Shouting "glory!" At the top of your voice! incomparably more difficult than "hurray!" No matter how you shout, you will not achieve powerful rumblings. From a distance it will always seem that they are shouting not "glory", but "ava", "ava", "ava"! In general, this word turned out to be inconvenient for parades and the manifestation of popular enthusiasm. Especially when they were shown by elderly hulks in dark-haired hats and crumpled zupans pulled out of chests.
Therefore, when the next morning I heard exclamations of "ava, ava" from my room, I guessed that the "ataman of the Ukrainian army and the Haidamak kosh" Pan Petliura himself was entering Kiev on a white horse.
The day before, announcements from the commandant were posted around the city. In them, with epic calmness and a complete lack of humor, it was reported that Petliura would enter Kiev at the head of the government - the Directory - on a white horse presented to him by Zhmeryn railroad workers.
It was not clear why the Zhmeryn railwaymen gave Petliura a horse, and not a railcar or at least a shunting locomotive.
Petliura did not disappoint the expectations of Kiev maids, merchants, governesses and shopkeepers. He really rode into the conquered city on a rather meek white horse.
The horse was covered with a blue blanket trimmed with a yellow border. On Petliura, he was wearing a protective zupan on cotton wool. The only decoration - a curved Zaporozhye saber, apparently taken from a museum - hit him on the thighs. The wide-eyed Ukrainians gazed with reverence at this Cossack "shablyuka", at the pale, swollen Petliura and at the Haidamaks, who pranced behind Petliura on shaggy horses.
The haidamaks with long bluish-black forelocks - donkeys - on their shaved heads (these forelocks hung from under their papa) reminded me of my childhood and the Ukrainian theater. There, the same gaidamaks with blue eyes, dashingly chipped off a hopak. "Gop, kume, do not zhurys, turn around here!"
Each nation has its own characteristics, its own worthy features. But people, choking on saliva from affection before their people and deprived of a sense of proportion, always bring these national traits to ridiculous proportions, to molasses, to disgust. Therefore, there are no worst enemies of their people than leavened patriots.
Petliura tried to revive the sugary Ukraine. But none of this, of course, came of it.
Following Petlyura rode the Directory - the writer Vinnichenko of neurasthenia, and behind him - some mossy and unknown ministers.
This is how the short, frivolous power of the Directory began in Kiev.
The people of Kiev, inclined, like all southern people, to irony, made the new "independent" government a target for an unheard-of number of anecdotes. The Kievites were especially amused by the fact that in the first days of Petliura's power, operetta haidamaks walked along Khreshchatyk with stepladders, climbed onto them, removed all Russian signs and hung Ukrainian ones instead.
Petliura brought with him the so-called Galician language - rather heavy and full of borrowings from neighboring languages. And the shining, truly pearly, like the teeth of perky young women, sharp, singing, the folk language of Ukraine retreated before the new stranger to the distant Shevchenko huts and quiet village levadas. There he lived "quietly" all the difficult years, but he retained his poetry and did not allow himself to break his spine.
Under Petliura, everything seemed deliberate - both the haidamaks, and the language, and all his politics, and the gray-haired chauvinists who crawled out of the dusty holes in huge numbers, and money - everything, including the anecdotal reports of the Directory to the people. But this will be discussed later.
When they met with the Haidamaks, everyone looked around in a daze and asked themselves whether this was Haidamak or on purpose. With the tortured sounds of the new language, the same question involuntarily came to mind - is it Ukrainian or on purpose. And when they gave change in the store, you looked with disbelief at the gray pieces of paper, where faint spots of yellow and blue paint barely appeared, and wondered if it was money or on purpose. Children like to play in such greasy pieces of paper, imagining them as money.
There were so many counterfeit money, and so little real money, that the population tacitly agreed not to make any difference between them. Counterfeit money moved freely and at the same rate as real money.
There was not a single printing house where typesetters and lithographers would not release, having fun, counterfeit Petliura banknotes - karbovanets and steps. The step was the smallest coin. It cost half a penny.
Many enterprising citizens made counterfeit money at home with ink and cheap watercolors. And they did not even hide them when someone outside entered the room.
Especially violent production of counterfeit money and moonshine from millet took place in the room of Pan Kurenda.
After this eloquent gentleman squeezed me into the hetman's army, he was imbued with an affection for me, which is often the case with an executioner for his victim. He was exquisitely courteous and called me to his place all the time.
I was interested in this last remnant of the small gentry who survived to our (in the words of Pan Kurenda himself) "stunning" era.
Once I went to him in a cramped room filled with bottles with muddy "millet". The sour smelled of paint and that special specific medicine - I have forgotten its name now - which gonorrhea was healed at that time.
I found Pan Kturenda preparing Petliura's hundred ruble notes. They depicted two hairy girls in embroidered shirts, with strong bare legs. For some reason, these maidens stood in graceful ballerinas' poses on intricate scallops and curls, which Pan Curenda was just making with ink at that time.
Pan Kurenda's mother, a thin old woman with a trembling face, was sitting behind a screen and reading a Polish prayer book in an undertone.
“Feston is the alpha and omega of Petliura's banknotes,” Pan Curenda told me in an instructive tone. - Instead of these two Ukrainian ladies, you can draw the bodies of two fat women, such as Madame Homolyaka, without any risk. It does not matter. It is important that this scallop looks like a government one. Then no one will even wink at these magnificent piquant ladies, I will willingly exchange your hundred karbovanets for you.
- How many of them do you make?
“I paint a day,” replied Pan Curenda, and stuck out his lips with a trimmed mustache importantly, “up to three tickets. And also five. Depending on my inspiration.
- Basia! - said the old woman from behind the screen. - My son. I'm afraid.
- Nothing will happen, mom. No one will dare to encroach on the person of Pan Kurenda.
“I'm not afraid of prison,” the old woman suddenly replied unexpectedly. - I'm afraid of you, Basya.
- Watery brain, - said Pan Curenda and winked at the old woman. - Excuse me, Mom, but can you keep quiet?
- No! - 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 wept, - my son, like that Judas Iscariot …
- Quiet! - Cturend shouted in a 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 creaked, its feet banged on the floor, and yellow dust flew out of it.
- Quiet, you crazy fool, or I'll gag you with a kerosene rag.
The old woman cried and blew her nose. - What does it mean? I asked Pan Curendu.
“This is my own business,” replied Curenda defiantly. His contorted face was cut with red veins, and it seemed that blood was just about to sprinkle from these veins. - I advise you not to pry into 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 scoundrel that you are not even worth these hundred lousy Karbovans.
- Under the ice! - Pan Kturenda suddenly shouted hysterically and stamped his feet. - Pan Petliura lowers people like you into the Dnieper … Under the ice!
I told Amalia about this case. She replied that, according to her guesses, Pan Kturenda served as a detective for all the authorities that were tearing Ukraine to shreds at that time - the Central Rada, the Germans, the hetman, and now Petliura.
Amalia was sure that Pan Curenda would begin to take revenge on me and would definitely report me. Therefore, as a caring and practical woman, on the same day she established her own observation of Pan Curenda.
But by evening, all Amalia's cunning measures taken to neutralize Pan Curendu were no longer necessary. Pan Cturenda died in front of me and Amalia, and his death was as unbearably stupid as his whole foul life.
At dusk, pistol shots rang out in the street. In such cases, I went out onto the balcony to find out what was going on.
I went out onto the balcony and saw that two men in civilian clothes were running to our house along the deserted square of the Vladimir Cathedral, and several Petliura officers and soldiers were chasing after them, obviously afraid to catch up with them. The officers on the move fired at the fleeing and shouted furiously: "Stop!"
At that time I noticed Pan Curendu. He rushed out of his room in the outbuilding, ran to the heavy gate overlooking the street, and snatched from the castle a huge key that looked like an ancient key to a medieval city. With the key in hand, Pan Curenda hid behind the gate. When people in civilian clothes were running by, Pan Curenda opened the gate, stuck out his hand with the key (he held it like a pistol, and from a distance it really looked like Pan Curenda was aiming from an old pistol) and shouted in a shrill voice:
- Stop! Bolshevik carrion! I will kill!
Pan Kturenda wanted to help the Petliurites and detain the fugitives at least for a few seconds. These seconds, of course, would have decided their fate.
I clearly saw from the balcony everything that happened next. The man running behind raised his pistol and, without aiming or even glancing at Curenda, fired in his direction as he ran. Pan Cturenda, screaming and choking on blood, rolled across the cobbled courtyard, kicked the stones, fluttered, wheezed and died with the key held in his hand. Blood dripped onto his celluloid pink cuffs, and an expression of fear and anger froze in his open eyes.
Only an hour later a shabby ambulance arrived and took Pan Curenda to the morgue.
The old mother slept through the death of her son and found out about her by nightfall.
A few days later, the old woman was sent to the old Sulimovskaya almshouse. I quite often met the Sulimov hospice. They walked in pairs, like schoolgirls, in identical dark tualdenor dresses. Their walk resembled a solemn procession of dry ground beetles.
I told about this insignificant incident with Pan Kturenda only because he was very close to the whole nature of life under the Directory. Everything was petty, ridiculous and reminded of a bad, disorderly, but at times tragic vaudeville.
Once across Kiev, huge posters were posted.
They informed the population that in the "Are" cinema hall the Directory would report to the people.
The whole city tried to break through to this report, anticipating an unexpected attraction. And so it happened.
The narrow and long cinema hall was plunged into a mysterious darkness. No lights were lit. In the dark, the crowd roared merrily.
Then, behind the stage, a resounding gong was struck, the multi-colored lights of the ramp flashed, and in front of the audience, against the background of the theatrical backdrop, in rather loud colors depicting how "the Dnieper is wonderful in calm weather", appeared an elderly, but slender man in a black suit, with an elegant beard - Prime Minister Vynnychenko.
Dissatisfied and clearly embarrassed, all the while straightening his big-eyed tie, he made a dry and short speech about the international situation of Ukraine. They slapped him.
After that, an unprecedentedly thin and completely powdered girl in a black dress entered the stage and, clasping her hands in front of her in obvious despair, began to scaredly recite the verses of the poetess Galina to the pensive chords of the piano:
"Chop the fox of greenery, young …"
She was also slapped.
The ministers' speeches were interspersed with interludes. After the Minister of Railways, the girls and boys danced a hopak.
The spectators were sincerely amused, but cautiously calmed down when the elderly "minister of sovereign balances", in other words, the minister of finance, came onto the stage with difficulty.
This minister looked disheveled and scolding. He was clearly angry and sniffling loudly. His round head, cropped by a hedgehog, glistened with sweat. A gray Zaporozhye mustache hung down to his chin.
The minister was dressed in wide gray striped trousers, the same wide scabbard jacket with drawn pockets, and an embroidered shirt tied at the throat with a ribbon with red pompoms.
He was not going to make any report. He walked up to the ramp and began to listen to the rumble in the auditorium. For this, the minister even brought his hand, folded into a cup, to his furry ear. There was laughter.
The minister smiled with satisfaction, nodded to some of his thoughts and asked:
- Muscovites?
Indeed, there were almost only Russians in the hall. Unsuspecting spectators innocently answered that yes, mostly Muscovites were sitting in the hall.
-T-a-ak! the minister said ominously and blew his nose into a wide checkered handkerchief. - Very understandable. Although not even pleasant.
The hall fell silent, anticipating unkindness.
- What a biss, - the minister suddenly shouted in Ukrainian and blushed like a beetle, - you came here from your filthy Moscow? Yak flies for honey. What didn't you bach here? Gore you would be smashed with thunder! You got there, in Moscow, to the point that not only eat a lot of things, but also … no matter what.
The hall buzzed indignantly. There was a whistle. A man jumped out onto the stage and carefully took the "minister of balances" by the elbow, trying to take him away. But the old man became inflamed and pushed the man away so that he almost fell. The old man was already drifting. He couldn't stop.
- Well, are you moving? he asked smoothly. - Ha? Are you kidding? So I will answer for you. In Ukraine, you have khlib, sugar, bacon, buckwheat, and tickets. And in Moscow, they sucked the muzzle with lamp oil. Yak axis!
Already two people were carefully dragging the minister by the flaps of his combed jacket, but he fiercely fought back and shouted:
- Stupid! Parasites! Get out to your Moscow! You are sweeping your Zhidiv government there! Get out!
Vynnychenko appeared behind the scenes. He waved his hand angrily, and the old man, red with indignation, was finally dragged backstage. And immediately, in order to soften the unpleasant impression, a chorus of boys in dashingly wrung hats jumped out onto the stage, the bandura players struck, and the boys, squatting down, sang:
Oh, there is a dead man lying there, It is not a prince, it is not a pan, not a colonel - That is an old lady-fly lover!
That was the end of the Directory's report to the people. With mocking cries: "Get out to Moscow! You are beating your Jewish government there!" - the audience from the movie "Ars" poured 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 state presences and the Dovgochkhuns who sat in them.
Everything in the city was arranged under the old-world Ukraine, right up to the gingerbread stall under the name "Oce Taras from Poltava region". The long-moustached Taras was so important and such a snow-white shirt was puffed up and glowed with bright embroidery on him that not everyone dared to buy from this opera character zhamki and honey.
It was not clear whether something serious was happening or whether a play was being performed with the characters from "The Gaidamaks".
There was no way to figure out what was happening. The time was convulsive, impetuous, upheavals came in rushes.. In the very first days of the emergence of each new government there were clear and menacing signs of its imminent and miserable fall.
Each government was in a hurry to announce more declarations and decrees, hoping that at least some of these declarations would seep into life and get stuck in it.
From the reign of Petliura, as well as from the reign of the hetman, there was a feeling of complete uncertainty in the future and the vagueness of thought.
Petliura hoped most of all for the French, who occupied Odessa at that time. From the north, Soviet troops loomed inexorably.
The Petliurites spread rumors that the French were already going to rescue Kiev, that they were already in Vinnitsa, in Fastov, and tomorrow, even in Boyar, near the city, brave French Zouaves in red trousers and protective fez could appear. His bosom friend, the French consul, Enno, swore to Petliura in this.
Newspapers, stunned by conflicting 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 loose Viennese chairs from each other.
Under Petliura, rumors acquired the character of a spontaneous, almost cosmic phenomenon, similar to a pestilence. It was general hypnosis.
These rumors have lost their direct purpose - to report fictitious facts. Rumors have acquired a new essence, as if a different substance. They turned into a means of self-soothingness, into the strongest narcotic medicine. People found hope for the future only through rumors. Even outwardly, the Kievites began to look like morphine addicts.
With each new hearing, their dull eyes lit up until then, the usual lethargy disappeared, their speech turned from tongue-tied into lively and even witty.
There were fleeting rumors and rumors for a long time. They kept people deceptively agitated for two or three days.
Even the most inveterate skeptics believed everything, up to the point 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 the film actress Vera Holodnaya gathered her army and, like Joan of Arc, entered a white horse at the head of her reckless army to the city of Priluki, where she declared herself the Ukrainian empress.
At one time I wrote down all these rumors, but then I gave it up. From this occupation, either the head became fatally aching, or quiet fury ensued. Then they wanted to destroy everyone, starting with Poincaré and President Wilson and ending with Makhno and the famous ataman Zeleny, who held his residence in the village of Tripolye near Kiev.
Unfortunately, I destroyed these records. In essence, it was a monstrous apocryphal of lies and irrepressible fantasy of helpless, confused people.
To recover a little, I re-read my favorite books, transparent, warmed by an unfading light:
"Spring Waters" by Turgenev, "Blue Star" by Boris Zaitsev, "Tristan and Isolde", "Manon Lescaut". These books really shone in the gloom of the dim Kiev evenings, like imperishable stars.
I lived alone. Mom and sister were still tightly cut off from Kiev. I didn't know anything about them.
In the spring I decided to make my way to Kopan on foot, although I was warned that the violent "Dymer" republic lay along the way and that I would not pass through this republic alive. But then new events rolled over, and there was nothing to think about hiking to Kopan.
I was alone with my books. I tried to write something, but it all came out shapeless and resembled delirium.
Loneliness with me was shared only by nights, when silence took possession of the entire quarter and our house and only rare patrols, clouds and stars did not sleep.
The footsteps of the patrols came from afar. Every time I put out the smokehouse, so as not to direct the patrolmen to our house. Occasionally I heard Amalia crying at night, and I thought that her loneliness was much heavier than mine.
Every time after nightly tears, she talked to me arrogantly and even hostile for several days, but then she suddenly smiled shyly and guiltily and again began to take care of me as devotedly as she took care of all her guests.
The revolution began in Germany. The German units stationed in Kiev carefully and politely chose their Soviet 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 this.
In the morning, on the day appointed for the disarmament of the Germans, I woke up with the feeling that the walls of our house were swaying regularly. Drums rumbled.
I went out onto the balcony. Amalia was already there. German regiments walked silently along Fundukleevskaya Street with a heavy step. Glasses clinked from the march of forged boots. The drums beat warningly. Behind the infantry, the cavalry passed just as gloomily, frantically clattering with horseshoes, and behind it, thundering and jumping along the cobbled pavement, dozens of guns, Without a single word, only to the beat of drums, the Germans went around the whole city in a circle and returned to the barracks.
Petliura immediately canceled his secret order to disarm the Germans.
Soon after this silent demonstration of the Germans, distant artillery fire began to fly from the left bank of the Dnieper. The Germans quickly cleared Kiev. The shooting became more and more audible, and the city learned that Soviet regiments were quickly approaching from Nizhyn with battles.
When the battle began near Kiev itself, at Brovary and Darnitsa, and it became clear to everyone that Petliura's case was gone, an order from Petliura's commandant was announced in the city.
In this order it was said that on the night of tomorrow, the command of the Petliura army would shoot deadly violet rays against the Bolsheviks, provided to Petliura by the French military authorities through the "friend of free Ukraine" French consul Enno.
In connection with the launch of violet rays, the population of the city was ordered to go down to the basements on the night of tomorrow to avoid unnecessary victims and not go out until morning.
Kievans habitually climbed into the basements, where they hid during the coups. In addition to cellars, kitchens have become a fairly reliable place and a kind of citadel for meager tea parties and endless conversations. They were mostly located in the depths of the apartments, where bullets flew less often. There was something soothing in the smell of meager food still in the kitchen. There sometimes even water dripped from the tap. In an hour, one could fill a teapot, boil it and brew strong tea from dried lingonberry leaves.
Everyone who drank this tea at night will agree that it 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 couldn’t believe that under the whistle of the wind in the roofs that were shot through, over these impenetrable nights, mixed with soot and despair, a cold dawn would seep someday, seep only so that you could again see the deserted streets and running along them who knew where they were green from the cold and the malnutrition of people in coarse coils, with rifles of all brands and calibers.
Fingers cramped from the steel bolts. All human warmth was blown out without a trace from under the liquid greatcoats and thorny calico shirts.
On the night of the "violet ray", the city was deathly quiet. Even the artillery fire fell silent, and the only thing that could be heard was the distant rumbling of wheels. From this characteristic sound, experienced Kiev residents understood that army carts were hastily removed from the city in an unknown direction.
And so it happened. In the morning the city was free of Petliurists, swept out to the last speck. Rumors about the violet rays were launched in order to leave at night without hindrance.
Kiev, as it happened to him quite often, found itself without power. But the chieftains and the outlying "punks" did not have time to seize the city. At noon, the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the Red Army entered the city of the Bogunsky and Tarashchansky regiments of the Red Army along the Chain Bridge, a couple of horse groats, thunder of wheels, shouts, songs and cheerful overflows of accordions, and again the whole life in the city broke at its very core.
There was, as the theater workers say, "a sheer change of scenery," but no one could have guessed what it boded for starving citizens. Only time could tell.
