The White Guard (24 page)

   of an old man, and its teeth were crooked and yellow. The apparition was holding a large birdcage covered with a black cloth andan unsealed blue letter . . .

   'I must be still asleep', Nikolka thought, with a gesture trying to brush the apparition aside like a spider's web and knocking his fingers painfully against the wires of the cage. Immediately the bird in the cage screeched in fury, whistled and clattered.

   'Nikolka!' cried Elena's voice anxiously somewhere far, far away.

   'Jesus Christ', thought Nikolka. 'No, I'm awake all right, but I've gone mad, and I know why - combat fatigue. My God! And I'm seeing things too . . . and what's happening to my fingers? Lord! Alexei's not back yet . . . yes, now I remember . . . he's not back . . . he's been killed . . . Oh, God . . .'

   'With her lover on the same divan,' said the apparition in a tragic voice, 'where I once read poetry to her.'

   The apparition turned towards the door, obviously to someone who was listening, then turned round again and bore down on Nikolka:

   'Yes, on the very same divan . . . They're sitting there now and kissing each other . . . after I signed those IOU's for seventy-five thousand roubles without thinking twice about it, like a gentleman, because I am and always shall be a gentleman. Let them kiss!'

   'Oh, Lord!' thought Nikolka. His eyes stared and a shiver ran down his back.

   'I'm sorry', said the apparition, gradually emerging from the shimmering fog of sleep and turning into a real live body. 'Perhaps you may not quite understand. Look, this letter will explain it all. Like a gentleman, I won't hide my shame from anyone.'

   And with these words the stranger handed Nikolka the blue letter. Feeling he had gone quite insane, Nikolka took it and moving his lips, began to read the large sprawling, agitated handwriting. Undated, the letter on the thin sky-blue paper read thus:

   'Lena darling, I know how good-hearted you are and I am sending him to you because you're one of the family. I did send a telegram, but he'll tell you all about it himself, poor boy. Lariosik has had a most terrible blow and for a long time Iwas afraid he

   wouldn't get over it. You know he married Milochka Rubtsova a year ago. Well, she has turned out to be a snake in the grass! Take him in I beg you, and look after him as only you can. I will send you a regular allowance for his keep. He has come to hate Zhitomir and I can quite understand why. I won't write any more - I'm too upset. The hospital train is just leaving and he'll tell you all about it himself. A big, big kiss for you and Seryozha.'

   This was followed by an indecipherable signature.

   'I brought the bird with me', said the stranger, sighing. 'A bird is man's best friend. I know many people think they're a nuisance to keep, but all I can say is that at least a bird never does anyone any harm.'

   Nikolka very much liked that last sentence. Making no effort to understand it, he shyly scratched his forehead with the incomprehensible letter and slowly swung his legs down from the bed, thinking: 'I can't ask him his name ... it would sound so rude . . . What an extraordinary thing to happen . . .'

   'Is it a canary?' he asked.

   'It certainly is', replied the stranger enthusiastically. 'Actually it's not a hen-canary as most of them are, but a real cock-canary. I have fifteen of them at home in Zhitomir. I took them to mother, so that she can look after them. I'm sure that
beast
would wring their necks. He hates birds. May I put him down on your desk for a moment?'

   'Please do', Nikolka replied. 'Are you from Zhitomir?'

   'Yes, I am', answered the stranger. 'And wasn't it a coincidence - I arrived here at the same time as your brother.'

   'What brother?'

   'What d'you mean - what brother? Your brother arrived here as I did', the stranger replied with astonishment.

   'But what brother?' Nikolka exclaimed miserably. 'What brother? From Zhitomir!'

   'Your elder brother . . .'

   Elena's voice came piercingly from the drawing-room: 'Nikolka! Nikolka! Illarion - please! Wake him up!'

   'Tweet, tweet, tweee-ee, tik, tik, tikki', screeched the bird.

   Nikolka dropped the blue letter and shot like a bullet through the library and dining-room into the drawing-room, where he stopped in horror, his arms spread wide.

   Wearing another man's black overcoat with a torn lining and a pair of strange black trousers Alexei Turbin lay motionless on the divan below the clock. His face was pale, with a bluish pallor, and his teeth were clenched. Elena was fussing around him, her dressing-gown untied and showing her black stockings and lace-trimmed underwear. She was tugging at her brother's arms and at the buttons on his chest and shouting: 'Nik! Nik!'

   Within three minutes, a student's cap crammed on to the back of his head and his grey overcoat flapping open, Nikolka was running up St Alexei's Hill, panting hard and muttering: 'What if he's not at home? And this extraordinary creature in the jockey's boots has to turn up at a moment like this! It's out of the question to call on Dr Kuritsky after Alexei laughed at him for speaking Ukrainian . . .'

   An hour later a bowl was standing on the dining-room floor, full of red-stained water, scraps of red bandage lay scattered among fragments of broken crockery which the stranger in the yellow-topped boots had knocked down from the sideboard while fetching a glass. Everybody walked back and forth on the broken pieces, crunching them underfoot. Still pale but no longer looking blue, Alexei still lay on his back, his head on a cushion. He had recovered consciousness and was trying to say something, but the doctor, a man with a pointed beard with rolled-up sleeves and a pince-nez said as he wiped his bloodstained hands:

   'Be quiet, doctor . . .'

   Anyuta, the color of chalk and wide-eyed, and Elena, her red hair dishevelled, were lifting Alexei to take off his wet, bloodstained shirt with a torn sleeve.

   'Cut it off him, it's ruined anyway', said the bearded doctor.

   They cut up Alexei's shirt with scissors and took it off in shreds, baring his thin yellowish body and his left arm freshly bandaged up to the shoulder. The ends of splints protruded above and

   below the bandaging. Nikolka knelt down carefully undoing Alexei's buttons, and removed his trousers.

   'Undress him completely and straight into bed', said the pointed beard in his bass voice. Anyuta poured water from a jug on to his hands and blobs of lather fell into the bowl as he washed. The stranger stood aside from the confusion and bustle, at one moment gazing unhappily at the broken plates, at the next blushing as he looked at the dishevelled Elena who had ceased to care that her dressing-gown was completely undone. The stranger's eyes were wet with tears.

   They all helped to carry Alexei from the dining-room into his bedroom, and in this the stranger took part: he linked his hands under Alexei's knees and carried his legs.

   In the drawing-room Elena offered the doctor money. He pushed it aside. 'No really, for heaven's sake,' he said, 'not from a colleague. But there's a much more serious problem. The fact is, he ought to go into hospital . . .'

   'No,' came Alexei's weak voice, 'impossible. Not into hosp . . .'

   'Be quiet, doctor. We shall manage quite well without you. Yes, of course, I understand the situation perfectly well. . . God knows what's going on in the City at the moment . . .' He nodded towards the window. 'He's probably right, I suppose, hospital's out of the question at the moment. . . All right then, he'll have to be treated at home. I'll come again this evening.'

   'Is he in danger, doctor?' asked Elena anxiously.

   The doctor stared at the parquet floor as though a diagnosis were imprisoned in the bright yellow wood, grunted and replied, twisting his beard:

   'The bone is not fractured . . . H'm . . . major blood-vessels intact . . . the nerve too . . . But it's bound to fester . . . strands of wool from the overcoat have entered the wound . . . Temperature . . .' Having delivered himself of these cryptic scraps of thought, the doctor raised his voice and said confidently: 'Complete rest, . . . Morphia if he's in pain. I will give him an injection this evening. Food - liquids, bouillon and so on . . . He mustn't talk too much . . .'

   'Doctor, doctor, please - one thing: he begs you not to talk to anyone about this . . .'

   The doctor glowered sidelong at Elena and muttered:

   'Yes, I understand . . . How did it happen?'

   Elena only gave a restrained sigh and spread her hands.

   'All right', growled the doctor and sidled, bear-like, out into the lobby.

   In Alexei's small bedroom dark-colored blinds had been pulled down on the two windows that gave on to the glazed verandah. Twilight filled the room. Elena's golden-red hair seemed a source of light, echoed by another white blur on the pillow - Alexei's face and neck. The wire from the plug snaked its way to a chair, where the pink-shaded lamp shone and turned day into night. Alexei signed to Elena to shut the door.

   'Warn Anyuta not to talk about me . . .'

   'I know, I know . . . Try not to talk too much, Alyosha.'

   'Yes . . . I'm only whispering . . . God, if I lose my arm!'

   'Now, Alyosha, lie still and be quiet . . . Shall we keep that woman's overcoat here for a while?'

   'Yes, Nikolka mustn't try and take it back to her. Otherwise something might happen to him ... in the street. D'you hear? Whatever happens, for God's sake don't let him go out anywhere.'

   'God bless her', Elena said with sincere tenderness. 'And they say there are no more good people in this world . . .'

   A faint color rose in the wounded man's cheeks. He stared up at the low white ceiling then turned his gaze on Elena and said with a frown:

   'Oh yes - and who, may I ask, is that block-head who has just appeared?'

   Elena leaned forwards into the beam of pink light and shrugged.

   'Well, this creature appeared at the front door no more than a

   couple of minutes before you arrived. He's Sergei's nephew from Zhitomir. You've heard about him - Illarion Surzhansky . . . Well, this is the famous Lariosik, as he's known in the family.'

   'Well?'

   'Well, he came to us with a letter. There's been some drama. He'd only just started to tell me about it when she brought you here.'

   'He seems to have some sort of bird, for God's sake.'

   Laughing, but with a look of horror in her eyes, Elena leaned towards the bed:

   'The bird's nothing! He's asking to live here. I really don't know what to do.'

   
'Live
here?'

   'Well, yes . . . Just be quiet and lie still, please Alyosha. His mother has written begging us to have him. She simply worships him. I've never seen such a clumsy idiot as this Lariosik in my life. The first thing he did when he got here was to smash all our china. The blue dinner service. Now there are only two plates of it left.'

   'I see. I don't know what to suggest . . .'

   For a long time they whispered in the pink-shadowed room. The distant voices of Nikolka and the unexpected visitor could be heard through closed doors. Elena wrung her hands, begging Alexei to talk less. From the dining-room came a tinkling sound as Anyuta angrily swept up the remains of the blue dinner service. Finally they came to a whispered decision. In view of the uncertainty of life in the City from now on and the likelihood of rooms being requisitioned, and because they had no money and Lariosik's mother would be paying for him, they would let him stay, but on condition that he observed the rules of behaviour of the Turbin household. The bird would be put on probation. If it proved unbearable having the bird in the house, they would demand its removal and its owner could stay. As for the smashed dinner service, since Elena could naturally not bring herself to complain about it, and to complain would in any case be insufferably vulgar and rude, they agreed to consign it to tacit oblivion. Lariosik could

   sleep in the library, where they would put in a bed with a sprung mattress and a table.

   Elena went into the dining-room. Lariosik was standing in a mournful pose, hanging his head and staring at the place on the sideboard where a pile of twelve plates had once stood. His cloudy blue eyes expressed utter remorse. Nikolka, with his mouth open and a look of intense curiosity, stood facing Lariosik and listening to him.

   'There is no leather in Zhitomir', Lariosik was saying perplexedly. 'Simply none to be had at all, you see. At least of the kind of leather I'm used to wearing. I sent round to all the shoemakers, offering them as much money as they liked, but it was no good. So I had to . . .'

   As he caught sight of Elena Lariosik turned pale, shifted from foot to foot and for some reason staring down at the emerald-green fringe of her dressing-gown, he said:

   'Elena Vasilievna, I'm going straight out to the shops to hunt around, and you shall have a new dinner service today. I don't know what to say. How can I apologise to you? I should be shot for ruining your china. I'm so terribly clumsy', he added to Nikolka. 'I shall go out to the shops at once', he went on, turning back to Elena.

   'Please don't try and go to any shops. You couldn't anyway, because they're all shut. Don't you know what's happening here in the City?'

   'Of course I know!' exclaimed Lariosik. 'After all, I came here on a hospital train, as you know from the telegram.'

   'What telegram?' asked Elena. 'We've had no telegram.'

   'What?' Lariosik opened his wide mouth. 'You never
got
it? Aha! Now I realise', he turned to Nikolka, 'why you were so amazed to see me . . . But how . . . Mama sent a telegram of sixty -three words.'

   'Phew, sixty-three words!' Nikolka said in astonishment. 'What a pity. Telegrams are very slow in getting through these days. Or to be more accurate, they're not getting through at all.'

   'What's to happen then?' Lariosik said in a pained voice. 'Will you let me stay with you?' He looked around helplessly, and it