A crumpled pair of lieutenant's shoulder-straps glittered on a short, fur-collared greatcoat.
From two feet away Alexei was nauseated by a powerful reek of moonshine vodka and onion.
With his free hand the lieutenant was waving a rifle.
'Turn . . . turn around', said the red-faced drunk. 'Ta . . . take on a passenger.' For some reason the word 'passenger' struck the man as funny and he began to giggle.
'What does this mean?' Alexei repeated angrily. 'Can't you see who I am?
I'm reporting for duty.
Kindly let go of this cab!
Drive on!'
'No, don't drive on . . .' said red-face in a threatening voice. Only then, blinking and peering, did he recognise the Medical Corps badges on Alexei's shoulder straps. 'Ah, doctor, we can travel together ... let me get in . . .'
'We're not going the same way . . .
Drive on!'
'Now see here . . .'
'Drive on!'
The cabman, head hunched between his shoulders, was about to crack his whip and move off, but thought better of it. Turning round, he glared at the drunk with a mixture of anger and fear. However, red-face let go the reins of his own accord.
He had just noticed an empty cab, which was about to drive away but did not have time to do so before the drunken officer raised his rifle in Both hands and threatened the driver.
The terrified cabman froze to the spot and red-face staggered over to him, swaying and hiccuping.
'I knew I shouldn't have taken you on, even for five hundred', Alexei's driver muttered angrily, lashing the rump of his ancient nag. 'What's in it for me if all I get's a bullet in my back?'
Turbin sat glumly silent.
'The swine . . . it's louts like him who give the whole White cause a bad name', he thought furiously.
The crossroads by the opera house was alive with activity.
Right in the middle of the streetcar tracks stood a machine-gun, manned by two small, frozen cadets, one in a black civilian overcoat with ear-muffs, the other in a gray army greatcoat.
Passers-by, clustered in heaps along the sidewalk like flies, stared curiously at the machine-gun.
By the corner druggist, just in sight of the museum, Alexei paid off his cab.
'Make it a bit more, your honor', said the cab-driver, grimly insistent. 'If I'd known what it was going to be like!
Look what's going on here.'
'Shut up. That's all you're getting.'
'They've even dragged kids into it now ...' said a woman's voice.
Only then did Alexei notice the crowd of armed men around the museum, swaying and growing thicker.
Machine-guns could be vaguely seen on the sidewalk among the long-skirted greatcoats.
Just then came the furious drumming of a machine-gun from the Pechorsk direction.
'What the hell's going on?' Alexei wondered confusedly as he quickened his pace to cross the intersection toward the museum.
'Surely I'm not too late? . . .
What a disgrace. . . .
They might think I've run away . . .'
Officers, cadets, and a few soldiers were crowding and running excitedly around the gigantic portico of the museum and the broken gates at the side of the building which led on to the parade-ground in front of the Alexander I High School.
The enormous glass panes of the main doors shuddered constantly and the doors groaned under the pressure of the milling horde of armed men. Exct ed, unkempt cadets were crowding into the side door of the circular white museum building, whose pediment was embellished with the words: 'For the Edification of the Russian People'.
'Oh God!' exclaimed Alexei involuntarily. 'The regiment has already left.'
The mortars grinned silently at Alexei, standing idle and abandoned in the same place as they had been the day before.
'I don't understand . . . what does this mean?'
Without knowing why, Alexei ran across the parade-ground to the mortars.
They grew larger as he moved towards the line of grim, gaping muzzles.
As he reached the first mortar at the end of the row, Alexei stopped and froze: its breech mechanism was missing.
At a fast trot he cut back across the parade ground and jumped over the railings into the street.
Here the mob was even thicker, many voices were shouting at once, bayonets were bobbing up and down above the heads of the crowd.
'We must wait for orders from General Kartuzov!' shouted a piercing, excited voice.
A lieutenant crossed in front of Alexei, who noticed that he was carrying a saddle with dangling stirrups.
'I'm supposed to hand this over to the Polish Legion.'
'Where is the Polish Legion?'
'God only knows!'
'Everybody into the museum!