'Anyone who can't do it - take care. Cadets!' Myshlaevsky sang out, 'show the students how it's done.'
As straps fitted with cartridge pouches and water-bottles were pulled on over heads and shoulders, a miracle took place. The motley rabble became transformed into a compact, homogeneous mass crowned by a waving, disorderly, spiky steel-bristled brush made of bayonets.
'All officers report to me, please', came Studzinsky's voice.
In a dark passageway to the subdued clink of spurs, Studzinsky asked quietly:
'Well, gentlemen, what are your impressions?'
A rattle of spurs. Myshlaevsky, saluting with a practised and nonchalant touch of his cap, took a pace towards the staff-captain and said:
'It's not going to be easy. There are fifteen men in my troop who have never seen a rifle in their lives.'
Gazing upwards as though inspired towards a window where the last trickle of gray light was filtering through, Studzinsky went on:
'Morale?'
Myshlaevsky spoke again.
'Er, h'umm ... I think the students were somewhat put off by
the sight of that funeral. It had a bad effect on them. They watched it through the railings.'
Studzinsky turned his eager, dark eyes on to him.
'Do your best to raise their morale.'
Spurs clinked again as the officers dispersed.
'Cadet Pavlovsky!' Back in the armory, Myshlaevsky roared out like Radames in Aida.
'Pavlovsky . . . sky . . . sky!' answered the stony walls of the armory and a chorus of cadets' voices.
'Here, sir!'
'Were you at the Alexeyevsky Artillery School?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Right, let's smarten things up and have a song. So loud that it'll make Petlyura drop dead, God rot him . . .'
One voice, high and clear, struck up beneath the stone vaults:
'I was born a little gunner-boy . . .' Some tenors chimed in from among the forest of bayonets:
'Washed in a shell-case spent . . .'
The horde of students seemed to shudder, quickly picked up the tune by ear, and suddenly, in a mighty bass roar that echoed like gunfire, they rocked the whole armory:
'Christened with a charge of shrapnel, Swaddled in an army tent! Christened with . . .'
The sound rang in their ears, boomed among the ammunition boxes, rattled the grim windows and pounded in their heads until several long-forgotten dusty old glasses on the sloping window ledges began to rattle and shake . . .
'In my cradle made of trace-ropes The gun-crew would rock me to sleep.'
Out of the crowd of greatcoats, bayonets and machine-guns, Studzinsky selected two pink-faced ensigns and gave them a rapid, whispered order:
'Assembly hall. . . take down the drapes in front of the portrait . . . look sharp . . .' The ensigns hurried off.
#
The empty stone box of the school building roared and shook in march time, while the rats lurked deep in their holes, cowering with terror.
'Hup, two, three, four!' came Karas' piercing voice.
'Louder!' shouted Myshlaevsky in his high, clear tenor.
'What d'you think this is - a funeral!?'
#
Instead of a ragged gray mob, an orderly file bristling with bayonets now marched off steadily along the corridor, the floor groaning and bending under the crunch of feet. Along the endless passages and up to the second floor marched the detachment straight into the gigantic assembly hall bathed in light from its glass dome, where the front ranks had already halted and were beginning to fidget restlessly.
Mounted on his pure-bred Arab charger, saddle-cloth emblazoned with the imperial monogram, the Arab executing a perfect caracole, with beaming smile and white-plumed tricorn hat cocked at a rakish angle, the balding, radiant Tsar Alexander I galloped ahead of the ranks of cadets and students. Flashing them smile after smile redolent of insidious charm, Alexander waved his baton at the cadets to show them the serried ranks of Borodino. Clumps of cannon-balls were strewn about the fields and the entire background of the fourteen foot canvas was covered with black slabs of massed bayonets.
#
As the gorgeous Tsar Alexander galloped onwards and upwards to
heaven, the torn drapes which had shrouded him for a whole year
since October 1917 lay in a heap around the hooves of his charger.
'Can't you see the Emperor Alexander? Keep that cadence!
Left, left! Hup, two, three, four!' roared Myshlaevsky as the file mounted the staircase with the ponderous tread of Tsar Alexander's foot-soldiers, past the man who beat Napoleon, the battery wheeled to the right into the vast assembly hall. The singing broke off as they formed into an open square several ranks deep, bayonets clicking. A pale, whitish twilight reigned in the hall and the portraits of the last tsars, still draped, peered down faint and corpse-like through the cloth.
Studzinsky about-faced and looked at his wrist-watch. At that moment a cadet ran in and whispered something to him. The nearby ranks could hear the words '. . . regimental commander.'
Studzinsky signalled to the officers, who began dressing the tanks. Studzinsky went out into the corridor towards the commanding officer.
Turning and glancing at Tsar Alexander, his spurs ringing, Colonel Malyshev mounted the staircase towards the entrance to the assembly hall. His curved Caucasian sabre with its cherry-red sword-knot bumped against his left hip. He wore a black parade-dress service cap and a long greatcoat with a large slit up the back. He looked worried.
Studzinsky marched rapidly up to him, halted and saluted.
Malyshev asked him:
'Have they all got uniforms?'
'Yes, sir. All orders carried out.'
'Well, what are they like?'
'They'll fight. But they're completely inexperienced. For a hundred and twenty cadets there are eighty students who have never handled a rifle.'
A shadow crossed Malyshev's face, but he said nothing.
'Thank God, though, we've managed to get some good officers,' Studzinsky went on, 'especially that new one, Myshlaevsky. We'll make out somehow.'
'I see. Thank you, captain. Now: as soon as I have inspected the battery I want you to send them home with orders to report back here in time to be on parade at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, except for the officers and a guard detachment of sixty of the best
and most experienced cadets, who will mount guard over the guns, the armory and the buildings.'
Paralysed with amazement, Studzinsky glared at the colonel in the most insubordinate fashion. His mouth dropped open.
'But sir . . .' - in his excitement Studzinsky's Polish accent became more pronounced -'. . . if you'll allow me to say so, sir, that's impossible. The only way of keeping this battery in any state of military efficiency is to keep the men here overnight.'
Instantly the colonel demonstrated an unsuspected capacity for losing his temper on the grandest scale. His neck and cheeks turned a deep red and his eyes flashed.
'Captain', he said in a furious voice, 'if you talk to me like that again I will have an official notice published that you no longer rank as a staff-captain but as an instructor who regards it as his job to lecture senior officers. This will be most unfortunate, because I thought that in you I had an experienced executive officer and not a civilian professor. Kindly understand that I am in no need of lectures, and when I want your advice I shall ask for it. Otherwise it is your duty to listen, to take note - and then to carry out what I say!'
The two men stared at each other.
Studzinsky's face and neck turned the color of a hot samovar and his lips trembled. In a grating voice he forced himself to say: