The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [118]
'I know those men! Kill them! They're officers! I've seen them in uniform!'
A troop of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, waiting their turn to march into the square, forced their way into the crowd and seized a man. Women screamed. The man who had been seized, Captain Pleshko, cried out weakly and jerkily:
'I'm not an officer. Nothing of the sort. What are you doing? I'm a bank clerk.'
Beside him another man was arrested, white-faced and silent, who wriggled in the soldiers' grip.
Then the crowd scattered down the street, jostling each other like animals let out of a sack, running away in terror, leaving an empty space on the street that was completely white except for one black blob - someone's lost hat. A flash and a bang, and Captain
Pleshko, who had thrice denied himself, paid for his curiosity to see the parade. He lay face upward by the fence of the presbytery of St Sophia's cathedral, spreadeagled, whilst the other, silent man fell across his legs with his face to the ground. Just then came a roll of drums from the corner of the square, the crowd surged back again and the band struck up with a boom and a crash. A confident voice roared: 'Walk-march!' Rank upon rank, gold-tasselled caps glittering, the 10th Cavalry Regiment moved off.
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Quite suddenly a gray patch between the domes of the cathedral broke open and the sun burst through the dull, overcast sky. The sun was bigger than anyone had ever seen it in the Ukraine and quite red, like pure blood. Streaks of clotted blood and plasma flowed steadily from that distant globe as it struggled to shine through the screen of clouds. The sun reddened the dome of St Sophia with blood, casting a strange shadow from it on to the square, so that in that shadow Bogdan turned violet, and made the seething crowd of people look even blacker, even denser, even more confused. And gray men in long coats belted with rope and waving bayonets could be seen climbing up the steps leading up the side of the rock and trying to smash the inscription that stared down from the black granite plinth. But the bayonets broke or slithered uselessly away from the granite, and Bogdan wrenched his horse away from the rock at a gallop as he tried to fly away from the people who were clinging on to the hooves of his horse and weighing them down. His face, turned directly towards the red globe, was furious and he continued steadfastly to point his mace into the distance.
At that moment a man was raised on to the slippery frozen basin of the fountain, above the rumbling, shifting crowd facing the statue of Bogdan. He was wearing a dark overcoat with a fur collar and despite the frost he took off his fur hat and held it in his hands. The square still hummed and seethed like an ant-heap, but the belfry of St Sophia had stopped ringing and the bands
had marched off in various directions down the snowbound streets. An enormous crowd had collected around the base of the fountain:
'Petka, who's that up on the fountain?'
'Looks like Petlyura.'
'Petlyura's making a speech.'
'Rubbish . . . that's just an ordinary speaker . . .'
'Look, Marusya, the man's going to make a speech. Look, look . . .'
'He's going to read a proclamation . . .'
'No, he's going to read the Universal.'
'Long live the free Ukraine!'
With an inspired glance above the thousands of heads towards the point in the sky where the sun's disc was emerging even more clearly and gilding the crosses with thick red gold, the man waved his arm and shouted in a weak voice:
'Hurrah for the Ukrainian people!'
'Petlyura . . . Petlyura ..."
'That's not Petlyura. What are you talking about?'
'Why should Petlyura have to climb up on a fountain?'
'Petlyura's in Kharkov.'
'Petlyura's just gone to the palace for a banquet . . .'
'Nonsense, there aren't going to be any banquets.'
'Hurrah for the Ukrainian people!' the man repeated,