The White Guard

Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second.

Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter with snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shepherds' star, eventide Venus; and Mars - quivering, red.

But in days of blood as in days of peace the years fly like an arrow and the thick frost of a hoary white December, season of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, joy and glittering snow, overtook the young Turbins unawares.

For the reigning head of the family, their adored mother, was no longer with them.

A year after her daughter Elena Turbin had married Captain Sergei Talberg, and in the week in which her eldest son Alexei Turbin returned from years of grim and disastrous campaigning to the Ukraine, to the City of Kiev and home, the white coffin with the body of their mother was carried away down the slope of St Alexei's Hill towards the Embankment, to the little church of the St Nicholas the Good.

Their mother's funeral had been in May, the cherry and acacia blossom brushing against the narrow lancet windows of the church.

His cope glittering and flashing in the golden sunlight, their parish priest Father Alexander had stumbled from grief and embarrassment while the deacon, his face and neck mauve, vested in beaten gold down to the tips of his squeaky boots, gloomily intoned the words of the funeral service for the mother who was leaving her children.

Alexei, Elena, Talberg, Anyuta the maid who had grown up in the Turbins' house, and young Nikolka, stunned by the death, a lock of hair falling over his right eyebrow, stood at the foot of the ancient brown ikon of St Nicholas.

Set deep on either side of his long bird-like nose, Nikolka's blue eyes had a wounded, defeated look.

Occasionally he raised them towards the ikon screen, to the vaulted apse above the altar where that glum and enigmatic old man, God, towered above them and winked.

Why had he inflicted such a wrong on them?

Wasn't it unjust?

Why did their mother have to be taken away, just when they had all been reunited, just when life seemed to be growing more tolerable?

As he flew away through the crack that had opened up in the sky, God vouchsafed no answer, leaving Nikolka in doubt whether the things that happened in life were always necessary and always for the best.

The service over, they walked out on to the ringing flagstones of the porch and escorted their mother across the vast City to the cemetery, to where their father had long lain under a black marble cross.

And there they buried their mother . . .

For many years before her death, in the house at No. 13 St Alexei's Hill, little Elena, Alexei the eldest and baby Nikolka had grown up in the warmth of the tiled stove that burned in the dining-room.