Gregor rose and began to pace up and down the room. Finally he halted in front of Podtielkov and asked:
‘Then what are we to do?’
‘Go on to the end!’
‘To what end?’
‘Once you’ve started ploughing you must furrow on to the end. Once you’ve overthrown the Tsar and the counter-revolution you must work for the government to pass into the hands of the people. That story about the old times is all fairy-tales. In the old days the Tsars oppressed us, and now if the Tsars don’t somebody else will.’
‘Then what is your way out, Podtielkov?’
‘A people’s government, elected. If you get into the hands of the generals there’ll be war again and we can do without that. If only we could get a people’s government set up all over the world, so that the people were not oppressed and we didn’t have war! But what have we got now? If you turn a pair of old trousers inside-out you’re still left with the holes. We’d better keep free of the old days, or they’ll be harnessing us up so that we shall be worse off than under the Tsar.’
Gregor clutched at the air with his hand and asked in a mournful voice:
‘Are we to give up our land? Divide it up among everybody?’
‘No … why should we?’ Podtielkov seemed confused and embarrassed by the question. ‘We shan’t give up our land. We shall divide it up among ourselves, among the cossacks, first taking the landowners’ land away from them. But we mustn’t give any to the peasants. They’re a whole coat to our sleeve. Once we start dividing it with them they’ll beggar us.’
‘And who will govern us?’
‘We shall govern ourselves,’ Podtielkov replied more animatedly. ‘We shall have our own government. Only let the Kaledins loosen the saddle-girths a little and we shall soon throw them off our backs.’
Gregor halted before the steaming window and stared out into the street, at children playing some game, at the wet roofs of the houses opposite, at the pale grey branches of a bare poplar in the fence, and listened no more to the argument between Podtielkov and Drozdov. He was struggling painfully to see daylight through the jumble of thoughts oppressing him, to come to some decision.
For some ten minutes he stood drawing initials with his finger on the window-glass. Beyond the window the faded, early winter sunset was smouldering on a level with the roof of the low house opposite. The sun hung as though set edgeways on the rusty crown of the roof and about to roll down on one or the other side. Rustling leaves came chasing along the street from the town garden, and the strong wind blowing from the Ukraine raided the town again and again.
Part Four
* * *
CIVIL WAR
Chapter One
The town of Novocherkass became the centre of attraction for all who had fled from the Bolshevik revolution. Important generals who formerly had been arbiters of the destiny of the Russian armies poured down into the lower regions of the Don, hoping to find support for their activities among the reactionary Don cossacks and to develop an offensive against Sovietized Russia. On November 15th general Alexeev arrived in the town. After talks with Kaledin he set to work to organize volunteer detachments. The backbone of the future Volunteer Army was provided by officers, Junkers, and others who had fled from the north. Within three weeks an unwholesome flesh had grown around this framework, consisting of students, soldiers, the most active of the counter-revolutionary cossacks, and men seeking adventure and higher pay even in Kerensky roubles.
At the beginning of December more generals arrived, and on December 19th Kornilov himself appeared in the town. By this time Kaledin had succeeded in withdrawing almost all the cossack regiments from the Roumanian and Austro-German fronts, and had distributed them along the main railway lines of the Don province. But the cossacks, wearied with three years of war and returning from the front in a revolutionary mood, showed no great desire to fight the Bolsheviks. The regiments were left with hardly a third of their normal complement, for the home-fires beckoned powerfully, and there was no power on earth that could have restrained the cossacks from their elemental movement homeward.
When Kaledin made a first attempt in December to send front-line detachments against revolutionary Rostov the cossacks refused to attack, and turned back after going a little distance. But the widely developed organization for consolidating the fragmentary divisions began to have its results. By the middle of December Kaledin had several reliable volunteer detachments at his command.
But from three sides columns of Red Guards were approaching the province. In Kharkov and Voronezh forces were being assembled to strike a blow against the counter-revolutionaries in the Don. Clouds hung, and deepened and blackened over the Don. The winds from the Ukraine were already bringing the sound of the gun-thunder accompanying the first clashes. Gloomy days were coming to the Don; an evil time was approaching.
Yellow-white, billowing clouds were floating slowly over Novocherkass. In the height of the heaven right above the glittering dome of the cathedral, a grey, fluffy scrawl of feathery cloud hung in an expanse of cloudless blue, its long tail drooping and gleaming a rosy silver.
One morning in November, Ilia Bunchuk arrived at Novocherkass by the Moscow train. He was the last to leave the carriage, pulling down the edges of his old overcoat, and feeling a little awkward and strange in his civilian clothing.
He went out into the town, carrying his cheap, shabby suitcase under his arm. He met hardly anyone along the whole of the road, although he crossed the town from one side to the other. After half an hour’s walk he halted before a small, dilapidated house. It had not been repaired for years; time had set its hands upon it, and the roof was sinking, the walls were awry, the shutters hung loosely, and the windows squinted. As he opened the wicket-gate Bunchuk ran his eyes over the house and the tiny yard; then he hurried up the steps.
He found half the narrow corridor of the house occupied by a chest piled with lumber. In the darkness he knocked his knee against one corner, but threw open the door, not feeling the pain. There was no-one in the first, low room. He went towards the second, halting on the threshold. His head swam with the terribly familiar scent peculiar to this one house. His eyes took in all the room: the ikon in the corner, the bed, the table, the small, speckled mirror above it, some photographs, several rickety chairs, a sewing-machine, and a tarnished samovar standing on the stove. With heart suddenly, violently beating, he threw down his suitcase and stared around the kitchen. The tall, green-washed stove had a welcoming look; from behind a blue cotton curtain peeped an old tabby-cat, its eyes gleaming with almost human curiosity. An unwashed utensil lay untidily on the table, and a ball of wool and four gleaming knitting-needles carrying an unfinished stocking had been left on a stool.
He ran out on to the steps. From the door of a shed in the far corner of the yard emerged an old, bowed woman. ‘Mother! But is it? Is it she?’ His lips trembling, he ran to meet her, tearing the cap from his head as he went.
‘Who do you want?’ the old woman asked cautiously, standing with her palm shading her eyes.
‘Mother!’ the words burst hoarsely from Bunchuk’s throat. ‘Don’t you know me?’
He went stumbling towards her, and saw her sway at his shout as though before a blow. She wanted to run, but her strength failed her and she came in little spurts, as though battling against a wind. He caught her in his arms, he kissed her furrowed face and her eyes, dull with fear and gladness, while his own eyes blinked helplessly.
‘Ilia! Illiusha! My little son! I didn’t know you … Lord, where have you come from?’ the old woman whispered.
They went into the house. He threw off his overcoat with a sigh of relief, and sat down at the table.
‘I never thought I should see you again … It’s so many years … My dear … How could I know you when you had grown so much and looked so much older?’ she said.
‘Well, but how are you, mother?’ he asked with a smile.
As she disconnectedly replied she b
ustled about, clearing the table, putting charcoal into the samovar. With streaming eyes she ran back again and again to her son to stroke his head and press him to her. She boiled water and gave him a meal, herself washed his head, took some clean underwear, yellow with age, from the bottom of the chest, and sat until midnight with her eyes fixed on him, questioning him and bitterly shaking her head.
Two o’clock had just struck in the neighbouring belfry when Bunchuk lay down to sleep. He dropped off at once, and dreamed that he was once more a pupil at the craft school, tired out with play and dozing over his books, while his mother opened the door from the kitchen and asked sternly: ‘Ilia, have you learnt your lessons for tomorrow?’ He slept with a fixed, tensely happy smile on his face.
His mother went to him more than once during the night, straightening the blanket and pillow, kissing his great forehead, and quietly going out again.
He spent only one day at home. In the morning a comrade in a soldier’s greatcoat came and talked with him in undertones; after the man had gone he bustled about, swiftly packed his suitcase, and drew on his ill-fitting overcoat. He took a hurried farewell of his mother, promising to see her again within a month.
‘Where are you off to now, Ilia?’ she asked.
‘To Rostov, mother; to Rostov. I’ll be back soon … Don’t you fret, mother … don’t fret,’ he cheered her.
She hurriedly removed a small cross from her neck, and as she kissed her son she slipped the string over his head. As with trembling fingers she adjusted it around his neck, she whispered:
‘Wear this, Ilia. Defend him and save him, Lord; cover him with Thy wings. He is all I have in the world …’ As she passionately embraced him she could not control herself, and the corners of her lips quivered and drooped bitterly. Like spring rain one warm tear after another fell on to Bunchuk’s hairy hand. He unfastened her hands from his neck and ran with clouded face out of the house.
The crowd was packed like sardines at Rostov station, and the floors were littered ankle-deep with cigarette-ends and the husks of sunflower-seeds. On the station square the soldiers from the town garrison were trading their equipment, tobacco, and articles they had stolen. A swarming throng of the many nationalities to be found in the southern seaport towns moved slowly about. Bunchuk pressed through the crowd, sought out the Party committee room, and made his way upstairs to the first floor. His further progress was barred by a Red Guard armed with a rifle of Japanese pattern. A knife was tied to its barrel instead of a bayonet.
‘Who do you want, comrade?’ the guard asked.
‘I want comrade Abramson. Is he here?’
‘Third room on the left.’
Bunchuk opened the door of the room indicated, and found a short, big-nosed, black-haired man talking to an elderly railwayman. His left hand was thrust into his jacket, his right waved methodically in the air.
‘That’s not good enough!’ the black-haired man was declaring. ‘That isn’t organization! If you carry on your agitation like this you’ll get exactly opposite results to those we want.’
Judging from the anxiously guilty look on the railwayman’s face, he wanted to say something in justification, but the other man would not let him open his mouth. Evidently irritated to the last degree, he shouted:
‘Remove Mitchenko from the work at once! This is not to be endured! We cannot allow what is going on among you. Vierkhovietsky will have to answer for it to the revolutionary tribunal. Is he arrrested? Yes? I shall insist on his being shot!’ he ended harshly. Still not completely in control of himself, he turned his angry face in Bunchuk’s direction and asked sharply: ‘What do you want?’
‘Are you comrade Abramson?’ Bunchuk asked.
‘Yes.’
Bunchuk handed him documents from the Petrograd Party Committee, and sat down in the window-ledge. Abramson carefully read the letters, then said, smiling morosely:
‘Wait a bit; we’ll have a talk in a moment or two.’
He dismissed the railwayman and went out, returning a few minutes later with a well-built, clean-shaven, non-commissioned officer bearing the mark of a sabre-cut across his lower jaw.
‘This is a member of our Military-Revolutionary Committee,’ Abramson said to Bunchuk. ‘And you, comrade Bunchuk, are a machine-gunner, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re just the man we’re wanting,’ the non-commissioned officer smiled.
‘Can you organize machine-gun detachments from the worker Red Guards for us? As soon as possible?’ Abramson asked.
‘I’ll try. It’s a question of time.’
‘Well, how long do you need? A week … two, three?’ Smiling expectantly, the other man bent towards Bunchuk.
‘Several days.’
‘Excellent!’
Abramson rubbed his forehead, and said with obvious annoyance:
‘Part of the town garrison is badly demoralized, and they are not to be relied on. Like everywhere else, I suppose, comrade Bunchuk, our hopes here are in the workers. The sailors, too; but as for the soldiers …’ He tugged at his beard, and asked: ‘How are you off in regard to supplies? Well, we’ll arrange that. Have you had anything to eat today? No, of course not.’
‘You must have starved a bit in your time, brother, if you can tell at a glance whether a man is full or hungry,’ Bunchuk thought. As he went with a guide to Abramson’s room, his mind still turned on him: ‘He’s a brave lad, he’s a true Bolshevik! Hard, yet there’s something good and human in him. He doesn’t think twice about the death sentence for some sabotager, yet he can see to the needs of his comrades.’
Still under the warm impression of his meeting, he reached Abramson’s quarters and had some dinner, then lay down to rest on the bed in the little, book-filled room. He fell straight off to sleep.
For the next four days Bunchuk was occupied from early morning till nightfall with the workers assigned to him by the Party Committee. There were sixteen altogether, men of the most varied peacetime occupations, ages, and even nationalities. There were two stevedores, an Ukrainian named Khvilichko and a Russianized Greek Mikhalidze; a compositor Stepanov; eight metal-workers; a miner, Zelenkov, from the Paramonov mines; a weak-looking Armenian baker Gievorkiantz; a Russianized German and skilled locksmith named Rebinder; and two workers from the railway workshops. A seventeenth requisition was brought to Bunchuk by a woman attired in a padded soldier’s greatcoat and boots too large for her feet. As he took the sealed letter from her, he asked: ‘On your way back can you call at the staff for me?’
She smiled, embarrassedly tidied a thick lock of hair that had fallen below her kerchief, and replied nervously:
‘I have been sent to you …’ then, overcoming her momentary confusion, she added ‘… as a machine-gunner.’
Bunchuk flushed heavily:
‘Have they gone out of their minds? Is it a woman’s battalion I’ve got to organize? Excuse me, but this isn’t fit work for you: it’s heavy and calls for a man’s strength. No, I can’t accept you.’
Still frowning, he opened the letter and hurriedly scanned its contents. The requisition itself merely stated that the party member Anna Pogoodko had been assigned to the machine-gune section, but attached to it was a letter from Abramson, which read:
Dear Comrade Bunchuk,
We are sending you a good comrade in Anna Pogoodko. We have yielded to her insistent demand and hope that you will make a fighting machine-gunner of her. I know the girl. I can warmly recommend her, she is a valuable worker, and I ask you only to watch one thing! She is fiery and a little exalted in temperament (she hasn’t yet outgrown her youth). Keep her from thoughtless actions and look after her.
Speed up the training. We hear that Kaledin is preparing to attack us.
With comradely greeting,
Abramson.
Bunchuk stared at the girl standing before him. The dim light of the cellar which had been allotted to him for headquarters shadowed her face and concealed its lines.
They crowded around the machine-gun, hung in clusters over it, leaning on one another’s backs and watching with inquisitive eyes as under Bunchuk’s skilful hands it came to pieces. Then he reassembled it, explaining the nature and function of each section, showing them how to handle it, to load it, sight it, determine the trajectory and the range. Then he showed them how to protect themselves from the enemy fire, pointed out the necessity of setting up the gun at a point of vantage, and of arranging the ammunition cases correctly.
All seventeen learnt quickly with the exception of the baker Gievorkiantz. No matter how many times Bunchuk showed him, he could not remember, and he lost his head, muttering in his confusion:
‘Why doesn’t it come out right? Ah … I’m a fool … this bit ought to be there … And now it isn’t right!’ he cried in despair. ‘Why isn’t it?’
‘This is why!’ the swarthy Bogovoi imitated his tone. ‘It doesn’t come right because you’re stupid. That’s how it goes.’ He confidently put the section in its proper place.
‘He’s extraordinarily stupid,’ the phlegmatic German Rebinder agreed.
Only Stepanov shouted with annoyance, his face flushing:
‘You ought to show your comrade, and not snarl at him!’
He was supported by Krutogorov, a great, big-limbed worker from the railway workshops:
‘You stand there laughing, you fools, and the work can wait! Comrade Bunchuk, instruct your waxwork gallery or else send them packing! The revolution is in danger, and they stand there laughing! And they’re party-men too!’ He waved his sledgehammer fist.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 48