Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [181]
“I also thought it was a swearword. But about electric force, you’re right. I decided from an advertisement to order an electric truss from Petersburg. To step up the activity. C.O.D. But then suddenly there’s a new upheaval. Trusses are out.”
Terenty did not finish. The din of drunken voices was drowned out by the thundering burst of a nearby explosion. The noise at the table momentarily ceased. A minute later it started up again with still more disorderly force. Some jumped up from their seats. The steadier ones stayed on their feet. Others, staggering, wanted to make off somewhere, but gave way and, collapsing under the table, immediately began to snore. Women shrieked. A commotion began.
Vlas Pakhomovich glanced around, looking for the culprit. At first he thought the bang came from somewhere in Kuteiny, quite near, maybe even very close to the tables. He strained his neck, his face turned purple, he bawled at the top of his lungs:
“What Judas has wormed his way into our ranks to commit outrages? What mother’s son is playing with grenades here? Whoever he is, even if he’s my own, I’ll strangle the vermin! We won’t suffer such jokes, citizens! I demand that we make a roundup. Let’s surround Kuteiny Posad! Let’s catch the provocator! Don’t let the son of a bitch escape!”
At first he was listened to. Then attention was distracted by the column of black smoke slowly rising into the sky from the local council building in Maly Ermolai. Everybody ran to the bank to see what was going on there.
Several undressed recruits came running out of the burning Ermolai council building, one completely barefoot and naked, just pulling on his trousers, along with Colonel Strese and the other military who had been carrying out the selective service examination. Mounted Cossacks and militiamen rushed back and forth in the village, swinging their whips and stretching out their bodies and arms on their horses, themselves stretched out like writhing snakes. They were searching for someone, chasing someone. A great many people were running down the road to Kuteiny. In pursuit of the running people came the rapid and anxious ringing of the alarm from the Ermolai bell tower.
Events developed further with terrible swiftness. At dusk, continuing his search, Strese and his Cossacks went up from the village to neighboring Kuteiny. Surrounding it with patrols, they began searching each house, each farmstead.
By that time half of the merrymakers were done in and, drunk as lords, lay in a deep sleep, resting their heads on the edges of the tables or sprawled on the ground under them. When it became known that the militia had come to the village, it was already dark.
Several lads, fleeing the militia, rushed to the backyards of the village and, urging each other on with kicks and shoves, got under the siding of the first storehouse they came to, which did not reach the ground. In the darkness it was impossible to tell whose it was, but, judging by the smell of fish and kerosene, it must have been the crawl space of the grocery cooperative.
The hiders had nothing on their conscience. It was a mistake for them to conceal themselves. Most of them had done it in haste, drunkenly, foolishly. Some had acquaintances who seemed blameworthy to them and might, as they thought, be the ruin of them. Now everything had been given a political coloring. Mischief and hooliganism were counted as signs of the Black Hundred13 in Soviet areas; in White Guard areas ruffians were taken for Bolsheviks.
As it turned out, the lads who slipped under the cottage had predecessors. The space between the ground and the storehouse floor was full of people. Several men from Kuteiny and Ermolai were hiding there. The former were dead drunk. Some were snoring with moaning undertones, grinding their teeth and whining; others were sick and throwing up. It was pitch-dark under the storehouse, stuffy and stinking. Those who crawled in last filled the opening they had come through from inside with earth and