The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [34]
'All right, it's in the sideboard.'
'Thanks. Just one small glass . . . better than all the aspirin in the world.'
With a martyred grimace Myshlaevsky tossed back two glasses of vodka one after the other, in between bites of the soggy remains
of last night's dill pickles. After that he announced that he felt like a new-born babe and said he would like a glass of lemon tea.
'Don't let yourself worry, Lena,' Alexei Turbin was saying hoarsely, 'I won't be long. I shall just go and sign on as a volunteer and then I shall come straight back home. Don't worry,*there won't be any fighting. We shall just sit tight here in the City and beat off "president" Petlyura, the swine.'
'May you not be ordered away somewhere?'
Karas gestured reassuringly.
'Don't worry, Elena Vasilievna. Firstly I might as well tell you that the regiment can't possibly be ready in less than a fortnight; we still have no horses and no ammunition. Even when we are ready there's not the slightest doubt that we shall stay in the City. The army we're forming will undoubtedly be used to garrison the City. Later on, of course, in case of an advance on Moscow . . .'
'That's pure guess-work, though, and I'll believe it when I see it . . .'
'Before that happens we shall have to link up with Denikin . . .'
'You don't have to try so hard to comfort me', said Elena. 'I'm not afraid. On the contrary, I approve of what you're doing.'
Elena sounded genuinely bold and confident; from her expression she was already absorbed with the mundane problems of daily life: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
'Anyuta,' she shouted, 'Anyuta dear, Lieutenant Myshlaevsky's dirty clothes are out there on the verandah. Give them a good hard brush and then wash them right away.'
The person who had the most calming effect on Elena was the short, stocky Karas, who sat there very calmly in his khaki tunic, smoking and frowning.
They said goodbye in the lobby.
'God bless you all', said Elena grimly as she made the sign of the cross over Alexei, then over Karas and Myshlaevsky. Myshlaevsky hugged her, and Karas, his greatcoat tightly belted in at the waist, blushed and gently kissed both her hands.
#
'Permission to report, colonel', said Karas, his spurs clinking gently as he saluted.
The colonel was seated at a little desk in a low, green, very feminine armchair on a kind of raised platform in the front of the shop. Pieces of blue cardboard hat boxes labelled 'Madame Anjou, Ladies' millinery' rose behind him, shutting out some of the light from the dusty window hung with lacy tulle. The colonel was holding a pen. He was not really a colonel but a lieutenant colonel, with three stars on broad gold shoulder-straps divided lengthwise by two coloured strips and surmounted by golden crossed cannon. The colonel was slightly older than Alexei Turbin himself- about thirty, or thirty-two at the most. His face, well fed and clean shaven, was adorned by a black moustache clipped American-style. His extremely lively and intelligent eyes looked up, obviously tired but attentive.
Around the colonel was primeval chaos. Two paces away from him a fire was crackling in a little black stove while occasional blobs of soot dripped from its long, angular black flue, extending over a partition and away into the depths of the shop. The floor, both on the raised platform and in the rest of the shop, was littered with scraps of paper and green and red snippets of material. Higher still, on a raised balcony above the colonel's head a typewriter pecked and clattered like a nervous bird and when Alexei Turbin raised his head he saw that it was twittering away behind a balustrade almost at the height of the shop's ceiling. Behind the railings he could just see someone's legs and bottom encased in blue breeches, but whose head was cut off by the line of the ceiling. A second typewriter was clicking away in the left-hand half of the shop, in a mysterious pit, in which could be seen the bright shoulder-straps and blond head of a volunteer clerk,