One of the Hetman’s officers in yellow and blue epaulettes sat behind a desk at the far end of a room that smelled of coffee. His foot bounced up and down nervously under the desk. Ahead of me was a sickly, unshaven youth in spectacles. He waited quietly, his eyes directed at the floor. When his turn came and the officer asked his profession, he said: ‘Accountant.’
‘A count?’ the officer asked, leaning back in his chair and beaming with pleasure at the young man. ‘That’s a rare bird! I’ve had lots of nobles and even a few barons, but so far no counts.’
‘Not a count, an accountant.’
‘Shut up!’ The officer said matter-of-factly. ‘We’re all counts. And we know all about you counts and accountants. Any more nonsense out of you and you’ll end up in the housekeeping unit.’
The young man just shrugged his shoulders.
‘Next!’
I was next. I showed the officer my documents and said firmly that as a citizen of the Russian Soviet Federation I could not be called up into the Hetman’s army.
‘What a surprise!’ said the officer, making a face and raising his eyebrows. ‘Your words simply delight me. Had I known you planned to grace us with your presence, I would have called for the regimental band.’
‘Your jokes really aren’t called for.’
‘Oh, really? And what is called for? Maybe this?’ he asked angrily and stood up. He made an obscene gesture with his hand and shoved it in my face. ‘Do you think I give a fig for your Soviet-Jewish citizenship? I couldn’t give a damn about it or you.’
‘You can’t talk to me like this!’ I said, trying to stay calm.
‘Everybody’s always telling me what I can and can’t do.’ The officer sighed sadly and sat back down. ‘That’s enough now! Out of my respect for your so-called citizenship, I’m putting you down for the Cossack Infantry Regiment – Pan Hetman’s very own life guards. You should thank God for that. Your documents will remain with me. Next!’
During this conversation, Pan Kturenda disappeared. We recruits were marched off under guard to the barracks in Demievka. The whole farce, highlighted by the presence of so many bayonets, was so ludicrous and unbelievable that the seriousness of it didn’t hit me until we reached the cold barracks. I sat down on a dusty windowsill, lit a cigarette and thought things over. I was prepared to face any danger or hardship, but not as a soldier in the Hetman’s army. I decided to look around for an opportunity to escape. The farce quickly turned bloody. That first night sentries shot and killed two young men from the workers’ suburb of Predmostnaya for walking out of the gate and not stopping fast enough when ordered.
The shelling was growing louder. This calmed those of us who had not yet lost the ability to feel anything. It signalled some sort of change, and soon, although whether good or bad no one could say. Not that it mattered. The Ukrainian saying ‘It may be worse, but at least it’s different’ was on everybody’s lips in Kiev.
Most of the recruits were so-called motor boys. That’s what the hooligans and thieves from Solomenka and Shuliavka – the worst slums on the outskirts of Kiev – were called. They were wild, desperate youths. They were happy to join the Hetman’s army. It was clear that its final days were approaching, and the motor boys knew better than anyone that in the coming chaos they would be able to hold onto their weapons and then rob and loot at will and generally raise hell. And so in the meantime the motor boys tried not to arouse the suspicions of the authorities and, as best they could, behave as model soldiers of the Hetman’s army. It boasted a grandiloquent title: ‘The Cossack Infantry Regiment of His Most Noble and Radiant Highness Pan Pavlo Skoropadskyi’. I was assigned to a regiment under the command of a former Russian airman. We addressed him as ‘Pan Sotnik’, an old Cossack military term roughly comparable to a captain. He didn’t know a word of Ukrainian, other than a few simple commands, and even these he wasn’t too sure of. He always had to stop and think for a few moments before saying ‘right’ or ‘left’, trying to remember which was which. He was openly contemptuous of the Hetman’s army. Sometimes, looking at us, he would shake his head with disgust and say: ‘Just look at you, the Shah of Lilliput’s army! Nothing but a band of riff-raff and ninnies!’
He spent a few days pretending to teach us how to march, fire our rifles and handle grenades. Then they dressed us in tobacco-coloured greatcoats, caps with the Ukrainian seal, old boots and puttees and got us to parade up and down Kreshchatik Street. They informed us that tomorrow we were being sent to the front against Petlyura’s men. Together with a few other units, we marched down Kreshchatik past the city Duma, where as a child I had come under fire. Even now, many years later, the gilded figure of the arch-strategist St Michael still balanced on one foot atop the spire.
In front of the Duma, the Hetman, in a white Circassian coat and a crumpled little Cossack hat, sat astride an English bay, a riding crop in his hand. Arranged behind the Hetman, as still as statues on their dark, gunmetal steeds, were several German generals. They wore helmets with gilded spikes and almost every single one of them had a glinting monocle screwed in place. Thin crowds of curious bystanders had gathered on the pavement. The units marched past, saluting the Hetman with lacklustre cheers of ‘Hurrah!’ He merely raised his crop to his hat and gave his horse a quick tug on the reins.
Our unit had prepared a little surprise for the Hetman. As soon as we drew even with him, we broke into a jaunty tune:
Our pride, our joy! Such a fine man!
That’s our rag-tag Pan Hetman!
To the future, there’s just one key,
No one else but – Pavlo Skoropadskyi!
The motor boys sang with exceptional bravura, adding whistles and a rollicking ‘Ekh!’ at the beginning of each stanza. The boys were angry that we were being sent off to the front so soon and had got a bit out of hand.
Skoropadskyi didn’t bat an eyelid. As calm as ever, he raised his crop to his hat, grinned as though he had heard a clever joke and turned to share the fun with the German generals behind him. An ironic flash of their monocles was the only sign that the generals had got the gist of the song. The crowd on the pavement erupted with laughter.
They woke us up when it was still dark. The unwished-for dawn was nothing more than a pale streak in the east. The sullen morning, the stench of paraffin in the barracks, the weak tea that smelled oddly of salted herring, the quiet despair that filled Pan Sotnik’s faded eyes, the cold, wet boots we could scarcely pull on – all this amounted to such complete and senseless misery, to such enormous, devastating unease, that I decided I had to escape from the Cossack Infantry Regiment of His Most Noble and Radiant Highness Pan Hetman that very day.
At roll call we discovered that twelve men had already deserted. Pan Sotnik shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘To hell with all of you! Fall in!’
We more or less managed to form a line.
‘Forward, march!’ commanded Pan Sotnik. Shivering, we exited the damp and dubious warmth of the barracks into the biting air of the early winter morning.
‘Where exactly is the front?’ a sleepy voice asked with a note of confusion from the rear. ‘Do we really plan to march the whole way?’
‘Ever heard of Madame Tsimkovich’s brothel, over in Priorka? Well, that’s where the front is. It’s the supreme commander’s HQ.’
‘Would you please shut up,’ Pan Sotnik begged. ‘Honest to God, it’s disgusting to listen to you. And besides, you’re not supposed to talk while marching.’
‘We know what we’re supposed to do and what not.’
Pan Sotnik just sighed and moved a few paces away from the men. The truth was, the motor boys frightened him.
‘They sold out Ukraine for a bottle of schnapps,’ said a deep, angry voice. ‘And now we’re the ones forced to wade through this pile of snow and horseshit. It’s a bloody disgrace!’