Part 15 (1/2)

For hours that night, when the heat of the stove had long since died down and burned instead in his head and arm, someone was twisting a red-hot nail into the top of his head and destroying his brain. 'I've got a fever', Alexei repeated drily and soundlessly, and tried to instil into his mind that he must get up in the morning and somehow make his way home. As the nail bored into his brain it finally drove out his thoughts of Elena, of Nikolka, of home and of Petlyura. Nothing mattered. Peturra... Peturra... He could only long for one thing - for the pain to stop.

Deep in the night Julia Reiss came in wearing soft fur-trimmed slippers, and sat beside him and again, his arm weakly hooked around her neck, he pa.s.sed through the two small rooms. Before this she had gathered her strength and said to him: 'Get up, if only you can. Don't pay any attention to me. I'll help you. Then lie right down . . . Well, if you can't . . .'

He replied: 'No, I'll go . . . only help me . . .'

She led him to the little door of that mysterious house and then helped him back. As he lay down, his teeth chattering from the cold, he felt some lessening and respite from his headache and said: 'I swear I won't forget what you've done. Go to bed . . .'

'Be quiet, I'll soothe your head', she replied.

Then the dull, angry pain flowed out of his head, flowed away from his temples into her soft hands, through them and through her body into the floor, covered with a dusty, fluffy carpet, and there it expired. Instead of the pain a delicious even heat spread all over his body. His arm had gone numb and felt as heavy as cast-iron, so he did not move it but merely closed his eyes and gave himself up to the fever. How long he lay there he could not have said: perhaps five minutes, perhaps hours. But he felt that he could have lain like that, bathed in heat, for ever. Whenever he opened his eyes, gently so as not to alarm the woman sitting beside him, he saw the same picture: the little lamp burning weakly but steadily under its red shade giving out a peaceful light, and the woman's unsleeping profile beside him. Her lips pouting like an unhappy child, she sat staring out of the window. Basking in the heat of fever, Alexei stirred and edged towards her . . .

'Bend over me', he said. His voice had become dry, weak and high-pitched. She turned to him, her eyes took on a frightened guarded look and the shadows around them deepened. Alexei put his right arm around her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips. It seemed to him that he was touching something sweet-tasting and cold. The woman was not surprised by what Alexei did, but only gazed more searchingly into his face. Then she said: 'G.o.d, how hot you. are. What are we going to do? We ought to call a doctor, but how are we going to do it?'

'No need', Alexei replied gently. 'I don't need a doctor. Tomorrow I'll get up and go home.'

'I'm so afraid,' she whispered, 'that you'll get worse. Then how can I help you? It's not bleeding any more, is it?' She touched his bandaged arm so lightly that he did not feel it.

'Don't worry, nothing's going to happen to me. Lie down and sleep.'

'I'm not going to leave you', she answered, caressing his hand. 'You have such a fever.'

He could not stop himself from embracing her again and drawing her to him. She did not resist. He drew her until she was leaning right over him. Then, as she lay down beside him he sensed through his own sickly heat the clear live warmth of her body.

'Lie down and don't move,' she whispered, 'and I'll soothe your head.'

She stretched out alongside him and he felt the touch of her knees. She began to smooth back his hair from his temples. He felt such pleasure that he could only think of how to prevent himself from falling asleep.

But he did fall asleep, and slept long, peacefully and well. When he awoke he felt that he was floating in a boat on a river of warmth, that all his pain had gone, and that outside the night was turning gradually paler and paler. Not only the little house but the City and the whole world were full of silence. A gla.s.sy, limpid blue light was pouring through the gaps in the blinds. The woman, warm from his body, but with her face set in a look of unhappiness, was asleep beside him. And he went to sleep again.

In the morning, around nine o'clock, one of the rare cab-drivers took on two pa.s.sengers on the deserted Malo-Provalnaya Street -a man in a black civilian overcoat, looking very pale, and a woman. Carefully supporting the man by the arm, the woman drove him to St Alexei's Hill. There was no traffic on the hill, except for a cab outside No. 13 which had just brought a strange visitor with a trunk, a bundle and a cage.

Fourteen.

That evening all the habitues of No. 13 began to converge on the house of their own accord. None of them had been cut off or driven away.

'It's him', echoed the cry in Anyuta's breast, and her heart fluttered like Lariosik's bird. There had come a cautious tap at the little snow-covered window of the Turbins' kitchen. Anyuta pressed her face to the window to make out the face. It was him, but without his moustache . . . Him . . . With both hands Anyuta smoothed down her black hair, opened the door into the porch, then from the porch into the snow-covered yard and Myshlaevsky was standing unbelievably close to her. A student's overcoat with a beaver collar and a student's peaked cap . . . his moustache was gone . . . but there was no mistaking his eyes, even in the half-darkness of the porch. The right one flecked with green sparks, like a Urals gemstone, and the left one dark and languorous . . . And he seemed to be shorter.

With a trembling hand Anyuta unfastened the latch, then the courtyard vanished and the patch of light from the open kitchen door vanished too, because Myshlaevsky's coat had enveloped Anyuta and a very familiar voice whispered: 'Hallo, Anyutochka . . . You'll catch cold ... Is there anyone in the kitchen, Anyuta?”

'No one', answered Anyuta, not knowing what she was saying, and also whispering for some reason. 'How sweet his lips have become . . .' she thought blissfully and whispered: 'Viktor Viktororich ... let me go . . . Elena . . .'

'What's Elena to do with it', whispered the voice reproachfully, a voice smelling of eau-de-cologne and tobacco. 'What's the matter with you, Anyutochka . . .'

'Let me go, I'll scream, honestly I will', said Anyuta pa.s.sionately as she embraced Myshlaevsky round the neck. 'Something terrible's happened - Alexei Vasilievich's wounded . . .'

The boa-constrictor instantly released her.

'What - wounded? And Nikolka?'

'Nikolka's safe and well, but Alexei Vasilievich has been wounded.'

The strip of light from the kitchen, then through more doors . . .

In the dining-room Elena burst into tears when she saw Myshlaevsky and said: 'Vitka, you're alive . . . Thank G.o.d . . . But we're not so lucky . . .' She sobbed and pointed to the door of Alexei's room. 'His temperature's forty . . . badly wounded . . .'

'Holy Mother', said Myshlaevsky, pus.h.i.+ng his cap to the back of his head. 'How did he get caught?'

He turned to the figure at the table bending over a bottle and some s.h.i.+ning metal boxes.

'Are you a doctor, may I ask?'

'No, unfortunately', answered a sad, m.u.f.fled voice. 'Allow me to introduce myself: Larion Surzhansky.'

The drawing-room. The door into the lobby was shut and the portiere drawn to prevent the noise and the sound of voices from reaching Alexei. Three men had just left his bedroom and driven away - one with a pointed beard and gold pince-nez, another clean shaven, young, and finally one who was gray and old and wise, wearing a heavy fur coat and a tall fur hat, a professor, Alexei's old teacher. Elena had seen them out, her face stony. She had pretended that Alexei had typhus, and now he had it.

'Apart from the wound - typhus . . .'

The column of mercury showed forty and . . . 'Julia' ... A feverish flush, silence, and in the silence mutterings about a staircase and a telephone bell ringing . . .

'Good day, sir', Myshlaevsky whispered maliciously in Ukrainian, straddling his legs wide. Red-faced, Shervinsky avoided his look.

His black suit fitted immaculately; an impeccable s.h.i.+rt and a bow tie; patent-leather boots on his feet. 'Artiste of Kramsky's Opera Studio.' There was a new ident.i.ty-card in his pocket to prove it. 'Why aren't you wearing epaulettes, sir? sir? Myshlaevsky went on. ' ”The imperial Russian flag is waving on Vladimirskaya Street . . . Two divisions of Senegalese in the port of Odessa and Serbian billeting officers . . . Go to the Ukraine, gentlemen, and raise your regiments” . . . Remember all that, Shervinsky? Why, you mother- .. .' Myshlaevsky went on. ' ”The imperial Russian flag is waving on Vladimirskaya Street . . . Two divisions of Senegalese in the port of Odessa and Serbian billeting officers . . . Go to the Ukraine, gentlemen, and raise your regiments” . . . Remember all that, Shervinsky? Why, you mother- .. .'

'What's the matter with you?' asked Shervinsky. 'It's not my fault is it? What did I have to do with it? I was nearly shot myself. I was the last to leave headquarters, exactly at noon, when the enemy's troops appeared in Pechorsk.'

'You're a hero', said Myshlaevsky, 'but I hope that his excellency, the commander-in-chief managed to get away sooner. Just like his highness, the Hetman of the Ukraine . . . the son of a b.i.t.c.h ... I trust that he is in safety. The country needs men like him. Yes - perhaps you you can tell me exactly where they are?' can tell me exactly where they are?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I'll tell you why.' Myshlaevsky clenched his right fist and smashed it into the palm of his left hand. 'If those excellencies excellencies and those and those highnesses highnesses fell into my hands I'd take one of them by the left leg and the other by the right, turn them upside down and bang their heads on the ground until I got sick of it. And the rest of your bunch of punks at headquarters ought to be drowned in the lavatory . . .' fell into my hands I'd take one of them by the left leg and the other by the right, turn them upside down and bang their heads on the ground until I got sick of it. And the rest of your bunch of punks at headquarters ought to be drowned in the lavatory . . .'

Shervinsky turned purple.

'See here - you be more careful what you're saying, if you please', he began. 'Don't forget that the Hetman abandoned his headquarters staff too. He took no more than two personal aides with him, all the rest of us were just left to our fate.'

'Do you realise that at this moment a thousand of our men are cooped up as prisoners in the museum, hungry, guarded by machine-guns . . . And whenever they feel inclined, Petlyura's men will simply squash them like so many bed-bugs. Did you know that Colonel Nai-Turs was killed? He was the only one who . . .'

'Keep your distance!' shouted Shervinsky, now genuinely angry. 'What do you mean by that tone of voice? I'm as much a Russian officer as you are!'

'Now, gentlemen, stop!' Karas wedged himself between Myshlaevsky and Shervinsky. 'This is a completely pointless conversation. He's right, Viktor - you're being too personal. Stop it, this is getting us nowhere . . .'

'Quiet, quiet,' Nikolka whispered miserably, 'he'll hear you . . .'