Two Captains (7 page)

But that day, when he came home solemn and grim in his new uniform, bringing two hundred rubles, nobody thought him a rogue. Even Aunt Dasha, who loathed him, came out and bowed to him in a stiff, unnatural way.

In the evening he invited guests and made a speech.

"All these procedures carried out by the authorities," he said, "are designed to safeguard the liberty of the revolution against the paupers, the absolute majority of whom consists of Jews. The paupers and the Bolsheviks are scheming a vile adventure, which is bound to jeopardise all the fruits of the existing regime. For us, champions of freedom, this tragedy is dealt with very simply. We are taking arms into our hands, and woe to him who, for the sake of gratifying his personal ambition, shall make an attempt upon the revolution and freedom! We have paid a high price for freedom. We will not surrender it cheaply. Such in general outline is the situation of the moment!"

Mother was very gay that evening. In her white velvet jacket, which became her so well, she moved round the guests with a bottle of wine and kept refilling each glass. Stepfather's friend, an amiable little fat man, who was also in the Death Battalion, stood up and respectfully proposed her health. He had laughed heartily during my stepfather's speech, but was now very grave. Raising his glass aloft, he clinked glasses with Mother and said briefly, "Hurrah!"

Everyone shouted "Hurrah". Mother was embarrassed. Slightly flushed, she stepped into the middle of the room and bowed low in the old-fashioned way.

"What a beauty!" the fat little man said aloud.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN JOURNEY'S END

It must have been some time past two; I had been asleep for quite a while and was awakened by a cry. Tobacco smoke hung motionless over the table; everyone had left long ago, and my stepfather lay asleep on the floor, his arms and legs spread wide. The cry was repeated. I recognised Aunt Dasha's voice and went to the window. A woman was lying in the yard and Aunt Dasha was blowing noisily into her mouth.

"Aunt Dasha!"

Not seeming to hear me, Aunt Dasha jumped up, ran round our house and knocked on the window.

"Water! Pyotr Ivanovich! Aksinya's lying out here!"

I opened the door. She came in and started to rouse my stepfather.

"Pyotr Ivanich! Oh, my God!" My stepfather did nothing but mumble.

"Aksinya-she must be carried in - she must have fallen in the yard and hurt herself. Pyotr Ivanich!"

My stepfather sat up with closed eyes, then lay down again. We couldn't wake him and had to give it up.

We spent the whole night trying to bring Mother round and she did not come to herself until dawn. It had been an ordinary fainting fit, but in falling she had struck her head on the stones. Unfortunately we learnt of this from the doctor only the following evening. The doctor ordered ice to be applied. But we all thought it odd to buy ice, and Aunt Dasha decided to apply a wet towel instead.

I remember Sanya running out into the yard to wet the towel in a bucket, and coming back wiping the tears away with the flat of her hand.

Mother lay still, as pale as she always was. Not once did she ask about my stepfather, who the next day had joined his battalion, but she would not let me or my sister out other sight. She was racked by fits of nausea and kept screwing up her eyes every minute as though trying to make something out.

This, for some reason, upset Aunt Dasha very much. She was laid up for three weeks and seemed to be on the mend. And then suddenly it "came over" her.

One morning I woke up towards daybreak to find her sitting on the bed, her bare feet lowered to the floor.

"Mum!"

She looked at me sullenly, and it dawned on me that she could not see me.

"Mum! Mamma!"

Still with the same intent, stern expression, she pushed my hands aside when I tried to get her back into bed.

From that day she stopped eating and the doctor ordered her to be fed forcibly with eggs and butter. It was excellent advice, but we had no money and there were neither eggs nor butter to be had in the town.

Aunt Dasha scolded her and wept, but Mother lay brooding, her black plaits lying across her breast, and not uttering a word. Only once, when Aunt Dasha announced in despair that she knew why Mother wasn't eating-it was because she did not want to live-Mother muttered something, frowned and turned away.

She had become very affectionate towards me since she was taken ill and even seemed to love me as much as she did my sister. Very often she looked at me steadily for a long time with a sort of surprise. She had never wept before her illness, but now she cried every day and I guess why. She was sorry she hadn't loved me before this and was remorseful at having forgotten Father, and maybe begging forgiveness for Scaramouch and for all that he had done to us. But a sort of stupefaction came over me. I couldn't put my hand to anything and my mind was a blank. Our last conversation together was like that too-neither I nor she had uttered a word. She only beckoned me and took my hand, shaking her head and trying hard to control her quivering lips. I realised that she wanted to say goodbye. But I stood there like a block of wood with my head lowered, staring doggedly down at the floor.

The next day she died.

My stepfather, in full dress uniform, with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a hand grenade at his belt, stood in the passage weeping, but no one paid any attention to him.

On the day of the funeral my sister had a headache and was made to stay at home. My stepfather, who had been called out to his battalion that morning, was late for the carrying-out, and after waiting a good two hours for him, we set out behind the coffin on our own- "we" being Skovorodnikov, Aunt Dasha and myself.

They walked. Aunt Dasha holding on to an iron ring to keep from lagging behind, while me they sat in the hearse.

As we were passing through Market Square I saw a sentry standing at the gates of the "Chambers" and some men in civilian clothes bustling about in the garden behind the railings, one of them dragging a machine gun. The shops were closed, the streets deserted, and after Sergievsky Street we did not meet a soul. What was the matter?

The hearse driver in his dirty robe was in a hurry and kept whipping up the horse. It was all Aunt Dasha and Skovorodnikov could do to keep up with it. We came out onto Posadsky Common-a muddy patch of wasteland between the town and Posad suburb leading down to the river across Mill Bridge. A short sharp crackle rang out in the distance; the driver cast a frightened glance over his shoulder and hesitantly raised his whip. Aunt Dasha caught up with us and started to scold.

"Man alive! Are you crazy? You're not carting firewood!" "There's shooting over there," the driver growled. A path was dug out in the hillside leading down to the river, and we drove down it for several minutes without seeing anything on the sides. They were shooting somewhere, but less and less frequently. Mill Bridge, from which I had often fished for gudgeon, came into view. Suddenly the driver stood up and lashed out at the horse; it dashed off and we raced along the bank, leaving Skovorodnikov and Aunt Dasha far behind.

It must have been bullets, because chips of wood flew from the hearse and one of them hit me in the face. The carved wooden upright I was gripping for support creaked, shook loose and fell into the roadway as the hearse jolted. I heard Skovorodnikov shouting somewhere behind us, and Aunt Dasha scolding in a tearful voice.

Pulling his cap down lower and twirling his whip over his head, the driver drove the horse straight towards the bridge, as though he couldn't see that the approach to it was blocked with logs, planks and bricks. The horse reared, and stopped dead in its tracks.

Among the men who ran out from behind this barrier I recognised the compositor who had rented a room the previous summer at the fortune-teller's in the next yard to ours. He was carrying a rifle and inside the leather belt, which looked so odd over an ordinary overcoat, he wore a service revolver. They were all armed, some even with swords.

The driver clambered down, hitched up the skirt of Us robe, stuck his whip into his high boot and began to swear.

"What the hell-couldn't you see it's a funeral? You nearly shot my horse!"

"We weren't shooting, you came under the cadets' fire," the compositor said. "And couldn't you see there was a barricade here, you dolt?"

"What's your name?" the driver shouted. "You'll answer for this! Who's going to pay for repairs?" He walked round the hearse, touching the damaged places. "You've smashed one o' the spokes!"

"Fool!" the compositor said again. "Didn't I tell you it wasn't us! Why should we fire on coffins! Fathead!"

"Who are you burying, lad?" an elderly man in a tall fur cap, on which hung a piece of red ribbon in place of a cockade, asked me quietly.

"My mother," I brought out with difficulty.

He took off his cap.

"Quiet there, comrades," he said. "This is a funeral. This boy here is burying his mother. You ought to know better."

They all stared at me. I must have looked pretty wretched because, when everything was patched up and Aunt Dasha, weeping, had caught up with us, and we had driven onto the bridge through the mill, I found in the pocket of my coat two lumps of sugar and a white biscuit.

Tired out, we returned home after the funeral by way of the opposite bank.

There was a glow in the sky over the town: the barracks of the Krasnoyarsk Regiment were on fire. At the pontoon bridge Skovorodnikov hailed a man of his acquaintance who was on point-duty, and they started a long conversation, from which I understood nothing: someone somewhere had pulled up the track, a cavalry corps was making for Petrograd, and the Death Battalion was holding the railway station. The name "Kerensky" kept cropping up all the time with various additions. I could hardly stand on my feet, and Aunt Dasha moaned and sighed.

My sister was asleep when we returned. Without undressing, I sat down next to her on the bed.

I don't know why, but Aunt Dasha did not spend that night with us, the first night we were left alone. She brought me some porridge, but I did not feel like eating, and she put the plate on the window-sill. On the window-sill, not on the table where Mother had lain that morning. That morning. And now it was night. Sanya was sleeping in her bed, in the place where she had been lying with that little wreath on her brow.

I got up and went over to the window. It was dark outside, and a fiery glow hung over the river, where bands of black smoke flared up with yellow streaks and died down.

The barracks were on fire they said, but it was beyond the railway, a long way off and in quite a different direction. I recalled how she had taken my hand, shaking her head and fighting back her tears. Why hadn't I said anything to her? She had so wanted me to say something, even if it was a single word.

I could hear the pebbles rolling up on the shore; the wind had probably risen and it started raining. For a long time, thinking of nothing, I watched the big heavy raindrops rolling down the window-pane, first slowly, then faster and faster.

I dreamt that someone pulled the door open, ran into the room and flung his wet army coat on the floor. It was some time before I realised that this was no dream. It was my stepfather, dashing about the house, pulling off his tunic as he ran. He tugged away at it, gnashing his teeth, but it clung to his back. At last, clad only in his trousers, he rushed over to his box and pulled a haversack out of it.

"Pyotr Ivanich!"

He glanced at me but did not answer. With matted hair, his face glistening with sweat, he was hastily thrusting linen into the haversack from the box. He rolled up a blanket, pressed it down with his knee and strapped it. All the time his mouth worked with vicious fury, and I could see his clenched teeth-the big, long teeth of a wolf.

He put on three shirts and shoved a fourth into his haversack. He must have forgotten that I was not asleep, or he would not have had the nerve to snatch Mother's velvet jacket from the nail on which it hung and thrust it into the haversack along with the rest.

"Pyotr Ivanich!"

"Shut up!" he said, looking up. "Go to hell, all of you!"

He changed his boots and put on his coat, then suddenly noticed the skull and crossbones on the sleeve. With an oath he threw the coat off again and started ripping off the emblem with his teeth. He flung his haversack on his back and was gone-gone out of my life. All that remained were his muddy footmarks of the floor and the empty tin box of Katyk cigarettes in which he kept his studs and ' tiepins.

Everything became clear the next day. The Military Revolutionary Committee proclaimed Soviet power in the town. The Death Battalion and the volunteers who had come out against the Soviets had been defeated.

I PRETEND TO BE ASLEEP

Where did Pyotr get the idea that you could travel free now on all the railways? The rumour about free tramcars must have reached him in this exaggerated form.

"Grown-ups have to have official travel papers," he said with assurance. "But we don't need anything."

He was no longer silent. He remonstrated with me, teased me, accused me of cowardice, and sneered. Everything that was happening on Earth, merely went to prove, in his view, that we had to make tracks for Turkestan without a moment's delay. Old Skovorodnikov proclaimed himself a Bolshevik and made Aunt Dasha take down the icons. Pyotr cashed in on this situation by arguing that life in the yard would now be impossible.

I don't know whether he would have succeeded in the end in taking me into the venture had not Aunt Dasha and Skovorodnikov

decided in family council to place Sanya and me into an orphanage. With tears in her eyes Aunt Dasha declared that she would visit us at the orphanage every day, that she would put us in there only for the winter, and we would return for sure in the summer. In the orphanage we would be fed, taught and clothed. They would give us new boots, two shirts each, an overcoat and cap, stockings and drawers. I remember asking her, "What are drawers?"