"Have some vodka!
Our last drink together," he said with a hoarse guffaw, quickly pouring out two glasses, and returning to his pacing up and down.
"It's all up with you, old man.... And my advice to you is to make yourself scarce as fast as you can.... I shan't stick up for you.... Tomorrow I'll appoint a commission to go through your papers, see?
You'll probably be shot...."
Belyakov raised a grey, haggard countenance, passed his hand across his brow, and let it drop.
"You're a contemptible little wretch, that's what you are," said Belyakov.
"And to think I put my whole heart into working for you.... You skunk.... So that's the man I was training for the role of Napoleon.... A louse!..."
Sorokin took up a wineglass, his teeth clattering against the rim as he drank.
Then, his hands in the pockets of his Circassian tunic, he resumed his pacing.
"There will be no inspection," he said, stopping abruptly.
"Get the hell out of here!
And if I don't shoot you now, mind you, it's on account of your past services. I hope you appreciate that!"
His nostrils quivered as he inhaled the air, his lips went blue, and he was trembling all over, trying to contain his fury.
Belyakov knew Sorokin's temper only too well: without taking his eyes off him, he backed towards the door, slamming it quickly after him.... He went out by the back entrance, and left Pyatigorsk that same night.
Hour followed hour, while Sorokin sat up all through the night, drinking glass after glass of vodka, and thinking.
His erstwhile friend had poisoned him with a single drop of contempt, and the poison had caused him agonizing pain, intolerable suffering.
He covered his face with his hands: Belyakov was right, a thousand times right. The Napoleonic scope of June had dwindled into sittings of the Revolutionary (Military Council, furtive glances at the comrades from Moscow.... Belyakov had not spoken for himself alone. That was how they spoke of him in the army, in the Party.
And Denikin!
He remembered an item in an Ekaterinodar White newspaper, and the memory stung him afresh—it was an interview with Denikin.
"I expected to see a lion, and the lion turned out to be nothing hut a cowardly cur in a lion's skin.... Not that I was really surprised. Sorokin was, and remains just an ignorant Cossack cornet."
Oh, Denikin!
Wait.... The hour will come.... You will rue this!
Sorokin squeezed his hands together and gnashed his teeth.
If only he could rush to the front, carrying with him the whole army, rout, pursue and ride down the officers, set the villages blazing from end to end!
Rush into Ekaterinodar ... then to have Denikin brought before him—to have him brought straight from his bed, in his underclothes....
"Was it you, Anton Ivanovich, who practised your wit in short newspaper articles upon a certain ignorant cornet?
Well, this is he, honoured Sir, whom you see before you.... Now then, shall we cut strips of skin out of your hack, or will fifteen hundred strokes of the ramrod do?"
Sorokin groaned, trying to shake off the delirious dreams which haunted him. But reality was dark, vague, full of anxiety and humiliation. The time had come for him to make a decision.
His old friend and former Chief of Staff, had today rendered him a last service, Sorokin walked up to the window—a light breeze brought with it the dry pungency of the wormwood-covered steppe.
A dark crimson strip, ushering in the dawn, but dull as yet, stood out against the sombre sky.
And the giant purple bulk of Mashuk was still there.... Sorokin gave a wry smile: thanks, Belyakov.... Now, then—to hell with hesitations and vacillations.... That night Sorokin decided to stake his all.
The Revolutionary Military Council had at last, after long hesitation, voted for an offensive to be started.
The supply base was moved to Svyatoi Krest, the army was to concentrate at Nevinnomysskaya, from there to move on Stavropol and Astrakhan, and join the Tenth Army, which was fighting near Tsaritsyn.
This was the very plan which Dmitri Shelest had brought with him from Tsaritsyn.
The taking of Stavropol was entrusted to the Taman troops.
Everything was in motion—the supply base moved northeast, the front lines northwest.
Political instructors and agitators shouted themselves hoarse in their endeavours to raise the morale of the units with fiery slogans.
Commanders left with their columns for the front.
Pyatigorsk was deserted.
Only the government stayed behind—the Central Executive Committee of the Black Sea Republic, and Sorokin with his bodyguard and staff.
In the rush nobody had realized that the government was, in fact, at the mercy of the Supreme Commander.
One evening, as Sorokin, accompanied by an orderly, riding home at a brisk trot, had just turned the corner of the municipal park where the road slopes upward, his horse almost knocked down a burly, round-shouldered individual wearing a leather jacket.
The pedestrian staggered, clapping his hand to his hip, from which hung a leather holster.
Sorokin knit his brows furiously as he recognized Gimza, who was supposed to be at the front. Gimza took his hand from the holster.
There was a strange look in his eyes, half-covered as they were by the beetling brows.... There had been a similar look in Belyakov's eyes at their last interview. And suddenly a strip of teeth made a white line across Gimza’s shaven, battle-blackened face.
Sorokin's heart sank—this one was laughing at him, too!
He thrust his knees into the horse's sides so violently that the animal, snorting and plunging, galloped over the ringing cobblestones and bore his rider up the hill, right into the middle of a pungent-smelling flock of sheep, bleating and shaking their tails as they wended their homeward way.
It was the evening of the twelfth of October.
Sorokin summoned the chief of his bodyguard, who whispered to him, glancing nervously at the window, that Gimza had just come to Pyatigorsk to suggest that the Central Executive Committee recall two companies from the front for their protection....
"One doesn't have to be very clever, Comrade Sorokin, to understand who these measures are taken against...."