"In this case interference would be useless," thought Dmitri Stepanovich nervously, and moved away, looking over his shoulder.... The cries were dying down. In the place where the wounded commissar had stood was a medley of sticks and umbrellas.... Now all was quiet, the only sound was of blows....
The retired general glanced down from the porch; his cap had now slipped over his nose, and he was motioning, faintly in the air above his head, like an orchestra conductor.
Dmitri Stepanovich was overtaken by Notary Mishin— puffy-faced, in a dingy jacket, buttoned up to the neck, one of the glasses of his pince-nez missing.
"They killed him. They beat him with their umbrellas. It's an awful thing, this mob law! Oh, doctor, they say there are terrible goings-on on the bank of the river now...."
"In that case, we'll go there. Did you know I was in the government?"
"Yes, and I was delighted to hear it."
Dmitri Stepanovich stopped a detachment of six officers in the name of the government, and demanded their escort to the river, where undesirable incidents were occurring.
There were now Czech patrols at all street corners.
Elegant ladies were adorning them with flowers, and giving them extempore lessons in the Russian language, laughing heartily the while in the endeavour to make the women, the town, and the country itself, pleasing to the foreigners, and to take away the bitter taste left by the hospitality extended to the Czechs by Russia during the years of their internment. Dmitri Stepanovich arrived too late: the volunteers had already finished off the Reds fleeing from the suburb to the slushy banks of the Samarka.
Those who had managed to cross by the wooden bridge, or by swimming the river in slanting lines, clambered on to barges and steamers and were moving upstream along the Volga.
There were a few corpses in the lazy ripples at the water's edge.
Hundreds of bodies had already been carried by the current into the Volga.
Govyadin was seated on a rotting, overturned boat, a tricolour band round his sleeve.
His tow-coloured Jocks were damp with sweat.
His pale eyes, the pupils mere pin points, were fixed on the sunny surface of the river.
Dmitri Stepanovich approached him with the severe words:
"Assistant Chief of Militia, I have been informed that undesirable incidents have taken place here.... The government wishes...."
The doctor did not finish his speech, for his glance was arrested by the sight of an oak staff in Govyadin's hands, on which clotted blood and tufts of hair were visible.
In a voice so muffled as to be almost inaudible, Govyadin muttered:
"There goes another...."
He then rose from the boat with a languid movement and went to the water's edge to get a closer look at the cropped head which was slanting down the river with the current.
Five or six youths with stakes in their hands went up to Govyadin.
Dmitri Stepanovich turned to his officers, who were standing and drinking Bavarian kvass from a cart driven up to the spot by a remarkably resourceful vendor, in a conspicuously clean apron.
The doctor harangued the officers as to the need for putting an end to unnecessary cruelty.
He pointed to Govyadin and the floating head.
A long-legged cavalry captain, the one in the snow-white tunic, twitching his froth-covered moustache, raised his rifle and fired.
The head disappeared beneath the water.
Dmitri Stepanovich, with the consciousness of having done all that was in his power, went back to town.
He must not be late for the first sitting of the government.
He raised clouds of dust with his boots as he went panting up the hill.
His pulse could not have been less than a hundred and twenty.
His head was filled with dazzling visions —the march on Moscow, the mellow pealing of Moscow's forty times forty churches... who knows?—perhaps even-the presidential chair.... For revolution is an unaccountable thing—once it started rolling backwards all those S.R.'s and S.D.'s would be sprawling under its chariot wheels in no time, with their stomachs ripped open.... No thank you, he had had enough of dabbling in Left politics.
* VII *
Ekaterina Dmitrevna sat beside the aspidistra in the low drawing room, writing a letter to her sister Dasha, her handkerchief, wet with tears, crumpled into a ball in her hand.
The rain was beating furiously against the flawed and bubbly glass of the windowpanes, and outside, the acacias were tossing in the wind.
The same wind which was chasing the clouds above the Sea of Azov rustled the peeling wallpaper inside the room.
"Dasha, Dasha," wrote Katya. "I can never tell you how desperately unhappy I am.
Vadim is dead.
Colonel Tetkin, whose house I am living in, told me about it yesterday.
I couldn't believe it, and asked him who told him.
He gave me the address of Valerian Onoli, one of Kornilov's men, just back from the front.
I went to his hotel in the evening.
He must have been drunk, he pulled me into his room and offered me wine.... It was awful.... You simply can't imagine what people are like here.... 'Is my husband dead?' I asked him. Onoli was his brother officer, you know, his comrade, they fought side by side.... He saw him every day.... He jeered at me. 'He's dead, girlie, don't you worry! I saw the flies eating him up with my own eyes....' Then he said: 'Roshchin was under suspicion with us, he was lucky to die in battle....' He didn't tell me when it was, how it happened, or the place where Vadim was killed.... I implored him, I cried.... He shouted at me: 'I can't remember where everybody was killed!'
And then he offered himself to me instead.... Oh, Dasha!
What horrid people!
I rushed away from the hotel, out of my mind with grief....
"I can't believe there's no more Vadim, Dasha.... But it must be true—that man had no reason to lie to me.
The Colonel says it must be true, too.... I only got one letter from Vadim all the time he was at the front, a very short one, not a bit like him. It came the second week after Easter. It had no beginning.
Here it is, word for word: O am sending you money. I can't come and see you. I remember your words when we parted.... I don't know if a man can stop being a murderer.... I don't know how I came to be a murderer. I try not to think, but I suppose I shall have to think, and do something about it. When all this passes, if it ever does, we can meet again....'
"And that's all.