The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [64]
Nai-Turs took the paper, tucked it into the cuff of his sleeve, turned to his cadets and gave the order:
'Load up the felt boots. Look sharp.'
Clumping and rattling, the cadets began to file out. As Nai waited for them to leave, the general, purple in the face, said to him:
'I shall immediately ring the commander-in-chief's headquarters and raise the matter of having you court-martialled. This is unheard-of . . .'
'Go ahead and try', replied Nai-Turs, swallowing his saliva. 'Just try. Just out of interest, go ahead and try.' He put his hand on the revolver-butt peeping out of his unbuttoned holster. The general's face turned blotchy and he was silent.
'If you pick up that telephone, you silly old man,' Nai suddenly said in a gentle voice, 'I'll give you a hole in your head from this Colt and that will be the end of you.'
The general sat back in his chair. The folds of his neck were still purple, but his face was gray. Nai-Turs turned around and went out.
For a few more minutes the general sat motionless in his armchair, then crossed himself towards the ikon, picked up the telephone receiver, raised it to his ear, heard the operator's muffled yet intimate voice . . . suddenly he had a vision of the grim eyes of that laconic colonel of hussars, replaced the receiver and looked out of the window. He watched the cadets in the yard busily carrying gray bundles of felt boots out of the black doorway of the stores, where the quartermaster-sergeant could be seen holding a piece of paper and staring at it in utter amazement. Nai-Turs was standing with his legs astraddle beside a two-wheeled cart and gazing at it. Weakly the general picked up the morning paper from the table, unfolded it and read on the front page:
On the river Irpen clashes occurred with enemy patrols which were attempting to penetrate towards Svyatoshino . . .
He threw down the newspaper and said aloud: 'Cursed be the day and the hour when I took on this . . .' The door opened and the assistant chief of the supply section entered, a captain who looked like a tailless skunk. He stared
meaningly at the folds of purpling flesh above the general's collar and said:
'Permission to report, sir.'
'See here, Vladimir Fyodorich', the general interrupted him, sighing and gazing about him in obvious distress, 'I haven't been feeling too good ... a slight attack of.. . er . .. and I'm going home now. Will you please take over?'
'Yes, sir,' replied the skunk, staring curiously at the general. 'But what am I to do? The Fourth Detachment and the engineers are asking for felt boots. Did you just give an order to issue two hundred pairs?'
'Yes. Yes, I did,' replied the general in his piercing voice. 'Yes, I gave the order. I personally allowed it. Theirs is an exceptional case! They are just going into combat. Yes, I gave the order!'
A look of curiosity flashed in the skunk's eyes.
'Our total stock is only four hundred pairs . . .'
'What can I do?' squeaked the general. 'Do you think I can produce them like rabbits out of a hat? Eh? Issue them to anybody who asks for them!'
Five minutes later General Makushin was taken home in a cab.
#
During the night of December 13th to the 14th the moribund barracks on Brest-Litovsk Street came to life. In the vast, dirty barrack-rooms the lights came on again, after some cadets had spent most of the day stringing wires from the barracks and connecting them up to the streetlamps. A hundred and fifty rifles stood neatly piled in threes, whilst the cadets slept sprawled fully dressed on dirty cots. At a rickety wooden table, strewn with crusts of bread, mess-tins with the remains of congealed stew, cartridge pouches and ammunition clips, sat Nai-Turs unfolding a large colored plan of the City. A small kitchen oil lamp threw a blob of light on to the maze-like map, on which the Dnieper was shown like a huge, branching, blue tree.
By about two o'clock in the morning sleep began to overtake Nai-Turs. His nose twitched,