The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [81]
'Lena darling, I know how good-hearted you are and I am sending him to you because you're one of the family. I did send a telegram, but he'll tell you all about it himself, poor boy. Lariosik has had a most terrible blow and for a long time Iwas afraid he
wouldn't get over it. You know he married Milochka Rubtsova a year ago. Well, she has turned out to be a snake in the grass! Take him in I beg you, and look after him as only you can. I will send you a regular allowance for his keep. He has come to hate Zhitomir and I can quite understand why. I won't write any more - I'm too upset. The hospital train is just leaving and he'll tell you all about it himself. A big, big kiss for you and Seryozha.'
This was followed by an indecipherable signature.
'I brought the bird with me', said the stranger, sighing. 'A bird is man's best friend. I know many people think they're a nuisance to keep, but all I can say is that at least a bird never does anyone any harm.'
Nikolka very much liked that last sentence. Making no effort to understand it, he shyly scratched his forehead with the incomprehensible letter and slowly swung his legs down from the bed, thinking: 'I can't ask him his name ... it would sound so rude . . . What an extraordinary thing to happen . . .'
'Is it a canary?' he asked.
'It certainly is', replied the stranger enthusiastically. 'Actually it's not a hen-canary as most of them are, but a real cock-canary. I have fifteen of them at home in Zhitomir. I took them to mother, so that she can look after them. I'm sure that beast would wring their necks. He hates birds. May I put him down on your desk for a moment?'
'Please do', Nikolka replied. 'Are you from Zhitomir?'
'Yes, I am', answered the stranger. 'And wasn't it a coincidence - I arrived here at the same time as your brother.'
'What brother?'
'What d'you mean - what brother? Your brother arrived here as I did', the stranger replied with astonishment.
'But what brother?' Nikolka exclaimed miserably. 'What brother? From Zhitomir!'
'Your elder brother . . .'
Elena's voice came piercingly from the drawing-room: 'Nikolka! Nikolka! Illarion - please! Wake him up!'
'Tweet, tweet, tweee-ee, tik, tik, tikki', screeched the bird.
Nikolka dropped the blue letter and shot like a bullet through the library and dining-room into the drawing-room, where he stopped in horror, his arms spread wide.
Wearing another man's black overcoat with a torn lining and a pair of strange black trousers Alexei Turbin lay motionless on the divan below the clock. His face was pale, with a bluish pallor, and his teeth were clenched. Elena was fussing around him, her dressing-gown untied and showing her black stockings and lace-trimmed underwear. She was tugging at her brother's arms and at the buttons on his chest and shouting: 'Nik! Nik!'
Within three minutes, a student's cap crammed on to the back of his head and his grey overcoat flapping open, Nikolka was running up St Alexei's Hill, panting hard and muttering: 'What if he's not at home? And this extraordinary creature in the jockey's boots has to turn up at a moment like this! It's out of the question to call on Dr Kuritsky after Alexei laughed at him for speaking Ukrainian . . .'
An hour later a bowl was standing on the dining-room floor, full of red-stained water, scraps of red bandage lay scattered among fragments of broken crockery which the stranger in the yellow-topped boots had knocked down from the sideboard while fetching a glass. Everybody walked back and forth on the broken pieces, crunching them underfoot. Still pale but no longer looking blue, Alexei still lay on his back, his head on a cushion. He had recovered consciousness and was trying to say something, but the doctor, a man with a pointed beard with rolled-up sleeves and a pince-nez said as he wiped his bloodstained hands:
'Be quiet, doctor . . .'
Anyuta, the color of chalk and wide-eyed, and Elena, her red hair dishevelled, were lifting Alexei to take off his wet, bloodstained shirt with a torn sleeve.
'Cut it off him, it's ruined anyway',