The Laughter of Carthage (63 page)

Mrs Cornelius, as open-hearted as ever, gave a sympathetic ear to all. Sometimes, to relieve our routine, we sat on deck, huddling in our coats while other passengers attempted to take what they called exercise. ‘Pore fings.’ Mrs Cornelius was amused in a kindly way. ‘Wat the bloody ‘ell’s gonna become of ‘em?’ Their exercise generally consisted of holding on to a rail with one hand, keeping clothing in place with the other, waiting for the ship to tilt in the direction they wished to go, then risking a few shaky, shuffling steps until the ship began her roil back, whereupon they lunged out and clung hard to the nearest fixture. ‘They don’t know ‘oo they are any more, do they?’

Many of these refugees were permanently dazed, it seemed. Indeed I remained fairly disoriented myself. One never realises how closely one’s personality is identified with one’s past, or country, or even a certain street in a certain city, until one is forcibly cut off from them. For my part I grew increasingly attached to my black and silver Cossack pistols. They remained always in the deep pockets of my black bearskin coat. I would frequently reach in to grip their reassuring butts. They possessed no sentimental significance, having been the property, after all, of an uncouth bandit, and the episode in which I came by them remained a painful and humiliating memory, yet they nonetheless meant ‘Russia’ to me.

Bad weather delayed the ship for two days. Eventually snow gave way to sleet, the sky cleared a little, then the sea calmed enough to let us distinguish both an horizon and a coastline. Mr Thompson announced our approach to the Crimean peninsula, though we should not see Sevastopol until morning. We would lay off and await radio assurance that it was safe to continue in to harbour. Mrs Cornelius went aft to find Jack Bragg, one of the younger officers (who was almost comically enamoured of her). She returned with his binoculars. Through these we studied the cliffs. After about an hour I saw silhouetted mounted figures racing westward; I heard the firing of heavy guns, but found it impossible to identify the riders or which side cannonaded the other. When Mrs Cornelius grew alarmed, I told her we were well out of range of any artillery possessed by the Reds. The cavalry disappeared and with it the firing. The sea grew still, the weather milder. By nightfall we learned it would soon be safe to proceed.

After dinner Mrs Cornelius was persuaded to entertain us. Linking arms with Mr Thompson and Jack Bragg (his delicate girlish features characteristic of so many young Englishmen) she strode around the table singing
The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo
until she fell down. Once more I helped her to her bunk before clambering into my own and lying awake full of melancholy and moral uncertainty. I had begun to wonder if I should go ashore with the Cossack major and fight the Reds. The idea was foolish and obviously my duty was to stay alive, to use my brains and skills in exile where I could most effectively bring about an end to the Bolsheviks. Nobody thought that decision cowardly. My own commander in Odessa had not for a moment criticised me. A White defeat, after all, was fairly inevitable. I would stay aboard. Yet the ghost of Esmé, of what Esmé had been and what she had represented, remained to haunt me. Her ghost questioned my reason, called me back to Russian soil. Why should I love my country, I told her, when the Tsar’s self-indulgence, his stupid tolerance of the alien and the exotic, was almost as much to blame for my present plight as the treachery of the Jews? Russia could have been great. All her resources could have been devoted to the establishment of a brilliant and exemplary new world. Instead my nation lay mortally wounded a mile or two from where I slept. She shuddered in her death-throes, torn by wolves and jackals squabbling over her remains. Raped, she could no longer scream; pillaged, she did not even bother to complain. I had written to them all and offered them a glorious alternative to this. That vision was a thin, bright outline behind the coiling black smoke and the unhealthy glare of the flames; a silver vision of clean, massive towers, of graceful airships, of peace and sanity, an absence of hunger and disease, an environment for wholesome, well-educated, upstanding people. A new St Petersburg might have risen, literally, above the old: a flying city of steel and glass. How easily they could have been made reality, those plans which had been abandoned with my trunks.

That night, as the
Rio Cruz
bounced at anchor in the choppy waters off Sebastopol harbour, seemingly a target for every mine lying across the mouth of the approach, I forced myself to abandon at least temporarily my dream of a wholly Slavic renaissance. With daylight, having had even less sleep than usual, I took a fortifying pinch of cocaine (making sure Mrs Cornelius should not wake and see me, for she disapproved) and went on deck. In a hazy glow, the green-skinned seeress was already spreading her cards. She did not look up as I passed. Everything was deathly still and silent, save for the slop of the water, the clack of pasteboard. Off the portside I saw low, snow-covered hills, a suggestion of buildings near the shore, all lying beneath a miserable grey sky. The ship still rocked a little, but her movements were no longer dramatic. Huddled in his donkey-jacket, hands in pockets and cap pulled tight over his ears, Jack Bragg joined me at the rail. ‘That’s Serich Point, I think.’ He gestured. ‘Thank God visibility’s a bit better. I didn’t fancy going through those mines completely blind. You couldn’t see a ship’s length in front of you earlier on.’ Breath poured like exhaust from his mouth. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much activity. I suppose that’s a good thing.’

A moment or two later, when the anchor began to lift, Bragg returned to his duties, but I remained forward. As we steamed towards Sebastopol I soon made out the entrance to the harbour where a sinister line of buoys indicated her mine defence. Beyond the buoys I could see a few low, modern buildings, apparently empty. There was not a single human figure visible anywhere; not a vehicle, not a whiff of smoke; not a sound. The greatest military harbour of the Black Sea seemed completely deserted.

Without a naval guard to warn us of potential danger or a pilot to guide us through the gate of the nets I felt the ship had little chance of getting in safely, but she continued to steam towards the buoys directly ahead. I gripped the rail, readying myself for the explosion which must certainly come, but somehow we passed into the harbour. A few minutes later we rounded the point to see the grey-hulled outline of a British man-o’-war at anchor: the only other ship in evidence. She did not acknowledge us and I began to believe she, too, had been abandoned. The same silence lay across the unpopulated hills and at the town below them. The sudden flap of a seagull’s wing was startling and unwelcome. Nothing, save for a few birds, moved on water or land: a desolation of snow and ice, it was as if the Winter King had passed through, leaving no soul alive which might have witnessed his presence.

The
Rio Cruz
dropped anchor between the battleship and the huge main quay. By now a good many passengers were on deck, as affected as I by the silence. They spoke in low, puzzled voices. Jack Bragg passed me, grinning. ‘Rather better reception than the last time the British came to the Crimea!’

The buildings of the main town rose as high as seven or eight storeys, mostly of the familiar neo-classical pattern, but here and there were signs of an older, more typically Slavic design, with the polished domes of churches and cathedrals, the baroque of ministerial offices, much of it in yellow limestone, reminding me of my own Kiev. Sebastopol’s fortifications were sturdy and not evidently breached, but she flew no standards. Shaking his head. Major Volisharof came up beside me. He stared intently shoreward, as if into a mirror, and automatically squeezed a small pimple on his left cheek; then he began to brush at his moustache with his index finger. He reminded me of a gardener at work on a favourite piece of topiary.

‘You know Sebastopol, major?’

‘Oh, very well.’ He pointed away to our left. ‘All the planes have gone. That was the aerodrome. Not so much as a windsock. And the signal station’s abandoned.’ His hands returned to tease his moustache. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Yet tomorrow both Reds and Whites could be back, fighting in the streets, and the quaysides choked with refugees.’

‘Do you still hope to go ashore?’

‘No, no. It’s Yalta definitely now. Isn’t that silence awful? When you get that, you can be sure there’s a mound or two of corpses not far away.’ He gave his moustache a pat. ‘As if the place has been visited by the plague. It will be like this everywhere in a year or two. The whole of Russia wiped out.’

We listened to the light wind in the rigging, the flap of the bedraggled flags against their masts. Then the bell sounded for lunch.

At about one-thirty there was a noise off to port and several of us, including Mrs Cornelius, left the saloon to look. Coming away from the vast yellow quay was an old steam launch. She wheezed and spat like the boats I used to see in the summer taking Odessa’s holidaymakers for trips, or the river-steamers I once serviced for the Armenian in Kiev. Her funnel panted out unhealthy black smoke and her machinery sounded as if it was held together only by ancient layers of congealed oil. In her stern was a middle-aged Russian officer wearing a green greatcoat and an astrakhan shako, his face pinched with cold, while in her bow a French infantry captain had on his regimental cap but was otherwise completely wrapped in fox fur. A British naval rating, in regular uniform, at the boat’s little wheel displayed considerable skill in bringing her alongside. The officers reached up for the ropes our crewmen threw down. When the boat was secured they climbed up the waiting ladder to be greeted by our captain. I had gained the impression these might be the only three survivors of Sebastopol. Some of our hands shouted questions to the rating, but I could not understand his replies. At that moment the British battleship, now lying aft of us and to starboard, came to life. She was half-hidden by mist so the sharp sound of her bosun’s whistle was all the more startling; this was followed by one single, deep note from her horn. The mood of desolation lifted just a little. People began to call out to the Russian officer, asking after relatives, for news of the Civil War, wanting to know what had happened to the port, but he merely shrugged and continued on to the captain’s cabin.

A few minutes later the cook’s boy passed us with a tray of steaming food and took it in. ‘They ain’t ‘ad nuffin’ ter eat fer a week,’ he told Mrs Cornelius when on his return she seized him by the arm. ‘I don’t fink we’ll be ‘ere long, missus.’ She and I went to sit and drink vodka in the saloon while around us a small army of merchants and ex-Princes discussed the significance of Sebastopol’s silence. About an hour later I saw Mr Thompson. He paused long enough to tell me that the Whites were trying to hold off the Reds at Perekop. We had arrived a day too late or a day too early. The battleship, H.M.S.
Marlborough,
was supposed to offer covering fire to the Whites in attacking the town. But Sebastopol had been taken before she could reach the harbour. Then, at the rumour of a large Red force coming through, the Whites and the majority of civilians had left.
Marlborough
had no orders and was sitting it out until she heard what she should do. Meanwhile suspected cases of mumps on board meant that she was in quarantine. There were a few refugees still in the town. The officers had come aboard to see how many more we could accommodate. ‘We’ll keep our steam handy so we can leave at an hour’s notice. We’ll probably be taking on wounded.’

Through Jack Bragg’s glasses Mrs Cornelius and I again surveyed the town. Shops had plainly been looted of everything; on walls I saw familiar posters, both White and Bolshevik, and occasionally an old person would scuttle from one doorway into another. I saw two dogs engaged in sexual intercourse on the quay, as if they had realized that here was the largest audience they would ever have. Though several buildings showed signs of shelling they were not particularly badly damaged. I had witnessed many a town devastated by War, but none whose population had vanished so completely. It was very difficult to understand where everyone could have gone. Later three horse-drawn wagons, crude red crosses painted on their canvas awnings, stopped wearily at the quay and crippled men were helped into the old steam-launch which had to make several journeys, eventually bringing some thirty wounded soldiers aboard. In the meantime grey mist descended on the town. Another hour passed. Then a wealthy Russian family and their servants were brought out. They were taken to the last available private cabin. These tall, dignified people had their faces hidden in their collars but there was speculation they were members of the Royal Family. Neither Mr Thompson nor Jack Bragg could discover their identities and Captain Monier-Williams would not tell. They had their meals served in their quarters. By nightfall we were apparently ready to sail again. The Russian soldiers were all youths; those who could walk dined with the rest of the passengers and were treated as heroes. They had evidently not eaten decent food for months. They said they had been fighting with the British Military Mission. There was still a division of Black Watch somewhere between Sebastopol and Perekop.
Marlborough,
in spite of her quarantine, would have to evacuate them if they ever reached the harbour.

Mrs Cornelius as usual began chatting almost at once to the White soldiers, noticing whose wounds were not properly bandaged, who needed a letter written and so on. She also learned a great deal about the state of the forces. It became clear to her that the Whites were being badly beaten. Before we went to sleep that night she laughed, ‘I feel like Florence bleedin’ Nightingale!’