‘ “What’s the meaning of this?” I asked, having somewhat recovered from the shock.
‘ “Sabotage, that’s what,” said the one with the loud spurs, and gave me a sly leer. “The doctors don’t want to be mobilised, so they’ll be punished according to the law.”
‘The hall light was switched off, the door clicked shut and we went down the stairs and out.
‘ “Where are you taking me?” I asked, stroking the cool ribbed butt of the automatic in my trouser pocket.
‘ “To the First Cavalry Regiment,” answered the man with the spurs.
‘ “What for?”
‘ “Wha’ you mean, what for?” The second man was surprised. “You’ve been appointed our doctor.”
‘ “Who’s in command of the regiment?”
‘ “Colonel Leshchenko,” the first one answered with some pride, his spurs clinking rhythmically to my left.
‘ “What an idiot I was,” I thought, “to waste so much time over my suitcase. All because of a pair of underpants … I could easily have left five minutes earlier.”
‘By the time we reached the house the city was covered by a black frosty sky studded with stars. A blaze of electric light shone through its large, ornate windows. With much clinking of spurs, I was led into an empty, dusty room, blindingly lit by a strong electric bulb under a cracked opal-glass lampshade. The muzzle of a machine-gun jutted out from a corner, and my attention was riveted by red and russet-coloured trickles on the wall by the machine-gun, where an expensive tapestry hung in shreds.
‘ “That’s blood,” I thought to myself and winced.
‘ “Colonel,” the man with spurs said quietly, “we’ve found the doctor.”
‘ “Is he a Yid?” barked a dry, hoarse voice.
‘From behind the woven sheperdesses of the tapestry a door was silently thrown open and a man walked in. He was wearing a magnificent greatcoat and boots with spurs. A fine Caucasian belt decorated with silver medallions was tightly drawn around his waist, and at his hip a Caucasian sabre glinted in the bright electric light. He was wearing a lambskin hat with a magenta top crossed with gold braid. His slanting eyes had a cruel and curiously pained look, as though little black balls were bouncing up and down inside them. His face was riddled with pockmarks and his neat black moustache twitched nervously.
‘ “No, not a Yid,” replied the trooper.
‘Then the colonel strode up to me and looked into my eyes:
‘ “You’re not a Yid,” he began in a strong Ukrainian accent, speaking a horrible mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, “but you’re no better than a Yid, and as soon as the fighting’s over I shall have you court-martialled. You’ll be shot for sabotage. Don’t let him out of your sight,” he told the trooper, “and give the doctor a horse.”
‘I stood there without saying a word, and as you can well imagine, the blood had drained from my face. Then once again everything started happening as though in a bad dream. A voice in the corner said plaintively:
‘ “Have mercy, sir …”
‘I dimly perceived a quivering beard and a soldier’s torn greatcoat. Troopers’ faces hovered around it.
‘ “A deserter?” croaked the now familiar hoarse voice. “God, you filthy wretch.”
‘I saw the colonel twitch at the mouth as he drew a grim, shining pistol from its holster and struck this broken man in the face with the butt. The man flung himself to one side, choking on his own blood as he fell to his knees. Tears poured from his eyes.
‘Then the white, frostbound city vanished, a tree-lined road stretched along the bank of the still, dark waters of the mysterious Dnieper and the First Cavalry Regiment was marching along the road, strung out in a long winding file.
‘At the rear of the column an intermittent rumbling came from the two-wheeled transport carts. Black lances bobbed along beside pointed hoods covered in hoar-frost. I was riding on a cold saddle, every now and then wriggling my aching toes in my boots. I breathed through a slit in my hood, which was growing a shaggy fringe of hoar-frost, and could feel my suitcase, tied to the pommel of the saddle, pressing against my left thigh. My inseparable escort rode silently beside me. Inwardly, I was as chilled as my feet. Now and then I raised my face to the sky and looked at the bright stars and in my ears, almost without cease, as though the sound had solidified, I could hear the shrieking of the deserter. Colonel Leshchenko had ordered him to be beaten with ramrods and they had beaten him in that house.
‘The distant darkness was now silent and I reflected bitterly that the Bolsheviks had probably been beaten off. My fate was hopeless. We were making our way to Slobodka, where we were to halt and guard the bridge across the Dnieper. If the fighting should die down and I ceased to be of immediate use to him, Colonel Leshchenko would have me court-martialled. At this thought I felt petrified and cast a sad, longing glance at the stars. It was easy to guess at the verdict of a trial on a man who refused to report for duty within two hours in such a crisis. A horrible fate for a medical man.
‘Two hours later the scene had again undergone a kaleidoscopic change. This time the dark road had vanished. I found myself in a room with plastered walls and a wooden table on which there was a lantern, a hunk of bread and the contents of a medical bag. My feet had thawed out and I was warm, thanks to the crimson flames dancing in a small black iron stove. From time to time cavalrymen came in to see me and I would treat them. Mostly they were cases of frostbite. They would take off their boots, unwrap their foot-cloths and crouch by the fire. The room stank of sour sweat, cheap tobacco and iodine. Occasionally my escort left me and I was alone. Always thinking of escape, I opened the door from time to time looked out and saw a staircase lit by a guttering wax candle, faces and rifles. The whole house was so packed with people that it was difficult to run away. I was in the middle of their headquarters. I would come back from the door to my table, sit wearily down, lay my head on my arms and listen attentively. I noticed that every five minutes according to my watch a scream came from the room below mine. By then I knew exactly what was going on. Someone was being beaten with ramrods. At times the scream turned into something like a lion’s roar, sometimes into gentle, plaintive entreaties—or so it sounded through the floor—as though someone were having an intimate conversation with a close friend. Sometimes it stopped abruptly as if cut off with a knife.
‘ “What are you doing to them?” I asked one of Petlyura’s men as he shivered and stretched his hands towards the fire. His bare foot was resting on a stool and I was smearing white ointment on the festering sore on his big toe, which was blue with cold. He answered:
‘ “We found an organisation in Slobodka. Communists and Yids. The colonel’s interrogating them.”
‘I said nothing. When he went out, I muffled my ears in a scarf and the sounds grew fainter. I spent about a quarter of an hour like this, still haunted by the image of a pockmarked face under a gold-braided fur hat, until I was woken from my doze by the voice of my escort:
‘ “The colonel wants to see you.”
‘I stood up, unwound the scarf while the escort looked on in amazement, and followed the trooper. We went down the stairs to the floor below and I entered a white room, where I saw Colonel Leshchenko by the light of a lantern. He was naked to the waist and huddled on a stool, pressing a bloodstained piece of gauze to his chest. A helpless-looking peasant soldier stood by him, shuffling his feet and clinking his spurs.
‘ “The swine,” the colonel hissed, and turned to me. “Come on, doctor, bandage me up. Out you go, lad,” he said to the soldier, who clumped noisily out of the door. The house was silent. Then the windowframe shook. “Guns,” I thought, shuddering, and asked:
‘ “How did it happen?”
‘ “With a pen knife,” the colonel answered with a frown.
‘ “Who did it?”
‘ “None of your business,” he retorted with a cold, spiteful malevolence, and added: “Ah, doctor, you’re really in for trouble.”
‘Then it
suddenly came to me: someone had been unable to endure his torture any longer, had made a rush for him and wounded him. That was the only way it could have happened.
‘ “Take off the gauze,” I said and bent down to his chest with its thick growth of black hair. But before he had time to remove the blood-stained rag we heard footsteps outside the door, a scuffle, and then a coarse voice shouted:
‘ “Stop, stop, where the hell d’you think you’re going?”
‘The door was flung open and a dishevelled woman burst in. Her face was tensed in a way that made me think she was smiling; only much later did I realise that extreme anguish can express itself in very strange ways. A grey arm tried to grab the woman by her headscarf, but she tore herself free.
‘ “Go away, lad, go away,” the colonel ordered, and the arm drew back.
‘The woman stared at the half-naked colonel and said in a dry, tearless voice:
‘ “Why did you shoot my husband?”
“Because he had to be shot, that’s why,” the colonel answered in his Ukrainian accent, grimacing with pain. The lump of gauze was getting redder and redder under his fingers.
‘She gave such a smile that I could not help staring at her eyes. I had never seen such eyes. Then she turned to me and said:
‘ “And you’re a doctor!”
‘She poked her finger at the red cross on my sleeve and shook her head:
‘ “Oh, my God,” she went on, her eyes blazing, “God, what a wretch you are … you trained at university and yet you can bring yourself to treat this murdering swine … tying nice little bandages for them! He thrashes a man in the face without cease, till he drives him mad … And you’re bandaging him!”
‘Everything blurred before my eyes and I felt sick; I knew that the most terrible episode in my wretched career as a doctor had begun.
‘ “Are you talking to me?” I asked, trembling. “Don’t you know …”
‘But she did not listen. She turned to the colonel and spat in his face. He jumped up and shouted:
‘ “Men!”
‘They rushed in and he said in fury:
‘ “Give her twenty-five strokes with the ramrod.”
‘She said nothing as they dragged her out by the arms; the colonel closed the door and bolted it. Then he slumped on to the stool and threw away the ball of gauze. Blood trickled out of a small wound. The colonel wiped away the spittle that clung to his right moustache.
‘ “They’re going to beat a woman?” I asked in a voice that I did not recognise.
‘Anger flared in his eyes.
‘ “What?” he barked, looking at me with hatred. “Now I see what sort of a doctor I’ve been given!”
‘I must have fired one of the bullets into his mouth because I remember him swaying on the stool and blood running out of his mouth; almost immediately it began to stream from his chest and stomach, then his eyes clouded and turned from dark to milky. Finally he slumped to the floor. As I pulled the trigger I remember being afraid of losing count and firing the seventh bullet, the last one. “That’ll be for my own death,” I said to myself. The smell of powder-smoke from the automatic was delicious. The door had barely started to crack before I hurled myself out of the window, breaking the glass with my feet. Fate was kind to me: I landed in an empty courtyard and ran past stacks of firewood into a back street. I would certainly have been caught if I had not run into a very narrow little blind alley between two walls; crouched on a pile of broken bricks, I waited in that cave-like space for several hours. I could hear cavalrymen galloping past me. The back street led down to the Dnieper, and they searched the river bank for a long time, looking for me. I could see one star through a crack—I think it must have been Mars. And then it seemed to explode: the first shell had burst, blotting out the stars. The night was filled with rumbling and crashing as I sat silent and motionless in my brick burrow, thinking about my degree and wondering whether the woman had died under the ramrods. When silence fell again, the dawn was just beginning to break and I came out of my hole, as I could not endure the torture of it any longer—both my legs were frostbitten. Slobodka was dead, everything was quiet, the stars had grown pale. When I reached the house it was as if there had never been a Colonel Leshchenko or a cavalry regiment. Only horse-dung on the trampled snow.
‘I walked alone all the way back to Kiev, and when I reached the city it was broad daylight. I was met by an unfamiliar-looking patrol, wearing funny hats with earflaps. They stopped me and asked to see my papers. I said:
‘ “I am Doctor Yashvin. I am escaping from Petlyura’s men. Where are they?”
‘They told me:
‘ “They ran away during the night. A revolutionary committee has been set up in Kiev.”
‘I noticed one of the men of the patrol looking closely at me, then he shrugged sympathetically and said:
‘ “You can go home, doctor.”
And off I went.’
After a pause I asked Yashvin:
‘Did he die? Did you kill him or only wound him?’
Yashvin answered with his odd smile:
‘Oh, don’t worry—I killed him all right. Trust my experience as a surgeon.’
THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY
AFTER MIDNIGHT
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YOUTH WITHOUT GOD
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I AWAIT THE DEVIL’S COMING
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Mikhail Bulgakov, A Country Doctor's Notebook
(Series: # )
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