Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  ‘Ere’s lookin’ at yer, Ivan!’

  It was Mademoiselle Cornelius to be sure. I began to rise, to join her. She shook her head and pointed at an empty table. It was close to the stage where the negro violinist squeezed discords from his instrument which would have horrified the maker. She joined me there. She still smelled of roses. She put a friendly hand on my arm with none of the ambiguity I had come to expect from Russian women. ‘Yore ther lad from ‘Dessa, ain’t yer?’ She spoke in her usual English. I bowed and said that I was. She commented that it was ‘a turn up an’ no mistake’. It was an even smaller world than they said it was. She was doing nicely in Peter and had learned ‘Russki’ enough to get by. When she gave me an example, it was perhaps the worst example of grammar and the most romantic accent I had ever experienced. I could see why she had so many admirers. I asked her how she had come to the capital and what she was doing with Lunarcharsky. Did she not know they were all wanted by the police?

  She said they were a more honest bunch of crooks than some she had met. She had a feeling that they ‘knew what was going on’. This was not true, she added disapprovingly, of the rest of the idiots in this bloody country. She had left Odessa with one of Dr Cornelius’s patients, an aristocratic liberal who had been holidaying there. When their affair ended she had fallen in with the radicals, whom she found amusing and, as she put it, ‘good sports’. She also had an eye, I believe, to the future, but her taste in men, together with her sense of humour, would often bewilder me. I am the first to admit, however, that I have never understood many jokes and that her taste was to serve both of us well in the years which followed.

  She told me that I was looking ‘peaky’ and if there was anything I needed in the way of grub I should ask her. She had a few contacts. I said I was eating better than most. I was studying hard for my examinations. She wished me luck. She said that she regretted she had not stayed at school, but there had not been much point ‘in the Dale’. She referred, I learned, to Notting Dale, her birthplace. She had later moved to Whitechapel where she had ‘met a lot of Russians’. These Russians were actually Jewish immigrants fleeing the pogroms. When Mrs Cornelius suggested we go ‘somewhere quieter’ so that I could tell her how I was getting on, I was reluctant to accompany her. I had been picked up by too many women during that period. I had become sated and wary, even of her. A whore asked only which part of her anatomy would be required; whether one wished to stay the whole night for an extra rouble or two. Moreover, I was not always charged by the whores. For a few days I lived completely free at a whorehouse near one of the main canals. I could have stayed there longer if I had not needed to return to school.

  I said I needed an early night. She laughed. ‘Don’t we all? I’ll see yer abart, Ivan.’ She patted my arm and got up to return to her party. I immediately regretted not taking her up on her offer. I do not believe, now, that it was sexual. She had wanted exactly what she had said she wanted, a quiet chat.

  My friends congratulated me on my ‘conquest’ and one of the well-bred beauties leaned over and asked me loudly what ‘the English whore is like in bed’. Offended, I left The Harlequinade’s Retreat.

  * * * *

  The autumn term was remarkable only because we were allowed to wear hats, scarves and greatcoats in classes. There was no fuel allocation for heating the Polytechnic. The lectures were if anything duller than ever. As the world grew colder, life took on an entropic aspect. Social energy was running down. Within the first week of my return to the Institute the steam-trams were replaced by horse-trams. These were driven by haggard, pallid figures swathed in dark felt and serge from whose heads thin white fumes occasionally escaped. The men had been brought from retirement and were like the coachmen of the dead. Their horses, lean, sickly beasts, would eventually fill the stomachs, perhaps, of orphans - the first bezhprizhorni - who now swarmed about the railway stations and filled the parks. Displays of pomp and glory continued. We were advised to suffer all our discomforts because the War was almost won. More and more wounded men appeared on the streets. The theatres thrived, but many restaurants could not find enough food to make it worthwhile remaining open. Even Donan on the Moika Canal, that favourite of the jeunesse dorée and the Apollon group (who shared the building) had to close at lunch-time and became more of a bar than a restaurant. The sturgeon in mushroom sauce, the white partridges with klufka jam and bilberries, the other delicious Donan specialities, gave way to horse-meat in sauces which could not disguise the unpalatable odour of what Kolya called ‘long cow’. We would joke: recommending the ‘stuffed sparrow’ or the ‘Chat Meunier’, not quite realising what was to come. Together with the orphans and the wounded in the streets came a plague of rats. Newspapers reported the ‘scandal’ and suggested they originated from foreign ships, but the wild dogs and cats, released by owners no longer able to feed them, were unquestionably our own. In not much more than a year the same people who had let them go would be hunting them again for the pot. It would be like the days of the Paris Commune.

  There was a steady decrease in our food supplies and an increase in illicit alcohol. Everyone lacked sleep. There was horrible tension in the air, a morbid sense of doom, longer bread-queues, longer rows of wounded waiting for transport or a hospital bed, larger crowds of beggars, hucksters and prostitutes on the quays and boulevards. So many aristocrats had left for Petrograd’s old rival, Moscow. Newspapers increasingly resorted to references to the Patriotic War against Napoleon as if preparing us for guerilla action with invaders on our own soil. Many people felt we were already defeated. The air of melancholia spread even to The Scarlet Tango. The negro band played ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and ‘Nobody Knows The Trouble I See’, while thin young ladies with painted cheeks recounted gloomier jingles concerning death and the cooling of love.

  I took to writing longer and more optimistic letters to my mother, to Esmé, to Captain Brown: life in the capital was full of good cheer; the Tsar and his family appeared in public every day; the Germans were bound to retreat soon; this winter would see the end of them. Because of difficulties with transport it was unlikely I would return at Christmas. They should not be surprised, though, if I did especially well at the Polytechnic. I wrote in cafés and restaurants. I wrote at school. I posted the letters sometimes twice a day. I was feeling homesick for the ordinary discomforts of Kiev. Petrograd’s filthy, uneven pavements, piles of refuse, menacing beggars, were all the worse for being unfamiliar. I received replies which were as optimistic. My mother said her health had improved. With God’s help and a mild winter she was looking forward to returning to the laundry. Esmé said she had applied to train as a nurse. She would soon leave the grocery. Captain Brown’s vaguely Anglified, sprawling letters, in which Russian characters took on the appearance of modified English ones, insisted that ‘Johnny Turk’ was on the run. He was only good at ‘defensive tactics’. ‘Fritz’ was useless without his officers and there were precious few of those left alive. British armour would soon shift the Hun from his ratholes. This would improve the morale of the ‘Frogs’, who had no real stomach for War, as they constantly demonstrated. He supplied maps in which military positions were described. He demonstrated how we would ‘smash through’ the German positions on a narrow front, with the Rumanians closing on them in a pincer movement. None of these battles ever came to be fought. Indeed the trench war was interminably boring. Larger numbers of men were killed and wounded. It seemed summer would never come again. Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok were actually with us.

  Along the Nevski a few high-stepping horses still pulled fine carriages. As snow fell and rivers froze and ice formed on the streets some troikas appeared. But along the gravel walks between the main pavements and the roads, there hopped a variety of cripples. They had missing legs and arms, bandaged faces, peculiar, rolling limps; they wore uniforms and frequently paused as if expecting a friend to approach and offer help. They lined up beside newspaper kiosks. They stood talking in low voices as they leaned aga
inst the railings of parks and private gardens. The Petersburgskaya Vedomosti, a special copy of which was printed on vellum every day for the Tsar, always referred to these wretches as ‘heroes’ and would show pictures of them waving, smiling, saluting: the very essence of courage and hope. Charitable institutions could not deal with the numbers. Thousands of deserters sneaked back with the wounded. Some were caught and shot.

  Stories of Rasputin grew increasingly bizarre. One afternoon Kolya took me to a great Petrograd house overlooking a more picturesque part of the river. Various members of the Mikhishevski family were gathered for tea. Clearly neither I nor the Count was particularly welcome. The over-furnished house contained a bewildering mixture of old, heavy sofas and tables and the very latest modern furniture from France and England. Here I met my first aristocrats ‘at home’. They seemed a rather ordinary group of people. They were richly dressed, had perfect manners and the china from which they drank their tea was very thin, but their conversation was not as brilliant as I had hoped.

  When the older relatives had left, two girls and a youth, cousins of Kolya, who appeared to be their hero, gathered about my friend and discussed the Court gossip. Rasputin had strengthened his grip on the Tsarina. As a result the Tsar, who doted on her, was losing interest in the War. Only his honour, and the Rumanian alliance, made him refuse to consider making peace with Germany.

  I paid very little attention to what was said, so I cannot report it faithfully. My interest was in the Fabergé objects: a frog carved from Siberian jade, several Easter-eggs, a little model of a policeman, also carved from stone and tinted with colours impossible to distinguish from the natural hues. The intricacy of the work intrigued me. The rest of the room had the usual naked nymphs supporting lampstands, mirrors, bon-bon trays and flower-vases, all of which might have been more suitable to a bordello. It was a sign, I suppose, of how decadent Russian aristocracy had become. Less liberalism, and we should have a Tsar on the throne to this day.

  I was distracted by the voice of a pretty young girl with all the animation of a true ‘Natasha’, whose light auburn hair hung in heavy curls to her shoulders. She was dressed in a yellow silk day-dress trimmed with sable. ‘Anna Virobouffa says we must follow Rasputin’s example and find redemption through debauchery.’

  Kolya was amused. ‘Really, Lolly, I don’t feel redeemed yet!’

  ‘Oh, Kolya!’ She brandished a cigarette which was lit for her by her brother, who wore the uniform of a lieutenant in an engineering regiment.

  ‘She says it was a wonderful experience. It freed her spirit.’

  ‘I’ve heard the phrase. I knew a political assassin who claimed the act of murder also freed his spirit? Have you been to Rasputin’s séances?’

  ‘One, yes. Mother wouldn’t let me go to another.’

  ‘Were you redeemed?’

  ‘Lolly’ simpered. ‘Of course not. It’s a salon, you know, full of wonderful perfumes and fabrics. You sit at an ordinary tea-table and have an ordinary afternoon tea. But he talks all the time to you. His eyes!’

  ‘What does he smell like?’ asked Kolya. ‘I heard he never bathes.’

  ‘He smells like - ‘ Lolly blushed.

  ‘Like a dirty peasant,’ said the young man. The girls laughed, ‘It’s true! He smells awful. Of sweat!’

  ‘Dishonest sweat. How valuable it can be.’ Kolya looked to me for appreciation of this, but I did not understand the witticism. The young engineer, however, laughed.

  Lolly continued. ‘He talks about God and the world, you know. About our souls, our bodies, our need for experience not usually associated with the kind of lives we lead even - even with our husbands ...’ She sighed. ‘He’s so convincing. He’s in touch with the common people.’

  ‘He cured the Tsarevitch.’ This was the other girl. She wore a red dress.

  ‘The poor boy’s still dying,’ said Kolya.

  ‘While you’re with him,’ Lolly went on, ‘he transports you from all cares. We were allowed to ask him questions, you know. He was like a wonderful, simple father. And then he just took one of the ladies - I shan’t say her name - and they went into the next room. After a while he came back alone. The lady leaves by another door. Or stays on until later. Whatever he tells her.’

  Kolya frowned. ‘You aren’t disturbed by this behaviour?’

  ‘It is spiritual, Kolya. He shows you Light in Darkness. The Divine Light.’

  ‘You’d give up everything for him?’

  ‘Everything. He’s holy, Kolya. He pretends to be a charlatan. He sometimes says he is. He has the most wonderful sense of humour. There’s something about him. I’ve studied Madame Blavatsky, of course, and the Theosophists. This is so much more real and intense.’

  ‘He hypnotises them,’ said the lieutenant. His name was Alexei Leonovitch Petroff and he seemed anxious to impress his older cousin. He ignored me and made me feel uncomfortable. ‘What do you think, Kolya? Anna Virobouffa says they obey him absolutely. He drugs them, I suppose. The more there are together, the more they vie to display their obedience to him. Haven’t there been some suicides?’ He touched his moustache and sought inexpertly for a fallen monocle.

  Lolly dropped her head. ‘So Anna Virobouffa says.’

  ‘They kill themselves to show devotion?’ Alexei laughed. He sought Kolya’s approval. His eye caught mine and shifted.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the reason. It’s spiritual,’ said the girl in red.

  ‘The canals are full of young women who at this moment are discovering the truth of Rasputin’s spiritualism. Isn’t it a sin? Don’t they go to Hell?’ Alexei Leonovitch was goading her. I found his sneering tone unpleasant. He was only a year or two older than me but seemed to regard me at once as an inferior and an interloping superior.

  Kolya stopped him. ‘Grigory Yefimovitch has abolished Hell in the after-life, Alexei. Hell has now come to Earth. Hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘You’re an abominable cynic, Kolya.’ The monocle was screwed, at last, into the appropriate eye.

  ‘I’m a realist. Why should people believe in the conventional God? There’s no evidence he any longer exists. Rasputin could well have the right idea.’

  ‘You’re being terrible, Kolya,’ said Lolly.

  ‘I’ll stop if you wish. I was speaking to a soldier only yesterday. Not a poor mouzhik who never knew why he’d been recruited, but a young man. He had been a cadet and had become a lieutenant. Like you, Alexei. He had only one arm, only one eye, only one leg and part of his right ear was missing - ‘

  ‘Kolya!’

  ‘I’m training to fly,’ said the lieutenant, ‘so this doesn’t really apply to me.’

  ‘I’ll stop,’ Kolya offered again.

  ‘Go on.’ Lolly used a tone, mixed sympathy and morbidity, typical of Russian women to this day.

  ‘He was glad he was out of it because he might have run away if he’d been returned to the Front.’

  ‘Not a gentleman, then,’ said Alexei Leonovitch.

  ‘Perhaps not any longer.’ Kolya looked tolerantly at his cousin. ‘Just a wounded soldier. He said this kind of war is like one’s worst dreams. Terrible things happen but you can’t move. You can’t do anything to help yourself or anyone else.’

  Again Alexei interrupted. ‘The air-war isn’t like that. Chivalry still exists - and action.’

  Kolya continued patiently: it’s not the same as the old cavalry charges, the old advances, old battles like Borodino, where issues of some sort at least are decided. This war is strange. First you fear it; then you come to be mesmerised by it; then you become so tired by it you can watch a comrade die before your eyes and not believe it’s real at all.’

  ‘People mauled by lions are said to feel nothing but the most beautiful euphoria,’ said Lolly.

  ‘But what’s this stuff about the Front got to do with Grigory Yefimovitch Rasputin?’ said Alexei. He was distressed and awkward.

  ‘Oh, quite a lot, don’t you think?’ Kolya gave hi
s tea-cup to a servant who had come to clear away. He stood up. ‘Make sure the mangy old lion doesn’t maul you,’ he warned Lolly. ‘You know I never agree with your mother about anything. But I agree with that. The starets is exploiting the grief we can’t admit and won’t admit until the War reaches its end.’