The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [67]
where the open music of Faust had still not been tidied away, towards the doorway of Alexei's study. The parquet floor creaked beneath her feet and she felt very unhappy.
#
At the corner of his own street and Vladimirskaya Street Alexei Turbin hailed a cab. The driver agreed to take him, but puffing gloomily, named a monstrous price and it was obvious that he would settle for no less. Grinding his teeth, Alexei Turbin climbed into the sled and set off towards the museum. There was frost in the air.
Alexei was extremely worried. As he drove, he caught the sound of machine-gun fire that seemed to be coming from the direction of the Polytechnic Institute and moving in the direction of the railroad station. Alexei wondered what it might mean (he had slept through Bolbotun's afternoon incursion into the City) and he turned his head from side to side to stare at the passing sidewalks. There were plenty of people about, although there was an air of unease and confusion.
'St . . . Stop . . .' said a drunken voice.
'What does this mean?' asked Alexei Turbin angrily.
The driver pulled so hard on the reins that Alexei almost fell forward on to his knees. A man with a very red face stood swaying beside the cab's shafts, holding the reins and making his way towards the passenger seats. A crumpled pair of lieutenant's shoulder-straps glittered on a short, fur-collared greatcoat. From two feet away Alexei was nauseated by a powerful reek of moonshine vodka and onion. With his free hand the lieutenant was waving a rifle.
'Turn . . . turn around', said the red-faced drunk. 'Ta . . . take on a passenger.' For some reason the word 'passenger' struck the man as funny and he began to giggle.
'What does this mean?' Alexei repeated angrily. 'Can't you see who I am? I'm reporting for duty. Kindly let go of this cab! Drive on!'
'No, don't drive on . . .' said red-face in a threatening voice.
Only then, blinking and peering, did he recognise the Medical Corps badges on Alexei's shoulder straps. 'Ah, doctor, we can travel together ... let me get in . . .'
'We're not going the same way . . . Drive on!'
'Now see here . . .'
'Drive on!'
The cabman, head hunched between his shoulders, was about to crack his whip and move off, but thought better of it. Turning round, he glared at the drunk with a mixture of anger and fear. However, red-face let go the reins of his own accord. He had just noticed an empty cab, which was about to drive away but did not have time to do so before the drunken officer raised his rifle in Both hands and threatened the driver. The terrified cabman froze to the spot and red-face staggered over to him, swaying and hiccuping.
'I knew I shouldn't have taken you on, even for five hundred', Alexei's driver muttered angrily, lashing the rump of his ancient nag. 'What's in it for me if all I get's a bullet in my back?'
Turbin sat glumly silent.
'The swine . . . it's louts like him who give the whole White cause a bad name', he thought furiously.
The crossroads by the opera house was alive with activity. Right in the middle of the streetcar tracks stood a machine-gun, manned by two small, frozen cadets, one in a black civilian overcoat with ear-muffs, the other in a gray army greatcoat. Passers-by, clustered in heaps along the sidewalk like flies, stared curiously at the machine-gun. By the corner druggist, just in sight of the museum, Alexei paid off his cab.
'Make it a bit more, your honor', said the cab-driver, grimly insistent. 'If I'd known what it was going to be like! Look what's going on here.'
'Shut up. That's all you're getting.'
'They've even dragged kids into it now ...' said a woman's voice.
Only then did Alexei notice the crowd of armed men around the museum, swaying and growing thicker. Machine-guns could be vaguely seen on the sidewalk among the long-skirted greatcoats.
Just then came the furious drumming of a machine-gun from the Pechorsk direction.
'What the hell's going on?' Alexei wondered confusedly as he quickened his pace to cross the intersection toward the museum.