“I am Colonel Tarabas,” said Nicholas. “I have been charged with the formation of a regiment in this town. I shall also be taking over the command of the town until further orders. For the present I should be obliged if you will inform me where I shall find billets for myself and my twenty-six men.”
The old major remained quietly beside the door through which he had just entered. It was many a long day since he had heard talk like this. It was the soldier’s music, familiar to him since boyhood and heard no more since the outbreak of the revolution, a melody he had thought never to hear again. The grey-haired major — Kisilaika was his name — felt his limbs stiffen under Tarabas’s words. He felt his bones hardening, his poor old bones; his muscles tightened and obeyed the military language they knew.
“Very good, sir,” said Major Kisilaika. “The main barracks lie half a mile outside the town. But I’m afraid the commissariat has run very low. I don’t know—”
“I’m not going another step,” said Colonel Tarabas. “What food there is I want brought here. Who are all those fellows loafing about the station? Let them bring it. I’ll place a guard at each exit.”
And Tarabas returned to his men.
“Nobody in this station is to leave it,” cried Tarabas.
And there was general consternation. Pure curiosity and unthinking idleness had brought them there to gather near the strange newcomers and gaze at them. And now they were prisoners. For a long time they had been accustomed to bearing hunger and thirst and privations of every kind. But freedom had been theirs. Now at one blow even their freedom had been taken from them. They were prisoners. They no longer even dared to look about them. Of Tarabas’s former audience one only, a little skinny civilian Jew, inspired by timorous recklessness or the hope of God knows what miracle, attempted to gain one of the exits. But on the instant Tarabas shot at the fugitive — and the poor thing fell; with a loud, unhuman bellow he fell down, hit in the left thigh in the precise spot at which Tarabas had aimed. The thin, bony little head with its sparse goatee lay stretched face upwards right on the edge of a pile of gravel which was used to show the engine-drivers where to stop, and the wretched boots with their ripped soles and misshapen toes pointed towards the glass roof. Tarabas himself went over to the casualty, picked up the feather-weight Jew, and carried him across both arms, as he would have carried a thin little birch tree, into the office of the station headquarters. There was complete silence. When the report of the shot had died away, not another sound was to be heard. It was as though it had hit everyone there, and struck them dumb and numb. Tarabas laid the weightless body of his now unconscious victim on the major’s paper-strewn table, ripped up the Jew’s ancient, shiny, dark-grey trouser-leg, pulled out his own handkerchief, inspected the wound, and said to the startled major: “Flesh-wound!” And then he called out: “Bandage!” And one of his men who had been a hairdresser and performed the ambulance duties to the troop came in and began to render swift and careful first-aid to the wounded Jew.
The paralysed spectators in the station were some forty in number. Tarabas had them lined up. He put two of his men in charge of them. They were to go and fetch food. The remainder stayed on the wide platform in the sunshine and waited. Tarabas stood at the edge of the platform and looked at the bluely gleaming, narrow, hurrying railway-tracks; meanwhile, indoors, in the major’s office, the wounded Jew was coming to himself again. His thin and feeble wailing could be heard through the open door. In the blue sky sparrows twittered.
It was not long before the men came back with food. The clatter of tin vessels and the regular tramp of men’s boots could be heard. They came into sight. The distribution of the meal began. The first bowlful was for Tarabas. In the midst of the opaque grey soup rose a piece of dark-brown meat like a rock out of the sea. Tarabas pulled a spoon out of his boot, and at the same moment his men followed suit. The forty prisoners who had gone with them stood by and did not move or speak. Hunger dwelt in their wide eyes. The water gathered in their mouths. The busy clatter of tin spoons against the bowls was almost more than they could bear. Some of them tried, by putting their fingers in their ears, to shut out the sound. Tarabas was the first to put down his spoon. To the prisoner standing nearest him he handed the rest of his meal, together with the spoon. And, without a word from him, all his men did likewise. Each put down his bowl with a jerk and handed it to the prisoner nearest him. The whole proceeding took place without a word. There was now no sound but the clatter of tin spoons against bowls, smacking of lips, teeth chewing, and sparrows twittering under the glass roof of the station.
When everyone had eaten, Colonel Tarabas ordered the march into the town. The men who had been thus suddenly and accidentally taken prisoners found their changed situation suddenly more tolerable. They let themselves be drawn up between Tarabas’s troops. And flanked by a living wall of armed soldiery they marched, contented and indifferent, many of them joyfully, under Tarabas’s command into the little town of Koropta.
They marched through the half-dried silvery mud of the roads — and the geese, the ducks, and the children scattered before them with loud and frightened cries. The little regiment spread a strange terror. The townsfolk of Koropta did not know what new kind of war could now have broken out. For the march of Colonel Tarabas upon their town seemed like a new kind of war to them. Swift and terrible rumours had flown out in advance of Tarabas. He was the new king of the new country, said some. And others declared he was the son of the Tsar himself, and had come to take revenge for his father’s fate.
But as for the Jews, of whom a few hundred lived in Koropta, they were all busily occupied, this being a Friday and the Sabbath drawing near on holy feet, in shutting up their tiny shops with all possible haste, and in the firm belief that their Sabbath could place a check upon the course of history, just as it did upon their businesses.
Tarabas, at the head of his dangerous troop, did not understand why the little shops were being shut so hurriedly, and took it as a personal affront. The gossiping women got up from their doorsteps as he approached. The iron rattle of chains and bolts and padlocks on the wooden shops were heard. Here and there the dark shadow of a Jew flitted by, coming towards Tarabas, clinging to the meagre protection the houses afforded. Before his eyes and all along his route, Tarabas saw nothing but fugitives. That anyone could be afraid of him was something he could not understand. And as he marched on, care and worry gained upon him. Yes, the townlet of Koropta had care in store for him.
He halted outside the government building, mounted the broad steps, followed by two of his armed men, and opened a folding door behind which he assumed that he would find the chief of police. And there indeed he sat, a pitiful, aged man, haggard and diminutive and lost in the mighty chair of office, a figure belonging to a bygone age.
“I have taken over the command of this town,” said Tarabas. “I am to form a new regiment here. Let me have a list of the principal buildings. Where are the barracks? Then you had best go home.”
“With pleasure,” said the little old creature. And began, in a cobwebby, extraordinarily thin voice, which seemed to come out of an antique cupboard, to recite what had been asked of him. Then he rose. His bald, yellowish, spotted skull hardly came up to the top of the chair-back. He took his hat and stick from the rack, bowed and smiled, and was gone.
“Sit down there!” said Tarabas to one of his escort. “Until I come back, you are the chief of police!” And Tarabas went from one of the few public departments in Koropta to the other, making a clean sweep everywhere. Then he took possession of the empty barracks, and talked to the assembled prisoners in the yard.