‘Go over to the buffet. There’s a good view of everything from the windows,’ he said.
‘And what about you?’
‘I’ll go out onto the platform and wave the train through with my green flag.’
Khvat looked at the guard doubtfully. ‘Maybe it’d be best if you didn’t go out,’ he said.
‘What are you talking about? I’m the station guard. If I don’t, the engine driver will stop the train, and then it’s farewell, my sweet little Dusya, you’ll have to write to me in heaven.’
Khvat and I walked over to the buffet. We found a wooden board with a prehistoric timetable of departures and arrivals and moved it over to the window. We could hide behind it and watch without being seen. In case of danger, it was easy to reach the kitchen from the buffet and then from there slip down into a dark cellar.
A dingy tomcat with rusty spots came up the cellar stairs, gave us a passing glance, walked across the empty tables and counter, jumped onto the windowsill, sat down with his back to us, and, like ourselves, began to stare at the empty tracks. He was apparently displeased with all the strange goings-on in the station, for the tip of his tail never stopped twitching irritably. He bothered us, but we decided to let him be. We understood that he was a railway cat and had every right to sit here, whereas we, mere passengers, should know our place. Now and then, he shot us exasperated looks. Then he pricked up his ears, and we heard the emphatic whistle of an engine racing furiously towards the station. I pressed my face to the window and saw the guard. He rushed out onto the platform, straightened his coat and raised his furled green flag.
Blowing clouds of steam into the air, the train tore through the station, pulling a string of alternating goods and flat wagons. What went by on the open flat wagons struck me as raving madness.
I saw hideous, laughing young men all covered with weapons – curved sabres, broadswords, silver-hilted daggers, Colts, rifles and cartridge belts. Large black and red ribbons flew in the wind from tall astrakhan hats, caps, bowlers and every headdress imaginable. The largest ribbon, I noticed, had been stuck to a crumpled top hat. The owner, in a fur coat with the bottom cut off for greater freedom of movement, was firing into the air, apparently a salute to the station of Pomoshnaya, which was holding its breath in terror.
One of Makhno’s men lost his boater in the wind. It rolled a long way down the platform before coming to a gentle stop near the guard’s feet. The boater looked frivolous, despite its sinister black band. The dream of every provincial Don Juan, the hat must have until recently covered the parting atop some well-groomed barber’s head. It’s not hard to imagine that this dandyism had cost him his life. Next, a scrawny, hook-nosed sailor with a neck as long as a giraffe’s swept past. His striped vest had been ripped down to his navel, obviously to show off the extravagant, menacing tattoo on his chest. It flashed by so fast that all I could make out was a tangle of women’s legs, hearts, daggers and snakes. The faint outline had been filled in with pinkish ink almost the colour of strawberry juice. If I were to give it a style, I’d say it was Rococo.
The sailor was followed by a fat Georgian in green velvet riding breeches, a feather boa around his neck. He stood balanced on a gun-carriage alongside two machine-guns, their barrels pointing straight at us. The cat watched this travelling circus and quivered with delight, one minute putting out his claws, the next drawing them back in. After a drunk blond youth in a priest’s stole who was clutching a roasted goose, an old man with a majestic head of white hair flowing out from beneath a school cap with its badge broken off whooshed solemnly by. He held in his hand a Cossack lance to which a torn black skirt had been tied. Painted on it was a white sunrise.
Every flat wagon flung snatches of sound onto the platform as it passed – the crying wail of an accordion, shrill whistles, a few words of a song. One song interrupted the next. ‘Arise now, boys!’ roared one wagon, ‘To Patashon’s Call’ chorused another, while a third shouted: ‘Rest in peace, rest in peace! That’s the end of Rabinovich’s wife, she’s gone and lost her life!’ After this the sad ending of the first song rose up: ‘And who’s that lying there under the green grave so proud?’ to which the next wagon provided the mournful reply: ‘One of Makhno’s heroes, a saddle blanket for his shroud.’
The first troop train passed, followed immediately by the second. Gun-carriages turned upside down to face the sky created a forest of metal shafts that bounced and swayed with the movement of the wagons. Inside the goods wagons, scruffy horses stood in profile, shaking their heads. Instead of blankets, they were covered with tallits, Jewish prayer shawls. The horsemen sat on the flat wagons, legs dangling over the side. Yellow riding boots swung by, wellingtons, traditional felt valenki, sandals, worn-out shoes held in place with twine, silver spurs, expensive hussars’ boots with officers’ cockades on the sides, waders, orange slippers with pompoms, horny red feet, puttees cut from red plush or a billiard table’s green baize.
Unexpectedly, the train slowed down. The guard looked around helplessly, but then drew himself up and froze. We moved back from the window, ready to run for our lives. But the train didn’t stop. It moved on slowly, smoothly through the station. Another flat wagon came into view carrying nothing but a luxurious, highly polished landau with some prince’s gilded coat of arms on the side. From one of the shafts, raised up like a flagpole, hung a black flag with the words ‘Anarchy is the Mother of Order!’ A machine-gun had been mounted in each of the wagon’s four corners, next to which sat one of Makhno’s men in a khaki-coloured English greatcoat.
A frail little man with a pallid green face in a black hat and an unbuttoned Cossack kaftan lay sprawled out on the landau’s back seat of rich red morocco. His feet were propped up against the coach box, and his whole bearing suggested a lazy, calm, well-fed indifference. He had stretched out one of his arms and was playing with his Mauser, tossing it up into the air and catching it as it fell.
The sight of his face made me sick. A damp fringe hung over his low, frowning forehead. His eyes – at once vicious and vacant, the eyes of a skunk and a paranoiac – burned with malevolence. Even now, despite his relaxed and stately pose, he seemed to simmer with a fierce violence which permeated his being.
This was Nestor Makhno.
The guard, standing unnaturally stiff and erect, held out the green flag with his right arm, while saluting Makhno with his left. At the same time, he smiled. This smile was the most horrifying thing imaginable. It was not a smile at all. It was an abject supplication, a pitiful call for mercy, a desperate, terrified appeal to spare a poor life. Makhno lazily raised his Mauser and, without bothering to aim or even look at the guard, fired. Why, I don’t know. Can anyone guess what goes on in the mind of a satanic monster?
The guard threw up his hands in a strange manner, stumbled, fell on his side and began to convulse on the platform, grabbing at his neck, which was spilling blood. Makhno waved his hand. Instantly, machine-gun fire raked the platform, hitting the guard. He twitched a few more times and then lay still.
We rushed out onto the platform. The last flat wagon was rolling past. A snub-nosed girl with cropped, curly hair, dressed in an astrakhan jacket and riding breeches, smiled from ear to ear and levelled her Mauser at us. The man next to her, his face covered in black stubble, a French steel helmet on his head, gave her a push. The bullet missed us and buried itself harmlessly in the wall. We ran up to the guard. He was dead. The imploring smile had frozen to his face. We lifted him, trying not to step in the large puddle of blood, and carried him to the buffet, where we laid him down on a long table next to a dried-out palm in a green pot. The soil in the pot bristled with yellowed cigarette butts.