The Laughter of Carthage

ONE

I AM ONE of the great inventors of my age. Rejected by its birthplace, my genius would otherwise be universally acknowledged; even by Turks. The Rio Cruz, loaded with snow and refugees, steamed from Odessa, heading for Sebastopol and the Caucusus. I was toasted by the British as a Russian Prometheus. How could I have guessed the irony? I was sublimely ignorant of my personal future. In those last days of 1919, having escaped an humiliating death, I became freshly inspired with my mission: I would bring scientific enlightenment to the world at large. (Now, chained, I still await my Hercules. Es war nicht meine Schuld.)

Within a day of my boarding, Mr Thompson, Chief Engineer of the Rio Cruz and by nature of his calling a cosmopolitan, a reader of learned journals, was my unqualified admirer. ‘You must get to England as soon as you can,’ he begged. ‘So many have been killed. They need trained people more than ever.’ Several other officers were equally encouraging. They were good-hearted fellows, spontaneous and sincere. The best type of Englishman; now extinct.

Until such time as, we were fond of saying, Russia came to her senses, England was the obvious country in which to further my career. Mr Green, my Uncle Semyon’s business partner, had returned to London at the outbreak of the Revolution. He would have money for me. Moreover, the support I discovered aboard the Rio Cruz suggested I should rapidly secure an important government position once ashore in ‘Blighty’.

By dint of these prospects, together with a little cocaine and wine, I was at least partially able to forget my earlier disappointments. Russia was harder to put behind me than I had anticipated and it would be three weeks before we actually reached Constantinople. Immediately we were out of sight of land, high winds and seas attacked us. A good sailor, I nonetheless felt a moderate amount of nausea and periodically was infected with a terrible, debilitating gloom. At these times I would be forced to rush from whatever company I was in to return to my bunk where for half-an-hour or so my whole body would shake, as if in time to the vibrations of the ship. These bouts were quite as much a physical as a psychological reaction to events of the previous two years, but whenever they seized me I would be overwhelmed by an agonising longing for a more innocent past, for my golden Odessa summer of 1914 when the whole world had appeared to open herself for me. In my quasi-delirium it seemed the noble city of Odysseus was lost forever to the Tartar, the Mussulman, the Jew. In conquering Odessa they had captured something of my being and still held it. Trotski and Lenin leered gigantically and grinned: with bloody fingers they brandished that small, pulsing fragment of my soul. The elements wailed around the ship in massive chorus as I wept for Esmé, my little angel, whose blonde Slavic beauty represented everything true and honest in Russia. Dishonoured by anarchists, by Mongol riff-raff, my lost sweetheart could never be redeemed. She had mocked me for my horror at her stories of rape and abasement. Esmé, my greatest support after my mother, had been my muse, my hope. If she still lived she was nothing but a Bolshevik’s whore. Esmé, as my body shuddered on its narrow bunk, I yearned to flee backwards in Time to rescue you. How different both our lives would have been if we had escaped together. I should have been loyal to you. Kàbus göruyorum. I am still, even in this decrepit body, loyal to you. For all that you betrayed me I bear you no ill will.

Before heading for Constantinople the Rio Cruz would call at several Black Sea ports, taking on passengers, disembarking troops and munitions. John Monier-Williams, her captain, was a grey, stocky Welshman with one side of his face badly scarred by an old fire. Though always polite to us, he plainly had some distaste for this commission, the last before he retired. Until now his experience had been with the Indonesian, Indian and Chinese colonies and to him our Civil War was an obscure local conflict unworthy of British involvement. A cargo-carrier converted to a troop-transport, the ship was not really suitable for passengers. Her cabins were mainly communal dormitories segregating men from women and children. Though Mrs Cornelius and myself had a private cabin, the necessary pretence of being husband and wife created unexpected discomforts for me, particularly at night, since she remained true to her Frenchman while I burned with lust in the bunk above. Mrs Cornelius was a wonderfully voluptuous woman. At that age (her early twenties) she was in her prime. It was impossible for me to put her soft pink flesh and erotic smell out of my thoughts. From time to time in her sleep she would interrupt her own delicious snores by murmuring and smacking those full, sensual lips, amplifying my desire and causing me to nurse both my homesickness and my poor, swollen penis for hours on end as the ship waded through dark, heavy seas, creaking, sighing and occasionally giving off mysterious coughing sounds, like an overburdened camel.

The other passengers were predominantly Ukrainians of the merchant class; nouveaux riches for whom I had little patience. When they were not merely dull the women were self-conscious snobs, the men complacent bores and their children and servants odious. Most pretended to noble birth; all constantly bemoaned the loss of ‘everything’ and all seemed to have carried at least two fur coats and three diamond necklaces aboard. They were war-profiteers fleeing the vengeance of the Bolsheviks, and a large percentage were Jews. I had vetted many such during my days in the Intelligence Corps and could smell them out. One or two must certainly have recognised me and initiated the malicious rumours which soon circulated: I was a Red spy, a German official or even, ironically, a Jew. I became aware of passengers who were either embarrassed in my presence or else obsequiously pleasant. My response was to avoid them. Happily, Mrs Cornelius and I did not have to mix with them much. We were invited from the start to eat at the small table set aside for Mr Thompson and most of the other ship’s officers who, because of the crowded conditions, were no longer in possession of their own messroom. Starved of English, Mrs Cornelius gladly accepted. They in turn enjoyed her humour. Their company was far more intelligent and agreeable to me than that of my own countrymen so I too was pleased with the arrangement.

We steamed on through white ectoplasmic haze, through blizzards and troubled water and, because we had not yet left Russia behind us, I was still subject to painful extremes of mood. Sebastopol, Yalta and other ports lay ahead. I was of course free to disembark at any of them and I was troubled by this. It would have been healthier if my attachment had been severed at a stroke. However, I did not much look forward to reaching Constantinople, which I understood was crammed with Russians unable to get exit visas to more hospitable countries. I consoled myself. After a few days at most in the Ottoman capital I would be on my way to London. Meanwhile I did all I could to drive the memories of Kiev and Odessa from my mind, to forget Esmé and my first flight over the Babi Gorge, the cheers of fellow-students at my matriculation speech, the delightful months spent with Kolya in St Petersburg’s bohemian nightclubs. I made an effort to concentrate on the Future, on my practical visions for building a technological Utopia. My thirst for knowledge and creative impulses were to some degree satisfied in the company of Mr Thompson, who helped me gain an intimate knowledge of the ship.

The Rio Cruz’s old-fashioned reciprocating engines aroused in Mr Thompson, more used to modern turbines, a certain admiration as well as suspicion. He found it marvellous they worked at all. They had been operated for years by dagoes, he said. Dagoes were notorious for hammering a ship to death. Normal maintenance procedures were anathema to them. ‘They treat their machinery the same as their horses, flogging them on until they die in their traces.’ Moving through the dark, pounding innards of the ship, his red face and hair glowing and his sharp nose quivering with puritanical dismay, he would point out his repairs and improvements, gesture accusingly at stains and dents on the brasswork, at rust and patches on pistons and pipes. The engine-room was miasmic with hot oil. Coal-smoke drifted from the stokehold. In the writhing half-light I imagined rivets bouncing in loose plates and rods shaking free of their rotating arms. Mr Thompson had insisted, he said, on the whole area being washed from top to bottom, every cog cleaned and lubricated, before he had allowed this prize of war to put to sea again, yet one never left without a patina of grime. Mr Thompson thought it would always be a problem on any ship, no matter how sophisticated her ventilation systems, so I described my ideas for a ship needing neither coal nor oil, her engines powered by two gigantic wind-vanes standing like funnels above the vessel’s superstructure and thus requiring merely an auxiliary motor and a small tank of diesel fuel. He was sceptical until I sketched the device for him, whereupon he became excited. He insisted gravely on my patenting these plans the moment I reached London. I assured him that this was my intention. At dinner that night he begged me to describe again the invention to his brother officers. They, too, were impressed. Captain Monier-Williams, who had served on sailing vessels, said he would appreciate my engine’s silence. He missed the tranquillity which used to fall over a great clipper-ship, even when she was racing at considerable speed.

Mrs Cornelius grinned. ‘I never ‘ad no bloody sense o’ tranquillity from wind,’ she said and burst into laughter shared by all except myself and the captain. Later she would explain the pun to me. Then, however, she had succeeded in her object and destroyed the over-serious tone of the conversation. After pudding, most passengers left the saloon; when Captain Monier-Williams with one or two others went to attend to their normal duties Mrs Cornelius performed some of her turns. Her career had begun in the Stepney music-halls and she had a large popular repertoire. The sailors were visibly cheered by what were evidently familiar favourites although the songs were mostly new to me. Eventually I learned them all and on more than one occasion would escape trouble, proving myself British with a rendering of Lily of Laguna or At Trinity Church I Met Me Doom.

In the course of that particular evening Mrs Cornelius grew rather tipsy. Eventually I had to help her back to our cabin. She was always a slave to a weak stomach and the laughter, the singing, the movement of the sea caused her to lose control before we got to our door. I helped her to the side. After a while she murmured she was much better and was ready to continue. I, too, could not have been entirely sober, for once inside, in the dark, while she sang The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery I attempted to climb into her bunk. She broke off long enough to remind me sharply that we were both ‘on our honour’. Ashamed of myself, I reluctantly ascended to my own berth.

When I woke the next morning there was pale light coming through the porthole. Mrs Cornelius, still in her pink and black silk dress, was sound asleep. Rather than disturb her (and somewhat unwilling to face her after coming so close to betraying her trust) I washed in our basin and went up on deck. This was to become my habit, partly because I was sleeping so badly below, partly because my lust intensified in the early hours of the morning and it was more than I could bear to lie above her while I desperately sought to maintain self-control. At dawn there were few people about. I could enjoy a solitary stroll and a smoke for an hour or two before breakfast. The only other passenger I encountered regularly was a thin, middle-aged woman never without very thick make-up, her face an arsenical green, her lips and hair bright scarlet. She would sit at a little deck-table playing Patience. The wind frequently disturbed her cards and sometimes blew them overboard, yet, apparently careless of this, she always continued with her game. I began to imagine her a creature from legend, an oracle, a captured Trojan seeress. There was certainly something of the gypsy about her black shawl decorated with large crimson roses, her vivid emerald dress and the red gloves to her elbows. Every morning, precisely at the same time, she took up her position. Concentrating on her cards, she never acknowledged my presence. Her husband, a crop-headed ex-soldier in a kind of civilian uniform of frock-coat and riding-trousers tucked into hunting-boots, would present himself to her the moment the first bell rang for breakfast; then she would gather up the cards, place them in a silver reticule, slip her long arm into his and go below. Although they never spoke they possessed a language of gesture and expression which suggested they were perpetually involved in the most intense intercourse.

During the first days of the voyage the ship’s main deck was almost constantly flooded. Cold, grey water merged imperceptibly with the sky and sometimes it seemed we were consigned to Limbo; we might have sailed over the edge of the world, destined never to make landfall again. Sitting in the restaurant, which between meals substituted as our main saloon, I would watch the rise and fall of the waves outside. Mrs Cornelius usually joined me at about two or three when she had completed her toilet. We would order a drink and chat casually with the other passengers. They were not, as she said, much of a bunch; but she was tolerant where I found most of them impossible. Those who stood out somewhat from the merchants and their wives were two little neuraesthenic sisters, forever holding hands, whom I mistook at first for lesbian lovers. A portly grain-dealer from Alexandrovsk told Mrs Cornelius he had helped the Tsar escape to Roumania in early 1918. He was friendly with Monsieur Riminski, the ex-owner of Odessa’s largest kinema, who liked to speak of his acquaintance with famous actors and plainly considered himself something of a film star. The signs of age on his handsome features were discreetly disguised with rouge and kohl. He planned, he informed us, to begin a new film studio in America and begged Mrs C. to become one of his first actresses. She giggled and said she would ‘fink abart it’. Riminski introduced us to his closest companion on board, a most unlikely choice, the tall Moldavian Prince Stanislav, pink and delicate and spindle-legged, like a flamingo. The Prince’s scatterbrained wife and their black-eyed twin sons smelled of eucalyptus and camphor and I avoided them, guessing them to be suffering from disease. Other saloon regulars included a swarthy, thick-set Georgian coal-merchant with a dark, forked beard and nothing to wear, apparently, but the same suit of evening tails and wolfskin cloak, both of which grew steadily mustier by the day. A Mennonite farmer, his underfed, shivering wife and five daughters, all in grey, were the only people prepared to speak to a pale, pudgy young man in ill-fitting clothes of the sort a bumpkin buys for his first visit to the city (everyone suspected he was a Skoptsy, nick-naming him ‘the eunuch’ behind his back). Lastly a Major Volisharof, whose white Don Cossack uniform was similar to the one I had packed away in my trunk, told us he was accompanying his little son and daughter to Yalta where they would be joined by their aunt. In Yalta, too, he hoped to find his regiment. His wife had been killed by the Reds. Volisharof was full of his children, forever pointing out their virtues and their vices, their physical characteristics, frequently in their presence. ‘Quick as a rat,’ he said one evening, gesturing with his vodka glass to where his lad and daughter played in a corner of the saloon. ‘Quick as a rat. But the girl’s a mouse.’ The chief feature of his nondescript military face was a moustache waxed in the German manner; clearly it rivalled his children for his attention. We talked about the Civil War. When he learned I had been fighting Reds around Kiev he remarked of campaigning difficulties in the Crimea. He was not leaving Russia, he declared, until either he or Trotski was dead. He had originally planned to disembark at Sebastopol but it had become impossible to know from day to day which side would control the city when we arrived. ‘We can only hope,’ he said.

Mrs Cornelius, as open-hearted as ever, gave a sympathetic ear to all. Sometimes, to relieve our routine, we sat on deck, huddling in our coats while other passengers attempted to take what they called exercise. ‘Pore fings.’ Mrs Cornelius was amused in a kindly way. ‘Wat the bloody ‘ell’s gonna become of ‘em?’ Their exercise generally consisted of holding on to a rail with one hand, keeping clothing in place with the other, waiting for the ship to tilt in the direction they wished to go, then risking a few shaky, shuffling steps until the ship began her roil back, whereupon they lunged out and clung hard to the nearest fixture. ‘They don’t know ‘oo they are any more, do they?’

Many of these refugees were permanently dazed, it seemed. Indeed I remained fairly disoriented myself. One never realises how closely one’s personality is identified with one’s past, or country, or even a certain street in a certain city, until one is forcibly cut off from them. For my part I grew increasingly attached to my black and silver Cossack pistols. They remained always in the deep pockets of my black bearskin coat. I would frequently reach in to grip their reassuring butts. They possessed no sentimental significance, having been the property, after all, of an uncouth bandit, and the episode in which I came by them remained a painful and humiliating memory, yet they nonetheless meant ‘Russia’ to me.

Bad weather delayed the ship for two days. Eventually snow gave way to sleet, the sky cleared a little, then the sea calmed enough to let us distinguish both an horizon and a coastline. Mr Thompson announced our approach to the Crimean peninsula, though we should not see Sevastopol until morning. We would lay off and await radio assurance that it was safe to continue in to harbour. Mrs Cornelius went aft to find Jack Bragg, one of the younger officers (who was almost comically enamoured of her). She returned with his binoculars. Through these we studied the cliffs. After about an hour I saw silhouetted mounted figures racing westward; I heard the firing of heavy guns, but found it impossible to identify the riders or which side cannonaded the other. When Mrs Cornelius grew alarmed, I told her we were well out of range of any artillery possessed by the Reds. The cavalry disappeared and with it the firing. The sea grew still, the weather milder. By nightfall we learned it would soon be safe to proceed.

After dinner Mrs Cornelius was persuaded to entertain us. Linking arms with Mr Thompson and Jack Bragg (his delicate girlish features characteristic of so many young Englishmen) she strode around the table singing The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo until she fell down. Once more I helped her to her bunk before clambering into my own and lying awake full of melancholy and moral uncertainty. I had begun to wonder if I should go ashore with the Cossack major and fight the Reds. The idea was foolish and obviously my duty was to stay alive, to use my brains and skills in exile where I could most effectively bring about an end to the Bolsheviks. Nobody thought that decision cowardly. My own commander in Odessa had not for a moment criticised me. A White defeat, after all, was fairly inevitable. I would stay aboard. Yet the ghost of Esmé, of what Esmé had been and what she had represented, remained to haunt me. Her ghost questioned my reason, called me back to Russian soil. Why should I love my country, I told her, when the Tsar’s self-indulgence, his stupid tolerance of the alien and the exotic, was almost as much to blame for my present plight as the treachery of the Jews? Russia could have been great. All her resources could have been devoted to the establishment of a brilliant and exemplary new world. Instead my nation lay mortally wounded a mile or two from where I slept. She shuddered in her death-throes, torn by wolves and jackals squabbling over her remains. Raped, she could no longer scream; pillaged, she did not even bother to complain. I had written to them all and offered them a glorious alternative to this. That vision was a thin, bright outline behind the coiling black smoke and the unhealthy glare of the flames; a silver vision of clean, massive towers, of graceful airships, of peace and sanity, an absence of hunger and disease, an environment for wholesome, well-educated, upstanding people. A new St Petersburg might have risen, literally, above the old: a flying city of steel and glass. How easily they could have been made reality, those plans which had been abandoned with my trunks.

That night, as the Rio Cruz bounced at anchor in the choppy waters off Sebastopol harbour, seemingly a target for every mine lying across the mouth of the approach, I forced myself to abandon at least temporarily my dream of a wholly Slavic renaissance. With daylight, having had even less sleep than usual, I took a fortifying pinch of cocaine (making sure Mrs Cornelius should not wake and see me, for she disapproved) and went on deck. In a hazy glow, the green-skinned seeress was already spreading her cards. She did not look up as I passed. Everything was deathly still and silent, save for the slop of the water, the clack of pasteboard. Off the portside I saw low, snow-covered hills, a suggestion of buildings near the shore, all lying beneath a miserable grey sky. The ship still rocked a little, but her movements were no longer dramatic. Huddled in his donkey-jacket, hands in pockets and cap pulled tight over his ears, Jack Bragg joined me at the rail. ‘That’s Serich Point, I think.’ He gestured. ‘Thank God visibility’s a bit better. I didn’t fancy going through those mines completely blind. You couldn’t see a ship’s length in front of you earlier on.’ Breath poured like exhaust from his mouth. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much activity. I suppose that’s a good thing.’

A moment or two later, when the anchor began to lift, Bragg returned to his duties, but I remained forward. As we steamed towards Sebastopol I soon made out the entrance to the harbour where a sinister line of buoys indicated her mine defence. Beyond the buoys I could see a few low, modern buildings, apparently empty. There was not a single human figure visible anywhere; not a vehicle, not a whiff of smoke; not a sound. The greatest military harbour of the Black Sea seemed completely deserted.

Without a naval guard to warn us of potential danger or a pilot to guide us through the gate of the nets I felt the ship had little chance of getting in safely, but she continued to steam towards the buoys directly ahead. I gripped the rail, readying myself for the explosion which must certainly come, but somehow we passed into the harbour. A few minutes later we rounded the point to see the grey-hulled outline of a British man-o’-war at anchor: the only other ship in evidence. She did not acknowledge us and I began to believe she, too, had been abandoned. The same silence lay across the unpopulated hills and at the town below them. The sudden flap of a seagull’s wing was startling and unwelcome. Nothing, save for a few birds, moved on water or land: a desolation of snow and ice, it was as if the Winter King had passed through, leaving no soul alive which might have witnessed his presence.

The Rio Cruz dropped anchor between the battleship and the huge main quay. By now a good many passengers were on deck, as affected as I by the silence. They spoke in low, puzzled voices. Jack Bragg passed me, grinning. ‘Rather better reception than the last time the British came to the Crimea!’

The buildings of the main town rose as high as seven or eight storeys, mostly of the familiar neo-classical pattern, but here and there were signs of an older, more typically Slavic design, with the polished domes of churches and cathedrals, the baroque of ministerial offices, much of it in yellow limestone, reminding me of my own Kiev. Sebastopol’s fortifications were sturdy and not evidently breached, but she flew no standards. Shaking his head. Major Volisharof came up beside me. He stared intently shoreward, as if into a mirror, and automatically squeezed a small pimple on his left cheek; then he began to brush at his moustache with his index finger. He reminded me of a gardener at work on a favourite piece of topiary.

‘You know Sebastopol, major?’

‘Oh, very well.’ He pointed away to our left. ‘All the planes have gone. That was the aerodrome. Not so much as a windsock. And the signal station’s abandoned.’ His hands returned to tease his moustache. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Yet tomorrow both Reds and Whites could be back, fighting in the streets, and the quaysides choked with refugees.’

‘Do you still hope to go ashore?’

‘No, no. It’s Yalta definitely now. Isn’t that silence awful? When you get that, you can be sure there’s a mound or two of corpses not far away.’ He gave his moustache a pat. ‘As if the place has been visited by the plague. It will be like this everywhere in a year or two. The whole of Russia wiped out.’

We listened to the light wind in the rigging, the flap of the bedraggled flags against their masts. Then the bell sounded for lunch.

At about one-thirty there was a noise off to port and several of us, including Mrs Cornelius, left the saloon to look. Coming away from the vast yellow quay was an old steam launch. She wheezed and spat like the boats I used to see in the summer taking Odessa’s holidaymakers for trips, or the river-steamers I once serviced for the Armenian in Kiev. Her funnel panted out unhealthy black smoke and her machinery sounded as if it was held together only by ancient layers of congealed oil. In her stern was a middle-aged Russian officer wearing a green greatcoat and an astrakhan shako, his face pinched with cold, while in her bow a French infantry captain had on his regimental cap but was otherwise completely wrapped in fox fur. A British naval rating, in regular uniform, at the boat’s little wheel displayed considerable skill in bringing her alongside. The officers reached up for the ropes our crewmen threw down. When the boat was secured they climbed up the waiting ladder to be greeted by our captain. I had gained the impression these might be the only three survivors of Sebastopol. Some of our hands shouted questions to the rating, but I could not understand his replies. At that moment the British battleship, now lying aft of us and to starboard, came to life. She was half-hidden by mist so the sharp sound of her bosun’s whistle was all the more startling; this was followed by one single, deep note from her horn. The mood of desolation lifted just a little. People began to call out to the Russian officer, asking after relatives, for news of the Civil War, wanting to know what had happened to the port, but he merely shrugged and continued on to the captain’s cabin.

A few minutes later the cook’s boy passed us with a tray of steaming food and took it in. ‘They ain’t ‘ad nuffin’ ter eat fer a week,’ he told Mrs Cornelius when on his return she seized him by the arm. ‘I don’t fink we’ll be ‘ere long, missus.’ She and I went to sit and drink vodka in the saloon while around us a small army of merchants and ex-Princes discussed the significance of Sebastopol’s silence. About an hour later I saw Mr Thompson. He paused long enough to tell me that the Whites were trying to hold off the Reds at Perekop. We had arrived a day too late or a day too early. The battleship, H.M.S. Marlborough, was supposed to offer covering fire to the Whites in attacking the town. But Sebastopol had been taken before she could reach the harbour. Then, at the rumour of a large Red force coming through, the Whites and the majority of civilians had left. Marlborough had no orders and was sitting it out until she heard what she should do. Meanwhile suspected cases of mumps on board meant that she was in quarantine. There were a few refugees still in the town. The officers had come aboard to see how many more we could accommodate. ‘We’ll keep our steam handy so we can leave at an hour’s notice. We’ll probably be taking on wounded.’

Through Jack Bragg’s glasses Mrs Cornelius and I again surveyed the town. Shops had plainly been looted of everything; on walls I saw familiar posters, both White and Bolshevik, and occasionally an old person would scuttle from one doorway into another. I saw two dogs engaged in sexual intercourse on the quay, as if they had realized that here was the largest audience they would ever have. Though several buildings showed signs of shelling they were not particularly badly damaged. I had witnessed many a town devastated by War, but none whose population had vanished so completely. It was very difficult to understand where everyone could have gone. Later three horse-drawn wagons, crude red crosses painted on their canvas awnings, stopped wearily at the quay and crippled men were helped into the old steam-launch which had to make several journeys, eventually bringing some thirty wounded soldiers aboard. In the meantime grey mist descended on the town. Another hour passed. Then a wealthy Russian family and their servants were brought out. They were taken to the last available private cabin. These tall, dignified people had their faces hidden in their collars but there was speculation they were members of the Royal Family. Neither Mr Thompson nor Jack Bragg could discover their identities and Captain Monier-Williams would not tell. They had their meals served in their quarters. By nightfall we were apparently ready to sail again. The Russian soldiers were all youths; those who could walk dined with the rest of the passengers and were treated as heroes. They had evidently not eaten decent food for months. They said they had been fighting with the British Military Mission. There was still a division of Black Watch somewhere between Sebastopol and Perekop. Marlborough, in spite of her quarantine, would have to evacuate them if they ever reached the harbour.

Mrs Cornelius as usual began chatting almost at once to the White soldiers, noticing whose wounds were not properly bandaged, who needed a letter written and so on. She also learned a great deal about the state of the forces. It became clear to her that the Whites were being badly beaten. Before we went to sleep that night she laughed, ‘I feel like Florence bleedin’ Nightingale!’

By the time I got up next morning we were already lifting our anchor and preparing to leave. Sebastopol at dawn was still lost in mist and all I could see was the main quay. As the sun rose, figures began to appear in ones and twos. They moved out of the mist like the spectres of the dead, wrapped in rags. Then came horses drawing wagons loaded with potatoes and other winter vegetables, for all the world as if their owners were about to set up a market. Creatures with hand-carts containing carrots and cabbages beckoned to the ship. I heard voices calling. It all seemed sinister to me, though they may well have been innocent peasants trying to sell us what they had. At any moment, however, I expected them to push aside the food and reveal machine-guns. We turned, heading for the gateway, and the figures became increasingly agitated, jumping and waving. The ship sounded her horn, as if in reply and then we were passing the still silent Marlborough, negotiating the buoys and moving out to sea.

On the next stage of our voyage, we never lost sight of a coast seemingly as deserted as Sebastopol. By that afternoon we had reached Yalta, the Queen of the Black Sea, looking impressive in the thin sunlight, just as she had in her heyday. She was superficially unspoiled: a fashionable holiday resort out of season, backed by spectacular, wooded, snow-covered hills. She seemed to consist chiefly of solidly-built hotels and had something of the appearance of a small, more compact St Petersburg. Because we were only a short distance off I could easily see people of all classes, horses, motor-cars, soldiers. Yalta had not been shelled and remained able to feed her population. The hotels along her front presented themselves like a committee of dowagers, primly magnificent, perfectly groomed. Any poverty, anything untoward, was hidden in the back-streets and ignored.

Soon white launches flying the Imperial standard came out to meet us and smart sailors, polite and practical, helped some of our passengers to disembark. Major Volisharof temporarily put his children in charge of a Ukrainian family and went ashore to find his sister-in-law and receive his orders. The wounded were taken off. My impression was that most of them were reluctant to leave the ship. The launches returned to the landing-stage and a while later, when the sun felt almost warm on our faces, began to bring out boxes, presumably of ammunition, which were loaded into our cargo holds. Next came the new passengers, mainly women of rank and their children, whose men had either been killed or had elected to remain to fight the Reds. Mrs Cornelius and I were especially impressed by a very tall couple who seemed unlikely companions - a Greek priest and a Roman Catholic nun. He was pale and haunted, but she was red-cheeked and full of smiles. ‘Looks like she’s gettin’ a bit o’ wot she fancies,’ said Mrs Cornelius with a wink to me. I was still young enough to be embarrassed and turned my attention towards the shore.

Yalta had been visited by the Tsar and his family every summer. The idea that those wonderful villas, the tree-lined streets and parks, the palaces and gardens might eventually fall to Communist shells seemed impossible. Even Bolsheviks must respect such beauty, I thought. I was so sure they would not wish to destroy Yalta that I had the impulse again to take my baggage and leave the ship. Yalta had been under siege; she had known horror, yet she continued to look proudly insouciant; a great eighteenth-century aristocrat simply refusing to acknowledge the presence of Robespierre’s sans culottes on her premises. She was at once nostalgic past and hopeful present: a citadel of good taste and refinement. By her very spirit she must surely resist any attempt to conquer her. (In a few months, of course, Deniken and Wrangel would desert Yalta; the British and French would also abandon her to her fate, and Red Guards would urinate in her fountains, defecate on her flower-beds and vomit over her remaining furnishings. One might as easily have expected the Antichrist to acknowledge the sanctity of a village church.)

Those Bolsheviks had a genuine will to destruction, an honest hatred of everything beautiful, an almost sexual lust to wreck whatever was most delicate and cultured in Russia. Just as they had brought it to Sebastopol, they would bring silence to Yalta. In another year they would strike the whole great country mute. Then Stalin would freeze speech and movement entirely, forbid birdsong in the forest and the bleating of lambs in the field.

The Winter King would come. Stalin would breathe sleeping ignorance into the minds of his subjects and cool their hearts until feeling was impossible. The same men and women who had begun in 1917 by shouting in the streets at the tops of their lungs would, by 1930, be afraid even to whisper in the corners of their own rooms: the Winter King could bear no noise. Even the faintest creaking of an icicle startled him. Shivering in his ghastly isolation, terrified lest some vagrant murmur remind him of his crimes, suspecting all others of his own monumental ruthlessness, his rest could be disturbed by the breeze of a moth’s wing fanning his ruined face. Then he would awake, stifling a gasp, dictating a memoir to his expectant executioners: all moths were State traitors and must perish by morning.

Major Volisharof returned to the ship with a dowdy woman of about forty; the aunt. She was introduced to us but I never heard her name and never again had occasion to ask it. He seemed to be paying even more attention to his moustache, as if anticipating the time when he need no longer feel his affections divided. He shook hands with me and begged me to continue pleading the White cause wherever I went in the world. I gave him my word.

‘This is worse than 1453,’ he said. ‘If Christendom had believed the Emperor and sent enough help, Constantinople would never have fallen.’ He looked back towards Yalta, seemingly impervious in her tranquillity. ‘This business is the responsibility of every Christian. Tell them that.’ I watched him kiss his children goodbye, give his moustache a couple of twirls, then follow the orderly, who had come with him to carry his kit, back to the launch.

The mysterious family of aristocrats disembarked and their cabin was taken by a woman, her little daughter and her servant. The woman was remarkably good looking and I was immediately attracted to her. Shortly after she had been installed, the ship was on her way again and an hour later it began to snow. Yalta, I thought, had let us go regretfully, but without complaint.

The Yalta refugees were altogether a better selection than those who had boarded in Odessa. Cheerfully, they made the most of their conditions, bringing with them a new atmosphere of camaraderie and good fellowship. The disappointed merchants and their complaining wives were soon shamed. After a day or so at sea the weather improved, the waves became less agitated and my own sadness at leaving beautiful Yalta to her fate was modified a little by the sound of children now able to play on deck; moreover, I at last had the opportunity to indulge in good conversation with people of my own intellectual capacity and there were women who, separated from their husbands, were only too pleased to enjoy a little mildly flirtatious badinage with a handsome young man. I began to entertain some hope that my appalling celibacy might soon be alleviated, if only briefly with one of their servants.

To this end I became a great and popular builder of paper aeroplanes and boats. I took innocent pleasure in the delight of the children whose admiration of my handiwork also helped me forget personal problems. My friendships with the little Boryas and Katyas led to contact with their nanyanas and their mothers, most of whom told me how wonderful I was with children and asked me about myself. I hinted, tastefully, at my aristocratic connections, Petersburg education, military service and my special mission. It was unwise, then, to be over-specific. The Bolsheviks were already planting spies amongst the refugees. I chose not to wear either of my uniforms but made it clear that once I arrived in London my business would be of significance to the White cause. Lastly I let it be understood that Mrs Cornelius and I were related, but not husband and wife. I was, in fact, a bachelor. The only thing which marred this general improvement in my life was an incident on the second night out from Yalta. I was taking my usual stroll, had just passed the wheelhouse, returning to the saloon, when I saw a pale figure, a handkerchief pressed to its mouth, retreat suddenly into one of the private cabins, as if startled. For a moment I had thought it was Brodmann, the Jew who had threatened to betray me in Odessa and who had witnessed my humiliation at the hands of the anarchist Cossack in Alexandrovsk. I felt faint. My stomach seemed to contract. I even uttered his name.

‘Brodmann?’

The door closed and was immediately bolted on the inside.

Surely this treacherous coward had not followed me onto the boat? It was impossible. I had seen him arrested. Maybe I was experiencing a mild hallucination? I had dreamed once or twice about Brodmann. I had dreamed about most of the terrors of the past two years. Now, in my extreme tiredness, I might be imposing the dream onto my waking life. I reasoned that Brodmann could never have escaped in time to join the Rio Cruz. A kind of residual horror was getting the better of me. I went at once to my cabin and tried to sleep.

The following morning I adhered to my routine; later I did as I always did now, greeting the children, chatting with their mothers, devising new deck games, sympathising with young women who had left their sweethearts fighting in the Caucasus, bending an ear to widows whose husbands had died bravely for Tsar and Fatherland, and offering reassurances concerning movements afoot which must soon destroy the Bolsheviks forever and re-establish a legitimate government in Petrograd.

The image of Brodmann was forced thoroughly from my mind. I was lucky enough to meet one or two of those who had known Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff, my Kolya. We spoke of mutually familiar acquaintances. We recalled the good old Tsarist days, spoke of the War and Kolya’s relatives. I gained enormous stature in their eyes when they learned I had been with the Count’s cousin, Alexei Leonovitch, in the Oertz which had crashed in the sea of Odessa, killing him and wounding me. Consequently this gave me the status of war-hero, a Knight of the Air, and thus I gained a little compensation for my sufferings.

The woman eventually showing the strongest interest in me was the good-looking creature of almost thirty who had taken the vacated cabin. Although Russian, she had a German married name: the Baroness von Ruckstühl. Her factory-owner husband, son of a ‘colonist’, had been shot by his Kharkov workers in 1918 after Skoropadskya fled to Berlin. The Baroness was not at all Germanic. She was a heavy, Slavic beauty with large blue-green eyes, a wide, smiling mouth and thick auburn hair which she generally wore bunched on top of her head. She favoured smart and simple clothes, chiefly travelling dresses and cloaks of conservative dark greens, reds and blues which suited her perfectly and added to her attraction; indeed, the only female on the Rio Cruz who outshone her was her own daughter (I must admit it was she who first attracted me). The daughter took after her mother in looks and complexion but had that air of vulnerability and courageous curiosity which has continued to fascinate me since childhood. Esmé had possessed it, and Zoyea, too. There is something wonderful about young girls with those qualities. They make one feel protective, lustful, happy and strong all at the same time. The little girl was about eleven and her name was Katerina, though we knew her as ‘Kitty’. When they first appeared on deck, the Baroness seemed sad and abstracted, only arousing herself from her depression to smile at some antic of the child’s. She never admonished her. This was left to the Caucasian nanny, Marusya Veranovna, a severe old hook-nosed woman with thick lips, very uncomfortable in the company of other passengers, who tended to glare defiantly at everyone except her charges, plainly hating all aspects of the voyage. For the first day or so she objected to Kitty’s choice of myself as her chief playmate until the Baroness evidently told her not to interfere. I soon became close friends with Kitty, yet would say little more than ‘Good morning’ either to the mother or the servant. Meeting them on deck, I would raise my hat, as distantly polite as they. Of course nobody judged me perverse in my attachment to the child! In my desperate frustration I was grateful if occasionally I brushed her cheek with the back of my hand or held her by the shoulder for a second whilst steadying her against a wave. Indeed, my discomfort actually increased. I now burned for Kitty by day and for Mrs Cornelius by night! Without my company Mrs Cornelius spent much of her time with young Jack Bragg. Had I been of a jealous disposition I might have suspected a romantic interest, but I knew she would not betray her Frenchman’s trust. Neither was there any question of my making sexual advances to the little girl. My feelings were entirely under control (and besides she was of good family; it would have been insane of me to have risked the scandal). At any rate, noticing the growing interest in me displayed by the Baroness, I began with controlled deliberation to transfer my feelings to the mother. It was not very difficult, since she was an extraordinarily handsome and self-contained woman. I know she felt at least a little of that competitive impulse so many mothers exhibit when a man takes an interest in their daughters. Ironically they are inclined to show particular favour to the man who courts their little offspring, until it becomes certain they have no chance of winning him; whereupon, of course, they become Furies, Tigers of Morality, Invokers of the Law. Thus, while I continued to ‘court’ young Kitty, joking with her, making her giggle, having her beg me for piggy-back rides and so on, the display was now chiefly designed to lure the Baroness. I am, I hope, a self-knowing and honest person and while not particularly proud of my technique in this matter, should remind you that I was not yet twenty. I was used to a full sex-life since I had spent the past months as a favoured guest in a whorehouse. What is more I had, in my heart of hearts, expected once at sea to enjoy the favours of Mrs Cornelius. The boy that I was needed warm, feminine company at night to help him forget his agony at leaving Holy Russia behind, for a Russian and his land are the same thing; to part them is to tear flesh from flesh: it is as if one’s entire substance is stolen. Few Russians ever voluntarily go abroad; we are almost all unwilling exiles, and that is why we are so easily misunderstood. I am no molester of children! These stupid Londoners fail to appreciate the sadness of an old, childless man. Why should I heed their magistrates’ warnings? I simply wish to give a little affection and receive some in return. I did not betray her trust. On the contrary, she betrayed mine. They always will.

Why do they avoid me, when I am so ready to give them everything they desire? Am I a rapist or a lecher? My powerful feelings are a noble force for good. What we did in Petersburg in 1916 the world now celebrates as new and ‘liberated’. They tell us on television it is not a crime to love, irrespective of age or sex. That was how it was for us. Kolya taught me to love, without prejudice, every aspect of sexuality. It is not a love lacking in morality or without profound responsibility. How can those who have entrapped me even begin to understand? In their fear and their jealousy of my Promethean vitality they have bound me, gagged me and delivered me up to little birds which peck at my flesh. For thirty years I have been their prisoner, watched, checked, pursued by their idiot bureaucracies: and yet it was I who could have saved them! They put a piece of metal in my stomach. Es tut mir hier weh. They put iron into my womb and I refuse to forgive them. (‘Yo’re nuffink but an ol’ ‘ore at ‘eart,’ says Mrs Cornelius. She is affectionate . She means well. But who was it made me a whore? Who robbed me of everything, even my name?) When they confront me all they see is a miserable old stateless shopkeeper; but even in 1919 on the Rio Cruz Mrs Cornelius admired me. ‘Y’ve got a way wiv ther ladies, I’ll say that for ya, Ivan.’ I could have had a dozen of the loveliest Russian gentlewomen. I chose the Baroness because she was older. I believed she would be more sophisticated and allow no unwelcome complications. Also I knew there had to be an element of self-interest in her attraction to me: from Constantinople she needed a transit visa to Berlin and she guessed I would be the man most likely to help her obtain it. Her husband had not been a German national. His father had taken Russian citizenship in 1885. She, of course, was Russian. She had some second cousins in Berlin who had already offered her a home and she spoke moderately good German. The child’s security at least was assured there. All this I learned as at her suggestion we began to take coffee in the mornings and then tea in the afternoons. I still ate my meals at the officers’ table in the far corner of the dining-saloon, but tended to leave earlier, to stroll for quarter-of-an-hour round the deck with the Baroness before she went to bed.

Brodmann, if Brodmann it had been, remained in hiding and I became sure I had invented him. However, I should feel much easier after the ship docked in Constantinople and I was on the last stages of my journey to England. Here there were too many malicious tongues, let alone Brodmann’s; too many potential enemies prepared to lie about my past. To be fair there were also allies and the Baroness was one of these. She had an attractive, wistfully sad air, typically Russian and considerably comforting. Her voice was low and warm and musical; her sentences would tend to end on a falling, distant note. I understood such women and their romantic desires I was able to make her smile with my little dry ironies, at once sympathetic and philosophical. It was not long before we were on closer terms. ‘You are a disarming man, Maxim Arturovitch,’ she said one evening, as we stood listening to the lapping water. She smiled. ‘I suppose you also write poetry.’

‘My poetry, Leda Nicolayevna, is to be found in specific configurations of steel and concrete,’ I said. ‘In what can be achieved with cogs, levers and pistons. I am a scientist first and foremost. I do not believe Man can reach for perfection until his environment is properly under his control. For me poetry is a giant aeroplane able to leap immediately into the air and fly infinite distances without a moment’s danger, landing wherever its pilot pleases. Poetry is the freedom technology brings us.’

She was impressed. ‘I cannot claim such vision, Maxim Arturovitch, but I do occasionally write verses. For my own consolation.’

‘Will you show them to me?’

‘Perhaps.’ She squeezed my hand, flushed a little, then went quickly to the cabin she shared with her daughter and servant.

Involved with this gentle seduction, I scarcely noticed the ship reaching Theodossia, disembarking wounded and cargo and then taking on a group of Georgian officers who kept themselves apart from the rest of us, smoking monstrous meerschaums and talking in their own outlandish language. We were anchored amidst half-a-dozen other ships, well away from the shore. It was hard to make out details of the coast, let alone the port, yet every so often, when the wind blew towards us from land, there was a smell like new-mown grass, its origin impossible to identify. My Baroness was romantically inclined to ascribe it to ‘the first scents of spring’, but someone else said it was horse-fodder; another was convinced it was quick-lime. The Georgians, taciturn and impatient with all civilians, would not be drawn on the matter. In contrast to Sebastopol, here Russian and Allied ships came and went at a tremendous rate, reminding me of Odessa in her heyday. This was still one of the great centres of real resistance. Perhaps that was why the Georgians were so displeased to be leaving. They stood in a single surly rank at the starboard rail, leaning back and watching the smoke from a dozen great men-o’-war drifting low over the metallic water. I guessed they were unhappy with their orders. As we began to steam away, they all went aft to glare at the plumes of dark smoke which stretched into the sky like a barrier of birch trees which emerges suddenly from the Ukrainian steppe and which is at once a miracle of nature, a reassurance of human settlement. And when these were below the horizon, the Georgians moved about the ship in small groups, brushing at the spray which fell on their faded green uniforms, displaying resentment and downright rudeness when attempts were made to befriend them, as if we were responsible for their discomfort. Possibly they wanted to go to Batoum. To our relief, we learned they were to disembark, instead, at Novorossisk, our next port of call. In their uniforms, with their black astrakhan caps and their huge walrus moustaches they looked, as I said to the Baroness, like a converse of village postmasters. This made the Baroness laugh; she had no great liking for Georgians at the best of times, she said, but these seemed to have stepped straight out of the pages of an illustrated comic magazine. I wondered, years later, if this were not the secret of ‘Uncle’ Joe Stalin’s success. It is often hard to hate a particular kind of stereotype. It became an important element of Hitler’s astonishingly rapid rise, too. He looked so much like Charlie Chaplin many people could not take him seriously. The Georgians went off the next day in a lighter which came especially for them. They were glad to leave and the hands responsible for mopping their phlegm off the decks were no less regretful to see the back of them.

So many ships filled the Novorossisk sea-roads it was impossible for us to come anywhere near the port. Through Jack Bragg’s glasses I observed an unremarkable but busy industrial and military harbour apparently getting ready to defend herself against a large-scale attack. For the first time since we had left Odessa I saw numbers of aircraft coming and going. It was a mixed bag of machines, some of them Russian, some Allied, a good many captured from the Germans and Austrians. In less than an hour I saw Sopwith Camels, Albatrosses, a Pfalz DII, a whole squadron of Friedrichshafen G III bombers, an Armstrong Whitworth FK 8, a Breguet-Michelin IV, some cumbersome Sikorsky RB VZs, a couple of Caproni CA5s and many FBA Type H flying boats. These were a few of the planes I pointed out to my Baroness who was under the impression I had done most of my war service as a flyer. I saw no point in disillusioning her, since my work in aircraft research could have easily shortened the conflict and changed the course of Russia’s history. This familiarity of mine with so many aircraft confirmed her guess (she was to tell me later) that I must be a well-known Ace removed from active service to deal with even more pressing tasks. She received no lies from me. From what little I had said she invented her own Romance. Sympathetically she slipped her arm into mine. ‘Do you miss the freedom of the skies?’

‘It is the most wonderful experience in the world.’ I made a small, significant gesture with my hands, ‘If that damned Oertz hadn’t crashed I might still be up there with those lads.’

‘Perhaps they’ll let you rejoin the Service.’ She pressed her body against mine. She was trembling. The hare was ready for the hawk. ‘When you’ve done what you have to do in London.’

‘I shall certainly be flying again soon.’ My senses grew keener, ready for the strike. ‘But probably in an advanced machine of my own design.’

All around us in the pale morning half-light ships were sounding their sirens. A blue and white Hansa-Brandenburg FB patrol flying-boat came in low overhead, its engine making a sweet, steady drone as it circled over us. I felt my blood warm as she dropped closer. Her Austrian markings were painted out, but the new Russian insignia evidently had not been allowed to dry properly. Long streaks of paint could be seen on the bright undersides of her lower wings. ‘She’s beautiful.’ The Baroness congratulated me as if I were the plane’s creator. ‘Like a huge gull. Would you take me up some day? If the opportunity ever arose?’

I clasped her hand. I felt a rapid pulse. She was half-frightened, half-fascinated. ‘Of course.’

At anchor off Novorossisk we awaited our next cargo. Mr Thompson said he thought it was artillery spares for Batoum and there was some confusion over the marking of the boxes. That night I took my usual turn around the deck with Leda Nicolayevna, then, just before she returned to her cabin, I kissed her. Now she was not at all flustered. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to do that,’ she murmured. She had at last made up her mind to have a love affair with me. We kissed again. We were both breathing heavily, our legs shaking so much I thought we must collapse, yet there was nowhere we could go. ‘It will have to be tomorrow,’ she said. I forced myself back from her. ‘Tell the nanyana you have a headache and to keep Kitty out of the cabin until just before dinner,’ I said. ‘Will she suspect?’

The Baroness was amused. ‘What if she does? I am her employer.’

I had forgotten how assured of their authority the Russian nobility still were. I returned to my cabin. Probably Mrs Cornelius was in the saloon, for her bunk was empty. I lit a cigarette and relaxed, still in my clothes, feeling full of the conquest and the pleasures to come. Then I disrobed and went almost immediately to sleep. I remember waking momentarily at dawn, hearing Mrs Cornelius stumbling and cursing to herself as she got undressed. Once she fell against the bunks and hissed ‘Bugger,’ saw me open my eyes and shrugged. ‘Sorry, Ivan. Didn’t wanna wake yer.’ I grunted before I returned to my dreams; dreams far more settled and pleasant than any I had known in months.

By the next afternoon we were still at anchor, awaiting our cargo. A strong north-easterly blew, making us move in our moorings like a captive balloon. It did not matter to me where we were for I was stretched naked upon the body of a passionate baroness who stroked and scratched me while she whispered delicious, innocent obscenities into my ear. I discovered that she had all the astonishing passion of a virgin girl when to tell the truth I had expected to possess a cool, calculating and relatively experienced mistress: even a somewhat cautious lover.

The Baroness von Ruckstühl was neither cool nor cautious. Her experience had been limited, as was now obvious, but her will rapidly to learn all the arts of debauchery easily compensated for any awkwardness; indeed her awkwardness was itself attractive. I could not have asked for a more delightful understudy, as it were, for Mrs Cornelius. What was more, I reminded myself, as my greedy tongue licked her nipples and my fingers lightly touched her clitoris, she was well-connected; we could be of considerable use to one another. My depression vanished completely. As my first orgasm splashed across her thighs my future was suddenly golden again! For her part she was giddily amazed at my skills, if overly curious as to where I had acquired them. Zolst mir antshuldigen, as we say in Russia.

At the sound of the dinner bell we dressed hurriedly, grinning like happy dogs. I slipped from her cabin with my body singing, my brain full of tremendous new schemes, a thousand wonderful futures, a hundred fresh ideas for our love-making. And that night, during dinner, I was at my wittiest, so much so that Mrs Cornelius leaned over to wink at me and whisper, ‘Wassa matter wiv you, Ivan? ‘Ad a win on the ‘orses?’

Later my Baroness and I met on deck to share a parting embrace before retiring to our respective cabins. In the deep blackness beyond the lines of waiting ships we saw the occasional flicker of fire and heard a distant explosion. ‘Arsonists,’ I told her, ‘without a doubt. Red saboteurs. This is their idea of warfare.’

‘What cowards they are.’

I agreed. ‘The terrible truth, however, is that it is frequently the cowards who win the wars.’

She found this either too profound or too disturbing. After arranging to meet at exactly the same time in her cabin the next day, we went off in opposite directions.

I paused near the bridge to light a cigarette and watch the far-off flames as they subsided. When I looked up at the sky there was a figure suddenly on the narrow deck above me. It was pale and it plainly had no wish to be seen. A man, wrapped in a kind of shawl or short cloak, who coughed almost apologetically and nodded to me. I stared hard at him this time. Again the name came to my lips.

‘Brodmann?’

If it was Brodmann, he was more frightened of me than I was of him. I laughed. ‘What do you mean, up there, playing at ghosts?’

The man drew his shawl closer about his shoulders and disappeared out of sight. I walked swiftly round the deck, trying to reach the stairway down which he must climb if he was to return to his cabin. But he had been too quick for me. The door was shut and although this time I banged on it there was no light inside. Even when I pressed my ear to the louvred panel which, like mine, was stuffed with old newspapers, I could hear nothing.

I went to find Mr Thompson, to ask him when he thought we should arrive in Constantinople.