'I don't care - even if he is dead', she cried, hoarse with misery. 'What does it matter now?
I'll drink to him.'
'He can never, never be forgiven for his abdication at Dno Station.
Never.
But we have learned by bitter experience now, and we know that only the monarchy can save Russia.
Therefore if the Tsar is dead - long live the Tsar!' shouted Alexei and raised his glass.
'Hurrah!
Hur-rah!
Hur-ra-ah!' The threefold cry roared across the dining-room.
Downstairs Vasilisa leaped up in a cold sweat.
Suddenly weakened, he gave a piercing shriek and woke up his wife Wanda.
'My God, oh my God . . ' Wanda mumbled, clutching his nightshirt.
'What the hell's going on?
At three o'clock in the morning!' the weeping Vasilisa shrieked at the black ceiling. 'This time I really am going to lodge a complaint!'
Wanda groaned.
Suddenly they both went rigid.
Quite clearly, seeping down through the ceiling, came a thick, greasy wave of sound, dominated by a powerful baritone resonant as a bell:
'. . . God Save His Majesty, Tsar of all Russia . . .'
Vasilisa's heart stopped and even his feet broke out into a cold sweat.
Feeling as if his tongue had turned to felt, he burbled:
'No ... it can't be . . . they're insane .. .
They'll get us into such trouble that we'll never come out of it alive.
The old anthem is illegal now!
Christ, what are they doing?
They can be heard out on the street, for God's sake!'
Wanda had already slumped back like a stone and had fallen asleep again, but Vasilisa could not bring himself to lie down until the last chord had faded away upstairs amid a confused babble of shouts.
'Russia acknowledges only one Orthodox faith and one Tsar!' shouted Myshlaevsky, swaying.
'Right!'
'Week ago ... at the theater . . . went to see Paul the First', Myshlaevsky mumbled thickly, 'and when the actor said those words I couldn't keep quiet and I shouted out
"Right!" - and d'you know what? Everyone clapped.
All except some swine in the upper circle who yelled
"Idiot!" '
'Damned Yids', growled Karas, now almost equally drunk.
A thickening haze enveloped them all . . .
Tonk-tank . . . tonk-tank . . . they had passed the point when there was any longer any sense in drinking more vodka, even wine; the only remaining stage was stupor or nausea.
In the narrow little lavatory, where the lamp jerked and danced from the ceiling as though bewitched, everything went blurred and spun round and round.
Pale and miserable, Myshlaevsky retched violently.
Alexei Turbin, drunk himself, looking terrible with a twitching nerve on his cheek, his hair plastered damply over his forehead, supported Myshlaevsky.
'Ah-aakh
Finally Myshlaevsky leaned back from the bowl with a groan, tried painfully to focus his eyes and clung to Alexei's arms like a limp sack.
'Ni-kolka!' Someone's voice boomed out through the fog and black spots, and it took Alexei several seconds to realise that the voice was his own. 'Nikolka!' he repeated.
A white lavatory wall swung open and turned green.
'God, how sickening, how disgusting.
I swear I'll never mix vodka and wine again.
Nikol . . .'
'Ah-ah', Myshlaevsky groaned hoarsely and sat down on the floor.
A black crack widened and through it appeared Nikolka's head and chevron.
'Nikol. . . help me to get him up.
There, pick him up like this, under his arm.'
'Poor fellow', muttered Nikolka shaking his head sympathetically and straining himself to pick up his friend.