MIKHAIL BULGAKOV: THE WHITE GUARD

'Yes, say what you like, times are bad, very bad', he mumbled. 'But one mustn't lose heart . . .'

Then drawing it out of the black sleeve of his cassock he suddenly laid his white hand on a pile of books, and opened the topmost one at the place marked by a bright embroidered ribbon.

'We must never lose heart', he said in his embarrassed yet somehow profoundly convincing voice. 'Faintness of heart is a great sin . . . Although I must say that I see great trials to come. Yes, indeed, great trials', he said with growing certainty. 'I have been spending much of the time with my books lately, you know. All concerned with my subject of course, mostly books on theology . . .'

He raised the book so that the last rays of the sun fell on the open page and read aloud:

'And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.'

White with hoar-frost, December sped towards its end. The glitter of Christmas could already be felt in the snowbound streets. The year 1918 would soon be over.

Number 13 was a curious building. On the street the Turbins' apartment was on the second floor, but so steep was the hill behind the house that their back door opened directly on to the sloping yard, where the house was brushed and overhung by the branches of the trees growing in the little garden that clung to the hillside. The back-gardens filled up with snow, and the hill turned white until it became one gigantic sugar-loaf. The house acquired a covering like a White general's winter fur cap; on the lower floor (on the street side it was the first floor, whilst at the back, under the Turbins' verandah, it was the basement) the disagreeable Vasily Lisovich-an engineer, a coward and a bourgeois - lit his flickering little yellow lamps, whilst upstairs the Turbins' windows shone brightly and cheerfully.

One evening Alexei and Nikolka went out into the yard for some firewood.

'Hm, damn little firewood left. Look, they've been pinching it again.'

A cone of bluish light burst out from Nikolka's pocket flashlight, and they could see clearly where the planking of the woodshed had been wrenched away and clumsily pushed back into place from the outside.

'I'd shoot the swine if I caught them, by God I would. Why don't we keep watch out here tonight? I know it's that shoemaker's

family from Number 11. And they've got much more firewood than we have, damn them!'

'Oh, to hell with them . . . Come on, let's go.'

The rusty lock creaked, a pile of logs tumbled down towards the two brothers and they lugged them away. By nine that evening the tiles of Saardam were too hot to touch.

The gleaming surface of that remarkable stove bore a number of historic inscriptions and drawings, painted on at various times during the past year by Nikolka and full of the deepest significance:

If people tell you the Allies are coming to help us out of this mess, don't believe them. The Allies are swine.

He's a pro-Bolshevik!

A drawing of a head of Momus, written underneath it:

Trooper Leonid Yurievich.

News is bad and rumours humming - People say the Reds are coming!

A painting of a face with long drooping moustaches, a fur hat with a blue tassel. Underneath:

Down with Petlyura!

Written by Elena and the Turbins' beloved childhood friends - Myshlaevsky, Karas and Shervinsky - in paint, ink and cherry-juice were the following gems:

Elena loves us all,

the thin, the fat and the tall.

Lena dear, have booked tickets for Aida Box No. 8, right.

On the twelfth day of May 1918 I fell in love.

You are fat and ugly.

After a remark like that I shall shoot myself.

(followed by an extremely realistic drawing of an automatic)

Long live Russia!

Long live the Monarchy!

June. Barcarolle.

All Russia will recall the day of glorious Borodino.

Then printed in capitals, in Nikolka's hand:

1 hereby forbid the scribbling of nonsense on this stove. Any comrade found guilty of doing so will be shot and deprived of civil rights, signed: Abraham Goldblatt,

Ladies, Gentlemen's and Women's Tailor.

Commissar, Podol District Committee.

30th January 1918.

The patterned tiles were luxuriously hot, the black clock going tonk-tank, tonk-tank, as it had done for thirty years. The elder Turbin, clean-shaven and fair-haired, grown older and more sombre since October 25th 1917, wearing an army officer's tunic with huge bellows pockets, blue breeches and soft new slippers, in his favourite attitude - in an upright armchair. At his feet on a stool Nikolka with his forelock, his legs stretched out almost as far as the sideboard - the dining-room was not big - and shod in his buckled boots. Gently and softly Nikolka strummed at his beloved guitar, vaguely . . . everything was still so confused. The City was full of unease, of vague foreboding . . .

On his shoulders Nikolka wore sergeant's shoulder-straps to which were sewn the white stripes of an officer cadet, and on his left sleeve a sharp-pointed tricolor chevron. (Infantry, No. 1

Detachment, 3rd Squad. Formed four days ago in view of impending events.)

Yet despite these events, all was well inside the Turbins' home:

it was warm and comfortable and the cream-colored blinds were drawn - so warm that the two brothers felt pleasantly languorous.

The elder dropped his book and stretched.

'Come on, play "The Survey Squad".' Thrum-ta-ta-tum, thrum-ta-ta-tum . . .

'Who look the smartest? Who move the fastest? The Cadets of the Engineers!'

Alexei began to hum the tune. His eyes were grim, but there was a sparkle in them and his blood quickened. But not too loud, gentlemen, not too loud . . .

'No need to run, girls, Life can be fun, girls -'

The guitar strummed away in time to the marching feet of an engineer company - left, right, left, right! In his mind's eye Nikolka saw a school building, peeling classical columns, guns. Cadets crawling from window to window, firing. Machine-guns at the windows. A handful of soldiers was besieging the school, literally a handful. But it was no use. General Bogoroditzky had turned yellow and surrendered, surrendered with all his cadets. The shame of it . . .

'No need to run, girls, Life can be fun, girls -The Survey Squad is here!'

Nikolka's eyes clouded again. Heat-haze over the red-brown Ukrainian fields. Companies of cadets, white with powdery dust, marching along the dusty tracks. All over now. The shame . . . Hell.

Elena pushed aside the drapes over the door, and her auburn head appeared in the dark gap. She glanced affectionately at her brothers but anxiously at the clock. With good reason; where on earth was Talberg? Their sister was worried. To hide it, she started to sing the tune with her brothers, but suddenly stopped and raised her finger.

'Wait. Did you hear that?'

On all seven strings the company came to a halt. All three listened. There was no mistaking the sound: gunfire. Low,

muffled and distant. There it was again: boo-oo-om . . . Nikolka put down his guitar and jumped up, followed, groaning, by Alexei.

In the lobby and drawing-room it was quite dark. Nikolka stumbled over a chair. Outside it was exactly like a stage-setting for The Night Before Christmas - snow and twinkling, shimmering lights. Nikolka peered through the window. Heat-haze and school house vanished as he strained his ears. Where was that sound? He shrugged his tabbed shoulders.

'God knows. I get the impression it's coming from the Svyato-shino direction. Funny, though. It can't be as near as that.'

Alexei was standing in the dark, but Elena was nearer to the window and her eyes were shadowed with fear. Why had Talberg still not come home? What did it mean? The elder brother sensed her anxiety and because of it he said nothing, although he very much wanted to speak his thoughts. There was not the slightest doubt that it was coming from Svyatoshino. The firing was no more than eight miles outside the City. What was going on?