It was then, in the trenches, that he first came across Communists.
He was a member of the Nezhin Soviet, and of the Revolutionary Committee, and had taken part in the secret organization of the partisan movement.
His story moved Dasha profoundly.
The truth behind it was so convincing.
The other passengers felt this, too, and listened spellbound to the narrator.
The rest of the day, and the long night, were exhausting.
Dasha sat with her feet drawn back beneath the seat, her eyes closed, thinking till her head ached, thinking to the point of desperation.
There were two truths: one, the truth of the one-eyed man, of those soldiers, those snoring women, with their plain, weary faces; and the other the truth which Kulichok was always trumpeting.
But there couldn't be two truths.
One of them must be wrong, fatally wrong....
The train arrived in Moscow at noon.
An ancient izvozchik drove Dasha at a shambling trot along Myasnitskaya Street, now become grimy and shabby, the windows of its empty shops bespattered with mud.
Dasha, who remembered the city in the days when vast crowds had roamed the snow-covered streets with flags and song, congratulating one another on the bloodless revolution, was astounded at its deserted state.
On Lubyanskaya Square dust was eddying in the wind.
Two soldiers in unbelted tunics, their collars open at the neck, were wandering across the square.
A frail, long-faced man in a velvet jacket looked at Dasha and shouted something to her; he even ran after the droshky, but soon fell back, half-blinded by the dust.
The Hotel Metropole was scarred with shell holes, and here, too, dust was eddying; a bed of bright-coloured flowers, planted by an unknown hand for an unknown reason, in the middle of the refuse-strewn square, struck a note of incongruity.
In Tverskaya Street, where a few small shops were still open, things were livelier.
A huge wooden cube, draped with bunting, stood in front of the building of the Moscow Soviet, where the monument to Skobelev had been.
Dasha found something sinister in this.
The old cab driver pointed to it with the handle of his whip:
"They've pulled down the hero.
I've been driving about Moscow for years, and he always stood there.
But the present government doesn't like him, you see.
How is anyone to live?
One might as well lie down and die.
Hay two hundred rubles a pood!
All the gentry have run away, and there's no one left but comrades, and most of them walk.... Oh, the State, the State!"
He tugged at the reins.
"If only we had a king... any sort of a king!"
Just before getting to Strastnaya Square, on the left, idle young men and languid girls could be seen through the two plate-glass windows of the Cafe Bom, lolling on sofas, smoking, and sipping nondescript drinks.
A longhaired, clean-shaven man, with a pipe in his mouth, stood in the open doorway leaning his shoulder against the jamb.
The sight of Dasha seemed to astonish him, and he took his pipe out of his mouth. But Dasha drove past.
Here was the pink spire of the Strastnoi Monastery, and there was Pushkin on his pedestal opposite.
From beneath his elbow there still protruded the faded rag on the end of a stick, placed there during the era of stormy meetings.
Skinny children were playing on the granite plinth, and on a bench sat a lady wearing pince-nez, her hat an exact replica of the one Pushkin was holding behind his back.
Sparse clouds were floating over Tverskoi Boulevard.
A motor lorry, full of soldiers, thundered past.
Nodding towards it, the driver said:
"They're after plunder.
Do you know Vasili Vasilievich Ovsyannikov?
He was the biggest millionaire in Moscow.
They went to his house yesterday, like that, in motor lorries, and cleaned up everything.
Vasili Vasilievich only shook his head, and walked out—where to, nobody knows.
People have forgotten God, that's how the old folk look at it...."
At the end of the boulevard the ruins of the Gagarin mansion came into sight.
A solitary man in shirt sleeves was standing on the top of a wall, breaking off bricks with a pickaxe, and throwing them on the ground.
To the left, the vast bulk of the burnt-out mansion seemed to be staring at the pallid sky through the empty sockets of its windows.
All round were houses riddled with bullet holes.
Only eighteen months before, Dasha and Katya had been hurrying along this very pavement, lambswool shawls over their heads.