The White Guard, Page 26

  'Make way, there . . .'

  'Where are they going?'

  'Manya! Look out! You'll be crushed . . .'

  'What are they celebrating? (whisper:) Is it theUkrainian people's republic?'

  'God knows' (whisper).

  'That's not a priest, that's a bishop . . .'

  'Look out, careful . . .'

  'Long may he live . . .!' sang the choir, filling the whole cathedral. The fat, red-faced precentor Tolmashevsky extinguished a greasy wax candle and thrust his tuning-fork into his pocket. The choir, in brown heel-length surplices with gold braid, the swaying choirboys whose cropped fair hair made their little heads look almost bald, the bobbing of Adam's apples and horse-like heads of the basses

  streamed out of the dark, eerie choir-loft. Thicker and thicker, jostling through all the doors, like a swelling avalanche, like water gushing from drainpipes flowed the murmuring crowd.

  From the doors of the sacristy floated a stream of vestments, their wearers' heads wrapped up as if they all had toothache, eyes anxious and uneasy beneath their toylike, mauve stovepipe hats. Father Arkady, dean of the cathedral, a puny little man, wearing a sparkling jewelled mitre above the gray check scarf wrapped around his head, glided along with little mincing steps. There was a desperate look in his eyes and his wispy beard trembled.

  'There's going to be a procession round the cathedral. Out of the way, Mitya.'

  'Hey, you - not so fast! Come back! Give the priests room to walk.'

  'There's plenty of room for them to pass.'

  'For God's sake - this child is suffocating . . .'

  'What is happening?'

  'If you don't know what's happening you'd better go home,where there's nothing for you to steal . . .'

  'Somebody's cut the strap of my handbag!'

  'But Petlyura's supposed to be a socialist, isn't he? So why areall the priests praying for him?'

  'Look out!'

  'Give the fathers twenty-five roubles, and they'll say a mass for the devil himself

  'We ought to go straight off to the bazaar now and smash in some of the Yids' shop windows. I once did . . .'

  'Don't speak Russian.'

  'This woman's suffocating! Clear a space!'

  'Kha-a-a-a

  Shoulder to shoulder, unable to turn, from the side chapels, from the choir-lofts, down step after step the crowd slowly moved out of the cathedral in one heaving mass. On the wall frescoes the brown painted figures of fat-legged buffoons, of unknown antiquity, danced and played the bagpipes. Half suffocated, half intoxicated by carbon dioxide, smoke and incense the crowd

  flowed noisily out of the doors, the general hum occasionally pierced by the strangled cries of women in pain. Pickpockets, hat brims pulled low, worked hard and with steady concentration, their skilled hands slipping expertly between sticky clumps of compressed human flesh. The crowd rustled and buzzed above the scraping of a thousand feet.

  'Oh Lord God . . .'

  'Jesus Christ . . . Holy Mary, queen of heaven . . .'

  'I wish I hadn't come. What is supposed to be happening?'

  'I don't care if you are being crushed . . .'

  'My watch! My silver watch! It's gone! I only bought it yesterday . . .'

  'This may be the last service in this cathedral . . .'

  'What language were they holding the service in, I didn't understand?'

  'In God's language, dear.'

  'It's been strictly forbidden to use Russian in church any more.'

  'What's that? Aren't we allowed to use our own Orthodox language any more?'

  'They pulled her ear-rings off and tore half her ears away at the same time . . .'

  'Hey, cossacks, stop that man! He's a spy! A Bolshevik spy!'

  'This isn't Russia any longer, mister. This is the Ukraine now.'

  'Oh my God, look at those soldiers - wearing pigtails . . .'

  'Oh, I'm going ... to faint . . .'

  'This woman's feeling bad.'

  'We're all feeling bad, dear. Everybody's feeling terrible. Look out, you'll poke my eye out - stop pushing! What's the matter with you? Gone crazy?'

  'Down with Russia! Up the Ukraine!'

  'There ought to be a police cordon here, Ivan Ivanovich. Do you remember the celebrations in 1912? Ah, those were the days . . .'

  'So you want Bloody Nicholas back again, do you? Ah, we know your sort ... we know what you're thinking.'

  'Keep away from me, for Christ's sake. I'm not in your way, so keep your hands to yourself . . .'

  'God, let's hope we get out of here soon . . . get a breath of fresh air.'

  'I won't make it. I shall die of suffocation in a moment.'

  Like soda-water from a bottle the crowd burst swirling out of the main doors. Hats fell off, people groaned with relief, crossed themselves. Through the side door, where two panes of glass were broken in the crush, came the religious procession, silver and gold, the priests breathless and confused, followed by the choir. Flashes of gold among the black vestments, mitres bobbed, sacred banners were held low to pass under the doorway, then straightened and floated on upright.

  There was a heavy frost, a day when smoke rose slowly and heavily above the City. The cathedral courtyard rang to the ceaseless stamp of thousands of feet. Frosty clouds of breath swayed in the freezing air and rose up towards the belfry. The great bell of St Sophia boomed out from the tallest bell-tower, trying to drown the awful, shrieking confusion. The smaller bells tinkled away at random, dissonant and tuneless, as though Satan had climbed into the belfry and the devil in a cassock was amusing himself by raising bedlam. Through the black slats of the multi-storied belfry, which had once warned of the coming of the slant-eyed Tartars, the smaller bells could be seen swinging and yelping like mad dogs on a chain. The frost crunched and steamed. Shocked by noise and cold, the black mob poured across the cathedral courtyard.

  In spite of the cruel frost, mendicant friars with bared heads, some bald as ripe pumpkins, some fringed with sparse orange-colored hair, were already sitting cross-legged in a row along the stone-flagged pathway leading to the main entrance of the old belfry of St Sophia and were chanting in a nasal whine.

  Blind ballad-singers droned their eerie song about the Last Judgment, their tattered peaked caps lying upwards to catch the sparse harvest of greasy rouble bills and battered coppers.

  Oh, that day, that dreadful day, When the end of the world will come. The judgment day . . .

  The terrible heart-rending sounds floated up from the crunching, frosty ground, wrenched whining from these yellow-toothed old instruments with their palsied, crooked limbs.

  'Oh my brethren, oh my sisters, have mercy on my poverty, for the love of Christ, and give alms.'

  'Run on to the square and keep a place, Fedosei Petrovich, or we'll be late.'

  'There's going to be an open-air service.'

  'Procession . . .'

  'They're going to pray for victory for the revolutionary people's army of the Ukraine.'

  'What victory? They've already won.'

  'And they'll win again!'

  'There's going to be a campaign.'

  'Where to?'

  'To Moscow.'

  'Which Moscow?'

  'The usual.'

  'They'll never make it.'

  'What did you say? Say that again! Hey, lads, listen to what this Russian's saying!'

  'I didn't say anything!'

  'Arrest him! Stop, thief!'

  'Run through that gateway, Marusya, otherwise we'll never get through this crowd. They say Petlyura's in the square. Let's go and see him.'

  'You fool, Petlyura's in the cathedral.'

  'Fool yourself. They say he's riding on a white horse.'

  'Hurrah for Petlyura! Hurrah for the Ukrainian People's Republic!'

  Bong . . . bong . . . bong . . . tinkle - clang
-clang . . . Bong-clang-bong . . . raged the bells.

  'Have pity on an orphan, Christian people, good people ... A blind man ... A poor man . . .'

  Dressed in black, his hindquarters encased in leather like a broken beetle, a legless man wriggled between the legs of the crowd, clutching at the trampled snow with his sleeves to pull himself along. Crippled beggars displayed the sores on their bruised shins, shook their heads as though from tic douloureux or paralysis, rolled the whites of their eyes pretending to be blind. Tearing at the heart-strings of the crowd, reminding them of poverty, deceit, despair, hopelessness and sheer animal misery, creaking and groaning, they howled the refrain of the damned.

  Shivering dishevelled old women with crutches thrust out their desiccated, parchment-like hands as they moaned:

  'God give you good health, handsome gentleman!'

  'Have pity on a poor old woman . . .'

  'Give to the poor, my dear, and God will be good to you . . .'

  Capes, coats, bonnets with ear-flaps, peasants in sheepskin caps, red-cheeked girls, retired civil servants with a pale mark on their cap where the badge had been removed, elderly women with protruding bellies, nimble-footed children, cossacks in greatcoats and shaggy fur hats with tops of different colors - blue, red, green, magenta with gold and silver piping, with tassels from the fringes of coffin-palls: they poured out on to the cathedral courtyard like a black sea, yet the cathedral doors still gave forth wave upon wave.

  Heartened by the fresh air, the procession gathered its forces, rearranged itself, straightened up and glided off in an orderly and proper sequence of heads wearing check scarves, mitres, stovepipe hats, bareheaded deacons with their long flowing hair, skullcapp-ed monks, painted crosses on gilded poles, banners of Christ the Saviour and the Virgin and Child and a host of ikons in curved and wrought covers, gold, magenta, covered in Slavonic script.

  Now like a gray snake winding its way through the City, now like brown turbulent rivers flowing along the old streets, the

  innumerable forces of Petlyura made their way to the parade on St Sophia's Square. First, shattering the frost with the roaring of trumpets and the clash of glittering cymbals, cutting through the black river of the crowd, marched the tight ranks of the Blue Division.

  In blue greatcoats and blue-topped astrakhan caps set at a jaunty angle the Galicians marched past. Slanting forward between bared sabres two blue and yellow standards glided along behind a large brass band and after the standards, rhythmically stamping the crystalline snow, rank on rank of men marched jauntily along dressed in good, sound German cloth. After the first battalion ambled a body of men in long black cloaks belted at the waist with ropes, with German steel helmets on their heads, and the brown thicket of bayonets crept on parade like a bristling swarm.

  In uncountable force marched the ragged gray regiments of Cossack riflemen and battalion on battalion of haidamak infantrymen; prancing high in the gaps between them rode the dashing regimental, battalion and company commanders. Bold, brassy, confident marches blared out like nuggets of gold in a bright, flashing stream.

  After the infantry detachments came the cavalry regiments riding at a collected trot. The excited crowd was dazzled by rank on rank of crumpled, battered fur caps with blue, green and red tops and gold tassels. Looped on to the riders' right hands, their lances bobbed rhythmically like rows of needles. Jingling gaily, the bell-hung hetmen's standards jogged along among the ranks of horsemen and the horses of officers and trumpeters strained forward to the sound of martial music. Fat and jolly as a rubber ball, Colonel Bolbotun pranced ahead of his regiment, his low, sweating forehead and his jubilant, puffed-out cheeks thrusting forward into the frosty air. His chestnut mare, rolling her bloodshot eyes, champing at the bit and scattering flecks of foam, reared now and again on her hind legs, shaking even the 200-pound weight of Bolbotun and making his curved sabre rattle in its scabbard as the colonel lightly touched her nervous flanks with his spurs.

  For our headmen are with us, Shoulder to shoulder Alongside as brothers . . .

  chorused the bold haidamaks as they trotted along, pigtails jogging.

  With their bullet-torn yellow-and-blue standard fluttering and accordions playing, rode the regiment of the dark, moustached Colonel Kozyr-Leshko mounted on a huge charger. The colonel looked grim, scowling and slashing at the rump of his stallion with a whip. The colonel had cause to be angry - in the misty early hours of that morning the rifle-fire from Nai-Turs' detachment on the Brest-Litovsk highway had hit Kozyr's best troops hard and as the regiment trotted into the square its ranks had been closed up to conceal the gaps in them.

  Behind Kozyr came the brave, hitherto unbeaten 'Hetman Mazeppa' regiment of cavalry. The name of the glorious hetman, who had almost destroyed Peter the Great at the battle of Poltava, glittered in gold letters on a sky-blue silk standard.

  Streams of people flowed around the gray and yellow walls, people pushed forward and climbed on to advertisement-hoardings, little boys clambered up the lamp-posts and sat on the crossbars, stood on rooftops, whistled and shouted hurrah . . .

  'Hurrah! Hurrah!' they shouted from the sidewalks.

  Faces crowded behind glassed-in balconies and window-panes.

  Cab-drivers climbed unsteadily on to the boxes of the sleighs, waving their whips.

  'They said Petlyura's troops were just a rabble . . . Some rabble. Hurrah!'

  'Hurrah! Hurrah for Petlyura! Hurrah for our Leader!'

  'Hurrah!'

  'Look, Manya, look! There's Petlyura himself, look, on the grayhorse. Isn't he handsome . . .'

  'That's not Petlyura, ma'am, that's a colonel.'

  'Oh, really? Then where is Petlyura?'

  'Petlyura's at the palace receiving the French emissaries fromOdessa.'

  'What's the matter with you, mister, gone crazy? What emissaries?'

  'Pyotr Vasilievich, they say Petlyura (whisper) is in Paris, did you know?'

  'Some rabble . . . there's a million men in this army.'

  'Where's Petlyura? If they'd only give us one look at him.'

  'Petlyura, madam, is on the square at this moment taking the salute as the parade marches past.'

  'Nothing of the sort. Petlyura's in Berlin at the moment meeting the president to sign a treaty.'

  'What president? Are you trying to spread rumors, mister?'

  'The president of Germany. Didn't you know? Germany's been declared a republic.'

  'Did you see him? Did you see him? He looked splendid .. . He's just driven down Rylsky Street in a coach and six horses.'

  'But will they recognise the Orthodox Church?'

  'I don't know. Work it out for yourself . . .'

  'The fact is that the priests are praying for him, anyway . . .'

  'He'll be stronger if he keeps the priests on his side . . .'

  'Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura. Petlyura . . .'

  There was a fearsome rumbling of heavy wheels and rattling limbers and after the ten regiments of cavalry rolled an endless stream of artillery. Blunt-muzzled, fat mortars, small-caliber howitzers; the crews sat on the limbers, cheerful, well-fed, victorious, the drivers riding calmly and sedately. Straining and creaking, the six-inch guns rumbled past, hauled by teams of powerful, well-fed, big-rumped horses and smaller hard-working peasant ponies that looked like pregnant fleas. The light mountain artillery clattered briskly along, the little guns bouncing up and down between their jaunty crews.

  'Who said Petlyura only had fifteen thousand men? It was all a lie. Just a rabble, they said, no more than fifteen thousand and demoralised . . . God, there are so many I've lost count already. Another battery . . . and another . . .'

  His sharp nose thrust into the upturned collar of his student's greatcoat, Nikolka was shoved and jostled by the crowd until he

  finally succeeded in climbing up into a niche in a wall and installed himself. A jolly little peasant woman i
n felt boots was already in the niche and said cheerfully to Nikolka:

  'You hold on to me, mister, and I'll hang on to this brick and we'll be all right.'

  'Thanks,' Nikolka sniffled dejectedly inside his frozen collar, 'I'll hold on to this hook.'

  'Where's Petlyura?' the talkative woman babbled on. 'Oh, I do want to see Petlyura. They say he's the handsomest man you've ever seen.'

  'Yes,' Nikolka mumbled vaguely into the beaver fur, 'so they say . . .' ('Another battery . . . God, now I understand . . .')

  'Look, there he goes, driving in that open car . . . Didn't you see?'

  'He's at Vinnitsa', Nikolka replied in a dry, dull voice, wriggled his freezing toes inside his boots. 'Why the hell didn't I put felt boots on? Hellish cold.'

  'Look, look, there's Petlyura.'

  'That's not Petlyura, that's the commander of the bodyguard.'

  'Petlyura has a palace in Belaya Tserkov. Belaya Tserkov will be the capital now.'

  'Won't he come to the City, then?'

  'He'll come in his own good time.'

  'I see, I see . . .'

  Clang, clank, clank. The muffled boom of kettledrums rolled across St Sophia's Square; then down the street, machine-guns thrust menacingly from their gun-ports, swaying slightly from the weight of their turrets, rolled the four terrible armored cars. But the enthusiastic, pink-cheeked Lieutenant Strashkevich was no longer inside the leading car. A dishevelled and far from pink-cheeked Strashkevich, waxy-gray and motionless, was lying in the Mariinsky Park at Pechyorsk, immediately inside the park gates. There was a small hole in Strashkevich's forehead and another, plugged with clotted blood, behind his ear. The lieutenant's naked feet stuck out of the snow and his glassy eyes stared straight up into the sky through the bare branches of a maple tree. It was very

  quiet round about, there was not a living soul in the park and scarcely anyone was to be seen even on the street; the sound of music from St Sophia's Square did not reach as far as here, so there was nothing to upset the complete calm on the lieutenant's face.

  Hooting and scattering the crowd, the armored cars rolled onward to where Bogdan Khmelnitzky sat and pointed northeastwards with a mace, black against the pale sky. The great bell was still sending thick, oily waves of sound over the snowbound hills and roofs of the City; in the thick of the parade the drums thumped untiringly and little boys, maddened with excitement, swarmed around the hooves of the black Bogdan. Next in the parade was a line of trucks, snow-chains clanking on their wheels, carrying choirs and dancing groups in Ukrainian costume -brightly colored embroidered skirts under sheepskin tunics, plaited straw wreaths on the girls' heads and the boys in baggy blue trousers tucked into their boot-tops . . .