The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [68]
'Surely I'm not too late? . . . What a disgrace. . . . They might think I've run away . . .'
Officers, cadets, and a few soldiers were crowding and running excitedly around the gigantic portico of the museum and the broken gates at the side of the building which led on to the parade-ground in front of the Alexander I High School. The enormous glass panes of the main doors shuddered constantly and the doors groaned under the pressure of the milling horde of armed men. Exct ed, unkempt cadets were crowding into the side door of the circular white museum building, whose pediment was embellished with the words:
'For the Edification of the Russian People'.
'Oh God!' exclaimed Alexei involuntarily. 'The regiment has already left.'
The mortars grinned silently at Alexei, standing idle and abandoned in the same place as they had been the day before.
'I don't understand . . . what does this mean?'
Without knowing why, Alexei ran across the parade-ground to the mortars. They grew larger as he moved towards the line of grim, gaping muzzles. As he reached the first mortar at the end of the row, Alexei stopped and froze: its breech mechanism was missing. At a fast trot he cut back across the parade ground and jumped over the railings into the street. Here the mob was even thicker, many voices were shouting at once, bayonets were bobbing up and down above the heads of the crowd.
'We must wait for orders from General Kartuzov!' shouted a piercing, excited voice. A lieutenant crossed in front of Alexei, who noticed that he was carrying a saddle with dangling stirrups.
'I'm supposed to hand this over to the Polish Legion.'
'Where is the Polish Legion?'
'God only knows!'
'Everybody into the museum! Into the museum!'
'To the Don!'
The lieutenant suddenly stopped and threw his saddle down on to the sidewalk.
'To hell with it! Who cares now, anyway - it's all over', he screamed furiously. 'Christ, those bastards at headquarters.'
He turned aside, threatening someone with a raised fist.
'Disaster ... I see now . . . But how awful - our mortar regi-ment must have gone into action as infantry. Yes, of course. Presumably Petlyura attacked unexpectedly. There were no horses, so they were deployed as riflemen, without the mortars . . . Oh my God. ... I must get back to Madame Anjou . . . Maybe I'll be able to find out there. . . . Surely someone will have stayed behind. . . .'
Alexei forced his way out of the milling crowd and ran, oblivious to everything else, back to the opera house. A dry gust of wind was Mowing across the asphalted path around the opera house and Mapping the edge of a half-torn poster on the theatre wall beside a dim, unlit side entrance. Carmen. Carmen . . .
At last, Madame Anjou. The artillery badges were gone from the window, the only light was the dull, flickering reflection of something burning. Was the shop on fire? The door rattled as Alexei pushed, but did not open. He knocked urgently. Knocked again. A gray figure emerged indistinctly on the far side of the glass doorway, opened it and Alexei tumbled into the shop and glanced hurriedly at the unknown figure. The person was wearing a black student's greatcoat, on his head was a moth-eaten civilian cap with ear-flaps, pulled down low over his forehead. The face was oddly familiar, but somehow altered and disfigured. The stove was roaring angrily, consuming sheets of some kind of paper. The entire floor was strewn with paper. Having let Alexei in, the figure left him without a word of explanation, walked away and squatted down on his haunches by the stove, which sent a livid red glow flickering over his face.
'Malyshev? Yes, it's Colonel Malyshev.' Alexei at last recognised the man.
The colonel no longer had a moustache. Instead, there was a bluish, clean-shaven strip across his upper lip.
Spreading his arms wide, Malyshev gathered up sheets of paper from the floor and rammed them into the stove.
'What's happened? Is it all over?' Alexei asked dully.
'Yes', was the colonel's laconic reply. He jumped up, ran over to a desk, carefully looked it over,