Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet Page 16

  On the morning of Christmas Eve I was called again to my uncle’s study. Concerned that he had not heard from her, he had sent my mother a telegram. A reply had reached him from Captain Brown. My mother had bad influenza. She was worrying about me. It seemed that providence had given me a perfect excuse to leave Odessa and escape any attempted vengeance from Shura. Uncle Semya agreed I should rejoin my mother as soon as the Christmas holiday was over, when the trains would be running as normally as could be expected in wartime. A place had been found for me at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. I would begin there in January. A full wardrobe would be provided for me. I would draw a small allowance from his agents in the city. They would also find me accommodation. In return, I might be called upon to translate in matters of business or carry small parcels to other agents of his. I told him I would be honoured to serve him.

  He had confirmed my place, he said, by telegram. A number of telegrams had gone back and forth in the past twenty-four hours. He had spoken to Shura and had received Shura’s faithful promise not to engage in acts likely to embarrass the family. My revenge was frustrated. There was no time to plot a fresh one. At least, I thought to myself, Katya would be opening her spiders by now.

  I went back upstairs to tell Wanda what was happening. We decided to make the most of our time together. I gave her a little of my cocaine to help her stay awake. We spent as much of the Christmas holiday as possible in an orgy of love-making.

  When my suitcases were packed and my first-class ticket (a gift from Aunt Genia) was in my pocket, I realised I would miss Wanda. I told her I would come back to Odessa as soon as possible. She must visit me in Kiev. I never did see her again. She became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and was looked after by Uncle Semya until she vanished three or four years later in the terrible days of famine and revolution.

  Wanda and Aunt Genia saw me to the Kiev train. The station was crowded with uniforms. I was already missing Odessa, with her docks and shops, her fog and coal-dust and her vital, noisy life. I believe I wept a little. Wanda certainly wept. Aunt Genia wept. The train began to move away from the platform, heading inland once more. I thought I saw Shura standing near the gate, raising his hat sardonically, Katya at his side.

  It was snowing heavily as the train pulled into open countryside. I sat back happily in the padding of the heated carriage. This was more comfortable than the last trip. I was already making progress. I wore a Petersburg suit, a good quality fur cap, an English top-coat with a fur collar, and black, patent-leather boots. Over the course of a few months, I thought, I had become not only a man. I had become a gentleman.

  In the main I received good service from the train staff. With my first-class ticket I was able to sit in a deep plush armchair with my books and magazines close by on a little folding table. Soon after we left Odessa we ran into a blizzard. The further north we went, the deeper the snow became. All I could see was undulating banks of whiteness, interspersed with the roofs, smoke and domes of villages, the silhouettes of trees, the occasional snow-drenched forest. I could almost smell the snow through the windows, though of course the carriage was insulated and the motion of the train so regular one might not have been travelling at all. Just for the pleasure of it I took the ‘large breakfast’ in the restaurant car. I ate cheese and cold meats and watched the snow clinging to the windows. Sometimes it built up a layer before the speed and heat of the train melted it away, to reveal the steppe again. I strolled into the saloon-car which bore the sign of the Romanoffs, the two headed eagle, over the door. Here I remained, in a small chair close to the ornate stove, listening to the murmurings of generals and priests, aristocrats and fine ladies—they were already drinking, many of them, for prohibition extended only to the lower classes. Their well-bred tones would from time to time be broken by sudden, loud laughter. They were cynical, in the main, about the War news.

  Being in the saloon and unable to join the occupants depressed me. I returned to my carriage, where an old lady dressed all in black took a fancy to me. She began to tell me how she was the widow of a certain general killed in the war with Japan.

  She spoke in the slightly Frenchified accents of St Petersburg. I was soon able to catch the sound and reproduce it. She decided I was well-educated, a well-bred boy. She shared some of her chocolates with me. She asked where I was bound. I told her Kiev. I was to go on almost immediately to St Petersburg. She said I should come to see her and wrote down an address in a small notebook. The other travellers in the carriage were a high-ranking military man who said nothing, studied maps, read The Voice of Russia, and sometimes left to go to the saloon-car to smoke a cigar; a theatrical, rather haughty, young woman who claimed she acted in Moscow and was soon to tour the provinces. She smelled of the same perfume as Mademoiselle Cornelius, whom I still remembered with great pleasure. This actress had none of that lady’s character; she was a typical, neurotic Moscow ‘beauty’. I doubt if she was an actress at all. Probably a general’s mistress, travelling separately to avoid scandal. Her brocades and furs had the look of trophies rather than familiar clothing.

  The snow did not stop. It became dark quite soon and the gas was lit in the carriages. So comfortable and warm was the train that I was more and more reluctant to have the journey end. I hoped for delays on the line, some minor disaster which would extend the adventure for another day at least. Lunch came and went, and dinner. I talked to my old lady, telling her of my ideas, my plans, my expectations of ‘doing good for Russia’. She said I would love Peter. ‘It is really Russian there, not like this awful province. This is a land of Jews. They are impossible to avoid.’

  Feelingly, I agreed with her.

  ‘But in St Petersburg,’ she said, ‘there you will find the embodiment of all that is best in Russia.’

  The actress claimed that Moscow was ‘more Russian’ than the capital. There were too many Europeans in Peter. The place had been founded by a Tsar who had looked to Germany for inspiration. See, she said, where that had got us. Attacked by the very people we had courted, to whom we had shown hospitality. Half the Royal Family was German. They were the scourge of the Earth. She wished she could remain in Moscow all her life. No socialists there. No nihilists. No assassins. There were no Jews and no Germans, either. It was a true Slav city, not some imitation Berlin or Paris.

  The old lady listened with amusement. Her husband had been just such a radical. A Pan-Slavist who wished to turn his back on Western Europe. ‘But Western Europe will not turn her back on us, my dear.’

  ‘No, indeed!’ said the actress. ‘She comes towards us with hands extended. With a knife in one fist and a sword in the other. We should have expelled all foreigners years ago. Including those who call themselves Russians.’ This was a reference to our ‘German Empress’ and a number of nobles in St Petersburg who were of German origin and still had German names. Even some of the generals at the front and the ministers in the Duma were of recent German ancestry, including the prime minister. There were plenty of rumours of German traitors working against Russia from within: a tendency, especially in Moscow, to put the blame for our military failures on corruption in the capital: a suspicion that the Court had no real interest in the progress of the War, that the Tsar might be inclined to negotiate a peace at any time. I make this clear to show how bad morale was. Russia had never started a major war. We had never wanted to go to war; Germany had attacked us. As a result of this, almost the whole of the civilised world was now in arms. Although I felt more patriotic than many at this time, I could understand why they were so aggrieved. It could be argued to this day that Germany, who gave the world Karl Marx, prepared the ground in which Marx’s pernicious doctrines could flourish. Many believe the German race the creator of the terror and chaos which is our twentieth century. I do not agree with this depiction. The Germans were very kind to me in the thirties, by and large.

  My wish for delay was in part to be granted. The train was late. Because of snow-drifts on the line, precedence given t
o military trains, and the general inefficiency of the railway company, whose best men were now engaged in war-work, we stopped frequently. The temperature never became absolutely uncomfortable but the saloon-car with its stove grew crowded and eventually we put on our top-coats and returned to our seats. The actress remained in the saloon, drinking cognac. We were brought frequent tumblers of tea to console us. By dawn the old lady in black had begun to shiver. At last the train moved slowly forward between high banks of snow. It was impossible to see anything but snow. It was as if we travelled through a brilliant ice-cavern, a tunnel whose roof was illuminated by glowing grey felt.

  Even as we crawled forward (we were only a few miles from Kiev) the snow came down again. Great sheets of it fell vertically. There was no wind. I was very tired, but I went to the observation platform behind the guard’s van and looked back at the line. There were two dark parallel tracks in it created by the wheels of the train. Even as I watched they began to fill. It was as if the whole of the past, the entire landscape behind us, were being erased. I had a feeling of freedom which quickly gave way to a sense of loss. I remembered Odessa in the summer; the quick, babbling people, the gaiety of it all, the wit, the kindness, the comradeship. This blizzard had fallen on that Odessan summer like a final curtain. The Frost Gods were taking vengeance on those who, for a few short months, had dared to be happy. A little later, as if celebrating escape from disaster, we came steaming and whistling into Kiev. The station seemed bleak, though as crowded as ever. The great baroque pillars where pigeons nested, the stone walls and ceilings, the looming renaissance bas reliefs, all gave an impression of coldness. With my bag (containing new clothes and gifts) I stepped down onto the platform, bewildered once more by the rush of the porters, the shouts of the passengers, the sense of panic which seized everyone the moment the train had stopped. But now I had no Shura to guide me.

  I began to walk as best I could through this press. I ignored porters, vendors, touts. I had some idea of getting the tram to Podol and from there walking or getting another tram home. As I reached the main entrance and saw people fighting for cabs, crushing one another to get on the trams, I felt a terrible regret at the absence of Shura and his comradeship. I was never really to know such warmth and spirit again. I went past the terminus. The roofs and streets were piled with snow. There were braziers on the pavements, bundled-up old snow-sweepers, peasants selling hot tea and chestnuts, troikas going past. It was familiar. I hated it. I had in a strange way become a person without a context. We Russians will do anything to ensure ourselves a context. If slavery is the only one offered us, we will accept it rather than have none at all. It is what Kropotkin realised. It is why the Red Napoleon, Lenin, and his gang were so successful.

  As a stranger, I looked at the city which I had left a few months ago and in which I had been raised. As a stranger, I did not enjoy what I saw. The War had already begun to affect us. The people were not as friendly, or at least as gregarious, as those in Odessa. There were not the smiles, the rapid exchanges, the gestures full of ambiguous meaning. So I thought.

  I made my way to what was then called Stolypinskaya. If I walked along this street, it would eventually lead me to Vladimirskaya and St Andrews, where I would be able to get an ordinary tram all the way home. I was anxious to avoid the crowds. I had turned into Stolypinskaya, with its tall, yellow buildings which, with snow at top and foot, resembled a kind of unappetising seedcake, when I heard a shout behind me. I gripped my suitcase and felt a touch or two of anxiety until, turning, I realised it was Captain Brown, a hobbling old bear in black fur, rushing after me. ‘Maxim! I thought I’d missed you. Didn’t you get the message?’

  He had sent a telegram to Odessa. Because of the War it had not arrived until I had left. I was to have waited near the gate of the platform where he would meet me. He had no transport, so we continued to walk along the Stolypinskaya together. He insisted on carrying my bag. He said he had been waiting several hours, because of the train being so late. He thought I must be exhausted, but of course I had been far more comfortable than had he. He looked older. His face had become almost a modern artist’s idea of a face, all in bright reds and blues. But I was glad to see him, even if he did smell of vodka. My mother had been desperately ill. Between them he and Esmé had nursed her to health. Now she was ‘sitting up and complaining’, drinking soup and no longer ‘getting ready to meet the Reaper’. I had had no idea, of course, that she had been so ill. I assumed her influenza to have been relatively mild. But there had been something of an epidemic in the poorer districts. Many had died, said Captain Brown. Esmé had not written to tell me this because she had not wanted me to worry. He had written to Uncle Semyon asking that I not be informed of the danger. She was much better now and anxious to see me. He commented on my fine clothes—’a little too smart for Kiev, eh?’—and on my complexion which was at once healthier and ‘more mature’. I had cut down radically on the cocaine. I now no longer used it daily. The supply in my luggage might be the last I was to find for some time. I must treasure it.

  We took a Number 10 tram up to our district. The streets of Podol below looked meaner and dirtier, even with the snow, and the people were wretched compared to those I had known in the Moldovanka. My dislike of Jewish poverty, Jewish passivity, Jewish greed, Jewish pride, welled within me, but I suppressed it. I had been shown kindness, too, by Jews. There were, I’ll argue to this day, Jews and Jews. In aggregate, however, they can be depressing. Our little street was piled with snow-drifts taller than me. Through them channels had been cut to doorways, and along the middle of the road. It seemed horribly seedy. I felt depressed as we turned into the building where I had spent most of my life. We climbed stairs smelling of cabbage and over-brewed tea, of kvass and sour dumplings. We entered the apartment and its oppressive darkness—the blinds were half-drawn—where my mother lay on her couch pulled close to the black iron stove. Esmé, pale and weary and as sweet as ever, ran forward to take my hand, leading me to my mother. Mother coughed the most horrible racking cough I have ever heard. She spoke in the croaking tones I had learned to recognise from past illnesses of all kinds; it was her ‘ill’ voice.

  ‘Maxim, my dear son. Such a joy! I thought we’d never meet in this world again.’

  I embraced her, letting her kiss me on my face while I kissed her cheeks. She smelled strongly of embrocation. She was swathed in layer upon layer of bodices and blouses and shawls and I must admit that I was, after the style and good living of Odessa, just a little repulsed. The room was extremely warm. I broke free, in the end, and patted her head. She winced. I stopped patting and said to Esmé, ‘You have been so good. I was sorry to hear of your father. You are a princess.’

  She blushed. It was almost as if she wished to curtsey to me. ‘You’ve become so manly, Maxim. Your manners! A prince, at least.’ She spoke with slight irony, but I was flattered.

  A great, expressive cough came from where my mother was propped. ‘He must eat!’

  ‘I have the broth ready.’ Esmé disappeared into the next room and came back with a pot which she placed on the stove. ‘It’s warm. It will not be long.’

  I looked miserably at the old familiar pot. The smell from it was no longer appetising. The pot had sustained me since I was weaned. It had been filled, as it were, by my mother’s sweat. I recalled the turnips and onions and beets and potatoes which had gone into it. And I longed for that spicy, tasty, Odessa food. The variety of bortsches, and yushkas, the kuleshnik, the schipanka, the zatirka, kulish and rassolnik, the herrings and boiled sturgeon and sardines, the roast meats with sauerkraut and prunes and buckwheat hash.

  ‘You must be hungry,’ said my mother.

  ‘I ate on the train,’ I said. ‘There was a lot of food. I’m not hungry. Don’t worry.’

  ‘There’s meat in the soup,’ she said. ‘Chicken. You must eat.’ She began to cough again, from the chest, her eyes watering.

  ‘I’ll eat later,’ I said. ‘I brought you a pres
ent.’ I was embarrassed because I had nothing special for Captain Brown. I produced the black and red shawl I had bought for my mother.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Real silk. Is it from Semyon?’

  ‘It’s from me,’ I said. ‘I earned the money.’

  ‘Earned? How?’

  ‘Bills of lading,’ I said. ‘A profit on cargo.’

  ‘You’re going to work in Semya’s office?’

  ‘This was a private matter,’ I told her. ‘Here Esmé. What do you think?’

  It was a beautiful apron, embroidered with intricate stitching. It had come from Wagner’s. Esmé clapped her hands with pleasure. Her blue eyes widened as she inspected the embroidery. I had chosen well. It went perfectly with her colouring, her blonde hair. I found a packet of ‘Sioux’ tobacco in the bottom of my suitcase. I was by no means an habitual smoker. I decided to give this to Captain Brown. He was delighted. ‘This is the best imported American tobacco,’ he said. ‘Virginian. You don’t often get hold of it. I have seen where it is grown, you know, in the Southern States of America. Miles of fields, full of niggers picking the weed, and singing. Beautiful music, particularly in the distance. I once crossed America from Charleston to Nantucket. By the railroad. I’ve seen New York, though I was only there a few hours. And Boston, too. And Washington. And Chicago, where I still have friends.’ He fondled the tobacco and I was glad I had given it to him. He was the most pleased of all. ‘It’s strange,’ he continued, ‘that I should have wound up here.’ He began to say something in English in a low tone. I only caught a few words and part of a phrase which had something to do with ‘worthless relatives in Inverness’. At some stage in his life he had written to his family asking if there was ‘a berth’ for him. He had received no reply. He claimed to be the black sheep of his family, though it was hard to see why. He was the next best thing to a father to me and a loving husband to my mother.