re sending me, Mother Protector. You’re finishing off our family all in a single year. Why? You took our mother from us, and I have no husband, nor will I, that I understand. I understand now very clearly. And now you’re taking away our older brother. Why? How will Nikol and I manage with just the two of us? Look at what’s happening around us, just look. Mother Protector, have you really no pity? Perhaps we mortals are bad, but why must you punish us so?” She bowed again and avidly touched forehead to floor, crossed herself, and reaching out once again began to implore. “Immaculate Virgin, you are our one hope. You. Beg your Son, beg the Lord God, to send us a miracle.” Elena’s whisper became passionate and she began confusing her words, but her speech was continuous, like a stream. She dropped to the floor more and more often, tossing her head to drive back the lock of hair that had escaped her comb and was falling in her eyes. The day vanished in the window-squares. Vanished, too, was the white falcon. The weaving gavotte had passed unheard at three in the afternoon, and He whom Elena had summoned through the swarthy Virgin’s intercession had arrived in utter silence. He appeared beside his open grave, perfectly resurrected, and good, and barefoot. Elena’s chest expanded mightily, spots appeared on her cheeks, and her eyes filled with light and overflowed in a dry-eyed lament. She pressed brow and cheek to the floor and then, straining with all her soul, fixed her eyes on the light, insensible to the hard floor under her knees. The light swelled, the dark face etched into the crown came vividly to life, and the eyes drew more and more new words from Elena. There was per-

290

white guard

fect silence out the doors and windows, the day was darkening with terrible speed, and once more a vision arose—the glassy light of the heavenly dome, red and yellow sand mounds unlike anything she had ever seen, olive trees, and a black ageless silence and chill blowing into the heart of the cathedral. “Mother Protector,” Elena mumbled in the flame, “beseech Him. There He is. What would it cost you? Have pity on us. Pity us. Your days are coming, your celebration. Perhaps He will do a good deed, and I will pray to you for my sins. Let Sergei not return. Take him away, take him, but don’t punish us with this death. We are all of us guilty for this blood, but don’t punish us. Don’t. There He is, there. . . .” The fire began to flicker, and a single chain-like ray stretched and stretched, all the way to Elena’s eyes. At this her maddened eyes could see that the lips on the Virgin’s face, framed by a gold scarf, had separated, and her eyes had become so amazing that terror and intoxicating joy tore at Elena’s heart. She sank to the floor and did not rise again. Alarm raced through the apartment like a dry wind, and someone ran across the dining room on tiptoe. Someone else scratched at the door and there was a whisper: “Elena . . . Elena . . . Elena.” Wiping her cold, clammy brow with the back of her hand and tossing back the lock of hair, she rose, looking straight ahead, blindly, like a madwoman, not looking at the shining corner anymore, and went through the door with a perfectly steeled heart. Without waiting for permission, the door flung open, and Nikol appeared in the frame of the hanging. Nikolka’s eyes stared at Elena in horror and he gasped for air. “Elena, you know . . . don’t be afraid . . . don’t be afraid . . . go to him . . . I think . . .” Dr. Alexei Turbin, as waxy as a broken candle clutched in sweaty hands, threw his bony hands with their uncut nails out from under

part three

291

the blanket, and lay there, his sharp chin jutting upward. His body was bathed in sticky sweat, and his withered, clammy chest was heaving in the gaps of his shirt. He brought his head down, pressed his chin into his chest, unclenched his yellowed teeth, and opened his eyes. In them the torn curtain of haze and delirium still fluttered, but light was peeking through the clusters of black. In a very weak voice, hoarse and reedy, he said, “The crisis, Brodovich. What . . . will I survive? . . . Ah.” Carp was holding a lamp in trembling hands, and it illuminated the sunken bed and rumpled sheets with the gray shadows in the folds. The clean-shaven doctor squeezed the remains of Turbin’s flesh with a not entirely steady hand, inserting the needle of a small syringe in his arm. Tiny beads of sweat appeared on the doctor’s forehead. He was shaken.

19

P

eturra. He had a life in the City of forty-seven days. January of 1919 sailed over Turbin shackled in ice and dusted by snow, and February flew in and twisted into a snowstorm. On February 2nd, a dark figure whose shaven head was covered with a black silk skullcap passed through the Turbin apartment. It was the resurrected Turbin himself. He was dramatically altered. Two folds had adhered to his face, at the corners of his mouth, evidently for good, his skin was the color of wax, and his eyes had sunk in shadows and were unsmiling and somber now, also for good. In the sitting room, Turbin leaned against the window and listened, as he had forty-seven days before, and like then, when he had seen warm fires, snow, an opera in the windows, he could hear the distant thudding of cannons. Frowning sternly, Turbin leaned the full weight of his body on his cane and looked out. He saw the days magi-

292

white guard

cally lengthening, the light increasing, even though a blizzard had descended upon them, scattering millions of snowflakes. His thoughts flowed under his little silk cap—stern, clear, and joyless thoughts. His head felt light and empty, like a strange box on his shoulders, and these thoughts seemed to come from outside him and in whatever order they pleased. Turbin was happy for the solitude by the window, and so he looked. Peturra. Tonight, no later, the deed will be done and Peturra will be no more. Did he ever exist? Or did I dream it all? No one knows and there’s no way of telling. Lariosik is quite likeable. He’s no bother in the family, in fact, we need him. I should thank him for his care. And Shervinsky? Who the hell knows. That’s the punishment with women. Elena is bound to wed him, it’s inevitable. But what’s so good about him? His voice? He does have a superb voice, but ultimately a voice is something you can listen to without marrying, isn’t that so? Actually, it doesn’t matter. What does matter? Yes, Shervinsky was saying they have red stars on their tall hats. Is the City likely to see bad times? Oh yes. And so, tonight . . . The transports are already passing through the streets. Nonetheless, I’m going to go, I’m going to go this afternoon. I’m going to take back . . . R-ring. Grab him! I’m a murderer. No, I fired in battle. Or winged him. Who does she live with? Where is her husband? R-ring. Malyshev. Where is he now? He’s fallen through the earth. And Maxim . . . and Alexander I? His thoughts were flowing, but the bell interrupted them. There was no one in the apartment except Anyuta. Everyone else had gone to the City, hurrying to complete their errands in the light of day. “If it’s a patient, show him in, Anyuta.” “Fine, Alexei Vasilievich.” Someone followed Anyuta up the stairs, removed his mohair coat in the vestibule, and went into the sitting room. “If you please,” said Turbin. A scrawny, rather yellowish young man in a gray tunic rose from

part three

293

his chair. His eyes were dull and focused. Turbin, wearing his white coat, stepped aside and ushered him into his study. “Please, sit down. How may I be of service?” “I have syphilis,” said the visitor in a hoarse voice, and he looked at Turbin, directly and gloomily. “Have you already been treated?” “Yes, but badly and sloppily. The treatment helped very little.” “Who sent you to me?” “Father Alexander, the priest at the Church of St. Nicholas the Good.” “What’s that?” “Father Alexander.” “You mean you know him?” “He heard my confession, and my conversation with the holy old man brought me spiritual relief,” explained the visitor, gazing at the sky. “I shouldn’t be treated. That’s what I thought. I should patiently bear the trial God has sent me for my terrible sin, but the priest convinced me I was reasoning incorrectly. So I have obeyed him.” Turbin examined the patient’s pupils most carefully, first studying his reflexes. But the pupils of the mohair coat’s owner were normal, only filled with a mournful blackness. “Here’s the thing,” said Turbin, tossing aside his hammer. “You are obviously a religious man.” “Yes, I think about God and pray to Him day and night. He is my sole refuge and consolation.” “That’s very good, of course,” responded Turbin, holding his gaze, “and I respect that highly, but here is what I would advise you. While you are in treatment you must relinquish your persistent thoughts of God. The problem is that it has begun to smack of an idée fixe. And in your condition, that is harmful. You need air, movement, and sleep.” “At night I pray.” “No, that will have to change. You will have to cut back on your

294

white guard

hours of prayer. They will fatigue you, and you must have peace and quiet.” The patient looked down meekly. He stood in front of Turbin naked and submitted to an examination. “Have you ever sniffed cocaine?” “That was among the vile and sinful acts I indulged in. Not now.” What the hell? What if he’s a crook . . . and faking? I’d better watch to see the coats in the vestibule don’t go missing. Turbin drew a question mark on the patient’s chest with the hammer handle. The white mark turned red. “You must cease your preoccupation with religious questions. In general you should indulge less in distressing thoughts. Get dressed. Starting tomorrow I’ll begin injecting you with mercury, and in a week you’ll have your first transfusion.” “Fine, doctor.” “No cocaine. No drinking. No women either.” “I’ve withdrawn from women and poisons. I’ve withdrawn from evil men,” said the patient as he fastened his shirt. “The evil genius of my life, the Antichrist’s precursor, has gone to the city of the devil.” “My dear fellow, you can’t go on like this,” groaned Turbin. “You’ll end up in a psychiatric ward. What Antichrist are you talking about?” “I’m talking about his precursor, Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky, the man with the snake eyes and black side-whiskers. He has gone to the kingdom of the Antichrist, to Moscow, to give the signal and lead a horde of angels to this City in punishment for its inhabitants’ sins. As once before in Sodom and Gomorrah.” “Is it the Bolsheviks you’re calling angels? I agree. Nonetheless, you can’t go on like this. You’re going to take a bromide, one tablespoonful three times a day.” “He’s young. But the vileness in him is like in a thousand-year-old

part three

295

devil. He turns wives to degeneracy, youths to sin, and blows, blows the trumpets of battle of the sinful hordes and above the fields you can see the face of Satan following behind.” “Trotsky?” “Yes, that’s the name he’s taken. But his real name in Hebrew is Avaddon, Apollion in Greek, which means ‘the destroyer.’” “I’m telling you in all seriousness, if you don’t stop this, watch out . . . because your mania is developing.” “No, doctor, I’m fine. How much will you take, doctor, for your holy work?” “Please, at your every step there’s the word ‘holy.’ I don’t see anything particularly holy in my work. I take payment for a course of treatment. If you are going to be treated by me, leave a deposit.” “Very well.” The tunic came unbuttoned. “You might not have the money,” mumbled Turbin, looking at his worn knees. No, he’s no scoundrel . . . no . . . he’s off his rocker. “No, doctor, I’ll come up with it. You ease mankind’s suffering, too, in your own way.” “And sometimes very successfully. Please, take the bromide as prescribed.” “A complete cure, my esteemed doctor, is something we get only there.” Inspired, the patient pointed to the white ceiling. “But right now trials await us all, trials the likes of which we have never seen. And they will come very soon.” “Well, thanks but no thanks. I’ve already suffered quite enough.” “Oh, you mustn’t renounce them, you mustn’t,” muttered the patient as he pulled on his mohair coat in the vestibule. “For it is said: And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.”³ 3. Revelation 16:4.

296

white guard

I’ve heard that somewhere before. Ah yes, of course, I discussed it with the priest at great length. And now they’ve found each other. Marvelous. “I firmly advise you read less of Revelation. I repeat, this is harmful for you. It has been my honor. Tomorrow, at six o’clock. Please, Anyuta, see him out.” “You can’t refuse to accept this. I’d like the person who saved my life to have something to remember me by. This was my departed mother’s bracelet.” “There’s no need. Why are you doing this? I don’t want it,” Reiss replied and she put her hand up to ward off Turbin, but he insisted and fastened the heavy, dark, hammered bracelet on her pale wrist. This made her arm even prettier and indeed all of Reiss even more beautiful. Even in the dusk he could see her blushing. Turbin could not restrain himself. He put his right arm around Reiss’s neck, drew her toward him, and kissed her several times on the cheek. As he did so his weakened hands let go of his cane, which fell with a thud by the table leg. “Leave,” whispered Reiss. “It’s time . . . it’s time. There are transports on the streets. Be careful they don’t happen upon you.” “You are dear to me,” whispered Turbin. “Allow me to come see you again.” “Yes.” “Tell me why you’re alone and whose picture that is on the desk. The dark one with the side-whiskers.” “That is my cousin,” replied Reiss, and she cast down her eyes. “What is his name?” “Why do you want to know?” “You saved me. I want to know.” “Because I saved you, you have the right to know? His name is Shpolyansky.”

part three

297

“Is he here?” “No, he’s gone. He went to Moscow. What a curious man you are.” Something shuddered inside Turbin, and for a long time he looked at the black side-whiskers and black eyes. An unpleasant, gnawing thought lingered longer than others as he studied the forehead and lips of the Magnetic Triolet’s chairman. But the thought was vague. The precursor. That unfortunate man in the mohair coat. What’s bothering me? Eating away at me? What do I care? Angels . . . Oh, it doesn’t matter. Just so I can come here, to this strange and quiet little house with the portrait in the gold epaulets. “Go. It’s time.” “Nikol? Is that you?” The brothers ran smack into each other on the lower tier of the mysterious garden at the other little house. For some reason Nikolka was embarrassed, as if he had been caught red-handed. “Yes, it’s me, Alyosha. I went to see Nai-Turs’s family,” he explained and he looked as if he’d been caught on a fence stealing apples. “Well then, that’s a good deed. Did he leave behind his mother?” “And a sister, you see, Alyosha. . . . Basically.” Turbin cast a sidelong look at Nikolka and did not subject him to any more questioning. The brothers covered half their journey in silence. Then Turbin broke it. “It’s obvious, brother, Peturra flung you and me onto MaloProvalnaya Street. Right? Oh well, we’ll be spending some time here. What might come of that, no one knows. Right?” Nikolka listened with the greatest of interest to this enigmatic statement and asked in turn, “Were you visiting someone as well, Alyosha? On Malo-Provalnaya?”

298

white guard

“Oh yes,” replied Turbin, and he raised his coat collar, hid behind it, and did not make another sound until they reached home. On this important and historic day, everyone was at the Turbins’ for dinner—Myshlaevsky, Carp, and Shervinsky. This was their first meal together since the wounded Turbin had taken to his bed. And all was as before except for one thing: there were no somber, sultry roses, for the looted La Marquise had long ceased to exist and receded into the unknown distance, the same place, evidently, where Madame Anjou’s lay at rest. Nor was a single man sitting at the table wearing epaulets, which had slipped away somewhere and dissolved in the snowstorm outside. Everyone was listening to Shervinsky open-mouthed; even Anyuta came in from the kitchen and leaned in the doorway. “What were their stars like?” Myshlaevsky questioned him somberly. “Small, like insignia, five-pointed,” related Shervinsky, “on their tall fur hats. They say they’re coming in swarms. In short, they’ll be here at midnight.” “Why such precision? ‘At midnight.’” But Shervinsky didn’t have a chance to respond because, after ringing at the apartment, Vasilisa appeared. Bowing to the right and left and shaking hands sociably, especially Carp’s, Vasilisa proceeded directly to the piano, his welted boots creaking. Elena smiled brightly and held out her hand to him, and Vasilisa gave a funny little hop and kissed it. Damn, Vasilisa’s been so likeable since he had his money stolen, thought Nikolka and his thoughts turned philosophical. Maybe money keeps you from being pleasant. Here, for instance, no one has any money, and everyone’s pleasant. Vasilisa did not want tea. No, he thanked them most humbly. This was very very nice. Hee, hee. How cozy it all was here, despite the

part three

299

horrible times. Hee, hee. No, I thank you most humbly. Vanda Mikhailovna’s sister was visiting from the country and he had to get right back home. He had come to give Elena Vasilievna a letter. He had just now opened the box by the door and there it was. “I felt it was my duty. I’m honored to offer my greetings.” Vasilisa gave another little hop and said goodbye. Elena took the letter into her bedroom. A letter from abroad? Could it really be? Sometimes there are such letters. The moment you pick up the envelope you know what it is. But how did it get here? There is no post. Even from Zhitomir to the City you’re apparently taking your chances. It’s all so stupid and savage in this country. After all, there are opportunities on the train when it runs as well. Why, one wonders, can’t letters travel, why do they go missing? But this one here made it. Don’t worry, a letter like this will make it, it will find the right person. War- . . . Warsaw. Warsaw. But this isn’t Talberg’s handwriting. How dreadfully my heart is pounding. Though the lamp did have a shade, it was nasty in Elena’s bedroom, as if someone had pulled the colorful silk off and the harsh light were shining in her eyes and wreaking havoc on everything. Elena’s face changed to resemble her mother’s face in the carved frame from times gone by. Her lips were trembling, but contemptuous folds formed. Her mouth twitched. The sheet of gray ribbed paper came out of the torn envelope and lay in a patch of light. . . . I only just learned here that you and your husband have divorced. The Ostroumovs saw Sergei Ivanovich at the embassy. He’s leaving for Paris with the Hertz family. People are saying he’s going to marry Lidochka Hertz. How odd everything is in this confusion. I’m sorry you didn’t leave. I’m sorry for all of you left in the peasants’ clutches. The papers here are saying Petlyura might advance on the City. We hope the Germans don’t let him. . . .

Nikolka’s march jumped and knocked mechanically in Elena’s head, through the walls and door, which was draped with Louis XIV.

300

white guard

Louis was laughing, holding his beribboned walking stick to one side. A cane rapped at her door and Turbin entered, tapping. He cast a sidelong look at his sister’s face and his mouth twitched just as hers had. “From Talberg?” he asked. Elena didn’t answer. She was ashamed and distressed. But very quickly she took herself in hand and pushed the page toward Turbin. “It’s from Olya . . . in Warsaw.” Turbin’s eyes latched onto the lines and rushed along until they reached the end and then read the greeting one more time: Dear Lenochka, I don’t know whether this will reach you . . .

Various colors played on his face. There was his overall saffron tone, the pink at his temples, and his blue eyes, which were turning black. “It would be such a pleasure,” he said through clenched teeth, “to punch him in the face.” “For whom?” asked Elena, and she sniffed because her nose had filled with tears. “For me,” replied Dr. Turbin, dying of shame, “for ever having embraced him.” Instantly, Elena began to weep. “Do me this favor,” continued Turbin. “Get rid of this damned thing here.” He pointed his cane at the portrait on her desk. Sobbing, Elena handed Turbin the portrait. Turbin instantly ripped Sergei Ivanovich’s picture from the frame and tore it to pieces. Elena began howling like a peasant woman, her shoulders shaking, and she buried her face in Turbin’s starched chest. She looked sideways, superstitiously, and with horror at the brown icon in front of which the icon lamp in the gold filigree holder still burned. I prayed to you . . . I made promises . . . and now this . . . don’t be angry . . . don’t be angry, Mother of God, thought the superstitious Elena.

part three

301

Turbin took fright. “There there. They’ll hear, and what’s the good of that?” But in the sitting room they didn’t hear. Nikolka’s fingers had just finished playing a reckless march, “The Two-Headed Eagle,” on the piano, and there was the sound of laughter.

20

G

reat was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918, but more terrible still was 1919. On the night of February 2nd, at the approach to the Chain Bridge across the Dnieper, a man wearing a torn black coat, his face blue and red with patches of blood, was being dragged across the snow by two local lads whose Cossack leader was running alongside and beating him about the head with his muzzleloader. The bloodied man’s head lolled at every blow, but he had ceased to cry out and merely groaned. The muzzleloader bit hard and trenchantly into his shredded coat, and to each blow he responded hoarsely, “Oof . . . ah . . .” “Rotten Yid!” the Cossack leader screamed, crazed. “Take him to the stacks. Shoot him! I’ll teach you to skulk around. I’ll show you! What were you doing behind that stack? Spy!” But the bloodied man did not respond to the crazed Cossack, who ran ahead while his lads jumped back to dodge his shiny, airborne stick. The Cossack leader misjudged his blow and delivered a lightning strike with his muzzleloader to the man’s head. Something cracked inside, and the black man did not even respond with an “Oof.” He turned his arm and shook his head, his knees buckled, and he collapsed on his side. Making a broad sweep with his other hand, he threw it back as if trying to grab as much of the trampled and dungstained earth for himself as possible. His fingers bent crookedly and raked the dirty snow. Then the lying man jerked convulsively a few times in the dark puddle and fell still.

302

white guard

An electric streetlamp buzzed above the prostrate man at the entrance to the bridge, the worried shadows of topknotted haydamaks milled around the prostrate man, and higher up the sky was black with stars at play. At that moment, as the prostrate man gave up the ghost, the star Mars suddenly exploded in the frozen heights above the outskirts of the City, spurted fire, and issued a deafening blow. In the star’s wake, the black expanse on the far side of the Dnieper, the expanse that led to Moscow, struck with thunder, long and hard. And immediately a second star burst, but lower, right above the roofs buried under the snow. Immediately, the haydamak Blue Division moved off the bridge and raced for the City, through the City, and away forever. In the Blue Division’s wake, Kozyr-Leshko’s unit loped by on their freezing horses, and then a field-kitchen bounced past. And then everything vanished as if it had never been. All that remained was the cooling corpse of the Jew in black at the bridge’s approach, some trampled clumps of straw, and horse dung. Only the corpse bore witness that Peturra was not a myth, that he had indeed existed. . . . Br-rum . . . Th-rum . . . the guitar, the Turk . . . the wrought-iron streetlamp on Bronnaya . . . the girls’ plaits, the swirling snow, the gunshot wounds, the bestial howl in the night, the frost. . . . That meant it had happened. Oh that Grits, he’s off to work . . . But Grits’s boots are torn . . .

What had it all been for? No one could say. And would anyone pay for the blood? No. No one would. The snow would melt, the green Ukrainian grass would come up and plait the earth, lush sprouts would emerge, the heat would shim-

part three

303

mer above the fields, and no trace would remain of the blood. Blood is cheap in these dark red fields, and no one would ever redeem it. No one. The Saardam tiles had been kept stoked good and hot since evening, and ever since, deep into the night, they had kept the stove warm. The inscriptions had been wiped off the Shipwright of Saardam, and only one remained: Lena, I got a ticket for Aida.

The building on Alexeyevsky Slope, a building capped like a white general, had been asleep for a long time and snugly asleep. A drowsy slumber roamed behind the curtains and fluttered in the shadows. Outside, the bitter cold night flourished more and more triumphantly and hovered silently above the earth. The stars played, contracting and expanding, and the five-pointed star was especially high in the sky: Mars. Dreams settled in the warm rooms. Turbin slept in his bedroom and his dream hung above him like a blurred picture. The vestibule swayed and Alexander I burned the battalion lists in the stove. Yulia walked by beckoning and laughing, and shadows galloped past shouting, “Grab him! Grab him!” They were shooting but not making any noise, and Turbin was trying to run away from them, but his feet kept sticking to the MaloProvalnaya sidewalk, and Turbin was dying in his sleep. He awoke with a moan and heard Myshlaevsky snoring in the sitting room and the soft whistling of Carp and Lariosik from the library. He wiped the sweat from his brow, came to his senses, smiled wanly, and reached for the clock. The clock said three.

304

white guard

“They must be gone . . . Peturra. . . . He’ll never come back.” And he fell back to sleep. The night was blossoming. It was getting on toward morning, and the house slept buried under the shaggy snow. Vasilisa, tormented, slept between cold sheets, warming them with his skinny body. Vasilisa’s dream wound around awkwardly. In it, there hadn’t been any revolution, which was all nonsense, hogwash. In his dream. A dubious, shaky happiness washed over Vasilisa. As if it were summer and Vasilisa had just bought a garden and vegetables were popping up in it. The beds were covered in cheerful vines, and cucumbers peeked out like green figs. Vasilisa stood there in canvas trousers looking at the dear setting sun and scratching his belly. Then Vasilisa dreamed of his stolen clock, round as a globe. Vasilisa wanted to feel bad about the clock, but the sun was shining so nicely, he couldn’t. At that very same fine instant round pink piglets flew into the vegetable garden and started digging up the beds with their ugly snouts. Fountains of earth flew up. Vasilisa picked a stick up off the ground and was about to drive the piglets out when he realized that the piglets were terrifying: they had sharp tusks. They started to run at Vasilisa, actually leaping an arshin off the ground because they had springs inside them. Vasilisa howled in his sleep. A black post fell on the piglets and they dropped through the earth, and Vasilisa’s bedroom surfaced before him, dark and damp. The night was blossoming. A drowsy slumber passed over the city, whooshed like a blurry white bird, leaving Vladimir’s cross to one side, and fell on the other side of the Dnieper, in the very thick of the night, and sailed along in an iron arc. It floated as far as the Darnitsa Station and lingered there, hovering. An armored train was wait-

part three

305

ing on the third track. Gray armor covered its sides solidly, down to the wheels. The train was black, like an articulated block, and as it sprawled on the rails a fiery payload spilled from its belly, so that from the side it looked as if the train’s womb were crammed with red-hot coals. It wheezed softly and darkly, something trickled down its sides, and its snub snout was silent and squinted at the woods along the Dnieper. From the last platform, a wide muzzle in a cover aimed up at the blue-black heights about twelve versts away and straight at the midnight cross. The station was frozen in horror. The night pushed the fog head on and shone with the eyes of yellow fires dazed from the evening’s rumbling. The bustle on the station platforms was continuous, despite the predawn hour. Three windows burned brightly on the low-slung yellow telegraph office, and through the glass you could hear the incessant tapping of three telegraph keys. Men ran up and down the platform despite the smarting cold, figures in knee-length sheepskin coats, greatcoats, and black pea-jackets. Stretched out beside and behind the armored car, the troop train did not sleep but shouted back and forth and rattled the doors of the heated cars. Next to the armored train, though, alongside the locomotive and the train’s first armored car, a man wearing a long greatcoat, torn felt boots, and a domed hood with a point paced, like a pendulum. He dandled his rifle in his hand, like a child’s weary mother, and the sharp splinter of his black shadow and shadowy mute bayonet paced alongside him, between the rails, under the meager streetlamp, over the snow. The man was very tired and savagely, inhumanly cold. His hands, blue and cold, dug their wooden fingers painstakingly into his tattered sleeves, seeking refuge. From the uneven maw of his hood, framed in a fringe of white frost that revealed a shaggy, frozen mouth, peered eyes in a snowy fall of lashes. The eyes were blue, suffering, sleepy, exhausted.

306

white guard

The man paced methodically, his bayonet lowered, and all he could think about was when this freezing hour of torture would finally be over and he could leave this brutal ground and go inside, where the pipes hissed with divine heat, warming the troop train, and where in their crowded hovel he could flop down on his narrow cot, cling to it, and sprawl out. The man and his shadow paced from the fiery flash of the armored train’s belly to the dark wall of the first armored car, where there was a black inscription: “Proletarian” Armored Train

The shadow would grow, then hunch over in an ugly way, but always with a pointy head, and would dig into the snow with its black bayonet. Blue beams from a streetlamp hung at the man’s rear. Two blue moons that taunted rather than warmed burned on the platform. The man was searching for a fire but could not find one anywhere. His teeth were chattering and he had lost all hope of warming his toes but was wiggling them and constantly casting his gaze at the stars. What he liked most was looking ahead at Mars shining in the sky over the outskirts of town. So he did. His gaze traveled a million versts from his eyes and did not let the vibrant red star out of his sight for a moment. The star contracted and expanded, was obviously alive, and had five points. From time to time, exhausted, the man would lower his rifle into the snow butt first, stop, and drop off to sleep instantly and transparently, and the armored train’s black wall would not leave his dream, nor would certain sounds from the station. But new ones would join them. An incredible firmament arose in his sleep. All red and sparkling and all adorned with a vibrant glimmering of Marses. Instantly, the man’s soul brimmed with happiness. An unknown, incomprehensible rider in chain mail emerged and drew toward the man in a brotherly way. The black armored train seemed on the verge of disappearing in his dream and instead a village—Malye Chugry—rose up,

part three

307

buried in snow. He, the man, was outside Chugry and a neighbor and countryman was coming toward him. “Zhilin?” said the man’s mind without making a sound, without his lips, and immediately the ominous guard’s voice in his chest tapped out these words: “Your post . . . sentry . . . you’ll freeze.” The man made a superhuman effort, grabbed hold of his rifle, tossed it on his arm, and staggering, jerked his feet up and started walking again. Forward and back. Forward and back. The dreamy firmament had vanished, and the whole frozen world was clothed once again in the blue silk of a sky riddled with the deadly black trunks of cannons. Ruddy Venus played, and from time to time an answering star would flash from the blue moon of the streetlamp onto the man’s chest. The star was small and had five points, too. An uneasy slumber tossed and turned. It flew along the Dnieper. It flew past lifeless wharves and dropped down over Podol, where the lights had gone out a long time ago. Everyone was asleep. Only at the corner of Volynskaya, in a three-story stone building, in the librarian’s apartment, in a space that was as narrow as a cheap room in a cheap hotel, blue-eyed Rusakov sat by a lamp shaded with a glass hood. In front of Rusakov lay a heavy book in a tan leather binding. His eyes ran over the lines slowly and triumphantly. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. . . . And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. . . .

308

white guard And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.⁴

The more he read this astonishing book, the more his mind became like a gleaming sword probing the darkness. Illness and suffering were without consequence, nonexistent, to him. Infirmity fell away like the bark from a dried branch forgotten in the forest. He saw the blue, bottomless mist of the ages, a millennial corridor, and he felt not fear but rather a wise humility and awe. Peace came to his soul, and in this peace he reached these words: And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.⁵

The troubled gloom parted and allowed Lieutenant Shervinsky to come in and see Elena. His prominent eyes smiled saucily. “I’m a devil,” he said, and he clicked his heels, “but he’s not coming back, Talberg isn’t. So I’m going to sing for you.” He took a huge tinsel star out of his pocket and pinned it to the left side of his chest. Mists of sleep swirled around him, and out of the clouds his face appeared like a painted doll’s. He sang shrilly, not like in waking life. “Live! Let us live!” “But death will come. We’re going to die,” sang Nikolka, and then he walked in. He was carrying his guitar, but his neck was covered in blood and on his forehead was a yellow wreath with tiny icons. For a second

4. Revelation 20:12–13, 15, 21:1. 5. Revelation 21:4.

part three

309

Elena thought he was about to die and she burst into bitter sobs and woke up with a shout in the night. “Nikolka. Oh, Nikolka!” And for a long time, sobbing, she listened to the night murmur. And still the night sailed on. Finally, Petka Shcheglov in the annex had a dream. Petka was little, therefore he wasn’t interested in Bolsheviks or Petlyura or the Demon. The dream he had was as simple and joyful as the ball of the sun. Petka seemed to be walking through a large green meadow on which lay a shiny diamond ball that was larger than Petka. In his dream, when the adults needed to run, they stuck to the ground, groaning and casting about, trying to pull their feet out of the quagmire. Children’s feet are frisky and free, though. Petka ran up to the diamond ball and grabbed it in his arms, breathless with happy laughter. The ball showered Petka with sparkling spurts. That was Petka’s entire dream. Pleased, he burst out laughing in the night. And he thought the cricket chirring behind the stove was funny. Petka began to have other happy, light-hearted dreams, and the cricket kept singing his song, somewhere in that niche, in the white corner behind the bucket, enlivening the family’s sleepy, murmuring night. The last night blossomed. In its second half its heavy blue, God’s curtain, which enrobes the world, was blanketed with stars. In the infinite height beyond this blue curtain, at the holy gates, they seemed to be serving vespers. Lights were lit at the altar, and they appeared on the curtain as crosses, in clusters and squares. Above the Dnieper, Vladimir’s midnight cross rose from the sinful, bloodied, snowy earth to the black and gloomy heights. From a distance its crossbar seemed to disappear and merge with its vertical, transforming the cross into a sharp, menacing sword.

310

white guard

But this isn’t frightening. All this will pass. The sufferings, agonies, blood, hunger, and wholesale death. The sword will go away, but these stars will remain when even the shadows of our bodies and our affairs are long gone from this earth. There is not a man who does not know this. So why are we reluctant to turn our gaze to them? Why? 1923–1924 Moscow