Sablin’s throat tightened with sorrow for his friend. Klim had come bursting into their world and turned it upside down, stealing Nina’s heart, poor girl.
And they’ll kill you in a couple of hours too. The sudden thought brought Sablin up short. Oh, Lubochka—you chose to love a murderer.
There were about thirty prisoners in the room. Some were telling others the stories of their arrests.
One seventy-year-old man, formerly a village chief, had been arrested for pinning on his medal when he had heard that the Whites were on their way.
Two other prisoners said that they had come to the railroad station to try to exchange a barrel of pickled mushrooms for agricultural tools. They were arrested and charged with profiteering.
Sablin stood at the window watching as an endless train of carts passed by. The Bolsheviks were hastily evacuating the town. He already knew that their situation was hopeless. The Red Terror sailor had told them that prisoners wouldn’t be taken back behind the lines but executed.
The sailor was nervous. He kept leaving the room to find out when the military checkpoint was to be evacuated. A second guard stayed with the prisoners in his absence.
Sablin felt his whole body burning as though seized by a fever. At first, just one thought kept going around and around in his head: Are they really going to kill us? Then he felt a rising sense of indignation and outrage. We have to do something. We have to fight!
He gazed at the remaining guard. The man was about forty-five, his face tanned and weather-beaten with bags under his eyes and a prominent mole on his nostril. He was sitting in the doorway and—for lack of anything to do—spitting at his feet trying to make the string of saliva reach to the ground.
Should I talk to him? Sablin thought. Try to frighten him? Tell him that the other Red Army soldiers have left him behind?
Now, the street outside was empty, and only the occasional messenger galloped by from time to time.
Sablin approached the remaining guard, trying his best to appear confident.
“Wait a minute,” he said with a fake smile plastered on his face, “I think I know you. Where are you from?”
The soldier glared sullenly at him. “From Vladimir Region.”
“What village?”
“Kostrovo.”
“I knew it!” Sablin exclaimed. “I was there on holiday. I lived at the old woman’s house. What was her name? She was all hunched and bent.”
The soldier raised his eyebrows. “Do you mean old Nura?”
“That’s it! Have you been there recently? How is she?”
“She’s fine. Her hut is two streets away from where I live.”
Sablin gave the guard a friendly slap on the shoulder. “That means you and I are almost family, aren’t we? Fancy meeting you here!”
The soldier’s name was Damian. He told Sablin in great detail all about his village, old Nura, and his family. Sablin found to his surprise that he was an inspired liar, telling the soldier that during the Great War, he had fought on the same part of the front as Damian and been wounded in the leg. They reminisced about battles, spoke critically of their commanders, and complained about the poor quality of their army greatcoats, which would come apart at the seams if they caught on anything.
I hope that damn sailor won’t be back anytime soon, thought Sablin, peering out the window.
“Hey, Damian, do you know where your friend with the ax went?” Sablin asked.
The guard grinned. “He’s gone off to ask for a machine gun to finish you all off.”
“Are you going to shoot me?” Sablin asked, looking the guard in the eye.
Damian turned away. “Oh, come on!”
“So, you’re going to let your friend do it for you?”
Damian quickly looked out. There was no one in the street.
“Go on,” he hissed, “get out of here. Now. Don’t worry about me—they won’t touch me. They haven’t registered the people who were arrested this morning. I’ll say I never saw you.”
“What about this lot?” Sablin asked, pointing at the silent prisoners. “After all, they might report that you let me go. What if you let all of us go home? Why bring more misery on everyone? Come to that, it’s probably time you ran away yourself. The Whites are coming, and if they catch you here, they’ll shoot you.”
The square in front of the church was crowded with people. A Bolshevik agitator on a cart was calling on the women and children to resist provocation. “The colossal propaganda machine of imperialism is trying to corrupt the minds of our people,” he ranted.
It’s no good coming here, thought Sablin, stepping back to the alley where he had left Sofia Karlovna and Nina.
They had been circling around the town for more than an hour trying to find a place to hide until the arrival of the Whites. Sablin’s knees were shaking from excitement or exhaustion. He still couldn’t believe they had been set free. He glanced anxiously at the two women. The old countess was half-dead with fear while Nina looked as though she didn’t care anymore where she was going or what was going to happen to her.
There was the sound of hooves, and a mounted patrol turned into the alley. Sablin held his breath: the Whites!
They rode along quite openly in their black and red caps and epaulets. They stopped, dismounted, and walked to the church square, leading their horses by the bridles.
The Bolshevik agitator was so carried away with his own eloquence that he failed to notice anything. “We’ll crush the White bandits with the full might of our proletarian wrath—”
At that moment, his gaze fell on a White officer standing and swishing at his boots with a horsewhip.
“Go on, comrade, don’t be shy,” the officer prompted. “We’re all ears.”
The crowd burst into laughter.
A bell on the church tower pealed once and then twice. Large and small bells rang out in a merry chorus just as if it were Easter.
Sablin walked down the street limping even more heavily than usual. He felt joy bubbling up inside him from his heart to his throat, a joy so intense that it exceeded even his grief at the loss of his friend and the fear of death he had just experienced. The Whites were in town!
Everything around him had become meaningful again. The colors had become brighter, the air fresher. Never before had Sablin felt such a feeling of inspiration, such gratitude before fate. He wanted to kneel down in the middle of the road and weep for joy.
The dashing soldiers of the Kornilov Regiment, sunburned and dust-covered, filled the streets of the town. Children hung around them, boys gaping at the skull motif on the men’s caps and badges.
“Look, look! See the skull and crossbones?” they whispered in awe. “That means, ‘We’ll destroy you all, sons of bitches.’”
“No, boys,” Sofia Karlovna said, her voice trembling with emotion. “That symbol is known as ‘Adam’s Head.’ It stands for the resurrection of the dead after the sacrifice of the body for one’s country and one’s people.”
The orchestra in the church square struck up a tune—not any tune but none other than “God Save the Tsar.”
Sablin turned to Nina and Sofia Karlovna. “I’m sorry, my dears, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to join the White Army. You’ll have to find your way to Novorossiysk by yourselves.”
“Oh,” gasped the old countess. She stared at him for a while and then shook his hand. “It’s a sacred cause, doctor. God bless you.”
Nina said nothing. She stood at the old countess’ side looking at the ground with a curl of hair come loose from her comb and hanging over her cheek. She was fingering mindlessly at the flap of her jacket.