The rising began in Penza, where the Soviets sent five hundred Red Guards against fourteen thousand Czechs.
The Reds attacked the railway station, and were destroyed almost to a man.
The Czechs carried away from Penza the expedition's press for printing paper money, defeated the Reds in a great battle in the neighbourhood of Bezenchuk and Lipyagi, and occupied Samara.
Thus a new front was opened in the Civil War, rapidly covering vast territories in the Volga district, the Urals, and Siberia.
Dr. Dmitri Stepanovich Bulavin stood leaning out of the open window, listening to the hollow rumblings of artillery firing.
The street was deserted.
The pale sun beat mercilessly down upon the walls of the low houses, the grimy windows of empty shops, the useless signs over their doors, and the asphalted street with the layer of lime dust.
To the right, where the doctor's gaze was directed, protruded the wooden obelisk, covered with faded rags which had been put up over the monument to Alexander II. Next to it was a cannon, and a group of townsfolk were listlessly digging up cobblestones.
Among them were the priest Slovokhotov, Notary Mishin, the pride and glory of the Samara intellectuals, Romanov, the proprietor of a food shop, Strambov, ex-member of the Zemstvo, and the landowner Kuroyedov, a grey-haired Apollo who had been a great gentleman in his day.
They had all been Dmitri Stepanovich's patients at one time or another, and his partners in whist.... A Red Army man, his rifle resting between his knees, sat on a low post, smoking.
The guns were booming from the other bank of the Samarka.
Windowpanes tinkled.
At each of these sounds the doctor made a sour grimace, and snorted into his grey moustache.
His pulse was 105.
This meant the old social impulse was still alive in him.
But it was dangerous as yet to allow his feelings to show themselves in any other way.
Just across the road, exactly opposite, on the boards covering the broken plate-glass window of Leder's jewellery shop, was an eyesore—the glaring order of the Rev. Com. threatening the shooting of counterrevolutionary elements.
The strange timorous figure of a man in a coconut-fibre hat with a peak back-and-front, and a tussore jacket of prewar cut, came into sight in the street.
He was creeping along, hugging the wall, continually looking back and leaping as if a gun had gone off in his ear.
His tow-coloured locks hung down to his shoulders, and his reddish beard seemed to have been glued on to his long, pallid face.
It was Govyadin, the statistician from the Zemstvo, the man who had once endeavoured vainly to awake in Dasha the "beautiful beast."
He was on his way to Dmitri Stepanovich, and his errand was apparently of sufficient importance to force him to overcome his fear of the empty street and the moaning guns.
Catching sight of the doctor at the window, Govyadin waved frantically, a signal to be interpreted:
"For God's sake don't look! I am being shadowed."
Looking back, he crept along the wall past the proclamation of the Revolutionary Committee, and suddenly plunged across the road and disappeared in the gateway.
A minute later he was knocking at the doctor's back door.
"For God's sake shut the window, we are being watched," whispered Govyadin hoarsely, as he entered the dining room.
"Pull down the blinds. Or perhaps better not! Dmitri Stepanovich, I've been sent to you...."
"At your service!" said the doctor ironically, seating himself at the table, covered with a soiled and scorched oilcloth.
"Sit down, and tell me what you have to say."
Govyadin seized a chair, threw himself upon it, drew one foot up beneath him and whispered, hoarse and spluttering, right in the doctor's ear:
"Dmitri Stepanovich! A vote has just been passed at a secret meeting of the Committee of the Constituent Assembly, proposing to offer you the post of Under-Secretary for Public Health...."
"Under-Secretary?" interrupted the doctor, drawing down the corners of his mouth so that his chin was surrounded by wrinkles.
"Well, well!
For what republic?"
"Not for a republic, for the government.... We are taking the initiative for the struggle into our own hands. We are creating a front.... We are getting a press for printing paper money. With the Czechoslovakian corps at our head, we are moving upon Moscow.... We are forming a Constituent Assembly. We ... we, ourselves, understand.;.. There was a violent quarrel today.
The S.R.'s and the Mensheviks demanded all posts.
But we of the Zemstvo insisted on you, we carried your candidature through.... I'm filled with pride.
Do you accept it?"
At that very moment there was such a stupendous roar from the other bank of the Samarka, that the glasses on the table rang, and Govyadin, clutching at his heart, leaped to his feet.
"That's the Czechs!" he exclaimed.
There was another explosion, and it seemed as if a machine gun was hammering away somewhere just next door.
Govyadin, white as a sheet, sat down again with his foot under him.
"And that was the beastly Reds....
Their machine guns are on the grain elevator.... But there can be no doubt about it, the Czechs will take the town.... They will, they will...."
"I may as well accept," said Dmitri Stepanovich, in a deep voice.
"Have some tea—it's cold, I'm afraid."
Govyadin declined tea and went on whispering in a sort of trance. *
"At the head of the government are patriots. The most upright people, noble individuals.... Volsky—you know him—he's a barrister from Tver, a splendid man.... Captain Fortunatov ... Klimushkin—he's one of ours, from Samara—also a noble individual.... All S.R.'s, all implacable fighters.... They are actually expecting Chernov, but that's a dead secret.... He is fighting the Bolsheviks in the north.... In military circles everywhere, close blocs with us are being formed.... Colonel Galkin is representing the military.... They say he's a second Danton.... In a word, everything is in readiness.
We are only waiting for the storming to begin.... Everything seems to show that the Czechs have appointed it for tonight.... I represent the militia.