The White Guard (37 page)

   'Come in.'

   Nikolka went in, followed by Irina Nai-Turs. Nikolka took off his cap, noticing the gleaming black blinds drawn down over the windows and a beam of painfully bright light falling on to a desk, behind which was a black beard, a crumpled, exhausted face, and a hooked nose. Then he glanced nervously around the walls at the line of shiny, glass-fronted cabinets containing rows of monstrous things in bottles, brown and yellow, like hideous Chinese faces. Further away stood a tall man, priest-like in a leather apron and black rubber gloves, who was bending over a long table. There like guns, glittering with polished brass and reflecting mirrors in the light of a low green-shaded lamp, stood a row of microscopes.

   'What do you want?' asked the professor.

   From his weary face and beard Nikolka realised that this was the professor, and the priest-like figure presumably his assistant.

   He stared at the patch of bright light that streamed from the shiny, strangely contorted lamp, and at the other things: at the nicotine-stained fingers and at the repulsive object lying in front of the professor - a human neck and lower jaw stripped down to the veins and tendons, stuck with dozens of gleaming surgical needles and forceps.

   'Are you relatives?' asked the professor. He had a dull, husky voice which went with his exhausted face and his beard. He looked up and frowned at Irina Nai-Turs, at her fur coat and boots.

   'I am his sister', she said, trying not to look at the thing lying on the professor's desk.

   'There, you see how difficult it is, Sergei Nikolaevich. And this isn't the first case . . . Yes, the body may still be here. Have they all been transferred to the general mortuary?'

   'It's possible', said the tall man, throwing aside an instrument.

   'Fyodor!' shouted the professor.

   
#

   'No, wait here. You mustn't go in there . . . I'll go . . .' said Nikolka timidly.

   'I shouldn't go, miss, if I were you', the janitor agreed. 'Look,' he said, 'you can wait here.'                                                           

   Nikolka took the man aside, gave him some more money and asked him to find a clean stool for the lady to sit on. Reeking of cheap home-grown tobacco, the janitor produced a stool from a corner where there stood a green-shaded standard lamp and several skeletons.

   'Not a medical man, are you, sir? Medical gentlemen soon get used to it.' He opened the big door and clicked the light switch. A globe-shaped lamp shone brightly under the glass ceiling. The room exuded a heavy stench. White zinc tables stood in rows. They were empty and somewhere water was dripping noisily into a basin. The stone floor gave a hollow echo under their feet. Suffering horribly from the smell, which must have been hanging there for at least a hundred years, Nikolka walked along trying not to think. The janitor led him through the door at the far end and into a dark corridor, where the janitor lit a small lamp and walked on a little further. The janitor slid back a heavy bolt, opened an iron door and unlocked another door. Nikolka broke out in a cold sweat. In the corner of the vast black room stood several huge metal drums filled to overflowing with lumps and scraps of human flesh, strips of skin, fingers and pieces of broken bone. Nikolka turned away, gulping down his saliva, and the janitor said to him:

   'Take a sniff, sir.'

   Nikolka closed his eyes and greedily inhaled a lungful of unbearably strong sal ammoniac from a bottle. Almost as though he were dreaming, screwing up his eyes, Nikolka heard Fyodor strike a match and smelled the delicious odour of a pipeful of home-grown shag. Fyodor fumbled for a long time with the lock of the elevator door, opened it and then he and Nikolka were standing on the platform. Fyodor pressed the button and the elevator creaked slowly downward. From below came an icy cold draft of air. The elevator stopped. They passed into the huge storeroom. Muzzily, Nikolka saw a sight that he had never seen before. Piled one upon another like logs of wood lay naked,

   emaciated human bodies. Despite the sal ammoniac, the stench of decay was intolerable. Rows of legs, some rigid, some slack, protruded in layers. Women's heads lay with tangled and matted hair, their breasts slack, battered and bruised.

   'Right, now I'll turn them over and you look', said the janitor bending down. He grasped the corpse of a woman by the leg and the greasy body slithered to the floor with a thump. To Nikolka she seemed sticky and repulsive, yet at the same time horribly beautiful, like a witch. Her eyes were open and stared straight at Fyodor. With difficulty Nikolka tore his fascinated gaze from the scar which encircled her waist like a red ribbon, and looked away. His eyes clouded and his head began to spin at the thought that they might have to turn over every layer of that pile of sticky bodies.

   'That's enough. Stop', he said weakly to Fyodor and thrust the bottle of smelling salts into his pocket. 'There he is. I've found him. On top. There, there.'

   Moving carefully in order not to slip on the floor, Fyodor grasped Nai-Turs by the head and pulled hard. A flat-chested, broad-hipped woman was lying face down across Nai's stomach. There was a cheap little comb in the hair at the back of her neck, glittering dully, like a fragment of glass. Without stopping what he was doing Fyodor deftly pulled it out, dropped it into the pocket of his apron and gripped Nai-Turs under the armpits. As it was pulled out of the pile his head lolled back, his sharp, unshaven chin pointed upwards and one arm slipped from the janitor's grasp.

   Fyodor did not toss Nai aside as he had tossed the woman, but carefully holding him under the armpits and bending the dangling body, turned him so that Nai's legs swung round on the floor until the body directly faced Nikolka. He said:

   'Take a good look and see if it's him or not. We don't want any mistakes . . .'

   Nikolka looked straight into Nai's glassy, wide-open eyes which stared back at him senselessly. His left cheek was already tinged green with barely detectable decay and several large, dark patches

   of what was probably blood were congealed on his chest and stomach.

   'That's him', said Nikolka.

   Still gripping him under the armpits Fyodor dragged Nai to the elevator and dropped him at Nikolka's feet. The dead man's arm was flung out wide and once again his chin pointed upwards. Fyodor entered the elevator, pushed the button and the cage moved upward.

   
#

   That night in the chapel everything was done as Nikolka had wanted it, and his conscience was quite calm, though sad and austere. The light shone in the bare, gloomy anatomical theater attached to the chapel. The lid was placed on another coffin standing in the corner, containing an unknown man, so that this ugly unpleasant stranger should not disturb Nai's rest. Lying in his coffin, Nai himself had taken on a distinctly more cheerful look.

   Nai, washed by two well bribed and talkative janitors; Nai, clean, in a tunic without badges; Nai, with a wreath on his forehead and three candles at the head of the bier; and, best of all, Nai wearing the bright ribbon of the St George's Cross which Nikolka himself had arranged under the shirt on the cold, clammy chest and looped through one buttonhole. Her head shaking, Nai's old mother turned aside from the three candles to Nikolka and said to him:

   'My son. Thank you, my dear.'

   At this Nikolka burst into tears and went out of the chapel into the snow. All around, above the courtyard of the anatomical theater, was the night, the snow, criss-crossed stars and the white Milky Way.

   Alexei Turbin began dying on the morning of December 22nd. The day was a dull white and overcast, and full of the advent of Christmas. This was particularly noticeable in the shine on the parquet floor in the drawing-room, polished by the joint efforts of Anyuta, Nikolka and Lariosik, who had spent the whole of the day before silently rubbing back and forth. There was an equally Christmassy look about the silver holders of the ikon lamps, polished by Anyuta's hands. And finally there was a smell of pine-needles and a bright display of greenery in the corner by the piano, where the music of
Faust
was propped up, as though forgotten for ever, above the open keys.

   At about mid-day Elena came out of Alexei's room with slightly unsteady steps and passed silently through the dining-room where Karas, Myshlaevsky and Lariosik were sitting in complete silence. Not one of them moved as she passed by, afraid to look into her face. Elena closed the door of her room behind her and the heavy portiere fell back motionless into place.

   Myshlaevsky shifted in his seat.

   'Well,' he said in a hoarse whisper, 'the mortar regiment commander did his best, but he didn't manage to arrange for Alyosha to get away . . .'

   Karas and Lariosik had nothing to add to this. Lariosik blinked, mauve shadows spreading across his cheeks.

   'Ah, hell', said Myshlaevsky. He stood up and tiptoed, swaying, to the door, then stopped irresolutely, turned round and winked toward Elena's door. 'Look, fellows, keep an eye on her ... or she may . . .'

   After a moment's hesitation he went out into the library, where his footsteps died away. A little later there came the sound of his voice and strange grieving noises from Nikolka's room.

   'Poor Nikolka is crying', Lariosik whispered in a despairing voice, then sighed, tiptoed to the door of Elena's room and bent over to the keyhole, but he could not see anything. He looked round helplessly at Karas and began making silent, questioning gestures. Karas walked over to the door, looked embarrassed, then plucked up courage and tapped on the door several times with his fingernail and said softly:

   'Elena Vasilievna, Elena . . .'

   'Don't worry about me', came Elena's muffled voice through the door. 'Don't come in.'

   The tense expression on the two men's faces relaxed, and they both went back to their places, in chairs beside the Dutch stove, and sat down in silence.

   In Alexei Turbin's room there was nothing more for his friends and kin to do. The three men in the room made it crowded enough. One was the bear-like man with gold-rimmed spectacles; the other was young, clean-shaven and with a bearing more like a guards officer than a doctor, whilst the third was the gray-haired professor. His skill had revealed to him and to the Turbin family the joyless news when he had first called on December 16th. He had realised that Alexei had typhus and had said so at the time. Immediately the bullet wound near the left armpit seemed to become of secondary importance. An hour ago he had come out to Elena in the drawing-room and there, in answer to her urgent question, a question spoken not only with her tongue but with her dry eyes, her quivering lip and her disarranged hair, he had said that there was little hope, and had added, looking Elena straight in the eyes, with the gaze of a man of very great experience and therefore of very great compassion - 'very little'. Everybody, including Elena, knew that this meant that there was no hope at all and, therefore, that Alexei was dying. After Elena had gone into her brother's room and had stood for a long time looking at his face, and from this she too understood perfectly that there really was no hope. Even without the skill and experience of that good, gray-haired old man it was obvious that Doctor Alexei Turbin was dying.

   He lay there, still giving off a feverish heat, but a fever that was already wavering and unstable, and which was on the point of declining. His face had already begun to take on an odd waxy tinge, his nose had changed and grown thinner, and in particular there was a suggestion of hopelessness about the bridge of his nose, which now seemed unnaturally prominent. Elena's legs turned cold and she felt overcome with a moment of dull despair in the reeking, camphor-laden air of the bedroom, but the feeling quickly passed.

   Something had settled in Alexei's chest like a stone and he whistled as he breathed, drawing in through bared teeth a sticky, thin stream of air that barely penetrated to his lungs. He had long ago lost consciousness and neither saw nor understood what was going on around him. Elena stood and looked. The professor took her by the arm and whispered:

   'Go now, Elena Vasilievna, we'll do all there is to do.'

   Elena obeyed and went out. But the professor did not do anything more.

   He took off his white coat, wiped his hands with some damp balls of cotton wool and looked again into Alexei's face. The bluish shadow around the folds of his mouth and nose was growing deeper.

   'Hopeless', the professor said very quietly into the ear of the clean-shaven man. 'Stay with him, please, Doctor Brodovich.'

   'Camphor?' asked Doctor Brodovich in a whisper.

   'Yes, yes.'

   'A full syringe?'

   'No.' The professor looked out of the window and thought a moment. 'No, just three grams at a time. And often.' He thought again, then added: 'Telephone me in case of a termination' - the professor whispered very cautiously so that even through the haze of delirium Alexei should not hear him, - 'I'll be at the hospital. Otherwise I'll come back here straight after my lecture.'

   # Year after year, for as long as the Turbins could remember, the

   ikon lamps had been lit at dusk on December 24th, and in the evening they had lit the warm, twinkling candles on the Christmas tree in the drawing-room. But now that insidious bullet-wound and the rattle of typhus had put everything out of joint, had hastened the lighting of the ikon lamp. As she closed her bedroom door behind her, Elena went over to her bedside table, took from it a box of matches, climbed up on a chair and lit the wick in the lamp hanging on chains in front of the old ikon in its heavy metal covering. When the flame burned up brightly the halo above the dark face of the Virgin changed to gold and her eyes shone with a look of welcome. The face, inclined to one side, looked at Elena. In the two square panes of the window was a silent, white December day, and the flickering tongue of flame helped to create a sense of the approaching festival. Elena got down from the chair, took the shawl from her shoulders and dropped onto her knees. She rolled back a corner of the carpet to reveal an open space of gleaming parquet and she silently bowed down until her forehead touched the floor.