On the street the Turbins' apartment was on the second floor, but so steep was the hill behind the house that their back door opened directly on to the sloping yard, where the house was brushed and overhung by the branches of the trees growing in the little garden that clung to the hillside. The back-gardens filled up with snow, and the hill turned white until it became one gigantic sugar-loaf. The house acquired a covering like a White general's winter fur cap; on the lower floor (on the street side it was the first floor, whilst at the back, under the Turbins' verandah, it was the basement) the disagreeable Vasily Lisovich-an engineer, a coward and a bourgeois - lit his flickering little yellow lamps, whilst upstairs the Turbins' windows shone brightly and cheerfully.

   One evening Alexei and Nikolka went out into the yard for some firewood.

   'Hm, damn little firewood left. Look, they've been pinching it again.'

   A cone of bluish light burst out from Nikolka's pocket flashlight, and they could see clearly where the planking of the woodshed had been wrenched away and clumsily pushed back into place from the outside.

   'I'd shoot the swine if I caught them, by God I would. Why don't we keep watch out here tonight? I know it's that shoemaker's

   family from Number 11. And they've got much more firewood than we have, damn them!'

   'Oh, to hell with them . . . Come on, let's go.'

   The rusty lock creaked, a pile of logs tumbled down towards the two brothers and they lugged them away. By nine that evening the tiles of Saardam were too hot to touch.

   The gleaming surface of that remarkable stove bore a number of historic inscriptions and drawings, painted on at various times during the past year by Nikolka and full of the deepest significance:

   If people tell you the Allies are coming to help us out of this mess, don't believe them. The Allies are swine.

   He's a pro-Bolshevik!

   A drawing of a head of Momus, written underneath it:

   Trooper Leonid Yurievich.

   News is bad and rumours humming - People say the Reds are coming!

   A painting of a face with long drooping moustaches, a fur hat with a blue tassel. Underneath:

   Down with Petlyura!

   Written by Elena and the Turbins' beloved childhood friends - Myshlaevsky, Karas and Shervinsky - in paint, ink and cherry-juice were the following gems:

   Elena loves us all,

   the thin, the fat and the tall.

   Lena dear, have booked tickets for Aida Box No. 8, right.

   On the twelfth day of May 1918 I fell in love.

   You are fat and ugly.

   After a remark like that I shall shoot myself.

   (followed by an extremely realistic drawing of an automatic)

   Long live Russia!

   Long live the Monarchy!

   June. Barcarolle.

   All Russia will recall the day of glorious Borodino.

   Then printed in capitals, in Nikolka's hand:

   1 hereby forbid the scribbling of nonsense on this stove. Any comrade found guilty of doing so will be shot and deprived of civil rights, signed: Abraham Goldblatt,

   Ladies, Gentlemen's and Women's Tailor.

   Commissar, Podol District Committee.

   30th January 1918.

   The patterned tiles were luxuriously hot, the black clock going tonk-tank, tonk-tank, as it had done for thirty years. The elder Turbin, clean-shaven and fair-haired, grown older and more sombre since October 25th 1917, wearing an army officer's tunic with huge bellows pockets, blue breeches and soft new slippers, in his favourite attitude - in an upright armchair. At his feet on a stool Nikolka with his forelock, his legs stretched out almost as far as the sideboard - the dining-room was not big - and shod in his buckled boots. Gently and softly Nikolka strummed at his beloved guitar, vaguely . . . everything was still so confused. The City was full of unease, of vague foreboding . . .

   On his shoulders Nikolka wore sergeant's shoulder-straps to which were sewn the white stripes of an officer cadet, and on his left sleeve a sharp-pointed tricolor chevron. (Infantry, No. 1

   Detachment, 3rd Squad. Formed four days ago in view of impending events.)

   Yet despite these events, all was well inside the Turbins' home:

   it  was warm and comfortable and the cream-colored blinds were drawn - so warm that the two brothers felt pleasantly languorous.

   The elder dropped his book and stretched.

   'Come on, play "The Survey Squad".' Thrum-ta-ta-tum, thrum-ta-ta-tum . . .

   'Who look the smartest? Who move the fastest? The Cadets of the Engineers!'

   Alexei began to hum the tune. His eyes were grim, but there was a sparkle in them and his blood quickened.