Byzantium Endures (22 page)

Esmé for her part talked of when she would be old enough to become a nurse. ‘It will be too late, soon,’ she said, ‘the War will be over.’

‘Pray for that.’ What would she do in the event of peace? She would still go into nursing, ‘I want to do something useful with my life.’

I squeezed her hand in gratitude as we sat on a bench in the winter sunshine, looking down over Babi gorge, ‘In the meantime you are keeping a brave woman alive. I owe everything to Mother, Esmé.’

‘When one only has a single parent, one appreciates them so much more,’ she said.

I agreed. She had become sad, thinking of her dead father.

‘He was a brave man,’ I said.

She became bleak. ‘Brave enough. But will there be justice in this clean, scientific world of yours, Maxim?’

‘Justice is a scarce commodity,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘You could be a great teacher.’

I had considered this, ‘I might decide to run my own laboratory, with assistants to whom I can pass on my knowledge.’

‘I shall become your resident nurse.’

‘We shall each do our best, in our different spheres, to improve the world.’

It was rare for me to make the mistake of believing knowledge could be used in the service of sentiment. It is no more the job of the nun to be ‘of the world’ than it is for a pure scientist to design more efficient soup-kitchens. It is mere intellectual arrogance to believe that science can cure human ills. But in Esmé’s company I was often temporarily infected with her own feminine sentimentality. And I am the first to admit that without such creatures, the world would be an even less tolerable one than it is.

On my birthday I received suitable gifts from my little family. Books, pencils, paper, a rare German pencil-sharpener and a proper attaché-case, all of which I should need in Petersburg. My mother wept and coughed and lay on her couch, looking at me through sleepy eyes and begging Esmé and Captain Brown to tell me to be sure I did not fall in with Reds and loose women.

I told her they were very strict at the Polytechnic Institute. I had looked it up on the map. It was not even in Petersburg proper.

The next day I had a letter and some silver roubles from Odessa. My uncle told me to make the most of myself in Peter, to meet the right people and to make a good impression on my professors. He told me I should be known there as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff and he enclosed a passport in that name. My own photograph was on it. This was a shock. Because of the War he had evidently had to pull strings, but I had not expected to enter the Institute under an assumed name. I might have to use this name for the rest of my life. It would be on all my diplomas. I had not at this time become used to the idea of changing names as one changed clothes. The Revolution soon familiarised me with that particular procedure. I knew from Shura that many people had identity papers in different names. Some had changed a dozen times. But these were criminals, radicals, who were forced to do such things. The passport was authentic. Uncle Semya reminded me to let my mother know the name I would be using.

I could not speak of this at once either to her or to Esmé. I put on my English topcoat and wandered out towards the park. Here, on the hill, I thought the problem over. I could see how it had all come about, of course. With the War on, places at the Polytechnic were hard to come by. Many Ukrainians wished to study in Petersburg. Obviously there were too many applicants. Presumably this Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff had given up his place so that I could go. Possibly he had died. He might have joined the army. There were a dozen possibilities. If I wished to learn I should have to learn under a pseudonym. It would make no difference to the quality of that learning. Perhaps later I could admit my real name and get my diplomas properly inscribed.

I have hated hypocrisy and deception all my life, yet all my life I have been victim to it. That is the terrible irony. Here I was having to live a lie not because I had done anything wrong, but because my Uncle Semya had been willing to go to any lengths to ensure me a good education. I had learned that the world is made up of lies.

I informed my mother. She was not surprised. She had had some hint, she told me, in Uncle Semya’s recent letters. Kryscheff was a good, respectable name. It had a ring to it.

I think that she was distressed, however. It could have been part of her general distress. In some ways it was bad for her that I had remained so long at home. Even Esmé was of the opinion that although my mother’s spirits and health had improved her nerves had deteriorated.

On my last evening, Esmé and I went for a walk. I told her that I was to pose as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch and that she must keep the secret of my real name. That secret was my parting present to her. She smiled and said she would treasure it. She was not especially puzzled by this sudden change of identity, either.

We held hands, like brother and sister, and Esmé reassured me that she would look after Mother, that I must dedicate myself to becoming a great engineer. If I became famous as Kryscheff, what did it matter? My mother would still be proud and I would still be able to look after her.

By the next morning I had managed to fit myself into the role and was D. M. Kryscheff boarding the Wagon-Lit which was to carry me in the comfort to which I had become accustomed to the capital.

Uncle Semyon had sent the ticket together with a sheet of instructions as to where I should go and how I should behave in Petersburg. He was anxious I should act like a gentleman in every aspect of my life. He was prepared to spare no expense to this end. I was deeply touched by his kindness. My mother was overjoyed. She had been too ill to see me to the station and for this, I must admit, I was somewhat grateful. It would have been humiliating to have been seen with a sickly, weeping mother coughing out her last goodbyes. Instead Esmé and Captain Brown came. They helped me with my luggage, saw that the porter took it to the appropriate compartment.

I was over-excited. I had never slept in a special Wagon-Lit coach. As I entered the coupé I saw that the top bunk was already occupied. I was to share with another gentleman. This was usual, unless one were very rich, and I had known there would be very few spare places on the train. Almost the whole of it was occupied by high-ranking military men and their families. Never had I heard so much drawling, well-bred Russian spoken - or so much French, for that matter. The girls spoke French in preference. I think they even liked to pretend they were French. Their accents gave them away. I could tell this, even though French is not the language I speak most fluently. It is the language of love; the language which these same girls would be speaking in a few years time as they tried to attract Bolshevik protectors on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow.

The compartment astonished Esmé. She had never heard of such things. She had expected, she told me, a row of cots, side by side in the carriage: a mobile dormitory. She discovered next door the little wash-basin, with its polished wooden top which could be a table when the basin was not in use. Even the lavatory was disguised to look like a chair, its livery matching the rest of the coupé. The whole effect was of dark pink and white, glowing in the snowy light from the windows. The upholstery was the colour of a confection later sold in Paris as Fraises a la Romanoff, presumably because it had been popular with the Tsar. The sheets were the purest white and the blankets matched the upholstery. There were small sets of drawers and tiny wardrobes. My fellow-traveller had already established himself. A smell of cologne filled the compartment and he had hung up an elaborate Arabian dressing-gown. I read the notices on the door. They were in Russian, French and German. They drew my attention to the bell, which could be reached from where one lay in bed, and to the various services available. We were required not to smoke in bed and to call the attention of a guard at the slightest hint of fire. The list included all the usual rules of rail travel.

Captain Brown said the compartment compared favourably with the best he had experienced (‘in India and elsewhere’) and that he would have enjoyed coming with me. Esmé agreed and said she envied me. I was now used to a certain amount of comfort, but to Esmé this carriage was more magical than anything she had ever seen. She could not stop touching the blankets, the sheets, the fixtures. She was almost mesmerised by them and asked me, ‘Was this what it was like at your uncle’s?’ I laughed, ‘It wasn’t, so different.’

She looked at me as if I had been elevated to the ranks of the gods. ‘You must do well at the Polytechnic,’ she said seriously, ‘It is a great honour, Maxim.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘Dimitri,’ I reminded her gently. ‘All this depends on my being Dimitri Mitrofanovitch, son of a priest from Kherson.’ (These details were in my papers.)

‘I hope you don’t meet any clerical friends from Kherson.’ Captain Brown patted my arm. ‘Make your mother happy, boy. It was her letters got you this. If she hadn’t bent her knee to your uncle... Well, he’s the only decent member of that family. I thought my own was bad enough, but at least they don’t pretend I’m dead.’

I had not heard this before. ‘I don’t understand you, Captain Brown?’

He smiled sympathetically, ‘It’s all right, boy. You’re not to blame and neither is she. They disapproved of your dad. Made themselves judge and jury. It’s the religion, I suppose.’

I was to hear no more. The guard shouted that visitors should leave the train. Whistles began to blow. Captain Brown patted my arm, Esmé kissed my cheek. I returned the kiss and made her blush. They stood outside the window of the coupé, smiling and nodding and making gestures until the whistle blew, the carriage jerked, and I was once again steaming towards the white landscape of the steppe.

This time my home-town was, in turn, obliterated by the falling snow. The train rushed into the silence of frozen lakes, stripped silver birches, pines, little stations whose telegraph cables were hung with icicles; old, grey, huddled villages where peasants dragged sledges containing babies, firewood, milk-churns, and the white, howling smoke of the train was the only warmth to fall upon that whole, cold landscape.

A large young man entered the compartment. He was flamboyantly dressed in a high-collared shirt, a lilac cravat, black silk waistcoat, tight-fitting trousers and a frock-coat. His fair hair was pomaded and piled into waves on his large, handsome head. He had wide blue eyes and a thick-lipped mouth of a sort I would normally mistrust. But he was very friendly in his greeting. He held out his big hand to shake mine. He bent his body forward in a pose which seemed familiar. He must be, I realised as he spoke, connected with the stage.
‘Bonjour, mon petit ami.’

His accent was gushing, exaggerated. I replied with a dignified:
‘Bonjour, m’sieu. Comment allez-vous?’

‘Ah, bon! Très bon! Et vous?’

‘Très bien, merci, m’sieu.’

This ludicrous schoolroom exchange continued until names were presented.

‘Je m’appelle
Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff,’ I told him.

He was Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov and he was, he said, a day behind the rest of his ‘gang’. To our mutual relief, we returned to Russian.

‘Gang?’ I said, amused. ‘Are you a bandit?’

He laughed for some moments. It was artificial, trilling. A stage laugh. ‘You could call me that. Can I say “Dimka”?’ It was the diminutive of Dimitri. He had dropped formalities rather more rapidly than I might have preferred, but there was nothing I could do. He was, after all, a far more experienced traveller than I. I agreed. ‘You can call me Seryozha,’ he said. ‘We’ll be pals on this trip. After all, we’ll be intimates for a long while. It’s freezing, isn’t it?’

I found the compartment rather warm. Again I decided it would seem more sophisticated if I remained silent, offering no opinions until I had the measure of my companion.

‘My gang’s the Foline Ballet.’ This explained his dandified clothes, informal use of first names and soft, gesticulating hands. I had heard of the Company. I had seen it advertised in Kiev. I felt flattered to be sharing a coupé with so eminent a personage. I said that I had been in Odessa for some months and had not had time to see a performance. He said they had been terrible. It was an awful stage, he said. But they had gone down very well. Was I, then, from Odessa? Or had I been travelling?

I said I had travelled a little.