Good night trucks

Lev Nikulin's story on the "Proletkult" site

http://primus-mag.ru/proletkult/evakuatsiya-rasskaz-lva-nikulina.html

Evacuation

, is the last echelon leaving the city.

There was a glow over the city, and a six-story house on the main street burned like a torch, throwing twisted red-hot sheets of roofing iron into the sky.

The house was on fire, shining for a long time on the deserted street. As if in thought, resting their radiators against the iron curtains of the stores, there were abandoned trucks scattered from the mountain.

The train was loaded on a freight train. Green incandescent lamps shone rarely and dimly, and on the cars one could read the oblique inscriptions in chalk:

"Headquarters of the Life Guards Artillery Brigade."

"Counterintelligence of the river forces of the south".

"Ataman's Life Guards"…

In addition to the usual classroom and freight wagons, there was a car with twenty-three suspects who were listed as counterintelligence.

The heating plant was locked with a heavy rusty arch lock. The escorts in sheepskin coats and steel French helmets slept on the braking platform.

When the first cavalrymen with red ribbons crossed across the quarry crossed the chain bridge, the train "fifty-two", slowly getting out of the empty trains on the tracks, moved into the damp November night. And two locomotives with machine guns on tenders gave full speed to the heavily laden train.

The first carriage from the locomotive was the commandant's one. The second had Belgian flags on the front and back grounds.

Half sheet of parchment on the car doors. Words washed away by the rain:

“According to the agreement of the high command, the chief commanders of the region ... provided ... to foreign citizens” ...

And two seals - the Belgian Consulate General and the head of the region.

Nine foreigners were traveling in this car - Belgians and Frenchmen, an Englishman - a correspondent of the Daily News, two elderly ladies, a boy of six years and a sugar factory Kagansky.

Mr. Consul Giraud, in a grey-blue jacket with a round velvet collar and night slippers, is sitting in Mr. Kagansky's compartment. Candles in candlesticks, snow-white napkins on the tables in the compartment, brand new leather suitcases and travel bags on the shelves in the places due to luggage.

Travel crockery shines with crystal and nickel in the cellar. There is a nice red wine in a thermos. Kagansky carefully wipes faceted crystal cups with a napkin.

- Strategically, I would call the situation favorable. During the night we will make at least 120 km. I take the minimum. But what bandits...

Kagansky smiles sadly...

— Are you surprised?

Correct and independent Monsieur Giraud is forced to upset his interlocutor.

- As a representative of a friendly power, I cannot hide from my government the saddest ... the saddest conclusions ...

Kagansky continues, so as not to bother Mr. Consul:

- The last degree of the fall. You see for yourself, my dear.

— Clearly, it's hard to be Russian... National honor, dignity... empty words.

Monsieur Giraud purses his lips sadly and runs his hand over his stomach:

— Victims, victims and victims. You can understand, you can forgive, if it were not fruitless. If for the sake of the fatherland, for the sake of order and law... yes...

Then, with restrained sympathy, he shakes Kagansky's hand.

- Good night.

Platforms with trucks and a platform with an armored car "Boyarin" at the tail of the echelon. In front of the trucks there is a caravan with arrested people who are registered with counterintelligence.

They didn't turn on the light in the car. Twenty-three people lie and sit on the chipped floor, on the spat-stained rotten straw. A strong spirit from the casings and shag of the peasants of the village of Shpanova. After the fire of the economy, the cavalry and infantry took the village with battle. Some were condemned on the spot, but for some reason these were driven into the city by state guards. When both the infantry and the cavalry had to leave the city, at night the peasants were led 24 km away. to a freight station and locked up in a wagon. And now the axles are buzzing along the rails, shaking the car vigorously. Twenty-three people in a row, peasants and townspeople, young and old, healthy and sick, and women. Arsenal workers - Taras and Yura, the compositor Volkov, nicknamed Volchok, wounded in the side during landing. The guard wounded with a bayonet for a strong word. No clean rags were found, and the wound was bandaged with an embroidered Ukrainian towel and Volchok was laid on his healthy side. Lying down, rarely moaning and trembling with feverish, small tremors. Then there were also the captive cadet Mitya and Nukhim Katz, a boy from the printing house - they took him because they found two newspapers stale from the time of the Reds in a chest. But rather because he was very swarthy, eyes like olives, and protruding ears upright.

II

Gray damp. A train stands by the goods area, glowing with yellow rectangles of windows. In a dim mass behind the three tracks is the station, dark and deserted, and across the tracks there are black, legible letters "Beavers." In the first-class hall there are broken marble buffets, dung, brick and clay. On the floor, behind a double row of helmeted soldiers, are twenty-three men.

Kerosene lamp - lightning on an overturned bucket shines brightly and cheerfully on garbage, on hunched shadows in the corner, on the convoy from wall to wall. On the pavement under the landing stage there is the clatter and rustle of many feet, and talking and coughing. Shaking the ground, heavy trucks roll down from the platform to the goods station.

Gloom, haze and darkness of the night are turning grey. Between the arrays of buildings and the boxes of wagons there are gaps, gray dawn stripes, and the day is added drop by drop, interfering with the night and diluting the dark damp night ... And while people are busy at the cars and wagons, day rises above them with a triple row of bright clouds and a blue gap in the east.

Four trucks and an armored car are parked on the highway and behind the station, turning towards a dark forest line on the horizon. A heavy iron mesh is thrown over the river from bank to bank by a railway bridge. Along the embankment, the rails are drawn into the iron mesh of the bridge over the green reeds boiling in the wind.

In the morning, Mr. Giraud, Consul General of Belgium, cautiously makes his way between red, wet, dog-smelling overcoats. Monsieur Giraud stretches his legs, breathes in the invigorating morning air and eagerly listens to the cornet Nikolai Baskakov. First, they run into a huddled crowd of soldiers at the wagons, where they distribute dry black bread, rations for a day, into the slot. Then they turn back and go out onto the highway, where there are four trucks and an armored car "Boyarin".

- We have almost a day. A small expedition for food to the nearest villages is expected.

- Why not buy here in the same place, say, in the bazaar?

Commandant's adjutant, cornet Baskakov stumbles slightly.

- The peasants are intimidated. The Reds are advancing, you have to buy locally. The Consul General does not mind, and they return to the platform. Giraud sadly points to significant destruction ... In the first class hall, he notices the arrested and escorts.

- Arrested Bolsheviks. At eleven o'clock a meeting of the field military-judicial commission, which will decide ...

Mister Giraud examines the people sitting and lying behind the double chain of escorts and then sighs vaguely...

— Pitiful people.

Madame Richard, a quiet old woman in an old-fashioned plush mantilla and a flat, dish-like hat, stands with her pupil, M. Giraud's son, by the carriage. A lean Englishman, in greenish square glasses, gets out of the carriage, exchanges greetings with M. Giraud, and talks about the advantages of his photographic apparatus. In the meantime, at the window of the control room, General Gabaev, fussy and choking from a scream, is shaking a curly, ruddy railway worker by the collar of his jacket.

- Maneuverable engine! Your mother, maneuverable locomotive, scoundrel!

Then he throws the railroad worker against the wall with a flourish and, having calmed down, asks almost affectionately:

— Are there any luggage ropes?

— That's right!

- Hang up! - and runs away, rolling like a ball, on short, shuffling legs.

And in the station garden, by the fountain with the stork, two men in steel helmets are fixing a noose. The railway worker looks at the fountain, at the stork, at the loop that is being fitted on the crossbar of the children's swing. Gradually, the blush on the cheeks dissolves into an inhuman pallor, and heavy drops roll from the temples.

Ten minutes later, a lean Englishman behind the fence of the railway garden carefully adjusts the camera on folding crane legs and takes a picture from a children's swing and a corpse hanging low above the ground, a corpse in a railwayman's jacket. Madame Richard looks with myopic eyes at the children's swing and suddenly loses her umbrella, pushes her son in front of Monsieur Giraud and leaves, covering his face with a plush mantilla.

Still no maneuverable locomotive.

III

Three machine-gun muzzles toss and turn in the cutouts of the armored car "Boyarin". People smeared with oil and soot are visible through the parted doors. In the lead truck, differently dressed officers in astrakhan round caps-kubankas. They have Caucasian checkers in silver and carbines. The Cossack Yesaul Kolesov is in command, in a white beshmet and a white shaggy hat, quite similar to a Cossack, if not for the glass of his glasses playing in the sun.

The clouds have long settled in the north, and two-thirds of the sky have turned blue, and the sun easily dries up puddles and deep ruts squeezed out in the black soil.

The buglers are playing, and cadets and Cossacks are running up the wide steps from the station and climbing onto the trucks. Car horns shy away with hoarse squeals and an armored car whistles with a rattling whistle.

Yesaul Kolesov is put on his hands and he shouts, waving his arms:

— Lupus eagles! Pigeons! Your mother . .. With God!

An armored car turns around on a narrow highway and slowly rolls forward, showing the Slavic letters "Boyarin" in a wreath of St. George's ribbons. Five powerful engines rumble, and five cars with regular intervals between them move in a column towards the crowd of mourners and, passing it, pass along a tangent line, directly onto the highway.

The first death, the first corpse, pulling the rope and hanging low above the ground, above the yellow leaves of the station garden. Under the canopies of the landing stage, in the empty halls of the station, mischievous shots are fired, mischievous abuse hangs. Bullies waddle around, overcoats thrown back, hand on unfastened holster, swearing, looking for quarrels, pressing on the convoy in the hall where the arrested are driven into a corner.

— Come on!.. Beat!.. Escort to mother!..

— Chinese ceremonies! Come on to us!

- Hit the skull once! Beat them, Drozdovites!

In a torn Circassian coat, a Caucasian is torn through a chain:

- Re-zhim, re-zhim, regime, regime of all . ..

In the void, high under the ceiling, the rumble and thunder of voices and the song:
From the Kuban campaign
Drozdovsky was walking glorious Regiment…

Looks like mischief.

But now the convoy has been moved into a corner, and a Caucasian is squealing, throwing the convoys aside. The clinking of glass, and through the broken window a loud, roaring, drunken-cheerful voice:

— Not here, damn it!.. Pull it on the way!.. There!..

A whirlpool, a seething muddy stream of overcoats, a ring of arms, rifle butts and sabers around twenty-three people, and suddenly they all fall out at once into a breach in the wall that used to be a door.

And again there is silence in the empty, smashed hall, and only a muffled echo, gunfire, hubbub and an inhuman and unanimal roar came out.

Mr. Giraud has a magnificent Zeiss. From the platform of the car he can clearly see the ring of guards and the second ring of people in hats and caps with multi-colored bands pulling them together. He sees a Caucasian dancing, brandishing a saber, but he sees even better the people in the very core of the crazy crowd. Peasant rough-cloth scrolls, blue blouses, caps and tattered urban jackets. Then he sees that the guards are throwing themselves in a ball at a fallen man who has fallen behind. And the man shouts in a surprisingly sonorous voice: “Bastards! I'm wounded!" Silver rays play in the air. Monsieur Giraud lowers the Zeiss, he sees nothing more, but hears discordant volleys. The guards, officers and soldiers are returning. A young volunteer, pale as a clown in disguise, unloads a Colt into the air, smiling or grimacing. Giraud leaves, an Englishman with a photographic camera walks straight into the crowd, walks with long steps towards the high bank of the river. Albert Giraud listens to the mischievous shooting on the tracks and says with some irritation:

- Everything seems to be done. It's time to stop.

In the evening, an Englishman locks himself in the lavatory, lights a red lantern, and develops Kodak films for a long time. And an hour later he shows the negatives. On a black film with white shadows are trees, a children's swing and a hanged man. Another negative is the high bank of the river, the bridge, reeds and corpses on the cliff. Ten pictures were taken. This is meant for an English illustrated magazine.

The wind brings heavy blue autumn clouds.

On the high bank, a white greyhound howls, which has run away from the train. The corpses were thrown off the cliff and scattered down the black earth slope near the reeds.

Late at night - anxiety and panic. People are running from all the cars. On the other side of the station, a wandering white beam of a searchlight breaks through the thick night. They often shoot around the echelon and on the tracks. The white beam jumps along the highway, advancing, grabbing from the darkness of the roof, the tower, the pumping station and the crowd on the steps of the station.

Cracking and tilting, the truck rolls down to the station. People pour in, falling right into the crowd, choking from the scream.

- Ambush!

- Detour!

Overcoats, shoulder straps, Cossack hats, bayonets, butts boil in a white frozen beam like an anthill, a key ...

On the landing of the carriage for foreigners, Giraud and an Englishman in a striped flannel night suit. Crazy fuss. Hissing and whistling, a locomotive rides along the rails, fastening the cars on the go. They climb on the move, officers and soldiers and women hang on the platforms.

Giraud sees the platform immediately empty. On the platform only Giraud, an Englishman and an unknown officer with a white George and a university badge on his unbuttoned jacket. M. Giraud goes to the officer who is standing by the overturned baggage cart. With dignity, he politely says to the officer:

— What is actually happening?..

The officer does not answer, turns pale and seems to be smiling. Then, in front of the consul's eyes, he draws his head into his shoulders and presses the barrel of the revolver to his temple. At the same time, there is a crackle of a shot, and the officer leans back, bending over, and slides off the overturned baggage cart.

The Consul General returns to his carriage. He clutches his head, rubs his temples, and, wincing painfully, says to the Englishman and the others:

— I don't understand anything... But a minute later he comes to his senses and falls asleep under a warm Scottish blanket. This is because train fifty-two is finally leaving the Beavers.

It got cold with the dawn. The earth got stronger, and four trucks and the armored car "Boyarin" wrote tracks on the swampy highway with strong ruts. As if tipsy, rolling its front wheels onto the station steps, there was an abandoned truck.

Above, the earth has become stronger from frost, but deeper - the same fat, rich black soil. They easily take spades, and the pit is already a arshin deep, a quadrangular pit, two fathoms by three, near the railway bridge, on the high bank of the river. From here you can see sharp reeds, the steppe, and islands in the steppe - old poplars decapitated by thunderstorms. People are running, railroad workers, villagers, women chasing children from a quadrangular pit on a high bank are swarming.

Women's handkerchiefs tied with horns sway, lament over the dead. Twenty three. Twenty-fourth - a dabbler, the first guitarist and dancer at the station - lies under the station tarpaulin.

- Oh, they didn't have mercy, they beat them to death! From the same well, every person has ridna mats, and maybe a zhinka and a child ... Why are they out there ... They seem kind people ... for what ... Oh, villains, villains, come before you ...

Deeper the pit, settle down, sink diggers, and by the time when the frosty sun is over the steppe, over the crippled skeletons of wagons, over the abandoned tail of echelon 52, the diggers are already waist-deep in the pit.

In the evening there are many horsemen and footmen in front of the station. Hefty and gloomy, differently dressed guys stand by the armored car and watch how they scrape steel with a chisel, scratching the Slavic letters “Boyarin” and soon wide white stripes remain from Slavic letters and St.

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