The fort was deserted, neglected. Tall grass grew on the parade ground. Swallows nested under the eaves. The warm, drowsy smell of summer leaves drifted through the broken windows. The fort had never been besieged. It had stood for many years as little more than a peaceful architectural folly. This impression of the fort was so deeply ingrained in me that I was actually happy to be serving within its walls. But my naïve illusions were scattered like dust within minutes. Inside, the fortress was dirty and grim. The mildewed walls were covered with obscene graffiti and shook from the tramp of boots along with the noise of curses, blasphemies and songs. The barrack stench was so strong that it immediately settled into my clothes and never left.
They lined us up in a dusty corridor with a rough plank floor. The head of the kitchen patrol, a pale, effeminate-looking man, most likely a former officer, approached. He gave us a sympathetic look, tapped his boot with a riding crop and said: ‘Well, men, so you’ve met the mad dog? Murder would be too good for a commander like that.’
We couldn’t tell whether he was being sincere or trying to provoke us. To be safe, no one said a word.
‘Ah, all right then, you scum,’ he said. ‘March! Down to the cellar – start peeling potatoes!’
We sat peeling rotten, wet potatoes in a cold underground vault until evening. Water dripped from the walls. Rats scurried in the dark corners. A narrow slit high up in the wall provided the only light. Our hands were numb from the cold, slippery potatoes. We talked among ourselves in hushed voices. I learned that the man next to me – a meek little man in spectacles with sad, red eyes – had been a worker in a razor factory in Lodz before the war. His name was Iosif Morgenstern.
We returned to the barracks that night. I lay down on my plank bed and fell straight to sleep. I was awakened in the night by the hollow beat of horses’ hooves. I opened my eyes. A dim electric bulb burned at the end of a long flex hanging from the ceiling. All around me the other men lay snoring. The cheap clock on the wall showed three. In the muddy yellow light of the bulb, I saw Antoshchenko. He was riding a heavy bay down the vaulted corridor. The flagstones rang under the horse’s shoes. The flex of a field telephone had been strung across the corridor and kept him from going any farther. He stopped his horse, drew his sword and slashed it in two. He rode on out of the corridor and into our barracks room. He pulled up and shouted: ‘Fatigue squad, fall in!’
Startled, sleepy men jumped from their beds and hastily lined up. Nearly all barefoot, they stood there on the stone floor, groggy and shivering. Antoshchenko began in a calm voice: ‘At this very moment I’m having a machine-gunner brought over and am going to order him to shoot every last one of you, like so many quail. Do you think I don’t know that you’ve been planning to kill me, your commander, and that you dare to call me a mad dog?!’ Notes of hysteria quivered in his voice. ‘Fetch the machine-gunner!’ he yelled, turning. Only then did we see his two orderlies standing in the doorway. ‘Where the hell’s he disappeared to, the bastard?’
‘Comrade Commander,’ one of the orderlies said nervously. ‘We really should head back.’
‘I’ll kill you!’ Antoshchenko screamed wildly. He was swaying back and forth in his saddle. ‘I’ll cut you into strips, you bespectacled little Jews! I’ll slice you up with a saw like mutton!’
He started choking. Foam poured from his mouth, he pitched forward in his saddle and then he fell to the floor. We stood motionless. We later discovered that the same thought came to each of us at that instant – if Antoshchenko really did call for the gunner, then we’d rush to the corner where the rifles were kept, grab them and open fire.
The orderlies grabbed Antoshchenko and helped him up and into the corridor, and from there out into the yard and the fresh air. His horse, indifferent to what had just happened, followed a few paces behind. None of us, soldiers of the kitchen patrol, men who had ended up in this regiment by pure chance, could understand how it was possible that here in Kiev, a stone’s throw from Kreshchatik, from the theatres and university, the libraries and symphony concerts, not to mention the good everyday citizens of the city, such a sinister den of bandits and its sick, half-mad commander could exist. This regiment’s very existence seemed like a phantasmagorical nightmare. At any moment Antoshchenko could shoot any one of us. Our lives depended on whatever crazed idea he might think up next. We lived from day to day in fear of some new madness, and he never disappointed us.
We never left the Nikolsky Fortress. Not once were we permitted into the city. Even if we had been, there was no one we could talk to about what was happening with our regiment. And it would have been pointless anyway – no one would have believed us. We decided to write a letter about Antoshchenko to the government and Commissar of War Podvoisky, but events overtook us.
Several days passed in relative calm. Part of the regiment had been sent to Tripolie against Zelëny’s forces, and the remaining companies were placed on guard duty in Kiev, protecting warehouses and the goods station, taking part in raids against speculators at the Bessarabsky Market and near the famous Café Semadeni on Kreshchatik. And then, late one night, we were roused by an alarm signal and lined up in a large square on the parade ground in front of the fortress. No one knew what was happening. There was talk of some unknown gang approaching from Svyatoshino and that we were going to be sent to hold them back from entering the city. The light air of excitement among the soldiers somehow found its way to us in the fatigue squad, even though we had not been issued with a single bullet for our Japanese rifles.
We stood and waited on the parade ground. A rainy dawn was breaking through the clouds beyond the Dnieper. The chestnut trees had released their broad green leaves, which hung down like fingers. There was the smell of dusty grass, and the bells of the Pechersk Monastery struck the useless hour of four o’clock.
‘Company, attention!’ the officers shouted. The men drew themselves up and froze. A gleaming black landau drove swiftly into the centre of the square. Two Orlov trotters, dappled greys, stopped and began to paw the ground. Antoshchenko was standing in the landau together with three young women in large hats. They were playfully elbowing each other, giggling and squealing with joy.
‘Regiment, listen!’ a drunken Antoshchenko shouted, raising his sabre over his head. ‘Gather round the carriage … by platoons … singing my favourite song … in a slow, ceremonial march … Let’s go … March!’
He dropped his sabre. The regiment remained in place. Only the First Company, made up of Makhno’s men, took a few tentative steps forward towards the landau. The song leaders launched into ‘Don’t you cry, Marusya, you’ll be mine,’ but quickly stopped, and the company, now completely confused, came to a disorganised halt.
‘March!’ Antoshchenko screamed wildly. The regiment remained motionless. No one said a word. The women stopped giggling. It was so quiet we could hear Antoshchenko’s angry, uneven breathing.
‘Ah, so that’s how it is, you sons of bitches,’ Antoshchenko wheezed and pulled his Mauser from the holster. That very instant came a cry from the back row: ‘Trying to impress his silly bimbos, the dog! At him, boys! Kill him!’