Byzantium Endures

SEVENTEEN

I THINK THE GIRL in grey had mended my clothes. They were clean. Everything was in order. I had a different coat. My pistols and papers were still there. Yermeloff’s gifts were in deep ‘gun-pockets’ in a dark blue kaftan. The chill was still in me. There was firing. We were taken from the train and put in ordinary peasant waggons. Makhno had disappeared. Riding a horse, someone said. Makhno rarely used a horse, because of a wounded ankle which made it hard to mount. The others went with him. Hulyai-Polye had been taken. I do not know which side was victor, White or Red. Perhaps both. They came and went.

The Whites began by fighting for God; they ended fighting for their own pride. The Reds began by fighting for the people; and ended fighting for their own authority. The Russian is naturally communal. We never needed Marx and his corrupted philosophy of revenge and destruction. Tolstoi and Kropotkin sought a philosophy suited to our national character. Communism emphasises the group, giving the community priority over individuals. It does not seek a balance. To survive, the world must always be in harmony. God’s greatest signs are Man and the universe itself. That is the balance we should try to find again. Human decency. If only the Jew would leave me alone. Vengeance! he cries. Russian chivalry is condemned. Tanks crush the Russian heart. Barbarian wire rips Russian flesh. Alien cunning exploits us. The Heroes of Kiev drove back the Turk and Mongol but made the city safe for their enemies. We could have developed so much. It is all lost.

They have destroyed the Russian mind, our language, the Russian heart. For a kopek’s worth of Western nonsense. They deny us our peaceful soil, our ancient cities, our Church. They go courting with Islam. How many mistakes can they make in all these years of mistakes? They breed a race of brutes who now confront the world, a hydrogen bomb in either hand, a mindless snarl upon the lips, unable to distinguish truth from lies. Dark forces threaten from within. Fear Carthage.

There were enough voices raised: Kropotkin, Tolstoi, Blok, Bely. Look inward! Look to Russia! But they looked to Germany. They came creeping back through Finland in the German train. Marks. What made Hitler threaten that great alliance? The whispering Jew? Not the Greek. I put my faith in Hitler. He betrayed us all. The Teuton always envied the Slav. He waited a thousand years until he was ready. Then he crossed the mountains at last. Marching against the Slav. Marching against Greece. They lost their centre. They always will. It is a tub of beer and a stick of pig-meat. All made sense when Turk and Teuton allied. And the British, as usual, swung this way and that, paving fifty roads to Hell. Jewish marks. They burn my soul. They brand my flesh. Let me go!

Little teeth suck the marrow from my bones. Esmé: How coarsened by despair you must have become as your life and idealism faded into the grey scum of Bolshevism. Mother: Did the Teuton kill you where I flew my first machine? Did the Teuton kill you, for I’ll swear I heard you scream? Your world flared in 1941. And then it died. The conquerors made you happy. Was it because you fought Satan all your life so whenever you saw Him marching along Kreshchatik you welcomed Him as a familiar adversary? I did not mean to lose you. Love was never in your eyes. But you were happy.

Western Europe is too easy, too warm, too soft. The hardness of our climate gives us everything - our isolation, our inner life, our language, our genius. We are lost in the crowds and the heat. Let me go back. They dispossessed us; they drove us away. Now we live in crannies. We are humiliated and mocked. We might have survived. But God deserted us. He deserted Deniken. Makhno and Hrihorieff might, like Villa and Zapata, have fought for liberals allowing freedom of religion and pushed the Bolsheviks into the Baltic, to become the émigrés. But the Whites were too proud, the Nationalists were too small-minded, and the Allies never will understand what goes on in Russia. A Russian has himself. He retreats there as the Englishman retreats into rationalism. Borrowed, foreign rationalism has always been the bane, the destruction, of the Russian soul. Faith in God and His authority provides the only true freedom: the freedom to live an inner life.

It was Makhno who avenged me. He went to Alexandriya for a parley with Hrihorieff. Makhno denounced the Ataman’s pogroms Hrihorieff laughed. He was disbelieving. Was it so important? One of Makhno’s lieutenants (Keretnik, I think) drew his Colt and shot the Ataman. Makhno finished him off. The other Anarchists killed Hrihorieff’s bodyguard. Makhno shot Grishenko between the eyes and down he went, whip and all, into the July dust of Alexandriya. Makhno, with his eloquence, won over Hrihorieff’s men in an instant. It was an old-fashioned act of bandit audacity. It impressed the remnants of the Zaporizhians, many of whom were now ragged and barefoot, for Hrihorieff had never consolidated his gains. They agreed to follow the Batko. But they were doomed. That Jew-loving Anarchist dismissed them in the end. He fled into Rumania and went to Paris, haunted by the knowledge that he had deserted Russia. He was no Nationalist, at least. He and his wife and daughter loved the whole of Russia. They spoke Russian. I met them again in Paris. It was hard for his wife. I think his daughter went back. He lived off the other émigrés. He drank the cheap French wine which makes sickly sentimentalists of everyone.

The carts rolled into the summer and there were poppies and fields of wheat and the stink of gunpowder and the hum of bullets. I had almost recovered but decided it was unwise to leave the wounded. Who would bother the near-dead? We reached a village, half-burned already, and we were left in a Catholic church which had been stripped. We lay amongst refuse not even valuable to peasants, on the stains of horse-droppings; the droppings themselves were worth something. We watched thin rats who, in turn, watched us, wondering who would die first, who would eat whom. The peasants would not release us. Our comrades never returned. The doors were locked and the windows were high. The peasants were too cowardly to kill us.

My cocaine had been stolen, I think by Esmé. It would have given me strength. It would have helped me. In turn I could have helped the others. We called out for mercy. Our weak voices echoed in the empty church. The priest was dead; hanged by some militia or other. The peasants hated us. They listened to our voices. They were probably inspired as others might be by the Dries Spaseniye Miru. This day salvation has come, to the world. Dries spaseniye miru byst. Poyem voskresshemu iz groba. Let us sing to the One who rose from the dead - Inachalniku zhizni nasheya: I nachalniku zhizni nasheya: Having destroyed death by death, Razrushiv bo smertiyu smert, He has given us victory and great mercy. Pobedu dade nam, i veliyu milost. Our spirit. Our spirit. They were slipping away from us, our souls. And not one of us could be sure either God or His Heaven still existed. We sank into that easy euphoria which comes between being alive and being dead.

There was the firing of machine-guns and artillery. It might be salvation. The starving wounded stirred amongst the corpses. I still had my pistols, but no powder. We heard artillery limbers go through the town. Horses. We heard shouts. The church began to shake. I heard the blessed noise of engines. An argument outside the door. A shot. I cried for joy as a White officer stood in the doorway. He held a smoking revolver at his side. He pressed a handkerchief to his face. He wore the pale grey infantry jerkin, with red and gold epaulettes. He wore a cap with the old Tsarist badge. He wore blue breeches tucked into black boots. There were medal ribbons on his jacket. There was a sword at his side. He had a well-trimmed beard and though his face was filthy and his uniform patched with powder-smoke he represented something I had never expected to see again. He called out to the soldiers in their helmets and khaki. They ran into the church with their rifles. They began to cough. Some of the wounded had been dead for several days. I crawled forward and raised myself to my feet. I was smiling. But I had been deceived once more.

The White officer said: ‘Get those who can walk out. Shoot the rest where they are. It will be a mercy.’ An NCO ordered the men to advance. I was pushed into the sunshine. It was a small unit of infantry. There were some horsemen with the long whips and wide red stripes of regular Don Cossack cavalry. Both riders and horses looked weary. There were two khaki tanks: massive things, with gun-turrets and side-firing Lewises. There were three good-sized artillery-pieces and about ten machine-guns. There was a large, open car. I tried to speak to the officer, but he was striding over to the tanks which were opening their hatches. Behind the tanks, as if worshipping new gods, peasants were on their knees in a line, holding their caps before them. I was pushed. I protested. ‘I am a loyal subject of the Tsar.’

‘Tell him yourself,’ said one of the soldiers, shoving his helmet onto the back of his head. ‘You’re going where he went.’

I was too weak. I waved again at the officer. They were going to rob me. It was of great urgency to me that they did not take my remaining property. My life seemed unimportant. ‘Captain! Captain!’

Four of the wounded men were thrown against the wall and began to slide down it even before the bullets drew their blood. It was a waste of everything. The men would have died in a few hours.

A tall, slender officer, wearing khaki shirt and shorts, with a large nose and long jaw, his cap reversed, goggles on his forehead, moved rapidly in our direction. He was shouting in English. The soldiers were taking me to the wall with three more partisans. ‘Stop! You bloody-handed bastards. Can’t you see he’s a gentleman!’ They hesitated, looking towards the White captain, who had turned. The sun was making me squint. The captain shrugged and said in Russian, ‘We’ll find out who he is.’ He spoke French to a short, broad-faced lieutenant who translated this into bad English. ‘They say to question.’

The tank-commander was Australian, as were both his crews. He wore an expression of permanent disgust on his long face. He complained he wanted to get back to Odessa and from there take a ship straight to Melbourne. He rubbed at his nose all the time, as if it itched. I spoke to him in English as he leaned, sighing, against his tank. ‘I am most grateful to you, sir.’

I was startled by his reaction. I did not know him. He grinned at his men. They had clambered out of their machines and were lounging on the warm metal, drinking from their canteens.

‘Someone who speaks real bloody English.’

The shots continued from inside the church and from the corner of the street where the walking wounded were being executed. ‘Jesus!’ said the tank-commander. ‘What else can you say?’

‘I am familiar with your language,’ I told him. ‘Blimey O’Reilly, not half!’ This to show I could speak the common dialect, as well as what Mrs Cornelius insisted on calling book-talk. ‘I learned in Kiev. I am a Doctor of Science from the University there and a qualified engineer. I have the rank of major.’

‘In whose army?’

‘Loyalist, I assure you.’ I began to explain, but then I had fainted. I awakened in twilight. An Australian soldier was waving a mug of sweet soup under my nose. I was not interested in food. It made me feel strange.

‘You got to eat, mate.’ He was like a Russian babushka. For him, I sipped the soup. Some of it remained in my stomach. ‘They’re bastards, these peasants,’ he said. He was about the same age as me. ‘I hate them worse than the Reds, don’t you?’

‘They have suffered,’ I said.

‘They certainly have.’ He shook his head. ‘Our Russkies are doing horrible things to them now. They’re all bloody savages. It don’t matter what bloody uniform they’re wearin’.’ He sighed. He did not understand. He did not want to be on Russian soil. Like his commander, he longed for the bush of his native outback. ‘We’re going to give you a lift. We need an interpreter and we could do with an engineer. We’ve lost two of our chaps from typhus already. Know anything about tanks?’

‘A little.’

‘Carbs?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Spiffing. Now, then, you have some shut-eye. Some brekker in the morning and you’ll be fit enough to look at Bessie.’ Almost all tanks, I was to learn, were called Bessie by Australians. I have asked more than once why this should be. Nobody knows. He spoke with kind assurance, as one chanting a spell whose efficacy has been thoroughly proven.

I slept in a sack beside a tank. The Russians were piling what little booty they had been able to find on the ground, under the eye of the captain, Kulomsin. He was thought lenient by his men. They called themselves, of course, Volunteers. Few of them were actually that. The Australians were contemptuous of them; ashamed of their association. The French-speaking liaison officer was a Serb. I guessed he was some sort of failed adventurer who had taken up with the Whites in order to save his skin. I breakfasted on bread and more soup, which they thinned with water. They kept their own stores and refused to share them with the Volunteers. They gave me a cigarette. It was milder than I had been used to. It was real Virginia tobacco. I cleaned their carburetor for them and reconnected it. They tested the engine. It ran well enough, but it had been badly overtaxed; driven too hard and too soon. I would have no more trouble servicing it, however, than if it had been a tractor. We were leaving the village. The Whites burned it. For harbouring Reds, they said. I did not see it. I was excited by my first experience of the choking interior of a tank. Those machines were even more cramped than the modern kind, which are Rolls Royce limousines in comparison. We moved slowly ahead. The Australians hardly spoke at all amongst themselves. I asked where we were going. They were joining up with other units, they said, for ‘some real fighting’. By this, I gathered, they meant an attack on a city.

The tank was hot and stuffy. I did not care. In it I felt secure for the first time in over two years. Every so often we stopped. Maps were inspected. I translated between Captain Wallace, the Australian commander, in his tank, and the Russian officer, who had a staff-car. My heart was singing. We were on our way to Odessa! The Serb glowered at me. His function had gone. When I last saw him, through one of the observation slits at the side of the tank, he wore an expression of morbid despair. I was called upon to tune the other machine’s engine as best I could. I was worth, said the Australians, my weight in gold.

All the gold would soon be gone from Russia. You see it in the Kensington antique shops still, just near the Soviet Embassy.

It was August, I learned. It grew hotter and hotter. Whenever possible, the hatches would be left open. We would take turns in the turret, trying to cool ourselves. My face and hands became quite brown. I was happy and very content by the time we entered a range of low wooded hills; it might have been Dorset, said Captain Wallace. We halted. Wallace conferred with Kulomsin. Kulomsin indicated a small, dusty road, wide enough to take a carefully-steered tank. He would go ahead in the car.

The leaves of the trees were shimmering. The smell of earth, recently damp and now drying in the sun, had the effect of further relaxing me. I have since discovered that the scent of flowers, rather than the by-product of the poppy, can calm me quite rapidly: hyacinth, roses, lilac and sometimes lilies do this.

I had just taken my turn in the turret, when we emerged from the wood and began to roll across an overgrown lawn leading down to an old ornamental lake with ruined balustrades. There was an artificial island in the middle. On it were willows and the gutted remains of a Japanese gazebo. Far across the murky waters I saw a large, neo-classical mansion. It was pitted by recent artillery bombardment. Its southerly side was half caved-in from what I took to have been a recent fire. Doubtless peasants, Bolsheviks, Nationalists, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, bandits of all descriptions, had had their way with house and estate. But it retained a good deal of its antique dignity. The Volunteer Army colours were flying from the roof now. The owner, doubtless dead or fled, would have been reassured to see the flag, if not the rather battle-weary White troops who moved around the grounds, setting up a camp.

The tank followed the curve of the water until we reached a kind of paddock where several more tanks were already at rest. To my absolute joy I saw, near a jetty on the far shore of the lake, two seaplanes. They had been hastily painted with Volunteer insignia and obviously had belonged to the Germans. There was a large machine and a very small single-seater. The first was a double-biplane with huge sets of wings fore and aft: an Oertz Flugschooner. The other was a Hansa-Brandenburg W20, meant to be flown from U-Boats but never actually used for that purpose. It could be collapsed and stored very quickly and was just as easily re-assembled. It was an ideal plane for this sort of campaigning where water, of course, was not always available. Hansa-Brandenburgs were wonderful aircraft. The Oertz on the other hand had a bad reputation. It was difficult to bring in on even the calmest waters. I could not take my eyes away from either plane until the tank cut its engine. We began to disembark, the Australians exchanging loud, friendly greetings and complaining about their Russian allies. Eventually Captain Wallace came up to me. He would introduce me to our Russian CO. We walked around the lake to the mansion. There was a smell of decay I found pleasant. The Volunteer units had made the house their GHQ.

I knew more than a little regret for the idyllic past, when the house and estate had represented the acme of civilisation in South Russia. However, I was glad enough to enjoy what it still represented. I imagined how it must have looked in the days of Turgenev who wrote so beautifully about such places you might have imagined yourself in France. The hall was wide and cool. A spiral staircase led off it. As usual all pictures and anything of the slightest value had been carried off. There were a few camp-chairs and collapsible desks for the staff, maps on the wall; an atmosphere of lassitude created, I suspect, by the heat. The majority of the soldiers were Russians in the smart uniforms of Tsarist times. There were also French, Greek and British officers among them. We were, I learned, less than twenty versts from Odessa and were quite near the coast. I could almost smell the beloved scent of flowers and saltwater. As I entered a large room, I thought I recognised one of the Russians. He was of average height, with a monocle and a small moustache, wearing a dark leather jacket open to reveal a light blue army shirt. The uniform, with its red, yellow and black flashes, was that of the Russian Engineers. He was a Second-Lieutenant. He was someone I had met in Petersburg when he had been home on leave. I saluted Major Perezharoff, the Russian ranking officer, who sat moodily on his desk smoking. Captain Wallace introduced me to him as ‘Major Pyatnitski, Intelligence’. Major Perezharoff regarded me with a scowl. He had a dark, unhappy Crimean face. He spoke in the purest French, asking me how things were in Nikolaieff. I explained I had been serving with the tanks. He nodded. ‘You speak English. That’s something.’ He sighed. ‘And you were spying on the Reds?’ He glanced with distaste at my clothes. ‘We have no spare uniforms.’

‘I was captured. And rescued by Captain Wallace.’

‘Where were you last?’

‘Hulyai-Polye. Before that Alexandriya. Before that Kiev.’

‘Do you know what Antonov’s up to?’

‘The different factions are at loggerheads, unable to agree amongst themselves. Their movements, I regret, are now a mystery to me.’

‘Well, their morale’s no better than ours. I’m glad.’ He turned away from me. I saluted the Second-Lieutenant and brought my heels together, unable to match the precision of the true Russian soldier. ‘I believe we are acquainted. Are you not Alexei Leonovitch Petroff, cousin to my old friend Prince Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff? We met at the Mikhishevskis some years ago. In Peter. You knew me then as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’

‘Ah, yes.’ He blinked and removed the monocle from his eye. He had become more expert with it now. ‘We talked about Rasputin.’ He uttered a rather unpleasant laugh.

‘Kolya and I were very close. I was studying science.’

He looked at me with a familiar insolence. I had not really experienced anything like it since Petersburg. I remembered how irritating he had been. But we were now, after all, equals. Indeed, I outranked him. ‘Do you know how Kolya is? Where he is? I know he went into politics.’

‘Kolya?’ The laugh was challenging, as if he laughed at a conqueror. He was puzzling. He said: ‘Who knows? Cheka?’

‘He’s in prison?’

Petroff laughed again. ‘Unlikely. They don’t keep too many prisoners for long, do they? Particularly Kerenskyite princes.’

I knew a terrible sadness. He spoke almost accusingly. I wondered if he associated me with Kolya’s political comrades.

‘You have English, I hear?’

‘Yes.’ I was mourning Kolya. He had been the best friend I had known. ‘I’m in Intelligence. I was acting as interpreter with the Australians.’

‘I could do with an interpreter. It always takes half-an-hour to translate a report. We’ll lose Odessa at this rate. Why don’t you come up with me, as my observer?’ The engineer’s uniform had deceived me. I remembered his conversation, then, in that Petersburg drawing-room. He was, of course, a pilot-officer. His was one of the planes on the lake. It could be my first trip in a machine not of my own making. I was curious to experience the differences.

‘In the Oertz?’ I said.

‘It’s the only two-seater. Done any observing before?’

‘Not really.’

‘It’s fun.’ He laughed again, still sardonically, still as if I had somehow cheated him at a sport. ‘What do you say, Kryscheff?’

‘If your seniors agree ...’

‘I have none. I’m a flyer. Like the tank people, I’m my own man. They need us too much to make us go through all that palaver. I’m going soon. There’s something I have to do in Odessa. You know the Church of the Vanquisher?’

‘It’s a strange name for a church.’ I tried to join in whatever his joke was. But Kolya’s memory was too strong.

‘Isn’t it? There’s a map in the plane. You can make notes of positions.’ There was a despairing quality about him. All his ideals had gone. He wanted to be revenged on something but could find nothing to blame. I should have been more nervous of him, but I wanted to forget about Kolya and I desperately wanted to take the aeroplane trip.

Petroff saluted Major Perezharoff. ‘Sir, this officer will be of considerable use to me as an observer. He can also relay reports directly to the English liaison people. I should like to take him up with me.’

Perezharoff shrugged. ‘He’ll be out of our way.’

Having said farewell to Captain Wallace I left the mansion. I wandered with a suddenly silent Petroff down to the lake. A small wooden jetty had been repaired and led out to where the seaplanes were moored. ‘Do you know the Oertz?’ he asked.

‘I know the Germans rejected them for war work.’

‘Not at the end. That’s how we got it. They’re devils to handle, but they’ve their own beauty. The little Hansa is a gem. You’d hardly know you were taking off or touching down. Like a dragonfly. But she’s a one-seater.’

‘You use both?’

‘I’m the only airman left. You’ve had some plane experience, didn’t Kolya say?’

‘Mine were experimental.’

‘Yes.’ He was thoughtful. ‘Kiev, of course.’

‘I owe Kolya much.’

‘You were a special friend? He was a true Bohemian. But he knew his duty.’

‘Politics?’ I shrugged. I was missing a clue to the nature of this exchange. We reached the end of the jetty.

‘Hot as hell, eh?’ Petroff removed his cap. it’s cooler up there.’ He seemed to yearn for the sky. The sun caught his monocle. It blazed like a dragon’s eye. ‘You survived, however. You’re a bit of a fraud, aren’t you? So you went into Intelligence.’

I ignored the insult, ‘It was my only possible contribution.’

‘Spying.’

‘Sabotage, too. As an engineer, I had to make the best use of my talents. In the struggle.’

‘You were always against the Reds?’

I wondered why he was interrogating me so intensely. ‘Profoundly opposed.’

‘You disagreed with Kolya?’

‘On that alone.’

‘I supported him. I was with Kerenski, you know. We’re all guilty.’

‘Kerenski’s revolution cost me my academic career.’

He looked down at rainbow oil on the water. ‘We’re all guilty. But you and I have survived Kolya.’

‘Guilty? For what?’

‘For not listening to our hearts. Everyone possesses precognition, don’t you think? It’s just that we refuse to accept what we see.’

‘The future?’

‘In a tea-cup or on our palms. In the cards, or in a cloud.’

‘I am not superstitious. I regret I’m an unmitigated rationalist.’

‘Ha! And you’re alive, while Kolya’s dead.’ He called over to a group of mechanics who lay on the grass at the water’s edge. ‘We’ll be wanting the Oertz started up.’ Then his attention seemed drawn to some distant willows.

‘We’re going now?’ I asked.

He grimaced. ‘Why not?’ He was abstracted. I thought he was unstable. ‘There’s something I want to do. For the future.’ I assumed he was thinking about death and meant to write a will.

‘You want to give it to me?’

‘What? If you like.’ He rubbed under his left eye with a gloved finger. He grinned, ‘If you like. You can’t see the future, then? And you a scientist!’

He had picked up some fragments of fashionable mysticism at the Mikhishevski ménage, perhaps from his sister Lolly, that ‘Natasha’ of happier days. ‘Come.’

I returned with him to the mansion and a small ground-floor room evidently shared by several people and which had formerly been a pantry. It still smelled of bread and mice. From under his mattress he drew an unopened bottle of French cognac. ‘You like this?’

‘I did once.’

‘Good. We’ll drink it. For Kolya.’

‘I cannot refuse.’

We sat on the ledge of the little window. There was an untidy kitchen garden outside. Two privates were trying to make something of it. They were working expertly, like peasants. Petroff uncorked the bottle and handed it to me. I drank sparingly, with relish. He took it from me impatiently and tilted his head back to drink nearly half the old brandy in a single swallow. War had evidently coarsened his palate. He gave me the bottle. I drank deep but there was still a fair amount left. He laughed that irritating laugh of his. I remembered it from Petersburg: universal irony tinged with tension and resentment. He finished the stuff off, but for a few drops, ‘It’s how airmen drink. We need it. Did you hear about those silly bastards who dragged their own planes on sleds for hundreds of versts to get to fight for Deniken? They were keen, eh?’

‘The drink doesn’t impair your control over the plane?’

‘It improves it. I’m the last member of the entire squadron.’

‘I know what it is,’ I was by now a trifle drunk, ‘to crash.’

‘You do?’ He smiled.

‘I designed several experimental planes. One went out of control while I was testing it. In Kiev.’

He drained the bottle. ‘That’s to the Wright brothers. Damn them to hell. And all inventors. Faust deserved no redemption.’

‘Shouldn’t you rest?’ I suggested. I could make neither head nor tail of his references.

‘Very soon, doctor.’ He searched under his mattress, ‘I’m sorry. That was the final bottle. Let’s go aloft now.’

Less nervous than if I had been sober, I followed him back to the lake where the Oertz was ready. Her propeller was spinning and she was pointing out at the long stretch of water. Mechanics, grateful for the breeze, held her by her tailplane and huge rear wings, as Cossacks might hold ropes on a fierce, unbroken stallion. The smell of oil was sweet. ‘You go forward,’ said Petroff. ‘Get in the front cockpit. You’ll find a harness. Strap in. There’s goggles and stuff, too. All you’ll need.’ He was tucking a bulky object, wrapped in a piece of calico, into his jacket. I wondered if it were a bomb. I was rather uncertain of my chances of reaching the cockpit. The fuselage was only wood and fabric. But I climbed through the struts on the rocking aircraft until I managed to lower myself into the small observer’s cockpit with its bucket seat and spring brackets where, in the other cockpit, the controls would be. There were binoculars fastened to the inside edge; a pistol in a holster, a map-case and a clipboard, some pencils and a pair of goggles whose rubber was frayed and hardened. Still in my kaftan, with my own Cossack pistols pressing to my hip’s, I settled myself and buckled on my harness, putting the goggles over my eyes. Petroff was behind me, now, signalling. The engine and propeller were, of course, making too much noise for him to bother trying to talk.

The machine suddenly moved forward at a rapid, almost maniacal, speed. It was like a bucking horse, an erratic sleigh-ride, at once exhilarating and alarming. Foul spray flew into my face. I almost drowned in it. The lake was stagnant.

The plane began to vibrate, to slew in the water, tipping to starboard. Then I saw ailerons move on the wings and we were rising over the green lake and the willows, banking steeply, and the brandy suddenly warmed my whole body, my mind and my soul. We were up, flying over the woods, the damaged house, the neglected fields; flying towards hills and the blue sea, a haze between sky and land. I saw the limans, with their abandoned resorts, glittering and shallow: columns of marching men; riders; motor-vehicles; gun-tenders and artillery. This was the Release of Flying. There is no greater pleasure. Why did people bother climbing mountains when they could gain so much more from this? The air was roaring and yet at peace; it is a combination of adventure and tranquillity no jet-setter will ever capture. A grey mist became the city. Odessa from the air, with her factories and her churches, her ports and railways, looked exactly as she had looked when Shura first took me there: exotic in her aura and golden in the sun; but so great was my experience of Escape that I did not care if I saw the city again for months. I was conscientious. I began to do my job. There were large groups of people on the docksides, filling the wide quays. There were few ships on the turquoise sea. There were pieces of large artillery. In the outer suburbs were guns, cavalry, infantry, but apparently few. The Reds were ill-prepared to meet Deniken. There came banging from below. For a moment the engine stopped and all I heard was the guns and the yelp of Petroff’s laughter. He dropped the nose. I felt groggy. We were being fired upon. The engine started again. Flak burst around us. Shrapnel tore at our canvas. It did no real damage.

Down into smoke and yelling murder went Petroff, flying low over office buildings, hotels, flats, while I scribbled on my maps. We went over the St Nicholas steps where I had gone on my first day with Shura. We flew round and round the dome with its huge ornamental crucifix, the cliffs on one side with their gardens and trees, the fashionable Nicholas Boulevard, the sea and its ships on the other; round and round, like a toy on a stick. This was stupid and risky. Petroff was still laughing. The guns from the docks continued to fire at us. Was he daring them to shoot us down? There were clouds of smoke everywhere. Petroff fumbled open his flying jacket and took out the object he had placed there. He held it in his gloved left hand. The calico fell away from us like a dead bird. It was not a bomb he held but a large hour-glass in a marble stand. I think it was Fabergé. The marble was white with pronounced blue veins. The glass glittered. The sand was silver. Petroff stretched out his hand, then banked even more steeply towards the dome. I felt as if I were going to vomit. Guns continued to bang. I could hear them through the engine-notes, as if far away.

His plane almost hit the cross. Petroff flung the hour-glass down upon the golden roof of the church. He was laughing. I could see his teeth. His goggles made black cavities in his skull. He was white. His nostrils flared. Through my binoculars I saw the object strike the dome and smash; I saw marble break to fragments. Sand scattered like money. Then we were flying down on the dockyard guns. Maniacally I began to make notes on my map. There was a sudden lurch. I looked back. Petroff had been hit by shrapnel. It had ripped his coat and exposed a bloody mass of flesh. He continued to grin. Because of his goggles, I could not read his true expression. He saluted me with his wounded arm; then the plane climbed into Odessa’s blue-green sky and we were at peace. The engine cut out completely. We were drifting. Petroff called to me. I think he was delirious because he referred to me as ‘Colonel’ and spoke of ‘the Vanquisher’. His laughter became uncontrollable. He shouted ‘Goodbye’ and then re-fired the engine. Laughter and engine-note became one thing to my ears. We had started a power-dive towards the sea. I realised he intended to kill me. Something tore away from the plane. It was part of the upper forward wing, I think. Then we were spinning in silence. The engine made laughing noises. In my terror I tried to reason with Petroff. He was quite insane. His hatred of me, or of what he thought I represented, had overwhelmed his reason. I still cannot understand it. He was dead, or at least unconscious, hanging in his straps. I could not reach the controls. I released myself from my own harness and curled up. We hit the water and went through it as if we were still going through air. I began to drown. I thought my ribs were broken. I pushed myself towards the surface. Petroff and the Oertz continued to drop away below me. I could not swim properly. On a current which carried me in, I floundered, astonished, to the beach. I stood up and waded between slimy rocks. The beach sloped steeply and became grass. I had already seen a few houses. I was gasping. My ribs seemed undamaged. There was no sign of Petroff or the plane. That beautiful machine was gone forever. I do not think that they manufactured any more. My feet would not grip. I had to keep bending down to steady myself with my hands, yet I felt quite revived as, fully clothed, my pistols weighting my steps, I climbed up the beach and saw, on the faded promenade, a deserted bandstand. I had come ashore in Arcadia.