The priest shifted in his armchair.
'Yes, say what you like, times are bad, very bad', he mumbled. 'But one mustn't lose heart . . .'
Then drawing it out of the black sleeve of his cassock he suddenly laid his white hand on a pile of books, and opened the topmost one at the place marked by a bright embroidered ribbon.
'We must never lose heart', he said in his embarrassed yet somehow profoundly convincing voice. 'Faintness of heart is a great sin . . .
Although I must say that I see great trials to come.
Yes, indeed, great trials', he said with growing certainty. 'I have been spending much of the time with my books lately, you know. All concerned with my subject of course, mostly books on theology . . .'
He raised the book so that the last rays of the sun fell on the open page and read aloud:
'And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.'
Two
White with hoar-frost, December sped towards its end.
The glitter of Christmas could already be felt in the snowbound streets.
The year 1918 would soon be over.
Number 13 was a curious building. On the street the Turbins' apartment was on the second floor, but so steep was the hill behind the house that their back door opened directly on to the sloping yard, where the house was brushed and overhung by the branches of the trees growing in the little garden that clung to the hillside.
The back-gardens filled up with snow, and the hill turned white until it became one gigantic sugar-loaf.
The house acquired a covering like a White general's winter fur cap; on the lower floor (on the street side it was the first floor, whilst at the back, under the Turbins' verandah, it was the basement) the disagreeable Vasily Lisovich-an engineer, a coward and a bourgeois - lit his flickering little yellow lamps, whilst upstairs the Turbins' windows shone brightly and cheerfully.
One evening Alexei and Nikolka went out into the yard for some firewood.
'Hm, damn little firewood left.
Look, they've been pinching it again.'
A cone of bluish light burst out from Nikolka's pocket flashlight, and they could see clearly where the planking of the woodshed had been wrenched away and clumsily pushed back into place from the outside.
'I'd shoot the swine if I caught them, by God I would.
Why don't we keep watch out here tonight?
I know it's that shoemaker's family from Number 11.
And they've got much more firewood than we have, damn them!'
'Oh, to hell with them . . .
Come on, let's go.'
The rusty lock creaked, a pile of logs tumbled down towards the two brothers and they lugged them away.
By nine that evening the tiles of Saardam were too hot to touch.
The gleaming surface of that remarkable stove bore a number of historic inscriptions and drawings, painted on at various times during the past year by Nikolka and full of the deepest significance:
If people tell you the Allies are coming to help us out of this mess, don't believe them.
The Allies are swine.
He's a pro-Bolshevik!
A drawing of a head of Momus, written underneath it:
Trooper Leonid Yurievich.
News is bad and rumours humming - People say the Reds are coming!
A painting of a face with long drooping moustaches, a fur hat with a blue tassel.
Underneath:
Down with Petlyura!
Written by Elena and the Turbins' beloved childhood friends - Myshlaevsky, Karas and Shervinsky - in paint, ink and cherry-juice were the following gems:
Elena loves us all,
the thin, the fat and the tall.
Lena dear, have booked tickets for Aida Box No.
8, right.
On the twelfth day of May 1918 I fell in love.
You are fat and ugly.
After a remark like that I shall shoot myself.
(followed by an extremely realistic drawing of an automatic)
Long live Russia!
Long live the Monarchy!
June.
Barcarolle.