If I had been struck on the head with a bust of Plato, I thought, then the result would have been far more serious. At this point I remembered that I had a head, the final fragments of sleep scattered and evaporated, and events began to follow the normal sequence of human awakening, as it became apparent that all of these thoughts had their existence inside the head, and that the head in question was aching intolerably.
I opened my eyes cautiously.
The first thing that I saw was Anna, sitting close to my bed. She had not noticed that I had woken, probably because she was absorbed in reading – there was a volume of Knut Hamsun lying open in her hands. I watched her for some time through my eyelashes. I was unable to add anything substantial to my first impression of her, but no additions were necessary: perhaps her beauty appeared even more tormenting in its indifferent perfection. I thought with sadness that when a woman like her does fall in love with a man it is always either a commercial traveller with a moustache or some red-faced artillery major – the mechanism is the same as that by which the most beautiful schoolgirls are bound to choose ugly friends. It is not, of course, a matter of wishing to emphasize their own beauty by means of the contrast (an explanation on the level of Ivan Bunin), but of compassion.
There were some changes in her, however. Her hair seemed to be shorter and a little lighter, but that was probably a trick of the light. Instead of the previous day’s dark dress she was wearing a strange semi-military uniform – a black skirt and a loose sandy-coloured tunic, dappled now with trembling rainbow spots of colour from a ray of sunlight that was split as it passed through the carafe that stood on a table, which stood in turn in a room I had never seen before. But the most astonishing thing was that outside the window it was summer – through the pane I could see what appeared to be the silvery-green crowns of poplars soaring upwards through the noonday heat.
This room in which I was lying reminded me of a suite in an inexpensive provincial hotel; a small table, two firmly upholstered armchairs, a washbasin on the wall and a lamp with a shade. One thing it did not resemble in the slightest, however, was the compartment of the train hurtling through the winter night in which I had fallen asleep the previous evening.
I propped myself up on my elbow. My movement evidently took Anna entirely by surprise – she dropped her book on the floor and stared at me in confusion.
‘Where am I?’ I asked, sitting up in bed.
‘For God’s sake, lie down,’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘Everything is all right. You are safe.’
The gentle pressure of her hands forced me back down on to the bed.
‘But may I not at least know where I am? And why it is suddenly summer?’
‘Yes,’ she said, going back to her chair, ‘it is summer. Do you not remember anything at all?’
‘I remember everything perfectly well,’ I said. ‘I simply cannot understand how it happens that one moment I was riding in a train and now suddenly I find myself in this room.’
‘You began talking quite often while you were delirious,’ she said, ‘but you never once came round fully. Most of the time you were in a coma.’
‘What coma? I remember that we were drinking champagne, and Chaliapin was singing…Or was it the weavers…And then that strange gentleman…Comrade…In short, Chapaev. Chapaev uncoupled the carriages.’
Anna must have stared doubtfully into my eyes for an entire minute.
‘How strange,’ she said at last.
‘What is strange?’
‘That you should remember precisely that. And afterwards?’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Yes, afterwards. For instance, do you remember the Battle of Lozovaya Junction?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Or what came before that?’
‘Before that?’
‘Yes, before that. At Lozovaya you were already commanding a squadron.’
‘What squadron?’
‘Petya, at Lozovaya you distinguished yourself. If you had not moved in from the left flank with your cavalry squadron, they would have wiped us all out.’
‘What is the date today?’
‘The third of June,’ she said. ‘I know that such instances do occur in cases of head wounds, but…I could understand it if you had lost your memory completely, but this strange selectivity is quite astonishing. But then, I am not a doctor. Perhaps this is also part of the normal order of things.’
I raised my hands to my head and shuddered – it was as though my palms had touched a billiard ball that had sprouted short stubble. I had been completely shorn, like a typhus case. And there was also something strange, some kind of hairless projection running through the skin. I ran my fingers along it and realized that it was a long scar lying diagonally right across my skull. It felt as though a section of a leather belt had been glued to my scalp with gum arabic.
‘Shrapnel,’ said Anna. ‘The scar is impressive, but it is nothing to worry about. The bullet only grazed you. But the concussion is apparently rather more serious.’
‘When did it happen?’ I asked.
‘On the second of April.’
‘And since then I have not recovered consciousness?’
‘Several times. But for just a few moments, no more.’
I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a memory of at least some of what Anna had spoken about. But the darkness into which I gazed held nothing except the streaks and spots of light that appeared behind my eyelids.
‘I do not remember a thing,’ I said, and felt my head again. ‘Absolutely nothing. I can only remember a dream I had – that in some dark hall in St Petersburg I am being beaten on the head with a bust of Aristotle, and every time it shatters into fragments. But then it happens all over again – pure Gothic…But now I understand what was going on.’
‘Your ravings were really quite intriguing,’ said Anna. ‘You spent half of yesterday remembering some Maria who had been hit by a shell. It was a rather incoherent tale, though, and I never did understand just what relationship you had with the girl. I suppose you must have been thrown together by the whims of war?’
‘I have never known anyone called Maria. Excluding, that is, a recent nightmare…’
‘Please do not be concerned,’ said Anna, ‘I have no intention of being jealous.’
‘That is a shame,’ I replied, then I sat up and lowered my legs to the floor. ‘Please, do not think that I am trying to shock you by talking to you in nothing but my underwear.’
‘You must not get up.’
‘But I feel perfectly well,’ I replied. ‘I would like to take a shower and get dressed.’
‘Quite out of the question.’
‘Anna,’ I said, ‘if I command a squadron, I must have an orderly.’
‘Certainly you have one.’
‘While you and I are talking here, he is most probably swinishly drunk yet again. Do you think you could send him to me? And another thing – where is Chapaev?’
The strange thing was that my orderly (he was a taciturn, yellow-haired, stocky individual with a long body and the short, crooked legs of a cavalryman – a ridiculous combination which made him look like an inverted pair of pincers) really was drunk. He brought me my clothes: a greyish-green military jacket with no shoulder-stripes (but with one sewn on to the arm for my wound), blue breeches with a double red stripe down the side and a pair of excellent short boots made of soft leather. Also thrown on to the bed were a fuzzy black astrakhan hat, a sabre with the inscription ‘To Pyotr Voyd for valour’, a holster containing a Browning and Vorblei’s travelling bag, the very sight of which suddenly made me feel unwell.
All of its contents were still in place, except that there was a little less cocaine in the tin. In addition, I discovered in the bag a small pair of binoculars and a notebook about one-third full of writing which was undoubtedly my own. I found most of the notes quite incomprehensible – they dealt with horses, hay and people whose names meant nothing to me. But apart from that
, my eyes did encounter a few phrases which resembled those which I had been in the habit of noting down:
‘Christianity and other religs. can be regarded as a totality of variously remote objects radiating a certain energy. How blindingly the figure of the crucified God shines! And how stupid it is to call Chr. a primitive system! If one thinks about it, it was not Rasputin who plunged Russia into revolution, but his murder.’
And then, two pages further on:
‘In life all “successes” have to be measured against the period of time over which they are achieved; if this interval is excessively long, then most achievements are rendered meaningless to a greater or lesser degree; the value of any achievement (at least, any practical achievement) is reduced to zero if the effort extends throughout the length of one’s life, because after death nothing any longer has any meaning. Do not forget the inscription on the ceiling.’
Despite this last exhortation, I seemed to have forgotten the inscription on the ceiling quite irretrievably. There had been times when I would use up an entire notebook every month on jottings of this kind, and every one of them had seemed genuinely significant and filled with a meaning which would be required in the future. But when this future arrived, the notebooks had been misplaced, life outside had completely changed, and I had found myself on the dank and miserable Tverskoi Boulevard with a revolver in my coat pocket. It was a good thing, I thought, that I had happened to meet an old friend.
Once I was dressed (the orderly had not brought any foot-bindings, and I was obliged to tear up the sheet to make some) I hesitated for some time before eventually donning the astrakhan hat – it smelt of something rotten – but my shaven head seemed to me to present an extremely vulnerable target. I left the sabre on the bed, but extracted the pistol from its holster and hid it in my pocket. I cannot bear to upset people’s nerves with the sight of a weapon, and in any case it made it easier to reach the weapon quickly if necessary. When I took a look at myself in the mirror above the washbasin I was quite satisfied – the astrakhan hat even lent my unshaven face a certain crazed haughtiness.
Anna was standing downstairs at the foot of the broad curved staircase which I descended after leaving my room.
‘What kind of place is this?’ I asked. ‘It looks like an abandoned manor-house.’
‘So it is,’ she said. ‘This is our HQ. And not only our HQ – we live here as well. Since you became a squadron commander, Pyotr, a great deal has changed.’
‘But where is Chapaev?’
‘He is out of town just at the moment,’ Anna replied, ‘but he should be back soon.’
‘And what town is this, by the way?’
‘It is called Altai-Vidnyansk, and it is surrounded on every side by mountains. I cannot understand how towns appear in such places. Society here consists of no more than a few officers, a couple of strange individuals from St Petersburg and the local intelligentsia. The locals have, at best, heard something about the war and the revolution, while the Bolsheviks are stirring things up on the outskirts. In short, a real hole.’
‘Then what are we doing here?’
‘Wait for Chapaev,’ said Anna. ‘He’ll explain everything.’
‘In that case, with your permission, I shall take a stroll around the town.’
‘You must not do that under any circumstances,’ Anna insisted. ‘Think for yourself. You have only just come round – you might suffer some kind of fit. What if you were to faint out on the street?’
‘I am deeply touched by your concern,’ I replied, ‘but if it is sincere, you will have to keep me company.’
‘You leave me no choice,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Exactly where would you like to go?’
‘If perhaps there is some kind of hostelry,’ I said, ‘you know, the usual kind for the provinces – with a wilting palm tree in a tub and warm sherry in carafes – that would do very nicely. And they must serve coffee.’
‘There is one such place here,’ said Anna, ‘but it has no palm tree, and no sherry either, I expect.’
*
The town of Altai-Vidnyansk consisted for the most part of small wooden houses of one or two storeys set rather widely apart from one another. They were surrounded by tall fences of wooden planks, most of which were painted brown, and were almost totally concealed behind the dense greenery of neglected gardens. Closer to the centre, which Anna and I approached by descending the steep slope of a cobbled street, buildings of brick and stone appeared, also as a rule no more than two storeys high; I noted a couple of picturesque cast-iron fences and a fire-observation tower with something elusively Germanic about its appearance. It was a typical small provincial town, not without a certain unspoilt charm, calm and bright and drowned in blossoming lilac. The mountains towered up around it on all sides; it seemed to lie at the bottom of the chalice which was formed by them – with the central square with its repulsively ugly statue of Alexander II at its very lowest point: the windows of the ‘Heart of Asia’ restaurant to which Anna took me happened to look out on that particular monument. The thought came to me that it was all just begging to be put into some poem or other.
It was cool and quiet in the restaurant; there was no palm-tree in a tub, but there was a stuffed bear standing in the corner clutching a halberd in its paws, and the room was almost empty. At one of the tables two rather seedy-looking officers were sitting and drinking – when Anna and I walked past they looked up at me and then turned their eyes away with indifference. I must confess that I was not really sure whether my present status obliged me to open fire on them with my Browning or not, but to judge from Anna’s calm demeanour, nothing of the kind seemed to be required; in any case, the shoulder-straps had been torn off their uniform jackets. Anna and I sat at the next table and I ordered champagne.
‘You wanted to drink coffee,’ said Anna.
‘True,’ I said. ‘Normally I never drink in the daytime.’
‘Then why the exception?’
‘It is made entirely in your honour.’
Anna laughed. ‘That’s very kind, Pyotr. But I want to ask you a favour – for God’s sake, please don’t start courting me again. I do not find the prospect of an affair with a wounded cavalry officer in a town where there are shortages of water and kerosene very attractive.’
I had expected nothing else.
‘Well, then,’ I said, when the waiter had set the bottle on the table, ‘if you choose to see me as a wounded cavalry officer, who am I to object? But in that case, how shall I regard you?’
‘As a machine-gunner,’ said Anna. ‘Or if you prefer to be more accurate, as a Lewis gunner. I prefer the disc-loading Lewis.’
‘As a cavalry officer, of course, I detest your profession. Nothing could be more depressing than the prospect of attacking a machine-gun emplacement in mounted formation. But since we are talking about you, I raise my glass to the profession of gunner.’
We clinked glasses.
‘Tell me, Anna,’ I asked, ‘whose officers are those at the next table? Who actually holds this town?’
‘Broadly speaking,’ said Anna, ‘the town is held by the Reds, but there are some Whites here as well. Or you might say it is held by the Whites, but there are some Reds here as well. So it is best to dress in a neutral style – much as we are dressed now.’
‘And where is our regiment?’
‘Our division, you mean. Our division has been dissipated in battle. We now have very few men left, a third of a squadron at the most. But since there are no enemy forces of any substance here we can regard ourselves as safe. This is the backwoods, everything is perfectly quiet here. You walk along the streets, you see yesterday’s enemies and you think to yourself – is the reason for which we were trying to kill one another only a few days ago real?’
‘I understand you,’ I said. ‘War coarsens the sinews of the heart, but one only has to glance at the lilac blossom and it seems that the whistling of shells, the wild whooping of cavalrymen, the scent of gunpowder mingle
d with the sweet smell of blood are all unreal, no more than a mirage or a dream.’
‘Exactly,’ said Anna. ‘The question is, how real is the lilac blossom? Perhaps it is just another dream.’
Well, well, I thought to myself, but I refrained from expanding any further on the theme.
‘Tell me, Anna, what is the present situation at the fronts? In general, I mean.’
‘To be quite honest, I do not know. Or as they say nowadays, I’m not posted on that. There are no newspapers here and the rumours are all different. And then, you know, I have had enough of all that. They take and lose towns one has never heard of with wild-sounding names like Buguruslan, Bugulma and…what is it now…Belebei. And where it all goes on, who takes the town and who loses it, is not really clear and, more importantly, it is not particularly interesting either. The war goes on, of course, but talking about it has become rather mauvais genre. I would say the general atmosphere is one of weariness. Enthusiasm has slumped badly.’
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