Byzantium Endures (66 page)

‘No,’ I said, ‘I have had my fill of it.’

‘You have been in there?’ He pointed towards Kiev.

‘I have.’

‘That’s what I shall have to do.’

‘They’ll kill you. You’re a Jew.’

‘Jews survive.’

‘Some do,’ I said. I had to be polite to him because he had helped me. Besides, I always had a soft spot for the cosmopolitan Odessa Jew who is a different type altogether: A Jew of the better kind, we used to say.

He laughed as if I had made a joke. He laughed appreciatively, unlike Petroff; but I was thinking the whole world was convulsed. It was possessed. I became wary. And I had fallen in love with him, this southerner, this soft-mouthed sardonic Jew. I wanted him. I admit it. I am ashamed. I admit I trembled as he brought me broth, ‘It’s made of sea-weed,’ he said, ‘but it’s good for you. Not that you’ve been starving. Are all the stories wrong?’

‘I was with a tank unit.’

He had dried my clothes. He had polished my guns. The silver was bright. They lay on the seat of the chair, with the military kaftan behind them. He had found a shapka to match.

‘You were in that plane,’ he said.

‘An observer.’

‘So they’re attacking.’

‘Well...’ I wanted to kiss his long hands. He fed me the soup with a dull wooden spoon. ‘Well...’

‘You’re not allowed to say, of course. There goes my job. As I guessed.’

‘You’ll get out?’

‘No need. I’ll join the next newspaper. They have dozens of newspapers and dozens of political creeds, but good journalists are in short supply.’

‘I have seen how they can destroy. Anyone.’

‘I’m facile.’ He shrugged, it’s those with strong needs who die, you see.’

‘You said you were going inland.’

‘Later. When things are more settled. Will they still kill me, then?’

‘Possibly.’

‘I can’t understand it, can you?’

‘I understand them,’ I said, ‘It is all the fault of the Poles.’

‘My sentiments exactly.’ He opened a small, green book. He showed me a line of poetry. I do not recall it.

What was my fascination for that intellectual Jew? Christ on the Mount? No, that is blasphemy. I loved him. I cannot feel disgust. I owed him nothing. I was an audience for him, I suppose. He was living alone in a house he had never been able to afford. He would soon be kicked out of it. He knew. I asked him if the trams were still running?

‘You know Odessa?’

‘I spent some of my youth here. I was happy.’

‘There’s a tram runs sometimes. A horse one. A steam one. An electric one. Depending what fuel’s available. It’s a long walk and you’re hurt. You could wait near the fountain, but I can’t offer much hope.’

‘I have relatives there.’

He shrugged. I did not want to leave him. He was gentle. I trusted him. Was he pretending to be Jewish, the way Tertz does? An affectation? I waited for him to touch me. He never touched me. I went with him to the tram-stop. My clothes were dry, from the sun. My pistols were clean. The whole resort was tranquil and decayed. Since then I have had a liking for deserted seaside towns. I used to go to them in the winter, with Mrs Cornelius, but, in those circumstances, she was never the best companion. She liked, she said, a bit of fun when she went to the seaside. Russians long for solitude. It is our only commodity now. Even that is being taken from us. They are trying to turn Russia into America; America, with its sentimental social conventions, destroying its culture, its language, its intellectual strength. America before the war was a very different place. It was harder.

I sometimes think there has been another War: the third. And that I am living after it. This is a sign, I suppose, of my old age. They say I am paranoid. But paranoia is only fear. And I am afraid. I try to warn them. They say I am afraid of the wrong things. How can that be, when I am afraid of everything? My head is full of possibilities. I do not care for life. I do not care if I die. I have never cared. But I have cared for what I carry in me. My honour. My gifts which God took back in return for the gift of Himself. It is knowledge and a generous spirit which is precious. I never understood people who did not recognise this. Mrs Cornelius would not talk about it. She liked me. She did not ever do me the disservice of telling me she loved me. Love grows from within. There is a coil in my womb. It is copper. It conducts electricity. It is cold. They put it there. It forbids love. Children are fond of me, are they? Why do they persecute me, if that is the case? Quartz sparks? Diodes? Printed circuits? Ask me any scientific question. I am afraid of betrayal. I have been betrayed. There was never enough love. The little I had was taken. Or did I lack an amplifier? No more grew in its place. I became strong in the company of that journalist, on the outskirts of the city of black, sleeping goats. The tram came. It was half-full of SR volunteers. They had the same uniforms as the Whites. I fitted in easily. They paid no attention to me or my companion who had decided, he said, to ‘see the action’. Half-way to Odessa the electricity was cut off. There were no horses for the tram. The soldiers decided to stay where they were. We walked into the twilight. The city grew larger. There were a few fires. It stank. My Odessa had become a cess-pit. Vandals had used it carelessly. The Reds had gone. The Whites had not yet arrived. I went with my friend to Uncle Semya’s house. It had been gutted. My room was a jagged hole. I asked at the only shop still open in the square. It sold ‘mixed meat’. All the trees had been cut down. The railings had gone for scrap. From Moldovanka came the smell of old smoke. They said that Uncle Semya had ‘sold up’. He had not been there when the house was burned. Someone had heard he had been caught profiteering and had gone to prison. This had already become a euphemism. He had been robbed and shot. And Shura? Conscripted. Dead. And Wanda? They did not remember Wanda. And Aunt Genia? They thought she might have gone to the Crimea. Quite a lot of people had left for the Crimea. The proprietors of the shop were planning to go themselves if they could get passage money and permission. They said they were not eligible for evacuation. They would have to pay a ‘private fare’. My friend was weeping as we came out. He had overtired himself, I suppose.

‘You’re a hard one to read,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes. I am. Do you want to come with me while I find out which paper I am working for now?’

I shook my head. He left. I was glad that he went. Such a relationship would have been impossible. He walked towards the Goods Station. Soldiers were coming in now. Horses and motor-vehicles pulled gun-limbers towards the docks. I went to look for Esau’s in Slobodka. It was rubble. I went to find the ironmongery shop where Katya lived. It was looted. There were broken shutters all over Moldovanka and hardly any people on the streets. Those few were, by the way they slouched, to be feared. I went to the St Nicholas Boulevard, by the church, and looked out over the harbour. There were no fashionable people here now. A French cruiser was coming in. They must have waited until they learned Odessa was in friendly hands. I found a fragment of blue-veined marble and put it in my pocket. Why had Petroff wanted to kill me? Had Kolya said something which his cousin had misinterpreted?

There were still crowds on the quays. There were limousines and carriages. All that remained of Russia’s decent people were here, hoping to leave. I saw them fighting. I decided I must return to Kiev, bring my mother back by force if necessary and get her to Yalta. In those days Yalta was considered permanently safe.

Diseased children gathered around me. I think they were threatening me, but they were too weak to do much. I laughed at them and gave them my Petlyura money. Let them spend that, if they could. They began to tug at me. I was too tired to play. I was busy. I had to think. I drew a black and silver pistol and they ran away. I returned the pistol to its pocket. A group of soldiers was coming towards me. They asked for my papers. I told them I was Major Pyatnitski and that I was working for Military Intelligence, I would rather not be seen talking to them. They believed me and went on. There was some firing from the harbour but it hardly lasted a moment.

I decided I must go to the station. People would be travelling back to Kiev soon. It would be as well to get in the queue as early as possible. But the station, which had emergency oil-lamps burning, was so full I knew I would not have the strength to cope with it. I realised, too, that I had no real money. I tried to find some tanks, to seek the hospitality of my Australian friends. The tanks were probably still on the outskirts. I could hear artillery fire from the northern suburbs.

As usual flags and proclamations were the first priority. They were spreading over the city like cosmetics on a leper’s face. Military cars went by. Everything seemed very busy. The Volunteers and their Allied friends were in control and were feeling, as new conquerors always did, efficient. The ‘representatives of the true government of Russia’ were issuing orders not so different from those I had read before. There was a curfew for ‘all civilian personnel’. I was glad of my kaftan and shapka. I tried to walk with more of a military gait. I entered a small café in Lanzeronovskaya, near Theatre Square. There was to be a performance that night, judging by the comings and goings. It was, someone said, a sign of the Odessa spirit. ‘We live through anything - and enjoy ourselves through anything,’ said a waiter. He called me comrade by accident and apologised. It was difficult, he said, to remember who was who, these days. Had I come with the ‘new troops’? I had, I said. He asked me if I knew what had happened to the aeroplane which had been seen flying round St Nicholas earlier that day. Was it hit?

‘It was hit,’ I said. ‘I know, because I was in it.’

Naturally, I became their hero. I was bought whatever there was to buy. Vodka, bread, sausage. People of noble birth shook my hand. Bankers saluted me. There was music. I was getting some small satisfaction from my adventure. I was asked my advice on every topic and gladly gave it, since it was in the main very good advice. When I said I needed to get back to Kiev to find my mother, I was offered almost every form of transport. I made an arrangement to see some prince or other on the following day at his hotel. I lost the card. In a carriage owned by an industrialist from Kherson I drove through the dark and foul-smelling streets to a small, undistinguished hotel. It had been, he said, the best he could find. We knocked on metal shutters and were cautiously admitted. The industrialist was drunk. He introduced me as his brother to a sour-faced Georgian woman. She said that I would be extra. The industrialist laughed and said: ‘Panye, I was prepared to pay for a suite at The Bristol, so I do not think it will mean much if I have to bribe you for an extra blanket and a mattress for my brother.’ We were, he said, as we went upstairs, all brothers now.

I slept on his floor. He was still snuffling and murmuring when I left. I was hungry. I had no money of any value. I had no gold. I would have to sell the pistols. I went to the old market. There were finer pistols for sale at a few roubles. I walked until I reached Preobrazhenskaya and stopped at the doorway. The dentist’s name plate:
H. Cornelius:
was still there. I began to vomit in the gutter where the cabs had once plied for hire. I have never been so ill in that way. There was a weight on my head, perspective distorted, lights flickered, a searing pain in my buttocks and thighs, a chill in my stomach like a piece of iron. I was cursed as a drunk by passers-by. A woman in a fashionable dress screamed. I thought she was Mrs Cornelius. I reached out. A gendarme, who might have been released from prison that morning, came along and escorted me to a side-street. He had every respect for the military, he said, but I should choose less public places to make a spectacle of myself.

I was shaking. I sat on a step in the doorway of an abandoned shop and watched the cars and horses come and go. The city had achieved a peculiar radiance, like a half-resurrected terminal patient: they seem to gain health just before they die. I think it is because they begin to relax and become reconciled to making the most of what is left. When I was strong enough I walked to the harbour, but the Nicholas area had been for some reason cordoned off. I heard more shooting. I found a church. It was as crowded as the railway station. I squeezed in and let the other bodies hold me upright. I did not, then, know the words of the prayers or the responses, so I mumbled. The crucifix was displayed. The priests chanted. Censers were waved. White and gold. White and gold. But God was gone from Odessa and a black sun was setting over Russia.