Byzantium Endures
Authors: Michael Moorcock,Alan Wall
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Historical
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Byzantium Endures
[Between the Wars 01]
By Michael Moorcock
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CONTENTS
Map
Appendix A: The Manuscripts of Colonel Pyat
Appendix B: A Brief Account of the Russian Civil War
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DRAMATIS
PERSONAE
Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski
(Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff) Narrator
Yelisaveta Filipovna
His mother
Captain
Brown
A Scottish engineer
Esmé Loukianoff
A friend
zoyea
A gypsy girl
Professor
Lustgarten
A schoolmaster
Frau
Lustgarten
His wife
Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian
An Armenian engineer
Alexander
(‘Shura’) Maxim’s cousin
Evgenia Mihailovna
(Aunt Genia) Maxim’s great-aunt
Wanda
Her poor relation
Semyon Josefovitch
(Uncle Semya) Maxim’s great-uncle
Esau
Slobodka tavern-keeper
Misha the Jap
Slobodka gangster
Victor the Fiddler
Isaac Jacobovitch
Little Grania
Denizens of Esau’s tavern
Boris the Accountant
Lyova
M. Savitsky
A drug-trafficker
Katya
A young whore
Katya’s
mother A whore
H. Cornelius
A dentist
Honoria Cornelius
An English adventuress
‘So-So’ A Georgian revolutionary
Nikita the Greek
Maxim’s friend
Mr
Finch
An Irish sailor
Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov
(‘Seryozha’) A ballet dancer
Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky
A student
Miss
Buchanan
Her ‘nanyana’
Mr
Green
Uncle Semya’s agent in
St Petersburg
Mr
Parrot
His assistant
Madame
Zinovieff
Maxim’s landlady in
St Petersburg
Olga
and
Vera
Her daughters
Dr
Matzneff
Tutor at the Petersburg
Polytechnic Institute
Professor
Merkuloff
Another tutor
Hippolyte
A catamite
Count
Nicholai Feodorovitch
Petroff
(‘Kolya’) A Petersburg bohemian
Lunarcharsky
A Bolshevik
Mayakovski
A poet
‘Lolly’
Leonovna Petroff
Kolya’s cousin
Alexei Leonovitch Petroff
Her brother
Elena Andreyovna Vlasenkova
(‘Lena’) Marya’s flat-mate
Professor
Vorsin
Head of the Polytechnic
Hetman
Pavlo Skoropadskya
A puppet dictator
Ataman
Semyon Petlyura
Effective leader of
Ukrainian Nationalists
General
Konovalets
Commander of the ‘Sich
Riflemen’
Vinnichenko
Ukrainian Nationalist leader
potoaki
Ukrainian Bolshevik
Marusia Kirillovna
Ukrainian Bolshevik
Sotnik (Captain)
Grishenko
Hrihorieff officer (Cossack)
Sotnik (Captain)
Yermeloff
The same
Stoichko
Cossack officer
Brodmann
Socialist ‘liaison officer’
Nestor Makhno
Anarchist leader
Captain
Kulomsin
A White infantry officer
Captain
Wallace
Australian tank commander
Major
Perezharoff
A White commander
A Jewish journalist In Arcadia
Madame
Zoyea
An hotelier
Captain
Yosetroff
White Intelligence officer
Major
Soldatoff
Maxim’s CO
Chief Engineer of the
Rio Cruz
A fellow spirit
OTHER
CHARACTERS INCLUDE
Korylenko
(a postman); Captain
Bikadorov
(a Cossack); whores and entertainers in Odessa; whores, entertainers and artists in St Petersburg; revolutionaries in St Petersburg; Cossacks (Red, Black, White); policemen, Chekists, naval officers, army officers, ‘Haidamaki’ soldiers, beggars, a drunken couple, the Jews of a shtetl near Hulyai-Polye, the inhabitants of a village in the Ukrainian steppe, and, off-stage,
Leon Trotsky, Deniken, Krassnoff, Ulyanski
, Prince Lvov,
Kerenski, Putilov, Josef Stalin, Stolypin, Lenin, Antonov, sikorski, savinkoff, catherine cornelius, H. G. wells.
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INTRODUCTION
THE MAN WHO was known for years in the Portobello Road area as ‘Colonel Pyat’ or sometimes simply as ‘the old Pole’, and who, in the 60s and 70s, was Mrs Cornelius’s regular evening consort at The Blenheim Arms, The Portobello Castle and The Elgin (her favourite public houses), collapsed during the August 1977 Notting Hill Carnival when a group of black boys and girls collecting for Help The Aged in Caribbean fancy dress entered his shop (one of the few open) and demanded a contribution. His heart had failed him. He died at St Charles Hospital some hours later. He had no next of kin. Eventually, following a great deal of unpleasant publicity, I inherited his papers.
