The Laughter of Carthage

ELEVEN

PARIS IS NO COMMON HARLOT. She is still a queen-whore, disdaining pimps, dismissing suitors with careless flattery, knowing that if her beauty fades a little year by year, she still remains elegantly attractive, for what nature takes away, cosmetics can easily replace. Paris of course has no heart of gold. She is a cold, mercenary goddess, pricing sexuality as precisely as she weighs confectionery; and she can be surprisingly prim, because fundamentally she remains a provincial matron. She sets high store by appearances. She knows the exact value of every pretty sentiment and she retails Romance by the gram. She is lace starched into stone. She is a corset braced with bone. She is a lure, a fly, a scent; a whiff of delight designed to part you from your cash with a girlish wink. The wink alone is worth a hundred francs. Charm has its commodity price; it would be quoted on the Bourse if someone ever dared reveal the truth. But no one ever will, or will ever be listened to, at any rate: for Paris, more than any other city, is dedicated to obfuscation, disguise, misleading decoration, since where there is ambiguity, as everyone knows, there is always money to be made. Few Parisians would ever accept the truism that the more one finds talk of love, flirtation, declarations of undying sentiment, the more one will discover rapacity, venality and hard cruelty. Soft words often exist in direct ratio to the greed they disguise.

Paris has been a grand courtesan for hundreds of years. She has suffered indignities (what harlot has not?) and even known periods of enforced virtue, domestic dullness, of half-hearted remorse; but she has recovered herself soon enough, flashed her scarlet petticoats, put on her most ravishing hat, displayed herself in all her well cut coquetry with its tiny betraying touch of vulgarity, the suggestion of a bawdy pout; but how outraged she is when her virtue is questioned! How she shrieks and threatens the Law. Moreover, if she fails to receive satisfaction by this means, she will forget her ladylike pretensions altogether. She will rush to attack. Yet possibly the person she threatens refuses to be frightened by her: whereupon she becomes her soft-voiced, placatory, eyelash-fluttering, melting professional self, full of crooned apologies and endearments, offering comforting luxury in her arms. Later, if she feels she can succeed without detection, she will murder her supposed conqueror while he sleeps, strip him naked and toss his body from her carriage into the river.

Paris is a wistful, acquisitive lullaby. She is able to pretend to good manners with all the skill of the truly arrogant. She preserves her looks at any cost, whether to friend or foe. When she has fallen to an enemy it has been with a glance over her shoulder, to make a virtue of surrender: it is hard, but what else can I do? I am helpless to defend myself. This harlot is a screen upon which men project their supreme fantasies, invest her with qualities she does not actually possess, which no city could ever possess, but which their imagination demands should exist. And women are defeated by her, too. She takes them by the arm, she shows them the secrets of her beauty, she pretends to make them confidantes while plotting their profound destruction. Occasionally, if her plans all fail, she will let herself go. Her hair falls prettily out of place. She slumps. Her little dress speaks of impoverished courage, she sings with hopeless, sardonic determination of betrayal, death and the end of romance. And so again, with this affectation of vulnerability, she wins sentimental allies, makes new conquests, until it is safe to be her old, jaunty, grasping self again. She knows how much to drink and exactly what she should eat. She is dedicated to appearances above principle, graciously applauding the appropriate lie while impatiently frowning upon inexpert honesty. And how she loves to entertain soldiers; preferably her own, but any soldier will do. She has a relish for gold braid and silver medals; the sniff of wounds and gunpowder from a safe distance is sufficient to excite her without alarming her; the brave sound of a marching band, the curl of an unblooded banner, the prance of the parade-ground stallion are as good as cash in hand, for she knows the weakness of soldiers and can price them out to the last sou. She loves fame. She pursues lions. And if no lions exist, she will manufacture some out of whole cloth. Where there are inflated egos, there are wallets to maintain them. And equally she worships intrigue; the more secrets there are, the more golden louis there are to buy silence. So her politics are conducted in hidden chambers, in bedrooms, in alleys and well guarded houses, while the rhetoric of her deputies is excessive in its glorious idealism, its talk of honour, glory and morality. Paris does not possess the shallow cynicism of the wounded young; frequently she will feign a horror of cynicism, make a huge protest in favour of the virtues of sentiment and humanity, but by her actions, like any very successful harlot, she is actually cynical to the core, and the only value she places on affection is what she can store in her private safe. Paris will rob the stranger more prettily, if she has to, than any other city. She begins by taking your money and then, if she finds it is worth something to her, your heart, your talent, finally your life. In contrast to Paris, all other cities are peopled with amateurs. She looks upon rivals with contempt or loathing. If they are brash or obvious or crude, she is offended, fearing their bad name might attach itself to her. She does not wish the game to be given away. She has been called an aristocrat, a madonna, an angel. She believes one day she will wake to discover she no longer need maintain a pose and will overnight have become a genuine gentlewoman, a dignified dowager like Vienna or Prague, able at long last to age gracefully, her power gained not by means of blackmail and flattery, but from the world’s respect. It is impossible. She knows it is impossible, but she clings to the hope as another might cling to her religion.

In Paris rather than in Rome one discovers the final expression of refined Catholicism. The Italians are notoriously careless of their history; they once ruled the world and know they could do so again if they cared enough; but are too easily bored with power. Even Mussolini began handing over the reins of his nation almost as soon as he gained them. His death was a tragedy. He had already shrugged and walked away. He might have wound up living a happy life, running a shop next door to mine, perhaps a little restaurant or a dry cleaner’s. And Rome is a fierce mother. When she tries to sell her favours she stands on a broken monument lifting her skirts and shouting for customers, just as if she were hawking hot chestnuts or ice cream. She has neither the patience nor the ambition for suggestive pouts or coy glances. She would rather get it over with and have something approaching a good time while she did it. She is and always has been more pagan than Catholic. To her, religion is worthless unless full-blooded and passionate. French priests, famous for their intellects, their cunning manipulations, their calculating and controlled ferocity, are symbolised best by Cardinal Richelieu who foreshadowed Lenin, a fanatic willing to destroy any individual who, by his very individuality, threatened the abstract idea of the State, his actual religion: himself. By definition a dedicated Catholic seeks power: every law his Church maintains speaks of it. The demand of women to multiply has the twofold effect of subjugating wives and increasing the numbers of children over whom power can be exercised. How beautifully the French have shaped their religion to their needs. It is a religion which makes no real demands upon its followers, save that they maintain appearances. There are certain prices to pay for the continuation of the proper façade: the occasional discreet penance. But God, to them, is an eighteenth-century Grand Seigneur, turning a blind eye to any crime so long as His own convenience is undisturbed. He possesses the practical rationality of the merchant, like so many French philosophers, and keeps neat accounts. And He would rather cathedrals be restored and decorated and organs not play out of tune, than have vulgar people throw themselves upon the floors of His houses in a flurry of unseemly hysteria. The French have refined their religion to its highest possible point. The Italians have left theirs alone in all its half-pagan incongruity, while the Spanish, who never quite lost the habit of human sacrifice, are barely restrained from soaking His altars in the blood of bulls and goats.

With what chill and lofty dedication did Richelieu destroy the Huguenots! Probably not a single expression of emotion ever passed his lips. He understood their point of view. But the Spanish Inquisition pursued its butchery with genuine lust, with hatred and hot cruelty, glad of the opportunity to fulfil its love for ritual murder; honouring its dark God with the screams of a million souls in the extremes of anguish; sending the stench of burning flesh to grace His quivering, bovine nostrils, for it is Moloch Himself who hides behind the mask of the Spanish Jehovah. Here lurks Carthage and all the sons of Shem, the descendants of Babylon, Assyria, Canaan, Aramea, Arabia, Ethiopia and Israel. The bull-gods grumble and prowl through the streets of Barcelona still.

The knives of the French are needles to prick a man’s life out of him, inch by tiny inch. They pretend friendship. They made me the toast of the town. I was one of their lions for a while. But Parisians only pretend to accept the manifestations of progress; to them these things are toys. One has to make bright, noisy, colourful things to impress them. Paris has a whore’s taste in trinkets. Santos-Dumont became their idol because his balloons and airships were gaudy and buzzed and because his attempts at powered flight were spectacular, highly publicised, conducted in machines of multicoloured silk! Much the same can be said of all their flyers, who had dash and filigree and well cut uniforms, but were rather poor at application, like the show cavalry of the nineteenth century. They were interested, as always, in appearances rather than pure science. To prove myself to them I was forced to become something of a Barnum (one of their favourite Americans). I was very quickly a darling of the Left Bank. I met every artist and intellectual worthy of the name. I was courted and proposed to by both men and women. I smoked opium in the houses of fashionable hostesses and sniffed ‘coco’ in Lesbian garrets. They took me up. I was their Monsieur ‘P’, their ‘Professeur Russe’, their ‘Petit Colonel’. Esmé and I were Hansel and Gretel wandering into the Palace of Versailles. We were overwhelmed. From Santucci’s friends, the exiled anarchists called Peronini, both of whom sported dyed red hair and masculine evening dress at all hours of the day, we moved into the company of criminals and radicals. I shook hands with Lamont himself. I shared a table with Antoinette Ferraud and Wanda Sylvano at Laperousse. The great astronomer Lalande would lunch regularly with us at the Café Royal and there I met his cousin Apollinaire, just returned from four years in the Foreign Legion. But for all they protested undying friendship and admiration of my creative genius, not one could help us in our efforts to reach England.

By the end of two weeks my optimism was waning. The British Embassy refused me the most ordinary kinds of information; the Russian émigré organisations could promise me nothing and had no concrete news of Kolya. Paris was awash with Russians, many of whom had credentials even better than my own, and the authorities were sick of us. Esmé, I could tell, began to have doubts about me, particularly when we were forced to move from our pension and take two miserable rooms in a street little better than an alley in Montparnasse. Rue de la Huchette consisted of a number of seedy bars and so-called ‘dancings’; there were cheap fishmongers, butchers and sellers of mouldy fruit and vegetables. Whores infested it. The alley was a rendezvous for every clochard on the Left Bank; at least one of the buildings was completely derelict, taken over by tramps and beggars of the worst sort. Our rooms were nearby, at the top of a crumbling house, scarcely any better than the squalor from which I had, in Galata, removed my Esmé. I was conscious she must be thinking this. The only advantage to our quarters was that they were high above the noise of the street. Esmé at first made the best she could of it, even sweeping and tidying and cleaning, but she quickly became depressed and lassitude set in. She implored me to spend more and more time outside, in the lively company of our new friends, inhabitants of the Montparnasse and Montmartre cafés, who at least were always generous with their wine. I think they meant well, those who swore they could provide Esmé with proper papers. They took photographs; they examined my own Russian documents. They claimed friendships with the highest and lowest: a master forger in St Germain, the secretary to the British Ambassador. But they were useless. I hated to be so dependent on them. There were no easy engineering jobs for me in Paris as there had been in Kiev or Pera. The French Army had disbursed thousands of half-trained jobbing mechanics upon the nation and most of those could find no work. My only hope lay in finding a backer for one of my designs. I knew it had to be an invention to impress the light-minded Parisians, something which would seem sensational to them. So I said I intended to build a great airliner able to fly to America with a hundred passengers in record time.

Esmé begged me to be cautious. ‘You have no plans for such a ship, Maxim! We must not attract the police.’

I reassured her. I laughed loudly. ‘What can the police do? Prove I am not a legitimate inventor? My little dove, if I get a bite - then it will be the work of a few hours to draw up the plans. In fact, if it will improve your state of mind, I’ll start at once.’

I began to mention my invention around the cafés. I spoke of the enterprise’s automatic success, how huge fortunes would be made from it. ‘Indeed, it must be considered as a sound commercial venture and nothing else,’ I would say.

American tourists had virtually taken over Montmartre and the Champs Elysees. The faster they could be brought in, and in the greatest numbers, the better for everyone, I said. Tourism would from now on become one of the main sources of any great city’s revenue.

By pawning my fur coat I paid for new visiting cards advertising The Franco-American Aerial Navigation Company and these I judiciously handed out at every sensible opportunity. My reputation slowly infected the Parisian consciousness. Many said they already knew of Professor Pyatnitski, the Russian aircraft expert, the same boy genius who had built Kiev’s Purple Ray and single-handedly held off the Red Cavalry. One of Lalande’s journalist friends interviewed me for his newspaper and in due course a large piece appeared about me. It exaggerated, but in my favour. I was described as ‘Le Quichotte Cossack’, a man of science and a man of action combined, an adventurer to rival Munchausen. I still have the cutting. It is from Le Review Coucou for 15th September 1920. This was by no means the only publicity I received. Everywhere toasted me in print.

My chief fear at the time was not that I should fail to survive but that Esmé would become bored and disenchanted. I had, after all, failed miserably to keep my wonderful promises. We were overly dependent on others for our entertainment. Since Rome, she had developed a profound craving for the cinema and the money was not always available to pay for the latest Pickford or Sennett. As my anxieties increased I paradoxically grew plump on the free dinners supplied by bohemian friends. What was worse, Esmé felt ashamed of her clothes. Even Paris’s artists had a certain style and their women looked elegant no matter how eccentric their frocks, and try as she might Esmé could not emulate them. I assured her she looked wonderfully attractive to me, but women never trust their lovers in these matters.

Meanwhile I persisted in my enquiries about Kolya. I was discovering Paris to be a city of people who cannot bear to say they do not know something. So many pretended to have heard of him; a dozen Russian exiles claimed to have met him in some nearby thoroughfare or to have dined with him only a night or two earlier, but most of these turned out to be rogues, only interested in getting money from me. Possibly because our Russian nobility had always looked to France for its manners and its language, Paris seemed to have almost as many émigrés as Constantinople. Russian restaurants were in vogue. Russian artists gave exhibitions of their garish paintings. Russian dancers shocked a sophisticated world with bizarre choreography and costumes, with hideous music. Those very elements of decadence which ushered the triumph of Lenin were now, like dangerous spoors, infecting France. As a result - and who could blame them? - Parisians became wary of us. I had made an initial mistake in admitting my nationality. I should have been better off if I had claimed to be a Jew or an Egyptian! Either I was besieged by bluestockings telling me soberly how much they ‘sympathised with your country’s terrible plight’ or I and my fellows were regarded as members of some gigantic circus come to town merely for the purpose of entertaining bored sensation-seekers.

Paris will seize on any passing fashion. I heard only recently that her latest craze is American comic-strips. The Minister of Culture awards prizes to the illustrator of Little Orphan Annie while Paris’s municipal authorities renamed the Avenue Roosevelt. Now it is Boulevard du Batman. So thoroughly do these modern French make nonsense of any claim to cultural superiority! They imitate the worst American and English pop music, the worst cheap fiction, the worst films. They presumably identify this trash with a vitality they themselves lost over half a century ago. I had hoped De Gaulle would pull his country together (though he seemed a pompous dullard when I met him in 1943). His reign is marked by student riots and an increase in violent pornography. He failed to subdue Algeria as he failed to put his harlot capital in her place. (More sinister rumours concerning his race and real loyalties I discount for lack of evidence. It is significant, however, that he proved inept at reducing Moslem power abroad yet thinks nothing of welcoming the Arab and the Turk to his capital! As a rational man I refuse credence to the conspiracy theories so prevalent these days amongst Western Reds. The truth is that the real conspiracy has been hatching for centuries, so perverting the Christian world it is nowadays barely recognised!)

Our material circumstances grew worse and worse. Esmé wept at the grey sheets, the filthy windows. She said we should never have left Rome. Italians were certainly more generous than the French. The news from Russia was appalling. Our loyalist armies, pushed back at every turn, received scant help from the Allies, now involved with the Turkish question. Newcomers from Southern Russia, questioned by me for news of my mother, my friends, had nothing to offer. The poor souls were still dazed, still ‘within the nightmare’. It seemed as dangerous to try suddenly to wake them as it was to wake a somnambulist. There were plenty of Russian language newspapers of all political colours, from rabidly monarchist to violently nihilist, reporting opinion rather than fact. Russian publishing companies and Russian information centres, together with certain cafés operated and patronised entirely by Russians, dealt chiefly in gossip and blind hope. These exiles and their Berlin counterparts were the lucky refugees. Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands were crushed into civilian concentration camps, dying of disease or sheer despair. Even amongst these pathetic refugees Lenin and Trotski had their supporters. Though the appalling consequences were visible everywhere, French socialists plotted a similar fate for their own nation! Perhaps resistance to all this would have been stronger if our newspapers had not published true stories of atrocities so ghastly the average Parisian could not accept them, dismissing them as partisan lies. I insisted they were true, for I had seen such things with my own eyes. I had suffered at the hands of Red irregulars, barely escaping with my life! But I soon learned to say nothing. During that everlasting, frenetic post-War party, people hated you if you spoke of death and terror (or even less dramatic realities). All they wanted was the latest American jazz, the newest dances, the most outrageous fashions. The heroes of the War were already forgotten. Sweating Negro banjo players were hailed in their place. And when the cost of these fresh sensations proved too high, they demanded money from an exhausted Germany! (In due course Germans grew tired of such demands. They marched back into the city, whereupon Parisians merely shrugged, doubled the price of drinks to German soldiers, and danced on.)

And Esmé was as eager as anyone to join the party. Her relish for the good life became alarming. Being young, she needed to go out and about, but of course I could not find the necessary cash. Soon I was forced to sell a valuable patent for a few hundred francs. My ‘agent’ was an Odessan Jew called Rosenblum. It was all I could do to force myself to be civil to him, stop myself automatically drawing back from his slimy hand when he put it, with an assumption of fraternity, upon my arm. He told me where I must go to meet his client.

It was in Montmartre, in a tourist Bal du Danse, one seedy afternoon while the Angelus bell clanked in the Savoyarde towers of Sacré Coeur. I was fond of this church. It seemed transported from somewhere further East. The usual press of visitors had dispersed. The bandstand was empty, the chairs stacked, the bar closed, yet the place still stank of the cheapest perfume, the youngest wine. I stepped inside. The door was closed and barred by the man I had agreed to meet. He was also Ukrainian, but from Marseilles, where he had lived since 1913. M’sieu Svirsky wore a loud pin-striped suit, a white trilby; his hands were covered in heavy gold rings crudely set with semi-precious stones, mostly crimson. He said he was a broker for important Southern industrial interests with branches in Paris. He was no more than ten years older than me but his face hung with loose skin, like a bloodhound’s, as if the flesh within had wasted away suddenly. This gave him a sad-eyed look. His eyes in actuality were hard brown stones. He asked me about the invention I had for sale. He stared as he listened, his face wrinkling, mouth smiling, as if he felt obliged to pretend intelligent interest in my description. This peculiar, agitated little fellow relaxed immediately when I indicated I had finished. Then he glanced nervously about the bar. Plainly he was uneasy, perhaps wishing to behave correctly but unsure what was expected of him. He reminded me of a half-trained spaniel. Yet he had money in his wallet, together with a piece of paper I must sign: a contract bearing the name of a Marseilles engineering firm. It promised royalties when my safety brake was commercially sold. (This device was attached to the accelerator of a car. It automatically operated when one lifted a foot completely off the pedal.)

We chatted about Odessa and the good times we had known there. He was familiar with some of my favourite cafés. He recalled ‘Esau the Hairy’, remembering the name of the accordion player who had been a regular for so long. When I mentioned my Uncle Semya he was impressed. Everyone knew Semyon Josefovitch. ‘So you’re his nephew. It’s a small world.’ He grinned, ‘I’d better have another look at this contract. You signed it too readily. Why didn’t you go into the family business?’

‘He sent me to technical college instead. He wanted me to be a lawyer, but I had no vocation for it.’

Svirsky accepted this soberly. ‘Your family doesn’t gravitate naturally to Law.’

I asked if he knew my cousin. Svirsky said he thought Shura might be in Marseilles. ‘No,’ I said. ‘He was killed. I heard.’

But Svirsky was certain Shura was alive. ‘He turned up a couple of years ago, asking for a job. I suppose he’d deserted. It would have suited him to let people think he was dead, eh? He switched papers probably, and got on a ship. It’s commonly done.’

Was all the world being resurrected? I was amused by this thought. It sounded like Shura. I asked Svirsky to tell my cousin to get in touch with me if he felt like it. We had quarrelled over a girl. I regretted falling out. I was sure he did, too. Relatives should stick together in these times. ‘Oh, indeed,’ said Svirsky. ‘The Ukrainians are still very thick in Marseilles. Since the War, of course, the old trade with Odessa has dwindled almost to nothing. It was a great shame. Everyone did well out of it.’ He yawned, far more comfortable now he had my measure. We agreed things could never return to normal in Odessa. The Golden Age had passed. Against a volume of evidence, only Paris attempted the maintenance of her first optimistic flush of 1918. Apocalyptic political ideas threatened every aspect of European life, promising new wars, new regimes. Svirsky still hoped the Bolsheviks ‘would relax a bit’ as soon as they had definitively won the Civil War. ‘They’re bound to open the ports for trade. They’d be mad not to.’ But he had almost no direct experience of that particular form of insanity. I told him I was less optimistic. Those people would destroy whole nations who threatened to give the lie to their lunatic myths. Svirsky insisted ‘things will settle down’. I thanked him for his money and left the Bal du Danse after shaking hands. It would be several years before I should see him again. Then he would freely admit my foresight.

My automatic brake kept us for more than two weeks. We bought splendid new clothes. We saw Das Kabinett Des Dr Caligari and were horrified at its madness. This modernistic ‘expressionism’ provided every evidence that in defeat Germany had grown deeply neurotic, almost psychopathic. Even more ordinary, less irrational, films reflected an identically morbid obsession with death and mental sickness. Esmé enjoyed Halbblut. One would never have guessed it to be the work of someone who later gave us the magnificent Metropolis, Die Nibelungen and Die Frau im Mond. My preference at the time was for Die Spinnen which was altogether more wholesome. We shared a taste for Charlie Chaplin, however, and visited Easy Street and The Immigrant several times. My own favourite was Mary Pickford, who reminded me in so many ways of Esmé. We saw The Little American, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and M’Liss, which whetted my appetite for the stories of Bret Harte, in turn making California an imaginative reality for me. I think my favourite Mary Pickford film was Daddy Long-Legs. I told Esmé if I were not already in love, Mary Pickford would claim my heart. Esmé said she thought Mary was far too ‘good and sweet’. I laughed. ‘Then she’s an ideal rival for you!’

In Paris America came to mean far more to me than ever before, thanks to D. W. Griffith, who brought his country vividly to life for me in the greatest film ever made. For a while we were both obsessed with Birth of a Nation. We saw it at least twenty times. As a direct consequence I began to realise what potential for social and scientific progress there was in the United States. If I had made a film, it should have been that one. Griffith alone showed the world that his country was not comprised merely of pilgrims, savages and gangsters. His ideals were uncannily close to mine! I promised myself that as soon as my airship company was successful, I should go at once to the USA and personally thank him. I would suggest he turn his attention to the problems of Russia. One film, showing the horrors of Bolshevism as graphically as Griffith had shown the evils of the scallawags and carpetbaggers, who incited the negro as cynically as Lenin incited the Mongol, and the whole world would rush to my country’s rescue. (Ironically, the Bolsheviks themselves realised this. With almost admirable cunning they employed the plagiarist Eisenstein to present their own distorted case. With the clever imitative skills of the Jew he looted Griffith’s work, fashioning a paean of praise to his bloodthirsty masters, presenting them in a ludicrously heroic light: a fanfare of histrionics which made the mob, so loathed by Griffith, seem somehow noble! This revealed that techniques are never good just for their own sake. It depends who manipulates them. That is why an inventor, too, must always be careful. These days I keep my inventions to myself. Too many people, over the past fifty years, have abused them.)

Paris continued to dance. Every street maintained its nightclubs, whorehouses, bars. Jaded people poured in from all over the world, eager to join the party. Americans could be found everywhere. They had money to spend, though typically they always claimed poverty. In my favourite Left Bank cafés I began to meet international journalists, painters, poets. I asked those from the USA if they knew Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish, but they could give me less information than I could find for myself in the film magazines. Some of them (mostly New Yorkers) did not even know who Douglas Fairbanks was! It would be like a Russian not having heard of Stenka Razin or Tsar Saltan. I pitied them their deep ignorance. They had come to Paris frantically anxious to prove themselves ‘high-brows’, reading impossible French novels by Gide, Ouida and Mauriac, salivating over the filth Willy-Colette issued in the guise of literature. At the same time they spoke grandly of the ‘popular taste’ and flung their limbs about in imitation of black cottonpickers experiencing the last throes of some lethal palsy. They laughed at me, I knew; yet I was far more in touch with the pulse of the age than ever they could be. They did not know it, but they actually represented the past. I was a true Man of my Time. They were merely trying to relive a nostalgic, nonexistent fin-de-siècle fantasy. Nonetheless some of them condescendingly bought the shares I issued for my Aerial Navigation Company. It was on this money, carefully accounted for in a notebook, that we lived. Esmé again began developing headaches; a lassitude similar to the condition which had overwhelmed her on Kazakian’s boat. At first I would stay with her, working at our only table, drawing up my plans, writing to anyone who could help us get to England. Gradually it became necessary to go out more, to leave her with an oil lamp and the second-hand novels I bought for her on the nearby quays. Money had to be gathered somehow and it was not always easy to pay for our necessities. The price of cocaine alone in Paris was exorbitant. It was suddenly a fashionable drug amongst the demi-mondaine; waiters openly sold it in nightclubs and restaurants. I became panic-stricken, certain Esmé must soon decide to leave me, for she was not meant for poverty or drudgery. London was set aside. I had no choice but to spend more time than I liked seeking a main financier for my great airship. People were increasingly wary of anyone wanting their money, no matter how sound the scheme. Parisians were concentrating on taking it from others. I grew at once horribly obsessed and miserably over-tired, following one wild goose after another. All the while Esmé withdrew deeper into herself until even the cocaine was of no help.

I prayed I should find Kolya. I left messages everywhere. I pinned them on notice-boards in émigré hostels; I left scraps of paper with strangers. I took advertisements in the Russian language press. Meanwhile I wrote to Mrs Cornelius, to Major Nye, to Mr Green, begging them to send us the fare to England and to use their influence with the English authorities both there and in Paris. I was making myself a laughing-stock with the Russians. They would mockingly ask me ‘Has your Prince come yet?’ or ‘Is the airship flying today?’ It was hideous. At last, just to avoid this sort of cruelty, I began to deny I was Russian.

One day I was standing outside the Cirque d’Hiver, near the hotel in Rue du Temple where we had originally stayed, waiting for the artistes to emerge from their afternoon rehearsals (for I had heard that many Russians were now performing as equestrians), when I definitely saw Brodmann, dressed to the nines in black homburg and overcoat, striding rapidly towards Place de la République. He hailed a cab with his umbrella and got in, waving to another man to join him. The man was more casually clothed, in brown cords, evidently a French intellectual. He carried a bundle of newspapers under his arm. It was obvious to me he was a radical. Smiling and laughing Brodmann gave no attention to the outside world. He was plainly doing well for himself, as that sort will. Doubtless he had made himself out to be a revolutionary hero. Almost certainly he was a Chekist bent on infiltrating some non-Bolshevik organisation. Shivering, I immediately hurried home. Esmé was pale, eating little, mouthing her way through something by Gautier. I could say nothing to her. I was terrified of distressing her further. But I stayed in for the rest of the evening. Next morning I left my face unshaven with the intention of growing a beard.

I caught a tram for the Montparnasse Cemetery. There was a theatre near it and a café, called something like the Pepe Napa, which had once been a favourite of Italian actors but was now the haunt of Russian anarchists. I had sunk so low I now rubbed shoulders with scum. It was for Esmé’s sake. I would do anything to escape our present squalor. Descending from the footplate of the tram I crossed the street to the café, the railings of the cemetery at my back. Sunshine was pale in the cool autumn air. The café had only just opened for business. Inside waiters were still taking chairs off tables. The only customers were grouped at the bar drinking little cups of coffee and sharing out their cigarettes. Some spoke a dialect familiar to me - the country speech, part Russian, part Ukrainian, of the Katerynoslav gubernia. I knew enough of this dialect - at least its inflections - to greet them. Nonetheless they regarded me with surly suspicion. They had probably been in Paris for several months and they still had something of the wolfish look I associated with their kind. Most wore ordinary cheap working-class clothes, though a few still had the vestiges of uniforms - a cap, a pair of trousers or boots. They were unimpressed when I told them I was from Kiev. They warmed a little upon learning that I had ridden with Nestor Makhno. The little batko was still their greatest hero. A tall, thin faced man with a pronounced limp, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, asked a couple of questions plainly designed to test me. He was satisfied by my answers. ‘What were you?’ he asked. ‘A Green? Or one of those city anarchists who tried to tell us how to fight the Reds?’

Instinctively I decided to tell them the truth. ‘Neither,’ I told him. ‘My sister was a nurse with Makhno’s army. Maybe you knew her? Esmé Loukianoff?’

‘The name’s familiar,’ said the tall man. ‘Pretty little blonde?’

‘That’s her.’

‘So what were you doing?’

‘I’m a teacher. And an engineer. I was with the education train until the Whites captured me. They locked us up in a synagogue to die. Then some Australians came through and took us to Odessa. Hearing that the Whites had overrun the whole place and that Reds were shooting anarchists, I got on a refugee ship.’

They did not wish to hear tales of heroism, these men. Many were themselves the defeated remnants of so-called Hulyai-Polye Cossacks. They had no call to point the finger at another escapee.

The wounded one was called Chelanak, evidently a German ‘colonist’ in origin, with a Jewish tinge to him which made me mistrust him. He said he had been left for dead after a Bolshevik ambush at Holta in September 1919. ‘We were winning, too, then.’ He paused and stepped back from me a pace of two, as if inspecting a painting. Then he continued. ‘I crawled to some woods where a troop of Greek infantry mistook me for a White officer on account of what was left of my jacket. I was sent to Odessa, put on a hospital ship. For Bulgaria, I think. But I got off in some little fishing village which we stopped at for no good reason. I tried to get back - it was near the border. I was captured by renegades who were overcome by Reds before I could be shot. I got away again, first into Poland, then down into Vienna and eventually into France.’ He frowned, his voice trailing off. ‘But I know you, I’m sure.’

I had never seen him before.

The café was beginning to fill with veterans. He leaned against the bar and sipped his coffee. His next statement had no particular relevance to what he had just said. He spoke significantly, however. ‘I was with Makhno when we executed Hrihorieff in full view of his own army. Remember that? Chubenko fired the first shot, Makhno the second, I the last. We did it because of the pogroms, I think. I do know you! You were one of the Barotbist liaison people we found with Hrihorieff. Brodmann!’

This was the most dreadful thing he could have said. I felt instantly sick. I tried to smile. He put down the journal he held and snapped his fingers. ‘Brodmann. Someone said you were in Paris.’ He looked about him.

I was near screaming. ‘I am not Brodmann! For God’s sake, man! My name is Cornelius! It’s true I was captured by Yermeloff, but I got away. I was Hrihorieff s prisoner for a few days, that’s all! Then I rejoined my sister in Hulyai-Polye. I swear it’s true.’ I was appalled. I had seen Brodmann only a day before. That in itself had been nerve-racking. But to be mistaken for the dreadful, treacherous Jew by ex-bandits was worse. ‘I met someone of that name. He was a Bolshevik, though he posed as a Barotbist for a while.’ I regretted even this admission as soon as it came out of me.

‘Brodmann’s comrade, then? I know your face. I know it.’ He was not particularly unfriendly. It was as if he did not personally carry any hatred for his old enemies.

It was unlikely his tolerance would be shared by the others. I know I was sweating, almost pleading with him not to pursue this line of association. My hands implored him. I had never seen this half-dead creature before and could scarcely believe the accident which led him to associate me with one of the people I most feared and despised in the world. I tried to shake my head. ‘Which Brodmann? Red beard? Alexandrovsk?’

Chelanak began to laugh. ‘No! No! I saw you at the meeting! Day before yesterday. Near Rue St Denis. I thought you were Brodmann, then.’

‘I wasn’t at a meeting, comrade. Please don’t go on with this!’ Was Brodmann, after all, to be the death of me?

‘Brodmann claims now he helped kill Hrihorieff, did you know? You didn’t kill Hrihorieff, did you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I apologise. We get Chekists in here quite frequently. You must have a doppelganger, comrade. Unpleasant, eh? A doppelganger who’s a Chekist!’

The chief danger seemed over, but I remained nervous. I had only come to this place in the hope of getting news of Kolya, who had had some anarchist associates in the old days. More and more exiles were crowding through the door, speaking every Russian dialect, as well as French, Polish, German. They carried their rolled newspapers casually, as they had once borne swords and rifles. I began pushing through them on my way out. Chelanak plucked at my coat. ‘But you are Brodmann’s friend, surely? Still a Barotbist, maybe? At least tell me what you’re here for!’

‘Prince Petroff,’ I said.

‘Why the hell are you looking for a Prince here?’ He was beside me again. ‘We’re a bit nervous of spies, Brodmann’s friend.’

‘I’m no friend of Brodmann. The only Brodmann I knew was caught and shot by the Whites in Odessa last year. As for Petroff, he’s done as much for the cause as anyone - and suffered as much. Is there now a class qualification for the Movement? If so you had better make plans to expel Kropotkin!’ I hated all the eyes now on me. I willed myself to speak levelly. ‘You’re a fool, Chelanak.’ I pushed at him, striking his dead arm which began to sway like a pendulum. ‘I can’t understand why you’re picking on me. I’ve done you no harm. We were part of the same group not so long ago.’

He took hold of his wounded arm with his good hand and stopped us swaying. He looked at the ground. ‘I apologise, comrade. We’ve no Petroff here, unless he’s changed his name and his caste. I’m not sure what got me going. Just something in you.’

Both of us were panting slightly. We stood outside the café now, staring towards the cemetery through the iron railings on the other side of the road.

‘You look a bit like Brodmann to me,’ he said, compounding the insult. ‘But I can see you’re not him. You haven’t the clothes or the complexion of a Chekist. It’s obvious in the daylight. I apologise again. What can I do for you?’

‘I’d hoped to find Prince Petroff, that’s all.’

‘Only exhausted and defeated anarchists come here. We share a common bond of bitterness and self-pity.’ He smiled, straightening his cap. ‘Maybe that’s why I mistook you for a Chekist. You don’t look crushed enough. Go in peace, comrade. But be careful. Your face is wrong for this kind of place.’ His mouth softened. ‘Your eyes have too much future in them. These cafés are citadels of a lost past. We don’t have the energy to take another step forward.’

I do not remember saying goodbye to him. I ran up the Rue Froidevaux, past the theatre. I was running not from Chelanak but from Brodmann. I was sure the anarchist was right. Brodmann was a natural candidate for the Cheka. He would delight in destroying me. At that moment I could have run all the way back to Rome. I had to be a fool so passively to have accepted Santucci’s lift. I had thought it would be easy to get to London from here. It would have been better to have remained in Constantinople. It was imperative, I thought, at least to get out of Paris, possibly to the South or to Belgium. From there we could choose Holland or Germany. I would sell all my clothes. Every treasure I had retained. I found myself in the Luxembourg Gardens with their thin, unfriendly trees. The place was far too exposed for me. I dashed into the Rue St Michel and its crowds, was almost hit by a tram and at last reached our alley. It had become a sanctuary. I was seriously out of breath by the time I got to the top of the stairs. Within, it was as gloomy as ever. Esmé, sitting up in our grey bed, read an old La Vie Parisienne and merely nodded as I entered. I went immediately to our little store of cocaine to pull myself together. She still had last night’s papers in her hair. She was turning into a slattern and it was my fault. Could Brodmann, I wondered, have come specifically to Paris to seek me out? The Bolsheviks had assassins in every major city. Their job was simply to wipe out those who had escaped them in Russia.

For once I was glad Esmé gave her entire attention to her magazine and did not see, thank God, my anxiety. How was I to tell her we must flee? She could only grow worse and it would be impossible to travel at any kind of speed with her an invalid and Brodmann in pursuit. He must surely be aware of my presence in Paris and since I had left my address everywhere in the hope Kolya would eventually be given it, Brodmann or one of his Chekist agents might discover it at any moment. I prayed they would spare Esmé. My first decision was to take my Georgian pistols to the expensive shops on the Quai Voltaire where tourists bought their old Louis XV chairs and Napoleonic medals, their carved saints looted from churches destroyed during the Siege. It was a short walk for me, along the Seine. I was bound to get enough for our rail fares out of France. However, I moved slowly. I felt I was renouncing the last vestiges of my heritage, selling my birthright, betraying a friend. But I had no choice. Refugees all over Paris were making exactly the same decision.

I believe I was singularly blessed in those days by a somewhat flamboyant and depraved Guardian Angel, the same who had started me into the bohemian Petersburg world and introduced me to Kolya. He now appeared, shrieking and waving his long, limp arms, on the Pont Neuf where it joined Quai de Conti. It was as if he had sprung from one of the grotesque buttresses of Notre Dame itself, dressed in a bright yellow cloak, green cravat, blue velvet jacket and white Oxford Bags. From habit, my first impulse was to avoid him; then I shrugged as he leapt across the roadway, cloak and trousers billowing like the silk of a deflated balloon, and seized me. He hugged me to his monstrous chest and breathed peppermint vodka into my face. He still had his exaggerated good looks, his theatrical speech and gesture. It was also obvious that his lust for me (first felt on the train when I was a boy travelling from Kiev to St Petersburg and the Polytechnic) was utterly undiminished. It was the ballet-dancer Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov. ‘Your own Seryozha, my darling Dimka!’ He kissed me passionately on both cheeks and then again on my forehead. ‘Oh. Dimka! You are not dead! I am not dead! Isn’t it wonderful? How long have you been in Paris? You don’t look well.’ He held me firmly in his huge hands and inspected me. ‘I told you Paris was the place to be and you remembered! Wasn’t I a good judge? I came here in ‘16 with some of the other Foline members. To entertain the troops. And I’ve been here ever since. Lucky, too, don’t you think?’

I seemed to remember he had once been absolutely firm that I should stay in Petersburg. I wanted to know how he had managed to reach Paris when it had been almost impossible for Russian civilians to travel. ‘My dear, Foline is a genius. Heartless, selfish, thoughtless, but a genius. He talked someone into believing our performances would improve the morale of the troops fighting in Flanders. And they let us go. About half of us, anyway. They wouldn’t have me, dear, in the army. And I didn’t pout about it. A tremendous piece of good fortune. We’re loved by everyone in Paris. I’ve had offers from Diaghilev and from that plagiarist Fokine. Not only did he steal Foline’s name, he’s stolen almost all our repertoire. But it doesn’t matter. There are hundreds of marvellous composers here, as you know. Where are you off to, Dimka dear?’

Having gathered that Seryozha was doing well, I had begun to consider my ideas. Perhaps I could borrow the money I needed, or at least sell him some shares in my Airship Company. I told him I was merely out for a stroll, whereupon he insisted we must go to a nearby café, L’Epéron. ‘I was on my way to it anyway. It’s marvellous there. Everyone’s so handsome and beautiful. Do you feel like an omelette? They have wonderful omelettes.’

We strolled past box after box of secondhand books lining the embankment then back up to Boulevard St-Michel, as crowded as always. Seryozha seemed to know half the people in the street. L’Epéron was one of those huge, modern places which had become so fashionable since the war. A glass enclosure filled the best part of a block and inside it was crowded with dirty, long-haired, bawdy self-styled painters, writers and musicians. I was only grateful the stage inside was presently unoccupied by the inevitable jazz band. We had to share a table with two obvious homosexuals who to my chagrin immediately assumed I was Seryozha’s catamite. But I was prepared to suffer even this if it meant escape for me and Esmé. Seryozha, for my benefit and for that of half the vast café, began to boast of his achievements on the dance stage, what the Parisian critics had said of him, how Diaghilev himself had tried to lure him away from Foline. This, too, I endured patiently, nodding and smiling; the price I paid for the omelette, which was large but mediocre. My acquaintance ordered a whole bottle of anis which he insisted we drink. I had forgotten his taste for alcohol. By the time we rose to leave I was fairly drunk and had agreed to go back with Tsipliakov to his rooms in Rue Dauphine. As we walked unsteadily over the cobbles I asked if he had seen anything of Kolya in Paris. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I was seeing him fairly frequently about six months ago. He always dines at Lipp’s in Boulevard St-Germain. Do you know it? Not to my taste. Country food, mainly. But he has a sentimental attachment to peasants, as you know.’ He stopped, took out his key, opened a huge courtyard gate and ushered me ahead of him. On the other side of the courtyard a flight of steps led to the door of his flat. It was spacious and light, but he had the taste of a kulak. Little nick-nacks were perched on every surface: china pigs, china roses, candlesticks, gold vases full of garish flowers. It was heavy with stale perfume. ‘Take those Japanese cushions,’ he said. ‘You’ll be most comfortable.’

I hoped I would not have to stay long. I removed my coat and lowered myself into the cushions, reaching up for the glass of yellow Pernod Seryozha handed me. i take it you’re still partial to snuff?’ he said. I wonder if he ever knew I stole his cocaine box on the train. I nodded. ‘The chief necessity of my life,’ I told him.

I watched him as he sat down at a black and gold lacquered table and began to prepare the ‘snuff. ‘I should explain,’ he said abstractedly, ‘that Kolya and I are no longer on speaking terms. I regard his life-style as miserable and his choice of companions - well, Dimka, dear, unconventional for him. He had the nerve to cut me the last time he saw me. He’s become massively respectable. Wants none of his old pals.’ The thick lips, the huge eyes, the flaring nostrils, turned to offer me a look of deep, but mysterious, significance. He brought me the cocaine in a little marble dish and I sniffed it through a long, gold tube. It was better quality than we had been getting. I would at least discover Seryozha’s supplier before I left.

Then suddenly he had taken a leap - a balletic jump - to land beside me in the cushions. What remained of my drink spilled and I tried to find somewhere to stand it, but he wrenched it from my hand with a loud laugh and flung it behind him. ‘Ah, Dimka, dear. It’s been so frustrating! Has it been the same for you? I dream of those days on the train. You were so young and sweet. Sometimes, before I go to sleep, I can still smell you. There’s nothing like that odour. No chemist could ever reproduce it. You still have a little of it now. How old are you?’

‘I’m twenty-one.’ I rolled awkwardly in the cushions.

‘A major at last. Ho, ho!’ He touched his lips to my shoulder and looked up at me with his brown eyes; a swooning cow.

‘And what are you doing in Paris?’

‘Looking for work. For money. The Cheka is after me. Because of my activities in Odessa.’

‘You have no money?’ I admired the way he sprang so easily to his feet. A desk drawer was opened. Several large-denomination notes were taken out. He was down again beside me, pressing the money into my shirt. ‘That will keep you for a while. Buy a suit. You could do with a good suit.’

I did not wish to offend him, so I said, ‘I’ll pay you back, Seryozha. This will help with the doctor’s bill, thank God!’

‘You’re ill? Consumption?’

‘Sadly, no. It’s crab lice. I got them in Montmartre, I think.’

Again he was on his feet, unconsciously scratching at his thigh. ‘You still have them?’

‘I must tell you the truth. I was on my way to find out whether I’m cured or not.’

‘Oh, but I should not keep you!’

I was surprised at the effectiveness of my ruse.

‘I’d love to see you again,’ I said, clambering to my feet and staggering from cushions to floor. I was scarcely able to stand upright, though the cocaine had partially cleared my head. Probably I could thank the cocaine for the alacrity with which I had invented my unpleasant affliction.

‘You shall, Dimka, darling. Tomorrow. Let’s pray to all the saints this awful ordeal is at an end for you.’

I think I saw him give the cushions a sidelong inspection as he showed me to the door. He blew a kiss. ‘Until tomorrow, Dimka, my dear.’

I was not sure whether I would be able to tolerate another encounter with the huge dancer, but he was my only real link with Kolya and a source of money, which in turn meant I could return to our pension with bon-bons for Esmé and some flowers to cheer her up. She almost wept when she saw my presents. ‘Are we rich again, Maxim?’

‘We are on the road to riches, my little dove. I think I know where to find Kolya.’

She was not much impressed by this. To her my Kolya was a myth, a symbol of hope rather than a reality. She tended to become depressed when his name was mentioned. She needed something more concrete, ‘I promise you, Esmé, that we shall soon be free of all this.’ I sat on the bed and squeezed her hands while she chewed her chocolates. ‘Kolya will be able to help me get my Airship Company going.’ It was all I could tell her. Presently, I should have been grateful for somewhere else to live, where Brodmann and his Chekists would not be able to find us. Even Esmé noticed the caution with which I locked up that afternoon. I went out again at 6 pm. I told her to be careful, to answer only my knock.

It was raining by the time I got to Lipp’s. In contrast to the street the restaurant’s ornamental brasswork and plate glass was cheerful. It was an old-fashioned family restaurant on two floors, catering to a wide clientele, many of them Jewish. Somewhat nervously I pushed through the revolving door and presented myself to the head-waiter. The place was already crowded. He asked if I had made a reservation and when I admitted that I had not, he shook his head. I could tell he might have allowed someone else in but he did not much like my looks. Depressed, I walked out into St Germain. I remained in a succession of shop doorways for an hour or two, watching Lipp’s entrance in the hope of seeing Kolya. Eventually I went home. My clothes were becoming too shabby but if I were to wear either of my uniforms I should become a sitting target for the Chekist assassins. I decided I must have a new suit.

Next morning, just before noon, I went to visit Seryozha again. By now I had a clearer idea of how to resist his advances. When he opened the door he was still bleary, but he brightened when he saw me. He wore a multi-coloured silk kimono which he did not bother to tie at the waist. Doubtless he hoped the occasional glimpse of naked thigh or genitals would increase my desire for him. I was already familiar with both. I remembered them vividly from the train, when he had the top bunk and I the lower. I had no means, however, of guarding against him when he kissed my lips (his own stank of stale alcohol) and squeezed my waist before padding over to the bureau to find his cocaine, offering it as another might offer coffee. Naturally, I accepted. Now, gradually, he remembered our last encounter. ‘How was your visit to the doctor, Dimka? Are you completely cleared up now?’

‘Almost. The best treatment is some kind of lotion, but he says it’s expensive. The other treatment’s slower.’

‘You’ve been sleeping around too much, Dimka. I always knew you had the makings of a little whore.’ Reaching back into his desk, he opened a drawer. He took out some more money. ‘Will this pay for the lotion?’

I controlled my rage at the insult, but the rage itself helped me accept the money without conscience. Let the pervert think what he liked! I would never sleep with him. There is such a thing as love between men. I do not deny I have experienced it. But whereas any reasonably good-looking woman is worth making love to, if only for an hour or so, a man has to be outstanding in every way and there has only, really, been one such man in my life, just as there have only been two true loves amongst women. I spent a little time with Seryozha, learning about the Foline and its plans for touring, his quarrels with the management (‘They say I drink too much. I say who would not drink too much with those leaden-footed ballerinas to heave about the stage!’) He asked where I was living. There was nothing to be gained from lying. I told him Rue de la Huchette. ‘But that’s a squalid place! Those awful little restaurants. You have to take your own bread and your own knife and fork into them! Oh, my dear Dimka, that’s dreadful!’

It was not politic to mention Esmé. ‘I was on my way to England,’ I said. ‘Travelling with a friend. The friend decided to go on without me, taking virtually everything I owned, including most of my documents.’

He was suitably horrified and sympathetic. This gained me an extra line of cocaine, since he now remembered not to touch me. ‘Oh, my dear. As soon as your trouble is cleared up, you must move in with me. I’ve tremendous amounts of room, as you can see. You could have your own bedroom. Your own dressing-room. Honestly, you’d be so welcome. You know how much I’ve always liked you, Dimka.’

I pretended to be delighted at the prospect. ‘That’s wonderful, Seryozha. I’ll go round to the doctor now and see if he has the lotion. It must only be a matter of a couple of days.’

‘You poor thing! I had no idea you were suffering so dreadfully. What happened? Were you picking up women? Or Belgians? They never know if they have lice or not, in my experience. That’s my rule in life, Dimka dear. Never have anything to do with women or Belgians - and be careful about American transvestites, too. They don’t change their underwear. But then you know Pigalle, down there, do you?’

‘Don’t worry. I’d have no part of them. In this case, however, I think a Turk was the culprit.’

‘Oh, well, Turks!’ And Seryozha shuddered. I had mentioned the almost inconceivable knowing that to him a Turkish louse must somehow be even more disgusting than any other kind. ‘You poor, poor thing. Were you raped?’

‘One day I’ll tell you of my adventures in Constantinople, Seryozha. Is it all right to come back at the same time tomorrow?’

‘Of course, my darling. Or later tonight, when I get home. No. Not tonight. Yes, the morning. Just after twelve. Wonderful.’

I went straight to the outfitter in Rue de Turenne. Happily my figure, except when it inclines to plumpness, has always been good: the ideal ‘standard’ for a man. I had no difficulty in selecting a three-piece suit, a fresh shirt, some collars, a tie and some shoes. Seryozha’s money - including that which remained from the previous day - covered the bill. I wore the clothes when I left, my others wrapped in a neat parcel.

Back at Rue de la Huchette I drew a few stares from the local clochards as I entered our miserable doorway and climbed the stairs. Esmé was no longer in bed. She sat in her dressing-gown at the table, slowly writing on a form torn from a magazine, ‘It’s a competition,’ she said. ‘The prize is a holiday for two in Egypt.’

I did not tell her the magazine was out of date. She needed to keep her hopes up quite as much as I. She had not noticed my new suit and in a way I was grateful.

That evening when I went to Lipp’s I took a cab and found that although the restaurant was quite as full as the day before I was now fitted into a corner of one of the long tables upstairs. This did not quite satisfy me, since regular and favoured customers tended to use the ground-floor restaurant. I ate sparingly of the food, which was more German in some ways than it was French, although I developed a relish for their asparagus, so that although my bill was relatively small I could leave a generous tip. Such things impress waiters. The news is swiftly carried to their fellows. I wanted to be certain next time of getting a seat downstairs. When I left, I looked about for Kolya, but he was not there. On my second visit I would ask the head waiter. But before I could come back to Lipp’s it meant going through the distasteful business of seeing Sergei Andreyovitch. My tale of the doctor and his lotion could not last me for more than two further visits before I must either succumb or run. Again I waited outside Lipp’s for a while. It was midnight before I went home. Esmé was asleep and did not wake when I got in beside her. I went immediately to sleep.

Three more visits to the increasingly impatient Seryozha, three more meals at Lipp’s. Seryozha had warned me he could not keep lending me money for ‘treatments’; my doctor seemed to be charging me without curing me. Seryozha knew a very good doctor, his own, whom he felt would be sure to help me. On the fourth visit I was forced to tell him I was cured but, on the excuse that I was still very sore, managed to avoid the worst of his passion, though his self-control (never his strongest virtue) was severely tested. There was little else I could do. I needed the money if I was to find Kolya and if I did find my friend, then anything would have been worth while. Soon, after a week or so, my main problem became how to refuse moving in with Seryozha, who also wanted to see where I lived.

I was sitting at a downstairs table, near the door, at Lipp’s one evening, considering my plight and trying to imagine a valid excuse for not going to Seryozha’s when he returned from the theatre. As I lifted my first piece of asparagus to my mouth a tall, handsome man, dressed entirely in black save for his linen, came through the revolving glass. On his arm was an equally startling woman. The head waiter approached them with obvious pleasure. When the man turned his wonderful eyes towards me he frowned slightly, then grinned broadly like a schoolboy. My heart leapt. The head waiter was already pointing towards me (I had by now asked after my friend). Prince Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff had never looked better. I was ecstatic. My body trembled. I could hardly rise to my feet. My asparagus fell to the floor. I was weeping. He was laughing. We embraced. ‘Dimka! Dimka! Dimka.’ He patted my shoulders. He kissed me on my cheeks. I became so excited I believe I flushed, breaking into a light sweat. ‘Oh, Kolya, I have looked for you everywhere.’

We gathered ourselves, still weeping and smiling, and he introduced me to the woman. ‘The Princess Anäis Petroff, my wife.’ I felt no jealousy. She had eyes of black plush and skin as white as Kolya’s, like new ivory. His hair remained pale blond, almost the colour of milk, while hers was raven. Her tawny evening frock had a summer cloak of pale fawn thrown over it. They were impossibly attractive: a pair of storybook lovers, the Prince and Princess of Fairyland. I kissed her hand and in my confusion knocked the rest of the asparagus to the floor. Amused, Kolya waved for a waiter to pick it up. ‘You’re dining alone?’

‘As I have dined night after night in the hope you would come.’ I shrugged, embarrassed by my own revelation. ‘My companion is not well.’

He was sympathetic. ‘Is your companion Russian?’

‘By origin, yes. But I met her in Constantinople.’

‘So you’ve been in Turkey, eh? Lots of adventures, Dimka? Join us at our table!’

We moved to the back of the restaurant, to a more secluded area. I was brought a new plate of asparagus. Kolya ordered their hors d’oeuvres. He told Anäis I was his oldest friend, his dearest companion from the days before the Revolution, that I had inspired his poetry and informed his sense of the future. Again I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. It was not wrong to love a man, particularly a man like Kolya, a sort of god put amongst mortals to make them aspire to perfection. He asked for my news. I told him briefly what had befallen me since I returned to Kiev, that I believed the Cheka was even now looking for me in Paris.

‘And I thought I had suffered!’ He had been in Paris for two years. A year ago he had met and married Anäis, who belonged to an old French family. He still hoped to get to America, but continued to have problems obtaining his visa. He suspected this was because of his service with Kerenski - or rather his political affiliations at the time he joined the Government. ‘But how do you pass your time in Paris, Dimka?’

‘Chiefly in seeking a backer for my new company. And I go to the cinema a great deal.’

‘That has become our passion, too. We have just seen Otets Sergii. Do you know it? I believe the director’s in Paris now.’

‘His name is Protazanov.’ Anäis spoke a soft French which was not Parisian. It was both melodious and humorous. Her lips were always smiling. She very evidently worshipped Kolya as much as I did. Perhaps because we had this passion in common. I liked her a great deal.

‘I scarcely ever see Russian films these days.’ I admitted. ‘They are too painful.’

Kolya poured white wine for us. ‘I understand. Have you a favourite director?’

It could only be Griffith. I spoke of Birth of a Nation. Where other films were concerned, I thought in terms of actors and actresses. Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton. Mary Pickford. I had seen everything of theirs.

‘You must love Harold Lloyd!’ Anäis was delighted. ‘Isn’t he wonderful! So frightening! So funny!’

‘And Fern Andra or Pola Negri, don’t you find them as attractive as all these Americans?’ Kolya was sardonic. ‘Really, Dimka, you’re becoming an Americophile! I thought you hated the place. Is that where you plan to go?’

‘I’ll content myself with London. Do you remember Mrs Cornelius? She has agreed to help me when I arrive. But I’m also having visa problems. Perhaps if I were alone it would be easy, but my friend Esmé has no papers at all.’ He knew of my original Esmé. I told him a little of the meeting in Makhno’s camp. ‘She is the image of her. Esmé repurified.’

Anäis said: ‘Perhaps you could have her adopted by a nice English family.’

Kolya laughed at this. ‘You’re being cruel, Anäis. We’ll put our heads together and see if we can come up with a solution. Your father has business connections in England. Could he help?’ He turned to me. ‘Anäis’s father’s a Captain of Industry, a holder of the Legion of Honour and an ex-Deputy! You see what grand circles I move in now, Dimka. Yet I can’t get permission to go to the United States and teach Russian. I am, instead, a leech.’

Anäis was disapproving. ‘When hostilities finish in Russia you’ll be able to claim at least part of your fortune.’

Kolya winked at me. ‘Do you think so, my dear? Russians have become everyone’s penniless guests. Poor relations to the rest of the world. People will soon lose patience with us.’ The waiter began to serve us our main course.

‘How far advanced is your Airship Company, M’sieu Mitrofanitch?’ Anäis pushed the chuckling Kolya back against his chair and bent across the table towards me. Naturally I had been introduced under the name I used in Petersburg.

‘I’ve some interest from the financial world, but nothing concrete as yet.’

‘You think it’s a good business venture?

‘It would take advantage of the increase in tourism since the War. The volume of passengers between New York and Paris alone has grown considerably. My ship would be far faster than a liner, in many ways smoother and safer. My designs are advanced, of course, but I’ve absorbed everything about airship construction I discovered during the War. Presently the Germans lead the field. The British plan to begin a commercial service in a year or two. In a matter of months we could be ahead of both: if the ship received appropriate publicity; a maiden flight, for instance, which crossed the Atlantic in record time.’

‘You’re fascinating, m’sieu.’ She sliced her liver. ‘And convincing. What do you think of it, Kolya?’

‘He’s a genius,’ said my friend simply. ‘I believe him capable of anything.’

The conversation drifted onto more general topics. Suddenly I was completely happy and consequently at my most charming. It was a very successful evening. We were eventually the last to leave Lipp’s. Both deities kissed me goodnight and Kolya took my address, swearing he would get in touch with me very soon. ‘We must never be parted again.’

It was only as I walked, whistling back along the Rue Saint-Sulpice I realized I had forgotten to tell Kolya of his dead cousin, Alexei Leonovitch, the pilot who almost killed me when he crashed his plane into the sea. Perhaps it would not be tactful, I thought, to introduce such a note at present. I could tell him soon enough.

As usual Esmé was asleep when I returned, but tonight her breathing was rapid and shallow. She had a temperature. I held her sweating little body in my arms and rocked her as she moaned: ‘Don’t leave me, Maxim. Don’t leave me.’ I brought her some water to drink, some aspirin to relieve the fever, then I lay beside her trying to tell her about my meeting with Kolya, but she fell back into delirious sleep again.

Next morning I went out to find a doctor. The nearest was in Boulevard St-Michel. Doctor Guilac stank of tobacco and rose-water. His walrus moustache was yellow with nicotine: he had a skin spotted like tortoiseshell, grey, thinning hair, over-polished boots and an old-fashioned frockcoat. After his examination of my girl, he told me firmly Esmé must have ‘real rest’. He gave me a tonic. He insisted she take it three times a day. She was anaemic, he said. She was suffering from nervous exhaustion, ‘But she is young,’ I told the old fool. ‘She is full of natural vitality. She’s a child!’

Doctor Guilac offered me a disbelieving glance. ‘Her ingestion of alcohol has been prodigious, I would say, and I hesitate to catalogue the drugs she has doubtless been taking. Someone should keep a responsible eye on your sister, m’sieu, if you will not.’

I could not tell him Esmé consumed no more drugs or drink than did I.

‘She’s suffering from a common complaint for these days,’ he continued disapprovingly. ‘Have you no parents she can stay with?’

‘We are orphans.’

He sighed. ‘I cannot judge you. But you need a wiser hand to guide you, m’sieu. I advise you to leave Paris. Visit the country for a month or two. Reconsider your way of life.’

I had asked for a doctor, not a priest. His moralising made me impatient. Nonetheless I thanked him politely, saying I would consider his suggestion, and paid him with our last money. As I sat by Esmé’s bedside, holding her warm, limp hand, which was moist with sweat, I wondered if I were being selfish. Should I demand she lead the same life as I? I had always been famous for my prodigious energy; the mark, I suppose, of an active mind. Others had rarely been able to keep up with me. It was probably unfair of me to expect it in Esmé. She was young enough to have no real sense of her own capacities. This collapse into an almost completely comatose state might well be her own way of resting. I determined to nurse her until she was recovered. Then I would review the situation, sure, once we had a fresh direction in our lives, matters would arrange themselves better. She had every reason for uncertainty. Instinctively she probably knew I was worrying about the Cheka. Moreover I had told her we were going to England and we were still in Paris. Her grasp of language remained rather weak. She might easily be homesick without wanting to tell me. There is no feeling of helplessness worse than watching someone mutter and sweat their way through a fever which has no obvious medical cure. I controlled my panic, however. I considered requesting another opinion. I decided, as soon as I saw him again, to ask Kolya to recommend a doctor: someone rather more eminent than this local quack. Depressingly this would almost certainly mean more visits to Seryozha.

Had Esmé, I wondered, always been subject to such fits? Some form of epilepsy? Perhaps that was why her parents had seemed so glad to see her go with me. As soon as I could, I visited the nearest library and took out medical books. There was no suitable description of her case. She had been without her ‘coco’ for several days. Could she be suffering from withdrawal? I managed to get her to take a little cocaine, but it did no apparent good. My frustration with the medical profession, which to this day remains, frequently, in the Dark Ages, was never greater. I sometimes wish fate had allowed me to become a doctor. With my analytical and creative gifts I could have done much more, I think, than anything I achieved as an engineer. My abiding desire has been to help the human race; to be of use: to lift mankind out of ignorance and animalistic, reflexive behaviour, a little further towards Heaven. I shared a misconception of my time, believing social conditions were the chief cause of the world’s ills. I thought a technological Utopia would solve the misery of the human condition. I now believe most people suffer from serious chemical imbalances. We should be searching for the correct mixture of substances which directly feed the brain. Even I am not always as clear-headed as normal. It is probably the food. We know the calories and vitamins, but what of the minerals, the subtler materials we ingest? Tiny pieces of metal, which never affect us physically, could be entering the cortex, reacting, say with magnetism in the streets, with random electrical impulses. These metallic atoms might be more terrifyingly crucial to our daily lives than the Hydrogen Bomb itself. One day we feel like making friends with the world and the next we want to blow it up. This could be for instance why personalities change so radically during thunderstorms. I wish someone had given me facilities to research this field. I made every effort. I applied to London University some years ago, listing my qualifications, and prepared my paper Electrical Emissions in the Atmosphere and their Effect on Human Higher Brain Functions, hoping they would at least allow me to address their doctors. In the end I was reduced to paying a Jewish printer to run off a few hundred copies which I distributed in surgeries and clinics in the Kensington and Chelsea area. I had one or two letters about my theory, but they were from lunatics, from hippies who wanted to tell me the electrical discharges were really messages from flying-saucer people! I disdained to reply. Whether Esmé’s malaise was due to electricity or some other, as yet undiscovered, source, I do not know. At that time I could only nurse her. I got a woman in to make her soups and change the bedding until she should recover. Unknowingly, Seryozha paid for this service.

A few days later, I received a note from Kolya. He was in town again and would like to meet for lunch. He suggested Laperousse at one o’clock. I left Esmé tucked up in our bed with some water and a note telling her where I would be. In my new suit I went to meet my friend. I will not say that I stepped lightly, however, for I was still nervous of meeting Brodmann on the street and, moreover, had no great desire to bump into Seryozha. It seemed my fortune might be about to turn - but everything could be destroyed if either of those individuals found out the truth.

Kolya was wearing black as usual. He stood up to greet me as I crossed the cool, comfortable upstairs room of the restaurant. His double-breasted jacket gave him the air of a well to do merchant banker and made him seem if anything paler. He apologised for not bringing his wife, ‘I thought it would be nice to chat alone.’

I was only too glad of the opportunity. There is a special love which exists between men, a love which the Greeks knew and described, which excludes women. It is noble and it is Spartan, far removed from those sordid meetings in the public lavatories and backstreet pubs of Hampstead Heath and Leicester Square. Kolya and I were almost part of the same being. I shall not deny I worshipped him. Equally, I am certain he loved me. We formed a unity. He was happy with his wife, he said. She was delightfully intelligent and very pretty, as I had doubtless noticed. Unfortunately, doting on him as she did, she wanted to pay for everything and this was not an ideal situation for a man who had always controlled his own fate. However, she had expressed serious interest in my Airship Company and, if she could convince her father and some of his friends to back it, Kolya wondered if he might be made Chairman. Would I object to this? Of course I welcomed the notion. ‘I can think of nothing better!’

In the gloom of a nearby hotel room we opened champagne to toast our coming together again. I could smell his body through his beautiful clothes. I had longed for him more than it was possible to admit, but till now my emotion had been suppressed. He said he, too, had missed me. There is nothing wrong. Christ says there is nothing wrong. It is spiritual, above all else. They accuse me of what their dirty minds invent. My life is my own. I am not their creature. How can these insinuating dwarfs understand my agony? They put a piece of metal in me. They move a magnet behind a card, trying to shift me in the direction they think I should go. But I resist them. I despise their pettiness, their unimaginative morality. It is not based on any true ethic at all. I am above those judges and magistrates. There was no purer love. No purer joy. I was helpless before it. Who could blame me? Their metal turns and twists in my womb, but I shall never conceive that demon-child, no matter what they say or do. Ich vil geyn mayn aveyres shiteln. Ich vil shiteln mayn zind in vasser. Ich vil gayn tashlikh makhen. What do they know with their accusations? Even more than his body, I loved his mind, giving myself up to both as I now give myself to God alone. I deny everything. I have done nothing wrong. I am my own master. My blood is pure. I did not let them make me a Mussulman. I was strong, accepting all blows. I did not challenge their lies, save through my actions. I kept silent and was true to myself. Let them believe what they want. They failed to keep me in their camps. They knew it was unjust. They called me vile names, hating me because they said I was perverted. But how could they know? The words were not there: they were dumb and I thrilled with the heat of my salvation. I conquered through the power of my brain, my God given gifts. Kolya knew what this meant. He never accused. He was Christ’s messenger; an angel. He was Mercury. He was silver intelligence, the essence of true Russian nobility, yet like me a victim. They took his power. We were beaten down like corn in the rain. But steppe-nourished corn is hardy; it grows back even before the ashes of the fires have dissipated. Kolya said the meeting was fated. We should both find ourselves again. The wings are beating; that white metal sings. All those cities have failed me, yet I cannot hate them.

Within a week the Company documents were being prepared. A dozen cultured faces with soft mouths and important eyes bent heads and dipped pens until I emerged christened, once more, as Professor Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, Chief Designer and a leading shareholder of the Transatlantic Aerial Navigation Company of Paris, Brussels and Lucerne: Chairman, Prince Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff; President, M. Ferdinand de Grion. Anäis’s father had been immediately impressed by what I had shown him. France, he told me soberly, would benefit from the folly and the distress of the Bolshevik beast.

Esmé and I moved to wonderful rooms across from the Luxembourg Gardens. We had the clothes we desired and ate dinners in ancient halls, attending dances in tall civic buildings. My darling rose began at once to bloom. That doctor was a fool. She needed the very opposite of country air. Like me she was nourished by what the city offered. Deprived of it she began to fade. For her sake, however, I did not take her everywhere, but made sure she rested, or found some means of entertaining herself while I visited the clubs of France’s leading men of business. Sometimes I took my huge scrolls of linen paper to a little hotel in Neuilly where, undisturbed, Kolya and I discussed the details of our adventure. With a regular salary I was relieved of my previous anxieties, though Brodmann and Tsipliakov still occasionally haunted me. Now I had powerful friends they would be circumspect, those two, about bothering me. Esmé encouraged me to go out alone; she said she could see it did me good. She was content to remain in our apartment and read or sew. I could now purchase the best quality cocaine. Kolya had abstained from the drug, he said, since Petersburg, but was more than willing to resume an affair with what he called his ‘cold pure mistress of the Moon’. He admitted how bored he had been, how my company brought him back to himself. ‘Even before the ship is built, I can feel myself flying again!’ He was writing poetry, too, but, as he told me with a laugh, he still burned it almost before the ink was dry. ‘Poetry is too indiscreet, expressing inappropriate sentiments for a man of affairs.’ On land to the north of Paris owned by Anäis’s father a giant shed was going up. Mechanics and all necessary varieties of craftsmen were hired. And I became a celebrity.

The newspapers featured announcements of our enterprise and illustrated magazines printed fanciful realisations of the great aerial liner which would eventually sail the Atlantic skies; drawings of cocktail parties in the main salon, of bridal suites and billiard rooms (so stable would our craft be). Both Kolya and I were frequently interviewed. We were described as Russian engineers, geniuses who had escaped by aeroplane the horrors of Revolution. This huge file of cuttings I pasted in a special book. Esmé was fascinated by the sight of her own lovely little face in the photographs, sometimes staring at them for hours, as if she did not believe they were real. Our apartment was on two floors, with a regular maid and a cook. We could entertain people from all walks of life and Parisian society became entranced by the romance of my beautiful sister’s history; her separation from me in Kiev as a child, her abduction to Roumania and finally to the Sultan’s Constantinople where she was rescued by me; the daring balloon flight over the Balkans and our arrival in Italy. So frequently did these stories appear in the journals I think she came to accept them as true. Certainly our guests wanted to hear them confirmed. More importantly, so much evidence had accumulated by these means we would have little trouble with passports when we needed them. Very quickly, she was issued with temporary resident’s papers giving her name as Esmé Pyatnitski, born Kiev 1907. People remarked on how alike, how devoted we were. Only Kolya knew the whole truth. These shared secrets added to our pleasure in each other and were never hinted at in any press report. It is the best way of preserving one’s private life, I find. Let them write what they like. The myth protects far more than it harms.

Our huge airship hangar, built almost overnight at St-Denis, was frequently photographed, but reporters were never allowed inside. Industrial espionage is not a present-day phenomenon. Under my personal supervision construction of the aluminium hull began. Meanwhile I discussed with engineers which kind of engines would be most suitable. We had decided to use diesels but were unsure about manufacturing our own or seeking an outside tender. At that time no firm was making exactly the motors needed. Every stage of the planning was crucially important. As soon as the aluminium struts were delivered from the foundry they were weighed to the last gram. Nothing on the ship could be heavier than was absolutely necessary. We had applied to America, the largest manufacturer of helium gas, for quotations. M. de Grion had begun by hoping we might receive additional funds from the French government, but in the end we decided to put shares on the market. Our costs, of course, were astronomical; but we knew the rewards were likely to be even greater. However, finance scarcely concerned me now. When I stood in the middle of a shed almost a thousand feet long, staring up through bars of sunshine streaming from wide glass skylights onto the slowly forming skeleton of my glittering ship I felt myself in the presence of a force both mysterious and awe-inspiring. I am sure the builders of medieval cathedrals were filled with an identical emotion. At long last one on my dearest dreams was to become, as it were, flesh and bone. The first step to the aerial ship the size of a small city, which in the next two decades must surely become reality. Soon there would be great fleets of such monsters, bearing cargo and passengers back and forth across the skies as casually as ferry boats on a lake. Someone else might understandably have felt a terrific sense of egocentric power at this achievement. I, however, experienced only incomprehensible humility.

Work was advancing so rapidly I was forced to devote more of my time to St-Denis and less to Esmé. I took her with me whenever possible, but grew guilty at being unable to give her as much attention as she needed. I begged her to make friends with the wives of our business acquaintances, to continue her visits to the cinema. But she was sometimes miserable. She complained, just occasionally, expressing her fears. ‘I worry that you do not love me any more.’

‘Of course that’s nonsense. You’re everything to me. It is because I love you I am doing all this.’

She said my airship seemed an excuse to leave her just as I had abandoned the Baroness. I denied all this passionately (including the suggestion that my jealous, scheming mistress had been abandoned by me!). She, Esmé, was my sister, my daughter, my bride. She must trust me now more than ever. Could she not imagine our reception when the vessel arrived in New York? She was already enjoying the benefits of fame. Soon she would have the chance to be a world celebrity and enjoy riches as well. But Esmé would not always allow herself to be cheered by this. ‘It hasn’t happened,’ she would say. She lacked the imagination to visualise my finished ship. ‘It takes too long,’ she complained. ‘There must be a faster way of making it.’ I laughed spontaneously at her naïveté. We were working at almost unbelievable speed. The cost of materials rose virtually every day, so it was in our interest to complete the ship as soon as possible. Secondly, we were hearing several rumours of both British and German plans for big commercial airliners. The Germans were officially banned from making Zeppelins under their treaties with the Allies, so I dismissed those stories. The ships they had already built had been requisitioned by the British and Americans and renamed. There was, however, talk of Zeppelin engineers being invited to America to work and that could have more substance (my own guess would be that the Americans were our most dangerous rivals). The Zeppelin firm itself was making aluminium pots and pans in Germany. It would be years before they received permission to build. (When that time finally came, they made unconscionable use of every innovation I developed in France, claiming my ideas as original! I was always the first to acknowledge Count Zeppelin’s tremendous influence on airship design. His successor Eckener, however, had no original ideas. Any reputation that lackey achieved was a direct result of his old association with Count Zeppelin. But there is nothing to be gained from reminding myself of his infamy, nor the unscrupulous treacheries of his Jewish masters.)

By Christmas 1920, I believed my moment come at last. Little more than a year after fleeing from the Bolshevik fury, convinced that all was lost, I stood sipping good-quality champagne side by side with my dearest friend Kolya and my reborn sister Esmé, watching visored riveters in blue overalls and huge gauntlets hang high overhead in cradles and hammer red hot bolts, joining together the main sections of my first liner. Isambard Kingdom Brunei, as he watched the Great Eastern taking shape, must have known the joy I felt, the warmth in the groin, the silver light in the mind, the certainty of immortality.

‘What are you going to call her?’ Kolya raised his glass towards the half constructed rounded framework of the nose section.

I had a dozen ideas, but one dominated all those others. I put my fur-clad arm about Esmé’s yielding little shoulders and looked tenderly down at her. There were tears in my eyes, I know. I was not ashamed.

‘I shall call her La Rose de Kieff.’