Croaking and writhing in pain he collapsed and pointing at his socks, groaned:
'Take them off, take them off . . .'
There was a sickening smell of methylated spirits as frozen extremities thawed out; from a single small wineglass of vodka Lieutenant Myshlaevsky became intoxicated in a moment, his eyes clouding.
'Oh Lord, don't say they'll have to be amputated . . .'he said bitterly, rocking back and forth in his chair.
'Nonsense, of course not.
You'll be all right . . .
Yes.
The big toe's frostbitten.
There . . .
The pain will go.'
Nikolka squatted down and began to pull on some clean black socks while Myshlaevsky's stiff, wooden hands inched into the sleeves of a towelling bathrobe.
Crimson patches began to appear on his cheeks and Lieutenant Myshlaevsky, grimacing in clean underwear and bathrobe, loosened up and came back to life.
A stream of foul abuse rattled around the room like hail on a window-sill.
Squinting with rage, he poured a stream of obscenities on the headquarters staff in their first-class railroad cars, on a certain Colonel Shchetkin, the cold, Petlyura, the Germans and the snowstorm and ended by heaping the most vulgar abuse on the Hetman of All the Ukraine himself.
Alexei and Nikolka watched the lieutenant's teeth chatter as he thawed out, making occasional sympathetic noises.
'The Hetman?
Mother-fucker!' Myshlaevsky snarled.
'Where were the Horse Guards, eh?
Back in the palace!
And we were sent out in what we stood up in . . .
Days on end in the snow and frost . . .
Christ!
I thought we were all done for . . .
Nothing but a row of officers strung out at intervals of two hundred yards - is that what you call a defensive line?
It was only by the grace of God that we weren't slaughtered like chickens!'
'Just a minute', Turbin interrupted, his head reeling under the flow of abuse. 'Who was with you at the Tavern?'
'Huh!' Myshlaevsky gestured angrily. 'You've no idea what it was like!
How many of us d'you think there were at the Tavern?
For-ty men.
Then that scoundrel Colonel Shchetkin drove up and said (here Myshlaevsky twisted his expression in an attempt to imitate the features of the detested Colonel Shchetkin and he began talking in a thin, grating lisp):
"Gentlemen, you are the City's last hope.
It is your duty to live up to the trust placed in you by the Mother of Russian Cities and if the enemy appears - attack, God is with us!
I shall send a detachment to relieve you after six hours.
But I beg you to conserve your ammunition . . ." (Myshlaevsky spoke in his ordinary voice again) - and then he and his aide vanished in their car.
Dark - it was like being up the devil's arsehole!
And the frost - needles all over your face.'
'But why were you there, for God's sake?
Surely Petlyura can't be at Red Tavern?'
'Christ knows.
By morning we were nearly out of our minds.
By midnight we were still there, waiting for the relief.
Not a sign of them. No relief.
For obvious reasons we couldn't light fires, the nearest village was a mile and a half away, the Tavern half a mile.
At night you start seeing things-the fields seem to be moving.
You think it's the enemy crawling up on you . . .
Well, I thought, what shall we do if they really do come?
Would I throw down my rifle, I wondered - would I shoot or not?
It was a temptation.
We stood there, howling like wolves.
When you shouted someone along the line would answer.