Byzantium Endures

TWELVE

IT WAS LIKE A FLOOD of brown and red mud in that wide, cold street. Remorseless and orderly, it flowed to the drone of engines and the trotting of horses; it flowed into the buildings, as disciplined as Germans and as fearsome as Haidamaki. I was looking at a real army, at last, and I was terrified. This was what Trotsky and Stalin and Antonov had built from our old Tsarist army: they had fuelled it with Bolshevik fanaticism and fired it with promises of land and Utopia. A dream worth killing for. And it was a Russian army. It was singing. The men on horseback, or in cars, or those who were marching, they were laughing in that easy, desperate way Russians have when they fight. Not a single Nationalist or Republican flag could be seen in the whole of Kreshchatik. Not a single shop was opening into the thin sunshine of that February dawn. There was only ice and Bolshevism in the streets. Without much hope, I began to finish packing. I dressed in my old ‘classless’ suit of black and white. I was able to light a cigarette before the doorhandle rattled and a tired voice asked who occupied the suite. I went to the door and opened it immediately. ‘Good morning, comrade,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you at last. I am Pyatnitski.’

It was a Chekist commissar in the leather jacket they all wore (many still wear such jackets, as easy to spot as Special Branch anoraks). He had yellow hair and a wide, prudish mouth. There were three Red Army guards behind him. They wore sailor uniforms, with red stars and bandoliers. They carried long rifles with fixed bayonets. The Chekist held the hotel register in his hands. He turned the pages. ‘You have stayed here frequently, citizen. Is this your home?’

‘I lost my own home,’ I told him. ‘It was looted by the Hetman’s people and by Petlyura.’

‘You don’t seem to have lost much.’ He came into the room.

‘I was poor. I worked with the Soviets. Pyatnitski?’ I hardly knew what lies to tell. I was desperate to talk my way clear of this terrible man.

‘You’ve stayed here and left, stayed here and left. Why’s that?’

‘I was in prison,’ I told him.

‘What had you done?’

‘Nothing. Bolshevik sympathies are enough to get you jailed in Kiev.’

‘You weren’t here during our previous occupation?’

‘I was in Kharkov, visiting comrades.’

‘And who do you support? The Kiev group?’

I knew no more about the different factions of the Party than I did about the sorts of flowers one might discover on a country walk. ‘I was non-aligned,’ I said. ‘My sympathies are with Moscow. I had made attempts to get back there.’

‘Have you any papers?’

I knew better than to give up my real papers, but I still had a spare set in my luggage. I opened my suitcase and took them out. ‘You’ll see I’m a scientist.’

‘Doctor Pyatnitski, is it? You’re very young.’

‘I did well at Petrograd, comrade.’

‘Your degree is from Kiev.’

‘I was transferred. That’s why I found myself here in the first place. You’ll discover that Comrade Lunarcharsky is an acquaintance of mine. He’ll vouch for me.’

‘You’re well-connected.’ He was sardonic. ‘One meets a lot of well-connected overnight Bolsheviks.’

‘I knew many comrades in Petrograd. Before the Revolution. I had a reputation. There are people there who know me.’

The Chekist sighed and scratched himself under his chin with my papers. He replaced a wide-brimmed hat on his head and looked at me through green, almost sympathetic eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was about to kill me. He turned away. A ritual had begun. ‘You’ll let these comrades search the rooms?’

‘If you think it necessary.’ There was a growing scent of death. I had smelled it once or twice before. I would learn to identify it easily in the months and years which followed.

‘You’ve been living very well.’

‘I’ve been lucky.’

‘How have you earned your money?’

‘As a mechanic.’

He sniffed. I wished I had stayed at Mother’s or had risen early enough to catch that Odessa train. ‘My working clothes aren’t here, of course.’

He removed his hat again. One of the sailors found an envelope in a drawer and brought it to him. ‘We still need skilled mechanics, comrade.’ He emptied all the Petlyurist military insignia into his hand.

I began to laugh.

He rounded on me. He was one of those unimaginative men who finds laughter baffling. I stopped, ‘I was offered a commission. Of course I refused it. That’s a souvenir.’

‘A major?’

I would normally have become impatient at this school-masterly malice, the stock-in-trade of so many Chekists and, indeed, policemen everywhere. They have no wit, but they have power. The worst abuse of that power, in my view, is in its employment to make bad jokes.

‘Is it major? I’m impressed.’ I was frightened.

‘Why did they offer you a commission?’

‘They wanted my help with their industrial problems.’

‘Running factories? Or motor-cars? Or what?’

‘Advice. I’ve helped keep most of Kiev going.’

He rubbed at his light-coloured eyebrows. He drew his puritanical lips together as if he had remembered a particularly unpleasant sin, either of his own or someone else’s. ‘You wouldn’t have had anything to do with the fire in that church? It was like a damned beacon. It helped us move in last night. I heard Petlyura or the French had installed a secret weapon up there. It had gone wrong. Was that you?’

‘It was,’ I said. ‘I sabotaged it.’

He smiled.

‘I was fired at by Petlyura’s men,’ I said, ‘while I was doing it. I’d been asked to work with it. I agreed. It was about to be turned on our forces when I set the sights out of alignment. There was a fight. It exploded.’

‘I think we’d better shoot you,’ said the commissar. I had irritated him. Over the months he had been doing his job he had evidently ceased to listen to words. He listened only to the sounds his victims made. He had learned to recognise desperation and anxiety and to identify these, as the simple-minded always will, with guilt. I could only continue to repeat the names of certain Bolsheviks whom I had known slightly in Petrograd. These names produced what Pavlov calls ‘a conditioned response’. It made him hesitate. He probably hated uncertainty, but he would hate those who made him uncertain so it was a dangerous game I played. These Moscow leather-jackets were famous for their snap decisions: a look at the clothes, a glance at the hands to see if they had done manual work, a quick check to ascertain ‘bourgeois background’, and off to the firing squad. Someone had since mentioned that the whole of the Bolshevik leadership could, by this yardstick, have been shot by the Cheka. My hands were not soft. I held them out towards the Chekist. I was mute. He frowned. I held my hands out to him, showing the fingers and palms calloused by the mechanical work I had been doing. He hesitated. He coughed for a second or two and drew a cigarette from a cardboard box he carried in one of his pockets. He had to shift his holster to get at the cigarettes. He struck a match. I looked around for my own cigarette. I had dropped it, but nothing was on fire. My papers went into his other deep pocket. ‘You’re wasting my time. You’re under arrest.’

‘House arrest? What have I done?’

‘This room’s needed.’

There was a sound of feet in the passage outside. A woman’s voice. Mrs Cornelius came in. She was wearing a loose, one-piece dress made of bright red silk and she had a red cloche on her head. Her lips and cheeks were carmine and emphasised the blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair. When she saw me she stopped dead and began to laugh.

‘ ‘Ullo, Ivan!’ She embraced me. ‘Yore a proper littel bad kopek, ain’t yer!’

‘You’re with the Reds?’ I said in English.

‘Been wiv ‘em all ther time, ain’t I? Lucky fer me, eh? Well, they’re more fun than the ovvers. Or were. I’ve got a noo boyfriend. ‘E’s ever so important.’

The Chekist was now looking firmly at his polished boots and frowning. He said something very sharp to the sailors. They began to carry Mrs Cornelius’s trunks into the room. She glanced round. ‘I’m not kickin’ yer art, am I? They’ll do anyfink fer me. But it’s too much, reelly. Sort o’ musical chairs. Yer never know ‘ose bed yore gonna sleep in next, eh?’ She threw back her head and bellowed with laughter. She giggled. She put a soft hand on my arm. ‘Yer gotter larf, incha?’

I did my best to smile and to adopt an easy stance which might convince the Chekist, who remained in the room, that I was one of the party elite. ‘Is Lunarcharsky here?’ I asked.

“E stopped bein’ any fun ages ago. And ‘is wife or somefink got stroppy. Nar. I’m serposed to be wiv Leo, but ‘e keeps goin’ ter ower places. I jest carn’t catch upwiv’imat all. I don’t reelly mind.’

‘Leo?’

‘Lev,’ she said. ‘You know. Trotsky. Littel trotty-true-ski I corl ‘im. Har, har, har.’

‘You’re his - paramour ...’

‘Lovely of yer ter say so, Ivan. I’m ‘is bit o’ all right, if that’s wot yer mean. Well, it’s fer the best. I’m tryin’ ter get back ter the sarth. Is that wot you’re doin’? I couldn’t stand anuvver winter’ere, could you?’

‘To Odessa?’

‘Seemed a good idear. ‘E don’t speak a word o’ English,’ she confided of the commissar, who was looking very sourly at both of us, ‘and ‘e ‘ates me. ‘E don’t seem too bloody fond o’ you, by ther look of it.’

‘I don’t think he is. You are going to the coast, then?’

‘I’ve orlways liked ther seaside.’ She winked. ‘Funny time ter pick fer an ‘oliday, innit?’

She knew I was in trouble. It was a knack she had. ‘Wot’s ther service like ‘ere?’ she asked casually.

‘It depends who you are.’

The leather-jacket said: ‘Would you mind speaking Russian, comrade. When in Rome...’

‘Russki?’ Mrs Cornelius replied in her abominable and attractive Russian. It was easy to see how, with her beauty and her spirit and her accent, she had won the hearts of the top Bolsheviks. She baffled the Chekist far more than I had. She laughed. He turned away to hide his scowl, ‘If yer like, Ivan.’ It seemed she addressed everyone by the same name. ‘This is a very good comrade. He is on his way to Odessa to work for the party there. He is known to many leading comrades from Petrograd days. I think you will find he and Comrade Stalin are old friends.’ The so-called ‘Siberian’ Bolsheviks had more weight with the rank-and-file at that time. Stalin was then just a name to me, associated with various rather incompetently waged Civil War campaigns and not popular with the Jewish intellectuals who controlled Party policies.

I said, taking out my watch, that I had probably missed the Odessa train. The Chekist went to put his cigarette out in a spittoon. ‘It was stopped. It’s being searched at Fastov.’

‘That’s all right, then.’ I make no attempt to imitate Mrs Cornelius’s Russian. ‘You can send a telegram and tell them to hold it up a bit longer.’

‘But how can I get to Fastov?’ I asked a reasonable question.

‘Same way as the troops,’ she told me. ‘By motor.’

‘I am not fortunate enough ...’

She slapped me on the shoulder. She began to pull on a huge fox-fur coat with a matching hat. ‘Daft!’ she said in English. ‘We’ll go in my bleedin’ motor, won’t we!’

On her instructions, the sailors picked up my bags. They took them down to her large Mercedes which was still parked outside the main doors. There was oil on the snow. I thought it was blood. ‘‘Op in,’ she told me. I climbed into the back seats. I had never experienced a car like it. It felt warm under the canopy. In Russian she said to the driver: ‘What’s the benzine situation?’

‘To go where?’ The driver wore a Red Army cap with earflaps, and a huge red star sewn on the front. Otherwise he was dressed in the regular khaki of a Tsarist soldier: trenchcoat, gloves, scarf wound round the lower part of his face against the cold, and goggles.

‘Fastov, was it?’ Mrs Cornelius turned to me.

‘Fastov,’ I said.

‘We can get there.’ The driver was amused. ‘And probably back.’

‘Perfect.’

The Chekist stood outside the hotel. His hands were deep in his pockets. He looked smug. I remembered. ‘You have my papers, comrade.’

As one robbed of his last consolation, he gave them to me. He must have been fondling them. Plainly he disapproved of Mrs Cornelius, but he had no power over her. Now he had no power over me. He had become like a demon in a pentagram.

‘Don’t forget about the cable,’ Mrs Cornelius told him. ‘And if Comrade Trotsky’s in touch asking for me, tell him I’ve put Comrade Pyat on the train to Odessa will you?’

‘Yes, comrade.’ He glared at us. The Mercedes, its engine cranked by grinning sailors, began to shake and mutter. Two of the sailors jumped into the front seats beside the driver. A third stood on the running board, his rifle on his shoulder. The driver engaged the engine, and we were off in style, flying the red hammer-and-sickle flag: an official Bolshevik car! More than once, as we left Kiev behind, we were cheered by the conquering Reds. It was an irony I think Mrs Cornelius appreciated. She would often wave back, but more like a queen than a comrade. It was then that I experienced one of my first ‘releases’. There are a number of them. I value them greatly. They are all specific to this century (i.e. I do not include the release of sexual fulfilment): the Release of Flying; the Release of Steam-liner Sailing; the Release of Rapid Train Travel; the Release of Motoring. In that monstrous German automobile, guarded by elite members of the Revolutionary Army, with a beautiful foreign woman at my side (her rose perfume, her furs, her wonderful complexion, her stylish self-assurance) I knew the Release of Motoring. I resolved to obtain such a car as soon as possible. She too was enjoying the ride. She chuckled. ‘Wot a pair o’ survivors we are, you an’ me, Ivan. That’s ther fing I like most abaht yer, I fink.’

I was still dazed by what had taken place. It was she, after all, who had rescued me. Without her, I should be dead. She nudged me in the side. ‘Never say die, eh?’

Suddenly I was laughing as she, alone, has been able to make me laugh. I laughed like a child.

Between avenues of lime trees, we travelled towards Fastov. I remembered my gypsy Zoyea. I imagined myself driving her in this car. It was not disloyalty to my rescuer to enjoy this fantasy. Mrs Cornelius had no sexual claims on me. I had none on her. She is the best friend I ever had. And all because I had visited a dentist in Odessa and been able to speak English! My luck since then was chiefly to stem from her. She became my mother, sister, goddess, guardian angel. And yet most of the time she hardly noticed me. I amused her. She had as much affection for me as a woman might have for a favourite cat. No more and no less. And, like a favourite cat, I survived to give her some comfort, I hope, in her old age. She wore very well. It was only, really, in the fifties that she began to decline and run to fat, though she had always been built on proper feminine proportions. I hate these skinny girls who try to look like boys. No wonder everyone today is a homosexual. We had thin girls in the twenties, but Mrs Cornelius was always feminine. I cannot say I have been as completely certain of my own sexuality as she, but for that, I suppose, I must blame Prince Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff and perhaps even my cousin Shura. Unwittingly, Shura showed me that women are not to be trusted: they try too hard to please too many people. It is a man’s world. Those idiots who come mincing into my shop have no idea what I have witnessed. I understand every word, every hint, every gesture. The world did not begin in 1965. Perhaps it ended then. Affection, moderation, understanding; these are now only of value to the elderly. And the elderly are no longer respected. In Russia, if I lived there, they would be calling me an old bore: boltun. We laughed at them in Kiev: the Jews of Podol who had nothing but gossip and memory, which they mistook for experience. It was that sentimentality which used to irritate me. It still does. It is not surprising their sons rebel and become cruel, pragmatic revolutionaries; cynicism is the other side of the sentimental coin.

The sailors were surprisingly good-natured about the trip. I think they enjoyed the motor-car. They had seen a great deal of the world. They had known what it was to risk their lives. They were, in their way, men of good will. They have not changed much, our Russian sailors. When I go to the docks for my vodka, as I still try to do, I meet them and speak to them. They are just as self-confidently tolerant and tough. They were fond of Mrs Cornelius. They flattered her with all sorts of purring Russian endearments, as they would flatter their sweethearts. She responded by blowing them kisses and sharing her food and cigarettes with them.

Scores of dead horses were piled alongside the Fastov road. They were stiffening. Some were still warm; you could smell them. There were human corpses as well, sprawled in the winter sun; young peasant bodies left behind as Petlyura had tried to leave me behind, to cover his escape. Petlyura had been another sentimentalist who betrayed all he claimed to stand for. As usual he had accused as traitors those he had misled; sacrificing them to his enemies when they had come to doubt his lies. They probably deserved their fate. Some still held their booty: a pair of women’s shoes, a length of cloth, an ornamental sword. But most had already been stripped by the followers of Marx and Lenin. We passed a black line of dead Orthodox priests. The line had fallen neatly against a snow-drift. Behind the drift was an almost identical line of birches. It was as if shadows had been reversed, for the sun was on our side of the trees.

There was blood, too, and that was black. The priests had been dead for some while. Their crucifixes had been cut from them, of course, as well as their rings, but otherwise their clothing was neatly arranged. Some pious woman had come upon them in the morning and attempted to give them a semblance of dignity. I remembered the church and the singing. The sweet girls’ voices. I think Catholic Petlyurists had shot the priests.

Mrs Cornelius avoided the sight. ‘Between you an’ me, Ivan,’ she confided, ‘I wasn’t expectin’ nuffink like this. It’s wot comes o’ bein’ English, I s’pose. It wouldn’t ‘appen over there. You wanna get ter London, mate.’

‘I had considered it.’

‘Yer might find me there a’ead o’ yer.’ She gave the sailor on the running board a cigarette she had already lit. She winked and laughed with him. it woz a soft spot fer sailormen got me inter me present predic, really, wannit?’

‘You’ve not been back to Odessa?’

‘Nar! I ‘alf-’oped, see, ter make ther Finlan’ train an’ go that way, like we wos talkin’ abart. But fings got orl wonky some’ow. An’ Leo can be a jealous pig. In spite o’ the fac’ ‘e’s not exactly single.’

‘Why not come with me to Odessa? The French are in control there.’

‘An’ a lot o’ bloody Bolshies, mark my words. I’ve ‘eard.’

‘Are you frightened they’ll do something to you?’

‘Nar! They got no reel respec’ fer women, any of ‘em. That’s me strengf, yeah? Know wot I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘They don’t reckon women count. Unless they’re in ther Party, that is. I’m just a fancy-bit ter them. I’ll be orl right. If Leo ‘eard I’d got on that bloody train wiv you, ‘e’d jest bring it back, wouldn’t ‘e?’

‘I suppose he would.’ I rather regretted the principles which had, and always will, stopped me from leaguing myself with the Communists. They certainly knew how to gain and hold power better than any of their rivals. They saw and accepted no ambiguities. Many non-Bolsheviks eventually came round to Lenin. It was better to have Bolshevik order than no order at all.

As we entered the rather unattractive town of Fastov, I saw a red flag flying from the dome of the church. A synagogue was burning. There were Red Cossacks everywhere and a considerable amount of filth and confusion. Overhead, a biplane dropped, observed us, then flew away towards the west. As if waiting to board a train, guns and horses crowded the street leading to the station. The long Odessa train had been shunted off the main line into a siding. People crowded around it. There were Red Guards, Chekists, women with babies which they displayed like talismans, Jews who argued vehemently with officials, men in uniform from which all insignia had been ripped: the wadding showed through their greatcoats, so urgently had those symbols been removed. Youths gave the Bolshevik salute, old men wandered about in the deep snow, looking for things which had been dropped, beautiful girls fluttered their eyelashes and tried to flirt with the leather-jackets. Cossacks, with red stars on their caps, were lounging over their ponies making filthy remarks to all and sundry (there is nothing worse than a Cossack who has gone to the bad), while sailors marshalled whole lines of workers and peasants beside the train and into the first-class compartments which filled up rapidly and had begun to smell of urine. The richer people were being forced to enter the fourth-class compartments, or even the animal-wagons at the rear.

The car bumped along a track and came to a stop. An officer in ordinary military clothes, wearing a cloak and an old Tsarist blue and white uniform with the inevitable red stars, came up to us. He did not salute. All the usual disciplines had been abolished at that time. They would return with a vengeance. People were astonished in World War II when Stalin brought back the entire paraphernalia of military rank and etiquette. He was sensible. While war is a fact of life, soldiers must exist; while soldiers exist, there must be proper ways of controlling them.

Mrs Cornelius knew the officer. She greeted him. He grinned at her. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘It’s my friend,’ she said. ‘He needs to be on the Odessa train. Party business. He’s a courier for Commissar Trotsky.’

‘There’s a carriage at the front for proletarian representatives. They plan to argue with French soldiers. Do you think they’ll succeed, comrade?’ He seemed anxious for an answer from me.

‘There’s every chance,’ I told him. I privately prayed the canker of Bolshevism would never touch France. But it was like a gas used in the trenches. It touched everyone. Bolshevism would have died out completely by now if it had not been for that shot at Sarajevo.

They had rounded up a number of people in civilian clothes. I had seen some of them only recently. Then, they had been wearing Petlyurist uniforms. They were taken away behind an embankment. There was a burst or two of machine-gun fire and some laughter. The guards returned without their prisoners. I thanked God and Mrs Cornelius for my escape. By oversleeping, I had missed the train and probably that firing squad.

Mrs Cornelius, with a gesture which reminded me of my mother, at once began to joke with the sailors, asking them which girl they liked the look of most. ‘Anything would do me at the moment,’ one said. ‘I’ll take a horse if the Cossack leaves it alone for a minute.’

I could not quite summon proper self-control. I knew my lips were dry. I wondered if my alarm betrayed me.

Another sailor leaned across the front seat and patted me on the shoulder, ‘It’s not your fault, comrade.’

I was grateful and smiled at him. He grinned back. ‘God knows what you Bolshies think you’re up to.’

I became confused.

‘No offence,’ he added. ‘I don’t quarrel with Bolsheviks. So long as they go on representing Soviet needs.’ He spoke with a certain amount of menace, as if he challenged Lenin himself. I could make no sense of it. I told the sailor I agreed with him and that fundamentally we had no differences. He was already turning away to take an interest in an argument between a Chekist and a woman with three small sons who refused to hand over their bundles for inspection.

I whispered in English to Mrs Cornelius. ‘Why do they shoot them so mercilessly? It will only bring more death.”

Because she was frowning I thought I had offended her. Then the frown became a wink. She said seriously: ‘They’re bloody shit-scared, Ivan. Leo an’ the ovvers, more than these bleedin’ fugs ‘oo don’t care ‘oo they kill. It’s like tryin’ ter stay on top of a bloody eruptin’ volcano, innit? They carn’t get ther stopper back in. Shoutin’ at it don’t exactly ‘elp! So they’re tryin’ dynamite, right?’ She screamed with laughter all of a sudden. ‘Pore buggers!’

‘A volcano expends its energy with less loss of life,’ I said.

‘Not in bloody Bali.’ Mrs Cornelius was smug. ‘They orl run up ther bloody ‘ill an lie darn in front o’ the bloody lava. If it gets enough o’ ‘em, they reckon, it’ll stop.’ She drew a handkerchief from a muff on the seat beside her and blew her nose. ‘I read that,’ she said with some pride, ‘in ther Penny Pictorial. Yer don’t see ther Penny Pictorial rahnd ‘ere, I s’pose?’

‘I have never seen it.’

‘Me neither. I could do wiv a nice read. It was a lot less borin’ fer me before all this broke aht, yer know. ‘Ow long’s it bin? Two years? Well, just over a year since the Old Man - ‘e don’t like me. neither - nearly bungled ‘is larst chance. ‘E won’t give an ounce o’ credit to Antonov, will ‘e?’

I scarcely understood her. She was so immersed in the internal gossip and politics of the Bolsheviks she assumed everyone took her meaning.

‘Never met such a bunch o’ self-important buggers. They orl ought ter be given little kingdoms of their own. No wonder I carn’t keep me eyes off ther bloody sailors!’ She sighed. ‘Well, it woz fun while it lasted. While they ‘ad nuffink ter do but talk. I’ll be glad ter be art of it, an’ no mistake. Yer goin’ ter Blighty?’

‘I hope so.’

‘I’ll give yer me address in Whitechapel. Somebody’ll know if I’m back an’ wot I’m up ter. But, I tell yer, Ivan, I’ll be up West first charncet I get.’

With these cryptic words she stretched across me, all soft fur and French perfume, and opened the door of the car. As I began to climb out, she fumbled with gloved hands in a reticule, removed a pamphlet printed on coarse paper, and with a pencil slowly wrote down a single line. She gave me the pamphlet. ‘Don’t mind if I wave bye-bye from ‘ere, do yer? I’m not goin’ in that bloody snow if I can ‘elp it.’

Two sailors shouldered their rifles and took my bags from the box at the back of the car. Between them I walked in dirty slush to the carriage nearest the locomotive. A variety of desperadoes, male and female, regarded me from misted windows. The sailors dumped my bags on the metal steps. Stumbling through the door I found I was in a sleeper. The compartments, however, were fairly full and there would be no way in which I would be able to stretch out. The majority of the people were dressed as peasants and industrial workers. There were one or two ‘intellectuals’ in dark overcoats similar to my own. My natural inclination was to join these. I had stored my luggage (including a small hamper from Mrs Cornelius) before I realised I had made a serious mistake. I would not be able to answer their questions or understand their references. They had made space for me. They were calling me comrade. I shook several hands and then went back to the carriage door to wave to Mrs Cornelius. Fox-fur arms saluted me. The car was already turning. One of the sailors now sat next to her, grinning at his friends and at me. I heard a faint ‘Keep yer pecker up, Ivan!’ and she was gone. I was left with the cursing Cossacks, the pallid Chekists, the weary sailors. I returned to the relative security of the compartment and was offered a flask of vodka. I accepted it and sipped. It was raw moonshine; the kind they brewed in Shulyavka, the foulest slum in Kiev. I expected to go blind instantly and it affected my vocal chords as the arak had done in Odessa. The man who had offered it, a round-faced Ukrainian with a bushy red beard and thick spectacles, laughed and said, ‘You’re used to better, eh?’

I managed to say I was not a great drinker. This gave him further amusement. ‘Then you can’t be a Katsup. What are you? A Moslem?’

I considered claiming I was from Georgia or Armenia, but the problem there was that someone else in the carriage might know those areas. I shook my head and said I was from Kiev. I had spent some time in Petrograd and elsewhere.

‘I’m Potoaki,’ he told me. It was a name with Polish resonances, but that was not strange in Ukraine. ‘You?’

‘Pyat.’ It was what Mrs Cornelius had christened me. It simply meant ‘five’ in Russian. I thought it gave me exactly the right air. I had decided how to play my game.

He said ‘most of us have only two’ and introduced me to the three men and the woman in our compartment. I remember only the name of the woman. She was Marusia Kirillovna and she was dark and delicate and grim. My mother must have looked like her. She had the same dark eyes, the same expression, half-open, half-shut. ‘Good afternoon, comrade,’ she said. She was pulling on tight leather gloves and there was a holstered automatic Mauser in her lap. She sat nearest the window. Her book was poetry by Mandelstam, and of recent issue, judging by the bad production. The others were good-natured idiots, but Marusia Kirillovna seemed a woman of reliable instinct. I determined to say nothing to her unless asked a direct question. Russia was throwing up better women than men at that time. All the worthwhile men had been killed. And they were more ruthless, some of those women. They judged themselves harshly. Their self-control became fanatical: dangerous to anyone who did not display the same quality. That was one of the reasons I remained uncommunicative. The only way to impress such women is to let their imagination work on your behalf. They are always inclined to see virtue in silence. They assume that a man with nothing to say is more intelligent. I have had long relationships, since my Russian years, which were only maintained because I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. I could have been Sophocles. It would not have mattered. Two or three sentences, and they would know I was ‘a sham’. They are the kind of women who shun mirrors as vanity, yet forever seek mirrors in their lovers. Sure enough, by the time the train was on its way, leaving corpses and cheering Cossacks in its wake, she had already begun to treat me with exaggerated respect. I pulled my hat down over my eyes, pretending to sleep.

Dante driven into exile inspired Liszt to create those painful Bolshoi voices, those Russian girls singing in Latin. What do the English know of exile? They cannot bear it. Everywhere they go they create another Surrey. New Zealand mutton and mint-sauce. And throbbing, terrible Australia, with its two-legged lizards, even that they have attempted to turn into some spiritual Torquay. The Romans left roads and villas. The English leave cold cups of tea and stale crumpets and ‘guest houses’ littering the world from China to Rio de Janeiro. They cannot abide emotion. They cannot face death, any more than can the Americans. So they smooth it away with polite voices and coffee-mornings. And because death is so unpleasant, because they cannot look Terror in the eye and smile back at him, they let their Law decline, their Empires fade - and they, too, have lost their honour. Phoenicia went sailing. What can save the world? Not the Jewish-Moslem God. We have had our taste of the power of the rabbi and the Khan. Our Cossacks dealt with them and will deal with them again if need be. Only the Son can save us. Christ is a Greek. The Greeks knew that. They laughed at the Jews when they spoke of strange new ideas. The Greeks took those ideas to Palestine. They were welcome again in Byzantium. Defend Greece. How did the English defend Cyprus? They let Turkish peasants foul it. Those sons of Islam knew nothing. They could not look after the houses they stole. They could not look after the olive groves or the vineyards. The Greeks lost everything. Islam is rising. Zion is rising. And from the East the Khans are galloping again, with skulls for banners, but now it is the skull of Mao who grins down at us from the lance-poles. Must Russia defend the West alone? Still? Must Ukraine drown in fresh blood? I worship Him: Kyrios, the Lord. The Christ of Saint Paul. The Greek Christ. I worship Him. Plato, Archimedes, Homer and Socrates were created by God to be the first prophets of Jesus, the Greek Messiah. That was why the Jews hated him. He spoke for Reason and Love. Their envious black eyes looked across the waters of the Middle Sea and saw Light glowing. Ah, Jerusalem. Oh, Carthage. They should put a wall across the world. What is race? Nothing. A description of the spirit. Christ is a Greek. Islam and Zion turn hot, black eyes towards the West. The light is too strong for them. It was alien to them. They crucified him. Those ancient devils, those primitive souls. What do they know of humility, with their Korans and their Talmuds? All they know is vengeance. Watch them fight. All they know is vengeance. What have we done to them? Fires burn through the Middle East, through Africa, through Asia. They are the smoking fires of ignorance. God tried to kill his own Son and failed. His Son returned from exile to Byzantium and there He shelters still. Where East and West blend in harmony, there is Christ. And that is the knowledge every Russian holds within him. It is what Tikhon tried to tell us; our martyred Tikhon. Herod. Nero. Stalin. They sought to kill the Shepherd. All they slaughtered was the sheep. The bandit-kings come and go. They die perplexed, wondering why they have won nothing, defeated nothing. And the generosity of the Shepherd is greater than ever. He is our protector, our comfort and our hope.

As night fell and the train became colder I was forced to share the chicken and salami from my very obvious hamper. They were all grateful. Even the woman ate with unfeminine greed. The train was moving very slowly. Since we had not yet passed Vinnitza, it would be a long time before we reached Odessa. Once or twice we heard firing, or saw flashes of rifles and artillery in the distance, but nobody was able to speculate with any authority as to the identity of the antagonists. Marusia Kirillovna suggested it was probably just Haidamaki fighting amongst themselves. I think she could have been right. There were thousands of petty warlords seeking to hold smaller and smaller territories as the major participants moved closer together for the decisive battles of our Civil War. Sometimes shots were fired from the train. We had a Red Army escort which would disembark when it reached a territory occupied by bandits who (like Vietnamese today) found it politic to declare themselves Bolsheviks. Thus they received arms and money to achieve their own petty ends.

Potoaki became bored. He kept leaving the carriage, presumably to use the lavatory (although there was one in the adjoining cubicle) and returning, stamping his feet and clapping his gloved hands together. The woman looked at him with considerable intolerance. ‘Trying to make the train go faster, comrade?’

‘I’m supposed to be at the docks by tomorrow morning,’ he explained. ‘There’s a French ship arriving.’

‘What will you do?’ Another occupant took Marusia Kirillovna’s lead. ‘Speak to each French sailor as he comes ashore? Explain he’s hampering the course of world revolution?’

‘They’re unloading supplies.’ Potoaki sat down beside me again and brought out his bottle of vodka, ‘It will be up to me to find out the kind of guns we’ll be confronting.’ With a self-important movement of his hand he finished his vodka.

‘I hope you don’t broadcast that particular piece of information so efficiently,’ she said. She stood up, arranged her dark shirt, then carefully reseated herself. ‘Has anyone the time?’

I took out my watch. It had stopped. I replaced it in my pocket. ‘I am sorry.’

‘We must be nearing Hrihorieff’s territory.’ Potoaki bent across the dark-faced man who sat reading a newspaper by the window. He wiped away condensation. There was nothing but ice inside and out. He rubbed at his waistcoat. ‘That salami of yours must have been cat and rat.’ He belched, it can’t have been dog. Dog never disagrees with me.’ He laughed. We were all becoming irritated. He could sense it. He apologised, farted, and left the smell behind him as he stepped again into the corridor. We kept the door open, in spite of the cold, until the air was clearer. Nobody mentioned the source of the smell. The train stopped completely. I thought I heard shouts from the locomotive. Booted feet ran past our carriage. There was a clatter. The feet ran back. Our train began to build up steam and again we were moving. Potoaki came in and told us there had been trees on the line. Soldiers had cleared the track. ‘They’re used to it. I’ve never seen such efficiency.’ He hesitated. ‘I’d hoped for a smoother ride. You’d think they’d let refugees through.’

The dark man with the newspaper was puzzled. ‘We’re not refugees.’

‘They don’t know that, do they? What bastards these people are. Worse than the Poles.’

‘You’re from Galicia?’ asked the woman.

‘I spent years in Moscow. And two years in Siberia.’

‘Where in Siberia?’ asked the man opposite him.

‘Near Kondinsk. Then I was a few months in the army.’

‘I know Kondinsk,’ said the man who had asked the question. He looked at me. ‘Are you a “Siberian”, too?’

‘Happily,’ I said, ‘not.’

‘It’s an experience,’ said Potoaki. ‘It gives you a better idea of what you’re fighting for. You live like the peasants. All our people should do it voluntarily. It keeps your feet on the ground.’

‘Or under it,’ said the dark man. Only I and Marusia Kirillovna did not laugh at this.

‘You get your milk in slices up there.’ Potoaki became nostalgic.

‘You had milk?’

‘The peasants did. They were often very kind. You have to saw it. Have you watched them sawing their milk?’

The man opposite nodded but now he was looking sceptically at Potoaki, as if he did not believe the man had been a political prisoner at all. There was a great deal of elitism involved. Whatever your intelligence, the length of your Siberian sentence gave extra weight to any argument you might make. They were like savages. And all obviously were originally well-educated.

The train was going faster. Soon it was moving as rapidly as any pre-war Express. This cheered us. ‘We could be in Odessa by morning,’ said Potoaki. He relaxed.

His fellow Siberian said quietly, ‘I never feel lonely now. Not after so much solitude. Every spring I am utterly re-born. A new person. But with the same political convictions, of course. That, however, is the mind. The mind remains. But the spirit is re-born every spring.’

He was becoming as much a bore as Potoaki. The man by the window uttered a choking, tubercular cough. The coughing grew worse. He began to snort and wheeze.

‘It’s asthma, I think,’ said the woman. She made to open the window. We all protested.

‘Get him into the corridor.’ Potoaki helped the man to his feet. Blood was on his lips. He tried to suppress the coughing and at the same time gasped for air. ‘What we need is a doctor.’

From boredom and to show I was a good comrade, I got up and moved along the carriage, asking if a doctor were present. Naturally, there was not. Any person with a real profession would have refused to be in the ‘political’ carriage. They would have had proper work to do. The coughing subsided as I returned. Ice was falling away from one of the forward windows, melted by gusting steam. I saw a few bare trees and small, snow-covered hills. We passed what I took to be gypsy fires. I felt much better now that we had picked up speed.

I remained in the corridor for the next hour or two, smoking and thinking. I had been lucky. None of the Bolsheviks had questioned me. All assumed I must be on important business because I had arrived in an official car. Dawn came, miserable and cunning. The train’s pace did not slacken. We were at least half-way to Odessa. The woman emerged from the compartment. She was stiff. She stretched her legs and arms like a dancer. Her pistol was on her hip. I realised, with a hint of amusement, that both skirt and black blouse were of heavy silk. She had not had a deprived childhood. She was used to the best. She nodded to me and asked for a cigarette which I willingly gave her. I had several hundred with me. They were likely to prove invaluable. We smoked. She rubbed at her neck. She seemed paler. I wondered if she were Jewish. There was something about her mouth. She yawned, looking out onto the grey snow. The sky was heavy and melancholy. There was yellow-grey mist hanging between it and the land. I have never really seen anything like it since. It seemed to depress her. I had a stupid impulse to put my arm around her shoulders (though she was almost as tall as me). I motioned. She looked into my face. She seemed startled. She said rapidly: ‘You’re tired. You should rest.’

‘Aha,’ I said. This was significant, even to me.

‘You must have a great deal on your mind. Too much thinking is exhausting, eh?’

‘Oh, indeed, Marusia Kirillovna.’

She hesitated. ‘I’m disturbing you?’

‘Not at all.’ I put my hand out to her without touching her. ‘I’m bored.’

This relieved her. ‘I can’t stand being still. It’s what makes a revolutionary, I suppose. Impatience.’

As one whose main virtue is patience, I could say nothing. Perhaps her generalisation was correct and that was why I was not a revolutionary. I have no patience with fools; but you will not find me complaining after five minutes if a bus does not come along.

She continued. ‘One desires to create Utopia overnight. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it, why people resist? They haven’t the imagination, I suppose. Or the vision. We have to supply that. It’s our function. We all have a role.’

I nodded. The train slowed, then gained speed. It drummed down a gradient, turning in a long curve, and everything was grey, including the locomotive, part of which I could now see. Our skins were grey. The windows were grey. The smoke from our grey cigarettes blended together to form a single grey cloud near the ceiling.

‘But what is duty, I wonder?’ asked Marusia Kirillovna.

There came a noise from outside the train. I looked up at the embankment. I saw men in heavy coats squatting behind machine-guns. Others were mounted. They fired at us with carbines.

The glass shattered. I fell to the floor, bearing Marusia Kirillovna with me. The train began to shriek and shudder. Cold air filled the squealing corridor. The train jolted as if mortally wounded, skidding down the gradient for a few more yards. It twitched and became lifeless, save for the sound of steam escaping, like the last breaths of a corpse.

Marusia Kirillovna’s blood stained my shirt and jacket. It warmed my hands. Her face was all blood. The only thing I could recognise was one sad and disapproving eye. Even as I crawled back towards the compartment I thought she had died exactly as her romantic nature might have demanded. Few of us are given the opportunity.

The Bolsheviks in my compartment were searching in their luggage for the pistols they all seemed to carry. I was astonished to see so much metal in those limp hands. I pulled my own bags down from the rack and, pushing them ahead of me, scrambled through the connecting door into the next carriage. I had no wish to be identified with the Reds.

I found myself in a press of peasants who screamed uncontrollably or sat with their hands covering their heads. The glass here had also been shattered. Several people were wounded while others were quite dead, sitting bolt upright between fellow passengers who could not or did not wish to move. It was a peculiar moment. The peasants thought I was an official. They began asking me what had happened. I said I intended to find out. They must let me through. They pushed one another back, some even removing their caps, to allow me to pass. There were more machine-guns firing. It was from our side. Another volley. There were shouts from the embankment and from our own soldiers. The firing stopped. They seemed to be parleying.

I reached the end of the second carriage and decided to wait where I was. The lavatory was occupied. I balanced my bags on top of some sacks and moved a little distance away, as if I were merely waiting to use the lavatory. Through the broken glass I saw stocky figures stumbling down the embankment. They made dark scars in the snow. They were laughing and using words like ‘comrade’ and ‘soviet’. I began to feel a little less anxious. These were Bolsheviks who had fired on us by accident. They were a long way from Bolshevik lines and wore no red stars. Indeed, they had no identifiable uniforms at all. I guessed they were irregulars.