Feldman had supplied General Kartuzov with tallow and vaselinefor greasing the garrison's weapons.
Oh God, work a miracle!
'Sergeant, sir, that's the wrong document . . .
May I . . .'
'No, it's the right one', said Sergeant Galanba, grinning diabolically. 'Don't worry, we're literate, we can read it for ourselves.'
Oh God, work a miracle.
Eleven thousand roubles . . .
Take it all.
Only let me live!
Let me!
Shma-isroel!
There was no miracle.
At least Feldman was lucky and died an easy death.
Sergeant Galanba had no time to spare, so he simply swung his sabre and took off Feldman's head at one blow.
Nine
Having lost seven cossacks killed, nine wounded, and seven horses, Colonel Bolbotun had advanced a quarter of a mile from Pechorskaya Square, as far as Reznikovskaya Street, where he was halted again.
It was here that the retreating detachment of cadets acquired some reinforcements, which included an armored car.
Like a clumsy gray tortoise capped by a revolving turret it lumbered along Moskovskaya Street and with a noise like the rustling of dry leaves fired three rounds from its three-inch gun.
Bolbotun immediately galloped up to take charge, the horses were led off down a side street, his regiment deployed on foot and took cover after pulling back a short way towards Pechorskaya Square and began a desultory exchange of fire.
The armored tortoise blocked off Moskovskaya Street and fired an occasional shell, backed up by a thin rattle of rifle-fire from the intersection of Suvorovskaya Street.
There in the snow lay the troops which had fallen back from Pechorsk under Bolbotun's fire, along with their reinforcements, which had been called up like this:
'Rrrring . . .'
'First Detachment headquarters?'
'Yes.'
'Send two companies of officers to Pechorsk.'
'Right away . . .'
The squad that reached Pechorsk consisted of fourteen officers, four cadets, one student and one actor from the Studio Theater. *
One undermanned detachment, alas, was not enough.
Even when reinforced by an armored car, of which there should have been no less than four.
And it can be stated with certainty that if the other three armored cars had shown up, Colonel Bolbotun would have been forced to evacuate Pechorsk.
But they did not appear.
This happened because no less a person than the celebrated Lieutenant Mikhail Shpolyansky, who had been personally decorated with the St George's Cross by Alexander Kerensky in May 1917, was appointed to command one of the four excellent vehicles which comprised the Hetman's armored car troop.
Mikhail Shpolyansky was dark and clean-shaven, except for a pair of velvet sideburns, and he looked exactly like Eugene Onegin.
Shpolyansky made himself known throughout the City as soon as he arrived there from St Petersburg.
He made a reputation as an excellent reader of his own verse at the poetry club known as The Ashes, also as an excellent organiser of his fellow-poets and as chairman of the school of poetry known as The Magnetic Triolet.
Not only was Mikhail Shpolyansky an unrivalled orator and could drive any sort of vehicle, civilian or military, but he also kept a ballerina from the Opera Theater and another lady whose name Shpolyansky, like the perfect gentleman that he was, revealed to no one. He also had a great deal of money, which he disbursed in generous loans to the members of The Magnetic Triolet. He drank white wine, played chemin-de-fer, bought a picture called l'enetian Girl Bathing; at night-time he lived on the Kreshchatik, in the mornings he lived in the Cafe Bilbocquet, in the afternoon in his comfortable room in the Hotel Continental, in the evening at The Ashes, whilst he devoted the small hours to a scholarly work on 'The Intuitive in Gogol'.
The Hetman's City perished three hours earlier than it should have done because on the evening of December 2nd 1918, in The Ashes club, Mikhail Shpolyansky announced the following to Stepanov, Sheiyer, Slonykh and Cheremshin (the leading lights of The Magnetic Triolet):
'They're all swine - the Hetman, and Petlyura too.
But Petlyura's worse, because he's an anti-Semite as well.
But that's not the real trouble.
The fact is I'm bored, because it's so long since I threw any bombs.'
After dinner at The Ashes (paid for by Shpolyansky) all the members of The Magnetic Triolet plus a fifth man, slightly drunk and wearing a mohair overcoat, left with Shpolyansky, who was dressed in an expensive fur coat with a beaver collar, and a fur hat.
Shpolyansky knew a little about his fifth companion - firstly, that he was syphilitic; secondly, that he wrote atheistic poetry which Shpolyansky with his better literary connections arranged to have published in one of the Moscow literary magazines; and thirdly that the man, whose name was Rusakov, was the son of a librarian.
The man with syphilis was weeping all over his mohair coat under the electric street lighting on the Kreshchatik and saying, as he buried his face in the beaver-fur lapels of Shpolyansky's coat:
'Shpolyansky, you are the strongest man in this whole city, which is rotting away just as I am.
You're such a good fellow that one can even forgive you for looking so disgustingly like Eugene Onegin!
Listen Shpolyansky . . . it's positively indecent to look like Onegin.
Somehow you're too healthy . . .
But you lack that spark of ambition which could make you the really outstanding personality of our day . . .
Here am I rotting to death, and proud of it . . .