Why was this?
Simply because he had thought the man was like Ivan Telegin?
Nonsense! Telegin was in Petrograd, wasn't he?
Commissar Sokolovsky and Telegin, his head bandaged, climbed the steps to the porch of the two-story brick building of the village council which stood, as was customary, opposite the church on an unpaved square, where, formerly fairs had been held.
Now the stalls were boarded up, the windows broken, the palings stolen.
The church had been converted into a military hospital, and there were scraps of soldiers' clothing fluttering on a string in the churchyard.
The entrance hall of the village council, which was the headquarters of Commander in Chief Sorokin, was littered with cigarette ends and scraps of paper. A Red Army man, his rifle between his knees, was seated on a bentwood chair at the foot of the staircase, humming a steppe melody, his eyes closed.
He had high cheekbones, and, sure sign that he was a military "tough," a lock of hair showed from under the red-banded cap pushed on to the back of his head.
"We want to see Comrade Sorokin," said Sokolovsky in rapid tones. "Where is he?"
The soldier opened his eyes, dull from drowsy boredom.
He had an absurd, squashy nose.
He inspected Sokolovsky from head to toe—his face, his clothes, his boots—and then did the same by Telegin.
The Commissar pushed impatiently up to him.
"Answer me, please, Comrade. We want to see the Commander in Chief on the most urgent business."
"It is not allowed to speak to the sentry on duty," said the youth with the forelock.
"Oh, my God!
They always have swine like that— formalists—at headquarters!" cried Sokolovsky.
"I insist on you giving me an answer, Comrade: is Comrade Sorokin in?"
"Can't say."
"Where's the Chief of Staff, then?
Is he in the office?"
"All right—he's in the office."
Sokolovsky, pulling Ivan Ilyich by the sleeve, was for hurling himself upon the staircase.
But the sentry, without getting off his chair, made a kind of lurching movement, and extricated his rifle from between his knees.
"Where are you going?"
"Where? To the Chief of Staff!"
"Have you got a pass?"
The Commissar fairly foamed at the mouth as he explained to the sentry the business for which he had dashed up on a trolley.
The sentry, his gaze travelling from the machine gun at the door to the decrees, orders and notices with which the walls of the hall were plastered, heard him out in silence.
Then he shook his head.
"An educated man like you," he said disgustedly. "You ought to know better!
If you have a pass, you can go, if you haven't, I shall shoot you down ruthlessly."
There was nothing for it but to submit, although passes were issued somewhere on the other side of the square, and they were sure to be told, when they did get there, that the commandant had gone for the day.
Sokolovsky felt beaten. But just then a short figure in a shirt slit right down to the navel, rushed from the square into the doorway, with a thunderous trampling of boots.
"Mitka—they're issuing soap...."
The sentry seemed to be swept from his chair as by a gust of wind.
He leaped out into the porch.
Sokolovsky and Telegin ascended unmolested to the second floor, and at last, directed to right and to left by pretty creatures in silk blouses, but rather puffy round the eyes, found the office of the Chief of Staff.
There, extended full-length on a tattered sofa, an elegantly-attired military man lay minutely inspecting his fingernails.
He received them with excessive politeness, and a carefully "proletarian" approach, constantly employing the word "Comrade," which, on his lips, sounded exactly like "Count Sokolovsky," "Prince Telegin." When he had satisfied himself as to the business they had come on, he left them, with profuse apologies, his high tan boots, laced to the knee, creaking.
A whispering began in the next room, a door banged in the distance, and all was quiet.
Sokolovsky looked at Telegin with burning eyes.
"Can you make anything of it all?
Where are we?
Is this White headquarters?"
He raised his bony shoulders, and his astonishment seemed to hold him frozen in that position.
More whispering in the next room.
Then the door was flung open and the Chief of Staff entered, a frowning, middle-aged, thickset individual, the hair retreating from above his great forehead; he wore a coarse soldier's tunic, held in over his huge stomach by a Caucasian belt.
Casting a rapid keen glance at Telegin, and nodding to Sokolovsky, he sat down at the desk, laying his hairy hands in front of him with a characteristic gesture.
His forehead was moist, like that of one who has just eaten and drunk his fill.