Wanda looked thoughtful and nodded.
'Yes, I thought so too when I went up there . . . You're right, he's been wounded . . .'
'Well, then, it's nothing to be pleased about - got away with it, indeed . . .'
Wanda licked her lips.
'I'm not pleased, I only say they seem to have "got away with it" because what I want to know is, when Petlyura's men come to you - which God forbid - and ask you, as chairman of the house committee, who are the people upstairs - what are you going to say? Were they in the Hetman's army, or what?'
Vasilisa scowled.
'I can say with absolute truth that he's a doctor. After all, there's no reason why I should know anything else about him. How could I?'
'That's the point. In your position you're supposed to know.'
At that moment the door-bell rang. Vasilisa turned pale, and Wanda turned her scrawny neck.
His nose twitching, Vasilisa stood up and said:
'D'you know what? Maybe I'd better run straight up to the Turbins and call them.'
Before Wanda had time to reply the bell rang again.
'Oh my God', said Vasilisa anxiously. 'Nothing for it - I shall have to go.'
Terrified, Wanda followed him. They opened their front door into the communal hallway, which smelled of the cold. Wanda's angular face, eyes wide with fear, peeped out. Above her head the electric bell gave another importunate ring.
For a moment the idea crossed Vasilisa's mind of knocking on the Turbins' glass door - someone would be bound to come down and things might not be so terrible. But he was afraid to do it. Suppose the intruders were to ask him: 'Why did you knock? Afraid of something? Guilty conscience?' Then came the hopeful thought, though a faint one, that it might not be a search-party but perhaps someone else . . .
'Who's there?' Vasilisa asked weakly at the door.
Immediately a hoarse voice barked through the keyhole at the level of Vasilisa's stomach and the bell over Wanda's head rang again.
'Open up', rasped the keyhole in Ukrainian. 'We're from headquarters. And don't try running away, or we'll shoot through the door.'
'Oh, God ., .' sighed Wanda.
With lifeless hands Vasilisa slid open the bolt and then lifted the heavy latch, after fumbling with the chain for what seemed like hours.
'Hurry up . . .' said the keyhole harshly.
Vasilisa looked outside to see a patch of gray sky, an acacia branch, snowflakes. Three men entered, although to Vasilisa they seemed to be many more.
'Kindly tell me why . . .'
'Search', said the first man in a wolfish voice, marching straight up to Vasilisa. The corridor revolved and Wanda's face in the lighted doorway seemed to have been powdered with chalk.
'In that case, if you don't mind', Vasilisa's voice sounded pale and colorless, 'please show me your warrant. I'm a peaceful citizen - I don't know why you want to search my house. There's nothing here', said Vasilisa, painfully aware that his Ukrainian had suddenly deserted him.
'Well, we've come to have a look', said the first man.
Edging backwards as the men pushed their way in, Vasilisa felt he was seeing them in a dream. Everything about the first man struck Vasilisa as wolf-like. Narrow face, small deep-set eyes, gray skin, long straggling whiskers, unshaven cheeks furrowed by deep grooves, he had a curious shifty look and even here, in a confined space, he managed to convey the impression of walking with the inhuman, loping gait of a creature at home in snow and grassland. He spoke a horrible mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, a language familiar to those inhabitants of the City who know the riverside district of Podol, where in summertime the quayside is alive with groaning, rattling winches and where ragged men unload watermelons from barges . . . On the wolf's head was a fur hat, a scrap of blue material with tinsel piping dangling loosely from one side.
The second man, a giant, almost touched the ceiling of Vasilisa's lobby. His complexion was as ruddy as a jolly, rosy-cheeked peasant woman's, and so young that there was no hair on his face. He wore a coarse sheepskin cap with moth-eaten earflaps, a gray overcoat, and his unnaturally small feet were clad in filthy, tattered rags.
The third man had a broken nose, one side of which was covered in a suppurating scab, and his upper lip was disfigured by a crudely stitched scar. On his head was an officer's old peaked cap
with a red band and a pale mark where the badge had once been. He wore an old-fashioned double-breasted army tunic with brass buttons covered in verdigris, a pair of black trousers, and bast foot-cloths round his instep over a pair of thick gray army-issue socks. His face in the lamplight was compounded of two colors - a waxy yellow and a dull violet, whilst his eyes stared with a look of malice and self-pity.
'We've come to have a look,' the wolf repeated, 'and here's our warrant.'
With this he dived into his trouser pocket, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and thrust it at Vasilisa. While one of his eyes kept Vasilisa in a state of palsied fear, his other eye, the left, made a cursory inspection of the furniture in the lobby.
The crumpled sheet was folded into four, and was embossed: 'Headquarters 1st Cossack Corps.' Beneath that, written with indelible pencil in large sloping characters, was an order in Ukrainian:
You are instructed to carry out a search of the premises of citizen Vasily Lisovich, No. 13 St Alexei's Hill. Resistance to this order is punishable by summary execution.
signed: Protsenko, Chief of Staff Miklun Adjutant
In the lower left-hand corner was the indecipherable impression of a blue rubber stamp.
The sprays of flowers on the lobby wallpaper swam slightly in front of Vasilisa's eyes and he said as the wolf regained possession of the piece of paper:
'Come in, please, but there's nothing here . . .'
The wolf pulled a black, oil-smeared automatic out of his pocket and pointed it at Vasilisa. Wanda gave a muffled scream. A long, businesslike revolver, also gleaming with oil, appeared in the hand of the man with the disfigured face. Vasilisa's knees weakened and he seemed to grow shorter. Suddenly the electric light flashed brightly on to full power.
'Who's here?' asked the wolf in a hoarse voice.
'No one', Vasilisa replied through white lips. 'Just me and my wife.'
'Come on, lads - let's have a look. And quick', grunted the wolf to his companions. 'No time to waste.'
The giant picked up a heavy wooden chest and shook it like a box of matches, whilst the disfigured man darted towards the stove. Pocketing his revolver, he hammered with his fists on the wall, noisily flung open the stove door sending out a wave of tepid heat.
'Any weapons?' asked the wolf.
'No, on my word of honor . . . why should I have a weapon . . .'
'No', echoed Wanda's shadow breathlessly.
'Better say if you have. Ever seen a man shot?' asked the wolf meaningfully.
'Why should I have a gun?'
The green-shaded lamp was burning brightly in the study where Alexander II, indignant to the depth of his cast-iron soul, stared at the three intruders. In the green light of the study Vasilisa discovered for the first time in his life the dizzy feeling that comes before a fainting-fit. All three men began immediately to examine the wallpaper. In great heaps, as if they were toys, the giant flung down row upon row of books from the bookshelf, whilst six hands tapped their way all over the wallpaper. Tap, tap, tap . . . the wall echoed dully. Suddenly the box in the secret cache rang out: tonk. The wolf's eyes shone with glee.
'What did I say?' he whispered noiselessly. The giant stamped a hole with his feet through the leather of the armchair and rose almost to the ceiling. There was a cracking sound as the giant's fingers broke into the cache. He pulled out the tin box and threw the string-tied paper package down to the wolf. Vasilisa staggered and leaned against the wall. The wolf began to shake his head and shook it for a long time as he stared at the half-dead Vasilisa.