Violet ray. Ukraine 1918. The story of Paustovsky
Shout out loud "glory!" It is incomparably harder than "Hurray!" No matter how you scream, but you will not achieve the mighty peals. From afar it will always seem that the shout is not “glory”, but “ava”, “ava”, “ava”! In general, this word was inconvenient for parades and manifestations of popular enthusiasm. Especially when they were shown by elderly hulkies in smoke caps and wrinkled jupans pulled out of chests.
Therefore, when the next morning I heard from my room the exclamations “Ava, Ava,” I realized that the “chieftain of the Ukrainian army and the Haidamak cat” himself, Pan Petlyura, rode into Kiev on a white horse.
On the eve of the city were posted ads from the commandant. In them, with epic calmness and a complete lack of humor, it was reported that Petlyura would enter Kiev at the head of the government - the Directory - on a white horse, presented to him by the Zhmerinsk railroad men.
Why Zhmerinsky railroad gave Petlyura a horse, and not a hand car, or at least a shunting train, was not clear.
Petliura did not disappoint the expectations of Kiev maids, shopkeepers, governesses and shopkeepers. He really rode into the conquered city on a rather quiet white horse.
The horse was covered with a blue blanket, trimmed with a yellow border. On Petliura, however, was a protective padded zupan. The only decoration - the Zaporizhzhya saber curve, taken, obviously, from the museum - beat him in the thighs. Schriye Ukrainians looked with reverence at this Cossack "Shablyuka", at the pale, puffy Petlyura and at the Haydamak, which they galloped behind Petlyura on shaggy horses.
Haydamaky with long bluish-black forelock oseledetsy-on shaven heads (these bows hung from under the popes) reminded me of childhood and the Ukrainian theater. There, the same Haidamaks with bluish-eyed eyes otlivatski chipped gopak. "Hop, Kuma, don't zuryys, tudy-syudy turn around!"
Every nation has its own characteristics, its worthy features. But people who choke on saliva from tenderness to their people and devoid of a sense of proportion always bring these national traits to ridiculous proportions, to molasses, to disgust. Therefore, there are no worst enemies of his people than leaven patriots.
Petliura tried to revive the sugary Ukraine. But nothing came of it, of course.
Following Petlyura, the Directory went — the writer Vynnychenko was a neurasthenia, and behind him were some mossy and unknown ministers.
Thus began the short, frivolous power of the Directory in Kiev.
Kievans, prone, like all southern people, to irony, have made of the new "independent" government a target for an unheard of number of anecdotes. The people of Kiev especially cheered up the fact that in the first days of the Petliura power, the operatic Haidamaks walked along the Khreshchatyk with ladders, climbed on them, removed all the Russian signs and hung Ukrainian ones instead.
Petliura brought with him the so-called Galician language - quite ponderous and full of borrowings from neighboring languages. And a brilliant, really pearly, like the teeth of fervently young, sharp, singing, the national language of Ukraine retreated before a new visitor to the distant Shevchenko huts and to the quiet village levadas. There he lived "tishkom" all the difficult years, but retained his poetry and did not allow to break his back.
Under Petliura, everything seemed deliberate — both the Haidamaks, and the language, and all of his politics, and the savage chauvinists who had crawled out in huge numbers out of the dusty holes, and money — everything, right down to the anecdotal reports of the Directory to the people. But this will be ahead.
When meeting with the Haidamaks, everyone looked around frantically and asked themselves whether it was Haidamak or on purpose. With the tortured sounds of a new language, the same question involuntarily occurred to me - Ukrainian is a language or on purpose. And when you gave the change in the store, you looked with disbelief at the gray pieces of paper, where the dull patches of yellow and blue paint barely showed through, and you understood whether it was money or on purpose. Children like to play such greasy pieces of paper, imagining them with money.
There were so many fake money and so little real money that the population tacitly agreed not to make any difference between them. Counterfeit money went freely and on the same course as the real ones.
There was not a single printing house, where typesetters and lithographers would not let out, while having fun, fake Petliura bills - karbovanets and steps. The pitch was the smallest coin. He was worth a penny.
Many enterprising citizens made fake money at home with ink and cheap watercolors. And they did not even hide them when someone else entered the room.
Especially the rapid production of counterfeit money, and the moonshine from millet took place in the room near the lord Currant.
After this eloquent panny wedged me into the hetman's army, he was filled with a favor for me, which is what the executioner often has for his victim. He was exquisitely gracious and kept inviting me to him all the time.
I was interested in this last remnant of the small nobility, who lived to our (according to the words of Mr. Currantha himself) of the "stunning" era.
Once I went to his cramped room, laden with bottles of muddy "millet". The sour smelled of paint and that particular specific medicine — I now forgot its name — which was used at the time by a clap.
I found Mr. Curtend preparing Petlura stubs. They were depicted two volokoukie wilderness in embroidered shirts, with strong bare legs. These women for some reason stood in the graceful poses of ballerinas on the intricate festoons and curls, which Pan Curtén at the time was suggesting with mascara.
Mother Pan Kurtenda, a thin old woman with a trembling face, sat behind a screen and read the Polish prayer book in a low voice.
“Feston is the alpha and omega of Petliur's notes,” Mr. Curtend told me in an admonitory tone. - Instead of these two Ukrainian panenok, you can without any risk draw the bodies of two full women, such as Madame Gomolyak. It does not matter. It is important that this festoon looks like a government one. Then no one even winks at these magnificent spicy ladies, I will gladly exchange you your hundred karbovanets.
- How many do you do them?
“I paint a day,” replied Mr Curtend, and importantly, his lips with trimmed mustaches, “up to three tickets.” And also five. Dependent on my inspiration.
- Basya! - the old woman said from behind the screen. - My son. I'm afraid.
- Nothing will, mother. No one will dare to attack the person of Pan Kurtenda.
“I'm not afraid of jails,” the old woman suddenly answered. - I'm afraid of you, Basya.
“The wateriness of the brain,” said Pan Turtend, and he winked at the old woman. - Excuse me, mother, but can you keep quiet?
- Not! - said the old woman. - No I can not. God will punish me if I do not tell all people that my son - the old woman began to cry - my son, like that Judas Iscariot ...
- Quiet! shouted Curtend’s furious voice, jumped up from his chair, and with all his might began to shake the screen behind which the old woman was sitting. The screen rattled, its feet tapped on the floor, and yellow dust flew out of it.
“Quiet, crazy fool, or I'll tie you a mouth with a kerosene cloth.”
The old woman cried and blew her nose. - What does it mean? - I asked Mr. Curtend.
“This is my private affair,” said Curtend defiantly. His distorted face was excised by red veins, and it seemed that blood was splashing out of these veins. - I advise you not to stick your nose in my circumstances, if you do not want to sleep in a common grave with the Bolsheviks.
- Scoundrel! - I said calmly. “You are such a petty villain that you don’t even stand these hundred lousy Karbovanets.”
- Under the ice! - suddenly Pan Turtean shouted hysterically and flooded with his feet. - Pan Petlura like you are lowered into the Dnieper ... Under the ice!
I told about this case of Amalia. She replied that, according to her guesses, Mr. Curtusend served as a detective for all the authorities, who were tearing Ukraine apart at that time - from the Central Council, the Germans, the hetman, and now from Petliura.
Amalie was sure that Mr. Curtend would take revenge on me and would definitely report on me. Therefore, as a caring and practical woman, on the same day she established her own observation of Pan Curtend.
But by the evening all the cunning measures of Amalia, taken to neutralize Mr. Curtend, turned out to be unnecessary. Ban Curtend died in front of me and Amalia, and his death was as unbearably stupid as his whole foul life.
At dusk in the street pistol shots clapped. In such cases, I went to the balcony to find out what was going on.
I went out onto the balcony and saw that two people in civilian clothes were running to our house in the deserted square of the Vladimir Cathedral, and several Petlyura officers and soldiers were chasing them, obviously afraid to catch up with them. The officers on the run shot at the runners and frantically shouted: "Stop!"
At that time, I noticed Mr. Curtend. He jumped out of his room in the outhouse, ran up to the heavy gate that went out into the street, and snatched a huge key out of the castle, similar to the ancient key to the medieval city. With the key in his hands, Pan Curtend lurked behind the gate. When people in civilian clothes ran past, Pan Kterend opened the gate, stuck out his hand with a key (he held it like a gun, and from a distance it really looked like Pan Kurenda aimed from an old gun) and shouted in a shrill voice:
- Stop! Bolshevik carrion! Kill you!
Ban Curtend wanted to help the Petliurists and to delay the fugitives for at least a few seconds. These seconds, of course, would decide their fate.
I saw well from the balcony everything that happened afterwards. The man who ran from behind raised his pistol and, without aiming or even glancing at Kurendu, fired a shot at his side. Pan Curtend, screaming and choking with blood, rolled down the cobbled yard, kicked his feet over the stones, fluttered, wheezed and died with the key held in his hand. Blood flowed onto his celluloid pink cuffs, and in his open eyes there was an expression of fear and anger.
Only an hour later the shabby ambulance arrived and took Mr. Curtend to the morgue.
The old mother oversaw the death of her son and found out about her by night.
A few days later the old woman was sent to the old Sulimovskaya almshouse. I quite often met Sulimov poor farms. They walked in pairs, like schoolgirls, in identical dark touldenor dresses. Their walk resembled a solemn procession of dry ground beetles.
I told about this insignificant incident with Pan Curtend only because he was very much in tune with the whole nature of life under the Directory. Everything was shallow, ridiculous and reminded of a bad, disorderly, but at times tragic vaudeville.
Once in Kiev huge billboards were pasted.
They informed the population that in the cinema hall “Are” the Directory will report to the people.
The whole city tried to break through to this report, anticipating an unexpected attraction. So it happened.
The narrow and long cinema hall was immersed in a mysterious darkness. Lights did not light. In the dark, the crowd roared merrily.
Then behind the scenes they hit the echoing gong, flashed multicolored ramp lights, and in front of the audience, against the background of a theatrical backdrop, in rather bright colors depicting how “wonderful Dnieper in calm weather” appeared an elderly but slim man in a black suit with an elegant beard - Prime Minister Vinnichenko.
Dissatisfied and visibly embarrassed, all the while straightening his big-eyed tie, he spoke a dry and short speech about the international position of Ukraine. They patted him.
After that, an unprecedentedly thin and completely powdered girl in a black dress came out onto the stage and, clasping her hands in obvious despair, started screamingly reciting the verses of the poetess Galina under scary piano chords:
"Chopping linden green, young ..."
She was also slapped.
The speeches of ministers were interspersed with interludes. After the Minister of Railways, the girls and lads danced hopak.
The audience was sincerely having fun, but they cautiously calmed down when the elderly “Minister of State Balanses,” otherwise speaking, the Minister of Finance, stepped on the stage heavily.
This minister had a disheveled and brutal look. He was clearly angry and sniffled loudly. His curly-haired round head glistened with sweat. Gray zaporozhye mustache hung down to the chin.
The minister was wearing a wide-legged gray striped trousers, the same wide-legged shesyuchy jacket with pockets drawn and a embroidered shirt tied at the neck with a ribbon with red pompoms.
He was not going to make any report. He approached the ramp and began to listen to the hum in the auditorium. For this, the minister even raised his palm, cupped, to his shaggy ear. I heard a laugh.
The minister grinned with satisfaction, nodded to some of his thoughts and asked:
- Muscovites?
Indeed, almost Russians were sitting in the hall. Unsuspecting spectators innocently replied that yes, in the hall mostly Muscovites are sitting.
-T-a-ak! - Minister said ominously and blew his nose into a wide checkered shawl. - Very understandable. Although not duzhno nice.
Hall subsided, anticipating evil.
“Well, I’m a bis,” the minister suddenly cried out in Ukrainian and blushed like a beetroot, “did you come here from your rotten Moscow?” Yak flies on honey. What are you not bachili here? Butt would break you with thunder! You, in Moscow, have come to the point that it’s not that what to eat is something, but ... and not what.
Hall indignantly boomed. There was a whistle. Some little man jumped out onto the stage and carefully took the "minister balansov" for his elbow, trying to lead him away. But the old man was inflamed and pushed the little man so that he almost fell. The old man was already drifting. He could not stop.
- Scho you move? - He asked insinuatingly. - Ha? Are you kidding? So I will answer for you. In Ukraine, you will have hlib, sugar, lard, buckwheat, and receipts. And in Moscow, the barrels were sucked with lamp oil. Ax yak!
Already two people cautiously dragged the minister over the floors of his leather jacket, but he fiercely beat off and shouted:
- Holopupy! Parasites! Get out to your Moscow! There you wash your government in Zhidivsk! Get out!
Vinnichenko appeared behind the scenes. He angrily waved his hand, and the old man was finally dragged away red from the indignation of the backstage. And immediately, in order to soften the unpleasant impression, a chorus of little females jumped out onto the stage in famously twisted soft-headed hats, the bandurists struck, and the females, throwing themselves into squatting, began to sing:
Oh, scho lies there for the dead, That is not a prince, it is not a pan, not a colonel - That old woman-fly flies in love!
On this report, the directory to the people ended. With mocking cries: "Get out to Moscow! There you wash your own government in Zhidiiv!" - The audience from the movie "Ars" pushed into the street.
The power of the Ukrainian Directory and Petliura looked provincial.
The once brilliant Kiev turned into an enlarged Shpola or Mirgorod with their official presence and Dovhochkhuny sitting in them.
Everything in the city was arranged under the old-world Ukraine, right up to the stall with gingerbread under the sign "Oze Taras from Poltava Region". Long-haired Taras was so important and such a snow-white shirt bristled and flamed with bright embroidery on it that not everyone dared to buy honey and honey from this opera character.
It was not clear whether something serious was happening or whether the play was being played with the actors from “Gaydamakov”.
It was not possible to figure out what was happening. The time was convulsive, impetuous, the upheavals were rushing in. In the very first days of the appearance of each new power, there were clear and formidable signs of its swift and miserable fall.
Each government was in a hurry to announce more declarations and decrees, hoping that at least one of these declarations would leak into life and get stuck in it.
From the reign of Petliura, as well as from the reign of the hetman, left a feeling of complete uncertainty about the future and the confusion of thought.
Petliura most of all hoped for the French, who occupied Odessa at that time. Soviet troops inexorably hung from the north.
Petliurists spread rumors that the French are already going to the rescue of Kiev, as if they were already in Vinnytsia, in Fastov and tomorrow even brave French trousers in red trousers and protective feses might appear even in Boyars near the city itself. Petlyura, his bosom friend of the French consul Enno, swore this to Petliura.
Newspapers, dumbfounded by contradictory rumors, willingly printed all this nonsense, while almost everyone knew that the French were sitting in Odessa, in their French occupation zone, and that the "zones of influence" in the city (French, Greek and Ukrainian) were simply fenced off apart loosened Viennese chairs.
Rumors at Petlyura acquired the character of a spontaneous, almost cosmic phenomenon, similar to the plague. It was a general hypnosis.
These rumors have lost their direct purpose - to report fictional facts. Rumors have acquired a new entity, as if a different substance. They have become a means of complacency, a powerful narcotic drug. People found hope for the future only in hearsay. Even on the surface, Kievites looked like morphine.
With each new rumor, their eyes lit up until then dull eyes, the usual lethargy disappeared, the speech from the tongue-tied turned into lively and even witty.
There were rumors fleeting and rumors long in force. They kept people in deceptive arousal for two or three days.
Even the most experienced skeptics believed everything, to the extent that Ukraine would be declared one of the departments of France and President Poincaré himself was going to Kiev to solemnly proclaim this state act, or that film actress Vera Cold collected her army and, like Joan of Arc, entered a white horse at the head of his reckless army in the city of Priluki, where he declared himself the Ukrainian empress.
One time I wrote down all these rumors, but then I quit. From this occupation, or fatally collapsed head, or quiet rage came. Then I wanted to destroy everyone, starting with Poincare and President Wilson and ending with Makhno and the famous ataman Zeleny, who kept his residence in the village of Tripoli near Kiev.
I, unfortunately, destroyed these records. In essence, it was a monstrous apocryphal lie and irrepressible fantasy of helpless, confused people.
In order to recover a little, I re-read my favorite books, transparent, warmed with unfading light:
"Spring Waters" by Turgenev, "Blue Star" by Boris Zaitsev, "Tristan and Isolde", "Manon Lesko". These books really shone in the gloom of vague Kiev evenings, like incorruptible stars.
I lived alone. Mom and sister were still cut off from Kiev tightly. I knew nothing about them.
I decided to make my way to Kopany in the spring on foot, although I was warned that the “Dymer” republic was on the way and that I would not pass through this republic alive. But then new events came up, and there was nothing to think about traveling on foot to Kopany.
I was alone with my books. I tried to write something, but it all came out shapelessly and resembled nonsense.
Loneliness with me was only shared by nights when silence took possession of the whole quarter and our house and only rare patrols, clouds and stars did not sleep.
The steps of the patrols came from far away. Every time I put out the smoke lamp so as not to direct the patrolmen to our house. Occasionally I heard at night how Amalie cried, and thought that her loneliness was much harder than mine.
Each time after the night of tears, she talked to me haughtily and even hostilely for several days, but then she smiled shyly and guiltily and began again to take care of me as faithfully as she took care of all her guests.
In Germany, the revolution began. The German units stationed in Kiev carefully and politely chose their own Council of Soldiers' Deputies and began to prepare for their return to their homeland. Petliura decided to take advantage of the weakness of the Germans and disarm them. The Germans found out about it.
In the morning, the day appointed to disarm the Germans, I woke up feeling like the walls of our house were swinging. The drums thundered.
I went to the balcony. There was already Amalie. German Shelves silently walked along Fundukleevskaya Street in silence. From the march of forged boots there were jingling glasses. Caution beats the drums. Behind the infantry, the cavalry passed sullenly, fractionally crowding with horseshoes, and behind it, dozens of guns thundering and jumping on the cobbled pavement,
Without a word, just to the beat of the drums, the Germans circled the whole city and returned to the barracks.
Petliura immediately canceled his secret order to disarm the Germans.
Soon after this silent demonstration of the Germans, distant sounds began to reach from the left bank of the Dnieper. artillery shooting. The Germans were quickly clearing Kyiv. The shooting became increasingly audible, and the city learned that Soviet regiments were quickly approaching from Nizhyn with battles.
When the battle began near Kiev, at Brovary and Darnitsa, and it became clear to everyone that the Petlyura case was gone, the order of the Petlyura commander was announced in the city.
In the order it was said that on the night of tomorrow the command of the Petliura army would launch deadly violet rays against the Bolsheviks, provided to Petliura by the French military authorities through the mediation of French Consul Enno, the friend of free Ukraine.
In connection with the launch of purple rays, the population of the city was ordered to go down to the basements in order to avoid unnecessary casualties on the night of tomorrow and not go out until the morning.
Kievans habitually climbed into the basements, where they sat out during coups. In addition to the basements, the kitchen became a fairly reliable place and a kind of citadel for meager tea drinking and endless conversations. They were mostly located in the depths of the apartments, where the bullets less frequently flew. Something soothing was felt in the smell of scarce food, still preserved in the kitchen. There sometimes even water dripped from the tap. For some time you could get a full kettle, boil it and brew strong tea from the dried leaves of lingonberries.
Everyone who drank this tea at night would agree that he was then our only support, a kind of elixir of life and a panacea for troubles and sorrows.
It seemed to me then that the country was rushing into cosmically impenetrable fogs. I could not believe that under the whistling of the wind in the shot-down roofs, over these inconvenient nights, mixed with soot and despair, the everlasting dawn would seep out, only seep again so that you could see the deserted streets and running through them unknown to those who turned green from the cold and the malnutrition of people in the hardened windings, with rifles of all brands and calibers.
Fingers curled from the steel bolts. All human warmth was blown out without residue from under liquid overcoats and prickly coarse calico.
On the night of the "purple ray" in the city was deadly silent. Even the artillery fire fell silent, and the only thing that was heard was the distant rumble of the wheels. By this characteristic sound, experienced Kiev residents realized that army transports were hastily removed from the city in an unknown direction.
So it happened. In the morning the city was free from Petliurists, swept up to the last mote. Rumors of violet rays were launched to leave at night without interference.
Kiev, as it happened to him quite often, was without power. But the chieftains and the outskirts of the "punks" did not manage to capture the city. At noon, along the Chain Bridge, a couple of horse grain, thunder of wheels, shouts, songs and cheerful accordions entered the city of Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the Red Army, and again the whole life in the city was broken at its very core.
There was, as theatrical workers say, a “clean change of scenery,” but no one could guess what it promised to hungry citizens. It could only show time.
Therefore, when the next morning I heard from my room the exclamations “Ava, Ava,” I realized that the “chieftain of the Ukrainian army and the Haidamak cat” himself, Pan Petlyura, rode into Kiev on a white horse.
On the eve of the city were posted ads from the commandant. In them, with epic calmness and a complete lack of humor, it was reported that Petlyura would enter Kiev at the head of the government - the Directory - on a white horse, presented to him by the Zhmerinsk railroad men.
Why Zhmerinsky railroad gave Petlyura a horse, and not a hand car, or at least a shunting train, was not clear.
Petliura did not disappoint the expectations of Kiev maids, shopkeepers, governesses and shopkeepers. He really rode into the conquered city on a rather quiet white horse.
The horse was covered with a blue blanket, trimmed with a yellow border. On Petliura, however, was a protective padded zupan. The only decoration - the Zaporizhzhya saber curve, taken, obviously, from the museum - beat him in the thighs. Schriye Ukrainians looked with reverence at this Cossack "Shablyuka", at the pale, puffy Petlyura and at the Haydamak, which they galloped behind Petlyura on shaggy horses.
Haydamaky with long bluish-black forelock oseledetsy-on shaven heads (these bows hung from under the popes) reminded me of childhood and the Ukrainian theater. There, the same Haidamaks with bluish-eyed eyes otlivatski chipped gopak. "Hop, Kuma, don't zuryys, tudy-syudy turn around!"
Every nation has its own characteristics, its worthy features. But people who choke on saliva from tenderness to their people and devoid of a sense of proportion always bring these national traits to ridiculous proportions, to molasses, to disgust. Therefore, there are no worst enemies of his people than leaven patriots.
Petliura tried to revive the sugary Ukraine. But nothing came of it, of course.
Following Petlyura, the Directory went — the writer Vynnychenko was a neurasthenia, and behind him were some mossy and unknown ministers.
Thus began the short, frivolous power of the Directory in Kiev.
Kievans, prone, like all southern people, to irony, have made of the new "independent" government a target for an unheard of number of anecdotes. The people of Kiev especially cheered up the fact that in the first days of the Petliura power, the operatic Haidamaks walked along the Khreshchatyk with ladders, climbed on them, removed all the Russian signs and hung Ukrainian ones instead.
Petliura brought with him the so-called Galician language - quite ponderous and full of borrowings from neighboring languages. And a brilliant, really pearly, like the teeth of fervently young, sharp, singing, the national language of Ukraine retreated before a new visitor to the distant Shevchenko huts and to the quiet village levadas. There he lived "tishkom" all the difficult years, but retained his poetry and did not allow to break his back.
Under Petliura, everything seemed deliberate — both the Haidamaks, and the language, and all of his politics, and the savage chauvinists who had crawled out in huge numbers out of the dusty holes, and money — everything, right down to the anecdotal reports of the Directory to the people. But this will be ahead.
When meeting with the Haidamaks, everyone looked around frantically and asked themselves whether it was Haidamak or on purpose. With the tortured sounds of a new language, the same question involuntarily occurred to me - Ukrainian is a language or on purpose. And when you gave the change in the store, you looked with disbelief at the gray pieces of paper, where the dull patches of yellow and blue paint barely showed through, and you understood whether it was money or on purpose. Children like to play such greasy pieces of paper, imagining them with money.
There were so many fake money and so little real money that the population tacitly agreed not to make any difference between them. Counterfeit money went freely and on the same course as the real ones.
There was not a single printing house, where typesetters and lithographers would not let out, while having fun, fake Petliura bills - karbovanets and steps. The pitch was the smallest coin. He was worth a penny.
Many enterprising citizens made fake money at home with ink and cheap watercolors. And they did not even hide them when someone else entered the room.
Especially the rapid production of counterfeit money, and the moonshine from millet took place in the room near the lord Currant.
After this eloquent panny wedged me into the hetman's army, he was filled with a favor for me, which is what the executioner often has for his victim. He was exquisitely gracious and kept inviting me to him all the time.
I was interested in this last remnant of the small nobility, who lived to our (according to the words of Mr. Currantha himself) of the "stunning" era.
Once I went to his cramped room, laden with bottles of muddy "millet". The sour smelled of paint and that particular specific medicine — I now forgot its name — which was used at the time by a clap.
I found Mr. Curtend preparing Petlura stubs. They were depicted two volokoukie wilderness in embroidered shirts, with strong bare legs. These women for some reason stood in the graceful poses of ballerinas on the intricate festoons and curls, which Pan Curtén at the time was suggesting with mascara.
Mother Pan Kurtenda, a thin old woman with a trembling face, sat behind a screen and read the Polish prayer book in a low voice.
“Feston is the alpha and omega of Petliur's notes,” Mr. Curtend told me in an admonitory tone. - Instead of these two Ukrainian panenok, you can without any risk draw the bodies of two full women, such as Madame Gomolyak. It does not matter. It is important that this festoon looks like a government one. Then no one even winks at these magnificent spicy ladies, I will gladly exchange you your hundred karbovanets.
- How many do you do them?
“I paint a day,” replied Mr Curtend, and importantly, his lips with trimmed mustaches, “up to three tickets.” And also five. Dependent on my inspiration.
- Basya! - the old woman said from behind the screen. - My son. I'm afraid.
- Nothing will, mother. No one will dare to attack the person of Pan Kurtenda.
“I'm not afraid of jails,” the old woman suddenly answered. - I'm afraid of you, Basya.
“The wateriness of the brain,” said Pan Turtend, and he winked at the old woman. - Excuse me, mother, but can you keep quiet?
- Not! - said the old woman. - No I can not. God will punish me if I do not tell all people that my son - the old woman began to cry - my son, like that Judas Iscariot ...
- Quiet! shouted Curtend’s furious voice, jumped up from his chair, and with all his might began to shake the screen behind which the old woman was sitting. The screen rattled, its feet tapped on the floor, and yellow dust flew out of it.
“Quiet, crazy fool, or I'll tie you a mouth with a kerosene cloth.”
The old woman cried and blew her nose. - What does it mean? - I asked Mr. Curtend.
“This is my private affair,” said Curtend defiantly. His distorted face was excised by red veins, and it seemed that blood was splashing out of these veins. - I advise you not to stick your nose in my circumstances, if you do not want to sleep in a common grave with the Bolsheviks.
- Scoundrel! - I said calmly. “You are such a petty villain that you don’t even stand these hundred lousy Karbovanets.”
- Under the ice! - suddenly Pan Turtean shouted hysterically and flooded with his feet. - Pan Petlura like you are lowered into the Dnieper ... Under the ice!
I told about this case of Amalia. She replied that, according to her guesses, Mr. Curtusend served as a detective for all the authorities, who were tearing Ukraine apart at that time - from the Central Council, the Germans, the hetman, and now from Petliura.
Amalie was sure that Mr. Curtend would take revenge on me and would definitely report on me. Therefore, as a caring and practical woman, on the same day she established her own observation of Pan Curtend.
But by the evening all the cunning measures of Amalia, taken to neutralize Mr. Curtend, turned out to be unnecessary. Ban Curtend died in front of me and Amalia, and his death was as unbearably stupid as his whole foul life.
At dusk in the street pistol shots clapped. In such cases, I went to the balcony to find out what was going on.
I went out onto the balcony and saw that two people in civilian clothes were running to our house in the deserted square of the Vladimir Cathedral, and several Petlyura officers and soldiers were chasing them, obviously afraid to catch up with them. The officers on the run shot at the runners and frantically shouted: "Stop!"
At that time, I noticed Mr. Curtend. He jumped out of his room in the outhouse, ran up to the heavy gate that went out into the street, and snatched a huge key out of the castle, similar to the ancient key to the medieval city. With the key in his hands, Pan Curtend lurked behind the gate. When people in civilian clothes ran past, Pan Kterend opened the gate, stuck out his hand with a key (he held it like a gun, and from a distance it really looked like Pan Kurenda aimed from an old gun) and shouted in a shrill voice:
- Stop! Bolshevik carrion! Kill you!
Ban Curtend wanted to help the Petliurists and to delay the fugitives for at least a few seconds. These seconds, of course, would decide their fate.
I saw well from the balcony everything that happened afterwards. The man who ran from behind raised his pistol and, without aiming or even glancing at Kurendu, fired a shot at his side. Pan Curtend, screaming and choking with blood, rolled down the cobbled yard, kicked his feet over the stones, fluttered, wheezed and died with the key held in his hand. Blood flowed onto his celluloid pink cuffs, and in his open eyes there was an expression of fear and anger.
Only an hour later the shabby ambulance arrived and took Mr. Curtend to the morgue.
The old mother oversaw the death of her son and found out about her by night.
A few days later the old woman was sent to the old Sulimovskaya almshouse. I quite often met Sulimov poor farms. They walked in pairs, like schoolgirls, in identical dark touldenor dresses. Their walk resembled a solemn procession of dry ground beetles.
I told about this insignificant incident with Pan Curtend only because he was very much in tune with the whole nature of life under the Directory. Everything was shallow, ridiculous and reminded of a bad, disorderly, but at times tragic vaudeville.
Once in Kiev huge billboards were pasted.
They informed the population that in the cinema hall “Are” the Directory will report to the people.
The whole city tried to break through to this report, anticipating an unexpected attraction. So it happened.
The narrow and long cinema hall was immersed in a mysterious darkness. Lights did not light. In the dark, the crowd roared merrily.
Then behind the scenes they hit the echoing gong, flashed multicolored ramp lights, and in front of the audience, against the background of a theatrical backdrop, in rather bright colors depicting how “wonderful Dnieper in calm weather” appeared an elderly but slim man in a black suit with an elegant beard - Prime Minister Vinnichenko.
Dissatisfied and visibly embarrassed, all the while straightening his big-eyed tie, he spoke a dry and short speech about the international position of Ukraine. They patted him.
After that, an unprecedentedly thin and completely powdered girl in a black dress came out onto the stage and, clasping her hands in obvious despair, started screamingly reciting the verses of the poetess Galina under scary piano chords:
"Chopping linden green, young ..."
She was also slapped.
The speeches of ministers were interspersed with interludes. After the Minister of Railways, the girls and lads danced hopak.
The audience was sincerely having fun, but they cautiously calmed down when the elderly “Minister of State Balanses,” otherwise speaking, the Minister of Finance, stepped on the stage heavily.
This minister had a disheveled and brutal look. He was clearly angry and sniffled loudly. His curly-haired round head glistened with sweat. Gray zaporozhye mustache hung down to the chin.
The minister was wearing a wide-legged gray striped trousers, the same wide-legged shesyuchy jacket with pockets drawn and a embroidered shirt tied at the neck with a ribbon with red pompoms.
He was not going to make any report. He approached the ramp and began to listen to the hum in the auditorium. For this, the minister even raised his palm, cupped, to his shaggy ear. I heard a laugh.
The minister grinned with satisfaction, nodded to some of his thoughts and asked:
- Muscovites?
Indeed, almost Russians were sitting in the hall. Unsuspecting spectators innocently replied that yes, in the hall mostly Muscovites are sitting.
-T-a-ak! - Minister said ominously and blew his nose into a wide checkered shawl. - Very understandable. Although not duzhno nice.
Hall subsided, anticipating evil.
“Well, I’m a bis,” the minister suddenly cried out in Ukrainian and blushed like a beetroot, “did you come here from your rotten Moscow?” Yak flies on honey. What are you not bachili here? Butt would break you with thunder! You, in Moscow, have come to the point that it’s not that what to eat is something, but ... and not what.
Hall indignantly boomed. There was a whistle. Some little man jumped out onto the stage and carefully took the "minister balansov" for his elbow, trying to lead him away. But the old man was inflamed and pushed the little man so that he almost fell. The old man was already drifting. He could not stop.
- Scho you move? - He asked insinuatingly. - Ha? Are you kidding? So I will answer for you. In Ukraine, you will have hlib, sugar, lard, buckwheat, and receipts. And in Moscow, the barrels were sucked with lamp oil. Ax yak!
Already two people cautiously dragged the minister over the floors of his leather jacket, but he fiercely beat off and shouted:
- Holopupy! Parasites! Get out to your Moscow! There you wash your government in Zhidivsk! Get out!
Vinnichenko appeared behind the scenes. He angrily waved his hand, and the old man was finally dragged away red from the indignation of the backstage. And immediately, in order to soften the unpleasant impression, a chorus of little females jumped out onto the stage in famously twisted soft-headed hats, the bandurists struck, and the females, throwing themselves into squatting, began to sing:
Oh, scho lies there for the dead, That is not a prince, it is not a pan, not a colonel - That old woman-fly flies in love!
On this report, the directory to the people ended. With mocking cries: "Get out to Moscow! There you wash your own government in Zhidiiv!" - The audience from the movie "Ars" pushed into the street.
The power of the Ukrainian Directory and Petliura looked provincial.
The once brilliant Kiev turned into an enlarged Shpola or Mirgorod with their official presence and Dovhochkhuny sitting in them.
Everything in the city was arranged under the old-world Ukraine, right up to the stall with gingerbread under the sign "Oze Taras from Poltava Region". Long-haired Taras was so important and such a snow-white shirt bristled and flamed with bright embroidery on it that not everyone dared to buy honey and honey from this opera character.
It was not clear whether something serious was happening or whether the play was being played with the actors from “Gaydamakov”.
It was not possible to figure out what was happening. The time was convulsive, impetuous, the upheavals were rushing in. In the very first days of the appearance of each new power, there were clear and formidable signs of its swift and miserable fall.
Each government was in a hurry to announce more declarations and decrees, hoping that at least one of these declarations would leak into life and get stuck in it.
From the reign of Petliura, as well as from the reign of the hetman, left a feeling of complete uncertainty about the future and the confusion of thought.
Petliura most of all hoped for the French, who occupied Odessa at that time. Soviet troops inexorably hung from the north.
Petliurists spread rumors that the French are already going to the rescue of Kiev, as if they were already in Vinnytsia, in Fastov and tomorrow even brave French trousers in red trousers and protective feses might appear even in Boyars near the city itself. Petlyura, his bosom friend of the French consul Enno, swore this to Petliura.
Newspapers, dumbfounded by contradictory rumors, willingly printed all this nonsense, while almost everyone knew that the French were sitting in Odessa, in their French occupation zone, and that the "zones of influence" in the city (French, Greek and Ukrainian) were simply fenced off apart loosened Viennese chairs.
Rumors at Petlyura acquired the character of a spontaneous, almost cosmic phenomenon, similar to the plague. It was a general hypnosis.
These rumors have lost their direct purpose - to report fictional facts. Rumors have acquired a new entity, as if a different substance. They have become a means of complacency, a powerful narcotic drug. People found hope for the future only in hearsay. Even on the surface, Kievites looked like morphine.
With each new rumor, their eyes lit up until then dull eyes, the usual lethargy disappeared, the speech from the tongue-tied turned into lively and even witty.
There were rumors fleeting and rumors long in force. They kept people in deceptive arousal for two or three days.
Even the most experienced skeptics believed everything, to the extent that Ukraine would be declared one of the departments of France and President Poincaré himself was going to Kiev to solemnly proclaim this state act, or that film actress Vera Cold collected her army and, like Joan of Arc, entered a white horse at the head of his reckless army in the city of Priluki, where he declared himself the Ukrainian empress.
One time I wrote down all these rumors, but then I quit. From this occupation, or fatally collapsed head, or quiet rage came. Then I wanted to destroy everyone, starting with Poincare and President Wilson and ending with Makhno and the famous ataman Zeleny, who kept his residence in the village of Tripoli near Kiev.
I, unfortunately, destroyed these records. In essence, it was a monstrous apocryphal lie and irrepressible fantasy of helpless, confused people.
In order to recover a little, I re-read my favorite books, transparent, warmed with unfading light:
"Spring Waters" by Turgenev, "Blue Star" by Boris Zaitsev, "Tristan and Isolde", "Manon Lesko". These books really shone in the gloom of vague Kiev evenings, like incorruptible stars.
I lived alone. Mom and sister were still cut off from Kiev tightly. I knew nothing about them.
I decided to make my way to Kopany in the spring on foot, although I was warned that the “Dymer” republic was on the way and that I would not pass through this republic alive. But then new events came up, and there was nothing to think about traveling on foot to Kopany.
I was alone with my books. I tried to write something, but it all came out shapelessly and resembled nonsense.
Loneliness with me was only shared by nights when silence took possession of the whole quarter and our house and only rare patrols, clouds and stars did not sleep.
The steps of the patrols came from far away. Every time I put out the smoke lamp so as not to direct the patrolmen to our house. Occasionally I heard at night how Amalie cried, and thought that her loneliness was much harder than mine.
Each time after the night of tears, she talked to me haughtily and even hostilely for several days, but then she smiled shyly and guiltily and began again to take care of me as faithfully as she took care of all her guests.
In Germany, the revolution began. The German units stationed in Kiev carefully and politely chose their own Council of Soldiers' Deputies and began to prepare for their return to their homeland. Petliura decided to take advantage of the weakness of the Germans and disarm them. The Germans found out about it.
In the morning, the day appointed to disarm the Germans, I woke up feeling like the walls of our house were swinging. The drums thundered.
I went to the balcony. There was already Amalie. German Shelves silently walked along Fundukleevskaya Street in silence. From the march of forged boots there were jingling glasses. Caution beats the drums. Behind the infantry, the cavalry passed sullenly, fractionally crowding with horseshoes, and behind it, dozens of guns thundering and jumping on the cobbled pavement,
Without a word, just to the beat of the drums, the Germans circled the whole city and returned to the barracks.
Petliura immediately canceled his secret order to disarm the Germans.
Soon after this silent demonstration of the Germans, distant sounds began to reach from the left bank of the Dnieper. artillery shooting. The Germans were quickly clearing Kyiv. The shooting became increasingly audible, and the city learned that Soviet regiments were quickly approaching from Nizhyn with battles.
When the battle began near Kiev, at Brovary and Darnitsa, and it became clear to everyone that the Petlyura case was gone, the order of the Petlyura commander was announced in the city.
In the order it was said that on the night of tomorrow the command of the Petliura army would launch deadly violet rays against the Bolsheviks, provided to Petliura by the French military authorities through the mediation of French Consul Enno, the friend of free Ukraine.
In connection with the launch of purple rays, the population of the city was ordered to go down to the basements in order to avoid unnecessary casualties on the night of tomorrow and not go out until the morning.
Kievans habitually climbed into the basements, where they sat out during coups. In addition to the basements, the kitchen became a fairly reliable place and a kind of citadel for meager tea drinking and endless conversations. They were mostly located in the depths of the apartments, where the bullets less frequently flew. Something soothing was felt in the smell of scarce food, still preserved in the kitchen. There sometimes even water dripped from the tap. For some time you could get a full kettle, boil it and brew strong tea from the dried leaves of lingonberries.
Everyone who drank this tea at night would agree that he was then our only support, a kind of elixir of life and a panacea for troubles and sorrows.
It seemed to me then that the country was rushing into cosmically impenetrable fogs. I could not believe that under the whistling of the wind in the shot-down roofs, over these inconvenient nights, mixed with soot and despair, the everlasting dawn would seep out, only seep again so that you could see the deserted streets and running through them unknown to those who turned green from the cold and the malnutrition of people in the hardened windings, with rifles of all brands and calibers.
Fingers curled from the steel bolts. All human warmth was blown out without residue from under liquid overcoats and prickly coarse calico.
On the night of the "purple ray" in the city was deadly silent. Even the artillery fire fell silent, and the only thing that was heard was the distant rumble of the wheels. By this characteristic sound, experienced Kiev residents realized that army transports were hastily removed from the city in an unknown direction.
So it happened. In the morning the city was free from Petliurists, swept up to the last mote. Rumors of violet rays were launched to leave at night without interference.
Kiev, as it happened to him quite often, was without power. But the chieftains and the outskirts of the "punks" did not manage to capture the city. At noon, along the Chain Bridge, a couple of horse grain, thunder of wheels, shouts, songs and cheerful accordions entered the city of Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the Red Army, and again the whole life in the city was broken at its very core.
There was, as theatrical workers say, a “clean change of scenery,” but no one could guess what it promised to hungry citizens. It could only show time.
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