Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  I was taken out into the quadrangle. Vorsin’s personal horse and troika stood ready. Students were still cheering. I heard snatches of their phrases: ‘It’s the great Kryscheff!’ ‘He’s Galileo and Leonardo rolled into one.’ I bowed. I waved. Again they cheered me. Again the kindly Vorsin tried to silence them. I was flattered by his thoughtfulness. He apologised for not being able to accompany me himself. My own professor would see me safely home. It was obvious that Merkuloff was reluctant. He frowned. He began to remonstrate. He was not ‘qualified’ to go with me. This was a change of tune! It was my turn to show magnanimity. It would be a pleasure, I said, to have his company in the troika. In awe, he climbed in to sit beside me. With a friendly acknowledgement to the senior professor, to the noisy students, I gestured for the driver to whip up the horse. Then we were off at the old St Petersburg lick, bells jingling, moving almost as swiftly as my thoughts, while I enlarged on my ideas to the open-mouthed Merkuloff. He could still not find the words to tell me how he had misjudged me.

  ‘The Special Diploma will, of course, be very welcome,’ I assured him. ‘But my future interest will chiefly be in government work.’

  He said he was sure the government would supply my every need. I was pleased with his perspicacity, ‘It is materials and supplies I require. Then I can begin to build.’

  He said I should try to look after myself. I was over-excited.

  ‘That’s hardly possible at the moment,’ I reassured him. ‘My dilemma is whether I should remain at the Polytechnic, perhaps to help with the teaching, or whether I should lend all my talents to the War Effort?’

  This was something, he said, which had to be carefully considered. Perhaps it could be discussed next term ‘after I had rested’. I pointed out, again, that I was at my peak. It would, however, be convenient to have more time to myself. He agreed. He suggested I take a sabbatical while the necessary meetings were held at high level. There would not be time this term to go into every detail. The staff would have to meet government representatives the following term. He suggested I wait until I heard from the Polytechnic. This fitted in with my plans. I agreed, it will also allow time to prepare my Special Diploma.’

  He had been thinking of much the same thing. We galloped through glowing mist. A white night was looming. As we neared Petersburg proper, he asked me where I lived. I decided not to give him my poorer address. I told the driver to go to the house by the Kryukoff Canal where my virgins lived.

  At the entrance, I was greeted with more fawning by the old Polish woman. Now she addressed me as ‘your honour’. Evidently she astonished Merkuloff. He still had his cold, and was blowing his nose heavily. He explained that I was over-tired. She should make sure I rested. He said someone, perhaps himself, would come to make sure I was all right. I told him this would be unnecessary. The Polish woman was puzzled but said I might be her own son. Professor Merkuloff’s attitude towards me had at last completely changed. He said that she was a good, kind woman. I had delicate sensibilities. I must have every comfort. I must rest my brain as well as my body. If a doctor were needed, the Institute would send one. I patted him on the shoulder, to show that I appreciated his magnanimous acceptance of defeat. ‘The girls are like sisters,’ said the Polish hag. ‘They will know what to do.’

  She escorted me to the apartment door. Lena answered the ring. Her face brightened when she saw me The ‘panye’ explained I had been brought in a troika. My professor asked that I be specially cared for. Lena led me into her feminine nest, assuring the concierge everything would be done. I was still, of course, on top of the world. We entered the main room. ‘Are you on the run?’ She was excited. I flung an arm round her shoulders and embraced her. ‘It has been the best day of my life.’ I realised she was mine. I could now celebrate. I kissed her gently upon the lips. She whispered that Marya was not yet home. She drew away from me, but I held her little wrist. I told her that I loved her. It was true. I loved everyone at that moment. I had astounded the school with my brilliance. I had come home in the senior professor’s own troika. The entire Polytechnic had been in an uproar. She asked if I had done anything ‘politically dangerous’. I laughed. ‘It depends what you mean, Lenushka. I showed them the Future. I showed them the Age of Science. I showed them all the possibilities for change in this old world of ours.’

  ‘And you convinced them?’

  ‘They applauded me.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  She could not quite understand. I embraced her again. I kissed her with more passion. I needed this culmination. This reward. Little Lena was ideal. A virgin. Her breasts began to rise and fall, her hands touched my back in an embrace. Then she had pulled away, blushing. She would make me some tea. I flung myself on the couch. It was covered with a peasant quilt of most intricate patterns. It was faintly, deliciously perfumed. I watched her body in its rustling frock as she moved about the apartment. At length she brought me a glass of tea. I accepted it, gesturing for her to sit beside me. Again that sweet, uncertain movement. Then she was with me, cradled in my arms. We sipped the tea together. I began to make love to her very slowly. I stroked her arms, her face, her thighs. A little later, I picked her up and carried her, weeping, into the bedroom. She made to resist, but no woman could have resisted me that day. My hands moved under her clothes and found flesh, then her sex, and she gasped. But, for all her feeble, birdlike flutterings, she was mine. I undressed her. Then I undressed myself. Her face was at peace, her eyes were like the eyes of a gazelle which has fallen in love with a leopard. She would willingly die for one touch of my paw, one movement of my mouth on her flesh. My body sang with the controlled agony of delicious passions and heightened senses. Then I was upon her. I took her fiercely. She wept and groaned and shrieked. I clawed her so that blood came. I bit her. I plunged into her and more blood came. And still I was not sated. I rolled away from her. Her eyes had turned to burning copper and her hair was a halo of flame, her body a lattice of scratches, of little bites and voluptuous, spreading bruises. Now she wept deeply, for the pleasure, for the release of her weeping, and I took her again.

  As I rolled back, Marya entered the room. ‘Lena! Dimitri?’ She was horrified. She shivered in her little fur cap, with her muff still on her hand. She was gasping. I smiled. I gestured to her to join us. I could easily have satisfied them both. She closed the door and had gone before I could suggest it. I laughed. Lena lay there staring vacantly at the closed door. I took her for the third time. My sperm filled her anus like liquid steel. She was once more overcome by her passion. Marya was unimportant. Let her disapprove. Lena agreed. She had become wild; a wonderful animal. We kissed and nibbled and stroked one another’s warmth and youth. We were about to make love for the fourth time, when Marya again opened the door. There was gas-light now behind her. It had become quite dark. She had removed her street-clothes. She was in distress, ‘I thought you loved me,’ she said.

  ‘I love you both. Come.’ I offered myself.

  ‘This is wrong. Can’t you see?’

  ‘There is nothing wrong in being alive.’

  ‘We’ll be out soon,’ Lena told her. ‘We’ll explain.’

  ‘Your body! What has he done to you?’

  Lena had not been aware of the love-marks. Now she looked at her breasts and her thighs and first she smiled, touching them, then she lost some of her elation. Foolish Marya had entered Eden. She had done what Lucifer did to Adam and Eve. She had made us suddenly self-conscious. The little idiot was the snake bringing sin to the Garden. I was furious. I leapt up. I jumped for her. I caught her by the hair. ‘Free yourself from all these preconceptions!’

  ‘This isn’t freedom - it’s - ‘ She burst into tears. She tried to struggle away from me. But I held her. ‘Join us, you bitch! Be a woman!’

  Then it was like a wheel. A gigantic flywheel on which we were all spinning. And Lena was shouting. Dancing naked between us. I was tearing at Marya. At her clothes, her hair, her b
ody. Round and round we whirled, unable to control anything. We were crushed in a machine which was white hot and yielding but which had the pressure of the hardest alloy. The cogs were ripping us to fragments. Blood sparkled. Slowly the squealing and wailing grew louder. It was unbearable. I looked at the girls. One was completely naked, the other had her clothes in shreds. One breast was exposed. Both were weeping and bleeding. They were begging me for something they refused to accept. They begged me for forgiveness, for death. They begged me for my love and for the ignorance they had lost. They begged me for the Faith I had given. Which now they thought they had lost. They begged for God, for the gentle, punishing Christ who had come to them in that hour of revelation. I was suddenly weary. I felt only contempt for them. They resisted everything they most desired. They resisted enlightenment. They refused to trust me. In that refusal they showed themselves for stupid little masturbating creatures. They had been prepared to entertain fuzzy romantic notions about free love and revolution, even assassination. Now they could not relinquish their poor, unformed identities. They would take no risks. I drew on my clothes. I laughed at them. They wept and bled in one another’s arms. They pleaded with me to become again the illusion I had let them create. I buttoned up my jacket. I owed them nothing. They owed me everything. My clothes became my armour. Their knight had offered them the salvation of their senses: the celebration of their own femininity, and of their primal sexuality. They had rejected the gift. I strode out of their apartment. They became Bolshevik whores, I believe, during the Revolution, and morphine addicts. Stalin doubtless cleared up what was left of them. It was only the stupid or the mesmerised who ever perished in those camps. Nobody was ever forced to die.

  I paced through the night, beside the frozen canal. I pushed the crippled and the starving from my path. I hoped to see Kolya at The Harlequinade but they told me he had gone home. I went to his apartment and let myself in with my key. Hippolyte was in bed with him, lying amongst furs. Kolya himself was asleep. Hippolyte was petulant. ‘Get out.’

  I crossed to the cabinet to pour a drink and look for more cocaine. I found some Polish tawny vodka and tossed it off. I opened the Pierrot jar and took a pinch of white powder. I tasted it, sniffed a little into my nostrils to experience the delicious numbness. Hippolyte had risen. He was whispering at me. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I came to see Kolya.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Inspired, perhaps. I’m not here to interfere.’ I reached out a hand to stroke him. ‘I love you, too.’ I loved the world.

  Then Hippolyte grinned his little, mindless, harlot’s grin. ‘Oh, I see.’

  Kolya’s naked body was gold crowned by silver as he came into the room. ‘Good evening, Dimka. It’s late, eh?’ He took the vodka bottle from my hand and poured some into a glass. ‘How was your dissertation?’

  I had become calm. I had no wish to boast of my achievement. ‘I think it was successful.’

  ‘Good. I expected you would have come over to the cabaret.’

  ‘I had some women to see.’

  ‘Celebrating?’ said Hippolyte. He was confused.

  ‘Trying to.’

  ‘The women didn’t suit you?’

  ‘They were too young. I offered them the mercy of my body, the salvation of my pain, my triumph. And they refused it.’

  ‘Oh, I know what you mean!’ Kolya laughed with Hippolyte. ‘They’re timid little things, on the whole, girls.’ He leaned against me, as if drunk, and began to unbutton my coat. ‘Did they hurt your feelings, Dimka?’

  ‘Not at all. They made me impatient.’

  ‘They haven’t the stamina.’

  Hippolyte loosened my scarf and the jacket of my uniform. I was feeling languorous. I yawned, appreciating the attention: enjoying the passivity. Kolya and Hippolyte led me back towards the bedroom, strewn with the skins of wolves and panthers, foxes and tigers. I was fully prepared to let them worship me. This was what I had wanted all along from the girls. Marya and Lena had not understood. Kolya and Hippolyte instinctively knew what to do. There was more vodka. There was more cocaine. I was magnificent. They told me so with every touch. I was a pagan god. I cannot explain. It was not perversity. I was Pan. I was Prometheus. I was Prometheus in a world which did not fear me. How those stupid little girls had feared me. Silly mice. I was a bronze Titan, a Lord of Thebes, an Etruscan nobleman, an Egyptian god-king. An Emperor of Carthage!

  It is vague, the rest. I slept for a very long time. Kolya brought my clothes from my lodgings. He was very gentle with me. I do not think Hippolyte was present. I was tired. Kolya’s goodness was Christ-like. It was too much. For a while I attempted to emulate it. But his goodness was a virtue of the nobly-born, of the privileged. It was nothing I could afford, in the end.

  There was a letter. I did not open it until I had slept again amongst the wolves and the foxes, with Kolya as my guardian angel. He did nothing that was unnatural. He helped me. I opened the letter on a morning. Much refreshed, I relived my moments of conquest. I felt a certain foolishness in exposing myself to the girls. I would not be able to return for a while, until they had calmed down. I knew they would not betray me because it would mean betraying their idealism. The packet was sealed with red wax. I broke the seas, and here was further proof of my victory over my past. A vindication of all I had been through. A passport. And a letter from Mr Green. I was to leave for England after Christmas. I was to go to Liverpool to conduct some business. I must call and see Mr Green as soon as possible. He would give me the details of my journey. I had a passport. I had a Special Diploma. I had recognition. And all in a rush. That is frequently how things happen, of course. Frequently, too, all the bad news comes at once. But I will not taint this reminiscence with any note of sourness. I am not one to brood on what might have been. My fate is in God’s hands. Heaven is my reward. I have sinned. I admit it. But I gave my knowledge and my innocence to the world, and if the world did not reward me as I hoped it was because it was temporarily conquered by my enemies. Few would disagree that they were God’s enemies, also. The world is in the power of the Antichrist. That is why I know I shall be received into the blessed arms of Christ, forgiven and acknowledged and honoured, to stand with the saints, to converse with the Lord, to kneel before the altar of His great love, His brilliance and mercy.

  Kolya said that until I left for England, I should stay at his apartment. This suited me very well. After that first night I received no further attentions from Kolya and few from Hippolyte.

  Rasputin was murdered. Shot, stabbed, poisoned and pushed under the ice, yet still he lived and roared. He was Russia. Tainted Russia, mystical and vibrant, and refusing to die. But for rejecting the cleansing of science and modern knowledge Russia paid a terrible price. She did not have to give up her soul. There must be equilibrium. Neither ‘salvation through sin’, nor the massive ‘Russian steamroller’ could rescue us. By then it was hopeless. We could not be redeemed by our divine irresponsibility under autocracy, by our magnificent Slavic wholeness of sentiment; by the careless bravery of our Cossacks, nor by our trust in a defeated Christ. Christ slept and Russia was stolen from Him.

  * * * *

  There was no point in returning to Kiev for Christmas. The trains were in confusion. There was a threat of the enemy occupying White Russia and parts of Ukraine. My letters and telegrams reached my mother in time. To my mother: dissertation great success. have received special diploma. whole school celebrates. your loving son. Through the good offices of Captain Brown came the reply: congratulations, love from all. we are very proud, best wishes for the season. To Uncle Semya I sent a similar message, but I added a few extra words, govt, post likely. thanks for all confidence. will serve you any way I can. god bless the tsar and god save russia.

  This meant that all members of my family were able to celebrate the season with great delight. I spent it quietly with Kolya. Happily we
were able to find some decent food in our City of Disaster. The ghost of Rasputin, the threat of civilian strife, of Revolution, hung like mist over the streets and canals. The food was horribly expensive. Hippolyte did not join us. He had taken to leaving the apartment for days at a stretch. Kolya reassured me this was nothing to do with me.

  We remained close, but not sexually. Indeed, that act on the night I had won my Diploma had not been carnal. It had been an act of love and celebration. I have sought religious advice on the matter. I have been reassured I committed no sin in the eyes of God. Never has God been better understood or more passionately loved than in Russia. Never has He been obeyed and honoured so thoroughly. Russia was God’s noblest creation. But He slept, wearied by War. Christ was betrayed by Lucifer. Russia was stolen. And nowhere else in the world, save in the Greek churches, have I been able to find Him. His gentle Son was accepted in Constantine’s Byzantium, which we call Tsargrad, the Emperor’s City. He saved the Roman Empire. His gentle son, crucified by resentful Jews, offered himself to Russia, and was accepted. Christ is Greek. Christ is God. They are a unity. The Jewish God is false. The Jews betrayed God and betrayed Russia. They brought us madness and despair and ruin. The Tsar drew a line across the map. He said ‘Jews, you shall not pass beyond this point.’ But they crept through and they pulled the Tsar from his throne. They killed him. They gave Russia to the Devil. Christ was distracted by so many dying souls. Christ was sleeping, lying with the millions killed by War. And when he woke, Russia had been stolen from Him. How can these be the opinions of a Jew? I reject that Jewish God. I accept Christ. No Jew could do that. Carthage came out of the Orient and threatened Rome. Carthage came out of Africa. Ancient, prehistoric, savage blood. Carthage was the ghost who rode with the Tatar Khans, who razed Kiev and brought Moscow to her knees. Those Khans will come again. Why else do honest Russians remain wary of their ‘Chinese comrades’? Do they share the same delusions? Perhaps. But they do not share a blood or a culture. Let the Chinese call us ‘foreign devils’, if they like. We know who the Devil is and who serves Him. Russia remains in readiness. She has turned her back on Christ, but Christ has not forgotten His Slavs. Let the Jews continue to lend tainted ideas as they have lent tainted money down the generations. Both will be destroyed. The signs are there already. Even under Stalin they began to get back more interest than they expected on their ideas. Stalin learned. Stalin would have begun the cleansing of Russia if he had not been poisoned. Do not think I forgive Stalin, that renegade priest. But in old age he came to understand his errors. He was gathering his strength for the war against the ghostly Semitic Empires, against Babylon and Tyre, Phoenicia and Carthage, against Israel, against the Eastern hordes who dreamed of the glories of Genghis Khan come again ...