The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [55]
'Hurrah!' echoed the woods around Bely Hai, 'Hurrah!' Leaving Bely Hai, they crossed the railroad line by a wooden bridge and from there they caught their first glimpse of the City. It lay in the distance, still warm from sleep, wrapped in a vapor that was half mist, half smoke. Rising in his stirrups Kozyr stared through his Zeiss field-glasses at the innumerable roofs of many-storey houses and the domes of the ancient cathedral of Saint Sophia.
Fighting was already in progress on Kozyr's right. From a mile or so away came the boom of gunfire and the stutter of machine-guns; waves of Petlyura's infantry were advancing on Post-Volynsk as the noticeably thinner and more ragged lines of the motley White Guard infantry, shattered by the heavy enemy fire, were retreating from the village.
*
The City. A heavy, lowering sky. A street corner. A few suburban bungalows, a scattering of army greatcoats.
'I've just heard - people are saying they've made an agreement with Petlyura to allow all Russian-manned units to keep their arms and to go and join Denikin on the Don. . . .'
'Well? So what?'
A rumbling burst of gunfire. Then a machine-gun started to bark.
A cadet's voice, full of bewilderment and despair:
'But then that means we must cease resistance, doesn't it?'
Wearily, another cadet's voice:
'God alone knows . . .'
*
Colonel Shchetkin had been missing from his headquarters since early morning, for the simple reason that the headquarters no
longer existed. Shchetkin's headquarters had already withdrawn to the vicinity of the railroad station on the night of the fourteenth and had spent the night in the Rose of Stamboul Hotel, right alongside the telegraph office. The field-telephone still squealed occasionally in Shchetkin's room, but towards dawn it grew silent. At daybreak two of Colonel Shchetkin's aides vanished without trace. An hour later, after searching furiously for something in his trunks and tearing certain papers into shreds, Shchetkin himself left the squalid little Rose of Stamboul, although no longer wearing his regulation greatcoat and shoulder straps. He was dressed in a civilian fur coat and trilby hat, which he had suddenly and mysteriously acquired.
Taking a cab a block away from the 'Rose', Shchetkin the civilian drove to Lipki, where he arrived at a small but cosy and well furnished apartment, rang the bell, kissed the buxom golden-haired woman who opened the door and retired with her to the secluded bedroom. The blonde woman's eyes widened with terror as he whispered to her face:
'It's all over! God, I'm exhausted . . .' With which Colonel Shchetkin sank down on to the bed and fell asleep after a cup of black coffee prepared by the loving hands of the lady with golden hair.
#
The cadets of the 1st Infantry Detachment knew nothing of this. This was a pity, for if they had known, it might have roused their imagination and instead of cowering under shrapnel fire at Post-Volynsk they might have set off for that comfortable apartment in Lipki, dragged out the sleepy Colonel Shchetkin and hanged him from the lamp-post right opposite the blonde creature's apartment.
They would have done well to do so, but they did not because they knew nothing and understood nothing. Indeed, no one in the City understood anything and it would probably be a long time before they did.
A few rather subdued steel-helmeted Germans could still be seen around the City, and for all anyone knew the foxy Hetman
with his carefully trimmed moustaches (that morning only very few people yet knew of the wounding of the mysterious Major von Schratt) was still there, as were his excellency Prince Belorukov and General Kartuzov, busy forming detachments for the defense of the Mother of Russian Cities (nobody yet knew that they had run away that morning). In fact the City was ominously deserted. The name 'Petlyura' still aroused fury in the City and that day's issue of the News was full of jokes at Petlyura's expense, made by corrupt refugee journalists