The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [89]
'Ugh . . . horrible . . . take it away', mumbled Alexei.
Startled, Nikolka raised his eyebrows, but persisted obstinately and clumsily. Frequently Elena changed into the black, unfamiliar figure of Lariosik, Sergei's nephew, and then as it turned back into Elena he felt her fingers somewhere near his forehead, which gave him little or no relief. Elena's hands, usually warm and deft now felt as rough and as clumsy as rakes and did everything to make a peaceful man's life miserable in this damned armorer's yard he was lying in. Surely Elena was not responsible for this pole on
which Alexei's wounded body had been laid? Yet now she was sitting on it . . . what's the matter with her? . . . sitting on the end of the pole and her weight was making it start to spin sickeningly round . . . How can a man live if a round pole is cutting into his body? No, no, they're behaving intolerably! As loudly as he could, though it came out as a mere whisper, Alexei called out:
'Julia!'
Julia, however, did not emerge from her old-fashioned room with its portrait of a man in gold epaulettes and the uniform of the 1840's, and she did not hear the sick man's cry. And that poor sick man would have been driven mad by the gray figures which began pacing about the room alongside his brother and sister, had there not also come a stout man in gold-rimmed spectacles, a man of skill and firm confidence. In honor of his appearance an extra light was brought into the bedroom - the light of a flickering wax candle in a heavy, old black candlestick. At one moment the light glimmered on the table, at the next it was moving around Alexei, above it the ugly, distorted shadow of Lariosik, looking like a bat with its wings cut off. The candle bent forward, dripping white wax. The little bedroom reeked with the heavy smells of iodine, surgical spirit and ether. On the table arose a chaos of glittering boxes, spirit lamps reflected in shining nickel-plate, and heaps of cotton wool, like snow at Christmas. With his warm hands the stout man gave Alexei a miraculous injection in his good arm, and in a few minutes the gray figures ceased to trouble him. The mortar was pushed out on to the verandah, after which its black muzzle, poking through the draped windows, no longer seemed menacing. He began to breathe more easily, because the huge wheel had been removed and he was no longer obliged to crawl through its spokes. The candle was put out and the angular coal-black shadow of Larion Surzhansky from Zhitomir disappeared from the wall, whilst Nikolka's face became clearer to see and not so infuriatingly obstinate, perhaps because the hands on his clock, thanks to the hope inspired by the skill of the stout man in gold-rimmed spectacles, had moved apart and did not point so implacably and despairingly towards the point of his sharp chin. The time on
Nikolka's face had moved backwards from half past six to twenty to five, whilst the clock in the dining-room, although it did not tell the same time, although it insistently pushed its hands ever forward, was now doing so without any senile croaking and grumbling, but in the good old manner, marking the seconds with a clear, healthy baritone: tonk! And the chimes, coming from the tower of the beautiful toylike Louis Quatorze chateau, struck: bom! bom! Midnight, listen . . . midnight, listen . . . the chimes gave their warning note, then a sentry's halberd began to strike the silvery hour. The sentries marched back and forth, guarding their tower, for without knowing it, man had made towers, alarm-bells and weapons for one purpose only - to guard the peace of his hearth and home. For this he goes to war, which if the truth be known, is the only cause for which anyone ought to fight.
Only when Alexei had reached a state of calm and peace did Julia, that selfish, sinful but seductive woman, agree to appear. And she appeared - her black-stockinged leg, the top of a black fur-trimmed boot flashed by on the narrow brick staircase, and the hasty