The Laughter of Carthage (78 page)

In comparison Odessa seemed no more than a small provincial town. When Jack Bragg rejoined us for a moment he was sardonic, ‘It’s impressive, but wait till you smell it. We’ll dock near the European Customs House on the quay there. First we have to cross to Haidur Pasha to be cleared.’ He gestured towards Asia. ‘On the Scutari side. At most points this bit of water’s no wider than the Thames. Astonishing what it separates.’

I resented his matter-of-fact voice; it interrupted my reverie, almost amounting to prayer. I had tried to cram, as it were, all the city into my eyes at once. The ship now turned her back on Byzantium and began her approach of the Eastern shore where the tall, official buildings were newer and built further apart, although there were still domes and minarets visible amongst the trees. We sailed towards a row of foreign warships flying the flags of Italy, America, Greece, France and England: the crosses of Christ, the tricolors of Liberty. All that was missing was our Russian flag. We had been pledged for centuries to restore Constantinople to Christ and at the moment of success we turned and destroyed one another in a bloody Civil War.

I believe I was weeping a little when Mrs Cornelius, holding to her face a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-cologne, came to stand unsteadily between me and the Baroness. She peered vaguely at the view, her eyes round in her soft, pink features. ‘Cor! It looks a bloody sight better from this side, dunnit?’ She had passed through Constantinople with her Persian lover in 1914. ‘So near and yet so bleedin’ far, eh, Ivan?’

In twos and threes the Russian passengers began to come up on deck. They shared a sense of awe and, I suspect, trepidation. Constantinople was central to our deepest mythology, meaning far more to us than Rome to a Catholic.
Mimari Kimdir!
Millions had died in recent years profoundly certain their sacrifice would see our Tsar in person ultimately raising the Russian eagle above the Sublime Porte. The posters had clearly told us that a victorious Tsar, sword lifted in triumph, would set his heel upon the neck of a fallen Sultan. Then he would lead his knights to the doors of St Sophia to claim our oldest church, after five hundred years of humiliating thraldom, for Christ again. That was the worst the Bolsheviks stole from the Russian people when they told us to stop killing Turks and destroy one another. My only consolation was a glimpse of the Greek’s blue-cross flag flying close to the Union Jack. When Lenin’s Jewish masters withdrew our forces from the Crusade the Greeks had heroically picked up our Saviour’s banner. But soon the Greeks would be cheated, too.

The
Rio Cruz
now sounded her whistle, a greeting to the other ships. I wished then that I could step ashore in Don Cossack uniform as a true representative of my nation. But it would have been madness to follow the impulse. I contented myself with a small, private prayer. Three old Russians were already on their knees. Many more sobbed and clasped their hands upon the rail. Hagia Sophia was released from Islam! We thought Christ redeemed. How could we predict his next betrayal? Even as the
Rio Cruz
stopped engines beside the stone quays of Scutari, Europe’s Jews, secure in their financial fortresses, manipulated the assets of Allied capital. Soon one nation would be pitted against another. A Jew calling himself a Greek and bearing an aristocratic British title would become chief architect of the treachery to follow: Zaharoff the Armaments King already sold weapons to Greeks, Turks and Armenians alike. He ate the bread of Prime Minister Venizelos and accepted scented coffee from that unregenerate Champion of Islam, Mustafa Kemal. He lied to each in turn. He boasted his veins flowed with the blood of St Paul, then delivered up the city of his birth to Mahomet. The betrayal of Constantinople became just another page in the account books of Vickers-Armstrong.

The ship was finally at her moorings. Tall British naval officers stood on the dock chatting easily to khaki-clad Turks in red tarbooshes. They hardly glanced at us. The high shuttered windows of the Customs buildings provided perches for fluttering, eager gulls who seemed far happier to see us. A Crossley staff-car drew up at the gates. From it emerged a Medical Officer and his nurse. Either from excitement, terror or physical weakness I began to tremble. Perhaps I realised for the first time that I was free of Russia. The umbilical was being cut. The Baroness scarcely noticed my condition. She went to attend to her daughter. Amidships Jack Bragg held a megaphone to his lips and told our passengers there would be a delay until necessary checks were made. The Greek priest interpreting for Jack had a face as calm as an ikon; his black arms flapped as he made placatory movements with his hands.

I looked back across the water to shimmering Byzantium. It was from here I supposed the first Hun hordes rested on their pommels, shielded their eyes and licked their lips in greedy anticipation at their prospective prize. The mercantile pivot of the world, Byzantium had been in a state of decadence, even then, for over a thousand years. I could still make out her far off palaces, her green and golden hills. At this distance she seemed unchanged, just as she might have looked in the time of Theodosius or Justinian the Great. For those thousand years moralists had called her decadent and predicted her end, yet no city, even Rome, retained her original character as thoroughly as Constantinople.

Mrs Cornelius glanced at me. ‘You orl right, Ive?’

Still trembling, I shrugged off her concern. I tried to speak, but could not. My throat was too dry. I think my legs gave out, though I did not faint. I remember her saying, ‘Oh, shit. Wot bleedin’ orful luck.’ Through the rail I could see the first officials beginning to come aboard. I tried to stand, but failed. I fell heavily against her legs. Having been granted my vision of Heaven. I felt now I must surely die.

* * * *

FIVE

ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1st 1920 I died a Russian and on January 14th (by the Western calendar) I was born a Cosmopolitan. I had suffered a mild attack of typhus. For his own convenience the British doctor diagnosed nervous exhaustion.
Ich Kann nichtso lange warten.
According to Mrs Cornelius and the Baroness I babbled in half-a-dozen different languages. I had visions. I spoke of my loved ones, of my mother, of Esmé, Captain Brown, Kolya, Shura and the rest. I relived the glories and horrors of my past. They told me I had most frequently believed myself a boy in Odessa. This did not surprise me. I lost my youth in Odessa (but I was to discover my humanity in Constantinople).

By the time I recovered my senses it had grown dark. I was cradled in a wide, high-sided bunk. Shadowy lamplight revealed the Baroness seated beside me, her hair unruly, wearing a brown velvet dress and yellow apron. She was holding my hand but was half asleep. Weakly I tried to rise, only to discover I had lost the use of my legs. Believing as always in the power of mind over matter, I refused to panic. I knew I must eventually walk again; it required only an effort of will. When I squeezed her hand her eyes popped open mechanically, as if she were a trick toy. ‘Where am I, Leda Nicolayevna?’

‘This is Captain Monier-Williams’s own cabin, Simka. The doctor thinks you are in some sort of shock. You don’t have typhus, though everyone’s been tested. There doesn’t seem to be sickness aboard, after all.’

I held my tongue, letting her think whatever most comforted her. ‘Mrs Pyatnitski?’

She had helped nurse me. Currently she was enjoying a late dinner. ‘She said she’d look in before she goes to bed. And Jack Bragg and Mr Thompson will be visiting you. We’re all, of course, in quarantine. But it won’t be for long.’

At that time I believed as firmly as now that a miracle had occurred. I had been saved in order to fulfil my proper destiny. ‘My cocaine is still in my luggage, I hope.’ I trusted more in the drug’s powers than in the quack’s.

‘It’s impossible for me to get. I said nothing, naturally, to the doctor.’

I slipped back into sleep. I had no dependence on the drug, but its healing properties would help me recover. Even then cocaine was beginning to receive a bad name. Artists painted men collapsing in their wives’ laps and labelled the pictures ‘Cocaine!’ The Coca-Cola Company was forced to remove the drug from its recipe. This persecution anticipated prohibition. While cocaine remained freely available it was something International Pharmaceutical Companies could not control. These companies wanted it all to themselves, so they could put their own name on it and trumpet it as a ‘wonder cure’. They conspired therefore to lie about its bad effects and campaigned to characterise the ordinary user as a degenerate. Ironically of course my sparing use of cocaine probably saved me from full scale typhus.

I awoke only half-an-hour or so later. Leda was still there. ‘You must forgive me if I acted strangely this morning.’ She was tender. ‘I thought you were unnaturally cool towards me. I now realise you were feeling ill. Do you still wish to arrange a meeting in Constantinople?’ She reached forward with a damp cloth to wipe my forehead. ‘There’s a restaurant where Russians go. If we’re separated, we should look for each other at Tokatlian’s.’

‘I’ll remember.’ I spoke feebly, still more than a little surprised to be alive.

She moistened my lips. ‘Poor little Ancient Mariner.’ The reference was as obscure to me then as it is now. I had never seen an albatross, let alone killed one with a crossbow. People fond of literary references always disturbed me. The poems and stories they read mean something only to them and possess virtually no relation to reality. But she was romantic, my Baroness, and I suppose I was fond of her for it. Perhaps I am too much a man of science. I have known many great poets. Few of them ever struck me as being very stable. As for the modern T. S. Eliot school and its attempts to glorify the language and manners of the gutter, I am repulsed by it. I heard such rubbish in its birthplace when the likes of Mandelstam and Mayakovski used it to cheer on their Red patrons. I see no virtue in elevating the football hooligan and the petty spiv to the status of demigods.

She turned the lamp down when I explained it hurt my eyes. Did I wish her to read to me? I asked if it was possible to find a newspaper, preferably an English one, on the ship. She had seen a
Times of Cairo
somewhere and left to look for it. Whoever had undressed me had put me in a pair of pyjamas not my own. I searched for my clothes to see if I had left any cocaine in the pockets. But they were presumably being disinfected. I wondered why our quarantine was to be so short. Now it is obvious they were afraid of starting a typhus scare. For that reason they chose to diagnose my attack as ‘nervous exhaustion’. I was too naive then to realise how frequently authorities acted from motives of straightforward expediency.

Leda returned with the paper. It was all news of Peace Conferences and temporary solutions. There were a few references to Russia, how Mr So-and-So sought negotiation with ‘Mr Lenin’ or ‘Mr Trotski’. More informative were ordinary reports from London: the King opening a new airship works, a rabid speech from Lloyd George, propagating that intemperate radicalism which eventually destroyed him and his Party. Many were warning of Socialism in England. Already Germany was threatened by a Red take-over, as were France and Italy (where the Vatican was in league with the communists). Few had learned from Russia’s present agony. Did people actually envy us our death-struggles? I told Leda I wanted to hear of human achievement, not human folly. She could find little enough to read after that.

For two more days I remained in the captain’s bunk, drinking tasteless soup, sipping vile medicine, until a pasty-faced, fastidious Medical Officer, who could barely bring himself to touch me, pronounced me well. Mrs Cornelius had by then gone ahead to Pera and was staying at the
Palas.
The ship had crossed from Scutari to the European side, my documents and trunks had been cleared. I could leave the ship whenever I chose. Jack Bragg had helped the Baroness find temporary lodging with a German family near the Artillery Barracks. My own destination was closer, in the main part of Pera. There were no cabs easily available at this particular part of the Galata docks (Galata and Pera lay on the Bosphorus shore of the pontoon bridge) and I was advised to use public transport. Captain Monier-Williams shook hands and promised my luggage would be sent on to the hotel. I asked to be remembered to Thompson and Bragg, who had already gone ashore. I packed the small bag, still feeling a little weak, and made my way along the decks of the deserted
Rio Cruz,
down the gangplank and onto the stone flags of the quayside. On solid ground after so long it took time to regain my land-legs. Handing me a little coin, a Marine sergeant escorted me through the barriers, past the grey respectability of the Customs offices and up the steps to the busy street where the buildings were immediately far more disreputable-looking, with peeling whitewash, layers of posters, flaking paint, broken windows. The sergeant pointed to the hand which held the coin. ‘You can get the tram here,’ he said. He indicated a filthy green sign. ‘You’ll want the Number One.’ He did an about face and swung off. In the hills overhead there was a little sunshine, but down here were only the remnants of mist.