The White Guard (4 page)

   Talberg was running away. He straightened up, trampling on the pieces of torn paper littered around the heavy, closed trunk. He was fully dressed in his long greatcoat, neat black fur cap with ear-muffs and gray-blue Hetmanite badge, his sword belted to his side.

   On the long-distance departure track of the City's No. 1 Passenger Station the train was already standing, though still without a locomotive, like a caterpillar without a head. It was made up of nine cars, all shining with blindingly white electric light, due to leave at 1 a.m. carrying General von Bussow and his headquarters staff to Germany. They were taking Talberg with them; he had influence in the right quarters . . . The Hetman's ministry was a stupid, squalid little comic opera affair (Talberg liked to express himself in cutting, if unoriginal terms) - like the Hetman himself, for that matter. All the more squalid because . . .

   'Look, my dear (whisper) the Germans are leaving the Hetman in the lurch and it's extremely likely that Petlyura will march in ... and you know what that means . . .'

   Elena knew what that meant. Elena knew very well. In March 1917 Talberg had been the first - the first, you realise - to report to the military academy wearing a broad red armband. That was in the very first days of the revolution, when all the officers in the City turned to stone at the news from Petersburg and crept away down dark passages to avoid hearing about it. As a member of the Revolutionary Military Committee it had been none other than Talberg who had arrested the famous General Petrov. Towards the end of that momentous year many strange and wonderful things happened in the City and certain people began appearing -people who had no boots but who wore broad, baggy Ukrainian trousers called
sharovary
which showed beneath their army greatcoats. These people announced that they would not leave the City for the front on any account because the fighting was none of their affair and they intended to stay in the City. This irritated Talberg, who declared curtly that this was not what was required, that it was a squalid comic opera. And to a certain extent he turned out to be right: the results were operatic, though so much blood was shed that they were hardly comic. The men in baggy trousers were twice driven out of the City by some irregular regiments of troops who emerged from the forests and the plains from the direction of

   Moscow. Talberg said that the men in
sharovary
were mere adventurers and that the real roots of legitimate power were in Moscow, even though these roots were Bolshevik roots.

   But one day in March the Germans arrived in the City in their gray ranks, with red-brown tin bowls on their heads to protect them from shrapnel balls; and their hussars wore such fine busbies and rode on such magnificent horses that Talberg at once realised where the roots of power grew now. After a few heavy salvoes from the German artillery around the City the men from Moscow vanished somewhere beyond the blue line of the forests to cat carrion, and the men in
sharovary
slunk back in the wake of the Germans. This was a great surprise. Talberg smiled in embarrassment, but he was not afraid because as long as the Germans were there the
sharovary
behaved themselves, did not dare to kill anyone and even walked the streets with a certain wariness, like guests who were none too sure of themselves. Talberg said they had no roots, and for about two months he had no work to do. One day when he walked into Talberg's room, Nikolka Turbin could not help smiling: Talberg was seated and writing out grammatical exercises on a large sheet of paper, whilst in front of him lay a thin text-book printed on cheap gray paper:

   Ignatii Perpillo

   UKRANIAN GRAMMAR

   At Easter in April 1918 the electric arc-lights hummed cheerfully in the circus auditorium and it was black with people right up to the domed roof. A tall, crisp, military figure, Talberg stood in the arena counting the votes at a show of hands. This was the end of the
sharovary,
there was to be a Ukrainian state but a 'hetmanite' Ukraine - they were electing the 'Hetman of All the Ukraine'.

   'We're safely insulated from that bloody comic opera in Moscow', said Talberg, his strange Hetmanite uniform clashing with the dear familiar old wallpaper in the Turbins' apartment. The clock's tonk-tank was choked with scorn and the water drained away from the bowl. Nikolka and Alexei found that they had nothing in common with Talberg. Talking to him would in any case have been extremely difficult because Talberg lost his temper whenever the conversation turned to politics and especially on those occasions when Nikolka was tactless enough to begin with the remark: 'What was it that you were saying in March, Sergei . . .?' Then Talberg would instantly bare his strong, widely-spaced teeth, yellow sparks would flash in his eyes and he would start to lose his temper. Conversation thus went out of fashion.

   Comic opera . . . Elena knew what those words meant on her husband's puffy, Baltic-German lips. But now the comic opera was becoming a real threat, and this time not to the
sharovary,
not to the Bolsheviks in Moscow, not just to other people, but to Sergei Talberg himself. Every man has his star and it was with good reason that court astrologers of the Middle Ages cast their horoscopes to predict the future. They were wise to do so. Sergei Talberg, for instance, had been born under a most unfortunate, most unsuitable star. Life would have been fine for Talberg if everything had proceeded along one definite straight line, but events in the City at that time did not move in a straight line; they followed fantastic zig-zags and Sergei Talberg tried in vain to guess what was coming next. He failed. Still far from the City, maybe a hundred miles away, a railroad car stood on the tracks, brilliantly lit. In that car, like a pea in a pod, a clean-shaven man sat talking, dictating to his clerks and his aides. Woe to Talberg if that man were to reach the City - and he might! Everybody had read a certain issue of the
Gazette,
everybody knew the name of Captain Talberg as a man who had voted for the Hetman. In that newspaper there was an article written by Sergei Talberg, and the article declared:

   'Petlyura is an adventurer, who threatens the country with destruction from his comic-opera regime . . .'

   'You must understand, Elena, that I can't take the risk of having to go into hiding and facing the uncertainties of the immediate future here. Don't you agree?'

   Elena said nothing in reply, being a woman of pride.

   'I think,' Talberg went on, 'that I shall have no difficulty in getting through to the Don by way of Roumania and the Crimea.

   Von Bussow has promised me his co-operation. They appreciate me. However, the German occupation has deteriorated into a comic opera. The Germans are leaving. (Whisper) By my calcula-tions Petlyura will collapse soon, too. The real power is in the South - Denikin. You realise, of course, that I can't afford not to be there when the army of the forces of law and order is being forned. Not to be there would ruin my career - especially as Denikin used
to
be my divisional commander. I'm convinced that in three months' time - well, by May at the latest - we shall be back in the City. Don't be afraid. No one is going to touch you and in a real emergency you still have your passport in your maiden name. I shall ask Alexei to make sure that no possible harm comes to you.'

   Elena looked up with a jerk.

   'Just a moment,' she said, 'shouldn't we tell Alexei and Nikolka at once that the Germans are betraying us?'

   Talberg blushed deeply.

   'Of course, of course, I will certainly . . . On second thoughts, you had better tell them yourself. Although it makes very little real difference to the situation.'

   For an instant Elena had a strange feeling, but she had no time to reflect on it. Talberg was kissing her and there was a moment when his two-layered eyes showed only a single emotion -tenderness. Elena could not prevent herself from bursting into tears, although she cried silently. She was, after all, her mother's daughter and a strong woman. Then came Talberg's leave-taking with her brothers in the living-room. A pinkish light shone from the bronze lampstand, flooding the corner of the room. The piano bared its familiar white teeth and the score of
Faust
lay open at the passage where the flamboyant lines of notes weave across the stave in thick black clusters and the gaily-costumed, bearded Valentine sings:

   'I beg you, beg you for my sister's sake, Have mercy on her - mercy! Guard her well, I pray you.'

   At that moment even Talberg, who had never been a prey to sentimental feelings, recalled the dense black chords and the tattered pages of the age-old family copy of
Faust.
Never again would Talberg hear the cavatina 'Oh God Almighty', never again hear Elena accompanying Shervinsky as he sang. But long after the Turbins and Talbergs have departed this life the keys will ring out again and Valentine will step up to the footlights, the aroma of perfume will waft from the boxes and at home beautiful women under the lamplight will play the music, because
Faust,
like the Shipwright of Saardam, is quite immortal.

   Talberg stood beside the piano as he said his piece. The brothers listened in polite silence, trying not to raise their eyebrows - the younger from pride, the elder from lack of courage. Talberg's voice shook.

   'You will look after Elena, won't you?' The upper layer of Talberg's eyes looked at them anxiously, pleadingly. He stuttered, glanced awkwardly at his pocket watch and said nervously: 'It's time to go.'

   Elena embraced her husband, hastily made a fumbling sign of the cross over him and kissed him. Talberg brushed his brothers-in-law on the cheek with his clipped, bristly moustache. With a nervous glance through his wallet he checked the thick bundle of documents in it, re-counted the thinner wad of Ukrainian money and German marks; then smiling tensely he turned and went. The light went on in the lobby, there came the sound of his trunk bumping downstairs. Leaning over the banisters, the last thing that Elena saw was the sharp peak of his hood.

   At one o'clock in the morning an armored train like a gray toad pulled out from Track 5, through the dark graveyards of rows of idle, empty freight cars, snorting and picking up speed as it spat hot sparks from its ash-pit and hooted like a wild beast. Covering six miles in seven minutes it reached Post-Volynsk with a roar and a rattle and a flash of its lights, arousing a vague sense of hope and pride in the cadets and officers huddled in railroad cars or on guard duty. Without slowing down the armored train was switched off the main line and headed boldly away towards the German frontier. After it, ten minutes later, a passenger train with a colossal locomotive and dozens of brilliantly-lit windows passed through Post-Volynsk. Massive as obelisks and swathed to the eyes, German sentries flashed by on the platforms at the end of the cars, their black bayonets glinting. Hunched up from the cold and lit by rapid shafts of light from the windows, the switchmen watched as the long pullman cars rattled over the junction. Then everything vanished and the cadets were seized with envy, resentment and alarm.

   'Ah, the swine . . .' a voice groaned from the switches as the blistering gust of a snowstorm lashed the railroad cars housing the cadets. That night Post was snowed up.

   In the third car back from the locomotive, in a compartment upholstered in checkered calico, smiling politely and ingratiatingly, Talberg sat opposite a German lieutenant and spoke German.

   'Oh, ja', drawled the fat lieutenant from time to time and chewed his cigar.

   When the lieutenant had fallen asleep, when all the compartment doors were shut and all that could be heard in the warm, brilliantly lit car was the monotonous click of the wheels, Talberg went out into the corridor, opened one of the pale-colored blinds with their transparent letters 'S. - W.R.R.' and stared long into the darkness. Occasional sparks, snow flickered past, and in front the locomotive raced on and with a howl that was so sinister, so threatening that even Talberg was unpleasantly affected by it.

   In the downstairs apartment at No. 13, which belonged to Vasily Lisovich, engineer and householder, absolute silence reigned at that hour of the night, a silence only occasionally dis-turbed by a mouse in the dining-room. Busily and insistently the mouse gnawed and gnawed away at an old rind of cheese, cursing the meanness of the engineer's wife, Wanda Mikhailovna. The object of this abuse, the bony and jealous Wanda, was sound asleep in the dark bedroom of their damp, chilly apartment. Lisovich himself was still awake and ensconced in his study, a draped, book-lined, over-furnished and consequently extremely cosy little room. The standard lamp, in the shape of an Egyptian queen and shaded in green flowered material, lit the room with a gentle mysterious glow; there was something mysterious, too, about the engineer himself in his deep leather armchair. The mystery and ambiguity of those uncertain times was expressed above all in the fact that the man in the armchair was not Vasily Lisovich at all, but Vasilisa ... He, of course, called himself Lisovich, many of the people he met called him Vasily, but only to his face. Behind his back no one ever called him anything but Vasilisa. This had come about because since January 1918, when the strangest things began happening in the City, the owner of No. 13 altered his distinctive signature, and from a vague fear of committing himself to some document that might be held against him in the future, instead of a bold 'V. Lisovich' he began signing his name on questionnaires, forms, certificates, orders and ration cards as 'Vas. Lis.'

   On January 18th 1918, with a sugar ration card signed by Vasily Lisovich, instead of sugar Nikolka had received a terrible blow on his back from a stone on the Kreshchatik and had spat blood for two days. (A shell had burst right over the heads of some brave people standing in line for sugar.) When he reached home, clutching the wall and turning green, Nikolka had managed to smile so as not to alarm Elena. Then he had spat out a bowlful of blood and when Elena shrieked: 'God - what's happened to you?' he replied: 'It's Vasilisa's sugar, damn him!' After that he turned white and collapsed. Nikolka was out of bed again two days later, but Vasily Lisovich had ceased to exist. At first only the people living at No. 13, then soon the whole City began calling him Vasilisa, until the only person who introduced him as Lisovich was the bearer of that girl's name himself.