‘I cannot do that,’ Popov announced sharply and resolutely.
Alexeev bent a little in his direction. ‘Why not, if I may ask?’ he said.
‘Because I cannot abandon the territory of the Don province and retire into the Kuban. Covered on the north by the Don, we shall await events in the steppe. We cannot count on any active movement on the part of the enemy, because the thaw will set in soon, and it will be impossible to send artillery or cavalry beyond the Don. From the area we have chosen, well supplied with forage and provisions, we can develop guerrilla activities at any moment and in any direction.’
He stopped for breath, but seeing that Kornilov was about to speak, obstinately shook his head.
‘Let me finish. In addition there is one very important factor, and we of the command have got to take it into account. That is the attitude of our cossacks. If we retreat to the Kuban there is a danger of our detachment breaking up. The cossacks may refuse to go. It must not be overlooked that the permanent and the strongest contingent of my detachment consists of cossacks, and they are by no means so morally reliable as … as your own men, for instance. And I cannot risk losing all my detachment. You must pardon me: I have told you our decision and must assure you that we are not in the position to change it. Of course it is not to our interest to split our forces, but there is one way out of the difficulty. I suggest that, taking what I have said into account, it would be more sensible for the Volunteer Army not to retreat into the Kuban, but to join the Don detachment in the steppe beyond the Don. There it will be able to rest and recuperate, and in the Spring will be reinforced by fresh volunteers from Russia …’
Kornilov looked at Alexeev, evidently uncertain which course to take, and seeking support from another authority. Alexeev, accustomed to decide a question quickly and with exhaustive clarity, expressed himself in few words in favour of the march to Yekaterinodar.
‘In that direction it will be easier for us to break through the Bolshevik ring and to join forces with the detachment already in action there,’ he ended.
‘But if we don’t succeed?’ Lukomsky cautiously asked.
Alexeev ran his fingers over the map. ‘Even if we are not successful,’ he said, ‘we still have the possibility of retreating to the Caucasian mountains and there dispersing the army.’
The discussion went on for some time longer, but, supported by the majority of the generals, Kornilov held to his decision to march by a devious route into the Kuban, collecting horses for the equipment of cavalry as he went. The conference broke up. Kornilov exchanged a few words with Popov, coldly said goodbye and went to his room, followed by Alexeev. Colonel Sidorin went out on to the porch, and cried cheerfully to his aide-de-camp:
‘The horses!’
A young, swarthy-faced cossack captain came up to him. He halted on the lowest step, and asked in a whisper:
‘Well, what decision, colonel?’
‘Not bad!’ Sidorin replied in an undertone, with exaggerated cheerfulness. ‘We have refused to march to the Kuban. We’re leaving at once. Are you ready, Izvarin?’
‘Yes. They’re bringing the horses.’
The escort brought up the horses, and Izvarin, Gregor Melekhov’s old friend, mounted his and gave the order to ride into the street. Popov and Sidorin, accompanied by some of the generals, came down the front steps. One of the escort held general Popov’s horse and helped him to find his stirrup. Waving his homely cossack knout, Popov put his horse into a trot, and behind him, standing in the stirrups and leaning a little forward, came Sidorin, the other officers and the cossacks.
Chapter Six
After Kaledin’s death a Military Council was summoned in Novocherkass, at which general Nazarov was appointed Provincial Ataman. Only a few delegates were present. Assured of the support of this depleted council, Nazarov proclaimed the mobilization of all cossacks from seventeen to fifty-five years of age. But the cossacks obeyed reluctantly, despite threats and the despatch of armed bands into the villages to enforce the order.
The Council was feeble in action. All felt that the result of the struggle against the Bolsheviks was a foregone conclusion. During the sessions of the Council Nazarov, formerly an energetic and vigorous general, sat with his head on his hands, as though tortuously thinking of something.
Golubov’s detachment was sent by the Revolutionary Committee in a wide encircling movement to capture Novocherkass, and Bunchuk went with it. Golubov led the division at a swift pace, riding at its head and bringing his whip impatiently down across his horse’s croup. At daybreak they passed through a little village. It was still deserted, but near the square an old cossack was breaking the ice in a trough by a well. Golubov rode up to him, while the division halted.
‘Good morning, old man,’ the commander greeted the cossack.
The man slowly raised his mittened hand to his fur cap, and replied in an unfriendly tone:
‘Good morning.’
‘Well, daddy, have your cossacks gone off to Novocherkass? Has there been a mobilization in your village?’
Without answering the old man hurriedly picked up his axe and disappeared through the gateway of his yard.
‘Forward!’ Golubov cried, and rode off cursing.
That same day the Military Council was preparing to evacuate Novocherkass. The newly appointed field ataman of the Don army, general Popov, had already withdrawn the armed forces from the town and removed all the military supplies. Meeting with no opposition, Golubov’s cavalry entered Novocherkass unexpectedly. Golubov himself, accompanied by a large detachment of cossacks, galloped up to the headquarters of the Military Council. A crowd of gaping sightseers was gathered at the gate, and a courier was waiting with general Nazarov’s saddled horse.
Bunchuk jumped from his horse and seized his hand machine-gun. With Golubov and the other cossacks he ran into the house. At the sound of the door being flung open, the delegates assembled in council in the spacious hall turned their heads and went white.
‘Stand up!’ Golubov commanded tensely, as though on parade. Surrounded by cossacks, he hurried to the head of the table. At the authoritative shout the members of the Council rose with a rattle of their chairs, only Nazarov remaining seated.
‘How dare you interrupt a session of the Military Council?’ the general demanded in an angry voice.
‘You are arrested! Silence!’ Golubov turned livid. He ran to Nazarov, tore the epaulettes from the general’s uniform, and roared hoarsely: ‘Stand up, I tell you! Take him away! Who am I talking to? Brasshat!’
Bunchuk had set up his machine-gun at the door. The members of the Council herded together like sheep. Past Bunchuk the cossacks dragged Nazarov, Voloshinov the chairman of the Council, and several others. His sword clattering, his face crimson, Golubov followed them. One of the members of the Council caught at his sleeve:
‘Mister colonel, where are we to go?’
Another thrust his head across Golubov’s shoulder. ‘Are we free?’ he asked.
‘Go to the devil!’ the commander shouted, pushing them away; as he reached Bunchuk he turned on them and stamped his foot: ‘Clear off to hell! I don’t want you! Well, what are you waiting for?’
Bunchuk spent the night in his mother’s house. Next day the news came that Rostov had been captured. He at once obtained Golubov’s permission to go to Rostov, and rode off the next morning.
Arrived in Rostov, he worked two days in the staff headquarters, and visited the offices of the Revolutionary Committee. But neither Abramson nor Anna was there. On the third day he went again to the Revolutionary Committee. As he was going up the stairs he heard Anna’s deep voice coming from a room. The blood rushed to his heart. He slowed his steps, and pushed open the door.
The room was thick with tobacco-smoke. He saw Anna standing at the window with her back to the door. Abramson was sitting on the window-ledge with hands clasped beneath his knee, and a tall Red Guard with Lettish features was standing at his side. As the man rolled a ciga
rette he was talking, evidently telling of some humorous incident, for Anna had her head thrown back in a hearty laugh, and Abramson’s face was furrowed like a melon-skin with his smile.
Bunchuk walked across and laid his hand on Anna’s shoulder.
‘Hallo, Anna!’
She looked round. The blood flooded her face and flowed down to her collar-bones, and tears started to her eyes.
‘Where have you sprung from? See, Abramson! He’s looking like a new coin, and you were anxious about him!’ she stammered without raising her eyes. Unable to control her agitation, she turned and walked towards the door.
Bunchuk squeezed Abramson’s hot hand, exchanged a few words with him, and then, with a foolish, boundlessly happy smile on his face, went to Anna. She had recovered her self-control and welcomed him with a smile, a little angry at her own embarrassment.
‘Well, and how are you?’ she asked. ‘When did you arrive? Are you from Novocherkass? Were you in Golubov’s division? Well, and what is the news?’
He replied to her questions without removing his unwinking, heavy gaze from her face. Her own eyes faltered and turned away from his.
‘Let’s go out into the street for a minute,’ she proposed.
As they turned to go, Abramson called after them: ‘You’ll be back soon? I’ve got work for you, comrade Bunchuk. We’re already thinking of making use of you.’
‘I shall be back in an hour,’ he replied.
In the street Anna gazed right into Bunchuk’s eyes, and waved her hand angrily:
‘Ilia, Ilia, how badly I lost control of myself! Just like a girl! It was because of the unexpectedness of seeing you, and also because of our half-and-half relation to each other. Really though, what is my relation to you? That of idyllic “husband and wife”? You know, at Lugansk Abramson once asked me: “Are you living with Bunchuk?” I denied it, but he’s a very observant man and cannot but see what happens right under his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but I could see by his look that he didn’t believe me.’
‘But tell me all about yourself.’
‘Oh how we made the work go at Lugansk! We gathered a detachment of two hundred and eleven bayonets. We carried on organizational and political activities … but I can’t tell you all about it in two words! I am still upset with your unexpected arrival. Where are you … where are you sleeping?’ she asked.
‘At a comrade’s house.’ He stammered over the lie, for he had spent his nights in the staff headquarters.
‘You’ll transfer to our house this very day! Do you remember where I live? You took me home once.’
‘I’ll find it. But … isn’t it rather crowding you?’
‘Don’t be silly! You’ll be crowding nobody, and in any case don’t talk about it.’
So it was decided. In the evening he collected his belongings into his capacious soldier’s kitbag, and went to the street on the outskirts where Anna lived. On the threshold of a small brick house he was met by an old woman. Her features had some distant resemblance to Anna’s; she had the same bluish-black glitter in her eyes and a slightly hooked nose, but her furrowed and earthy skin and her fallen mouth betrayed her age.
‘Are you Bunchuk?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Come in, will you? My daughter has told me about you.’
She led him into a small room, showed him where to put his things, and with rheumatically contorted fingers pointed around the room:
‘This is where you will sleep. That is your bed.’
She spoke with a noticeable Jewish accent. Beside her in the house there was a young girl, deep-eyed like Anna.
A little while later Anna herself arrived, bringing life and animation with her.
‘Has anyone been? Has Bunchuk arrived?’ she asked.
Her mother replied in Yiddish, and Anna strode firmly to the door of Bunchuk’s room.
‘May I come in?’ she called.
‘Yes, yes.’ He rose from the chair and went to meet her.
She looked him over with a satisfied, smiling glance, and asked:
‘Have you had anything to eat? Come into the other room.’
She led him by his sleeve into the larger room, and said:
‘Mother, this is my comrade.’ And she smiled.
During the night shots cracked like acacia seed-pods over Rostov. Occasionally a machine-gun rattled; then the sound died away, and the night, the gracious, sombre March night wrapped the streets again in silence. Bunchuk sat up till late in his scrupulously tidy little room.
‘I lived here with my little sister,’ she told him. ‘You see how modestly we lived – just like nuns. No cheap pictures, or photographs, nothing to show that I was a student in the high school.’
‘How did you manage?’ he asked her.
Not without pride she replied: ‘I worked at a factory and gave lessons.’
‘And now?’
‘Mother takes in sewing. The two of them need very little.’
He told her details of the capture of Novocherkass, and the battles in which he had taken part since she left him. She gave him impressions of her work in Lugansk and Taganrog. At eleven o’clock, as soon as her mother had put out the light in her room, she said goodnight and left him.
Bunchuk was assigned to work in the Revolutionary Tribunal attached to the Don Revolutionary Committee. The tall chairman of the Tribunal, hollow-cheeked and faded of eye with incessant activities and sleepless nights, led him to the window of his room, and asked:
‘When did you join the Party? Aha, good! Well, you will be our commandant. Last night we sent our previous commandant to join Kaledin, because he was taking bribes. He was nothing but a sadist, a bestial swine, and we don’t want that type in our ranks. It’s dirty work we’re doing, but we must retain full consciousness of our responsibility to the Party. Understand rightly what I am saying.’ (He laid extra emphasis on this phrase.) ‘And we must preserve humanity. Of necessity we are physically exterminating the counter-revolutionaries, but we mustn’t make a circus of the job. You understand me? Well, that’s good. Now go and take over.’
That same night Bunchuk, in charge of a squad of Red Guards, shot sixteen counter-revolutionaries at midnight, taking them some three miles outside the town. Among them were two cossacks, the rest being inhabitants of Rostov. Almost every night thereafter they carried those sentenced to death out of the town, and hasty graves were dug, some of the Red Guards and the condemned working side by side. Then Bunchuk would draw up his squad of Red Guards, and in an iron-hollow voice would give the command:
‘At the enemies of the revolution …’ A wave of his revolver. ‘Fire!’
After a week of this work he withered and darkened, as though drawn by the earth. His eyes became sunken, and the nervously twitching eyelids failed to hide their cold and yearning glitter. Anna saw him only at night, for she was working in the Revolutionary Committee and came home late. But she always waited up until the familiar knock at the window told of his arrival.
One night he returned as usual after midnight. She opened the door, and asked:
‘Will you have some supper?’
He did not reply, but passed into his own room, stumbling drunkenly. He flung himself just as he was, in greatcoat, boots and cap, on to his bed. Anna went to him and glanced into his face: his eyes were stickily filmed, spittle was dribbling from his bared teeth, and his hair, thin after typhus, lay in a damp strand over his brow.
She sat down at his side. Pity and pain clawed at her heart. She whispered:
‘Is it hard for you, Ilia?’
He squeezed her hand, ground his teeth, and turned to the wall. So he fell asleep, saying not a word. He muttered indistinctly and miserably in his sleep, and tried to jump up. She watched him in terror, and shuddered with unaccountable fear. He slept with eyes half-closed, and the yellow of the swollen whites gleamed feverishly below the lids.
‘Go away from here!’ she told him in the morning. ‘You’d better go to the fro
nt. You’re looking like nothing on earth, Ilia. You’ll perish at this work.’
‘Shut up!’ he shouted, his eyes blinking with his rage.
‘Don’t shout! Have I offended you?’
He was quiet at once, as though his shout had released the fury pent up in his breast. He looked wearily at his palms, and said:
‘The destruction of human filth is a filthy business. To shoot them down is injurious to the health and to the mind, you see. Damn it all …’ for the first time he cursed indescribably in her presence. ‘For such filthy business volunteer either fools and beasts, or fanatics. We all want to live in a flower-garden, but … to the devil with them! Before the flowers and trees can be planted the dirt must be cleared away. The earth must be dunged! The hands must be soiled!’ He raised his voice, although Anna had turned silently away. ‘The filth must be exterminated, and yet they are fastidious about the job!’ he shouted, thundering his fists on the table and blinking his bloodshot eyes.
Anna’s mother glanced into the room, and he recollected himself and spoke more quietly:
‘I will not give up this work! I see, I feel positively that I am being of service here. I shall rake away the filth, dung the earth, so that it will be more fertile. More fruitful! Some day happy people will walk over it … Perhaps my own son, that I haven’t got, will walk there too!’ He laughed gratingly and joylessly. ‘The music of the future … do you remember, Anna? How many of these serpents, these ticks, have I shot! The tick is an insect that eats into the body. I’ve killed dozens with these hands.’ He stretched out his long-nailed, black-haired hands, clenched like a vulture’s talons, then dropped them on to his knees and said in a whisper: ‘To the devil with it all! Let it burn so that the sparks fly and no smoke comes … Only, I am tired … that’s true. A little more, and then I’ll go off to the front … You’re right …’