The people, however, in particular the settled inhabitants of the City who had already experienced the first shocks of civil war, not only failed to see the humor of the situation but were unable to discern any sense in it at all.
The election had taken place with bewildering speed. Before most people knew it had happened it was all over -and God bless the Hetman.
What did it matter anyway, just so long as there was meat and bread in the market and no shooting in the streets, and so long - above all - as the Bolsheviks were kept out and the common people were kept from looting.
Well, more or less all of this was put into effect under the Hetman - indeed to a considerable degree.
At least the Moscow and Petersburg refugees and the majority of people in the City itself, even though they laughed at the Hetman's curious state and like Captain Talberg called it a ludicrous operetta, sincerely blessed the Hetman, and said to themselves
'God grant that it lasts for ever'.
But whether it could last for ever, no one could say - not even the Hetman himself.
For the fact was that although life in the City went on with apparent normality - it had a police force, a civil service, even an army and newspapers with various names - not a single person in it knew what was going on around and about the City, in the real Ukraine, a country of tens of millions of people, bigger than France.
They not only knew nothing about the distant parts of the country, but they were even, ridiculous though it seems, in utter ignorance of what was happening in the villages scattered about twenty or thirty miles away from the City itself.
They neither knew nor cared about the real Ukraine and they hated it with all their heart and soul.
And whenever there came vague rumors of events from that mysterious place called 'the country', rumors that the Germans were robbing the peasants, punishing them mercilessly and mowing them down by machine-gun fire, not only was not a single indignant voice raised in defense of the Ukrainian peasants but, under silken lampshades in drawing-rooms, they would bare their teeth in a wolfish grin and mutter:
'Serve them right!
And a bit more of that sort of treatment wouldn't do 'em any harm either.
I'd give it 'em even harder.
That'll teach them to have a revolution - didn't want their own masters, so now they can have a taste of another!'
'You're so mistaken . . .'
'What on earth d'you mean, Alexei?
They're nothing more than a bunch of animals.
The Germans'll show 'em . . .'
The Germans were everywhere.
At least, they were all over the Ukraine; but away to the north and east beyond the furthest line of the blue-brown forest were the Bolsheviks.
Only these two forces counted.
Five
Then suddenly, out of the blue, a third force appeared on the vast chessboard.
A poor chess-player, having fenced himself off from his opponent with a line of pawns (an appropriate image, as Germans in their steel helmets look very like pawns) will surround his toy king with his stronger pieces - his officers.
But suddenly the opponent's queen finds a sly way in from the side, advances to the back line and starts to knock out pawns and knights from the rear and checks the terrified king. In the queen's wake comes a fast-moving bishop, the knights zig-zag into action and in no time the wretched player is doomed, his wooden king checkmated.
All of this happened very quickly, but not suddenly, and not before the appearance of certain omens.
One day in May, when the City awoke looking like a pearl set in turquoise and the sun rose up to shed its light on the Hetman's kingdom; when the citizens were already going about their little affairs like ants; and sleepy shop-assistants had begun opening the shutters, a terrible and ominous sound boomed out over the City.
No one had ever heard a noise of quite that pitch before - it was unlike either gunfire or thunder - but so powerful that many windows flew open of their own accord and every pane rattled.
Then the sound was repeated, boomed its way around the Upper City, rolled down in waves towards Podol, the Lower City, crossed the beautiful deep-blue Dnieper and vanished in the direction of distant Moscow.
It was followed instantly by shocked and bloodstained people running howling and screaming down from Pechyorsk, the Upper City.
And the sound was heard a third time, this time so violently that windows began shattering in the houses of Pechyorsk and the ground shook underfoot.
Many people saw women running in nothing but their underclothes and shrieking in terrible voices.
The source of the sound was soon discovered.
It had come from Bare Mountain outside the City right above the Dnieper, where vast quantities of ammunition and gunpowder were stored.
There had been an explosion on Bare Mountain.
For five days afterwards they lived in terror, expecting poison gas to pour down from Bare Mountain.
But the explosions ceased, no gas came, the bloodstained people disappeared and the City regained its peaceful aspect in all of its districts, with the exception of a small part of Pechyorsk where several houses had collapsed.
Needless to say the German command set up an intensive investigation, and needless to say the City learned nothing of the cause of the explosions.
Various rumors circulated.
'It was done by French spies.'
'No, the explosion was produced by Bolshevik spies.'
In the end people simply forgot about the explosions.
The second omen occurred in summer, when the City was swathed in rich, dusty green foliage, thunder cracked and rumbled and the German lieutenants consumed oceans of soda-water.
The second omen was truly appalling.
One day on Nikolaevsky Street, in broad daylight, just beside the cab-stand, no less a person than the commander-in-chief of the German forces in the Ukraine, that proud and inviolable military pro-consul of Kaiser Wilhelm, Field Marshal Eichhorn was shot dead!
His assassin was, of course, a workman and, of course, a socialist.
Twenty-four hours after the death of the Field Marshal the Germans had hanged not only the assassin but even the cab driver who had driven him to the scene of the incident.
This did nothing, it is true, towards resurrecting the late distinguished Field Marshal, but it did cause a number of intelligent people to have some startling thoughts about the event.
That evening, for instance, gasping by an open window and unbuttoning his tussore shirt, Vasilisa had sat over a cup of lemon tea and said to Alexei Turbin in a mysterious whisper: