Alpha And Omega.
Posting #35.
“Look, he knows it
all! But you haven’t even been there!”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
Returning
to Bulgakov’s novella Fateful Eggs,
why does Bulgakov describe one of the visitors of Professor Persikov from
Lubyanka in the same way as he describes the man helping the hetman to change
his clothes in the novel White Guard?
Also
the second man of the three visitors of Professor Persikov draws the
researcher’s attention:
“The second one, short, terribly gloomy, was wearing civilian
clothes, but these civilian clothes on him were looking as though they
constrained him.”
An
impression is being created that Bulgakov splits Lieutenant Shervinsky into
these two men. At the same time as the “french” and the “reithosen” coincide –
both are military: Shervinsky, who is helping the hetman to transform his
appearance, and the first of Professor Persikov’s visitors from Lubyanka, the
second visitor, the “perfectionist,” is described by Bulgakov with the full memory
of what he had written about Shervinsky in White
Guard:
“The second one... was wearing civilian clothes, but these civilian
clothes on him were looking as though they constrained him.”
To
begin with, this tells us that the man in the civilian clothes is also a
military man, like the first one. Secondly, Bulgakov wants to draw the
researcher’s attention, writing about Shervinsky:
“The black suit fit him flawlessly.”
Intelligence
officers, like actors, must fit into the role they are playing. That’s why
describing the second man as “short” and “terribly gloomy,” Bulgakov may well
be describing M. Yu. Lermontov, who was of short stature and quite likely,
being a military man, disliked civilian clothes.
As
a writer, Bulgakov does not make mistakes, that’s why if the reader comes
across repetitions in his writings, they have to be deliberate repetitions. And
the only question must be why they are there.
The
fact that Lieutenant Shervinsky may have been assigned to the hetman even
before the event of changing clothes can also explain his strange behavior and
also his conversations as early as in the 3rd chapter of White Guard. Always referring to Prince
Belorukov (Dolgorukov), Shervinsky, still in the game, is trying to convince
his fellow players that the hetman’s plan is correct to allow 5% of the
“eternal ferment” “to blabber in their movi tongue or whatever.”
After
the war, according to Shervinsky, “the hetman would have solemnly laid Ukraine down to the feet of His Imperial
Majesty Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich.”
Repeating
“His Imperial
Majesty Sovereign Emperor” practically twice, Bulgakov also draws
our attention to the fact that Shervinsky’s prototype is M. Yu. Lermontov, who was against autocracy. Which is why
it is becoming clear that telling his make-believe tale-legend about the Tsar’s
survival represents Shervinsky’s alibi. And all his talk about a non-existent Emperor
who had managed to survive with the help of his son’s devoted tutor Monsieur
Gillard and a few officers who had smuggled him to Asia, whence to Singapore
and by sea to Europe. And now our Emperor is a guest of Emperor Wilhelm… – this
is all “weaving lace,” to use Blokian language. As Karas gets into the conversation
questioning the veracity of Shervinsky’s tale:
“How’s that? Haven’t they
also toppled Wilhelm?”
But
an unfazed Shervinsky keeps telling the tale he started:
“They are both guests in
Denmark, and the Most Auguste Empress-Mother Maria Fedorovna is with them. And
if you do not believe me, here’s what: I was told this personally by the Prince
[i.e. Prince Belorukov, Commander of the Russian Forces in Ukraine] himself.”
So,
this is why Bulgakov gives N. S. Gumilev/Karas such a name. Fedor Nikolayevich
Stepanov. Fedor comes from the Empress-Mother Maria Fedorovna. Nikolayevich
comes from the Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich. And Stepanov comes from Gumilev’s
own patronymic: Stepanovich.
And
even the words of Lieutenant Myshlayevsky do not persuade him. To Shervinsky’s
remark: “Well,
and I know it all!” – Myshlayevsky is surprised:
“Look, he knows it all!
But you haven’t even been there!”
“Shervinsky wasn’t particularly drunk.” Having brought two bottles of vodka with him – for his
friends – it was his friends who drank too much, mixing vodka with wine. All
except Shervinsky. What all of them remembered though was that sheer nonsense
about the surviving Emperor and a very great Hetman Skoropadsky. Hence the two
bottles of vodka. Mixed with wine, vodka did the job.
“…After Emperor Wilhelm
graciously talked to hetman’s retinue, the drape was pulled aside, and our
Sovereign entered the hall, assuring those in attendance that he was going
personally to put himself at the head of the Army and lead it into the heart of
Russia – to Moscow.”
Because
of such a coincidence of two military men both wearing a french and reithosen
in White Guard and Fateful Eggs, I’d like to return to an
interesting sentence in that same 3rd chapter of White Guard:
“Karas' golden crossed cannon on his crumpled
shoulder-straps were regular nothing alongside the pale cavalry shoulder-straps
and the carefully pressed blue breeches of Shervinsky…”
Obviously
this is possible to figure out as long as we figure out who is who in these
personages. In the character of Shervinsky, the features of M. Yu. Lermontov
are clearly coming through. As for Karas, here we see the features of N. S.
Gumilev, who followed Lermontov. Specifically, in his gradation of poets,
Gumilev put the category “warrior-clerk” above the rest.
But
this tells me more. Bulgakov has a purpose in presenting the scene of the
hetman’s change of attire. And for some reason in misleadingly calling Major
von Schratt (into whom the hetman was transformed, wrapped in gauze bandages) –
“mysterious”!
What
is so mysterious here when the reader already knows who that Major is?
Bulgakov
points to the following passage in White
Guard:
“…In a small narrow room on the ground floor of the palace, a man
in the uniform of an artillery colonel found himself at the telephone
apparatus. He warily closed the door to the small whitewashed communications
room which looked like none of the other palace rooms, and only then picked up
the receiver. He asked the sleepless girl at the station to connect him to the
number 212. Having been put through, he said merci,” sternly and discomposedly pinched his eyebrows and asked
intimately and somewhat hollowly: Is this
the Headquarters of the Mortar Division?”
In
spite of the fact that in both halls adjacent to the hetman’s bedroom where the
transformation was taking place, there were telephones – yes, there were
telephones, but... no privacy, which was apparently so necessary to the “man in
the uniform of an artillery colonel.”
To
be continued…
***
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