Part 2 (1/2)

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.

Three.

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 doc.u.ment 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 sh.e.l.l 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: 'G.o.d - what's happened to you?' he replied: 'It's Vasilisa's sugar, d.a.m.n 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.

After making sure that the street was quiet at last, with not even the occasional creak of sleigh-runners to be heard, and listening attentively to the whistling sound coming from his wife in the bedroom, Vasilisa went out into the lobby. There he carefully checked the locks, bolt, chain and door-handle and returned to his study, where he produced four s.h.i.+ny safety-pins from a drawer of his ma.s.sive desk. He tiptoed away somewhere into the darkness and returned with a rug and a towel. Again he stopped and listened, even putting his finger to his lips. He pulled off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and took down from a shelf a pot of glue, a length of wallpaper neatly rolled into a tube, and a pair of scissors. Then he sidled up to the window and, s.h.i.+elded by his hand, looked out into the street. With the aid of the safety-pins he hung the towel over the top half of the left-hand window and the rug over the right-hand window, arranging them with care lest there should be any cracks. Taking a chair he climbed up on it and fumbled for something above the topmost shelf of books, ran the point of a little knife vertically down the wallpaper, then sideways at a right angle; next he inserted the blade under the cut to reveal a small, neat hiding-place the size of two bricks, made by himself during the previous night. He removed the cover - a thin rectangle of zinc - climbed down, glanced fearfully at the windows and patted the towel. From the depths of a lower drawer, which opened with a tinkling double turn of the key, there came to light a package carefully wrapped in newspaper, sealed and tied crisscross with string. This Vasilisa immured in his secret cache and replaced the cover. For a long while he stood on the red cloth of the chair-cover and cut out pieces of wallpaper until they exactly fitted the pattern. Smeared with glue, they covered the gap perfectly: half a spray of flowers matching its other half, square matching square. When the engineer climbed down from his chair, he was positive that there was not a sign of his secret hiding-place in the wall. Vasilisa rubbed his hands with exultation, crumpled up the sc.r.a.ps of wallpaper and burned them in the little stove, then pounded up the ashes and hid the glue.

Out in the black and deserted street a gray, ragged, wolf-like creature slid noiselessly down from the branches of an acacia, where he had been sitting for half an hour, suffering badly from the cold but avidly watching Lisovich at work through a tell-tale gap above the upper edge of the towel. It had been the oddness of a green towel being draped over the window which had attracted the snooper's attention. Dodging behind snowdrifts, the figure disappeared up the street, whence it loped through a maze of side-streets until the storm, the dark and the snow swallowed it up and obliterated all its traces.

Night. Vasilisa in his armchair. In the green shadows he looks exactly like the Taras Bulba. Long, bushy, drooping moustaches: he's no Vasilisa - he's a man, dammit! After another gentle tinkle of keys in his desk drawer, there lay on the red cloth several wads of oblong bills like green stage-money, with a legend in Ukrainian: State Bank Certificate 50 Roubles Circulates at Parity with Credit Notes Pictured on one side of the bill was a Ukrainian peasant with drooping moustaches and armed with a spade, and a peasant woman with a sickle. On the reverse in an oval frame were the reddish-brown faces of the same two peasants magnified in size, the man complete with typical long moustaches. Above it all was the warning inscription: The Penalty for Forgery is Imprisonment and beneath it the firm signature: Director of the State Bank: Lebid- Yurchik.

Mounted on his horse, a bronze Alexander II, his face framed in a ragged lather of metal sideburns, glanced angrily at Lebid-Yurchik's work of art and smirked at the Egyptian queen disguised as a lampstand. From the wall one of Vasilisa's ancestors, a civil servant painted in oils with the Order of St Stanislav around his neck, stared down in horror at the banknotes. The spines of Goncharov and Dostoyevsky glowed gently in the green light, whilst nearby the green and black volumes of Brockhaus and Ephron's encyclopedia stood drawn up in mighty ranks like Horse Guards on parade. A world of comfort and security.

The five-per-cent state bonds were safely hidden in the secret cache under the wallpaper, along with fifteen Tsarist 1000-rouble bills, nine 500-rouble bills, twenty-five silver spoons, a gold watch and chain, three cigar-cases (presents 'To our Esteemed Colleague', although Vasilisa did not smoke), fifty gold 10-rouble pieces, a pair of salt-cellars, a six-person canteen of silver cutlery and a silver lea-strainer. The second cache was a large one, outside in the woodshed-two paces straight forward from the doorway, one pace to the left, then one pace on from the chalk-mark on one of the planks of the wall. Everything was packed in tin boxes that had once held Einem's Biscuits, wrapped in oilcloth with tarred seams, then buried five feet deep.

The third cache was in the loft, a hollow in the plaster under a beam six feet north-east of the chimney-stack. In this were a pair of sugar-tongs, one hundred and eighty-three gold 10-rouble pieces and state bonds to a nominal value of twenty-five thousand roubles.

Lebid-Yurchik was for current expenses.

Vasilisa glanced around, as he always did when counting money, licked his finger and started to flick through the wad of stage money. Suddenly he went pale.

'Forgeries', he growled angrily, shaking his head. 'Disgraceful!'

Vasilisa's blue eyes glowered morosely. In the third bundle of ten bills there was one forgery, in the fourth - two, in the sixth -two, in the ninth three bills in succession were unmistakeably of the kind for which Lebid-Yurchik threatened to imprison him. A hundred and thirteen bills in all and, if you please, eight of them with obvious signs of being forged. The peasant had a sort of gloomy look instead of being cheerful, they lacked the proper quotation marks and colon, and the paper was better than Lebid's. Vasilisa held one up to the light and an obvious forgery of Lebid's signature shone through from the other side.

'One of these will do for the cab fare tomorrow', said Vasilisa aloud to himself. 'And I've got to go down to the market, anyway. They don't look too hard at them there.'

He carefully put the forged notes aside, to be given to the cab- driver and used in the market, then locked the wad in the drawer with a tinkle of keys. He shuddered. Footsteps were heard along the ceiling overhead, laughter and m.u.f.fled voices broke the deathly silence. Vasilisa said to Alexander II: 'You see - no peace . . .'

There was silence again upstairs. Vasilisa yawned, stroked his wispy moustache, took down the rug and the towel from the windows and switched on the light in the sitting-room, where a large phonograph horn shone dully. Ten minutes later the apartment was in complete darkness. Vasilisa was asleep beside his wife in their damp bedroom that smelled of mice, mildew and a peevish sleeping couple. In his dream Lebid-Yurchik came riding up on a horse and a gang of thieves with skeleton keys discovered his secret hiding-place. The jack of hearts climbed up on a chair, spat at Vasilisa's moustache and fired at him point-blank. In a cold sweat Vasilisa leaped up with a shriek and the first thing that he heard was the mouse family hard at work in the dining-room on a packet of rusks; then laughter and the gentle sound of a guitar came through the ceiling and the carpets . . . Suddenly from the floor above a voice of unusual strength and pa.s.sion struck up, and the guitar swung into a march.

'There's only one thing to be done - turn them out of the apartment', said Vasilisa as he m.u.f.fled himself up in the sheets. 'This is outrageous. There's no peace day or night.'

'The guards' cadets Are marching along -Swinging along, Singing a song.'

'Still, in case anything happened . . . Times are bad enough. If you kick them out you never know who you'll get instead - they are at least officers and if anything happened, they would defend us . . . Shoo!' Vasilisa shouted at the furiously active mouse.

The sound of a guitar . . .

Four lights burning in the dining-room chandelier. Pennants of blue smoke. The french windows on to the verandah completely shut out by cream-colored blinds. Fresh bunches of hot-house flowers against the whiteness of the tablecloth, three bottles of vodka and several narrow bottles of German white wine. Long-stemmed gla.s.ses, apples in glittering cut-crystal vases, slices of lemon, crumbs everywhere, tea ...

On the armchair a crumpled sheet of the humorous magazine Peep-show. Peep-show. Heads muzzy, the mood swinging at one moment towards the heights of unreasoning joy, at the next towards the trough of despondency. Singing, pointless jokes which seemed irresistibly funny, guitar chords, Myshlaevsky laughing drunkenly. Elena had not had time to collect herself since Talberg's departure . . . white wine does not remove the pain altogether, only blunts it. Elena sat in an armchair at the head of the table. Opposite her at the other end was Myshlaevsky, s.h.a.ggy and pale in a bathrobe, his face blotchy with vodka and insane fatigue. His eyes were red-ringed from cold, the horror he had been through, vodka and fury. Down one of the long sides of the table sat Alexei and Nikolka, on the other Leonid Shervinsky, one-time First Lieutenant in His Majesty's Own Regiment of Lancers and now an aide on the staff of Prince Belorukov, and alongside him Second Lieutenant Fyodor Stepanov, an artilleryman, still known by his high school nickname of 'Karas'-the carp. Short, stocky and really looking very like a carp, Karas had b.u.mped into Shervinsky at the Turbins' front door about twenty minutes after Talberg had left. Both had brought some bottles with them. In Shervinsky's package were four bottles of white wine, while Karas had two bottles of vodka. Beside that Shervinsky was loaded with an enormous bouquet, swathed in three layers of paper - roses for Elena, of course. Karas gave him his news on the doorstep: he was back in artillery uniform. He had lost patience with studying at the university, which was pointless now anyway; everybody had to go and fight, and if Petlyura ever got into the City time spent at the university would be worse than useless. It was everyone's duty to volunteer and the mortar regiment needed trained gunnery officers. The commanding officer was Colonel Malyshev, the regiment was a fine one - all his friends from the university were in it. Karas was in despair because Myshlaevsky had gone off to join that crazy infantry detachment. All that death-or-glory stuff was idiotic, and now where the h.e.l.l was he? Maybe even killed at his post somewhere outside the City . . . Heads muzzy, the mood swinging at one moment towards the heights of unreasoning joy, at the next towards the trough of despondency. Singing, pointless jokes which seemed irresistibly funny, guitar chords, Myshlaevsky laughing drunkenly. Elena had not had time to collect herself since Talberg's departure . . . white wine does not remove the pain altogether, only blunts it. Elena sat in an armchair at the head of the table. Opposite her at the other end was Myshlaevsky, s.h.a.ggy and pale in a bathrobe, his face blotchy with vodka and insane fatigue. His eyes were red-ringed from cold, the horror he had been through, vodka and fury. Down one of the long sides of the table sat Alexei and Nikolka, on the other Leonid Shervinsky, one-time First Lieutenant in His Majesty's Own Regiment of Lancers and now an aide on the staff of Prince Belorukov, and alongside him Second Lieutenant Fyodor Stepanov, an artilleryman, still known by his high school nickname of 'Karas'-the carp. Short, stocky and really looking very like a carp, Karas had b.u.mped into Shervinsky at the Turbins' front door about twenty minutes after Talberg had left. Both had brought some bottles with them. In Shervinsky's package were four bottles of white wine, while Karas had two bottles of vodka. Beside that Shervinsky was loaded with an enormous bouquet, swathed in three layers of paper - roses for Elena, of course. Karas gave him his news on the doorstep: he was back in artillery uniform. He had lost patience with studying at the university, which was pointless now anyway; everybody had to go and fight, and if Petlyura ever got into the City time spent at the university would be worse than useless. It was everyone's duty to volunteer and the mortar regiment needed trained gunnery officers. The commanding officer was Colonel Malyshev, the regiment was a fine one - all his friends from the university were in it. Karas was in despair because Myshlaevsky had gone off to join that crazy infantry detachment. All that death-or-glory stuff was idiotic, and now where the h.e.l.l was he? Maybe even killed at his post somewhere outside the City . . .

But Myshlaevsky was here - upstairs! At her mirror, with its frame of silver foliage, in the half-light of the bedroom the lovely Elena hastily powdered her face and emerged to accept her roses. Hurrah! They were all here. Karas' golden crossed cannon on his crumpled shoulder-straps and carefully pressed blue breeches. A shameless spark of joy flashed in Shervinsky's little eyes at the news of Talberg's departure. The little hussar immediately felt himself in excellent voice and the pink-lit sitting-room was filled with a positive hurricane of gorgeous sound as Shervinsky sang an epithalamion to the G.o.d Hymen - how he sang! Shervinsky's voice was surely unique. Of course he was still an officer at present, there was this stupid war, the Bolsheviks, and Petlyura, and one had one's duty to do, but afterwards when everything was back to normal he would leave the army, in spite of all his influential connections in Petersburg -and they all knew what sort of connections those those were (knowing laughter) - and ... he would go on the stage. He would sing at La Scala and at the Bolshoi in Moscow - as soon as they started hanging Bolsheviks from the lamp-posts in the square outside the theatre. Once at Zhmerinka, Countess Lendrikov had fallen in love with him because when he had sung the Epithalamion, instead of C he had hit E and held it for five bars. As he said 'five', Shervinsky lowered his head slightly and looked around in an embarra.s.sed way, as though someone else had told the story instead of him. were (knowing laughter) - and ... he would go on the stage. He would sing at La Scala and at the Bolshoi in Moscow - as soon as they started hanging Bolsheviks from the lamp-posts in the square outside the theatre. Once at Zhmerinka, Countess Lendrikov had fallen in love with him because when he had sung the Epithalamion, instead of C he had hit E and held it for five bars. As he said 'five', Shervinsky lowered his head slightly and looked around in an embarra.s.sed way, as though someone else had told the story instead of him.

'Mm'yes. Five bars. Well, let's have supper.'

And now the room was hung with wispy pennants of smoke . . .

'Where are these Senegalese troops? Come on, Shervinsky, you're at headquarters: tell us why they aren't here. Lena, my dear, drink some more wine, do. Everything will be all right. He was right to go. He'll make his way to the Don and come back here with Denikin's army.'

'They're coming,' said Shervinsky in his twinkling voice, 'reinforcements are coming. I have some important news for you: today on the Kreshchatik I myself saw the Serbian billeting-officers and the day after tomorrow, in a couple of days' time at the latest, two Serbian regiments will arrive in the City.'

'Listen, are you sure?'

Shervinsky went red in the face.

'Well, really. If I say I saw them myself, I consider that question somewhat out of place.'

'That's all very well, but what good are two regiments?'

'Kindly allow me to finish what I was saying. The prince himself was telling me today that troop-s.h.i.+ps are already unloading in the port of Odessa: Greek troops and two divisions of Senegalese have arrived. We only have to hold out on our own for a week - and then we can spit on the Germans.'

'Treacherous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

'Well, if all that's true it won't be long before we catch Petlyura and hang him! String him up!'

'I'd like to shoot him with my own hands.'

'And strangle him too. Your health, gentlemen.'

Another drink. By now minds were getting fogged. Having drunk three gla.s.ses Nikolka ran to his room for a handkerchief, and as he pa.s.sed through the lobby (people act naturally when there's no one watching them) he collapsed against the hat-stand. There hung Shervinsky's curved sabre with its s.h.i.+ny gold hilt. Present from a Persian prince. Damascus blade. Except that no prince had given it to him and the blade was not from Damascus, but.i.t was still a very fine and expensive one. A grim Mauser in a strap-hung holster, beside it the blued-steel muzzle of Karas' Steyr automatic. As Nikolka stumbled against the cold wood of the holster and fingered the murderous barrel of the Mauser he almost burst into tears with excitement. He suddenly felt an urge to go out and fight, now, this minute, out on the snow-covered fields outside the City. He felt embarra.s.sed and ashamed that here at home there was vodka to drink and warmth, while out there his fellow cadets were freezing in the dark, the snow and the blizzard.

They must be crazy at headquarters - the detachments were not ready, the students not trained, no sign of the Senegalese yet and they were probably as black as a pair of boots . . . Christ, that meant they'd freeze to death - after all, they were used to a hot climate, weren't they?

'As for your Hetman,' Alexei Turbin was shouting, 'I'd string him up the first of all! He's done nothing but insult us for the past six months. Who was it who forbade us to form a loyalist Russian army in the Ukraine? The Hetman. And now that things have gone from bad to worse, they've started to form a Russian army after all. The enemy's practically in sight and now - now! - now! - we have to rake up troops, form detachments, headquarters, - and in conditions of total disorder! Christ, what lunacy!' we have to rake up troops, form detachments, headquarters, - and in conditions of total disorder! Christ, what lunacy!'

'You're spreading panic', Karas said coolly.

Turbin lost his temper.

'Me? Spreading panic? You are simply shutting your eyes to the facts. I'm no panic-monger. I just want to get something off my chest. Panic? Don't worry. I've already decided to go and enrol in that Mortar Regiment of yours tomorrow, and if your Malyshev won't have me as a doctor I shall enlist in the ranks. I'm fed up with the whole d.a.m.n business! It's not panic . . .' A piece of cuc.u.mber stuck in his throat, he began to cough furiously and to choke, and Nikolka started thumping him on the back.

'Well done!' Karas chimed in, beating the table. 'In the ranks h.e.l.l - we'll fix you to be the regimental doctor.'

'Tomorrow we'll all go along together,' mumbled the drunken Myshlaevsky, 'all of us together. The whole of our cla.s.s from the Alexander I High School. Hurrah!'

'He's a swine,' Turbin went on with hatred in his voice, 'why, he can't even speak Ukrainian properly himself! h.e.l.l - the day before yesterday I asked that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Kuritsky a question. Since last November, it seems, he's forgotten how to speak Russian. Changed his name, too, to make it sound Ukrainian . . . Well, so I asked him-what's the Ukrainian for ”cat”? ”Kit” he said. All right, I said, so what's the Ukrainian for ”kit”? That finished him.

He just frowned and said nothing. Now he doesn't say good-morning any longer.' Nikolka roared with laughter . . .

'Mobilisation - huh', Turbin continued bitterly. 'A pity you couldn't have seen what was going on in the police stations yesterday. All the black marketeers knew about the mobilisation three days before the decree was published. How d'you like that? And every one of them had a hernia or a patch on his lung, and any one of them who couldn't fake lung trouble simply vanished as if he'd fallen through a hole in the ground. And that, my friends, is a very bad sign. If the word's going round all the cafes even before mobilisation is officially announced and every s.h.i.+rker has a chance to dodge it, then things are really bad. Ah, the fool - if only he had allowed us to form units manned by Russian officers back in April, we could have taken Moscow by now. Don't you see? Here in the City alone he could have had a volunteer army of fifty thousand men-and what an army! An elite, none but the very best, because all the officer-cadets, all the students and high school boys and all the officers - and there are thousands of them in the City - would have gladly joined up. Not only would we have chased Petlyura out of the Ukraine, but we would have reached Moscow by now and swatted Trotsky like a fly. Now Now would have been the time to attack Moscow - it seems they're reduced to eating cats. And Hetman Skoropodsky, the son of a b.i.t.c.h, could have saved Russia.' would have been the time to attack Moscow - it seems they're reduced to eating cats. And Hetman Skoropodsky, the son of a b.i.t.c.h, could have saved Russia.'

Turbin's face was blotchy and the words flew out of his mouth in a thin spray of saliva. His eyes burned.