The White Guard

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The White Guard Page 31

by Mikhail Bulgakov


  No one.

  #

  That evening they had stoked up the Dutch stove until it glowed, and it was still giving out heat late into the night. The scribbled inscriptions had been cleaned from the tiles depicting Peter

  the Great as 'The Shipwright of Saardam', and only one had been

  left:

  'Lena . . . I've bought tickets for Aid . . .'

  The house on St Alexei's Hill, covered with snow like a White general's fur hat, slept on in a long, warm sleep that dozed away behind the blinds, stirred in the shadows.

  Outside, there flourished the freezing, all-conquering night, as it glided soundlessly over the earth. The stars glittered, contracting and broadening again, and especially high in the sky was Mars - red, five-pointed.

  Many were the dreams dreamed in the warm rooms of the house.

  Alexei slept in his bedroom, and a dream hovered over him like a blurred picture. The hallway of the school swayed in front of him and the Emperor Alexander I had come down from his picture to burn the list of names of the Mortar Regiment in the stove . . . Julia Reiss passed in front of him and laughed, other shadows leaped out at him shouting 'Kill him!'

  Soundlessly they fired their rifles at him and Alexei tried to run away from them, but his feet stuck to the sidewalk of Malo-Provalnaya Street and Alexei died in his dream. He awoke with a groan, heard Myshlaevsky snoring from the drawing-room, the quiet whistle of breathing from Karas and Lariosik in the library. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, remembered where he was, then smiled weakly and stretched out for his watch.

  It was three o'clock.

  'They must have gone by now . . . Petlyura . . . Won't see him again.'

  And he went to sleep again.

  #

  The night flowed on. Morning was already not far away and the house slept, buried under its shaggy cap of snow. The tormented Vasilisa lay asleep between cold sheets, warming them with his skinny body, and he dreamed a stupid, topsy-turvy dream.He dreamed that there had been no revolution, the whole thing was pure nonsense. In his dream a dubious, insecure kind of happiness

  hovered over Vasilisa. It was summer and Vasilisa had just bought a garden. Instantly, fruit and vegetables sprang out of the ground. The beds were covered with gay little tendrils and bulbous green cucumbers were peeping through them. Vasilisa stood there in a pair of canvas trousers looking at the cheerful face of the rising sun, and scratching his stomach . . .

  Then Vasilisa dreamed of the stolen globe-shaped clock. He wanted to feel regret at the loss of the clock, but the sun shone so sweetly that he could summon up no regret.

  It was at this happy moment that a crowd of chubby pink piglets invaded the garden and began to root up the beds with their little round snouts. The earth flew up in fountains. Vasilisa picked up a stick and started to chase the piglets away, but there turned out to be something frightening about these pigs - they had sharp fangs. They began to jump and snap at Vasilisa, leaping three feet into the air as they did so because they had springs inside them. Vasilisa moaned in his sleep. A large black fence-post fell on the pigs, they vanished into the earth and Vasilisa woke up to see his damp, dark bedroom floating in front of him.

  #

  The night flowed on. The dream passed on over the City, flapping like a vague, white night-bird, flew past the cross held aloft by St Vladimir, crossed the Dnieper, into the thickest black of the night. It sped along the iron track to Darnitsa station and stopped above it. There, on track No. 3, stood an armored train. Its sides were fully armored right down to the wheels with gray steel plates. The locomotive rose up like a black, multi-faceted mass of metal, red-hot cinders dropping out of its belly on to the rails, so that from the side it looked as if the womb of the locomotive was stuffed with glowing coals. As it hissed gently and malevolently, something was oozing through a chink in its side armor, while its blunt snout glowered silently toward the forest that lay between it and the Dnieper. On the last flat-car the bluish-black muzzle of a heavy caliber gun, gagged with a muzzle-cover, pointed straight towards the City eight miles away.

  The station was gripped in cold and darkness, pierced only by the light from dim, flickering yellow lamps. Although it was almost dawn there was constant movement and activity on its platforms. Three windows shone brightly in the low, single-storey yellow hut that housed the telegraph, and the ceaseless chatter of three morse-keys could be heard through the panes. Regardless of the burning frost men ran up and down the platform, figures in knee-length sheepskin jerkins, army greatcoats and black reefer jackets. On the next track alongside the armored train and stretching out far behind it, stood the heated cars of a troop-train, a constant unsleeping bustle as men called out, doors opened and slammed shut again.

  Beside the armored train, level with the locomotive and the steel sides of the first armored car, there marched up and down like a pendulum a man in a long greatcoat, torn felt boots and a sharp-pointed hood. He cradled his rifle in his arms as tenderly as an exhausted mother holding her baby, and beside him, under the meager light of a station lamp, there marched over the snow the silent foreshortened black shadow of the man and his bayonet. The man was very tired and suffering from the savage, inhuman cold. In vain he thrust the wooden fingers of his cold, blue hands into his ragged sleeves to seek refuge and warmth. From the ragged, frozen black mouth of his cowl, fringed with white hoar frost, his eyes stared out from under frost-laden eyelashes. The eyes were blue, heavy with sleeplessness and pain.

  The man strode methodically up and down, swinging his bayonet, with only one thought in his mind: when would his hour of freezing torture be up? Then he could escape from the hideous cold into the heavenly warmth of the heated cars with their glowing stoves, where he could crawl into a crowded kennel-like compartment, collapse on to a narrow cot, cover himself up and stretch out. The man and his shadow marched from the fiery glow of the armored belly as far as the dark wall of the first armored car, to the point where stood the black inscription: 'The Proletarian'

  Now growing, now hunching itself to the shape of a monster,

  but never losing its sharp point, the shadow dug into the snow with its black bayonet. The bluish rays of the lamp shone feebly down behind the man. Like two blue moons, giving out no heat and trying to the eyes, two lamps burned, one at each end of the platform. The man looked around for any source of heat, but there was none; having lost all hope of warming his toes, he could do nothing but wriggle them. He stared fixedly up at the stars. The easiest star to see was Mars, shining in the sky ahead of them, above the City. As he looked at it, the gaze from his eyes travelled millions of miles and stared unblinkingly at the livid, reddish light from the star. It contracted and expanded, clearly alive, and it was five-pointed. Occasionally, as he grew more and more tired, the man dropped his rifle-butt on to the snow, stopped, dozed off for a moment, but the black wall of the armored train did not depart from that sleep, nor did the sounds coming from the station But he began to hear new sounds. A vast sky opened out above him in his sleep, red, glittering, and spangled with countless red-pointed stars. The man's soul was at once filled with happiness. A strange unknown man in chain-mail appeared on horseback and floated up to the man. The black armored train was just about to dissolve in the man's dream, and in its place rose up a village deep in snow - the village of Maliye Chugry. He, the man, was standing on the outskirts of Chugry, and a neighbor of his was coming toward him.

  'Zhilin?' said the man's brain, silently his lips motionless. At once a grim voice struck him in the chest with the words:

  'Sentry . . . your post . . . keep moving . . . freeze to death.'

  With a superhuman effort the man gripped his rifle again, placed it on his arm, and began marching again with tottering steps.

  Up and down. Up and down. The sky that he had seen in his sleep disappeared, the whole frozen world was again clothed in the silky, dark-blue night sky, pierced by the sinister bla
ck shape of a gun-barrel. The reddish star in the sky shone, twinkling, and in response to the rays of the blue, moon-like station lamp a star on

  the man's chest occasionally flashed. The star was small and also five-pointed.

  *

  The urgent spirit of the night flew on and on above the Dnieper. It flew over the deserted riverside wharves and descended on Podol, the Lower City. There, all the lights had long been put out. Everyone was asleep. Only in a three-storey stone building on Volynskaya Street, in a room in the house of a librarian, like a room in a cheap hotel, the blue-eyed Rusakov sat beside a lamp with a green glass shade. In front of him lay a heavy book bound in yellow leather. His gaze travelled slowly and solemnly along the lines.

  And I saw the dead small and great stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

  ... And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

  As he read the shattering book his mind became like a shining sword, piercing the darkness.

  Illness and suffering now seemed to him unimportant, unreal. The sickness had fallen away, like a scab from a withered, fallen branch in awood. He saw the fathomless blue mist of the centuries, the endless procession of millenia. He felt no fear, only the wisdom of obedience and reverence. Peace had entered his soul and in that state of peace he read on to the words:

  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there

  shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed

  away.

  *

  The dim mist parted and revealed Lieutenant Shervinsky to Elena. His slightly protuberant eyes smiled cheerfully.

  'I am a demon,' he said, clicking his heels, 'and Talberg is never coming back. I shall sing to you . . .'

  He took from his pocket a huge tinsel star and pinned it on to the left side of his chest. The mists of sleep swirled around him, and his face looked bright and doll-like among the clouds of vapor. In a piercing voice, quite unlike his waking voice, he sang: 'We shall live, we shall live!'

  'Then will come death, and we shall die', Nikolka chimed in as he joined them.

  He was holding a guitar, but his neck was covered in blood and on his forehead was the wreath worn by the dead. Elena at once thought he had died, burst into bitter sobs and woke up in the night screaming:

  'Nikolka! Nikolka!'

  For a long time, sobbing, she listened to the muttering of the night.

  And the night flew on.

  *

  Later Petka Shcheglov, the little boy next door, dreamed a dream too.

  Petka was very young, so he was not interested in the Bolsheviks, in Petlyura, or in any sort of demon. His dream was as simple and joyful as the sun.

  Petka dreamed he was walking through a large green meadow, and in it lay a glittering, diamond ball, bigger than Petka himself. When grown-ups dream and have to run, their feet stick to the ground, they moan and groan as they try to pull their feet free of the quagmire. But children's feet are free as air. Petka ran to the

  diamond ball, and nearly choking with happy laughter, he clasped it in his arms. The ball sprinkled Petka with glittering droplets. And that was all there was of Petka's dream. He laughed aloud with pleasure in his sleep. And the cricket behind the stove chirped gaily back at him. Petka began dreaming more sweet, happy dreams, while the cricket sang its song somewhere in a crack, in the white corner behind the bucket, enlivening the night for the Shcheglov family.

  The night flowed on. During its second half the whole arc of the sky, the curtain that God had drawn across the world, was covered with stars. It was as if a midnight mass was being celebrated in the measureless height beyond that blue altar-screen. The candles were lit on the altar and they threw patterns of crosses, squares and clusters on to the screen. Above the bank of the Dnieper the midnight cross of St Vladimir thrust itself above the sinful, bloodstained, snowbound earth toward the grim, black sky. From far away it looked as if the cross-piece had vanished, had merged with the upright, turning the cross into a sharp and menacing sword.

  But the sword is not fearful. Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?

  Moscow, 1923-1924.

  Epilogue 'THE HOUSE OF THE TURBINS'

  by VICTOR NEKRASOV

  Originally published in the journal

  NOVY MIR, Moscow 1967, No. VIII,

  pp. 132-142

  . . . Who look the smartest?

  Who move the fastest?

  The Cadets of the Engineers!

  And at that moment, out go the lights. Nikolka and his guitar stop playing. 'What the hell's the matter?' says Alexei. 'They keep going out. Lena my dear, let's have some candles.' Elena enters with a candle, and from somewhere very far away comes the boom of gunfire. '. . . I get the impression it's coming from the Svyato-shino direction', says Nikolka. 'Funny, though. It can't be as near as that.'

  Nikolka Turbin is seventeen and a half. And I am seventeen and a half. Admittedly he wears a corporal's stripes on his shoulder straps and tricolor chevrons on his sleeves and I am simply an apprentice in a trades-union school for Soviet railwaymen, but we are both seventeen and a half. And he is talking about Svyatoshino, our Kievan suburb of Svyatoshino, and the lights had gone out in our apartment too and we too heard the sound of distant gunfire . ..

  The firing boomed on day after day, with occasional random bursts of rifle-fire. And at night they used to hit a length of railroad track as some kind of alarm. People came and went. Then when everything calmed down we were taken to the Nicholas I Park in front of the university buildings, where it was always full of soldiers. Nowadays there are none, the park is a haunt of old-age pensioners playing dominoes, but in those days the people sitting on the benches were soldiers. They were of various kinds -Germans, Petlyura's men, and then in 1920 Poles, wearing British khaki greatcoats. We would run from bench to bench asking the Germans: 'Wieviel ist die Uhr?' The soldiers would laugh, and show us their watches, give us sweets and sit us on their knees. We liked them very much. But as for 'white guardists', or, as they were called in those days, 'volunteers', there was no sign of them. There were the two huge sentries who used to stand by the steps leading up to the Tereshchenkos' big house where General Dragomirov had his headquarters and we would throw pebbles at them, but they just stood dumbly there like statues . . .

  I always think of them, those unmoving sentries, whenever I pass that house on the corner of Kuznechnaya and Karavaevskaya streets, the house which was metamorphosed into the prosaic Institute of Radiology after the general and his staff had left it. . .

  . . . The electric lights come on again. The candles are put out. (The electricity came on again in our house too, but in our case we would put out oil lamps, not candles. God knows where the Turbins got their candles from - they were worth their weight in gold.) Talberg has still not returned. Elena is worried. A ring at the door. Enter Myshlaevsky, frozen to death. 'Careful how you hang it up, Nikolka. Don't knock it. There's a bottle of vodka in there...'

  How many times have I seen The Days of the Turbins} Three or four, maybe even five times. I have grown up, but Nikolka has stayed seventeen. Sitting with my knees hunched up on the steps of the dress c
ircle at the Moscow Art Theater, I felt as I always did that I was the same age as him. And Alexei Turbin has always seemed 'grown-up', much older than me, although when I last saw The Turbins, before the war, I was already at least as old as Alexei.

  Sakhnovsky, a director at the Moscow Art Theater, wrote somewhere that for the younger generation at the M.A.T. The Turbins became 'the second Seagull'. I'm sure it was. But that was for the actors, for the M.A.T. - for me, though at first as an apprentice then as a gradually maturing student, The Turbins was not just a play but something much more. Even when I became an actor and began to be interested in it from the purely professional angle, even then The Turbins was still not merely a piece of theater, even though a play of great talent and fascination, oddly unique in our stage literature, but it was a tangible piece of life, receding as the years passed, yet always very near to me.

  Why? After all, I had never known a single 'white guardist' in my life (I met some for the first time in Prague in 1945), my family had no liking for them at all (in our apartment we had Germans and French billeted on us and - my favourites - two Red Army men who smelled of home-grown shag and foot-cloths, but never a 'White'); my parents were in any case left-wing in sympathy, having made friends abroad with Plekhanov, and with Bolsheviks like Lunacharsky and Nogin . . . there were never any Myshlaevskys or Shervinskys in our house. But there was something else about our family, something obviously 'Turbinesque'. It is even rather hard to define exactly what it was. I was the only man in our family (my mother, my grandmother and my aunt and myself - aged seven), and there were no guitars, no rivers of wine - not even a trickle - in our house, and it would seem that we had nothing in common with the Turbins, unless you count our neighbour Alibek, an Ossete, who occasionally called on us wearing his Caucasian silver cartridge-pockets (Shervinsky?) and who, when I was a little more grown up, kept asking me whether one of my schoolmates wouldn't like to buy his dagger - he was rather fond of his drink. And yet we had something in common with the Turbins. A kind of spirit? The past? Things, perhaps?

 

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