‘Going on, sir? Why, we’re beginning to put the things into place. You should have seen it when we started. Those stairs up to the
The man gave a frown of exasperating puzzlement. ‘The purpose? We’re restoring the church, sir. That’s to say, we’re putting it back like it used to be, before it was an ironmongery. So that when-’
‘Yes yes, of course, but… what are those men there doing?’
‘They’re building the, the places for the choir to be, sir.’
‘Just so. And that basin there?’
‘That’s the font, sir.’ Just in time to save his front teeth, the supervisor went on, ‘For the holy water, sir.’
‘Good,’ said Alexander, sounding relieved that these important details had not been overlooked. ‘And this, I take it, is how it was originally.’
‘Correct, your honour. In 1983, as you see. It had been out of use for some years before then, but not yet deconsecrated.’
‘No.’ How strange it looked, as if it had been the product of a different civilisation, showing nothing at all that could be paralleled in the surviving theatres or other public halls of those times. Even those features with an identifiable function, like the rows of benches where the audience must have sat, seemed almost perversely odd in their design. Perhaps that design could be traced to the Eastern origins of Christianity, but if so all the other progeny of that stock, if any, must have died out. As this one had. Once, as a small boy, Alexander had been taken into a church in Sevastopol, and he thought he remembered now that he had experienced the very same sense of the alien, almost the inhuman. And yet there had been something about what had been here, and in innumerable other such places, that men had been ready to die for – long ago, as Mets had said. Whatever it had been, it must have changed remarkably over the years.
It seemed time to be off, but just then a bald-headed fellow in an apron came bustling up to the supervisor. He said in some agitation and with a strong English accent,
‘Sir, sir, there’s a crowd of soldiers outside. I think you’d better-’
At the door he found to his mild surprise that he had taken his cap off; he could not remember having done so. On his reappearance Ulmanis called to the men to tighten girths and be ready to march, and Warsky gently shooed away the small crowd of children who had gathered to sit in the saddles and to beg ?10 pieces. Alexander announced a tactical exercise for the return journey, naming a map-reference as assembly-point; no prizes were offered for first arrival there. Within a minute the churchyard was empty and the sound of hooves had faded. Suddenly the note of a bell came from the steeple, was repeated three or four times and then ceased, and the children on their way home wondered what it was.
7
When his day’s work was done, Ensign Petrovsky walked slowly across the park to ‘B’ Squadron mess. This was a small farmhouse built about the middle of the nineteenth century. On the ground floor there was a dining- room just big enough for the seven officers and up to three guests, a comfortable, low-ceilinged ante-room with a small bar in one corner, and an extensive kitchen and attachments. The upper floors provided good accommodation for the squadron commander, Major Yakir, and for his second-in-command, and accommodation for five subalterns. As one who slept out of mess except when too drunk or lazy or cross with his family or disinclined to face the weather to ride home, Alexander had the worst bedroom, according to him at his own wish, but in fact the major had so ruled without consulting him.
This evening, as on all such evenings, his standard-dress uniform, the military equivalent of a lounge suit, had been laid out on his cot by a brother-officer’s batman in return for money. He showered in the tiny second-floor bathroom, put on the uniform and went down to the ante-room, feeling, after his varied and strenuous day, as well physically as he had ever felt in his life. His mental and emotional states were hardly if at all more complicated: Theodore Markov was coming over that evening – was due shortly, in fact – and he knew he would be able to think of plenty of things to say to him.
A pleasant breeze was fluttering the blue-and-white gingham curtains of the ante-room. As Alexander came in, a handsome dark-haired young man of about his own age looked up from the long chintz-covered sofa that faced the window, his expression changing from a sullen gloom to a rather rigid cheerfulness. There was an empty glass on the arm of the sofa beside him.
‘Kind words of good advice would be wasted on you, would they?’
‘Completely, I’m afraid.’
‘Then I’ll save my breath.’ Alexander turned to the under-corporal mess waiter. ‘A vodka and a beer.’ Tonight was not an occasion for drinking deep. When the time came he signed the chit, carried a glass of dill-flavoured Ochotnitscha across to the other officer and took a thirsty pull at his own lager. This resembled only very generally the sometime product of the Northampton brewery whence it came, a famous drink made to a Danish formula under Danish direction and enjoyed all over what had been the kingdom. ‘We’ll call that six hundred
‘I’ll give it to you tomorrow; I seem to have left my cash upstairs. And it’ll be easier to settle up all at once.’
‘What? Oh, you mean you’d like another one.’
‘For the time being, yes.
‘Is this just on general principles, or has something out of the ordinary come up?’
‘Both, really,’ said Victor, at once reverting to his gloomy manner. ‘All days stink, but today stank specially.’
‘I thought all days did that too.’
‘That pig Ryumin – he told me this morning that if I didn’t pull myself together, as he chose to call it, he’d apply for a posting. I’d been giving him more or less a free hand with the troop, I thought that’s what somebody in his position would like, after all he’s been a sergeant longer than I’ve been commissioned, and now he says the troop is the worst mounted in the regiment and it’s all my fault. And before he’d finished one of my corporals came into the office and he didn’t stop.
‘That was very wrong of him.’
‘It was all very wrong of him. Dear God, perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps he was quite right. I can’t wait to get away from this vile country.’
‘Are you joking? It’s a beautiful country. Just look out of the window.’
‘Everybody’s miserable.’
‘Nonsense, that’s just how you’re feeling yourself at the moment. When you’re in the right mood you’ll see there’s nothing wrong with the place at all.’
‘Alexander, not everything done and said is because of someone’s mood. Sergeants don’t have moods.’
‘Of course they don’t; what do you think makes them into sergeants? With us, you’ll find moods are about as good a way of looking at things as any. You’ve finished that one too, I see. Why not have another? On me this time. – Ah, Boris, you’ve turned up at exactly the right moment as usual. What can I get you to drink?’
The newcomer was thirty years old, with close-cropped hair and a face that would have served unimprovably as the model for the Russian entry in some illustrated catalogue of racial types. Each epaulette of his standard- dress jacket, which was of inferior cut and material to those of the other two, bore a pair of nickel bars enclosing a rhomb, for this was the lieutenant-commissary of the squadron. He answered Alexander’s question in a deep,
