Alpha And Omega.
Posting #41.
“I
see Rus having exorcised the demons,
Crowned
with the tablets of the law,
It’s
all the same to me whether with a tsar or without a throne,
But
without a sword over the cups of the scales.”
Colonel Tsygalsky.
Continuing
the story of “Colonel Shchetkin” in Bulgakov’s White Guard, it was already twilight when Myshlayevsky’s men
“arrived at the Post,” bringing their dead with them, whom the others refused
to accept.
Myshlayevsky
proceeds:
“Only by nightfall did I find
Shchetkin’s car. First class, electricity!..”
[Electricity
is always connected in Bulgakov to V. V. Mayakovsky.]
“…A batman by the car: ‘They
[Shchetkin] are asleep.’”
Following
Myshlayevsky’s lead, his men start a racket, to wake up the colonel.
Bulgakov
writes:
“Shchetkin crawled out and started hedging: Ah, my God! Batmen, Shchi! Cognac! Complete rest. This is heroism. Ah,
such losses! But what can be done? Casualties! I am so worn-out! And he is
reeking of cognac from a mile away.”
The
reader meets this personage again already in the 2nd part of White Guard in the 8th chapter.
Bulgakov writes:
“Colonel Shchetkin wasn’t at the headquarters already since
morning. And he wasn’t there for the simple reason that there was no
headquarters anymore. On the night of the 14th, Shchetkin’s staff
moved back to the railway station of City-I, and spent the night at the hotel Rose of Istanbul, near the telegraph. And in the morning, two
aides of Colonel Shchetkin disappeared without a trace. An hour later Shchetkin
himself, having torn some [documents] to shreds, exited from the sealed Rose…”
(What
a difference with the “two white roses in a pool of red,” in Pontius Pilate, representing the two
perished outstanding Russian poets: A. A. Blok and N. S. Gumilev!)
“...but already not in a gray overcoat with shoulder-straps, but in
a shaggy civilian coat, and wearing a pirozhok hat. Nobody knows where these
had come from.”
I
wonder if the researcher is aware of who happens to be the prototype of this
scoundrel?
“Having hired a cabby, the civilian Shchetkin departed for Lipky
[the historically famous area in the center of Kiev], arrived at a narrow,
well-appointed apartment with furniture, rang the bell, kissed a plump golden
blonde, and took her to the dimly lit bedroom, where he whispered straight into
the rounded from fear eyes of the blonde:
All is finished! Oh, how
worn-out am I!
Colonel Shchetkin removed himself into the alcove and fell asleep
there after a cup of black coffee made by the hands of the golden blonde.”
Considering
that Bulgakov sort of borrows the “golden blonde” from A. A. Blok’s poetry, it
may be easy to become confused. But I hurry to reassure the researcher that it
is not so. The last name of Colonel Shchetkin gives us an indication of that.
This is what it is all about.
Bulgakov
continues:
“None of it had been known to the cadets of the first unit
[commanded by Nai-Turs]. Pity though. Had they been aware of that, they might
perhaps be visited by an inspiration, and instead of spinning under a
shrapneled sky they might have gone to the cozy little flat in Lipky, from
which they might have extracted a sleepy Colonel Shchetkin, and taking him out,
might have hanged him on a lantern exactly across the street from the apartment
of that golden person…”
Harsh!
No clue yet?
But
the solution could not be easier. The solution to Bulgakov’s puzzle is hidden
in the name! But in order to put two and two together the researcher must jump
from Alpha into Omega, that is, to Bulgakov’s last novel Master and Margarita.
After
talking on the phone with Azazello, Margarita heard something. –
“Margarita hung up and then in the next room something wooden
hobbled and started beating at the door. Margarita opened it and a floor brush,
its bristles up, dancing, flew into the bedroom, drumming a tap on the floor,
kicking and rushing to get through the window. Margarita squealed with delight
and mounted the floor brush. Only now it entered the rider’s mind that in all
this ado she neglected to get dressed. She galloped toward the bed and snatched
the first thing she saw: some kind of blue nightshirt, she waved it like a
standard, and flew out the window. The waltz over the garden thundered even
louder.
Margarita slipped down from the window and
saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the bench. He had as though frozen on it, and in
complete bewilderment was listening to the screams and uproar coming from the
lit bedroom of the neighbors upstairs.
Farewell,
Nikolai Ivanovich! – yelled
Margarita, dancing [naked] before Nikolai Ivanovich.
The man gasped and crawled along the bench,
supporting himself with his hands and knocking off his briefcase to the ground.
Farewell
forever! I am flying away! – yelled Margarita, outshouting the waltz.
Here she figured out that she would no
longer need the nightgown, and, ominously laughing, she dropped it on the head
of Nikolai Ivanovich. Blinded, Nikolai Ivanovich fell off the bench onto the
bricks of the walkway.”
…It
is all clear now, isn’t it?
Having
solved the character of Shchetkin, I was long wondering why M. A. Bulgakov
would call him “Colonel,” considering that he represents the poetry of Osip
Mandelstam as “shredded paper” in the 18th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors.
And then I found the answer in Marina Tsvetaeva’s essay My Reply to Osip Mandelstam
“Osip Mandelstam. The Noise
of Time.
The book opened on the Barmas
of Law, and the eyes attracted by the opening letter fell upon the words:
“Colonel Tsygalsky.”
Colonel Tsygalsky? I know Colonel Tsygalsky. Nothing stands out.
But I know Colonel Tsygalsky. The first glance was echoed by the first sound. “Colonel Tsygalsky was coddling his halfwit
weeping sister and an ailing eagle, miserable, blind, with broken legs, the eagle
of the Volunteer Army. In one corner of his abode, as though unseen, stirred to
the hissing of the primus an emblematic eagle. Into another [corner], wrapping
herself in a military coat or in a scarf, the sister squeezed herself, looking
like a crazy fortuneteller.”
In the meantime, I read not believing my eyes. This is what from
the deepest bottom, except for the bottom of the Black Sea, my memory serves me:
Colonel Tsygalsky, Army volunteer, poet, friend of Max Voloshin and
of Mandelstam himself. In 1919 he was in the Crimea, had an ailing wife and two
wonderful boys. He was needy but helping others. I have never seen him, but
when someone returning on 1921 from the Crimea presented me with a book of
verses titled The Arc, of all the
poems I was attracted by a certain poem by the poet Tsygalsky. I have retained
its ending in memory:
“I
see Rus having exorcised the demons,
Crowned
with the tablets of the law,
It’s
all the same to me whether with a tsar or without a throne,
But
without a sword over the cups of the scales.”
To
be continued…
***
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