MIKHAIL BULGAKOV - THE WHITE GUARD

That evening, for instance, gasping by an open window and unbuttoning his tussore shirt, Vasilisa had sat over a cup of lemon tea and said to Alexei Turbin in a mysterious whisper:

'When I think about all these things that have been happening I can't help coming to the conclusion that our lives are extremely insecure. It seems to me that the ground (Vasilisa waved his stubby little fingers in the air) is shifting under the Germans' feet.

Just think . . . Eichhorn . . . and where it happened. See what I mean.' (Vasilisa's eyes looked frightened.)

Alexei listened, gave a grim twitch of his cheek and went.

Yet another omen appeared the very next morning and burst upon Vasilisa himself. Early, very early, when the sun was sending one of its cheerful beams down into the dreary basement doorway that led from the backyard into Vasilisa's apartment, he looked out and saw the omen standing in the sunlight. She was incomparable in the glow of her thirty years, the glittering necklace on her queenly neck, her shapely bare legs, her generous, resilient bosom. Her teeth flashed, and her eyelashes cast a faint, lilac-colored shadow on her cheeks.

'Fifty kopecks today', said the omen in a lilac-colored voice, pointing to her pail of milk.

'What?' exclaimed Vasilisa plaintively. 'For pity's sake, Yav-dokha - forty the day before yesterday, forty-five yesterday and now today it's fifty. You can't go on like this.'

'It's not my fault. Milk's dear everywhere', replied the lilac voice. 'They tell me in the market it's fetching a rouble in some places.'

Again her teeth flashed. For a moment Vasilisa forgot about the price of milk, forgot about everything and a deliciously wicked shiver ran through his stomach - the same cold shiver that Vasilisa felt whenever this gorgeous sunlit vision appeared before him in the morning. (Vasilisa always got up earlier than his wife.) He forgot everything and for some reason he imagined a clearing in the forest, the scent of pinewoods. Ah, well . . .

'See here, Yavdokha', said Vasilisa, licking his lips and looking quickly round in case his wife was coming. 'You've blossomed since this revolution. Look out, or the Germans will teach you a lesson or two.' 'Dare I kiss her or daren't I?' Vasilisa wondered agonisingly, unable to make up his mind.

A broad alabaster ribbon of milk spurted foaming into the jug.

'If they try and teach us a lesson we'll soon teach them it doesn't pay', the omen suddenly replied, flashing, glittering, rattling her pail; swung her yoke and herself, even brighter than

the sunlight, started to climb up the steps from the basement into the sunlit yard. 'Ah, what legs', groaned Vasilisa to himself.

At that moment came his wife's voice and Vasilisa, turning round, bumped into her.

'Who were you talking to?' she asked, giving a quick, suspicious glance upward.

'Yavdokha', Vasilisa answered casually. 'Can you believe it -milk's up to fifty kopecks today.'

'What?' exclaimed Wanda. 'That's outrageous! What cheek! Those farmers are impossible . . . Yavdokha! Yavdokha!' she shouted, leaning out of the window. 'Yavdokha!'

But the vision had gone and did not come back.

Vasilisa glanced at his wife's angular figure, her yellow hair, bony elbows and desiccated legs and suddenly felt so nauseated by everything to do with his life that he almost spat on the hem of Wanda's skirt. Sighing, he restrained himself, and wandered back into the semi-darkness of the apartment, unable to say exactly what was depressing him. Was it because he had suddenly realised how ugly Wanda looked, with her two yellow collar bones protruding like the shafts of a cart? Or was it something vaguely disturbing that the delicious vision had said?

'What was it she said? "We'll teach 'em it doesn't pay"?' Vasilisa muttered to himself. 'Hell - these market women! How d'you like that? Once they stop being afraid of the Germans . . . it's the beginning of the end. ". . . teach 'em it doesn't pay" indeed! But what teeth - bliss . . .'

Suddenly he seemed to see Yavdokha standing in front of him stark naked, like a witch on a hilltop.

'What cheek . . . "we'll teach 'em" . . . But those breasts of hers . . . my God . . .'

The thought was so disturbing that Vasilisa felt sick and dizzy and had to go and wash his face in cold water.

Imperceptibly as ever, the fall was creeping on. After a ripe, golden August came a bright, dust-laden September and in September there came not another omen but a happening that at first sight was completely insignificant.

It was one bright September evening that a piece of paper, signed by the appropriate official of the Hetman's government, arrived at the City's prison. It was an order to release the prisoner being held in cell No. 666. That was all.

That was all ?!Without any doubt that piece of paper was the cause of the untold strife and disaster, all the fighting, bloodshed, lire and persecution, the despair and the horror that were to come . . .

The name of the prisoner was quite ordinary and unremarkable: Semyon Vasilievich Petlyura. Both he and the City's newspapers of the period from December 1918 to February 1919 used the rather frenchified form of his first name - Simon. Simon's past was wrapped in deepest obscurity. Some said he had been a clerk.

'No, he was an accountant.'

'No, a student.'

On the corner of the Kreshchatik and Nikolaevsky Street there used to be a large and magnificent tobacco store. Its oblong shop-sign was beautifully adorned with a picture of a coffee-colored Turk in a fez, smoking a hookah and shod in soft yellow slippers with turned-up toes. There were people who swore on their oath that not long ago they had seen Simon in that same store, standing elegantly dressed behind the counter and selling the cigarettes and tobacco made in Solomon Cohen's factory. But then there were others who said:

'Nothing of the sort. He was secretary of the Union of Municipalities.'

'No, not the Union of Municipalities, the Zemstvo Union,' countered yet a third opinion; 'a typical Zemstvo official.'

A fourth group (refugees) would close their eyes as an aid to memory and mutter:

'Now just a minute ... let me think . . .' Then they would describe how, apparently, ten years ago - no, sorry, eleven years ago - they had seen him one evening in Moscow walking along Malaya Bronnaya Street carrying under his arm a guitar wrapped in a black cloth. And they would add that he had been going to a party given by some friends from his home town, hence the guitar. He had been going, it seems, to a delightful party where there were lots of gay, pretty girl students from his native Ukraine, bottles of delicious Ukrainian plum-brandy, songs, a Ukrainian band... Then these people would grow confused as they described his appearance and would muddle their dates and places . . . 'He was clean-shaven, you say?'

'No, I think . . . yes, that's right ... he had a little beard.' 'Was he at Moscow University?' 'Well no, but he was a student somewhere . . .' 'Nothing of the sort. Ivan Ivanovich knew him. He was a schoolteacher in Tarashcha.'

Hell, maybe it wasn't him walking down Malaya Bronnaya, it had been so dark and misty and frosty on the street that day . . . Who knows? ... A guitar ... a Turk in the sunlight ... a hookah . . . chords on a guitar, it was all so vague and obscure. God, the confusion, the uncertainty of those days . . . the marching feet of the boys of the Guards' Cadet School marching past, lurking figures shadowy as bloodstains, vague apparitions on the run, girls with wild, flying hair, gunfire, and frost and the light of St Vladimir's cross at midnight.

Marching and singing Cadets of the Guards Trumpets and drums Cymbals ringing . . .

Cymbals ringing, bullets whistling like deadly steel nightingales, soldiers beating people to death with ramrods, black-cloaked Ukrainian cavalry-men are coming on their fiery horses.