Taking a deep breath, and aware that his legs were noticeably weaker and less able to obey him, Nikolka ran along the deserted Razezhaya Street and safely reached the next intersection, from which two streets branched off - Lubochitskaya Street leading to Podol and Lvovskaya Street which forked away to the right and to the centre of the City. Here he noticed a pool of blood alongside the kerbstone, an overturned cart, two abandoned rifles and a blue student's peaked cap. Nikolka threw away his own army-issue fur hat and put on the student's cap. It turned out to be too small and gave him the look of an untidy, raffish civilian - a high-school expellee with a limp. Nikolka peered cautiously around the corner and up Lvovskaya Street. At the far end of it he could just make out a scattering of mounted troops with blue badges on their fur hats. Petlyura. Some sort of a scuffle was in progress there, and stray shots were whistling through the air, so he turned and made off down Lubochitskaya Street. Here he saw his first sign of normal human life. A woman was running along the opposite sidewalk, her black feathered hat fallen to one side, holding a gray bag from which protruded an anguished rooster loudly squawking 'cock-a-
doodle-doo', or as it seemed to Nikolka 'pet-a-luu-ra'! Some carrots were falling out of a hole in the basket on the woman's left arm. She was weeping and moaning as she staggered along, hugging the wall. A well-dressed man rushed out of a doorway, crossed himself feverishly and shouted:
'Jesus Christ! Volodya, Volodya! Petlyura's coming!'
At the end of Lubochitskaya Street there were signs of more life as people scurried to and fro and disappeared indoors. Crazed with fear, a man in a black overcoat hammered at a gateway, thrust his stick between the bars and broke it with a violent crack.
Meanwhile time was flying by and twilight had already come. As Nikolka turned off Lubochitskaya Street and down Volsky Hill the electric street lamp on the corner was turned on and began to burn with a very faint hiss. The shutters clanged down on a shop-front, instantly hiding piles of gaily-colored cartons of soap powder. Turning the corner, a cabman overturned his sleigh into a snowdrift and lashed furiously at his miserable horse. Nikolka dashed past a four-storey apartment block with three walk-up entrances, in all three of which the doors were being constantly slammed as residents hustled inside. One of them, in a sealskin fur collar, ran out in front of Nikolka and yelled at the janitor:
'Ivan! Have you gone crazy? Shut the doors! Shut the front doors, man!'
One of the huge doors slammed shut and a piercing woman's voice could be heard on the darkened staircase shrieking:
'Petlyura! Petlyura's coming!'
The farther Nikolka ran towards the haven of Podol, as Nai-Turs had told him to, the greater became the bustle and confusion on the street, although there was less of a sense of fear and not everyone was going the same way as Nikolka. Some were even heading in the opposite direction.
At the very top of the hill leading down to Podol, there stepped out of the doorway of a gray stone building a solemn-looking young cadet wearing an army greatcoat and white shoulder-straps embroidered with a gold badge. The cadet had a snub nose the size of a button. Glancing boldly around him, he gripped the sling
of a huge rifle slung across his back. Passers-by scurried by glancing up in terror at this armed cadet, and hurried on. As he stepped down on to the sidewalk the cadet stopped, cocked an ear to listen to the firing with the knowing look as of a trained military man, stuck his nose in the air and was about to stride off. Nikolka swerved aside sharply, planted himself across the sidewalk, pressed close to the cadet and said in a whisper:
'Get rid of that rifle and hide at once.'
The little cadet shuddered with fright and took a step back, but then took a more threatening grip on his rifle. With the ease born of experience Nikolka gently but firmly edged the boy backward, pushed him into a doorway and went on urgently:
'Hide, I tell you. I'm a cadet-officer. It's all up. Petlyura's taken the City.'
'What d'you mean - how can he have taken the City?' asked the cadet. His mouth hung open, showing a gap where a tooth was missing on the left side of his lower jaw.
'That's how', Nikolka answered, with a sweep of his arm in the direction of the Upper City, adding: 'D'you hear? Petlyura's cavalry are in the streets up there. I only just got away. Run home, hide that rifle and warn everybody.'
Dumbstruck, the cadet froze to the spot. There Nikolka left him, having no time to waste on people who were so dense.
In Podol there was less alarm, but considerable bustle and activity. Passers-by quickened their pace, often turning their heads to listen, whilst cooks and servant girls were frequently to be seen running indoors, hastily wrapping themselves in shawls. An unbroken drumming of machine-gun fire could now be heard coming from the Upper City, but on that twilit December 14th there was no more artillery fire to be heard from near or far.
Nikolka had a long way to go. As he crossed through Podol the twilight deepened and enveloped the frostbound streets. Swirling in the pools of light from the street-lamps, a heavy fall of snow began to muffle the sound of anxious, hurrying footsteps. Occasional lights twinkled through the fine network of snowflakes, a few shops and stores were still gaily lit, though many were
closed and shuttered. The snowfall grew thicker. As Nikolka reached the bottom of his own street, the steep St Alexei's Hill, and started to climb up it, he noticed an incongruous scene outside the the doorway of No. 7: two little boys in gray knitted sweaters and woolen caps had just ridden down the hill on a sled. One of them, short and round as a rubber ball, covered with snow, was sitting on the sled and laughing. The other, who was older, thinner and serious-looking, was unravelling a knot in the rope. A youth was standing in the doorway and picking his nose. The noise of rifle fire grew more audible, breaking out from several directions at once.
'Vaska, did you see how I fell off and hit my bottom on the kerb!' shouted the youngest.
'Look at them, playing so peacefully', Nikolka thought with amazement. He turned to the youth and asked the youth in an amiable voice:
'Tell me, please, what's all the shooting going on up there?'
The young man removed his finger from his nose, thought for a moment and said in a nasal whine:
'It's our people, beating the hell out of the White officers.'
Nikolka scowled at him and instinctively fingered the revolver in his pocket. The older of the two boys chimed in angrily:
'They're getting even with the White officers. Serve 'em right. There's only eight hundred of them, the fools. Petlyura's got a million men.'
He turned and started to pull the sled away.
#
At the sound of Nikolka opening the front gate the cream-colored blind flew up in the dining-room window. The old clock ticked away, tonk-tank, tonk-tank . . .
'Has Alexei come back?' Nikolka asked Elena.
'No', she replied, and burst into tears.
The whole apartment was in darkness, except for a lamp in the kitchen where Anyuta, leaning her elbows on the table, sat and wept for Alexei Turbin. In Elena's bedroom logs flamed in the
stove, light from the flames leaping behind the grate and dancing on the floor. Her eyes red from crying about Alexei, Elena sat on a stool, resting her cheek on her bunched fist, with Nikolka sprawling at her feet across the fiery red pattern cast on the floor.