The Laughter of Carthage (69 page)

Leda joined me almost at once. I said nothing about Hernikof, for I knew what her answer would be. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. She began to guide me into the darkness, avoiding the ship’s lights and stopping at last in the shadow of the afterdeck. I listened to the screw turning through the water. I heard the movement of our pistons. I knew our machinery almost as well as Mr Thompson. I recovered myself and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘These English people mean well,’ I said, ‘but they occasionally revive memories which are best left to die.’

She understood. She stroked my face with her soft, loving hand. ‘That is why we learn the habit of never asking questions,’ she said. ‘Of waiting until we are told.’

I looked at her a little sharply, wondering if there were anything more in what she said. But she seemed sincere. She did not have quite the same ability as Mrs Cornelius to make me relax, but she was calming me now. I sighed and from its case took one of my last papyrussa. Using a brass ‘everlasting match’ which someone had given me as part payment for passport work, I lit the cigarette with care. She leaned against me. chiefly to shelter herself from the cold wind which blew now from the North East. ‘It is so hard to imagine the future,’ she said.

‘You mean in your personal life?’

She smiled. ‘You, of course, have a very good idea of what the future should be like, even if your dream never comes true. That must give your life the momentum which mine, for instance, lacks. All I have is Kitty. She’s my only reason for going to Berlin, where I may find some security, a good school. Yet I’m dependent on the kindness of distant relatives. My destiny is in their hands.’

‘It was once the same for me.’ I drew carefully on the papyrussa. The tobacco was too dry and the whole thing threatened to fall from its paper tube, ‘It’s terrible to be made a child again. And all for the sake of a real child, too. Is there no work you could do?’

She held out her hand to take the cigarette from me. She puffed at it once or twice, then gave it back. ‘I was trained to be the wife of an eminent industrialist. Nothing else. The likes of me, my dear, are a glut on the market. There are thousands of us all over the world and only a handful of eminent industrialists! Some of us try to poach from those who have one; others become lost in a kind of mental haze. I even heard of one or two who took up with completely unsuitable young men.’ Though she joked I became again suspicious. Did she now have it in mind to turn me into the creature she would best like to marry?

‘You are intelligent and personable,’ I told her. ‘You have a little capital in Germany, eh? You should think of going into business. Become an eminent industrialist in your own right! Go to Paris. All the best Russians are in Paris. Found a Fashion Salon. Or a secretarial agency.’ My imagination failed me.

‘I would rather,’ she teased, ‘become an international adventuress and bring down kings and emperors.’

‘But this is the age of republics and democracies. It is so much harder to seduce and ruin a committee.’

She laughed at this. ‘Maxim Arturovitch, you are insufficiently romantic tonight. It’s my function to be the realist, yours to be the dreamer. Would you rob me of my only portion?’

I forced myself to dismiss my suspicions. ‘Very well, I shall continue to dream for you. And you may continue to be a sceptic. But I assure you the future I plan is very practical. A scientist makes it his business to know how things work, to be aware of the proper place of every nut and bolt.’

We parted at her cabin door. ‘Until tomorrow,’ she said, and then: ‘We shall be able to be together in Constantinople at least for a while I hope.’

‘I hope so.’

She said hastily. ‘Batoum is safe. Couldn’t we go ashore there?’

I agreed to consider the idea, which had not occurred to me. While I would be glad to break the journey I remained wary of our intimacy deepening, particularly at an earlier stage than I had planned. I returned to my cabin. As usual when Mrs Cornelius was absent, I indulged myself in a larger than usual sniff of cocaine for, by all accounts, Constantinople had become the capital of the drug world and I would be in no danger of running out of that particular means of moral support. I have never been addicted to anything in my life. I smoke and drink and take cocaine from choice; they give me pleasure. The mild effects of deprivation from cigarettes or from ‘neige’ are hardly noticeable when I am busy. Anyway, I would not buy what today’s hairy children call ‘cocaine’. It is no more than a mixture of household powders touched up with a taste or two of quinine or procaine to numb the lips and a dash of amphetamine to simulate the euphoric effect. One might as well mix ginger beer with dish-washing liquid and call it champagne!

They think they are so modern and daring with their ‘narcotics’. They soften their brains with marijuana and sleeping pills to the point where they cannot tell one drug from another. I despise them, in their leather jackets; they look the same as those barbarians who swaggered through the Winter Palace in 1917, thinking they knew everything when all they had was a monumental arrogance born of stupidity. I see them every day, across the street, in Finch’s pub. They whisper together and pass little paper packets back and forth and every so often the police come, bored and irritable, to perform some ritual search and take one or two of them away. They toady to negroes. The police merely restore the belief of these louts in their ‘outlaw pride’. There is nothing different about them. No wonder the use of cocaine is frowned upon these days. In my youth it was the drug of the aristocrat, the artist, the scientist, the doctor. Ask anyone. Even Freud. And I have made no secret of my dislike for his views. (The Triumvirate which destroyed our civilisation is Marx, Freud, Einstein. It will be remembered in a million years as the greatest enemy of mankind. Marx attacked the basic foundations of Christian society. Freud attacked our minds so we doubted every opinion. Einstein attacked the very substance of the universe. And they say Goebbels was a Master of Lies! He was an
ingénu.
How that Triumvirate must laugh as it pushes down fragile walls and monuments, tramples the ikons, stands, with hands on hips, amongst the rubble of the world’s greatness while rivers of blood wash its feet and Hope and Humanity are defeated, dying in flames whose light casts a monstrous shadow over the world; the shadow of the Beast, the three-headed symbol of Death.)

Freud himself helped ruin the reputation of cocaine. But they have no need to consider my arrest. I will not use that adulteration of talc and scouring powder they try to sell me.

Quietly enjoying my isolation, I lay down on my bunk to consider Leda’s suggestion. It would be pleasant to go ashore in Batoum. By all accounts it was a handsome enough town, though full of Moslems. We would probably find a hotel without much difficulty and spend a night or two together. This would be both a holiday and an amiable way of easing our inevitable parting. Yet if she saw this as a sign of our enjoying a longer liaison it could cause embarrassment in the future. For all my caution lust once again triumphed and I decided to ask the captain what he thought of some of us going ashore. I would not, though, put the question at dinner for fear of hurting Mrs Cornelius’s feelings, so I would seek the Old Man out next day and have a word with him alone.

I was asleep by the time Mrs Cornelius returned. I awoke to hear whispering on the other side of the door and realised Jack Bragg was with her. I heard her giggle. There was a scuffle. It was obvious that he had also temporarily lost control of himself. In order to save them both embarrassment, I called, as if startled, ‘Who’s there?’

The whispering subsided. I believe she kissed him and murmured goodnight. When she closed the door behind her she asked if I would mind her turning up the lamp. I said it was all right. She was dishevelled and tipsy, but her usual happy self. She waved her fingers at me. ‘Orl alone, Ive?’

She sat on the edge of her bunk to remove her shoes. She was wearing another frock, a pink and silver one. She had managed to bring a large, up-to-date wardrobe in several trunks. Mrs Cornelius always was fastidious about her clothes, at least when she could afford it. In later years poverty conquered both of us and we were forced to lower our standards considerably. ‘Phew!’ she said. ‘It’s a party ev’ry night aboard this bloody boat, innit!’

‘Your energy is boundless.’ I was admiring. ‘It would exhaust me.’

‘I’m sorta makin’ up fer lorst time. That Leon was such a bleedin’ pill. Fergot ‘ow ter enjoy ‘imself. They’re orl ther bloody same.’ Her view of the Bolshevik leaders was contemptuous and universally dismissive: they were a bunch of pious hypocrites, repressed middle-class intellectuals. If they had let their hair down a bit they might have been much happier and caused a lot less trouble. Not one of them, she would occasionally tell me in confidence, was any good as a lover. ‘And some of ‘em ‘re downright odd!’ She had a soft spot for loonies. ‘I’ll prob’bly orlways end up wiv blokes ‘oo’re a bit potty. They’re more int’restin’, at least at first.’

With her usual skill she got into her nightclothes, smoked a cigarette, read a page or two of one of her ‘books’ - old popular magazines someone had found for her on the ship - and turned the lamp down. ‘Night-night, Ivan.’ Again I was left with only her snores which, in the darkness, could still be mistaken for the pantings and exhalations of lust. And as usual I sought consolation in masturbation and fantasy, recalling my lovely Slav only a hundred yards from where I lay. I was now determined to spend all the time I could with her in Batoum.

I was up early, having decided I might best consider my plans in the fresh air. Our cabin was always extremely stuffy by morning. We had the choice of taking the rags and newspapers from the louvres of the door and freezing, or being virtually unable to breathe. As I dressed, Mrs Cornelius shifted in her bunk. Sleepily she said: ‘You watch yer don’ get in too deep, Ivan. Yore a clever littel bleeder, but yer got no sense . . .’Then her eyes closed and she was snoring. She had said nothing new. She believed me headstrong, my own worst enemy. She would tell me so through all the years to come, almost to her dying day (though I was kept from the deathbed by jealous relatives). I have been praised and condemned by great leaders, famous artists and intellectuals, but only her opinion was worth anything to me. Everyone remembers her; she became a legend. Novels were written about her, just as novels were written about Makhno. She could wrap politicians and generals around her fingers. She never lied to me.

‘They should’ve given yer the Nobel Prize, Ivan,’ she said one night in
The Elgin.
‘If only fer tryin’.’It was just before closing time on a Saturday night. The pub was a favourite with gypsies from the Westway camp; it was full of rowdy fiddles and accordions. They were the same seedy kind who had infested Odessa and Budapest and Paris fifty years before. It was almost impossible to stand up without being pushed over. Mrs Cornelius was rarely given to betraying strong feelings, but five pints of mild-and-bitter had relaxed her tongue. She felt sorry for me: it was not long after my last trouble with the Courts. I had also been insulted by a cloth-capped junk man, reeking of urine and motor-oil, when I tried to get to the bar. She was trying to show she at least still recognised my gifts. From Mrs Cornelius it was worth more than a knighthood. I am glad she was able to speak before she died, confirming her faith in me. That memory alone sustains me. I have suffered injustice for too long. Now there is no hope.

I helped her through the sweating singers in their collarless shirts and greasy coats, into the dark rain of Ladbroke Grove where the buses and lorries splashed and grumbled. I took her in my arms. She felt sick, she said. She bent over the gutter outside her flat in Blenheim Crescent, but nothing came up. Even then it was apparent she was very ill. She was dying. There was no need for her to lie. We were always honest with each other. She had a nose for genius, even if it were sometimes corrupt. Trotski, Mussolini, Goering: she had known them all. She shook her head. ‘They never give ya yore due, Ivan.’ It was true. She alone could testify that, but for the Bolsheviks, every Russian honour would today be mine. I would be a world name.

The Poles called the Tsarist Empire ‘Byzantium’ and use the same word today for the Soviet Union. The Polish talent for piety is almost as great as their talent for laziness. I did not become an émigré merely to own a little house in Putney and work for a record company. They are not martyrs. They are self-pitying
petit bourgeoisie.
They would complain under any regime. I wish people would stop introducing them to me. It is the same with the Czechs. We have nothing in common beside basic Slavonic. During the War it was all Poles. Now it is all Czechs. Mrs Cornelius told the neighbours how great I had been and how I had suffered. But I did not want their pity. I gambled, I said to her, and I lost.

I go up to the canal near Harrow Road. It is so bleak there. Everything is rotting. Everything is grey. There is slime on the water. The tow-path is littered with filth. I look at the backs of derelict buildings where unhealthy children smash the remaining windows and piss on floorboards which are beds for tramps. They spray the bricks with their excrement and illiterate slogans. This is Sunday afternoon and this is my exercise! My day off, my stroll, my relaxation! I have seen the wonders of Constantinople, the glories of Rome, the masculine grandeur of Berlin before they bombed it, the elegance of Paris, the brutal magnificence of New York, the dreaming luxury of Los Angeles. I have worn silk from top to bottom. I have satisfied my lust with women of outstanding beauty and breeding. I have experienced at first hand all the world’s noblest engineering miracles: the great liners, the skyscrapers, the planes and the airships. I have known the exhilaration of rapid, luxurious travel. But now I totter along a disgusting tow-path, staring at flotsam and smeared walls, terrified in my frailty for my worthless old life, praying I do not slip on a dog turd or attract the ruthless curiosity of some prepubescent footpad. Their noises echo over the water; the mysterious croaks and grunts of primitive amphibians heralding a return to bloody ignorance and unsentient savagery.