The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [117]
'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 in 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 . . .
At that moment a volley of rifle-fire