Dedicated
Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya
Part I
Fine snow began to fall and suddenly fell in flakes. The wind howled; there was a snowstorm. In an instant dark sky mixed with the snowy sea. Everything has disappeared.
“Well, master,” the coachman shouted, “there’s trouble: a snowstorm!”
"Captain's daughter"
And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds...
1
The year after the birth of Christ, 1918, was a great and terrible year, the second since the beginning of the revolution. It was full of sun in summer and snow in winter, and two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd star - evening Venus and red, trembling Mars.
But the days, both in peaceful and bloody years, fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how a white, shaggy December arrived in the bitter cold. Oh, our Christmas tree grandfather, sparkling with snow and happiness! Mom, bright queen, where are you?
A year after daughter Elena got married to captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, and in the week when the eldest son, Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, after difficult campaigns, service and troubles, returned to Ukraine in the City, to his native nest, a white coffin with his mother’s body They demolished the steep Alekseevsky descent to Podol, to the small church of St. Nicholas the Good, which is on Vzvoz.
When the funeral service was held for my mother, it was May. cherry trees and acacia trees tightly covered the lancet windows. Father Alexander, stumbling from sadness and embarrassment, shone and sparkled by the golden lights, and the deacon, purple in face and neck, all forged and gold to the very toes of his boots, creaking on the welt, gloomily rumbled the words of church farewell to the mother leaving her children.
Alexey, Elena, Talberg, and Anyuta, who grew up in Turbina’s house, and Nikolka, stunned by death, with a cowlick hanging on right eyebrow, stood at the feet of the old brown Saint Nicholas. Nikolka’s blue eyes, set on the sides of a long bird’s nose, looked confused, murdered. From time to time he led them to the iconostasis, to the arch of the altar, drowning in twilight, where the sad and mysterious old god ascended and blinked. Why such a grudge? Injustice? Why was it necessary to take away my mother when everyone moved in, when relief came?
God, flying away into the black, cracked sky, did not give an answer, and Nikolka himself did not yet know that everything that happens is always as it should be, and only for the better.
They performed the funeral service, went out onto the echoing slabs of the porch and escorted the mother through the entire huge city to the cemetery, where the father had long been lying under a black marble cross. And they buried mom. Eh... eh...
* * *
Many years before his death, in house number 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk, the tiled stove in the dining room warmed and raised little Elena, Alexey the elder and very tiny Nikolka. As I often read “The Carpenter of Saardam” near the glowing tiled square, the clock played the gavotte, and always at the end of December there was the smell of pine needles, and multi-colored paraffin burned on the green branches. In response, the bronze ones, with gavotte, which stand in the bedroom of the mother, and now Elenka, beat the black wall towers in the dining room. My father bought them a long time ago, when women wore funny sleeves with bubbles at the shoulders. Such sleeves disappeared, time flashed like a spark, the father-professor died, everyone grew up, but the clock remained the same and chimed like a tower. Everyone is so used to them that if they somehow miraculously disappeared from the wall, it would be sad, as if one’s own voice had died and nothing could fill the empty space. But the clock, fortunately, is completely immortal, the “Carpenter of Saardam” is immortal, and the Dutch tile, like a wise rock, is life-giving and hot in the most difficult times.
Here is this tile, and the furniture of old red velvet, and beds with shiny knobs, worn carpets, variegated and crimson, with a falcon on the hand of Alexei Mikhailovich, with Louis XIV basking on the shore of a silk lake in the Garden of Eden, Turkish carpets with wonderful curls in the oriental the field that little Nikolka imagined in the delirium of scarlet fever, a bronze lamp under a lampshade, the best cabinets in the world with books that smelled of mysterious ancient chocolate, with Natasha Rostova, the Captain’s Daughter, gilded cups, silver, portraits, curtains - all seven dusty and full rooms who raised the young Turbins, the mother left all this to the children in the most difficult time and, already out of breath and weakening, clinging to the crying Elena’s hand, said:
- Together... live.
But how to live? How to live?
Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, the eldest, is a young doctor - twenty-eight years old. Elena is twenty-four. Her husband, Captain Talberg, is thirty-one, and Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Their lives were suddenly interrupted at dawn. Revenge from the north has long begun, and it sweeps and sweeps, and does not stop, and the further it goes, the worse. The elder Turbin returned to hometown after the first blow that shook the mountains above the Dnieper. Well, I think it will stop, the life that is written about in chocolate books will begin, but not only does it not begin, but it becomes more and more terrible all around. In the north the blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the disturbed womb of the earth muffles and grumbles dully. The eighteenth year is flying to the end and day by day it looks more menacing and bristly.
The walls will fall, the alarmed falcon will fly away from the white mitten, the fire in the bronze lamp will go out, and Captain's Daughter will be burned in the oven. The mother said to the children:
- Live.
And they will have to suffer and die.
Once, at dusk, shortly after his mother’s funeral, Alexey Turbin, coming to his father Alexander, said:
– Yes, we are sad, Father Alexander. It’s hard to forget your mother, and it’s still such a difficult time. The main thing is that I just returned, I thought we’d improve our lives, and now...
He fell silent and, sitting at the table in the twilight, thought and looked into the distance. The branches in the churchyard also covered the priest's house. It seemed that right now, behind the wall of a cramped office crammed with books, a mysterious tangled forest of spring was beginning. The city was making a dull noise in the evening, and it smelled of lilacs.
“What will you do, what will you do,” the priest muttered embarrassedly. (He was always embarrassed if he had to talk to people.) - God's will.
- Maybe this will all end someday? Will it be better next? – Turbin asked unknown to whom.
The priest stirred in his chair.
“It’s a hard, hard time, what can I say,” he muttered, “but you shouldn’t be discouraged...
Then suddenly he imposed white hand, taking it out of the dark sleeve of the duckweed, onto a stack of books and opening the top one, where it was covered with an embroidered colored bookmark.
“Despondency must not be allowed,” he said, embarrassed, but somehow very convincingly. – Big sin- despondency... Although it seems to me that there will be more trials. “Oh, yes, great trials,” he spoke more and more confidently. - I Lately everyone, you know, I sit with books, my specialty is, of course, mostly theological...
He lifted the book so that the last light from the window fell on the page and read:
– “The third angel poured out his cup into the rivers and springs of water; and there was blood."
2
So, it was a white, furry December. He was quickly approaching half. The glow of Christmas could already be felt on the snowy streets. The eighteenth year will soon end.
Above two-story house No. 13, an amazing building (the Turbins’ apartment on the street was on the second floor, and the small, sloping, cozy courtyard was on the first), in the garden, which was molded under a steep mountain, all the branches on the trees became palmate and drooping. The mountain was swept away, the sheds in the yard were covered, and there was a giant sugar loaf. The house was covered with the cap of a white general, and on the lower floor (on the street - the first, in the courtyard under the Turbins' veranda - the basement) the engineer and coward, bourgeois and unsympathetic, Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, lit up with faint yellow lights, and on the top - the Turbino windows lit up strongly and cheerfully .
At dusk, Alexey and Nikolka went to the barn to get firewood.
- Eh, eh, but there’s too little firewood. They pulled it out again today, look.
A blue cone shot out from Nikolka’s electric flashlight, and in it it is clear that the paneling from the wall was clearly torn off and hastily nailed on the outside.
- I wish I could shoot you, the devils! By God. You know what: let's sit on guard this night? I know - these are the shoemakers from number eleven. And what scoundrels! They have more firewood than we do.
- Come on... Let's go. Take it.
The rusty castle began to sing, a layer fell on the brothers, and wood was dragged along. By nine o'clock in the evening the tiles of Saardam could not be touched.
The wonderful stove on its dazzling surface carried the following historical notes and drawings, made at different times in the eighteenth year by Nikolka’s hand in ink and full of the deep meaning and values:
If they tell you that the allies are rushing to our rescue, don’t believe it. The allies are bastards.
He sympathizes with the Bolsheviks.
Drawing: Momus' face.
Ulan Leonid Yurievich.
Rumors are menacing, terrible,
The red gangs are coming!
Drawing with paints: a head with a drooping mustache, wearing a hat with a blue tail.
By the hands of Elena and tender and old Turbino childhood friends - Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky - written in paints, ink, ink, and cherry juice:
Elena Vasilna loves us very much.
To whom - on, and to whom - not.
Helen, I took a ticket to Aida.
Mezzanine No. 8, right side.
1918, May 12th day, I fell in love.
You are fat and ugly.
After such words I will shoot myself.
(A very similar Browning is drawn.)
Long live Russia!
Long live autocracy!
June. Barcarolle.
No wonder all of Russia remembers
About Borodin Day.
In block letters, in Nikolka’s hand:
I still order you not to write foreign things on the stove under the threat of shooting any comrade with deprivation of your rights. Commissioner of the Podolsk region. Ladies', men's and women's tailor Abram Pruzhiner.
The painted tiles glow with heat, the black clock runs as it did thirty years ago: a tonk-tank. The elder Turbin, shaved, fair-haired, aged and gloomy since October 25, 1917, in a jacket with huge pockets, blue leggings and soft new shoes, in his favorite pose - in a chair with legs. At his feet on a bench is Nikolka with a cowlick, her legs stretched out almost to the sideboard - the dining room is small. Feet in boots with buckles. Nikolka’s friend, guitar, gently and dully: friction... Vaguely friction... because for now, you see, nothing is really known yet. It’s alarming in the City, foggy, bad...
On Nikolka’s shoulders are non-commissioned officer’s shoulder straps with white stripes, and on her left sleeve is an angular tricolor chevron. (The first squad, infantry, its third section. The fourth day is being formed, in view of the beginning events.)
But, despite all these events, the dining room is, essentially speaking, wonderful. It’s hot, cozy, the cream curtains are drawn. And the heat warms the brothers, gives rise to languor.
The elder throws down the book and reaches out.
- Come on, play “Shooting”...
Rub-ta-there... Rub-ta-there...
Shaped boots,
Tonne caps,
Then the cadet engineers are coming!
The elder begins to sing along. The eyes are gloomy, but there is a fire in them, a heat in the veins. But quietly, gentlemen, quietly, quietly.
Hello, summer residents,
Hello, summer residents...
The guitar is marching, the company is pouring from the strings, the engineers are coming - ah, ah! Nikolka’s eyes remember:
School. Peeled Alexander columns, cannons. The cadets crawl on their bellies from window to window and shoot back. Machine guns in the windows.
A cloud of soldiers besieged the school, well, a real cloud. What can you do. General Bogoroditsky got scared and surrendered, surrendering with the cadets. Pa-a-zor...
Hello, summer residents,
Hello, summer residents,
We started filming a long time ago.
Nikolka’s eyes become misty.
Columns of heat over the red Ukrainian fields. The powdered cadet companies are walking in the dust. It was, it was all and now it’s gone. A shame. Nonsense.
Elena parted the curtain, and her reddish head appeared in the black gap. She sent a soft look to her brothers, but at the clock it was very, very alarming. This is understandable. Where, in fact, is Thalberg? My sister is worried.
To hide it, she wanted to sing along with her brothers, but suddenly she stopped and raised her finger.
- Wait. Do you hear?
The company broke off its step on all seven strings: whoa-oh! All three listened and were convinced - guns. It’s hard, far away and deaf. Here it is again: boo... Nikolka put down the guitar and quickly stood up, followed by Alexey, groaning.
The living room/reception area is completely dark. Nikolka bumped into a chair. In the windows there is a real opera “Christmas Night” - snow and lights. They tremble and flicker. Nikolka clung to the window. The heat and the school disappeared from the eyes, and the most intense hearing disappeared from the eyes. Where? He shrugged his non-commissioned officer shoulders.
- The devil knows. The impression is that it’s as if they’re shooting near Svyatoshin. It's strange, it can't be that close.
Alexey is in the darkness, and Elena is closer to the window, and you can see that her eyes are black and frightened. What does it mean that Thalberg is still missing? The elder senses her excitement and therefore does not say a word, even though he really wants to tell him. In Svyatoshin. There can be no doubt about this. They are shooting, 12 versts from the city, no further. What is this thing?
Nikolka took the latch, pressed the glass with his other hand, as if he wanted to squeeze it out and get out, and flattened his nose.
- I want to go there. Find out what's the matter...
- Well, yes, you were missing there...
Elena says in alarm. This is misfortune. The husband was supposed to return at the latest, you hear - at the latest, today at three o’clock in the afternoon, and now it’s already ten.
They returned to the dining room in silence. The guitar is gloomily silent. Nikolka drags a samovar from the kitchen, and it sings ominously and spits. On the table there are cups with delicate flowers on the outside and golden inside, special, in the form of figured columns. Under my mother, Anna Vladimirovna, this was a holiday service for the family, but now the children use it every day. The tablecloth, despite the guns and all this languor, anxiety and nonsense, is white and starchy. This is from Elena, who cannot do otherwise, this is from Anyuta, who grew up in the Turbins’ house. The floors are shiny, and in December, now, on the table, in a matte column vase, there are blue hydrangeas and two gloomy and sultry roses, affirming the beauty and strength of life, despite the fact that on the approaches to the City there is an insidious enemy who, perhaps, can break snowy, beautiful City and trample the fragments of peace with your heels. Flowers. Flowers are an offering from Elena’s faithful admirer, guard lieutenant Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky, a friend of the saleswoman in the famous candy store “Marquise”, a friend of the saleswoman in a cozy flower shop"Nice Flora" Under the shade of hydrangeas there is a plate with blue patterns, several slices of sausage, butter in a transparent butter dish, a saw-frage in a bread bowl and white oblong bread. It would be great to have a snack and drink some tea, if not for all these gloomy circumstances... Eh... eh...
A motley rooster rides on a teapot, and three disfigured Turbino faces are reflected in the shiny side of the samovar, and Nikolkina’s cheeks are like Momus’s.
There is melancholy in Elena’s eyes, and the strands, covered with a reddish fire, droop sadly.
Talberg got stuck somewhere with his hetman's money train and ruined the evening. The devil knows, has something happened to him?... The brothers languidly chew their sandwiches. In front of Elena is a cooling cup and “Mr. from San Francisco.” Blurred eyes, not seeing, look at the words: “...darkness, ocean, blizzard.”
Elena doesn't read.
Nikolka finally can’t stand it anymore:
- I would like to know why they are shooting so close? After all, it can’t be...
He interrupted himself and became distorted while moving in the samovar. Pause. The needle creeps past the tenth minute and - tonk-tank - goes to a quarter past ten.
“They shoot because the Germans are scoundrels,” the elder suddenly mutters.
Elena looks up at her watch and asks:
– Will they really, really leave us to our fate? – Her voice is sad.
The brothers, as if on command, turn their heads and begin to lie.
“Nothing is known,” Nikolka says and takes a bite of a slice.
- That's what I said, um... presumably. Gossip.
“No, not rumors,” Elena answers stubbornly, “it’s not a rumor, but true; Today I saw Shcheglova, and she said that two German regiments had been returned from near Borodyanka.
- Nonsense.
“Think for yourself,” the elder begins, “is it conceivable for the Germans to let this scoundrel close to the city?” Think about it, huh? I personally absolutely cannot imagine how they will get along with him for even one minute. Complete absurdity. The Germans and Petliura. They themselves call him nothing more than a bandit. Funny.
- Oh, what are you saying? I know Germans now. I myself have already seen several with red bows. And a drunk non-commissioned officer with some woman. And the woman is drunk.
- Well, you never know? Individual cases There may even be disintegration in the German army.
- So, in your opinion, Petliura won’t come in?
- Hm... In my opinion, this cannot be.
- Apsolman. Please pour me another cup of tea. Do not worry. Keep calm, as they say.
- But God, where is Sergei? I'm sure their train was attacked and...
- And what? Well, what are you inventing in vain? After all, this line is completely free.
- Why isn’t he there?
- Oh my God. You know what the ride is like. We stood at each station for probably four hours.
- Revolutionary riding. You drive for an hour and stand for two.
Elena, sighing heavily, looked at her watch, paused, then spoke again:
- Lord, Lord! If the Germans had not done this meanness, everything would have been fine. Two of their regiments are enough to crush this Petliura of yours like a fly. No, I see the Germans are playing some kind of vile game double play. And why are there no vaunted allies? Ooh, scoundrels. They promised, they promised...
The samovar, which had been silent until then, suddenly began to sing, and coals covered with gray ash fell onto the tray. The brothers involuntarily looked at the stove. The answer is here. Please:
The allies are bastards.
The hand stopped at the quarter, the clock wheezed solidly and struck - once, and immediately the clock was answered by a clear, thin ringing from the ceiling in the hallway.
“Thank God, here’s Sergei,” the elder said joyfully.
“This is Talberg,” Nikolka confirmed and ran to open the door.
Elena turned pink and stood up.
But it turned out to be not Thalberg at all. Three doors thundered, and Nikolka’s surprised voice sounded muffled on the stairs. A voice in response. Following the voices, forged boots and a butt began to waddle down the stairs. The door to the hallway let in the cold, and in front of Alexei and Elena found themselves a tall, broad-shouldered figure in a gray overcoat down to the toes and in protective shoulder straps with three lieutenant stars in pencil. The cap was covered with frost, and a heavy rifle with a brown bayonet occupied the entire front.
“Hello,” the figure sang in a hoarse tenor and grabbed the head with numb fingers.
Nikolka helped the figure untangle the ends, the hood came off, behind the hood was a pancake of an officer’s cap with a darkened cockade, and the head of Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky appeared above the huge shoulders. This head was very beautiful, strange and sad and attractive beauty of an ancient, real breed and degeneration. Beauty is in different colored, bold eyes, in long eyelashes. The nose is hooked, the lips are proud, the forehead is white and clean, without any special features. But one corner of the mouth is lowered sadly, and the chin is cut off obliquely, as if the sculptor, sculpting a noble face, had a wild fantasy of biting off a layer of clay and leaving the manly face with a small and irregular feminine chin.
- Where are you from?
- Where?
“Be careful,” Myshlaevsky answered weakly, “don’t break it.” There's a bottle of vodka.
Nikolka carefully hung up his heavy overcoat, from the pocket of which the neck of a piece of newspaper was peeking out. Then he hung the heavy Mauser in a wooden holster, swinging the rack with deer antlers. Then only Myshlaevsky turned to Elena, kissed her hand and said:
- From under the Red Tavern. Let me spend the night, Lena. I won't make it home.
- Oh, my God, of course.
Myshlaevsky suddenly groaned and tried to blow on his fingers, but his lips did not obey. The white eyebrows and the frost-grayed velvet of the trimmed mustache began to melt, and the face became wet. Turbin Sr. unbuttoned his jacket and walked along the seam, pulling out his dirty shirt.
- Well, of course... That's enough. Swarming.
“That’s it,” the frightened Elena began to fuss and forgot Talberg for a minute. - Nikolka, there’s firewood in the kitchen. Run and light the speaker. Oh, what a shame that I let Anyuta go. Alexey, take off his jacket, quickly.
In the dining room near the tiles, Myshlaevsky, giving vent to groans, collapsed on a chair. Elena ran in and rattled her keys. Turbin and Nikolka, kneeling down, pulled off Myshlaevsky’s narrow, smart boots with buckles on the calves.
- Easier... Oh, easier...
The disgusting, spotted foot wraps unraveled. Underneath are purple silk socks. French Nikolka immediately sent him to the cold veranda to let the lice die. Myshlaevsky, in a dirty cambric shirt, crossed with black suspenders, in blue breeches with stripes, became thin and black, sick and pitiful. Blue palms splashed and groped across the tiles.
Rumor... menacing...
Nast... gang...Fell in love... may...
- What kind of scoundrels are these! - Turbin shouted. - Couldn’t they really give you felt boots and short fur coats?
“Va-alenki,” Myshlaevsky mimicked, crying, “valenki...
Unbearable pain tore into my arms and legs in the warmth. Hearing that Elena’s steps had died down in the kitchen, Myshlaevsky shouted furiously and tearfully:
Hoarse and writhing, he fell down and, poking his fingers at his socks, groaned:
- Take it off, take it off, take it off...
There was a nasty smell of denatured alcohol, a mountain of snow was melting in the basin, and a glass of vodka made Lieutenant Myshlaevsky instantly drunk to the point of blurry vision.
- Is it really necessary to cut it off? Lord... - He rocked bitterly in his chair.
- Well, what are you talking about, wait a minute. Not bad. I froze the big one. So... it will go away. And this one will go away.
Nikolka squatted down and began to pull on clean black socks, and Myshlaevsky’s wooden, stiff arms reached into the sleeves of his shaggy bathrobe. Scarlet spots bloomed on his cheeks, and, huddled in clean linen and a dressing gown, the frozen Lieutenant Myshlaevsky softened and came to life. Terrible curse words jumped in the room like hail on the windowsill. Squinting his eyes to his nose, he cursed with obscene words the headquarters in the first-class carriages, some Colonel Shchetkin, the frost, Petlyura and the Germans, and the blizzard, and ended up accusing the hetman of all Ukraine himself of the most vile vulgar words.
Alexey and Nikolka watched as the lieutenant clinked his teeth while warming up, and from time to time they cried out: “Well, well.”
- Hetman, huh? Your mother! - Myshlaevsky growled. - Cavalry guard? In a palace? A? And they drove us away with what we were wearing. A? 24 hours in the cold in the snow... Lord! After all, I thought that we would all be lost... To my mother! One hundred fathoms officer from officer - is this a chain called? How the chickens were almost slaughtered!
“Wait,” Turbin asked, dazed from the abuse, “tell me, who is there, under the Tavern?”
- At! – Myshlaevsky waved his hand. – You won’t understand anything! Do you know how many of us were under the Tavern? Forty man. This scammer, Colonel Shchetkin, arrives and says (here Myshlaevsky distorted his face, trying to portray the hated Colonel Shchetkin, and spoke in a nasty, thin and lisping voice): “Gentlemen officers, all the hope of the City is on you. Justify the trust of the dying mother of Russian cities; if the enemy appears, go on the offensive, God is with us! I'll give you my shift in six hours. But please take care of the cartridges...” (Myshlaevsky spoke in his ordinary voice) - and he fled in a car with his adjutant. And it’s dark as hell...! Freezing. He takes it with needles.
- Who’s there, Lord! After all, Petlyura can’t be near the Tavern?
- The devil knows! Believe it or not, by morning we almost went crazy. We arrived at midnight, waiting for a shift... No arms, no legs. There is no shift. Of course, we can’t light a fire; the village is two miles away. The tavern is a mile away. At night it seems like the field is moving. It seems like they’re crawling... Well, I think, what are we going to do?... What? You raise your rifle, wondering whether to shoot or not to shoot? Temptation. They stood like wolves howling. If you shout, it will respond somewhere in the chain. Finally, I buried myself in the snow, dug a coffin for myself with the butt of my gun, sat down and tried not to fall asleep: if I fell asleep, I was a kayak. And in the morning I couldn’t stand it, I felt like I was starting to doze off. Do you know what saved? Machine guns. At dawn, I hear, it’s gone about three versts! And just imagine, I don’t want to get up. Well, then the gun started firing. I stood up as if I was on my feet, and I thought: “Congratulations, Petliura has arrived.” We tightened the chain a little and called to each other. We decided this: if something happens, we’ll huddle together, shoot back and retreat to the City. They will kill you - they will kill you. At least together. And, imagine, it became quiet. In the morning, three people started running to the Tavern to warm up. Do you know when the shift came? Today at two o'clock in the afternoon. There were about two hundred cadets from the first squad. And, you can imagine, they were beautifully dressed - in hats, felt boots and a machine-gun team. Colonel Nai-Tours brought them.
- A! Ours, ours! - Nikolka cried.
- Wait a minute, he’s not a Belgrade hussar? - asked Turbin.
- Yes, yes, hussar... You see, they looked at us and were horrified: “We thought that there were two companies of you here, they say, with machine guns, how did you stand?”
It turns out that it was these machine guns that a gang of about a thousand people attacked Serebryanka in the morning and launched an attack. It’s fortunate that they didn’t know that there was a chain like ours, otherwise, you can imagine, in the morning this whole horde could make a visit to the City. It was fortunate that they had a connection with Post-Volynsky - they let them know, and from there some battery hit them with shrapnel, well, their ardor faded away, you know, they didn’t complete the offensive and were wasted somewhere, to hell.
- But who are they? Is it really Petlyura? This can't be true.
- Oh, the devil knows their souls. I think these are local peasant God-bearers of Dostoevsky! uh... your mother!
- Oh my God!
“Yes, sir,” Myshlaevsky wheezed, sucking on a cigarette, “we changed, thank God.” We count: thirty-eight people. Congratulations: two froze. To the pigs. And they picked up two, their legs will be cut...
- How! To death?
- What did you think? One cadet and one officer. And in Popelyukha, near the Tavern, it turned out even more beautiful. Second Lieutenant Krasin and I went there to take the sleigh and carry the frozen ones. The village seemed to have died out - not a single soul. We look, finally some old man in a sheepskin coat is crawling with a stick. Imagine - he looked at us and was happy. I immediately felt bad. What is it, I think? Why did this God-bearing horseradish rejoice: “Lads... lads...” I tell him in such a rich voice: “Great, did. Hurry up the sleigh." And he answers: “Nope. The Usi officer drove the sleigh to the Post.” I blinked at Krasin and asked: “Officer? Tek, sir. What about all your boys?” And the grandfather blurts out: “Usi got big before Petlyura.” A? As you like? He, blindly, did not see that we had shoulder straps under our bashlyks, and mistook us for Petliurists. Well, here, you see, I couldn’t stand it... Frost... I went berserk... I grabbed this grandfather by the shirtfront, so that his soul almost jumped out of him, and I shouted: “Bigly to Petlyura? But I’ll shoot you now, so you’ll know how they run to Petlyura! You’re running away to the kingdom of heaven, you bitch!” Well, here, of course, the holy tiller, sower and guardian (Myshlaevsky, like a collapse of stones, let out a terrible curse), received his sight in no time. Of course, at his feet and yells: “Oh, your honor, excuse me, old man, but I’m foolish, I’ll go blind, I’ll give you the horses, I’ll give you them right away, don’t beat them in!” And horses were found, and sledges.
Well, sir, at dusk we arrived at the Post. What is going on there is beyond comprehension. I counted four batteries on the tracks, standing undeployed; it turns out there were no shells. There are no number of headquarters. Nobody knows a damn thing, of course. And most importantly, there is nowhere to put the dead! They finally found a dressing station, believe me, they dumped the dead by force, they didn’t want to take them: “You’re taking them to the City.” This is where we went wild. Krasin wanted to shoot some staff member. He said: “These, he says, are Petliura’s methods.” Got away. In the evening I finally found Shchetkin’s carriage. First class, electricity... So what do you think? Some servant-type lackey is standing there and won’t let me in. A? “They are going to sleep,” he says. No one was ordered to be accepted.” Well, when I hit the wall with my butt, and behind me all our guys started making noise. They jumped out of all the compartments like peas. Shchetkin got out and started talking: “Oh, my God. Surely. Now. Hey, messengers, cabbage soup, cognac. We will now accommodate you. P-complete rest. This is heroism. Oh, what a loss, but what to do - sacrifices. I’m so exhausted...” And cognac is a mile away from him. Ah-ah-ah! – Myshlaevsky suddenly yawned and nodded. He muttered as if in a dream:
– They gave the detachment a heating vehicle and a stove... Oh-oh! And I was lucky. Obviously, he decided to get rid of me after this roar. “I am sending you, lieutenant, to the City. To the headquarters of General Kartuzov. Report there." Uh-uh! I'm on the locomotive... numb... Tamara's castle... vodka...
Myshlaevsky dropped the cigarette from his mouth, leaned back and immediately began snoring.
“That’s so great,” said the confused Nikolka.
- Where is Elena? – the elder asked worriedly. “You’ll need to give him a sheet, you take him to wash.”
At this time Elena was crying in the room behind the kitchen, where behind a chintz curtain, in a column near a zinc bath, the flame of a dry, chopped birch was flickering. The hoarse kitchen clock struck eleven. And the murdered Talberg introduced himself. Of course, the train with the money was attacked, the convoy was killed, and there was blood and brains in the snow. Elena sat in the semi-darkness, flames pierced her crumpled crown of hair, tears flowed down her cheeks. Killed. Killed...
And then a thin bell began to tremble and filled the entire apartment. Elena storms through the kitchen, through the dark bookroom, into the dining room. The lights are brighter. The black clock struck, ticked, and began to shake.
But Nikolka and the eldest faded away very quickly after the first explosion of joy. And there was more joy for Elena. The wedge-shaped epaulettes of the Hetman's War Ministry on Talberg's shoulders had a bad effect on the brothers. However, even before the epaulettes, almost from the very day of Elena’s wedding, some kind of crack had formed in the vase of Turbino’s life, and good water was leaking through it unnoticed. The vessel is dry. Perhaps, main reason this in the double-layered eyes of the captain of the general staff Talberg, Sergei Ivanovich...
Eh-eh... Whatever it was, now the first layer could be read clearly. In the top layer is simple human joy from warmth, light and safety. But deeper down there is clear anxiety, and Talberg just brought it with him. The deepest things were, of course, hidden, as always. In any case, nothing was reflected in the figure of Sergei Ivanovich. The belt is wide and hard. Both icons - the academy and the university - shine evenly with white heads. The lean figure turns under the black watch like a machine gun. Talberg is very cold, but smiles benevolently at everyone. And anxiety also affected the favor. Nikolka, sniffing his long nose, was the first to notice this. Talberg, drawing out his words, slowly and cheerfully told how the train that was carrying money to the province and which he was escorting, near Borodyanka, forty miles from the City, was attacked by no one knows who! Elena squinted in horror, huddled close to the badges, the brothers again cried out “well, well,” and Myshlaevsky snored deathly, showing three gold crowns.
-Who are they? Petlyura?
In the essay “Kyiv-Gorod” of 1923, Bulgakov wrote:
“When heavenly thunder (after all, there is a limit to heavenly patience) kills every single one modern writers and in 50 years a new one will appear real Leo Tolstoy, an amazing book will be created about the great battles in Kyiv.”
Actually, great book Bulgakov wrote about the battles in Kyiv - this book is called “The White Guard”. And among those writers from whom he counts his tradition and whom he sees as his predecessors, Leo Tolstoy is first of all noticeable.
The works preceding The White Guard can be called War and Peace, as well as The Captain's Daughter. All three of these works are usually called historical novels. But it's not easy, and maybe not at all historical novels, these are family chronicles. At the center of each of them is family. It is the house and family that Pugachev destroys in “The Captain’s Daughter”, where quite recently Grinev dines with Ivan Ignatievich, at the Mironovs he meets with Pugachev. It is Napoleon who destroys the house and family, and the French rule in Moscow, and Prince Andrei will say to Pierre: “The French ruined my house, killed my father, and are coming to ruin Moscow.” The same thing happens in the White Guard. Where the Turbins' friends gather at home, everything will be destroyed. As will be said at the beginning of the novel, they, the young Turbins, will have to suffer and suffer after the death of their mother.
And, of course, it is no coincidence that the sign of this crumbling life is cabinets with books, where the presence of Natasha Rostova and the captain’s daughter is emphasized. And the way Petliura is presented in The White Guard is very reminiscent of Napoleon in War and Peace. The number 666 is the number of the cell in which Petlyura was sitting, this is the number of the beast, and Pierre Bezukhov, in his calculations (not very accurate, by the way), adjusts the digital meanings of the letters of the words “Emperor Napoleon” and “Russian Bezukhov” to the number 666. Hence the theme of the beast of the apocalypse.
There are many small overlaps between Tolstoy’s book and Bulgakov’s novel. Nai-Tours in The White Guard burrs like Denisov in War and Peace. But this is not enough. Like Denisov, he violates the regulations in order to obtain supplies for his soldiers. Denisov repels a convoy with provisions intended for another Russian detachment - he becomes a criminal and receives punishment. Nai-Tours violates the regulations in order to get felt boots for his soldiers: he takes out a pistol and forces the quartermaster general to hand over the felt boots. Portrait of Captain Tushin from War and Peace: “ small man, with weak, awkward movements." Malyshev from the White Guard: “The captain was small, with a long sharp nose, in an overcoat with a large collar." Both of them cannot tear themselves away from the pipe, which they continuously smoke. Both end up alone on the battery - they are forgotten.
Here is Prince Andrey in War and Peace:
“The very thought that he was afraid lifted him up: “I can’t be afraid,” he thought.<…>“This is it,” thought Prince Andrei, grabbing the flagpole.”
And here is Nikolka, the youngest of the Turbins:
“Nikolka was completely stupefied, but at that very second he controlled himself and, thinking with lightning speed: “This is the moment when you can be a hero,” he shouted in his piercing voice: “Don’t you dare get up!” Listen to the command!’”
But Nikolka, of course, has more in common with Nikolai Rostov than with Prince Andrei. Rostov, hearing Natasha singing, thinks: “All this, and misfortune, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor - all this is nonsense... but here it is - real.” And here are Nikolka Turbin’s thoughts: “Yes, perhaps everything in the world is nonsense, except for a voice like Shervinsky’s,” - this is Nikolka listening to Shervinsky, the Turbins’ guest, sing. I'm not even talking about such a passing, but also interesting detail, like the fact that both of them proclaim a toast to the health of the emperor (Nikolka Turbin clearly does this belatedly).
The similarities between Nikolka and Petya Rostov are obvious: both are younger brothers; naturalness, ardor, unreasonable courage, which destroys Petya Rostov; a crush in which both are involved.
The image of the younger Turbin has features of quite a few characters from War and Peace. But something else is much more important. Bulgakov, following Tolstoy, does not attach importance to the role historical figure. First, Tolstoy's phrase:
“In historical events, the so-called great people are labels that give a name to the event, which, like labels, have least of all any connection with the event itself.”
And now Bulgakov. Not to mention the insignificant Hetman Skoropadsky, here is what is said about Petlyura:
“Yes, he was not there. Did not have. So, nonsense, legend, mirage.<…>All this is nonsense. Not him - someone else. Not another, but a third.”
Or this, for example, is also an eloquent roll call. In War and Peace, at least three characters - Napoleon, Prince Andrew and Pierre - compare battle to a chess game. And in “The White Guard” Bulgakov will talk about the Bolsheviks as the third force that appeared on the chessboard.
Let us remember the scene in the Alexander Gymnasium: Alexey Turbin mentally turns to Alexander I, depicted in the picture hanging in the gymnasium, for help. And Myshlaevsky proposes to burn the gymnasium, just as Moscow was burned in the time of Alexander, so that no one would get it. But the difference is that Tolstoy’s burned Moscow is a prologue to victory. And the Turbines are doomed to defeat - they will suffer and die.
Another quote, and a completely frank one. I think Bulgakov had a lot of fun when he wrote this. Actually, the war in Ukraine is preceded by “a certain clumsy peasant anger”:
“[Anger] ran through the snowstorm and cold in holey bast shoes, with hay in his bare, matted head and howled. In his hands he carried a great club, without which no undertaking in Rus' is complete.”
It is clear that this is a “club” people's war”, which Tolstoy sang in “War and Peace” and which Bulgakov is not inclined to glorify. But Bulgakov writes about this not with disgust, but as an inevitability: this peasant anger could not help but exist. Although Bulgakov does not have any idealization of the peasants, it is no coincidence that Myshlaevsky in the novel sarcastically speaks about the local “God-bearing peasants of Dostoevsky.” There is and cannot be any admiration for the people's truth, no Tolstoy's Karataev in The White Guard.
Even more interesting are artistic overlaps, when the key compositional moments of two books are connected with the common vision of the writers’ world. The episode from War and Peace is Pierre's dream. Pierre is in captivity, and he dreams of an old man, a geography teacher. He shows him a ball, similar to a globe, but consisting of drops. Some drops spill and capture others, then they themselves break and spill. The old teacher says: “This is life.” Then Pierre, reflecting on Karataev’s death, says: “Look, Karataev spilled over and disappeared.” Petya Rostov had a second dream that same night, a musical dream. Petya is sleeping in a partisan detachment, a Cossack is sharpening his saber, and all the sounds - the sound of a saber being sharpened, the neighing of horses - are mixed, and Petya thinks he hears a fugue. He hears the harmonious agreement of voices, and it seems to him that he can control. This is an image of harmony, just like the sphere that Pierre sees.
And at the end of the novel “The White Guard” another Petya, Petka Shcheglov, sees in a dream a ball splashing spray. And this is also the hope that history does not end with blood and death, does not end with the triumph of the star of Mars. And the last lines of “The White Guard” are about the fact that we do not look at the sky and do not see the stars. Why don't we detach ourselves from our earthly affairs and look at the stars? Maybe then the meaning of what is happening in the world will be revealed to us.
So, how important is the Tolstoyan tradition for Bulgakov? In a letter to the government, which he sent at the end of March 1930, Bulgakov wrote that in “The White Guard” he strove to depict an intellectual-noble family, abandoned by the will of fate in the years Civil War to the White Guard camp, in the traditions of War and Peace. Such an image is quite natural for a writer who is closely connected with the intelligentsia. For Bulgakov, Tolstoy was an indisputable, absolutely authoritative writer all his life, whom Bulgakov considered following greatest honor and dignity.
Year of publication of the book: 1925
Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" was first published back in 1925 and became the first a major work author. Although some chapters of the book were published in various periodicals several years before the publication of the final version. The plot of Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" formed the basis of several theatrical productions And feature films. The latest was the Russian series of the same name, which was released in 2012.
The novel "The White Guard" summary
At the very beginning of Mikhail Bulgakov’s work “The White Guard,” a certain city is described that vaguely resembles Kyiv. It is the winter of 1918, and the entire population, as in, is going through turbulent times due to the political situation. And this is not without reason - the city has been occupied by the Germans for several years. It was then headed by the hetman and his subordinates. However, already a few kilometers away from him were Petliura’s troops, ardently wanting to gain power. At that time the city was crowded not only local residents, but also by visiting Muscovites who were hiding from the power of the Bolsheviks.
Further in Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” we can read about the Turbin family, which is going through difficult times. The fact is that two brothers Alexey and Nikolka and their sister Elena recently lost their beloved mother. It’s hard for them to come to terms with her death, so for several weeks now a mournful atmosphere has reigned in their apartment on Aleksandrovsky Spusk. Before her death, the mother told her children that, no matter what happens, they should all live in friendship and harmony.
The eldest son of the deceased woman was twenty-eight-year-old doctor Alexei. Having now become the head of the family, it is difficult for him to come to terms with the loss of his mother. Therefore, he decides to go to church and talk with Father Alexander. The priest tells him that there is no point in living in sadness for so long, so he needs to get involved in the whirlpool of events. Moreover, very difficult times are coming for the country.
One day, when the brothers were sitting near the stove and humming the tunes of songs familiar from their youth, their sister, twenty-four-year-old Elena, entered the room. She was very alarmed that her husband Sergei Talberg had still not returned from work, although he himself promised to be home seven hours ago. The girl does not find a place for herself and does not know at all what to do. Suddenly there is an unexpected knock on the door. Everyone was sure that it was Sergei who had come, but the guest turned out to be an old family friend, Lieutenant Viktor Myshlaevsky. He talks about how his squad was cordoned off for six hours. But after this time, no one gave the order to complete the operation, and the soldiers spent a day in the cold without food supplies and in light uniforms. Two of them died from the cold, two more received severe frostbite. And the lieutenant himself was shaking from the cold throughout this entire time. 
Reading the novel “The White Guard” further, we learn that Sergei finally enters the house. He says that the rumors that have been circulating around the city for quite some time have been confirmed - the Germans are retreating due to the approach of Petlyura’s troops. Therefore, Thalberg must also urgently leave Kyiv with them. But he cannot take his wife with him, because he is not sure what exactly awaits him next after escaping. Elena collects her husband's things, and the Turbins say goodbye to him. A couple of hours pass, and Alexey’s guests come - his friends from his days at the gymnasium. They bring alcohol with them and have fun until Myshlaevsky begins to feel uneasy. Alexey decides to help his friend. He takes him to another room and offers him some medicine. On the way, he notices Elena crying in her room. The girl understands that she may never see her husband again.
Further in the novel “The White Guard” by Bulgakov, the content briefly talks about the neighbor of the main characters, Vasily Lisovich, who lives on the floor below. On the night when the above-mentioned events happened to the main characters, the man hid valuable things in a cache. In addition, Vasily had several more hiding places that were located in the attic and barn. The man wanted to hide at least a little valuables so much that he missed one important thing - during all this time a stranger was watching him outside the window.
The next morning, Nikolka and one of the guests, Leonid Shevrinsky, leave the apartment. They all want to enlist. This is especially necessary right now, when terrible things are happening in the city - explosions in warehouses, murders and the retreat of the German army oppress the residents. Everyone understands that something terrible is approaching. A little later, the others woke up - Alexey, his friend, who was called Karas among his comrades, and Myshlaevsky. They decide to go to the gymnasium where they once studied. IN this moment the headquarters of the volunteer artillery is located there. Their commander Malyshev carefully examined the new arrivals and sent them under the leadership of Captain Studzinsky. Karas and Myshlaevsky became officers, while Alexey received the position of military doctor. However, that night it turns out that most of the volunteers do not know how to handle weapons. Since there is no time to train soldiers, Malyshev decides to disband the division, which he announces the next morning. Moreover, news arrives that the hetman has fled the city. Now there is no legal authority in it, and therefore there is no one for the soldiers to protect.
Further in Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” summary tells about Colonel Nai-Tours, who forms several squads to protect the city from the Petliurists. However, he understands that soldiers without warm uniforms and sufficient food supplies will not be able to carry out their work at full capacity. That’s why Nai-Tours is trying to get at least warm clothes for the cadets. He even took with him several soldiers with rifles to intimidate the quartermaster a little. This move worked, and after some time the supply service gives him everything he needs.
The headquarters orders the colonel to hold the defense of the Polytechnic Highway and open fire if the enemy appears. Nai-Tours sends several soldiers on reconnaissance. They had to find out if the hetman's units were somewhere nearby. After some time, the cadets return with unpleasant news - they are all in a trap, no units are observed nearby. Moreover, news arrived that Petliura’s troops had already entered the city.
Around the same time, Nikolka, who by that time had already become a corporal, received an order to lead several soldiers along the specified route. Already halfway there, he sees Nai-Tours, who orders the cadets to immediately tear off their shoulder straps, run away from here and burn all their documents. Shooting begins, and the colonel tries to cover his soldiers. Nikolka volunteers to help and begins to shoot back, but a few minutes later Nai-Turs is mortally wounded. Before his death, he orders the corporal to immediately retreat in order to save his life. Nikolka follows the commander’s orders and gets home, encountering enemies along the way.
Meanwhile, in the novel M.A. Bulgakov's "The White Guard" tells that Alexey did not know that the volunteer division had been disbanded. As he was ordered, by two o'clock in the afternoon the man arrives at the headquarters near the gymnasium. However, he finds no one there - moreover, there are no weapons or papers at the headquarters. After some time, he manages to find Malyshev, who burns the remaining documents. He tells the doctor about Petlyura’s army, which has already penetrated the city. The commander tells Turbin to tear off his shoulder straps and leave the building through the back door. Alexei obeys him and leaves. He runs into an unfamiliar and empty yard. Turbin was supposed to urgently go home, but decides to see what is happening in the city center now. On the way, he meets Petlyura’s army, which understands that a soldier is standing in front of them. The thing is that, having removed his shoulder straps, Alexey completely forgot about the cockade. Thus, the enemies realized that there was a soldier in front of them and opened fire on him. A few minutes later, the young man was wounded in the shoulder. He tried to hide, but accidentally ran into an impenetrable yard. A few more minutes and the Petliurists would have found him. Alexey no longer hoped for salvation, when suddenly an unfamiliar woman opened the gate of her house and let him inside. She later introduced herself as Yulia and began caring for the wounded soldier. The woman bandaged his wound and hid his bloody clothes. The next morning, having changed Turbin’s clothes, she sent him home as a cab driver.
If we download Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard,” we will find out that together with Alexei, their distant relative Larion Surzhansky arrives at the Turbins’ apartment. A young man is upset after his wife cheated on him. Therefore, his mother decides to send him to his Kyiv relatives to rest. Lariosik (as everyone calls him) quickly fell in love with all family members. He turned out to be kind, albeit a little strange man. The only things that bring him genuine pleasure are canaries and reading books. Larion himself was a rather clumsy person. Already on the first day of his stay in Kyiv, he managed to break the service and cause a minor injury to Nikolka. However, his sincerity won over his relatives, and they were not against him living here as long as he wanted.
After everyone learned about Alexei’s injury, it was decided to call a doctor home. He carefully examined and treated the wound. However, the wound that Trubin received was complicated by one detail - along with the bullet, pieces of his overcoat penetrated into the shoulder, which could provoke the man’s illness. A few hours later, Alexey’s temperature rose sharply. The doctor gave him a morphine injection, after which the man felt relief and fell asleep.
The family decides not to tell anyone about the wounded Turbine and tells the neighbors that the man, as the head of the family in Moscow, contracted typhus. After some time, it turns out that Alexei actually contracted this terrible disease. He gets worse and cannot get out of bed.
Meanwhile, Nikolka, following the orders of the late Nai-Tours, tries to destroy any evidence that soldiers live in the house. It reliably hides shoulder straps, weapons and documents. Suddenly neighbor Vasily knocks on the door. He is in a semi-fainting state and tells what happened to him a few hours ago. While having dinner with his wife, strangers burst into his room. They handed over some piece of paper with a seal and claimed that they had the right to search the apartment. A few minutes later they found a cache of valuables hidden for a rainy day. Threatening the owners of the house with pistols, uninvited guests They took away everything they could find. Before leaving, they demanded that Vasily sign a document of voluntary transfer of valuables.
Nikolka and Myshlaevsky go and inspect Lisovich’s apartment. They tell the man not to file a complaint with the authorities and to be glad that he is alive. Nikolka later realizes that the weapon the robbers came with belonged to him. He discovers that the box with his shoulder straps and documents, which was hanging outside the window, has disappeared.
If we read Bulgakov’s “The White Guard” briefly, we learn that Nikolka is gathering strength to go to Nai-Tours’ relatives and inform them of his death. He arrives at the specified address and meets the colonel's sister Irina. The corporal volunteers to help a woman find her brother's body. They find Nai-Tours and arrange a funeral, for which Irina is very grateful to Nikolka. Meanwhile, Alexei is getting worse. Several doctors arrive at the house. After a long examination, they all come to the conclusion that the man will not recover. In despair, Elena goes to her room, where behind a closed door she begins to pray. After her mother died and her husband left, the girl does not want to lose her older brother. After a few days, Alexei feels much better.
Further in the novel “The White Guard,” a brief summary tells that after the stormy January 1919, in February there was news that Petliura’s troops were leaving the city. During this time, Alexey practically recovered and could already move around the apartment, albeit relying on a cane. He comes to visit Julia, wanting to thank his savior. Turbin brings the woman a gift - a precious bracelet that once belonged to his late mother. On the way back, he meets Nikolka, who was returning from his sister Nai-Turs.
Despite the fact that the post office was working intermittently at that time, Turbin received a letter from Warsaw. In it, Elena's friend talks about Thalberg getting married again. She is very surprised because she has not heard about the couple’s divorce. Elena cannot hold back her tears and does not want to believe in her husband’s betrayal. Meanwhile, having driven out the Petliurists, the Bolsheviks entered the city.
The novel “The White Guard” on the Top books website
White Guard
"red guard"- novel. First published (incomplete): Russia, M., 1924, No. 4; 1925, No. 5. In full: Bulgakov M. Days of the Turbins (White Guard). Paris: Concorde, vol. 1 - 1927, vol. 2 - 1929. Volume 2 in 1929 as “The End of the White Guard” and also published in Riga in “A Book for Everyone”.
B.G. is a largely autobiographical novel based on the writer’s personal impressions of Kyiv (in the novel - the City) at the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. The Turbin family is to a large extent the Bulgakov family. Turbine - maiden name Bulgakov's maternal grandmother, Anfisa Ivanovna, in marriage - Pokrovskaya.
B. g. was started in 1922, after the death of the writer’s mother, V. M. Bulgakova, on February 1, 1922 (in the novel, the death of the mother of Alexei, Nikolka and Elena Turbins is attributed to May 1918 - the time of her marriage to a long-time friend, doctor Ivan Pavlovich Voskresensky. The manuscript of the novel has not survived. As Bulgakov told his friend P. S. Popov in the mid-20s, B. was conceived and written in 1922-1924.
According to the testimony of the typist I. S. Raaben, who retyped the novel, B. G. was originally conceived as a trilogy, and in the third part, the action of which covered the entire 1919, Myshlaevsky found himself in the Red Army. It is characteristic that an excerpt from the early edition of B. G. “On the night of the 3rd” in December 1922 was published in the Berlin newspaper “Nakanune” with the subtitle “From the novel “The Scarlet Mach”. As possible names of the novels of the proposed trilogy in the memoirs of contemporaries the “Midnight Cross” and “White Cross” appeared.
The prototype for Lieutenant Shervinsky was another friend of Bulgakov’s youth, Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky, an amateur singer (this quality passed on to the character), who served in the troops of Hetman Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945), but not as an adjutant. Then he emigrated. It is interesting that in B.G. and the play “Days of the Turbins” Shervinsky’s name is Leonid Yuryevich, and in more early story“On the night of the 3rd” the corresponding character is called Yuri Leonidovich.
In the same story, Elena Talberg (Turbina) is called Varvara Afanasyevna, like Bulgakov’s sister, who served as the prototype for Elena. Captain Talberg, her husband, was largely based on Varvara Afanasyevna Bulgakova’s husband, Leonid Sergeevich Karum (1888-1968), a German by birth, a career officer who served first Skoropadsky and then the Bolsheviks, for whom he taught at a rifle school.
In the version of the finale of B.G., in the magazine “Russia”, which was brought to proofreading, but was never published due to the closure of this printing organ, Shervinsky acquired the features not only of an opera demon, but also of L. S. Karum: “I have the honor “,” he said, clicking his heels, “the commander of the rifle school is Comrade Shervinsky.”
He took a huge leaf star from his pocket and pinned it on his chest on the left side. The mists of sleep were creeping around him, his face from the club was bright and doll-like.
“This is a lie,” Elena cried in her sleep. - You should be hanged.
“Would you like,” the nightmare answered. - Take a risk, madam.
He whistled impudently and split into two. The left sleeve was covered with a diamond, and a second star, a golden one, glowed in the diamond. Rays splashed from her, and with right side a pale uhlan epaulette was born on the shoulder...
- Condottiere! Condottiere! - Elena shouted.
“Excuse me,” answered the two-colored nightmare, “there are only two, I have two in total, but I have only one neck, and that one is not the official one, but my own.” We will live.
“And death will come, we will die...” Nikolka sang and went out.
He had a guitar in his hands, but there was blood all over his neck, and on his forehead there was a yellow aureole with icons. Elena instantly realized that he would die, and sobbed bitterly and woke up screaming in the night."
Dedicated
Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya
Part I
Fine snow began to fall and suddenly fell in flakes. The wind howled; there was a snowstorm. In an instant, the dark sky mixed with the snowy sea. Everything has disappeared.
“Well, master,” the coachman shouted, “there’s trouble: a snowstorm!”
"Captain's daughter"
And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds...
1
The year after the birth of Christ, 1918, was a great and terrible year, the second since the beginning of the revolution. It was full of sun in summer and snow in winter, and two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd star - evening Venus and red, trembling Mars.
But the days, both in peaceful and bloody years, fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how a white, shaggy December arrived in the bitter cold. Oh, our Christmas tree grandfather, sparkling with snow and happiness! Mom, bright queen, where are you?
A year after daughter Elena got married to captain Sergei Ivanovich Talberg, and in the week when the eldest son, Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, after difficult campaigns, service and troubles, returned to Ukraine in the City, to his native nest, a white coffin with his mother’s body They demolished the steep Alekseevsky descent to Podol, to the small church of St. Nicholas the Good, which is on Vzvoz.
When the mother's funeral was held, it was May, cherry trees and acacias tightly covered the lancet windows. Father Alexander, stumbling from sadness and embarrassment, shone and sparkled by the golden lights, and the deacon, purple in face and neck, all forged and gold to the very toes of his boots, creaking on the welt, gloomily rumbled the words of church farewell to the mother leaving her children.
Alexei, Elena, Talberg, and Anyuta, who grew up in Turbina’s house, and Nikolka, stunned by death, with a cowlick hanging over his right eyebrow, stood at the feet of the old brown Saint Nicholas. Nikolka’s blue eyes, set on the sides of a long bird’s nose, looked confused, murdered. From time to time he led them to the iconostasis, to the arch of the altar, drowning in twilight, where the sad and mysterious old god ascended and blinked. Why such a grudge? Injustice? Why was it necessary to take away my mother when everyone moved in, when relief came?
God, flying away into the black, cracked sky, did not give an answer, and Nikolka himself did not yet know that everything that happens is always as it should be, and only for the better.
They performed the funeral service, went out onto the echoing slabs of the porch and escorted the mother through the entire huge city to the cemetery, where the father had long been lying under a black marble cross. And they buried mom. Eh... eh...
* * *
Many years before his death, in house number 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk, the tiled stove in the dining room warmed and raised little Elena, Alexey the elder and very tiny Nikolka. As I often read “The Carpenter of Saardam” near the glowing tiled square, the clock played the gavotte, and always at the end of December there was the smell of pine needles, and multi-colored paraffin burned on the green branches.
In response, the bronze ones, with gavotte, which stand in the bedroom of the mother, and now Elenka, beat the black wall towers in the dining room. My father bought them a long time ago, when women wore funny sleeves with bubbles at the shoulders. Such sleeves disappeared, time flashed like a spark, the father-professor died, everyone grew up, but the clock remained the same and chimed like a tower. Everyone is so used to them that if they somehow miraculously disappeared from the wall, it would be sad, as if one’s own voice had died and nothing could fill the empty space. But the clock, fortunately, is completely immortal, the “Carpenter of Saardam” is immortal, and the Dutch tile, like a wise rock, is life-giving and hot in the most difficult times.
Here is this tile, and the furniture of old red velvet, and beds with shiny knobs, worn carpets, variegated and crimson, with a falcon on the hand of Alexei Mikhailovich, with Louis XIV basking on the shore of a silk lake in the Garden of Eden, Turkish carpets with wonderful curls in the oriental the field that little Nikolka imagined in the delirium of scarlet fever, a bronze lamp under a lampshade, the best cabinets in the world with books that smelled of mysterious ancient chocolate, with Natasha Rostova, the Captain’s Daughter, gilded cups, silver, portraits, curtains - all seven dusty and full rooms who raised the young Turbins, the mother left all this to the children in the most difficult time and, already out of breath and weakening, clinging to the crying Elena’s hand, said:
- Together... live.
But how to live? How to live?
Alexey Vasilyevich Turbin, the eldest, is a young doctor - twenty-eight years old. Elena is twenty-four. Her husband, Captain Talberg, is thirty-one, and Nikolka is seventeen and a half. Their lives were suddenly interrupted at dawn. Revenge from the north has long begun, and it sweeps and sweeps, and does not stop, and the further it goes, the worse. The elder Turbin returned to his hometown after the first blow that shook the mountains above the Dnieper. Well, I think it will stop, the life that is written about in chocolate books will begin, but not only does it not begin, but it becomes more and more terrible all around. In the north the blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the disturbed womb of the earth muffles and grumbles dully. The eighteenth year is flying to the end and day by day it looks more menacing and bristly.
The walls will fall, the alarmed falcon will fly away from the white mitten, the fire in the bronze lamp will go out, and the Captain's Daughter will be burned in the oven. The mother said to the children:
- Live.
And they will have to suffer and die.
Once, at dusk, shortly after his mother’s funeral, Alexey Turbin, coming to his father Alexander, said:
– Yes, we are sad, Father Alexander. It’s hard to forget your mother, and it’s still such a difficult time. The main thing is that I just returned, I thought we’d improve our lives, and now...
He fell silent and, sitting at the table in the twilight, thought and looked into the distance. The branches in the churchyard also covered the priest's house. It seemed that right now, behind the wall of a cramped office crammed with books, a mysterious tangled forest of spring was beginning. The city was making a dull noise in the evening, and it smelled of lilacs.
“What will you do, what will you do,” the priest muttered embarrassedly. (He was always embarrassed if he had to talk to people.) - God's will.
- Maybe this will all end someday? Will it be better next? – Turbin asked unknown to whom.
The priest stirred in his chair.
“It’s a hard, hard time, what can I say,” he muttered, “but you shouldn’t be discouraged...
Then he suddenly placed his white hand, extending it from the dark sleeve of his duckweed, on a stack of books and opened the top one, where it was covered with an embroidered colored bookmark.
“Despondency must not be allowed,” he said, embarrassed, but somehow very convincingly. – A great sin is despondency... Although it seems to me that there will be more trials. “Oh, yes, great trials,” he spoke more and more confidently. – Lately, you know, I’ve been sitting on books, my specialty, of course, is mostly theological...
He lifted the book so that the last light from the window fell on the page and read:
– “The third angel poured out his cup into the rivers and springs of water; and there was blood."
2
So, it was a white, furry December. He was quickly approaching half. The glow of Christmas could already be felt on the snowy streets. The eighteenth year will soon end.
Above the two-story house No. 13, an amazing building (the Turbins’ apartment was on the second floor, and the small, sloping, cozy courtyard was on the first), in the garden, which was molded under a steep mountain, all the branches on the trees became palmate and drooping. The mountain was swept away, the sheds in the yard were covered, and there was a giant sugar loaf. The house was covered with the cap of a white general, and on the lower floor (on the street - the first, in the courtyard under the Turbins' veranda - the basement) the engineer and coward, bourgeois and unsympathetic, Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, lit up with faint yellow lights, and on the top - the Turbino windows lit up strongly and cheerfully .
At dusk, Alexey and Nikolka went to the barn to get firewood.
- Eh, eh, but there’s too little firewood. They pulled it out again today, look.
A blue cone shot out from Nikolka’s electric flashlight, and in it it is clear that the paneling from the wall was clearly torn off and hastily nailed on the outside.
- I wish I could shoot you, the devils! By God. You know what: let's sit on guard this night? I know - these are the shoemakers from number eleven. And what scoundrels! They have more firewood than we do.
- Come on... Let's go. Take it.
The rusty castle began to sing, a layer fell on the brothers, and wood was dragged along. By nine o'clock in the evening the tiles of Saardam could not be touched.
The wonderful stove on its dazzling surface bore the following historical notes and drawings, made at different times in the eighteenth year by Nikolka’s hand in ink and full of the deepest meaning and significance:
If they tell you that the allies are rushing to our rescue, don’t believe it. The allies are bastards.
He sympathizes with the Bolsheviks.
Drawing: Momus' face.
Ulan Leonid Yurievich.
Rumors are menacing, terrible,
The red gangs are coming!
Drawing with paints: a head with a drooping mustache, wearing a hat with a blue tail.
By the hands of Elena and tender and old Turbino childhood friends - Myshlaevsky, Karas, Shervinsky - written in paints, ink, ink, and cherry juice:
Elena Vasilna loves us very much.
To whom - on, and to whom - not.
Helen, I took a ticket to Aida.
Mezzanine No. 8, right side.
1918, May 12th day, I fell in love.
You are fat and ugly.
After such words I will shoot myself.
(A very similar Browning is drawn.)
Long live Russia!
Long live autocracy!
June. Barcarolle.
No wonder all of Russia remembers
About Borodin Day.
In block letters, in Nikolka’s hand:
I still order you not to write foreign things on the stove under the threat of shooting any comrade with deprivation of your rights. Commissioner of the Podolsk region. Ladies', men's and women's tailor Abram Pruzhiner.
The painted tiles glow with heat, the black clock runs as it did thirty years ago: a tonk-tank. The elder Turbin, shaved, fair-haired, aged and gloomy since October 25, 1917, in a jacket with huge pockets, blue leggings and soft new shoes, in his favorite pose - in a chair with legs. At his feet on a bench is Nikolka with a cowlick, her legs stretched out almost to the sideboard - the dining room is small. Feet in boots with buckles. Nikolka’s friend, guitar, gently and dully: friction... Vaguely friction... because for now, you see, nothing is really known yet. It’s alarming in the City, foggy, bad...
On Nikolka’s shoulders are non-commissioned officer’s shoulder straps with white stripes, and on her left sleeve is an angular tricolor chevron. (The first squad, infantry, its third section. The fourth day is being formed, in view of the beginning events.)
But, despite all these events, the dining room is, essentially speaking, wonderful. It’s hot, cozy, the cream curtains are drawn. And the heat warms the brothers, gives rise to languor.
The elder throws down the book and reaches out.
- Come on, play “Shooting”...
Rub-ta-there... Rub-ta-there...
Shaped boots,
Tonne caps,
Then the cadet engineers are coming!
The elder begins to sing along. The eyes are gloomy, but there is a fire in them, a heat in the veins. But quietly, gentlemen, quietly, quietly.
Hello, summer residents,
Hello, summer residents...
The guitar is marching, the company is pouring from the strings, the engineers are coming - ah, ah! Nikolka’s eyes remember:
School. Peeled Alexander columns, cannons. The cadets crawl on their bellies from window to window and shoot back. Machine guns in the windows.
A cloud of soldiers besieged the school, well, a real cloud. What can you do. General Bogoroditsky got scared and surrendered, surrendering with the cadets. Pa-a-zor...
Hello, summer residents,
Hello, summer residents,
We started filming a long time ago.
Nikolka’s eyes become misty.
Columns of heat over the red Ukrainian fields. The powdered cadet companies are walking in the dust. It was, it was all and now it’s gone. A shame. Nonsense.
Elena parted the curtain, and her reddish head appeared in the black gap. She sent a soft look to her brothers, but at the clock it was very, very alarming. This is understandable. Where, in fact, is Thalberg? My sister is worried.
To hide it, she wanted to sing along with her brothers, but suddenly she stopped and raised her finger.
- Wait. Do you hear?
The company broke off its step on all seven strings: whoa-oh! All three listened and were convinced - guns. It’s hard, far away and deaf. Here it is again: boo... Nikolka put down the guitar and quickly stood up, followed by Alexey, groaning.
The living room/reception area is completely dark. Nikolka bumped into a chair. In the windows there is a real opera “Christmas Night” - snow and lights. They tremble and flicker. Nikolka clung to the window. The heat and the school disappeared from the eyes, and the most intense hearing disappeared from the eyes. Where? He shrugged his non-commissioned officer shoulders.
- The devil knows. The impression is that it’s as if they’re shooting near Svyatoshin. It's strange, it can't be that close.
Alexey is in the darkness, and Elena is closer to the window, and you can see that her eyes are black and frightened. What does it mean that Thalberg is still missing? The elder senses her excitement and therefore does not say a word, even though he really wants to tell him. In Svyatoshin. There can be no doubt about this. They are shooting, 12 versts from the city, no further. What is this thing?
Nikolka took the latch, pressed the glass with his other hand, as if he wanted to squeeze it out and get out, and flattened his nose.
- I want to go there. Find out what's the matter...
- Well, yes, you were missing there...
Elena says in alarm. This is misfortune. The husband was supposed to return at the latest, you hear - at the latest, today at three o’clock in the afternoon, and now it’s already ten.
They returned to the dining room in silence. The guitar is gloomily silent. Nikolka drags a samovar from the kitchen, and it sings ominously and spits. On the table there are cups with delicate flowers on the outside and golden inside, special, in the form of figured columns. Under my mother, Anna Vladimirovna, this was a holiday service for the family, but now the children use it every day. The tablecloth, despite the guns and all this languor, anxiety and nonsense, is white and starchy. This is from Elena, who cannot do otherwise, this is from Anyuta, who grew up in the Turbins’ house. The floors are shiny, and in December, now, on the table, in a matte column vase, there are blue hydrangeas and two gloomy and sultry roses, affirming the beauty and strength of life, despite the fact that on the approaches to the City there is an insidious enemy who, perhaps, can break snowy, beautiful City and trample the fragments of peace with your heels. Flowers. The flowers are an offering from Elena’s faithful admirer, guard lieutenant Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky, a friend of the saleswoman in the famous candy store “Marquise”, a friend of the saleswoman in the cozy flower shop “Nice Flora”. Under the shade of hydrangeas there is a plate with blue patterns, several slices of sausage, butter in a transparent butter dish, a saw-frage in a bread bowl and white oblong bread. It would be great to have a snack and drink some tea, if not for all these gloomy circumstances... Eh... eh...
A motley rooster rides on a teapot, and three disfigured Turbino faces are reflected in the shiny side of the samovar, and Nikolkina’s cheeks are like Momus’s.
There is melancholy in Elena’s eyes, and the strands, covered with a reddish fire, droop sadly.
Talberg got stuck somewhere with his hetman's money train and ruined the evening. The devil knows, has something happened to him?... The brothers languidly chew their sandwiches. In front of Elena is a cooling cup and “Mr. from San Francisco.” Blurred eyes, not seeing, look at the words: “...darkness, ocean, blizzard.”
Elena doesn't read.
Nikolka finally can’t stand it anymore:
- I would like to know why they are shooting so close? After all, it can’t be...
He interrupted himself and became distorted while moving in the samovar. Pause. The needle creeps past the tenth minute and - tonk-tank - goes to a quarter past ten.
“They shoot because the Germans are scoundrels,” the elder suddenly mutters.
Elena looks up at her watch and asks:
– Will they really, really leave us to our fate? – Her voice is sad.
The brothers, as if on command, turn their heads and begin to lie.
“Nothing is known,” Nikolka says and takes a bite of a slice.
- That's what I said, um... presumably. Gossip.
“No, not rumors,” Elena answers stubbornly, “it’s not a rumor, but true; Today I saw Shcheglova, and she said that two German regiments had been returned from near Borodyanka.
- Nonsense.
“Think for yourself,” the elder begins, “is it conceivable for the Germans to let this scoundrel close to the city?” Think about it, huh? I personally absolutely cannot imagine how they will get along with him for even one minute. Complete absurdity. The Germans and Petliura. They themselves call him nothing more than a bandit. Funny.
- Oh, what are you saying? I know Germans now. I myself have already seen several with red bows. And a drunk non-commissioned officer with some woman. And the woman is drunk.
- Well, you never know? There may even be isolated cases of decomposition in the German army.
- So, in your opinion, Petliura won’t come in?
- Hm... In my opinion, this cannot be.
- Apsolman. Please pour me another cup of tea. Do not worry. Keep calm, as they say.
- But God, where is Sergei? I'm sure their train was attacked and...
- And what? Well, what are you inventing in vain? After all, this line is completely free.
- Why isn’t he there?
- Oh my God. You know what the ride is like. We stood at each station for probably four hours.
- Revolutionary riding. You drive for an hour and stand for two.
Elena, sighing heavily, looked at her watch, paused, then spoke again:
- Lord, Lord! If the Germans had not done this meanness, everything would have been fine. Two of their regiments are enough to crush this Petliura of yours like a fly. No, I see that the Germans are playing some kind of vile double game. And why are there no vaunted allies? Ooh, scoundrels. They promised, they promised...
The samovar, which had been silent until then, suddenly began to sing, and coals covered with gray ash fell onto the tray. The brothers involuntarily looked at the stove. The answer is here. Please:
The allies are bastards.
The hand stopped at the quarter, the clock wheezed solidly and struck - once, and immediately the clock was answered by a clear, thin ringing from the ceiling in the hallway.
“Thank God, here’s Sergei,” the elder said joyfully.
“This is Talberg,” Nikolka confirmed and ran to open the door.
Elena turned pink and stood up.
But it turned out to be not Thalberg at all. Three doors thundered, and Nikolka’s surprised voice sounded muffled on the stairs. A voice in response. Following the voices, forged boots and a butt began to waddle down the stairs. The door to the hallway let in the cold, and in front of Alexei and Elena found themselves a tall, broad-shouldered figure in a gray overcoat down to the toes and in protective shoulder straps with three lieutenant stars in pencil. The cap was covered with frost, and a heavy rifle with a brown bayonet occupied the entire front.
“Hello,” the figure sang in a hoarse tenor and grabbed the head with numb fingers.
Nikolka helped the figure untangle the ends, the hood came off, behind the hood was a pancake of an officer’s cap with a darkened cockade, and the head of Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky appeared above the huge shoulders. This head was very beautiful, strange and sad and attractive beauty of an ancient, real breed and degeneration. Beauty is in different colored, bold eyes, in long eyelashes. The nose is hooked, the lips are proud, the forehead is white and clean, without any special features. But one corner of the mouth is lowered sadly, and the chin is cut off obliquely, as if the sculptor, sculpting a noble face, had a wild fantasy of biting off a layer of clay and leaving the manly face with a small and irregular feminine chin.
- Where are you from?
- Where?
“Be careful,” Myshlaevsky answered weakly, “don’t break it.” There's a bottle of vodka.
Nikolka carefully hung up his heavy overcoat, from the pocket of which the neck of a piece of newspaper was peeking out. Then he hung the heavy Mauser in a wooden holster, swinging the rack with deer antlers. Then only Myshlaevsky turned to Elena, kissed her hand and said:
- From under the Red Tavern. Let me spend the night, Lena. I won't make it home.
- Oh, my God, of course.
Myshlaevsky suddenly groaned and tried to blow on his fingers, but his lips did not obey. The white eyebrows and the frost-grayed velvet of the trimmed mustache began to melt, and the face became wet. Turbin Sr. unbuttoned his jacket and walked along the seam, pulling out his dirty shirt.
- Well, of course... That's enough. Swarming.
“That’s it,” the frightened Elena began to fuss and forgot Talberg for a minute. - Nikolka, there’s firewood in the kitchen. Run and light the speaker. Oh, what a shame that I let Anyuta go. Alexey, take off his jacket, quickly.
In the dining room near the tiles, Myshlaevsky, giving vent to groans, collapsed on a chair. Elena ran in and rattled her keys. Turbin and Nikolka, kneeling down, pulled off Myshlaevsky’s narrow, smart boots with buckles on the calves.
- Easier... Oh, easier...
The disgusting, spotted foot wraps unraveled. Underneath are purple silk socks. French Nikolka immediately sent him to the cold veranda to let the lice die. Myshlaevsky, in a dirty cambric shirt, crossed with black suspenders, in blue breeches with stripes, became thin and black, sick and pitiful. Blue palms splashed and groped across the tiles.
Rumor... menacing...
Nast... gang...Fell in love... may...
- What kind of scoundrels are these! - Turbin shouted. - Couldn’t they really give you felt boots and short fur coats?
“Va-alenki,” Myshlaevsky mimicked, crying, “valenki...
Unbearable pain tore into my arms and legs in the warmth. Hearing that Elena’s steps had died down in the kitchen, Myshlaevsky shouted furiously and tearfully:
Hoarse and writhing, he fell down and, poking his fingers at his socks, groaned:
- Take it off, take it off, take it off...
There was a nasty smell of denatured alcohol, a mountain of snow was melting in the basin, and a glass of vodka made Lieutenant Myshlaevsky instantly drunk to the point of blurry vision.
- Is it really necessary to cut it off? Lord... - He rocked bitterly in his chair.
- Well, what are you talking about, wait a minute. Not bad. I froze the big one. So... it will go away. And this one will go away.
Nikolka squatted down and began to pull on clean black socks, and Myshlaevsky’s wooden, stiff arms reached into the sleeves of his shaggy bathrobe. Scarlet spots bloomed on his cheeks, and, huddled in clean linen and a dressing gown, the frozen Lieutenant Myshlaevsky softened and came to life. Menacing swear words bounced around the room like hail on a windowsill. Squinting his eyes to his nose, he cursed with obscene words the headquarters in the first-class carriages, some Colonel Shchetkin, the frost, Petlyura and the Germans, and the blizzard, and ended up accusing the hetman of all Ukraine himself of the most vile vulgar words.
