The White Guard Part 6

With this his attack of fury subsided. The boy dropped his newspapers, slipped and fell down in a snowdrift. For a moment he pretended to burst into tears, and his eyes filled with a look of the most savage hatred that was no pretence.

'What's the matter with you? Who d'you think you are, mister? What've I done?' he snivelled, trying to cry and stumbling to his feet in the snow. A face stared at Turbin in astonishment, but was too afraid to say anything. Feeling stupid, confused and ashamed Turbin hunched his head into his shoulders and, turning sharply, ran past a lamp-post, past the circular white walls of the gigantic museum building, past some holes in the ground full of snow-covered bricks and towards the huge asphalt square in front of the Alexander I High School.

'Voice of Liberty! Paper! Paper!' came the cry from the street. Paper! Paper!' came the cry from the street.

The huge four-storey building of Alexei Turbin's old school, with its hundred and eighty windows, was built around three sides of an asphalted square. He had spent eight years there. For eight years, in springtime during breaks between cla.s.ses he had run around that playground, and in the winter semester when the air in the cla.s.srooms was stuffy and dust-laden and the playground was covered by the inevitable cold, solid layer of snow, he had gazed at it out of the window. For eight years that brick-and-mortar foster-mother had raised and educated Alexei Turbin and his two younger friends, Karas and Myshlaevsky.

And precisely eight years ago Turbin had said goodbye to the school playground for the last time. A spasm of something like fear s.n.a.t.c.hed at his heart. He had a sudden feeling that a black cloud had blotted out the sky, that a kind of hurricane had blown up and carried away all of life as he knew it, just as a monster wave will sweep away a jetty. Ah, these eight years of school! There had been much in them that as a boy he had felt to be dreary, pointless and unpleasant - but there had also been a lot of sheer fun. One monotonous cla.s.sroom day had plodded after another - ut ut plus the subjunctive, Caius Julius Caesar, a zero for astronomy and an undying hatred of astronomy ever since; but then spring would come, eager spring and somehow the noise in the school grew louder and more excited, the high school girls would be out in their green pinafores on the avenue, May and chestnut blossom and above all the constant beacon ahead: the university, in other words - freedom. Do you realise what the university means? Boat trips on the Dnieper, freedom, money, fame, power. plus the subjunctive, Caius Julius Caesar, a zero for astronomy and an undying hatred of astronomy ever since; but then spring would come, eager spring and somehow the noise in the school grew louder and more excited, the high school girls would be out in their green pinafores on the avenue, May and chestnut blossom and above all the constant beacon ahead: the university, in other words - freedom. Do you realise what the university means? Boat trips on the Dnieper, freedom, money, fame, power.

And now he had been through it all. The teachers with their permanently enigmatic expressions; those terrible swimming baths in the math problems (which he still dreamed about) always draining themselves at so many gallons per minute but which never emptied; complicated arguments about the differences in character between Lensky and Onegin, about the disgraceful behaviour of Socrates; the date of the foundation of the Jesuit order; the dates of Pompey's campaigns and every other campaign for the past two thousand years.

But that was only a beginning. After eight years in high school, after the last swimming bath had emptied itself, came the corpses in the anatomy school, white hospital wards, the gla.s.sy silence of operating theatres; then three years in the saddle, wounded soldiers, squalor and degradation - the war, yet another ever-Mowing, never-emptying pool. And now he had landed up here again, back in the same school grounds. He ran across the square feeling sick and depressed, clutching the revolver in his pocket, running G.o.d knew where or why: presumably to defend that life, that future on whose behalf he had racked his brains over emptying swimming-pools and over those d.a.m.ned men, one of whom was always walking from point 'A' and the other walking towards him from point 'B'.

The dark windows were grim and silent, a silence revealed at a glance as utterly lifeless. Strange, that here in the center of the City, amidst all the disintegration, uproar and bustle this great four-storey ship, which had once launched tens of thousands of young lives on to the open sea, should now be so dead. No one seemed to be in charge of it any longer; there was not a sound, not a movement to be found any longer in its windows or behind the yellow-washed walls dating from the reign of Nicholas I. A virginal layer of snow lay on its roofs, covered the tops of the chestnut trees like white caps, lay evenly like a sheet over the playground, and only a few random tracks showed that someone had recently tramped across it.

And most depressing of all, not only did n.o.body know, but n.o.body cared what had become of the school. Who was there now to come and study aboard that great ship? And if no one came to school-why not? Where was the janitor? What were those horrible, blunt-muzzled mortars doing there, drawn up under the row of chestnut trees by the railings around the main entrance? Why had the school been turned into an armory? Whose was it now? Who had done this? Why had they done it?

'Unlimber!' roared a voice. The mortars swung round and moved slowly forward. Two hundred men sprang into action, ran about, squatted down or heaved on the enormous cast-iron wheels. There was a confused blur of yellow sheepskin jerkins, gray coats and fur caps, khaki army caps and blue students' caps.

By the time Turbin had crossed the vast square four mortars had been drawn up in a row with their muzzles facing him. The brief period of instruction was over and the motley complement of a newly-formed mortar troop was standing to attention in two ranks.

'Troop all present and correct, sir!' sang out Myshlaevsky's voice.

Studzinsky marched up to the ranks, took a pace backwards and shouted: 'Left face! Quick-march!'

With a crunch of snow underfoot, wobbling and unsoldierly, the troop set off.

Among the rows of typical students' faces Turbin noticed several that were similar. Karas appeared at the head of the third troop. Still not knowing quite what he was supposed to do Turbin fell into step beside them. Karas stepped aside and marching backwards in front of them, began to shout the cadence: 'Left! Left! Hup, two, three, four!'

The troops wheeled toward the gaping black mouth of the school's bas.e.m.e.nt entrance and the doorway began to swallow litem rank by rank.

Inside, the school buildings were even gloomier and more funereal than outside. The silent walls and sinister half-light awoke instantly to the echoing crash of marching feet. Noises started up beneath the vaults as though a herd of demons had been awakened. The rustling and squeaking of frightened rats scuttling about in dark corners. The ranks marched on down the endless black underground corridors sh.o.r.ed up by brick b.u.t.tresses, until they reached a vast hall feebly lit by whatever light managed to filter through the narrow, cob webbed, barred windows.

The silence was next shattered by an infernal outbreak of hammering as steel-banded wooden ammunition boxes were opened and their contents taken out- endless machine-gun belts and round, cake-like Lewis gun magazines. Out came spindle-legged machine-guns with the look of deadly insects. Nuts and bolts clattered, pincers wrenched, a saw whistled in a corner. Cadets sorted through piles of store-damaged fur caps, greatcoats in folds as rigid as iron, leather straps frozen stiff, cartridge pouches and cloth-covered waterbottles.

'Come on, look lively!' Studzinsky's voice rang out.

Six officers in faded gold shoulder-straps circled around like clumps of duckweed in a mill-race. Myshlaevsky's tenor, now fully restored, bawled out something above the noise.

'Doctor!' shouted Studzinsky from the darkness, 'please take command of the medical orderlies and give them some instruction.'

Two students materialised in front of Alexei Turbin. One of them, short and excitable, wore a red cross bra.s.sard on the sleeve of his student's uniform greatcoat. The other was in a gray army coat; his fur cap kept falling over his eyes, so he was constantly pushing it back with his fingers.

'There are the boxes of medical supplies,' said Tubirn, 'take out the orderlies' satchels, put them over your shoulder and pa.s.s me the surgeon's bag with the instruments . . . Now go and issue every man with two individual field-dressing packets and give them brief instructions in how to open them in case of need.'

Myshlaevsky's head rose above the swarming gray mob. He climbed upon a box, waved a rifle, slammed the bolt open, noisily charged the magazine, then aimed out of a window, rattled the bolt and showered the surrounding cadets with ejected cartridges as he repeated the action several times. After this demonstration the cellar began to sound like a factory as the cadets rattling and slamming, filled their rifle-magazines with cartridges.

'Anyone who can't do it - take care. Cadets!' Myshlaevsky sang out, 'show the students how it's done.'

As straps fitted with cartridge pouches and water-bottles were pulled on over heads and shoulders, a miracle took place. The motley rabble became transformed into a compact, h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s crowned by a waving, disorderly, spiky steel-bristled brush made of bayonets.

'All officers report to me, please', came Studzinsky's voice.

In a dark pa.s.sageway to the subdued clink of spurs, Studzinsky asked quietly: 'Well, gentlemen, what are your impressions?'

A rattle of spurs. Myshlaevsky, saluting with a practised and nonchalant touch of his cap, took a pace towards the staff-captain and said: 'It's not going to be easy. There are fifteen men in my troop who have never seen a rifle in their lives.'

Gazing upwards as though inspired towards a window where the last trickle of gray light was filtering through, Studzinsky went on: 'Morale?'

Myshlaevsky spoke again.

'Er, h'umm ... I think the students were somewhat put off by the sight of that funeral. It had a bad effect on them. They watched it through the railings.'

Studzinsky turned his eager, dark eyes on to him.

'Do your best to raise their morale.'

Spurs clinked again as the officers dispersed.

'Cadet Pavlovsky!' Back in the armory, Myshlaevsky roared out like Radames in Aida. Aida.

'Pavlovsky . . . sky . . . sky!' answered the stony walls of the armory and a chorus of cadets' voices.

'Here, sir!'

'Were you at the Alexeyevsky Artillery School?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Right, let's smarten things up and have a song. So loud that it'll make Petlyura drop dead, G.o.d rot him . . .'

One voice, high and clear, struck up beneath the stone vaults: 'I was born a little gunner-boy . . .' Some tenors chimed in from among the forest of bayonets: 'Washed in a sh.e.l.l-case spent . . .'

The horde of students seemed to shudder, quickly picked up the tune by ear, and suddenly, in a mighty ba.s.s roar that echoed like gunfire, they rocked the whole armory: 'Christened with a charge of shrapnel, Swaddled in an army tent! Christened with . . .'

The sound rang in their ears, boomed among the ammunition boxes, rattled the grim windows and pounded in their heads until several long-forgotten dusty old gla.s.ses on the sloping window ledges began to rattle and shake . . .

'In my cradle made of trace-ropes The gun-crew would rock me to sleep.'

Out of the crowd of greatcoats, bayonets and machine-guns, Studzinsky selected two pink-faced ensigns and gave them a rapid, whispered order: 'a.s.sembly hall. . . take down the drapes in front of the portrait . . . look sharp . . .' The ensigns hurried off.

The empty stone box of the school building roared and shook in march time, while the rats lurked deep in their holes, cowering with terror.

'Hup, two, three, four!' came Karas' piercing voice.

'Louder!' shouted Myshlaevsky in his high, clear tenor.

'What d'you think this is - a funeral!?'

Instead of a ragged gray mob, an orderly file bristling with bayonets now marched off steadily along the corridor, the floor groaning and bending under the crunch of feet. Along the endless pa.s.sages and up to the second floor marched the detachment straight into the gigantic a.s.sembly hall bathed in light from its gla.s.s dome, where the front ranks had already halted and were beginning to fidget restlessly.

Mounted on his pure-bred Arab charger, saddle-cloth emblazoned with the imperial monogram, the Arab executing a perfect caracole, with beaming smile and white-plumed tricorn hat c.o.c.ked at a rakish angle, the balding, radiant Tsar Alexander I galloped ahead of the ranks of cadets and students. Flashing them smile after smile redolent of insidious charm, Alexander waved his baton at the cadets to show them the serried ranks of Borodino. Clumps of cannon-b.a.l.l.s were strewn about the fields and the entire background of the fourteen foot canvas was covered with black slabs of ma.s.sed bayonets.

As the gorgeous Tsar Alexander galloped onwards and upwards to heaven, the torn drapes which had shrouded him for a whole year since October 1917 lay in a heap around the hooves of his charger.

'Can't you see the Emperor Alexander? Keep that cadence!

Left, left! Hup, two, three, four!' roared Myshlaevsky as the file mounted the staircase with the ponderous tread of Tsar Alexander's foot-soldiers, past the man who beat Napoleon, the battery wheeled to the right into the vast a.s.sembly hall. The singing broke off as they formed into an open square several ranks deep, bayonets clicking. A pale, whitish twilight reigned in the hall and the portraits of the last tsars, still draped, peered down faint and corpse-like through the cloth.

Studzinsky about-faced and looked at his wrist-watch. At that moment a cadet ran in and whispered something to him. The nearby ranks could hear the words '. . . regimental commander.'

Studzinsky signalled to the officers, who began dressing the tanks. Studzinsky went out into the corridor towards the commanding officer.

Turning and glancing at Tsar Alexander, his spurs ringing, Colonel Malyshev mounted the staircase towards the entrance to the a.s.sembly hall. His curved Caucasian sabre with its cherry-red sword-knot b.u.mped against his left hip. He wore a black parade-dress service cap and a long greatcoat with a large slit up the back. He looked worried.

Studzinsky marched rapidly up to him, halted and saluted.

Malyshev asked him: 'Have they all got uniforms?'

'Yes, sir. All orders carried out.'

'Well, what are they like?'

'They'll fight. But they're completely inexperienced. For a hundred and twenty cadets there are eighty students who have never handled a rifle.'

A shadow crossed Malyshev's face, but he said nothing.

'Thank G.o.d, though, we've managed to get some good officers,' Studzinsky went on, 'especially that new one, Myshlaevsky. We'll make out somehow.'

'I see. Thank you, captain. Now: as soon as I have inspected the battery I want you to send them home with orders to report back here in time to be on parade at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, except for the officers and a guard detachment of sixty of the best and most experienced cadets, who will mount guard over the guns, the armory and the buildings.'

Paralysed with amazement, Studzinsky glared at the colonel in the most insubordinate fashion. His mouth dropped open.

'But sir . . .' - in his excitement Studzinsky's Polish accent became more p.r.o.nounced -'. . . if you'll allow me to say so, sir, that's impossible. The only way of keeping this battery in any state of military efficiency is to keep the men here overnight.'

Instantly the colonel demonstrated an unsuspected capacity for losing his temper on the grandest scale. His neck and cheeks turned a deep red and his eyes flashed.

'Captain', he said in a furious voice, 'if you talk to me like that again I will have an official notice published that you no longer rank as a staff-captain but as an instructor who regards it as his job to lecture senior officers. This will be most unfortunate, because I thought that in you I had an experienced executive officer and not a civilian professor. Kindly understand that I am in no need of lectures, and when I want your advice I shall ask for it. Otherwise it is your duty to listen, to take note - and then to carry out what I say!'

The two men stared at each other.

Studzinsky's face and neck turned the color of a hot samovar and his lips trembled. In a grating voice he forced himself to say: 'Very good, colonel.'

'Now do what you're told. Send them home. Tell them to get a good night's sleep; send them home unarmed, with orders to report back here by seven o'clock tomorrow morning. Send them home - and what's more, make sure they go in small parties, not whole troops at a time, and without their shoulder-straps, so that they don't attract any unwelcome attention from undesirable elements.'

A ray of comprehension pa.s.sed across Studzinsky's expression and his resentment subsided.

'Very good, sir.'

The colonel's tone altered completely.

'My dear Studzinsky, you and I have known each other for some time and I know perfectly well that you are a most experienced regimental officer. And I'm sure you know me well enough not to be offended. In any case, taking offense is a luxury we can hardly afford at the moment. I apologise for showing you the rough side of my tongue - please forget it; I think you rather forgot yourself, too. . . .'

Studzinsky blushed again.

'Quite right, sir. I'm sorry.'

'Well, that's in order. Let's not waste time, otherwise it will be bad for their morale. Everything depends on what happens tomorrow, because by then the situation will be somewhat clearer. However, I may as well tell you now that there's not much prospect of using the mortars: there are no horses to pull them and no ammunition to fire. So as of tomorrow morning it's to be rifle and shooting practice, shooting practice and more shooting practice. By noon tomorrow I want this battery to be able to shoot like a Guards regiment. And issue hand-grenades to all the more experienced cadets. Understood?'

Studzinsky looked grim as he listened tensely.

'May I ask a question, sir?'

'I know what you're going to ask, and you needn't bother. I'll tell you the answer straight away-it's sickening. It could be worse - but not much. Get me?'

'Yes, sir!'

'Right then.' Malyshev raised his voice: 'So you see I don't want them to spend the night in this great stone rat-trap, at an uncertain time like this, when there's a good chance that by doing so I would be signing the death warrant of two hundred boys, eighty of whom can't even shoot.'

Studzinsky said nothing.

'So that's it. I'll tell you the rest later on this evening. We'll pull through somehow. Let's go and have a look at 'em.'

They marched into the hall.

'Atten-shun!' shouted Studzinsky.

'Good day, gentlemen!'

Behind Malyshev's back Studzinsky waved his arm like an anxious stage director and with a roar that shook the windowpanes the bristling gray wall sang out the Russian soldier's traditional response to their commanding officer's greeting.

Malyshev swept the ranks with a cheerful glance, snapped his hand down from the salute and said: 'Splendid! . . . Now gentlemen, I'm not going to waste words. You won't find me at political meetings, because I'm no speaker, so I shall be very brief. We're going to fight that son of a b.i.t.c.h Petlyura and you may rest a.s.sured that we shall beat him. There are cadets among you from the Vladimir, Constantine and Alexeyevsky military academies and no officer from any of these inst.i.tutions has ever yet disgraced the colors. Many of you, too, were once at this famous school. Its old walls are watching you: I hope you won't make them redden with shame on your account. Gentlemen of the Mortar Regiment! We shall defend this great city in the hour of its a.s.sault by a bandit. As soon as we get Petlyura in range of our six-inchers, there won't be much left of him except a pair of very dirty underpants, G.o.d rot his stinking little soul!'

When the laugh from the ranks had died down the colonel finished: 'Gentlemen - do your best!'

Again, like a director off-stage, Studzinsky nervously raised his arm and once more the Mortar Regiment blew away several layers of dust all around the a.s.sembly hall as they gave three cheers for their commanding officer.

Ten minutes later the a.s.sembly hall, just like the battlefield of Borodino, was dotted with hundreds of rifles piled in threes, bayonet upwards. Two sentries stood at either end of the dusty parquet floor sprouting its dragon's teeth. From the distance came the sound of vanishing footsteps as the new recruits hastily dispersed according to instructions. From along the corridors came the crash of hobnailed boots and an officer's words of command -Studzinsky himself was posting the sentries. Then came the unexpected sound of a bugle-call. There was no menace in the ragged, jerky sound as it echoed around the school buildings, but merely an anxious splutter of sour notes. On the landing bounded by the railings of the double staircase leading from the first floor up to the a.s.sembly hall, a cadet was standing with distended cheeks. The faded ribbons of the Order of St George dangled from the tarnished bra.s.s of the bugle. His legs spread wide like a pair of compa.s.ses, Myshlaevsky was standing in front of the bugler and instructing him.