The Story of a Life

83

Crimson Riding Breeches

My good-humoured arguments with Zozulya about art and literature came to an unexpected end with my call-up. So far, my short-sightedness had guaranteed me a so-called ‘white ticket’, meaning a deferral from military service. But now they were calling up everyone. Along with a few sickly youths, I was given a perfunctory medical examination and packed off to the ‘Prisoners’ Regiment’. As far as I can tell, this was the most bizarre regiment in all of history.

In one of the skirmishes with Makhno’s forces, a top adjutant had been captured. His name was either Antoshchenko or Antonyuk, I don’t recall. We’ll call him Antoshchenko. Such were Antoshchenko’s crimes that he was sentenced to death by firing squad. As he awaited execution in a cell of Kiev’s Lukyanovskaya prison, his crazed mind sought a plan for salvation.

Antoshchenko sent for the prosecutor and dictated to him a letter for the local head of the Extraordinary Commission.fn1 He wrote that the Soviet government didn’t know what to do with the bandits it had captured. There were too many of them to shoot and what with the widespread shortage of food it made no sense to feed all these parasites. It was for these reasons that the bandits had simply been disarmed and released, and most of them immediately returned to their atamans and went straight back to looting, pillaging and murdering all over Ukraine. Antoshchenko offered a way out of this predicament: instead of shooting him, the Soviets should release him, and as an expression of his gratitude Antoshchenko promised to form an exemplary regiment out of the large number of imprisoned thugs and killers. He noted the great respect he commanded among these men and insisted that he alone had the authority to succeed with such a plan.

The government decided it was worth taking the risk and freed Antoshchenko. And he really did organise in quick fashion this Prisoners’ Regiment, made up of separate companies of captured bandits based on their gang affiliations. There was the Makhno Company, the Struk Company, the Zelëny Company, and others for the Angel Hearts, the Red Coats and the Grigorievites. A final one was formed from members of smaller, less important gangs, referred to as ‘the Forgotten Slaves Company’. It was to this Prisoners’ Regiment that we ‘white-ticket men’ were assigned.

An escort picked us up at the recruiting station and took us to the regimental HQ in the Pechersk neighbourhood. Along the way he refused to acknowledge our questions but muttered from time to time in an ominous way: ‘He’s a viper, that one, you’ll see soon enough’ or ‘So much as look cross-eyed at him and you’re done for.’ Apparently, he was referring to Commander Antoshchenko.

Upon arrival they lined us up with other conscripts opposite a small old house. The tops of the lilacs in the garden extended beyond the roofline. There were no obvious signs of danger, although the tense, pale faces of the escorts did not bode well. A short man with bushy black side-whiskers and crooked crab legs waddled out of the house. He wore a red wool tunic, crimson riding breeches with silver piping, enormous, clanking spurs and boots made of red leather. To this he had added red leather gloves on his pudgy hands and a scarlet-tipped Cossack hat pulled low over his forehead. It was the exact caricature of a ‘Red Commander’ as envisioned by Makhno’s men.

None of us conscripts dared to so much as smile. Just the opposite – we shuddered upon catching sight of the man’s eyes, bright and almost white with malice. We guessed this had to be Antoshchenko. On one side of the belt around his waist hung a Mauser with a large wooden butt and on the other a curved sabre in a sheath decorated with silver. He pulled a snow-white handkerchief from the pocket of his riding breeches, delicately shook it out and wiped his lips before asking in a hoarse voice: ‘Who’d you bring me this time, slaves? More scum of the earth?’

The escorts were silent. Antoshchenko slowly walked up and down the ranks, inspecting each one of us from head to toe. Two lanky officers walked behind him. We assumed they must have been battalion commanders. All of a sudden, Antoshchenko unsheathed his sabre and cried in a high, plaintive voice: ‘I’m going to teach you to serve the revolution, and when I’m done, I’m going to have my way with your mothers! Understand, you bastards? Do you know who I am? I carved up General Kaledin with this very sword, so just imagine what I can do to the likes of you with it. I spit up a dozen mugs of blood a day, I’ve taken more bullets for the Fatherland than any man alive, and that’s why Moscow sends me thirty thousand gold roubles a month, just for pocket money. Did you know that, eh? Well, if not, maybe you do know that I don’t waste my time on human scum like you. Some hot lead in the back of the head and into the ditch, that’s how I handle things!’

He was shrieking by now. Spit bubbles popped in the corners of his mouth. Clearly the man was either insane or an epileptic. Stepping up close to a tall youth in spectacles, a student most likely, he prodded him on the chin with his sword hilt. ‘And what’s your problem?’ he asked, staring drunkenly at the boy. ‘What are the glasses for? With these very hands I killed my wife for sleeping with another man.’ He had spread out his short fat fingers and was holding them up to us. The blood-red gloves were several sizes too big for him. ‘Do you think because you’re wearing glasses, I’ll spare you? Why, I could just as easily skin you alive, and no one would lift a finger to stop me.’

We were speechless, bewildered and didn’t understand what was happening or even where we were. The escorts stared at Antoshchenko with a look of tense anger. Only the two battalion commanders stood calmly by and looked at us with bored expressions. Apparently, they were used to such displays.

Antoshchenko hopped back a few steps and called out in an affectedly cheerful tone: ‘Well now, who here can read and write? Do be so kind as to step forward three paces.’

He made an inviting gesture with his sabre, and I was about to step forward when the escort standing next to me said in a hushed whisper: ‘Stop. Stay where you are.’

I stood still. All of us were literate, but many of the conscripts suspected something nefarious in Antoshchenko’s voice, and so in the end only a dozen or so men came forward. Antoshchenko didn’t seem the least bit surprised.

‘And which of you are musicians?’ he asked in the same phony tone. Again, the escort whispered: ‘Don’t move.’ Next, Antoshchenko, joking and laughing, called out for cobblers, singers and tailors. The conscripts relaxed and a great many of them stepped out of rank. By now only a dozen of us useless ignoramuses were left – evidently, only those whom the escorts had managed to warn. Antoshchenko turned to one of the battalion officers and said in a tired voice: ‘Commander, look at these shirkers – all wanting to be clerks at HQ or mend soldiers’ trousers instead of dying a hero’s death fighting for the oppressed peasants of the world. Do you see these bastard intelligènty trying to find some nice safe perch for themselves, even though they don’t have any right to it?’

‘I see them, Comrade Commander,’ said the officer wearily.

‘Send them all off today against Zelëny’s men near Tripolie. And if a single one of them comes back alive, you’ll pay for it with your head. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir, Comrade Commander,’ the officer said just as wearily.

Antoshchenko gave us illiterates a quick look, popped his sabre back into the sheath and said: ‘I’d better not lay eyes on this rubbish again. Off to the kitchen patrol! For Christ’s sake, forward march, now, all of you!’

We were separated from the other men and marched over to the regimental barracks in the Nikolsky Fortress. A large semicircle surrounded by slopes overgrown with elder, the fortress stood on a bluff overlooking the Dnieper not far from Mariinsky Park. As a boy, I had spent a good deal of time, especially in spring, in this shady and empty park. I had once seen a midshipman there and this encounter had awoken a passion in me for the sea. There, to the humming of the bees in the jasmine bushes, I exhausted myself in reading and rereading my favourite poets, reciting aloud those especially wonderful lines I couldn’t get out of my head. This is why the grey-brick fortress, with its embrasures, its archways, its decrepit drawbridge hanging from rusty chains, its bronze lion heads on the cast-iron gates, had always seemed to me to be one of the most romantic places on earth.

The fort was deserted, neglected. Tall grass grew on the parade ground. Swallows nested under the eaves. The warm, drowsy smell of summer leaves drifted through the broken windows. The fort had never been besieged. It had stood for many years as little more than a peaceful architectural folly. This impression of the fort was so deeply ingrained in me that I was actually happy to be serving within its walls. But my naïve illusions were scattered like dust within minutes. Inside, the fortress was dirty and grim. The mildewed walls were covered with obscene graffiti and shook from the tramp of boots along with the noise of curses, blasphemies and songs. The barrack stench was so strong that it immediately settled into my clothes and never left.

They lined us up in a dusty corridor with a rough plank floor. The head of the kitchen patrol, a pale, effeminate-looking man, most likely a former officer, approached. He gave us a sympathetic look, tapped his boot with a riding crop and said: ‘Well, men, so you’ve met the mad dog? Murder would be too good for a commander like that.’

We couldn’t tell whether he was being sincere or trying to provoke us. To be safe, no one said a word.

‘Ah, all right then, you scum,’ he said. ‘March! Down to the cellar – start peeling potatoes!’

We sat peeling rotten, wet potatoes in a cold underground vault until evening. Water dripped from the walls. Rats scurried in the dark corners. A narrow slit high up in the wall provided the only light. Our hands were numb from the cold, slippery potatoes. We talked among ourselves in hushed voices. I learned that the man next to me – a meek little man in spectacles with sad, red eyes – had been a worker in a razor factory in Lodz before the war. His name was Iosif Morgenstern.

We returned to the barracks that night. I lay down on my plank bed and fell straight to sleep. I was awakened in the night by the hollow beat of horses’ hooves. I opened my eyes. A dim electric bulb burned at the end of a long flex hanging from the ceiling. All around me the other men lay snoring. The cheap clock on the wall showed three. In the muddy yellow light of the bulb, I saw Antoshchenko. He was riding a heavy bay down the vaulted corridor. The flagstones rang under the horse’s shoes. The flex of a field telephone had been strung across the corridor and kept him from going any farther. He stopped his horse, drew his sword and slashed it in two. He rode on out of the corridor and into our barracks room. He pulled up and shouted: ‘Fatigue squad, fall in!’

Startled, sleepy men jumped from their beds and hastily lined up. Nearly all barefoot, they stood there on the stone floor, groggy and shivering. Antoshchenko began in a calm voice: ‘At this very moment I’m having a machine-gunner brought over and am going to order him to shoot every last one of you, like so many quail. Do you think I don’t know that you’ve been planning to kill me, your commander, and that you dare to call me a mad dog?!’ Notes of hysteria quivered in his voice. ‘Fetch the machine-gunner!’ he yelled, turning. Only then did we see his two orderlies standing in the doorway. ‘Where the hell’s he disappeared to, the bastard?’

‘Comrade Commander,’ one of the orderlies said nervously. ‘We really should head back.’

‘I’ll kill you!’ Antoshchenko screamed wildly. He was swaying back and forth in his saddle. ‘I’ll cut you into strips, you bespectacled little Jews! I’ll slice you up with a saw like mutton!’

He started choking. Foam poured from his mouth, he pitched forward in his saddle and then he fell to the floor. We stood motionless. We later discovered that the same thought came to each of us at that instant – if Antoshchenko really did call for the gunner, then we’d rush to the corner where the rifles were kept, grab them and open fire.

The orderlies grabbed Antoshchenko and helped him up and into the corridor, and from there out into the yard and the fresh air. His horse, indifferent to what had just happened, followed a few paces behind. None of us, soldiers of the kitchen patrol, men who had ended up in this regiment by pure chance, could understand how it was possible that here in Kiev, a stone’s throw from Kreshchatik, from the theatres and university, the libraries and symphony concerts, not to mention the good everyday citizens of the city, such a sinister den of bandits and its sick, half-mad commander could exist. This regiment’s very existence seemed like a phantasmagorical nightmare. At any moment Antoshchenko could shoot any one of us. Our lives depended on whatever crazed idea he might think up next. We lived from day to day in fear of some new madness, and he never disappointed us.

We never left the Nikolsky Fortress. Not once were we permitted into the city. Even if we had been, there was no one we could talk to about what was happening with our regiment. And it would have been pointless anyway – no one would have believed us. We decided to write a letter about Antoshchenko to the government and Commissar of War Podvoisky, but events overtook us.

Several days passed in relative calm. Part of the regiment had been sent to Tripolie against Zelëny’s forces, and the remaining companies were placed on guard duty in Kiev, protecting warehouses and the goods station, taking part in raids against speculators at the Bessarabsky Market and near the famous Café Semadeni on Kreshchatik. And then, late one night, we were roused by an alarm signal and lined up in a large square on the parade ground in front of the fortress. No one knew what was happening. There was talk of some unknown gang approaching from Svyatoshino and that we were going to be sent to hold them back from entering the city. The light air of excitement among the soldiers somehow found its way to us in the fatigue squad, even though we had not been issued with a single bullet for our Japanese rifles.

We stood and waited on the parade ground. A rainy dawn was breaking through the clouds beyond the Dnieper. The chestnut trees had released their broad green leaves, which hung down like fingers. There was the smell of dusty grass, and the bells of the Pechersk Monastery struck the useless hour of four o’clock.

‘Company, attention!’ the officers shouted. The men drew themselves up and froze. A gleaming black landau drove swiftly into the centre of the square. Two Orlov trotters, dappled greys, stopped and began to paw the ground. Antoshchenko was standing in the landau together with three young women in large hats. They were playfully elbowing each other, giggling and squealing with joy.

‘Regiment, listen!’ a drunken Antoshchenko shouted, raising his sabre over his head. ‘Gather round the carriage … by platoons … singing my favourite song … in a slow, ceremonial march … Let’s go … March!’

He dropped his sabre. The regiment remained in place. Only the First Company, made up of Makhno’s men, took a few tentative steps forward towards the landau. The song leaders launched into ‘Don’t you cry, Marusya, you’ll be mine,’ but quickly stopped, and the company, now completely confused, came to a disorganised halt.

‘March!’ Antoshchenko screamed wildly. The regiment remained motionless. No one said a word. The women stopped giggling. It was so quiet we could hear Antoshchenko’s angry, uneven breathing.

‘Ah, so that’s how it is, you sons of bitches,’ Antoshchenko wheezed and pulled his Mauser from the holster. That very instant came a cry from the back row: ‘Trying to impress his silly bimbos, the dog! At him, boys! Kill him!’

A shot rang out. Antoshchenko’s coachman pulled the horses round so sharply they reared, and then bolted out of the parade ground and down the street along the slope of Mariinsky Park. They were chased by several rifle shots. Then the regiment broke rank. The men began cursing and yelling wildly. Makhno’s First Company was driven up against a wall. The men fought back with their rifle butts. Amid all this noise, piercing two-fingered bandit whistles rang out and seemed to hover in the air over everything – the parade ground, the fortress and even Kiev itself.

‘Back to the barracks! Quiet!’ shouted the commanders, although by now no one paid them any attention. The regiment had mutinied.

Makhno’s men were being beaten because they were Antoshchenko’s favourite company. They had retreated to the ground floor of the fortress and begun shooting from the windows. Cooks and orderlies were being beaten up left and right. It was hard to make out what was happening. The frenzied melee spread from the parade ground to the stairwells and the guardrooms. Fortunately, our fatigue guard had escaped notice, and so we quietly walked back to our barracks and barricaded ourselves inside.

The mutiny ended two hours later after the fortress was surrounded by the International Regiment, composed of Hungarian and Austrian prisoners of war stationed nearby. Amazingly, no one had been killed, although there were a good many wounded.

We were called back to the parade ground by the signal alarm the next morning at eleven o’clock. The men were angry, cursing and grumbling as they reluctantly fell in. Officers informed the regiment that members of the government were on their way to speak to the soldiers and get to the bottom of what had just happened. A collective sigh of relief swept through the ranks.

A wooden platform had been erected in the centre of the square. Before long, cars bearing members of the government, led by Rakovsky, drove up. The regiment presented arms. The band struck up ‘The Internationale’. Looking at the columns of soldiers standing at attention, no one could have believed that only a few hours earlier the regiment had been in a state of rebellion. The only clue was the bandages covering up the wounds and bruises on some of the men’s heads.

Antoshchenko had climbed unobtrusively onto the platform. He didn’t acknowledge the regiment. Instead, he went over to the government delegates and tried to engage them in conversation but was studiously ignored. Rakovsky was the first to speak. He spoke softly, kindly, and tried to reassure the soldiers, telling them that a special government commission had been set up to investigate the complaints against the commander. A decision would be forthcoming in three days, and should the complaints be found justified, the most decisive of measures would be taken against the regimental commander.

Antoshchenko was standing behind Rakovsky. Blood filled his face. One of his cheeks, marked by a crimson scar, twitched. His hand repeatedly clenched, then unclenched on the hilt of his sword. At last, he could stand it no longer. Antoshchenko pushed Rakovsky out of the way and started shouting: ‘Just what are you thinking, Comrade Rakovsky, talking to these bloodthirsty louts like a bunch of schoolboys? The government may lick your boots, comrade, but I don’t intend to. I’ve had more than enough of this shit, and I’ll talk to you all as I see fit. First of all, how dare you sons of bitches complain to our most beloved government about me, your commander, your father, in fact? Who put such an idea in your thick skulls? Complain? No, you ought to kiss my hands. Who was it who turned you cut-throats into men? I did, Antoshchenko! Who put shoes on your feet and clothes on your back? Again, I did, Antoshchenko! Who feeds you buttered porridge and makes sure you get your full tobacco ration? That very same commander, Comrade Antoshchenko. If it weren’t for me, you’d all have been shot long ago, so many fish in a barrel, I swear to it on the life of my poor dead father, that fine cobbler from Khristinovka. And you dare to complain! And to mutiny! Scum! You there, with the red face – three steps forward, march! No, not you, the one over there, in the Austrian greatcoat. Just who issued that to you, huh? Answer!’

The soldier in the Austrian coat stepped forward three paces and stood at attention but didn’t say a word.

‘I gave you everything. I did … I, you snub-nosed fool! Just who was it who gave you puttees of blue wool, of the finest English fabric? Don’t know, eh? Well, damn your eyes! I gave them to you, against all the regulations, I, Commander Antoshchenko, gave you puttees meant only for officers. I took pity on you vermin. What are you goggling for? Can’t you speak? And another thing! You dare to complain about your commander, meanwhile you brave boys have been selling government bread on the sly to the monks at Pechersk. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? And who’s been flogging soldiers’ coats at the Zhitny Market? And who stripped those trollops over on Vladimirskaya Hill and sent them off to walk naked through the streets of Russia’s mother city? I know everything. I’ve got you all right here,’ at this point Antoshchenko began clenching and unclenching his red-leather fist. ‘I could execute any one of you at any moment.’

His adjutant tried to stop him, but Antoshchenko paid him no attention. ‘Brewing hooch all over the barracks, making coils out of gas-masks. Wasting bullets for the fun of it, for your ridiculous crimes, while there’s a shortage of them at the front where soldiers are waging a war against the free Ukrainian atamans!

‘All right then, you see what I mean. Enough’s enough. Speaking here before representatives of the government, I forgive you. I don’t give a fig for any of you, but I won’t say that I harbour any hatred in my heart. What can I expect from a lot of oafs like you anyway? And so, men, listen!’

Antoshchenko pulled his bent sabre out of its sheath. The blade flashed like sparkling water in the raw morning air.

‘All right now! Beginning with the companies to my right, on my count … forward march! Past the platform … all together now, sing!’

The band struck up a rollicking tune, and the regiment marched clumsily past the platform. The First Company broke into song:

A puffed-up cock

Went out for a walk,

They caught him, they jailed him,

Not even his passport could save him.

The government representatives, not waiting for the end of the song, quickly descended from the platform and drove off. The entire regiment wondered what would happen next. We were all certain that Antoshchenko would be relieved of command and cashiered. But the days passed and nothing happened. It became obvious that the government didn’t have time to worry about Antoshchenko. Denikin had taken Odessa. The situation was grave.

Antoshchenko continued to strut about and bullied the regiment more than he had before the notorious mutiny. The difficult, turbulent existence of our regiment was brought to an end by a soldier in our company – that very same meek little Iosif Morgenstern I mentioned earlier. Although gentle and long-suffering, Morgenstern hated Antoshchenko with a wild, raging passion, especially after the commander vowed to ‘carve up’ all the Jews in the regiment and get rid of what he called its ‘Jerusalem Gentry’. One night, against regulations, our company was ordered to guard a warehouse out beyond the Baikovoe Cemetery. Amazingly, each of us was issued with two cartridges for our rifles. It was warm. The air was filled with the smell of flowering stocks. A waning crescent moon rose over darkened Kiev and traversed the still Ukrainian sky. To keep from falling asleep, I sang bits of songs to myself –

The sounds of the city have died completely,

Beyond the Neva tower, there’s silence in the gloom,

And on the bayonet of the lone sentry,

Bright flashes sparked by the midnight moon.fn2

As I was singing this old tune there came the sound of a horse’s hooves. Someone had ridden up to the warehouse and hopped down from the saddle. I could hear him cursing. I recognised Antoshchenko’s voice. Sometimes he rode out at night to inspect the guards. Antoshchenko walked over to the warehouse. Morgenstern stood watch at the doors. ‘Who goes there?’ he called out in his soft little voice.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you, damned fool!’ yelled Antoshchenko. ‘Can’t you see who it is?’

Morgenstern now realised perfectly well who it was. Nevertheless, he followed regulations and shouted, ‘Who goes there?’ three times in quick succession. Without giving Antoshchenko a chance to answer, Morgenstern fired at him from point-blank range. Antoshchenko was killed instantly. Morgenstern was arrested and then released the next day. Our regiment was immediately disbanded, and we were sent home.

It was late in the evening as I made my way along Institutskaya Street past the State Bank, built by an eccentric architect in the style of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. It was humid, a storm was approaching, lightning reflected off the polished black pillars of the bank. A fresh breeze blew through the chestnut trees and then died. Through an open window in the dark I could hear someone playing the piano and a baritone voice singing: ‘He’s far away, he won’t know, he’ll never care about your grief.’ The smell of grass came from the front gardens.

All of a sudden, I recalled that night of my graduation ball marking the end of my gymnasium years when I had accompanied Olga Bogushevich along this same street under these same chestnut trees. Her dress had seemed too formal even for that festive night, but still she was all beauty and joy. I recalled that night, her hands, cold with nervous excitement as we said goodbye outside her house, her eyes sparkling in the lamplight. All of it seemed to me now like an impossible dream from centuries ago. I couldn’t believe that in the same world as this summer lightning and chestnut trees, in this simple, decent world of fresh grass and soft voices, of a young girl’s tender trembling, of books, poetry and secret hopes, there could also exist a monster like Antoshchenko, this raving, bloodthirsty madman, this ‘fiend from hell’, as Morgenstern called him. I couldn’t help thinking how thin was the veneer of civilisation that separated us from a bottomless sea of dark savagery. I wanted to believe that human reason would penetrate these waters, and I knew this was going to be the great challenge of our future and of our still unsettled lives.

More than twenty years later, I was asked to give a talk at the main library in the city of Alma-Ata. The stiff, dry leaves of the poplars crackled in the late autumn wind. Irrigation canals carried icy water which smelled of the sea down from the mountains. A deep blue sky sparkled over the Alatau, beyond whose peaks one could imagine far-off India.

After my talk, a small, completely white-haired man with sad eyes approached me. ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘I’m Morgenstern. We served in the fatigue regiment together in Kiev.’

‘What are you doing now?’ I asked.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said and smiled. ‘But I’m happy for you. You’ve got to speak up for all of us in your writing, to give voice to everyone you’ve ever met. That includes me too, Morgenstern, your old comrade in arms.’