In the high, square entrance hall two men were sitting before a huge fireplace, ablaze with round birch logs thick as a man’s body. The younger leaped up as they entered, tall and loose-limbed, in a uniform of dark mustard color such as Sergey had never seen. In two strides, so it seemed, he was across the room, lifting Marfoosha right off her feet into his arms.
There was more delight than anger in her squeal of protest.
“Enough, Mahlinkie, enough,” cried Marfoosha in a stifled voice. “Put me down — we have a visitor, bad-mannered one!”
Regaining her feet, she flung her arm round Sergey’s shoulder. “This is my American, little comrade; his name is Djim, but that is a dog’s name, not a man’s, so I call him Mahlinkie, the little one, because he is so tall.” She laughed gayly and pushed the boy forward, pulling off his hat with her other hand. “Look, Mahlinkie, it’s fire, but it doesn’t burn.”
“Fortheluvamike!”
Sergey McTavish did not understand this American greeting, but something within him called forth two half-forgotten words in reply. “Scottish, gorrd-am-you-sirr.”
The effect was startling. High in the air went Sergey in those strong young arms, while a torrent of unfamiliar words beat upon his cars. What a din they made! Sergey, six feet from the ground, beside himself with excitement, yelling his new found slogan, the American shouting strange noises, and Marfoosha dancing around.
The prison warden and his friend by the lire rushed forward in panic. “Are you mad?” cried the former, catching his daughter around the waist. “Stop this uproar. You don’t know what’s happened. She is here already, staying in Petrusha’s house.”
Marfoosha halted as if struck by lightning, and the American stiffened, holding Sergey in mid-air.
Slowly he lowered the boy to the ground, still grasping him firmly under the arms. An instant’s silence; then the warden continued: “She came tonight, with her parrot — saints defend us — and holds court tomorrow. Very angry when she heard there were only two eases. She will judge the factory manager in the morning; and the next day” — he jerked his thumb towards the American — “it’s his turn. They say we are lucky. He’s a foreigner — she was quite interested and said no more about our scarcity of prisoners.”
There was no answer to these words save a low sound from Marfoosha. She had fainted.
Sergey McTavish awoke next morning from a tormenting dream of gray devil-birds with red tails pecking at his breast, to find Marfoosha and her American standing beside the bench on which he had passed the night before the fire.
The girl’s face was red and swollen with weeping, but her lover wore a friendly grin.
“Wake up, little comrade, wake up and eat your breakfast, for there’s work for you to do.” She had tried to speak cheerfully, but as Sergey rubbed his eyes she sank down in a heap beside the bench, sobbing desperately.
The tall American tried vainly to comfort her: “Marfoosha, my darling, my baby girl, don’t worry.”
Sergey McTavish sat upright. How stupid girls were, not to understand that death was part of a soldier’s job! He pulled Marfoosha’s hair sharply. “Stop crying,” he said, “and tell me what’s the matter.”
Marfoosha shook herself free. “All right,” she said to her lover, “but you go and let me talk to him alone.”
And then to Sergey: “The Baba Papagai is in a frightful humor. We know it from Petrusha. She had her parrot at breakfast with her, early, two hours ago before it was light, and sat there talking, talking. She said to him, ‘Belogvardeyetz’ (White Guard), and the parrot answered, ‘Belogvardeyetz,’ and then the Baba Papagai laughed and the parrot said over and over again, ‘Belogvardeyetz,’ and the Baba Papagai laughed some more. You, Sergey Sergeyitch, do you know what that means?”
“No,” said Sergey uneasily, with a spoonful of kasha poised halfway to his lips.
“Death! That’s all! Just death for my American!” Marfoosha laid her head on her arms, then straightened up and rattled on breathlessly: “The court opens at ten o’clock. You go there. It will be just a general rehearsal. The Baba Papagai is having her rehearsal this morning. The real show is when my American comes before her.” Marfoosha’s voice faltered. Sergey again stopped eating.
“She knows it. She told Petrusha she had heard of this American in town. She said she had never before had the chance to try her papagai on an American. She cursed America. She said it was the sink of all iniquity, a den of wolves, the castle of capitalism. She said that all Americans were White Guards, and when she said ‘American’ to her parrot this morning, it just answered, ‘Belogvardeyetz.’ Sergey, go see for yourself.”
Sergey put the half-empty kasha bowl on the floor. He had lost his appetite.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Near ten,” answered Marfoosha. “Come with me — I’ll show you the way.”
Ten minutes from her home Marfoosha slopped, took Sergey by the arm, and pointed straight ahead.
“There it is,” she said.
“What, the church?” asked Sergey.
“It used to be the church. Don’t you see the guard in front? Now go, please, and come to us as soon as it is over.” Marfoosha took Sergey’s head in her arms, pressed it to her heart until he struggled to get free, then released him with a push.
Sergey McTavish recovered his balance, frowned a moment at the retreating figure, then proceeded warily toward the church. There was nothing strange to him about a Cheka trial taking place there. Even when other buildings were available, the “Flying Tribunals of the All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolutions” had found that their sessions made a far greater impression on their White Guard enemies it they were held in the church. It appealed, too, to the Red sense of humor.
In front of the building, beneath an ikon of the Virgin Mary, a Red Guard paced up and down, his conical cap pulled tight over his ears to meet the threadbare collar of an old gray overcoat. The buttons, cut off because they had borne the insignia of the Czar, were replaced with string. When Sergey approached, the Red Guard dropped the butt of his rifle nonchalantly in the snow, crying, “What do you want, little princeling?” with an ironic wink at the boy’s astrakhan suit.
“Don’t call me names, comrade,” grinned back Sergey. “I’m Red Army too. This is loot, issued me by the regimental tailor, Seventh Battalion Rifles. Just lost touch with headquarters. Now be a good comrade and give me a cigarette and let me go inside and get warm a bit.”
The sentry laughed, said he’d no tobacco but obligingly turned his back while Sergey slipped past into the church.
For a moment he could see nothing in the dim interior save two tall candles on the altar above which an ikon glittered with gold and jewels.
Very quietly he groped his way forward to the last of a number of rough wooden benches which had been placed in the nave, and sat down behind rows of people bent forward in eager attention. At the other end of the church a man was speaking in a high-pitched voice, trailing off at times into falsetto. The words came rapidly, tumbling over one another, hardly intelligible. Sergey could only catch a phrase now and then — “never... Czar’s government... always tried to work for the people... worker myself... not my fault... education... no counter-revolutionary, believe me, believe me, believe me.”
Cutting this babble like a saw, another voice, metallic, harsh, rasped a single word: “Belogvardeyetz!” (White Guard)
Then a loud laugh. Then silence.
Sergey’s eyes, by now accustomed to the semi-darkness, sought the source of the inhuman voice. With a shiver of interest he realized the word “Belogvardeyetz!” had come from a cage swinging beneath a stiff gold embroidery attached like a banner to a pole, which stood at the left of the altar. Within the cage a gray-red bird moved listlessly on its perch. That was the bird that talked like a man, but who had laughed?