Thread by @irgarner

Beautiful, tragic words from Mikhail Bulgakov on war in Kyiv. From his novel "The White Guard": '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 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 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 cape glittering and flashing in the golden sunlight, their parish priest Father Alexander had stumbled from grief and embarrassment.

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 front of the ancient brown icon 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 icon 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?' 🇺🇦

Trans. Michael Glenny.

I'm not religious, but this is exquisite war writing.