Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  A band started to play. It was Gypsy music, very sad. Esmé began to relax. She was immensely beautiful now, in her prime as a girl. I still considered her a sister. I could not regard her as a sexual partner. I wished her to keep her virginity. I could now help her marry well. I was a brother and a father to her. I wanted to do for her what her father would have wished. A number of my friends and business acquaintances saw us together. I was winked at more than once and when Esmé was not in earshot I was congratulated. I explained nothing. It suited me to be seen with her. When the War was over I would need to give dinners to great industrialists. Esmé would make a perfect hostess. I could employ her in my firm. I had begun to evolve what the Germans call ‘a lifeplan’. I would model myself as far as possible on Thomas Edison, the American inventor and entrepreneur. My name would become as famous throughout Europe as his was in his native land. It would become a synonym for progress and enlightenment, possibly mentioned in the same breath as Galileo and Newton. But I would be practical. I would keep control of my own patents. I spoke to Esmé of this and of certain details I had already worked out. ‘You will be a full partner,’ I told her. ‘It is only fair. Your encouragement, and mother’s, made me what I am.’

  She looked down at her plate and she smiled a little, ‘I had aspirations to become a doctor,’ she told me. ‘I think I have a vocation.’

  ‘And perhaps Captain Brown could become a laundress!’ The humour was meant to be harmless. The image of my feminine Esmé in mannish suits, carrying a doctor’s bag, was ludicrous. ‘Why not? Anything is possible in the New Russia!’ I parodied a popular phrase of the Provisional Government. I changed the subject: ‘There’s talk of mutiny. Will you be safe at the Front?’

  She looked up and laughed spontaneously. ‘Safer than walking up Kreshchatik. Dear Maxim. The soldiers are like children. You get the odd agitator, of course. But their loyalty depends on respect. If they like an officer, or a nurse, they’ll do anything for them. Conditions are unspeakable. They’re so grateful if you merely wipe the sweat from their foreheads. They’re honest, decent, Russian lads.’

  ‘All the virtues you mention can become vices overnight.’

  She did not want to listen. She frowned and shook her head.

  ‘Children can turn against you,’ I said.

  ‘We’re their nanyanas. They trust us. They know we suffer as they do. They know we volunteered to help them.’

  I called for the bill. She had reassured me a little. But she was still innocent.

  We took the carriage through the steep Kiev streets. There were lights of sorts burning, candles and oil-lamps. I wished we had been able to paint the town red in proper style, the old style, when Kreshchatik would have been full of electrics and gaslight; the pleasure gardens along the river would have had different coloured lanterns glowing in the trees. German bands would have played waltzes. Then I should truly have enjoyed my triumph and her enjoyment.

  Esmé said she felt guilty. So many were now homeless, sick and crippled. I told her that I was not oblivious to the misery. I spent my own money freely, giving to beggars and to various church institutions, to organisations set up for the aid of the needy. Even the Jews of Podol knew me for one who could be relied upon to put a coin in a collecting box. Meanness has never been one of my vices. When I had money, I would give. And, of course, I was saving. I had a duty to my mother, to myself, to all those I loved, to make sure that political events would not affect them. The day would come when Mother would be too frail to work at the laundry. A man can live as he chooses, I said, so long as he is insured. Freedom is based on a sense of responsibility. That is what the Bolsheviks never realised. The only slogan I ever hoped to see strung out on a banner over any street was ‘Live and let Live.’

  Esmé asked where I intended taking her next. I mentioned a popular cabaret. It had one of the usual names: The Purple Monkey or The Chartreuse Sioux. She asked if she might visit the flat instead, to have a quiet glass of tea with my mother and Captain Brown. Captain Brown would have had more than one quiet glass of vodka by now and if not asleep he would be singing some obscure Glaswegian shanty, but I understood that the high-life could be exhausting. I had no hesitation in ordering the carriage up Kirillovskaya to our own little street. Esmé’s instincts had been good. Suddenly I was at ease again. Here so little had changed: the woods and gorges, the mixture of houses, the distant barking of dogs, the quarrelling of couples. We might have been the two happy children who had attended Herr Lustgarten’s school. So little time had passed since we had tried out my first flying machine. Now her father was at rest and, oddly enough, my mother seemed mentally at rest.

  Though I had a key, I knocked on the door. It was opened at once. My mother had seen Esmé earlier, before I had arranged the hotel, but she hugged her as if greeting her for the first time. ‘What a beautiful girl. You are still an angel. Look at her, Maxim!’

  I looked at her. ‘Were you expecting us then, mama?’

  She became flustered. ‘Was it a good restaurant?’

  ‘The best. You must come there.’

  ‘Oh, I always get too nervous. I have indigestion before I take a bite of bread!’ It was why I had given up trying to take her out.

  Esmé sat down in her usual chair and removed her shoes. She hitched up her skirt and scratched a perfect calf encased in pale blue silk. I was used to women, of course, and most of them had no modesty at all, but I expected different behaviour from Esmé. This was stupid of me. She was, after all, amongst family and she had been serving at the Front. My mother put lumps of sugar and pieces of the fresh lemon I had bought that morning into Esmé’s tea. ‘I’ve brewed it strong. You’ve got used to strong tea, eh?’

  ‘Not any more.’ Esmé did not elaborate, it’s very good, Yelisaveta Filipovna.’ She looked at me, smiling. ‘The best thing to pass my lips all day.’

  ‘I have wasted a fortune!’ I said in mock despair. I settled down into a chair and accepted a glass of tea.

  ‘You are not eating properly,’ said my mother to Esmé. ‘The food is bad?’

  ‘Not as bad as what the soldiers get.’

  ‘Weevils in the bread, eh?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘you’ve become a critic!’

  She shrugged. ‘They let us criticise now, instead of eating.’

  Esmé was amused. ‘We’re all turning into revolutionists.’

  ‘We bend with the wind,’ said my mother. ‘What is the alternative?’

  I knew her thoughts. My father had never learned to bend. He had stuck zealously to his religion of anarchy and violence. Strangely, now that chaos threatened on all sides, my mother had lost her anxieties.

  Esmé made it clear she did not want to discuss the War, ‘at least, not tonight’. We talked about a letter my mother had received that day from Uncle Semya. It was one of several he had sent. All the others had gone astray. ‘He’s well. He says they’re making the most of the lull. They’ve taken a villa in Arcadia. Is that a nice place, Maxim? It sounds it.’

  ‘It was,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it still is.’ I wished we could all three be there at that moment, enjoying the warm, salty air of an Odessa evening. I yearned for that southern magic, the smell of rotting flowers mingled with brine, the simple fellowship of Shura and his friends which had appeared so sophisticated and now seemed pleasantly provincial. ‘Shall we all go there tomorrow? Take the train?’

  ‘Is there a train, any more?’ My mother brightened.

  ‘There has to be. It’s a main line.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful idea.’ But she was hesitant.

  Esmé drained her glass. ‘I have to be back in two days. You could go.’

  I became obsessed. ‘What about compassionate leave?’

  Esmé was regretful. ‘Not fair. There are only a few of us.’

  ‘She has her duty, Maxim.’

  ‘Yes, mama.’

  ‘And I suppose we have ours.’ Mother collected the
glasses. ‘Without me, the laundry would collapse. The ladies would receive gentlemen’s collars and the gentlemen would be going to bed in ladies’ night-dresses.’ She giggled. She had to pour herself another glass of tea and sip it before she could stop. We both laughed with her.

  ‘It’s like the old days,’ said my mother, and her face became set and sad.

  ‘The future will be better,’ I said. ‘We’ll buy a house of our own. On Trukhanov Island. We’ll have a yacht. We’ll sail up and down the Dnieper. We’ll have a motor and visit Odessa whenever we feel like it. And Sevastapol. And Yalta. And Italy and Spain. And Greece. We’ll take the waters in Baden-Baden, which by then will be part of Russia, and we’ll go to England for the Season. Paris will be our second home. We shall hob-nob with the famous. You, Esmé, shall be courted by dukes, by the Prince of Wales. I shall attract a circle of titled ladies who will fight one another for my affections. And you, mother, will be Queen of a Salon!’

  ‘I should become bored very quickly.’

  ‘I shall invent a new method of cleaning everything. A universal laundry. At the touch of a switch, you’ll make the whole world shine!’

  ‘I could run the Salon and this world-launderer at the same time?’

  ‘Why not!’

  We laughed again. Those were moments which were to be amongst the happiest I have known.

  My mother told me Uncle Semya was very pleased about my Diploma. If I needed any assistance finding a good job in Odessa he would be happy to offer it. He suggested, however, that there were opportunities ‘elsewhere’. She took him to mean I might find greater scope abroad. I wondered if he still wished me to travel to England. The thought excited me. Since I had become such a man of the world I could go anywhere with complete assurance. The passport remained one of my most important treasures. It was an ‘open’ passport, the hardest to obtain, particularly during the War. I could leave and enter the country at any time. I could visit all countries friendly to Russia. I could go to England, America, France. If peace were made, I could even go to Berlin should the spirit take me. At the age of seventeen I was a person of considerable substance. I already possessed virtually everything I had ever dreamed of save the resources to build my own inventions. I took Esmé back and on my way to my own hotel I continued my internal debate.

  I had written once or twice in the past month to Professor Matzneff. Probably the letters had not reached Petrograd or perhaps he had left the Institute. I had given other letters to friends who felt it safe to return. It would be a little while before I had any reply. Telegrams were no longer reliable. I had made one or two attempts to deal with representatives of the Kiev Technical College but they were too busy with their politics to take an interest in my problem. One man, with pince-nez, a grey beard and all the appearance of a typical ancien-régime supporter, told me mine were ‘Russian qualifications’. If I wished to receive a diploma in Kiev, I must re-take the examinations in Ukrainian. I had given up in disgust. In the meantime I was still rising in the world. Peasants, workers, deserters, refugees, men of affairs, poured into Kiev, demanding services often operated by machinery. Thus I enjoyed the benefits of the influx as well as the inconveniences. I could see that science and technology were to be Russia’s salvation. Putilov, the visionary industrialist, shared my view. So would Stalin, for that matter. We needed no revolutions. We needed, I suppose, word from God that He approved of science. Stolypin had recognised ignorance as Russia’s most dangerous enemy. It is to my city’s eternal discredit that she allowed herself to be the scene of that great politician’s assassination. Perhaps Stolypin was God’s true emissary? The forces of the Antichrist, disguised as policemen, destroyed him. The Tsar, I heard, was not sorry. He thought Stolypin was a Jew-lover. Maybe he was and maybe that was his weakness. He had pointed out that the Germans made ‘sensible’ use of their Jews. But the Jews infiltrated German culture until they controlled it. They will always do the same, given the smallest chance.

  The Germans took Riga and even more people came into Kiev. Livonia had begun to claim ‘nationhood’, so in a sense the victory was not on Russian soil, but all true Russians saw the defeat of Riga as a terrible blow. Of course the Jews did not care who won. They might have felt, speaking Yiddish, that life would be better for them under the Germans.

  Soon I would be eligible for the army. I was determined not to be thrown away as cannon fodder. I wrote out a number of copies of the letter in which Professor Vorsin had mentioned my Special Diploma. Each copy was clearly marked ‘Duplicate’. It would not seem as if I were attempting a crude forgery. I sent these off, together with a letter of my own, to various establishments in Ukraine, offering my services. My only problem was that the letter had addressed me as D. M. Kryscheff whereas my new name was M. A. Pyatnitski. This was the sole substitute I made. Professor Vorsin’s writing was very precise and formal and easily imitated. I produced, after several attempts, a facsimile which was honestly what he had written, but which now called me by the same name as the one on my passport. This might seem a petty trick. It should be understood that I was determined to get justice. It did not seem wrong if I corrected the balance, since events threatened to rob me of everything I had achieved. With the help of a local printer, I reproduced the stationery of the Petrograd Institute of Technology. It was on this that I transcribed the professor’s promise of my Special Diploma. After it was done I felt many doubts lift from my mind. I became confident that the wind would soon turn and bring me what I deserved. Through an acquaintance in the Podol underworld, I had two copies of my passport printed, complete with photographs. One was in the name of Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff, so that it would marry with my Diploma if it came in the wrong name. The other was an exact copy. Captain Brown introduced me to a British Tommy in hospital in Kiev. He was due to return home via Archangel. He had lost his right leg. I offered him a good sum if he would carry a passport home with him. I asked him to put it in a safety-deposit and leave the key in London for collection by me. He winked mysteriously as he pocketed my gold roubles. ‘Don’t worry chum. I’d be doing the same.’ He said if I got to London to go to St Martin’s Lane Post Office where I should find my key. I only half-believed him. But Captain Brown assured me he was a thoroughly reliable fellow. He had also agreed to take a letter which he would post to the captain’s relatives in Scotland as soon as he arrived in Blighty. The young soldier’s name was Fraser. He was to become quite a success as a shoe-shop proprietor in Portsmouth. I still wonder if he began by selling all the odd shoes of his own pairs. There must, after all, have been many men needing only left shoes in post-war London.

  I had been wise to take my precautions. In September 1917, when Kiev was at her golden best, Kerenski made himself premier and declared Russia a republic. Hubris! He had overstepped himself. He was obsessed with his own mission to ‘save Russia’. He underestimated Lenin. Almost at the very moment when we might have won the War, when the first American divisions were arriving to help us, Lenin and his gang became the rulers of Russia, ready to make a separate peace with Germany. This merely confirms my contempt for Comrade Bronstein as a strategist. There was no need for peace at all. We had almost won. It was a typical Bolshevik decision. It pretended to have anticipated and planned for the chaos it itself created. History? Men were deserting from the army faster than they could be sent to the Front. So the Bolsheviks said this was part of their scheme. They were to change their tune very shortly afterwards. Most of the population rose up against them. They had to create a Cheka and a Red Army to terrorise the people they claimed to be saving. On the day of the first important tank battle, at Cambrai, our Ukrainian Rada declared the province a republic. We were suddenly no longer Russian citizens. At least we were not subject to the Bolshevik madness. Although my links with Petrograd were almost completely cut off I felt we had gained breathing space. We still had a free enterprise system enabling me to continue working and saving.

  The snows covered Kiev. The river began to
freeze. The armistice was as good as made. It was signed officially by the Bolsheviks. This did not mean an immediate end to the fighting. It did not improve the lot of the ordinary people one jot. Such paper agreements rarely do; but soldiers came home and with them Esmé. I think the city was kept warm during that winter by the agitation of large crowds, by bodies pressing together in the squares, by the hot air issuing from every mouth. Esmé declined to stay at an hotel. I let her live with my mother while I went to The Yevropyaskaya, which was full of delegates of one sort or another, It was impossible to find peace there. Eventually I moved to the more expensive Savoy. Even here I was to be plagued by politicians. I gave up after a week or two and returned to Ulyanski’s. It had ceased to be The Hotel Arson and was now The Cube; the last word to describe a ramshackle building of imitation Gothic turrets and imitation Kremlin domes. Still, the mixture of architectural styles did not clash on the outside nearly so much as the mixture of artistic styles within. Acmeists, Futurists, Constructivists, Cubists; poets, musicians, painters and journalists drank quite as much as the politicians. They talked almost as much as the politicians. They certainly fornicated as much, if not more; but at least they left one alone. I had worn out a lifetime’s supply of different cockades during my couple of weeks at Kreshchatik hotels. The Cube stood near the site of the Château des Fleurs, not far from the Municipal Gardens. The Château (a pleasure garden and theatre) had perished before the War during a fire to rival London’s Crystal Palace. Once established at The Cube I began to feel as if I were back in Petrograd in the good old days. I had a small top-floor private suite looking out over snow-covered parks and bare trees to the Dnieper.