The general instructed five musicians by the fence at the Tsar’s Garden. One of them could not play any instrument at all but had, so it seemed to the general, a good ear. His task during performances of musical compositions was to listen carefully, conveying the essence of the performance through facial expressions when possible. This musician had long gray bangs that he should toss from his eyes with a sharp head motion. He was also given a violin and asked to draw the bow near the strings. But not to touch them.
Toward the end of the day, the general ordered that a cabinet be taken out of his house. A big oak cabinet with a two-headed eagle. The general ordered a cart be brought and he positioned loaders to look after it. The loaders had just returned from Perekop and did not quite imagine how they ought to handle such a heavy item. Furthermore, they still did not understand where or why it should be moved. Recalling a famous social-democratic slogan, the general announced to them that the ultimate aim is nothing, but movement is everything. The cabinet’s aimless motion did not contradict the new ideology, making this pursuit relatively safe. As he was walking away, the general advised the loaders not to be shy about using coarse language; when in contact with the Reds this could create an atmosphere of similarity in social class.
Only late in the evening, when the entire detachment had jobs, did the general and Captain Kologrivov approach the pharmacy. The general leaned wearily against an electric streetlamp (in previous times it had used gas) by the entrance. He rummaged around in his pockets, fetched the keys, and began searching for the lock in the dying yellowy light. A minute later the door opened and a little bell jingled. The general enjoyed feeling the edges of the beveled glass on the door. The prisms reflected the evening’s last lights. They reflected the soundness of a previous life. As it happened, in those November days, it had already been three years since that kind of glass had been made.
The general and Kologrivov entered the pharmacy and looked around. Unlike many abandoned places, the pharmacy had not been ransacked. Everything remained in place there. The general took Kologrivov by the shoulders and sat him down in a chair.
‘The main thing is inner calm. Speak in a soft voice. The scrape of a little oak door, the smell of mint drops: nothing more is required here. That is the only way you will be able to exist organically in a pharmacy.’
‘I’m calm,’ said Kologrivov. ‘And I speak in a soft voice.’
The general uncorked one of the little vials and stirred its contents with a glass pestle.
‘I placed observers on the Alushtinsk road. They’ll shoot a blank from a cannon when they sight the Reds. That will be the signal to start a new life. I won’t be able to give further instruction because I’ll be busy with my own matters. That, basically, is everything.’
The streetlamp was no longer burning when the general went outside. A cold autumn rain had begun. The pharmacy windows were all that prevented Morskaya Street from plunging into darkness.
The cannon struck at 9:30 in the morning. With that shot, they began playing Oginsky’s Polonaise by the fence at the Tsar’s Garden. A detachment of Tatars rode out to the Alushtinsk Road and energetic paving work began on Autskaya Street by the St. Theodor Tiron Church. Shoeshine booths opened in various parts of Yalta during those same minutes. The quantity of staff as well as the abundance of brushes and polish allowed them to shine shoes for the entire coastline but Yaltans preferred not to leave their homes that day. Even the shops did not open that morning, with the exception of a shoe store and a sweet shop. Yalta was at a standstill, awaiting the entrance of the Reds.
First to enter the city was an armored vehicle with the uneven inscription Antichrist. It did not notice the Tatar detachment and drove past at top speed. Shots were fired into the air from the armored vehicle. To the detachment’s surprise, the armored vehicle did not notice a curve in the road, either. It did not brake until the place where the road’s shoulder turned into a steep slope. The vehicle’s front wheels went down and a belated reverse gear could no longer rectify anything. The vehicle rolled into the gorge, topsy-turvy, its armor knocking along the cliff’s overhangs. Moans resounded in the gorge after the last echo had finished rumbling. Local residents—simple, god-fearing people—surrounded the vehicle. They had no love for the Reds but they did not plan to refuse them help. The residents began conferring when they saw the inscription on the armored vehicle. They did not know who lay ahead for them to save. Withered grass rustled in the wind. Nobody could bring themselves to come closer to the vehicle with the eschatological inscription. The moaning soon stopped.
The Reds’ primary troops entered the city at that same time. Comrades Zhloba, Kun, and Zemlyachka were out front on well-fed horses. They met a Tatar detachment and even received kumys from them. Zemlyachka poured out kumys for representatives of the commanding personnel and passed the leftovers on to rank-and-file Red Armymen. Those entering the city praised the kumys, though they noted its sharp taste. Only Kun did not praise the kumys. Surprised by his silence, Zemlyachka asked if he liked the kumys. Still on his horse, Kun vomited in answer and stated that this was because he was not accustomed to it. Zhloba jokingly proposed that Kun have his stomach pumped in the city hospital. Everyone laughed so as not to offend Zhloba. Kun blushed and said he was planning to inspect the hospital anyway. Zemlyachka recommended that he record how much blood was in stock. Seeing a shoe shiner, Kun asked the advance guard to wait while he had his spattered boots cleaned. In addition to the kumys, remnants of beet salad and poorly chewed veal were apparent on his boots. Zhloba’s boots were not dirty but he dismounted to have his shined, too.
General Larionov was having his boots shined, too. This was happening at the other end of the city, by the St. Theodor Tiron Church. The mezzanine of the Chekhov house was visible about a hundred paces from the church. Maria Pavlovna Chekhova was opening the shutters. As he watched how deftly the brush moved in a shoe shiner’s hands, the general said, ‘Chekhov died only sixteen years ago but an entirely new epoch has arrived.’
The roadway was being repaired not far from the church. The knocking of wooden tampers, which pressed the paving stones, spread over Autskaya Street. The stones were laid in a fan shape on a sand foundation. The wind was tearing the last leaves from the trees in a front yard. Blackened and crumpled, they rolled along the brand-new paving stone, settling in a gutter.
The general stopped next to one of the houses as he walked down Autskaya Street. The biting November wind had come this far, too. It sounded in a squeaking gate spring and in a little flapping runner rug that had been flung on the fence. It was quiet in the house. They were playing chess there. Two men sitting on bentwood chairs were considering positions on the board. Their words were inaudible. Their calm could be sensed. A woman with a pail came down the front steps. She went behind the corner of the house and the general could no longer see her. He heard when the well’s door was set aside and the chain began unwinding. The gurgly dipping, the unhurried path up, the knock of the full pail against the well house. The general pressed his cheek to the fence. It was warm, rough wood. The woman wiped her feet and went out on the porch. Poured some water into a tank. Someone began coughing behind a curtain. The bell-like ring of the tank and the patter of water on the bottom of the basin. Everything was authentic, nothing was superfluous: a thin trill at the beginning (a little hysterically), then calmed and muted as it filled. The distant bark of dogs. The general was not worried about this house.
He turned on Botkinskaya Street and went to the pier by Alexander Square. Thick snow had begun to fall. It was wet and not even cold. The sea whipped against the embankment’s stones. There was no ice in the sea but it was hopelessly wintry, from the distant breakers to the splashes that spread in the snow. The pier’s pilings were entwined in its gray strands. The general sniffed the air—only the winter sea smelled like this.