The Laughter of Carthage (34 page)

My automatic brake kept us for more than two weeks. We bought splendid new clothes. We saw
Das Kabinett Des Dr Caligari
and were horrified at its madness. This modernistic ‘expressionism’ provided every evidence that in defeat Germany had grown deeply neurotic, almost psychopathic. Even more ordinary, less irrational, films reflected an identically morbid obsession with death and mental sickness. Esmé enjoyed
Halbblut.
One would never have guessed it to be the work of someone who later gave us the magnificent
Metropolis, Die Nibelungen
and
Die Frau im Mond.
My preference at the time was for
Die Spinnen
which was altogether more wholesome. We shared a taste for Charlie Chaplin, however, and visited
Easy Street
and
The Immigrant
several times. My own favourite was Mary Pickford, who reminded me in so many ways of Esmé. We saw
The Little American, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
and
M’Liss,
which whetted my appetite for the stories of Bret Harte, in turn making California an imaginative reality for me. I think my favourite Mary Pickford film was
Daddy Long-Legs.
I told Esmé if I were not already in love, Mary Pickford would claim my heart. Esmé said she thought Mary was far too ‘good and sweet’. I laughed. ‘Then she’s an ideal rival for you!’

In Paris America came to mean far more to me than ever before, thanks to D. W. Griffith, who brought his country vividly to life for me in the greatest film ever made. For a while we were both obsessed with
Birth of a Nation.
We saw it at least twenty times. As a direct consequence I began to realise what potential for social and scientific progress there was in the United States. If I had made a film, it should have been that one. Griffith alone showed the world that his country was not comprised merely of pilgrims, savages and gangsters. His ideals were uncannily close to mine! I promised myself that as soon as my airship company was successful, I should go at once to the USA and personally thank him. I would suggest he turn his attention to the problems of Russia. One film, showing the horrors of Bolshevism as graphically as Griffith had shown the evils of the scallawags and carpetbaggers, who incited the negro as cynically as Lenin incited the Mongol, and the whole world would rush to my country’s rescue. (Ironically, the Bolsheviks themselves realised this. With almost admirable cunning they employed the plagiarist Eisenstein to present their own distorted case. With the clever imitative skills of the Jew he looted Griffith’s work, fashioning a paean of praise to his bloodthirsty masters, presenting them in a ludicrously heroic light: a fanfare of histrionics which made the mob, so loathed by Griffith, seem somehow noble! This revealed that techniques are never good just for their own sake. It depends who manipulates them. That is why an inventor, too, must always be careful. These days I keep my inventions to myself. Too many people, over the past fifty years, have abused them.)

Paris continued to dance. Every street maintained its nightclubs, whorehouses, bars. Jaded people poured in from all over the world, eager to join the party. Americans could be found everywhere. They had money to spend, though typically they always claimed poverty. In my favourite Left Bank cafés I began to meet international journalists, painters, poets. I asked those from the USA if they knew Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish, but they could give me less information than I could find for myself in the film magazines. Some of them (mostly New Yorkers) did not even know who Douglas Fairbanks was! It would be like a Russian not having heard of Stenka Razin or Tsar Saltan. I pitied them their deep ignorance. They had come to Paris frantically anxious to prove themselves ‘high-brows’, reading impossible French novels by Gide, Ouida and Mauriac, salivating over the filth Willy-Colette issued in the guise of literature. At the same time they spoke grandly of the ‘popular taste’ and flung their limbs about in imitation of black cottonpickers experiencing the last throes of some lethal palsy. They laughed at me, I knew; yet I was far more in touch with the pulse of the age than ever they could be. They did not know it, but they actually represented the past. I was a true Man of my Time. They were merely trying to relive a nostalgic, nonexistent
fin-de-siècle
fantasy. Nonetheless some of them condescendingly bought the shares I issued for my Aerial Navigation Company. It was on this money, carefully accounted for in a notebook, that we lived. Esmé again began developing headaches; a lassitude similar to the condition which had overwhelmed her on Kazakian’s boat. At first I would stay with her, working at our only table, drawing up my plans, writing to anyone who could help us get to England. Gradually it became necessary to go out more, to leave her with an oil lamp and the second-hand novels I bought for her on the nearby quays. Money had to be gathered somehow and it was not always easy to pay for our necessities. The price of cocaine alone in Paris was exorbitant. It was suddenly a fashionable drug amongst the demi-mondaine; waiters openly sold it in nightclubs and restaurants. I became panic-stricken, certain Esmé must soon decide to leave me, for she was not meant for poverty or drudgery. London was set aside. I had no choice but to spend more time than I liked seeking a main financier for my great airship. People were increasingly wary of anyone wanting their money, no matter how sound the scheme. Parisians were concentrating on taking it from others. I grew at once horribly obsessed and miserably over-tired, following one wild goose after another. All the while Esmé withdrew deeper into herself until even the cocaine was of no help.

I prayed I should find Kolya. I left messages everywhere. I pinned them on notice-boards in émigré hostels; I left scraps of paper with strangers. I took advertisements in the Russian language press. Meanwhile I wrote to Mrs Cornelius, to Major Nye, to Mr Green, begging them to send us the fare to England and to use their influence with the English authorities both there and in Paris. I was making myself a laughing-stock with the Russians. They would mockingly ask me ‘Has your Prince come yet?’ or ‘Is the airship flying today?’ It was hideous. At last, just to avoid this sort of cruelty, I began to deny I was Russian.

One day I was standing outside the Cirque d’Hiver, near the hotel in Rue du Temple where we had originally stayed, waiting for the artistes to emerge from their afternoon rehearsals (for I had heard that many Russians were now performing as equestrians), when I definitely saw Brodmann, dressed to the nines in black homburg and overcoat, striding rapidly towards Place de la République. He hailed a cab with his umbrella and got in, waving to another man to join him. The man was more casually clothed, in brown cords, evidently a French intellectual. He carried a bundle of newspapers under his arm. It was obvious to me he was a radical. Smiling and laughing Brodmann gave no attention to the outside world. He was plainly doing well for himself, as that sort will. Doubtless he had made himself out to be a revolutionary hero. Almost certainly he was a Chekist bent on infiltrating some non-Bolshevik organisation. Shivering, I immediately hurried home. Esmé was pale, eating little, mouthing her way through something by Gautier. I could say nothing to her. I was terrified of distressing her further. But I stayed in for the rest of the evening. Next morning I left my face unshaven with the intention of growing a beard.

I caught a tram for the Montparnasse Cemetery. There was a theatre near it and a café, called something like the
Pepe Napa,
which had once been a favourite of Italian actors but was now the haunt of Russian anarchists. I had sunk so low I now rubbed shoulders with scum. It was for Esmé’s sake. I would do anything to escape our present squalor. Descending from the footplate of the tram I crossed the street to the café, the railings of the cemetery at my back. Sunshine was pale in the cool autumn air. The café had only just opened for business. Inside waiters were still taking chairs off tables. The only customers were grouped at the bar drinking little cups of coffee and sharing out their cigarettes. Some spoke a dialect familiar to me - the country speech, part Russian, part Ukrainian, of the Katerynoslav
gubernia.
I knew enough of this dialect - at least its inflections - to greet them. Nonetheless they regarded me with surly suspicion. They had probably been in Paris for several months and they still had something of the wolfish look I associated with their kind. Most wore ordinary cheap working-class clothes, though a few still had the vestiges of uniforms - a cap, a pair of trousers or boots. They were unimpressed when I told them I was from Kiev. They warmed a little upon learning that I had ridden with Nestor Makhno. The little
batko
was still their greatest hero. A tall, thin faced man with a pronounced limp, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, asked a couple of questions plainly designed to test me. He was satisfied by my answers. ‘What were you?’ he asked. ‘A Green? Or one of those city anarchists who tried to tell us how to fight the Reds?’

Instinctively I decided to tell them the truth. ‘Neither,’ I told him. ‘My sister was a nurse with Makhno’s army. Maybe you knew her? Esmé Loukianoff?’

‘The name’s familiar,’ said the tall man. ‘Pretty little blonde?’

‘That’s her.’

‘So what were you doing?’

‘I’m a teacher. And an engineer. I was with the education train until the Whites captured me. They locked us up in a synagogue to die. Then some Australians came through and took us to Odessa. Hearing that the Whites had overrun the whole place and that Reds were shooting anarchists, I got on a refugee ship.’

They did not wish to hear tales of heroism, these men. Many were themselves the defeated remnants of so-called Hulyai-Polye Cossacks. They had no call to point the finger at another escapee.

The wounded one was called Chelanak, evidently a German ‘colonist’ in origin, with a Jewish tinge to him which made me mistrust him. He said he had been left for dead after a Bolshevik ambush at Holta in September 1919. ‘We were winning, too, then.’ He paused and stepped back from me a pace of two, as if inspecting a painting. Then he continued. ‘I crawled to some woods where a troop of Greek infantry mistook me for a White officer on account of what was left of my jacket. I was sent to Odessa, put on a hospital ship. For Bulgaria, I think. But I got off in some little fishing village which we stopped at for no good reason. I tried to get back - it was near the border. I was captured by renegades who were overcome by Reds before I could be shot. I got away again, first into Poland, then down into Vienna and eventually into France.’ He frowned, his voice trailing off. ‘But I know you, I’m sure.’

I had never seen him before.

The café was beginning to fill with veterans. He leaned against the bar and sipped his coffee. His next statement had no particular relevance to what he had just said. He spoke significantly, however. ‘I was with Makhno when we executed Hrihorieff in full view of his own army. Remember that? Chubenko fired the first shot, Makhno the second, I the last. We did it because of the pogroms, I think. I do know you! You were one of the Barotbist liaison people we found with Hrihorieff. Brodmann!’

This was the most dreadful thing he could have said. I felt instantly sick. I tried to smile. He put down the journal he held and snapped his fingers. ‘Brodmann. Someone said you were in Paris.’ He looked about him.

I was near screaming. ‘I am not Brodmann! For God’s sake, man! My name is Cornelius! It’s true I was captured by Yermeloff, but I got away. I was Hrihorieff s prisoner for a few days, that’s all! Then I rejoined my sister in Hulyai-Polye. I swear it’s true.’ I was appalled. I had seen Brodmann only a day before. That in itself had been nerve-racking. But to be mistaken for the dreadful, treacherous Jew by ex-bandits was worse. ‘I met someone of that name. He was a Bolshevik, though he posed as a Barotbist for a while.’ I regretted even this admission as soon as it came out of me.

‘Brodmann’s comrade, then? I know your face. I know it.’ He was not particularly unfriendly. It was as if he did not personally carry any hatred for his old enemies.

It was unlikely his tolerance would be shared by the others. I know I was sweating, almost pleading with him not to pursue this line of association. My hands implored him. I had never seen this half-dead creature before and could scarcely believe the accident which led him to associate me with one of the people I most feared and despised in the world. I tried to shake my head. ‘Which Brodmann? Red beard? Alexandrovsk?’

Chelanak began to laugh. ‘No! No! I saw you at the meeting! Day before yesterday. Near Rue St Denis. I thought you were Brodmann, then.’

‘I wasn’t at a meeting, comrade. Please don’t go on with this!’ Was Brodmann, after all, to be the death of me?

‘Brodmann claims now he helped kill Hrihorieff, did you know? You didn’t kill Hrihorieff, did you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I apologise. We get Chekists in here quite frequently. You must have a doppelganger, comrade. Unpleasant, eh? A doppelganger who’s a Chekist!’

The chief danger seemed over, but I remained nervous. I had only come to this place in the hope of getting news of Kolya, who had had some anarchist associates in the old days. More and more exiles were crowding through the door, speaking every Russian dialect, as well as French, Polish, German. They carried their rolled newspapers casually, as they had once borne swords and rifles. I began pushing through them on my way out. Chelanak plucked at my coat. ‘But you are Brodmann’s friend, surely? Still a Barotbist, maybe? At least tell me what you’re here for!’