There was, to quote the theatrical expression, a complete change of scenery, although no one could guess what the future held in store for the famished citizens. Only time would tell.
82
The Bolshevik and the Haidamachka
Rain-soaked notices with menacing decrees from the newly established Military-Revolutionary Committee appeared on walls around the city. The decrees were short and momentous. Ruthlessly and without reservation, they divided the population of Kiev into worthwhile people and human rubbish. They began to clean out the rubbish, although it turned out there wasn’t much of it left. It had taken to hiding in hard-to-find places, where it settled down to wait for better days. My experiences from Moscow started all over again. But there was a difference – here in Kiev I noticed an added air of licence and recklessness.
The Bogunsky Regiment was quartered in private homes throughout Kiev. Four soldiers were billeted in our flat. They brought a bomb used by aeroplanes, carefully laid it on the floor in the front hall under a bentwood hat-stand, and said to Amalia: ‘Dearie, do be careful now and don’t so much as lay a finger on this here, or there’ll be such a big bang that your entire home and everything in it will be nothing more than a memory. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ she replied through pursed lips. She opened the door to the back stairs, and from then on no one used the front door again.
The soldiers of the Bogunsky Regiment carried so much weaponry with them it was hard to imagine how they ever got anywhere. They had everything: machine-guns, rifles, hand-grenades, Brownings, Mausers, sawn-off shotguns, hunting knives, daggers, swords. They also carried with them purple and red gramophone horns, sentimental reminders of peacetime.
As soon as the soldiers occupied a city, strains of long-forgotten, heart-rending romances wafted from every window. Once more, a morose baritone complained, his voice quivering, of nowhere to go and no one to love, while a lisping tenor lamented that never again would springtime come for him, no, not for him would the river Bug course mightily, nor would his heart ever again throb with joy. Once more, shouting ‘Hai-da-Troika!’, Vyaltseva galloped off, and a lovely seagull expired on some lake of flaming waters. Everything was all jumbled together – Varya Paninafn1 and hand-grenades, the smell of iodoform and the soft sing-song of Ukrainian speech, the red cockades on the Cossack hats and symphony concerts, soldiers’ dreams of still ponds amid peaceful meadows and the hysterical cries of illegal traders being rounded up in the bazaars.
A kind, feeble old engineer by the name of Belelyubsky lived together with his wife in the flat below us. He had once been famous throughout the world as the constructor of the bridge over the Volga at Syzran. The Belelyubskys had a maid, a jolly, red-cheeked girl named Motrya. The regimental sergeant-major fell in love with her and proposed. Motrya hesitated. The officer insisted. Motrya still wasn’t sure. She had some rather old-fashioned notions about marriage. She was afraid that he was trying to sweep her off her feet just so he could move in with her for a few days and then be gone for good.
One day Motrya came to me and with the direct honesty of a country girl said that she had nearly given in to the sergeant’s advances but had run away in time and was now willing to have him but only if he agreed to marry her ‘according to the Book’ and promised to love her for life. She dictated to me a letter for him that comprised four short words: ‘Yes, if for life.’ I wrote it down in big block letters. About an hour later, having received the letter, the sergeant began charging up and down the halls, swearing to high heaven and barging in and out of the flats in search of the regimental seal. ‘Which one of you bandits hid the damned seal?’ he screamed at his men. He had a gun in his hand. ‘I’ll shoot every last one of you Yids if it’s not returned to me this instant!’
The house shook from the tramping of boots. The sergeant began emptying out the men’s knapsacks. Finally, the seal was found. ‘I swear, for life’ he wrote on the letter, and then affixed the regimental seal for good measure and sent it back to Motrya. And so, Motrya gave in.
A large, noisy wedding was celebrated two days later. A few gun-carriages drove up to the house. Coloured ribbons had been braided into the excited horses’ manes. And even though it could not have been more than two hundred metres from our house to St Vladimir’s Cathedral, where the ceremony was set to take place, the entire wedding party climbed onto the carriages and roared off. They drove round and round the cathedral several times, to the sound of clanging bells, hoots and whistles, and rollicking song:
I sit on a barrel,
My head all a whirl,
I’m now a Bolshevik bride,
A Haidamachka with pride!
Ekh, lil’ darling, for whom are you yearning?
If Bogun should get you, you won’t be returning!
Bogun’s our commander,
You know what he’s after,
Tho’ covered with holes and scars,
He still makes the girls see stars!
At the words ‘Ekh, lil’ darling’ the drivers pulled up on the reins and the horses stopped, pranced and shook the bells in time to the tune. It was a brilliant performance, and a large crowd had formed before the cathedral to watch and cheer.
On the third day (when for some reason trouble always seems to happen) the regiment was roused in the middle of the night. They gathered themselves reluctantly, in silence, saying only when questioned: ‘They’re sending us to Zhitomir. To restore order. The priests there are rebelling.’
Motrya was sobbing. Her worst fears had come to pass – the sergeant was leaving and never coming back. At this the sergeant flew into a rage. ‘Herd all the lodgers out into the yard!’ he yelled at his men, punctuating his words upon reaching the bottom of the stairs by firing his pistol into the ceiling. ‘Everybody into the courtyard! This instant, you bloody parasites!’
The men forced the frightened lodgers out of their rooms and into the yard. It was late on a winter night. Ice crystals hung in the still, cold air. Women cried and clutched their sleepy, quivering children to their breasts.
‘Stop your carrying on,’ the soldiers said. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you. It’s just our sergeant, that devilish Motrya drives him mad.’
The sergeant lined up his men to face the frightened group of lodgers and then stepped forward. He was holding a wailing Motrya by the hand. They came to a stop in the middle of the icy yard. He drew his sword, scratched a large cross in the ice, and shouted: ‘Warriors and citizens of a free Russia! You are my witnesses that by this cross and by my native land, I swear never to desert my queen and to return to her. And I swear that we shall make a home together in the village of Moshny near the celebrated town of Kanev, and to this I sign my name and pledge my troth.’
He hugged Motrya, who was still crying, and then gently pushed her away and barked at his men: ‘Mount the carriages! March!’
The men flung themselves up onto the carriages and hurtled out of the yard whistling and singing. We could hear the metal wheels thunder off down Bibikovsky Boulevard in the direction of the Zhitomirsky Highway. It was all over. Motrya dried her tears. ‘To hell with him, the damned heathen!’ she said before turning and going back inside to the Belelyubskys’ flat. Life resumed its normal course. Yet it seemed to have lost some of its lustre, and soon the people of Kiev began to speak about the Bogunsky Regiment with unmistakable nostalgia. The soldiers had been cheerful, big-hearted and incredibly brave young men. They had brought with them the smell of battle, bullet-ridden red banners, dashing songs and a selfless devotion to the revolution. They had come and gone, but for a long time afterwards a current of revolutionary romanticism pulsed through Kiev, bringing a smile to the faces of its citizens who had been through so much.