The White Guard (20 page)

   'Is that Number 3 Company?'

   'Yes.'

   'Put the company commander on the line.' 'Who's speaking?' 'Headquarters.'

   'The company commander isn't back yet.' 'Who's that speaking?' 'Corporal Turbin.' 'Are you the senior rank?' 'Yes, sir.'

   'Get your squad out on to the street and into action right away.' So Nikolka mustered his twenty-eight men and led them out along the street.

   
#

   Until two o'clock that afternoon Alexei Turbin slept the sleep of the dead. He woke up as though someone had thrown water over him, glanced at the little clock on his bedside chair, saw that it was ten minutes to two, got up and began stumbling about the room. Alexei pulled on his felt boots, fumbled in his pockets, in his haste forgetting first one thing and then another - matches, cigarette case, handkerchief, automatic pistol and two magazines, - buttoned his greatcoat, then remembered something else, but hesitated - it seemed shameful and cowardly, but he did it nonetheless: out of his desk drawer he took his civilian doctor's identity card. He turned it around in his hands, decided to take it with him, but just at that moment Elena called him and he forgot it, leaving it lying on the desk.

   'Listen, Elena', said Alexei, nervously tightening and buckling his belt. An uncomfortable premonition had taken hold of him and he was tormented by the thought that apart from Anyuta, Elena would be alone in their big, empty apartment. 'There's nothing for it - I must go. Let's hope nothing happens to me. The mortar regiment is unlikely to operate outside the City limits and I will probably be in some safe place. Pray God to protect Nikolka. I heard this morning that the situation was a little more serious, but I'm sure we will beat off Petlyura. Goodbye, my dear . . .'

   Alone in the empty sitting-room Elena walked from the piano,

   where the open music of
Faust
had still not been tidied away, towards the doorway of Alexei's study. The parquet floor creaked beneath her feet and she felt very unhappy.

   
#

   At the corner of his own street and Vladimirskaya Street Alexei Turbin hailed a cab. The driver agreed to take him, but puffing gloomily, named a monstrous price and it was obvious that he would settle for no less. Grinding his teeth, Alexei Turbin climbed into the sled and set off towards the museum. There was frost in the air.

   Alexei was extremely worried. As he drove, he caught the sound of machine-gun fire that seemed to be coming from the direction of the Polytechnic Institute and moving in the direction of the railroad station. Alexei wondered what it might mean (he had slept through Bolbotun's afternoon incursion into the City) and he turned his head from side to side to stare at the passing sidewalks. There were plenty of people about, although there was an air of unease and confusion.

   'St . . . Stop . . .' said a drunken voice.

   'What does this mean?' asked Alexei Turbin angrily.

   The driver pulled so hard on the reins that Alexei almost fell forward on to his knees. A man with a very red face stood swaying beside the cab's shafts, holding the reins and making his way towards the passenger seats. A crumpled pair of lieutenant's shoulder-straps glittered on a short, fur-collared greatcoat. From two feet away Alexei was nauseated by a powerful reek of moonshine vodka and onion. With his free hand the lieutenant was waving a rifle.

   'Turn . . . turn around', said the red-faced drunk. 'Ta . . . take on a passenger.' For some reason the word 'passenger' struck the man as funny and he began to giggle.

   'What does this mean?' Alexei repeated angrily. 'Can't you see who I am? I'm reporting for duty. Kindly let go of this cab! Drive on!'

   'No, don't drive on . . .' said red-face in a threatening voice.

   Only then, blinking and peering, did he recognise the Medical Corps badges on Alexei's shoulder straps. 'Ah, doctor, we can travel together ... let me get in . . .'

   'We're not going the same way . . . Drive on!'

   'Now see here . . .'

   'Drive on!'

   The cabman, head hunched between his shoulders, was about to crack his whip and move off, but thought better of it. Turning round, he glared at the drunk with a mixture of anger and fear. However, red-face let go the reins of his own accord. He had just noticed an empty cab, which was about to drive away but did not have time to do so before the drunken officer raised his rifle in Both hands and threatened the driver. The terrified cabman froze to the spot and red-face staggered over to him, swaying and hiccuping.

   'I knew I shouldn't have taken you on, even for five hundred', Alexei's driver muttered angrily, lashing the rump of his ancient nag. 'What's in it for me if all I get's a bullet in my back?'

   Turbin sat glumly silent.

   'The swine . . . it's louts like him who give the whole White cause a bad name', he thought furiously.

   The crossroads by the opera house was alive with activity. Right in the middle of the streetcar tracks stood a machine-gun, manned by two small, frozen cadets, one in a black civilian overcoat with ear-muffs, the other in a gray army greatcoat. Passers-by, clustered in heaps along the sidewalk like flies, stared curiously at the machine-gun. By the corner druggist, just in sight of the museum, Alexei paid off his cab.

   'Make it a bit more, your honor', said the cab-driver, grimly insistent. 'If I'd known what it was going to be like! Look what's going on here.'

   'Shut up. That's all you're getting.'

   'They've even dragged kids into it now ...' said a woman's voice.

   Only then did Alexei notice the crowd of armed men around the museum, swaying and growing thicker. Machine-guns could be vaguely seen on the sidewalk among the long-skirted greatcoats.

   Just then came the furious drumming of a machine-gun from the Pechorsk direction.

   'What the hell's going on?' Alexei wondered confusedly as he quickened his pace to cross the intersection toward the museum.

   'Surely I'm not too late? . . . What a disgrace. . . . They might think I've run away . . .'

   Officers, cadets, and a few soldiers were crowding and running excitedly around the gigantic portico of the museum and the broken gates at the side of the building which led on to the parade-ground in front of the Alexander I High School. The enormous glass panes of the main doors shuddered constantly and the doors groaned under the pressure of the milling horde of armed men. Exct ed, unkempt cadets were crowding into the side door of the circular white museum building, whose pediment was embellished with the words:

   'For the Edification of the Russian People'.

   'Oh God!' exclaimed Alexei involuntarily. 'The regiment has already left.'

   The mortars grinned silently at Alexei, standing idle and abandoned in the same place as they had been the day before.

   'I don't understand . . . what does this mean?'

   Without knowing why, Alexei ran across the parade-ground to the mortars. They grew larger as he moved towards the line of grim, gaping muzzles. As he reached the first mortar at the end of the row, Alexei stopped and froze: its breech mechanism was missing. At a fast trot he cut back across the parade ground and jumped over the railings into the street. Here the mob was even thicker, many voices were shouting at once, bayonets were bobbing up and down above the heads of the crowd.

   'We must wait for orders from General Kartuzov!' shouted a piercing, excited voice. A lieutenant crossed in front of Alexei, who noticed that he was carrying a saddle with dangling stirrups.

   'I'm supposed to hand this over to the Polish Legion.'

   'Where is the Polish Legion?'

   'God only knows!'

   'Everybody into the museum! Into the museum!'

   'To the Don!'

   The lieutenant suddenly stopped and threw his saddle down on to the sidewalk.

   'To hell with it! Who cares now, anyway - it's all over', he screamed furiously. 'Christ, those bastards at headquarters.'

   He turned aside, threatening someone with a raised fist.

   'Disaster ... I see now . . . But how awful - our mortar regi-ment must have gone into action as infantry. Yes, of course. Presumably Petlyura attacked unexpectedly. There were no horses, so they were deployed as riflemen, without the mortars . . . Oh my God. ... I must get back to Madame Anjou . . . Maybe I'll be able to find out there. . . . Surely someone will have stayed behind. . . .'

   Alexei forced his way out of the milling crowd and ran, oblivious to everything else, back to the opera house. A dry gust of wind was Mowing across the asphalted path around the opera house and Mapping the edge of a half-torn poster on the theatre wall beside a dim, unlit side entrance. Carmen. Carmen . . .

   At last, Madame Anjou. The artillery badges were gone from the window, the only light was the dull, flickering reflection of something burning. Was the shop on fire? The door rattled as Alexei pushed, but did not open. He knocked urgently. Knocked again. A gray figure emerged indistinctly on the far side of the glass doorway, opened it and Alexei tumbled into the shop and glanced hurriedly at the unknown figure. The person was wearing a black student's greatcoat, on his head was a moth-eaten civilian cap with ear-flaps, pulled down low over his forehead. The face was oddly familiar, but somehow altered and disfigured. The stove was roaring angrily, consuming sheets of some kind of paper. The entire floor was strewn with paper. Having let Alexei in, the figure left him without a word of explanation, walked away and squatted down on his haunches by the stove, which sent a livid red glow flickering over his face.

   'Malyshev? Yes, it's Colonel Malyshev.' Alexei at last recognised the man.

   The colonel no longer had a moustache. Instead, there was a bluish, clean-shaven strip across his upper lip.

   Spreading his arms wide, Malyshev gathered up sheets of paper from the floor and rammed them into the stove.

   'What's happened? Is it all over?' Alexei asked dully.

   'Yes', was the colonel's laconic reply. He jumped up, ran over to a desk, carefully looked it over, pulled out the drawers one by one and banged them shut, bent down again, picked up the last heap of documents from the floor and shoved them into the stove. Only then did he turn to Alexei Turbin and added in an ironically calm voice: 'We've done our bit - and now that's that!' He reached into an inside pocket, hurriedly pulled out a wallet, checked the documents in it, tore up a few of them criss-cross and threw them on the fire. As he did so Alexei stared at him. He no longer bore any resemblance to Colonel Malyshev. The man facing Alexei was simply a rather fat student, an amateur actor with slightly puffy red lips.

   'Doctor - you're not still wearing your shoulder-straps?' Malyshev pointed at Alexei's shoulders. 'Take them off at once. What are you doing here? Where have you come from? Don't you know what's happened?'

   'I'm late, sir, I'm afraid . . .' Alexei began.

   Malyshev gave a cheerful smile. Then the smile suddenly vanished from his face, he shook his head anxiously and apologetically and said:

   'Oh God, of course - it's my fault ... I told you to report at this time. . . . Obviously you stayed at home all day and haven't heard . . . Well, no time to go into all that. There's only one thing for you to do now - remove your shoulder-straps, get out of here and hide.'

   'What's happened? For God's sake tell me what's happened?'

   'What's happened?' Malyshev echoed his question with ironical jocularity. 'What's happened is that Petlyura's in the City. He's reached Pechorsk and may even be on the Kreshchatik now for all I know. The City's taken.' Suddenly Malyshev ground his teeth, squinted furiously and began unexpectedly to talk like the old Malyshev, not at all like an amateur actor. 'Headquarters betrayed us. We should have given up and run this morning. Fortunately I

   had some reliable friends at headquarters and I found out the true state of affairs last night, so was able to disband the mortar regiment in time. This is no time for reflection, doctor-take off your badges!'

   '. . . but over there, at the museum, they don't know all this and they still think. . . .'

   Malyshev's face darkened.

   'None of my business', he retorted bitterly. 'Not my affair. Nothing concerns me any longer. I was there a short while ago and I shouted myself hoarse warning them and begging them to disperse. I can't do any more. I've saved all my own men, and prevented them from being slaughtered. I saved them from a shameful end!' Malyshev suddenly began shouting hysterically. Obviously his control over some powerful and heavily-suppressed emotion had snapped and he could no longer restrain himself. 'Generals - huh!' He clenched his fists and made threatening gestures. His face had turned purple.

   Just then a machine-gun began to chatter at the end of the street and the bullets seemed to be hitting the large house next door.

   Malyshev stopped short, and was silent.

   'This is it, doctor. Goodbye. Run for your life! Only not out on to the street. Go out there, by the back door, and then through the back yards. That way's still safe. And hurry.'

   Malyshev shook the appalled Alexei Turbin by the hand, turned sharply about and ran off through the dark opening behind a partition. The machine-gun outside stopped firing and the shop was silent except for the crackling of paper in the stove. Although he suddenly felt very lonely, and despite Malyshev's urgent warnings, Alexei found himself walking slowly and with a curious languor towards the door. He rattled the handle, let fall the latch and returned to the stove. He acted slowly, his limbs oddly unwilling, his mind numb and muddled. The fire was dying down, the flames in the mouth of the stove sinking to a dull red glow and the shop suddenly grew much darker. In the graying, flickering shadows the shelves on the walls seemed to be gently moving up and down. As he stared around them Alexei noticed dully that

   Madame Anjou's establishment still smelled of perfume. Faintly and softly, but it could still be smelled.