He straightened up, trampling on the pieces of torn paper littered around the heavy, closed trunk. He was fully dressed in his long greatcoat, neat black fur cap with ear-muffs and gray-blue Hetmanite badge, his sword belted to his side.

   On the long-distance departure track of the City's No. 1 Passenger Station the train was already standing, though still without a locomotive, like a caterpillar without a head. It was made up of nine cars, all shining with blindingly white electric light, due to leave at 1 a.m. carrying General von Bussow and his headquarters staff to Germany. They were taking Talberg with them; he had influence in the right quarters . . . The Hetman's ministry was a stupid, squalid little comic opera affair (Talberg liked to express himself in cutting, if unoriginal terms) - like the Hetman himself, for that matter. All the more squalid because . . .

   'Look, my dear (whisper) the Germans are leaving the Hetman in the lurch and it's extremely likely that Petlyura will march in ... and you know what that means . . .'

   Elena knew what that meant. Elena knew very well. In March 1917 Talberg had been the first - the first, you realise - to report to the military academy wearing a broad red armband. That was in the very first days of the revolution, when all the officers in the City turned to stone at the news from Petersburg and crept away down dark passages to avoid hearing about it. As a member of the Revolutionary Military Committee it had been none other than Talberg who had arrested the famous General Petrov. Towards the end of that momentous year many strange and wonderful things happened in the City and certain people began appearing -people who had no boots but who wore broad, baggy Ukrainian trousers called sharovary which showed beneath their army greatcoats. These people announced that they would not leave the City for the front on any account because the fighting was none of their affair and they intended to stay in the City. This irritated Talberg, who declared curtly that this was not what was required, that it was a squalid comic opera. And to a certain extent he turned out to be right: the results were operatic, though so much blood was shed that they were hardly comic. The men in baggy trousers were twice driven out of the City by some irregular regiments of troops who emerged from the forests and the plains from the direction of

   Moscow. Talberg said that the men in sharovary were mere adventurers and that the real roots of legitimate power were in Moscow, even though these roots were Bolshevik roots.

   But one day in March the Germans arrived in the City in their gray ranks, with red-brown tin bowls on their heads to protect them from shrapnel balls; and their hussars wore such fine busbies and rode on such magnificent horses that Talberg at once realised where the roots of power grew now. After a few heavy salvoes from the German artillery around the City the men from Moscow vanished somewhere beyond the blue line of the forests to cat carrion, and the men in sharovary slunk back in the wake of the Germans. This was a great surprise. Talberg smiled in embarrassment, but he was not afraid because as long as the Germans were there the sharovary behaved themselves, did not dare to kill anyone and even walked the streets with a certain wariness, like guests who were none too sure of themselves. Talberg said they had no roots, and for about two months he had no work to do. One day when he walked into Talberg's room, Nikolka Turbin could not help smiling: Talberg was seated and writing out grammatical exercises on a large sheet of paper, whilst in front of him lay a thin text-book printed on cheap gray paper:

   Ignatii Perpillo

   UKRANIAN GRAMMAR

   At Easter in April 1918 the electric arc-lights hummed cheerfully in the circus auditorium and it was black with people right up to the domed roof.