The Laughter of Carthage (64 page)

By the time I got up next morning we were already lifting our anchor and preparing to leave. Sebastopol at dawn was still lost in mist and all I could see was the main quay. As the sun rose, figures began to appear in ones and twos. They moved out of the mist like the spectres of the dead, wrapped in rags. Then came horses drawing wagons loaded with potatoes and other winter vegetables, for all the world as if their owners were about to set up a market. Creatures with hand-carts containing carrots and cabbages beckoned to the ship. I heard voices calling. It all seemed sinister to me, though they may well have been innocent peasants trying to sell us what they had. At any moment, however, I expected them to push aside the food and reveal machine-guns. We turned, heading for the gateway, and the figures became increasingly agitated, jumping and waving. The ship sounded her horn, as if in reply and then we were passing the still silent
Marlborough,
negotiating the buoys and moving out to sea.

On the next stage of our voyage, we never lost sight of a coast seemingly as deserted as Sebastopol. By that afternoon we had reached Yalta, the Queen of the Black Sea, looking impressive in the thin sunlight, just as she had in her heyday. She was superficially unspoiled: a fashionable holiday resort out of season, backed by spectacular, wooded, snow-covered hills. She seemed to consist chiefly of solidly-built hotels and had something of the appearance of a small, more compact St Petersburg. Because we were only a short distance off I could easily see people of all classes, horses, motor-cars, soldiers. Yalta had not been shelled and remained able to feed her population. The hotels along her front presented themselves like a committee of dowagers, primly magnificent, perfectly groomed. Any poverty, anything untoward, was hidden in the back-streets and ignored.

Soon white launches flying the Imperial standard came out to meet us and smart sailors, polite and practical, helped some of our passengers to disembark. Major Volisharof temporarily put his children in charge of a Ukrainian family and went ashore to find his sister-in-law and receive his orders. The wounded were taken off. My impression was that most of them were reluctant to leave the ship. The launches returned to the landing-stage and a while later, when the sun felt almost warm on our faces, began to bring out boxes, presumably of ammunition, which were loaded into our cargo holds. Next came the new passengers, mainly women of rank and their children, whose men had either been killed or had elected to remain to fight the Reds. Mrs Cornelius and I were especially impressed by a very tall couple who seemed unlikely companions - a Greek priest and a Roman Catholic nun. He was pale and haunted, but she was red-cheeked and full of smiles. ‘Looks like she’s gettin’ a bit o’ wot she fancies,’ said Mrs Cornelius with a wink to me. I was still young enough to be embarrassed and turned my attention towards the shore.

Yalta had been visited by the Tsar and his family every summer. The idea that those wonderful villas, the tree-lined streets and parks, the palaces and gardens might eventually fall to Communist shells seemed impossible. Even Bolsheviks must respect such beauty, I thought. I was so sure they would not wish to destroy Yalta that I had the impulse again to take my baggage and leave the ship. Yalta had been under siege; she had known horror, yet she continued to look proudly insouciant; a great eighteenth-century aristocrat simply refusing to acknowledge the presence of Robespierre’s sans culottes on her premises. She was at once nostalgic past and hopeful present: a citadel of good taste and refinement. By her very spirit she must surely resist any attempt to conquer her. (In a few months, of course, Deniken and Wrangel would desert Yalta; the British and French would also abandon her to her fate, and Red Guards would urinate in her fountains, defecate on her flower-beds and vomit over her remaining furnishings. One might as easily have expected the Antichrist to acknowledge the sanctity of a village church.)

Those Bolsheviks had a genuine will to destruction, an honest hatred of everything beautiful, an almost sexual lust to wreck whatever was most delicate and cultured in Russia. Just as they had brought it to Sebastopol, they would bring silence to Yalta. In another year they would strike the whole great country mute. Then Stalin would freeze speech and movement entirely, forbid birdsong in the forest and the bleating of lambs in the field.

The Winter King would come. Stalin would breathe sleeping ignorance into the minds of his subjects and cool their hearts until feeling was impossible. The same men and women who had begun in 1917 by shouting in the streets at the tops of their lungs would, by 1930, be afraid even to whisper in the corners of their own rooms: the Winter King could bear no noise. Even the faintest creaking of an icicle startled him. Shivering in his ghastly isolation, terrified lest some vagrant murmur remind him of his crimes, suspecting all others of his own monumental ruthlessness, his rest could be disturbed by the breeze of a moth’s wing fanning his ruined face. Then he would awake, stifling a gasp, dictating a memoir to his expectant executioners: all moths were State traitors and must perish by morning.

Major Volisharof returned to the ship with a dowdy woman of about forty; the aunt. She was introduced to us but I never heard her name and never again had occasion to ask it. He seemed to be paying even more attention to his moustache, as if anticipating the time when he need no longer feel his affections divided. He shook hands with me and begged me to continue pleading the White cause wherever I went in the world. I gave him my word.

‘This is worse than 1453,’ he said. ‘If Christendom had believed the Emperor and sent enough help, Constantinople would never have fallen.’ He looked back towards Yalta, seemingly impervious in her tranquillity. ‘This business is the responsibility of every Christian. Tell them that.’ I watched him kiss his children goodbye, give his moustache a couple of twirls, then follow the orderly, who had come with him to carry his kit, back to the launch.

The mysterious family of aristocrats disembarked and their cabin was taken by a woman, her little daughter and her servant. The woman was remarkably good looking and I was immediately attracted to her. Shortly after she had been installed, the ship was on her way again and an hour later it began to snow. Yalta, I thought, had let us go regretfully, but without complaint.

The Yalta refugees were altogether a better selection than those who had boarded in Odessa. Cheerfully, they made the most of their conditions, bringing with them a new atmosphere of camaraderie and good fellowship. The disappointed merchants and their complaining wives were soon shamed. After a day or so at sea the weather improved, the waves became less agitated and my own sadness at leaving beautiful Yalta to her fate was modified a little by the sound of children now able to play on deck; moreover, I at last had the opportunity to indulge in good conversation with people of my own intellectual capacity and there were women who, separated from their husbands, were only too pleased to enjoy a little mildly flirtatious badinage with a handsome young man. I began to entertain some hope that my appalling celibacy might soon be alleviated, if only briefly with one of their servants.

To this end I became a great and popular builder of paper aeroplanes and boats. I took innocent pleasure in the delight of the children whose admiration of my handiwork also helped me forget personal problems. My friendships with the little Boryas and Katyas led to contact with their nanyanas and their mothers, most of whom told me how wonderful I was with children and asked me about myself. I hinted, tastefully, at my aristocratic connections, Petersburg education, military service and my special mission. It was unwise, then, to be over-specific. The Bolsheviks were already planting spies amongst the refugees. I chose not to wear either of my uniforms but made it clear that once I arrived in London my business would be of significance to the White cause. Lastly I let it be understood that Mrs Cornelius and I were related, but not husband and wife. I was, in fact, a bachelor. The only thing which marred this general improvement in my life was an incident on the second night out from Yalta. I was taking my usual stroll, had just passed the wheelhouse, returning to the saloon, when I saw a pale figure, a handkerchief pressed to its mouth, retreat suddenly into one of the private cabins, as if startled. For a moment I had thought it was Brodmann, the Jew who had threatened to betray me in Odessa and who had witnessed my humiliation at the hands of the anarchist Cossack in Alexandrovsk. I felt faint. My stomach seemed to contract. I even uttered his name.

‘Brodmann?’

The door closed and was immediately bolted on the inside.

Surely this treacherous coward had not followed me onto the boat? It was impossible. I had seen him arrested. Maybe I was experiencing a mild hallucination? I had dreamed once or twice about Brodmann. I had dreamed about most of the terrors of the past two years. Now, in my extreme tiredness, I might be imposing the dream onto my waking life. I reasoned that Brodmann could never have escaped in time to join the
Rio Cruz.
A kind of residual horror was getting the better of me. I went at once to my cabin and tried to sleep.

The following morning I adhered to my routine; later I did as I always did now, greeting the children, chatting with their mothers, devising new deck games, sympathising with young women who had left their sweethearts fighting in the Caucasus, bending an ear to widows whose husbands had died bravely for Tsar and Fatherland, and offering reassurances concerning movements afoot which must soon destroy the Bolsheviks forever and re-establish a legitimate government in Petrograd.

The image of Brodmann was forced thoroughly from my mind. I was lucky enough to meet one or two of those who had known Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff, my Kolya. We spoke of mutually familiar acquaintances. We recalled the good old Tsarist days, spoke of the War and Kolya’s relatives. I gained enormous stature in their eyes when they learned I had been with the Count’s cousin, Alexei Leonovitch, in the Oertz which had crashed in the sea of Odessa, killing him and wounding me. Consequently this gave me the status of war-hero, a Knight of the Air, and thus I gained a little compensation for my sufferings.

The woman eventually showing the strongest interest in me was the good-looking creature of almost thirty who had taken the vacated cabin. Although Russian, she had a German married name: the Baroness von Ruckstühl. Her factory-owner husband, son of a ‘colonist’, had been shot by his Kharkov workers in 1918 after Skoropadskya fled to Berlin. The Baroness was not at all Germanic. She was a heavy, Slavic beauty with large blue-green eyes, a wide, smiling mouth and thick auburn hair which she generally wore bunched on top of her head. She favoured smart and simple clothes, chiefly travelling dresses and cloaks of conservative dark greens, reds and blues which suited her perfectly and added to her attraction; indeed, the only female on the
Rio Cruz
who outshone her was her own daughter (I must admit it was she who first attracted me). The daughter took after her mother in looks and complexion but had that air of vulnerability and courageous curiosity which has continued to fascinate me since childhood. Esmé had possessed it, and Zoyea, too. There is something wonderful about young girls with those qualities. They make one feel protective, lustful, happy and strong all at the same time. The little girl was about eleven and her name was Katerina, though we knew her as ‘Kitty’. When they first appeared on deck, the Baroness seemed sad and abstracted, only arousing herself from her depression to smile at some antic of the child’s. She never admonished her. This was left to the Caucasian nanny, Marusya Veranovna, a severe old hook-nosed woman with thick lips, very uncomfortable in the company of other passengers, who tended to glare defiantly at everyone except her charges, plainly hating all aspects of the voyage. For the first day or so she objected to Kitty’s choice of myself as her chief playmate until the Baroness evidently told her not to interfere. I soon became close friends with Kitty, yet would say little more than ‘Good morning’ either to the mother or the servant. Meeting them on deck, I would raise my hat, as distantly polite as they. Of course nobody judged me perverse in my attachment to the child! In my desperate frustration I was grateful if occasionally I brushed her cheek with the back of my hand or held her by the shoulder for a second whilst steadying her against a wave. Indeed, my discomfort actually increased. I now burned for Kitty by day and for Mrs Cornelius by night! Without my company Mrs Cornelius spent much of her time with young Jack Bragg. Had I been of a jealous disposition I might have suspected a romantic interest, but I knew she would not betray her Frenchman’s trust. Neither was there any question of my making sexual advances to the little girl. My feelings were entirely under control (and besides she was of good family; it would have been insane of me to have risked the scandal). At any rate, noticing the growing interest in me displayed by the Baroness, I began with controlled deliberation to transfer my feelings to the mother. It was not very difficult, since she was an extraordinarily handsome and self-contained woman. I know she felt at least a little of that competitive impulse so many mothers exhibit when a man takes an interest in their daughters. Ironically they are inclined to show particular favour to the man who courts their little offspring, until it becomes certain they have no chance of winning him; whereupon, of course, they become Furies, Tigers of Morality, Invokers of the Law. Thus, while I continued to ‘court’ young Kitty, joking with her, making her giggle, having her beg me for piggy-back rides and so on, the display was now chiefly designed to lure the Baroness. I am, I hope, a self-knowing and honest person and while not particularly proud of my technique in this matter, should remind you that I was not yet twenty. I was used to a full sex-life since I had spent the past months as a favoured guest in a whorehouse. What is more I had, in my heart of hearts, expected once at sea to enjoy the favours of Mrs Cornelius. The boy that I was needed warm, feminine company at night to help him forget his agony at leaving Holy Russia behind, for a Russian and his land are the same thing; to part them is to tear flesh from flesh: it is as if one’s entire substance is stolen. Few Russians ever voluntarily go abroad; we are almost all unwilling exiles, and that is why we are so easily misunderstood. I am no molester of children! These stupid Londoners fail to appreciate the sadness of an old, childless man. Why should I heed their magistrates’ warnings? I simply wish to give a little affection and receive some in return. I did not betray her trust. On the contrary, she betrayed mine. They always will.