"
"That's due to my former occupation, your Excellency. I am Goroshkin,
the usher from the Ekaterinensky Theatre. So sorry to apprehend of
your sorrow, Sir, in connection with her Excellency's death."
This man, Goroshkin, was a real friend to me, although I hardly
recollected him. We never used to pay much attention to the ushers!
There was no use in trying to go to a hotel with my appearance of
a gentleman and my pockets filled with money; my fever and my
indifference were growing; I had no desire to do anything for myself.
I think that Goroshkin understood me and the state of my mind when
he said, "May I venture to offer Your Excellency my humble house, and
perhaps call a doctor?"
This is as much as I remember of the next fortnight. I had a terrible
attack of typhus,--and when communists were killing the boys from the
military school, bombarding the Hotel National, destroying the Kremlin
and pillaging private homes, I was quietly lying in a little house
somewhere behind Sukharev Tower under the care of a doctor and
Goroshkin's fat sister, whose conspicuous parts of the corsage were
soiled from cooking, and whose face was always red and radiant. My
return to life, and with it my return to the desire for activity and
eating, was commemorated by the appearance at my bed of nobody else
but Marchenko.
One bright morning, when my room seemed to be full of sunshine and
hope,--a man in the uniform of a communist soldier with a red rag on
his coat sleeve, walked into the room bringing in a breath of fresh
and frosty air and a whole arsenal of munitions.
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