Her strength forsook her, she grew a little cooler, and said articulately:
‘Ilia, but why? Well, you see how simple it is … You’re a strange fellow … It’s terribly simple … Ilia, dearest, you’ll … there’s mother’ She half-opened her eyes, and striving to master her pain and horror, began to talk unintelligibly, as though oppressed by something. ‘At first the feeling … A blow and a burning … Now everything’s on fire … I feel … I am dying.’ She frowned as she noticed his bitter gesture of denial. ‘Don’t! I am bleeding internally. My lungs are filling with blood … It’s hard … ah, how hard it is to breathe!’
She talked much and frequently in spasmodic outbursts, as though trying to tell him all that was burdening her. With boundless horror he noticed that her face was lighting up, becoming more translucent, turning yellow at the temples. He turned his eyes to her hands lying lifelessly alongside her body, and saw the nails flooding with a rosy blue like ripening black plums.
‘Water! On my chest … It’s so hot!’
He ran to the house for water. As he returned he could not hear Anna’s snorting breath under the shed. The setting sun was shining on her mouth contorted with a last spasm, on the still warm, waxen hand pressed to the wound. Slowly putting his arms around her shoulders, he raised her, stared for a moment at the pinched nose and the tiny dark lines between the eyes, and caught the fading gleam of the pupils beneath the black brows. Her helplessly drooping head dropped lower, and in her slender, girlish neck the pulse beat out its last beats.
He pressed his cold lips to the black, half-closed eyelids, and called:
‘Dearest! Anna!’
Then he straightened up, turned sharply on his heel, and walked away unnaturally erect, not moving the arms pressed against his sides. As though blind he knocked against the gate-post, howled chokingly, and pursued by a spectral cry, dropped on to all fours. Inarticulate sounds broke from his foaming lips. He crawled along under the wall like a half-killed animal, tensely and swiftly, his face almost touching the ground. The three Red Guards stared after him apprehensively, silently exchanging glances, crushed by so repellent and naked a manifestation of human misery.
During the following days Bunchuk lived as though in the delirium of typhus. He went about, did things, ate, slept, but always as if in a stupefying, narcotic doze. With frenetic, dilated eyes he stared uncomprehendingly out at the world around him, failed to recognize his friends, and looked as though heavily intoxicated or only just recovering from a wasting illness. From the moment of Anna’s death feeling was temporarily atrophied in him: he wanted nothing, and thought of nothing. ‘Eat, Bunchuk!’ his comrades would suggest; and he ate, his jaws working slowly and harshly. When it was time to sleep they said to him: ‘Time to sleep!’ and he lay down.
He spent four days in this withdrawal from the world of reality. On the fifth day Krivoshlikov met him in the street, and caught hold of his arm:
‘Aha, there you are! I’ve been looking for you,’ he said. Not knowing what had happened to Bunchuk, he gave him a friendly slap on the back and smiled anxiously: ‘What’s the matter with you? You haven’t been drinking, have you? Have you heard that we’re sending an expedition into the northern Don district, to mobilize the cossacks there? Podtielkov will lead it. Our only hope is in the cossacks of the north. Otherwise we’ll be caught here. Will you go? We need agitators. You will go, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Bunchuk replied shortly.
‘Well, that’s fine. We’re leaving tomorrow.’
In the same state of complete mental prostration Bunchuk prepared for departure, and rode off with the expedition the next day.
At this time the situation in the southern Don was extremely menacing for the Don Soviet government. The German army of occupation was marching eastward from the Ukraine, the districts of the lower Don were seething with counter-revolutionary revolts. Popov was lurking in the steppes beyond the Don, and threatening to attack Novocherkass at any moment. The Provincial Congress of Soviets held at the beginning of May was more than once interrupted in order to repel the revolting cossacks threatening Rostov. Only in the north were the fires of the revolution still burning, and towards those fires Podtielkov and the others were involuntarily drawn as they lost hope of support in the lower Don. On Lagutin’s initiative, Podtielkov, recently elected chairman of the Don Council of People’s Commissars, decided to go northward to mobilize three or four regiments of frontline men, and to throw them against the Germans and the counter-revolution in the lower districts. An Extraordinary Mobilization Commission of five, with Podtielkov at its head, was appointed; ten million roubles in gold and Tsarist money were withdrawn from the exchequer for the needs of the mobilization; a detachment consisting mainly of cossacks from the Kemenska district was hastily scraped together to act as guard, and on May 14th the expedition set out northward.
The railroads were crowded with Red Guards retreating from the Ukraine. The insurgent cossacks were breaking down the bridges and organizing train-wrecking activities. Every morning squadrons of German aeroplanes flew along the railway from Novocherkass to Kamenska, swooped low like bands of vultures and opened machine-gun fire on the Red Guard detachments. Everywhere were the signs of boundless destruction: burnt-out and shattered wagons, broken wires festooned around the telegraph poles, ruined houses, and snow-fences swept away as though by a hurricane.
For five days the expedition travelled slowly along the railway line in the direction of Millerovo. On the sixth day Podtielkov called a meeting of the Mobilization Commission in his wagon.
‘We can’t go on like this. I think we ought to leave the wagons and march the rest of the way,’ he proposed.
‘What are you suggesting?’ Lagutin exclaimed. ‘While we’re struggling along by forced marches the Whites will sweep right across us.’
‘It’s too far,’ Mrikhin doubted.
Krivoshlikov sat silent, wrapped in his greatcoat and yellow with malaria and quinine. He took no part in the discussion, but sat huddled like a sack of sugar.
‘Krivoshlikov, you’ve got a tongue; what do you think?’ Podtielkov drily asked him.
‘What’s the question?’
‘Aren’t you listening? We must march on foot, otherwise we’ll be overtaken. What do you think? You’re more educated than the rest of us.’
‘We can march,’ Krivoshlikov deliberately pronounced.
‘Good!’ Podtielkov said.
He unfolded a map, and Mrikhin held it up by two corners. ‘We’ll take this road,’ he ran his cigarette-stained fingers over the map. ‘It might be a hundred and fifty miles. Is that right?’
‘That’s about it,’ Lagutin agreed.
Krivoshlikov provokingly shrugged his shoulders. ‘I make no objection,’ he said.
‘I’ll tell the cossacks to detrain at once. There’s no point in losing time.’ Mrikhin looked around expectantly, and meeting with no opposition, jumped down from the wagon.
Bunchuk was lying in his wagon with his head covered by his greatcoat. He was living over and over again the incidents of the past, feeling the same pain. Before his filmy eyes the snow-covered steppe lay like a great silver rouble, fringed with the brown spines of forests on the horizon. He thought he could feel the cold wind, and that Anna was standing at his side. He could see her black eyes, the strong yet tender lines of her mouth, the tiny freckles above her nose, the thoughtful furrow of her brow. He could not catch the words that came from her lips: they were inarticulate and interrupted by strange voices and laughter. But by the gleam of her eyes and the flutter of the eyelashes he guessed what she was saying.
But then he saw a different Anna, her face a bluish yellow, the traces of tears on her cheeks, her nose pinched and her lips torturously writhing. He bent to kiss the dark hollows of her eyes. He groaned and clutched his throat to suppress his sobs. Anna did not leave him for a moment. Her features did not fade or darken with the passing of time. Her face, figure, walk, gestures, the sweep
of her brows, all united to compose her living and whole. He recalled her words, her sentimentally romantic speeches, all he had lived through with her. And through the vitality of his re-creation of her his torment was intensified tenfold.
He made no attempt to analyse his present state of mind, but unreasoningly, bestially gave himself over to his grief. Thus fettered, he was perishing: perishing like an oak eaten from the root by worms.
When the order came to detrain they aroused him. He arose, indifferently pulled himself together and went out. He helped to unload the baggage. With the same indifference he clambered on to a cart and rode off.
A freezing rain was falling. The low-growing grass along the roadside was wet. The open steppe, the wind freely wandering over the slopes and hollows. Behind them the smoke of locomotives, the red blocks of the station buildings. The forty carts hired from the nearest village dragged along the road. The horses moved slowly. Soaked with rain, the clayey black earth hindered their movement. The mud clung to the wheels, and dropped off in black woolly clods. Before and behind them went crowds of miners fleeing with their wives and families and their miserable belongings eastward from the cossack vengeance.
For several days the expedition marched into the heart of the Don province. The inhabitants of the Ukrainian villages welcomed them with invariable hospitality, willingly selling them provisions and provender, and giving them shelter.
But as they drew nearer to the cossack lands Podtielkov and the other leaders began to be apprehensive. They noticed a change in the attitude of the people, who began to manifest open ill-will and alarm, selling their food reluctantly, and avoiding questions. Reduced to desperation by their chilly reception, one of the cossacks of the expedition struck his sword against the ground on the square of one village and roared:
‘Are you men or devils? What are you standing silent for, damn you? We’re pouring out our blood for your rights, and you won’t come near us! There is equality now, comrades, there aren’t any more cossacks and Hokhols, and nobody will lay hands on you. Bring us eggs and chickens at once, and we’ll pay for everything in Tsarist roubles.’
Six Ukrainians stood listening to him, their heads drooping gloomily like horses harnessed to ploughs. Not one of them responded to his burning speech. ‘You needn’t howl!’ was all they said as they dispersed in various directions.
In the same village an Ukrainian woman questioned one of the cossacks:
‘Is it true that you will steal everything and cut up everybody?’
Without quivering an eyelash the cossack replied:
‘Yes, it’s true. Maybe not everybody, but we’ll cut up all the old men.’
‘Oi, my God! And what do you want to cut them up for?’
‘We eat them with gruel. Mutton isn’t a good flavour, it isn’t sweet enough yet, so we put the daddies into our pots and make a fine stew of them …’
‘But aren’t you joking, maybe?’
‘He’s lying, woman!’ Mrikhin intervened, and turned on the jester.
‘You learn how to joke and who to joke with! What are you spreading those stories for? They’ll go and tell everybody that we cut up the old men!’
Consumed with anxiety, Podtielkov shortened the length of the halts and the nightly rest, and hurried the expedition onward. The day before their arrival in the Upper Don district he had a long talk with Lagutin.
‘There’s no point in our going too far, Ivan,’ he said. ‘We’ll begin the mobilization as soon as possible. We’ll proclaim an enrolment, offer good wages, and gather men as we go along. By the time we get to Michailovskoe we shall have a division at our command. You think we shall get them, don’t you?’
‘We’ll get them, provided everything is still quiet there.’
‘So you think the Whites may have begun already?’
‘Who knows?’ Lagutin stroked his thin beard and added despondently:
‘We’re late … I’m afraid we shall fail. The officers are already doing their work there. We must hurry …’
‘We are hurrying! And don’t you be afraid! You mustn’t be afraid!’ Podtielkov replied, his eyes gleaming harshly. ‘We’ll break through! Within two weeks we shall be sweeping the Germans and the Whites out of the Don.’ Puffing hard at his cigarette, he gave expression to his own secret thoughts: ‘If we’re too late, we’re lost and the Soviet rule in the Don with us. We mustn’t be too late. If the officers have organized a rising before we get there, then that’s the end!’
Towards evening of the following day they set foot on cossack territory. As they approached the first village Podtielkov, who was riding with Lagutin and Krivoshlikov on one of the foremost carts, saw a herd of cattle in the steppe. ‘We’ll go and question the herdsman,’ he proposed to Lagutin.
They jumped down from the cart and strode towards the herd. Podtielkov greeted the herdsman:
‘Good health, old man!’
‘Praise be!’ the man replied.
‘Well, and what’s the news in your parts?’
‘There’s nothing to tell. But who may you be?’
‘We’re soldiers going home.’
‘That Podtielkov isn’t with you, is he?’
‘Yes.’
The herdsman was obviously alarmed by the answer, and he turned pale.
‘What’s the matter, old man?’ Podtielkov inquired.
‘Why, they say you’re going to kill off all the Orthodox.’
‘Nonsense! Who is telling such stories?’
‘The ataman said so at a meeting two days ago.’
‘So you’ve got atamen again?’ Lagutin asked, glancing at Podtielkov.
‘We elected an ataman some days ago. The Soviet has been closed down.’
Podtielkov strode back to the cart and shouted to the driver: ‘Whip up your horses!’ He sat huddled on the cart, urging the cossack driver continually to greater speed.
Rain began to fall. The sky was overcast. Only to the east an ultramarine, sunlit scrap of sky peered through the clouds. As they were descending a slope into a little settlement they saw people running and several carts racing along out of the farther side.
‘They’re running away. They’re afraid of us …’ Lagutin said distractedly, eyeing the others.
The carts of the expedition rattled down into the settlement. The wind was eddying along the broad, deserted street. In one of the yards an old Ukrainian woman was throwing pillows into a cart, while her husband, barefoot and hatless, was holding the horses’ bridles.
Here they learnt that the man they had sent on ahead to arrange for quarters had been taken prisoner by a cossack patrol and carried off. Evidently the cossacks were not far away. The leaders of the expedition held a brief consultation to consider whether to turn back. At first Podtielkov insisted on continuing their advance, but after a time even he began to waver. His arguments were roughly interrupted by one of the cossack agitators:
‘You’ve taken leave of your senses! Where do you want to lead us to? To the counter-revolutionaries? We’re going back! We’ve got no desire to die! What’s that? See there?’ He pointed to the slope above the village.
They all turned and gazed up the hill. On the crest the figures of three riders were clearly silhouetted against the sky.
‘That’s one of their patrols!’ Lagutin exclaimed.
‘And there; look!’
More groups of horsemen appeared, vanished beyond the hill, and reappeared.
Podtielkov gave the order to turn back. They rode to the first Ukrainian village, only to find its inhabitants, evidently forewarned by the cossacks, preparing to hide and flee.
Dusk began to fall. The fine, chilly rain wet them through to the skin. The men walked alongside the carts, holding their rifles at the ready. The road wound down into a valley, ran through it and climbed the rise beyond. On the hill-tops the cossack patrols were appearing and disappearing continually, accompanying the expedition and increasing the already nervous tension of the retreating Reds.
br /> Close to one of the streams crossing the valley Podtielkov jumped from his cart and curtly called to the men: ‘Be ready!’ The Spring flood water showed blue in the stream. It ran into a pond formed by a dam. The dam was overgrown with bushes, and beneath it the pond was densely covered with sedges. Podtielkov was expecting an ambush at this spot, but the advance patrol could not discover anybody.
‘You needn’t expect them here,’ Krivoshlikov whispered to him. ‘They won’t attack now. They’ll wait for night.’
The clouds gathered heavily in the west. Night fell. Far away towards the Don lightning was flickering, and the orange sheet-lightning quivered like the wings of a half-dead bird. The sunset gleamed pallidly beneath the heavy pall of cloud. The steppe was brimming with silence and dampness; mournful glimmers of the ebbing daylight lurked in the folds of the valley. There was an autumnal quality in that May evening. Even the grasses exuded an inexpressible odour of decay. Podtielkov sniffed in the mingled aroma of the saturated grasses as he walked along. Occasionally he halted and stooped to clean the mud from his boots, straightening up again heavily, and wearily bearing onward his massive body.
They arrived at the next village after nightfall. The cossacks of the expedition abandoned their carts and wandered from hut to hut in search of quarters. Podtielkov gave orders for pickets to be posted, but they had difficulty in getting men for the duty. Three flatly refused to go.
‘Hold a comrades’ court-martial on them at once! Shoot them for refusing to obey orders!’ Krivoshlikov fumed. But Podtielkov made a bitter gesture:
‘They’ve been demoralized by the journey. They won’t defend themselves. We’re done for, Misha!’
Somehow Lagutin managed to collect several cossacks, and posted sentries outside the village. Podtielkov made a round of the huts and spoke to the cossacks upon whom he could most rely.
‘Don’t sleep, lads! Otherwise they’ll get us!’ he told them.
All through the night he sat at a table, his head on his hands, breathing heavily and hoarsely like a wounded animal. Just before dawn he was overcome with sleep, and dropped his head to the table. But almost immediately he was aroused to prepare for the further retreat. Day was breaking. He went out into the yard. The mistress of the hut met him in the porch.