In the daytime, Stakover showed me plans and drawings of old castles, with their massive towers, dungeons, embrasures, turrets, passageways, gloomy labyrinths, walls two metres thick, fireplaces, inner gardens and wells. All the castles stood on the tops of mountains or clung to impregnable rocky faces. The winds of Burgundy and the Île-de-France, of Lotharingia and Savoy, Bohemia and the Apennines buffeted them from all sides. The sun, like a burning crown, cast its rays over the towers, banners and moss-grown slates.
Mama especially loved to listen to Stakover. When I was on duty, she got up at night, threw on a heavy shawl and came into the yard. We would sit in a nook sheltered from the wind and talk in a whisper, often stopping to listen to some unfamiliar sound. Like all mothers, Mama still thought of Galya and me as little children and encouraged me in her good-natured way to see more of Stakover. ‘He’s a fount of knowledge,’ Mama liked to say. ‘A walking encyclopedia. It would be good for you to spend more time with him, Kostik. Don’t look down on people like that.’
She was wrong. I never did look down on people like that. Just the opposite. I could listen to them for hours. I was impressed by their vast knowledge and grateful for their generosity in sharing it with me. What astonished me was that they, in their turn, were grateful to me for listening to them so attentively. They had evidently not been spoiled by too much attention, and I could explain this only by the fact that, as Pushkin said, we Russians ‘are lazy and incurious’. Neither gymnasium nor university taught me so much, or so thoroughly, as the books I’ve read and the people I’ve met. Being extremely shy, I have always envied people who feel comfortable in any surroundings and can easily strike up conversations with strangers. This is something that has always been difficult for me to do.
Shells whistled over the city all night long. The explosions coming from Podol sounded as though someone were dropping large bundles of sheet metal. By dawn the Soviet forces had retreated to the north along the Dnieper, and everything was quiet again. Early that morning, Mama, who had been blessed with extraordinary inquisitiveness and a complete disregard for her safety, went out into the city, as she put it, ‘to reconnoitre’. She came back soon to say that the city was deserted and even though there was still no sign of Denikin’s troops, some of the city’s more cautious residents had already hung out white, blue and red tsarist flags.
Drinking our carrot tea later in the kitchen, we heard the familiar cries of ‘Glory!’ coming from Fundukleevskaya Street. We went out to the balcony. The soldiers marching down the street holding blue and yellow banners were not Denikin’s but Petlyura’s. They marched slowly and confidently, full of pride in their Austrian uniforms. And the same old ‘proper’ Ukrainians we had grown so tired of seeing a short while ago were now back out in the streets in their embroidered shirts screaming ‘Glory!’ and tossing their moth-eaten lambskin hats in the air. The city was puzzled. Why Petlyura and not Denikin?
The soldiers marched to Kreshchatik, occupied it, spread their bivouac and hung their flag from the balcony of the City Duma. Hanging one’s flag from that balcony was a declaration of sorts. Every new occupier did it as a way of saying they would not surrender without a fight. Rumours quickly began to spread that Denikin had ceded Kiev to Petlyura and redirected his White Army, which had been advancing on the city from the south, towards Orël. Driven nearly mad by the ceaseless coups and overthrows, the population hardly cared who controlled the city, as long as the new rulers stopped shooting, looting and throwing people out of their homes. For this reason, the arrival of Petlyura was met with complete indifference.
And then, at one o’clock, advance cavalry units of Denikin’s army, followed by a regiment of Don Cossacks, entered the city from the direction of Pechersk, not far from the monastery. Denikin’s forces advanced to Kreshchatik, only to find it already occupied by Petlyura’s men, a state of affairs they found as shocking as had the residents a short while ago and that they tried to get to the bottom of. It turned out that one of Petlyura’s divisions had been hiding in the villages to the west of Kiev and biding its time. No one had known anything about this. Taking advantage of the Soviet retreat, the division had decided to beat Denikin to the prize – the soldiers launched an attack on Kiev and after a two-day battle they occupied the city.
Quite naturally, Denikin’s men were not pleased. Mysterious and complicated talks began between the two sides, after which a white, blue and red flag appeared on the Duma balcony alongside that of Petlyura’s as a sign of dual sovereignty. The residents were now completely bewildered. It was impossible to know who exactly was in charge.
All doubts on the matter were settled that evening when reinforcements from Denikin’s army moved in. Two more Cossack regiments suddenly poured like lava down the steep Pechersk hills onto Petlyura’s unsuspecting troops. Galloping at full-tilt, lances levelled, swords flashing, the Cossacks roared forth, whooping and shooting their guns in the air. The steeliest of nerves could not have withstood this savage and sudden attack. Petlyura’s men dropped their weapons, abandoned their cannons and fled without a shot. And the same old ‘proper’ Ukrainians who had been shouting ‘Glory!’ so movingly only that morning were now out on the streets and the balconies, shaking their fists and screaming ‘Ganba!’ – ‘Shame! Disgrace!’ But the soldiers paid them no attention. They were running as fast as they could, looking back now and then in terror and hurriedly shoving things into their pockets. It wasn’t until they reached Svyatoshino outside the city that they stopped to catch their breath. Their last remaining battery lobbed a dozen or so shells in the general direction of Kiev, but that was it. There were no casualties, unless you count a wrecked ice-cream stand on Vladimirskaya Hill and the loss of an ear from the plaster statue of one of those two great Enlighteners of Russia, either St Cyril or St Methodius, I can’t recall which.
The following morning, an order signed by General Bredov had been posted around the city, announcing that from that day on, Kiev would forever remain a part of a united and indivisible Russia.
85
A Cry in the Night
It must have been at that late hour when everything succumbs to silence and the miry darkness. Even the water in the rusty pipes ran dry in the middle of the night and stopped its rhythmic drip from the tap in the kitchen. It was one of those torpid nights that breed troubled dreams and leave a vague sense of disquiet.
Someone had been trying to rouse me for a long time, but I could not wake up. In fact, I didn’t want to wake up and kept trying to hold onto a vanishing glimmer of light in my befuddled mind. Then, in a sudden flash, the sound of crying broke through this tense struggle. I opened my eyes, quickly sat up and saw Mama. She was sitting at the foot of my bed. Grey, dishevelled hair fell over her face. Clutching the bed rail, she sobbed silently, her shoulders shaking.