The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [114]
'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,