Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  I still worked as a mechanic. I kept my tools and overalls at Mother’s. Esmé was relieved to see the evidence of my honest work. She continued with her nursing. She now served at the Alexander Hospital, not very far from where I lived. Occasionally I was able to give her lifts in a cab. When cabs became scarce, we sometimes shared a tram-ride. As fuel and lubricating oils disappeared, my Podol customers began to go out of business or adapted to more primitive manufacturing methods. I would shortly be in the position of a doctor whose patients were all dead, so I cast around for larger game. It was not hard to find. Some of the main engineering firms, a few stores with private generators, hospitals and public offices, all needed me. This was far more to my taste. Gradually I became a diagnostician until I did little of the ordinary physical work myself. There were other freelance engineers in Kiev in those days: people who had been invalided out of the army or had taken a ‘ticket of leave’. My knowledge of more sophisticated machinery was at first almost wholly theoretical. It did not take me long to get experience, though at cost, sometimes, to the customer. Soon I exchanged my overalls and tools for a sober dark grey suit, a grey homburg and grey overcoat with a fox-fur collar. I must have looked ridiculously young in that fine suiting, but I knew what I was doing and could easily instil my own confidence into those seeking my help. Sometimes a machine had nothing wrong with it. Its operators had simply lost heart. I was able to cure it with a few mystic passes and taps. I told my mother how my career was improving. She wondered if I were not moving ‘too far, too fast’. But I was getting what I could while I could. There was no telling how long our Ukrainian Republic would stand. Both Bolsheviks and Germans were greedy for Ukrainian corn and raw materials.

  I gave my mother the best holiday of her life. We had a Christmas Eve dinner in a room at a fine restaurant where I managed to get her to take a glass or two of champagne. She enjoyed herself immensely. The waiters treated her like a queen. Esmé and Captain Brown sang Christmas songs and we exchanged gifts. It was marvellous. I never feel guilty about my mother. When it was possible I compensated her for much of her suffering. That night she knew a taste of heaven. As we drank liqueurs I told them my great plan. I was going to start a proper business. No longer just a consultant, I would be head of a firm of engineers.

  ‘Whatever happens to Kiev in the future,’ I said, ‘there will certainly be a demand for us. We shall design new factories, install machinery, give advice. If Ukraine booms, we shall boom. If she is in trouble, we shall help her in her trouble.’

  My mother seemed taken aback. Her face clouded. ‘And what will you call yourself?’

  ‘All-Ukraine Engineering Consultants,’ I said, it has a suitable ring to it.’

  She became reconciled. Esmé grinned at me as if I had somehow pulled off a coup requiring both nerve and intelligence. ‘And your own name?’ she asked.

  ‘Pyatnitski for the moment.’

  ‘Your father...’ began my mother. But then she nodded, it would be better. You’ll be careful?’

  ‘The times have changed,’ I said. ‘I have changed with them. I was born to be part of these times.’

  ‘You’ve an eye for the future,’ murmured Captain Brown from behind his champagne. He toasted me. ‘A Happy New Year to you!’

  My mother began to cry. Almost at the same moment Esmé began to chuckle. It was a strange experience. I did not know to whom I should respond. At length I went to comfort my mother. ‘Why are you crying?’

  She said she was crying from happiness.

  * * * *

  TEN

  THE BOLSHEVIKS SOLD RUSSIA OFF and Ukraine again became a Republic. I remained in prison where the Reds, for reasons of their own, had put me. The Rada did not see fit to release me. I had done nothing. Eventually I was able to explain myself to the Varta security police of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskya; to help them identify the genuine trouble-makers. Then I was free. Trudging back over the bridge I saw my rescuer himself, leading a parade. Skoropadskya looked every inch the Cossack, with his white riding coat, white shapka, silk trousers, decorated red boots, English stallion and silver-hilted sabre. The Germans believed he had his hand on the pulse of Ukrainian thought. He was an infinitely better alternative to the socialists and anarchists. He was able to police Kiev with our German allies and restrict the bandit-gangs of the rural areas. These killed Uhlans as cheerfully as they killed Varta. The Exalted and Glorious Excellency, Pan Hetman Skoropadskya, as he was called in official proclamations, had half the intelligence and twice the swagger of Mussolini. But he had sweeping Cossack moustaches and he shaved his head in the old Zaporizhian fashion. He reminded us of what Cossacks had stood for: self-reliance and courage. My only quarrel with the Hetman was his apparent wish to destroy all signs of the modern world. The three terrible weeks of Bolshevik occupation had lost me a good many of my best business connections. So many had been killed. But the Germans were interested in keeping our factories going. Skoropadskya could not afford to alienate them.

  It was obvious that the Hetman was a sentimental romantic with a theatrical gift for holding military displays in which his ‘Free Cossack Host’ (many of them recruited from the dregs of the city and not true Slavs, let alone Cossacks) paraded with grey- and blue-uniformed Austro-Hungarians, Germans and Galicians. This made a change from street-meetings, which were banned.

  I found myself naturally falling in with the Germans who were in the main practical, good-hearted fellows. The peasants were the chief cause of all our frustrations. The Germans had been promised grain. But the canny Ukrainian defeated our attempts to wrest it from him. He had learned to hide whole fields of corn, whole herds of cattle, as easily as he had hidden away his gold and his icons. German requisition teams, with official orders from Hetman Skoropadskya, searched barns and houses and found not so much as an egg. Used to threats, the peasants would confuse them, display their poverty, claim that Makhno’s guerillas or Hrihorieff’s bandits or some other force had already taken everything. It was an easy claim to make. Makhno in particular was displaying considerable ingenuity in his attacks. He flew the black banner of Anarchy and seemed to come and go faster than an express train. A favourite trick was to dress in Varta uniforms, claim he was chasing himself, enter a Varta garrison and then shoot down the occupants. To many he had already become a Robin Hood or Jesse James and dozens of legends were current about his daring exploits. It was forbidden to mention him in anything but a bad light in the newspapers. More folk heroes were not needed in Ukraine. There was a need for order, proper transport, proper communications.

  In Kiev, at least, there was now a semblance of Law. German businessmen began to come to the city to trade. I was able to discuss my new company and what it could do. It was important to increase production for export and home consumption. I mentioned new British and American machinery likely to outstrip anything we had. I discussed plans for new plants, new kinds of generators, new manufacturing machinery. This impressed the far-sighted Germans. They were by this time hard-pressed themselves. Many of them confided to me they thought Germany might not win the War. There would be a need to build their country up again very rapidly if it were not itself to fall into the hands of socialists. They suggested I consider locating a branch of my firm in Berlin. The sooner our countries were back to normal the sooner the Reds would be thwarted. Through my business friends I made the acquaintance of top-ranking officers and through these I came to meet the elite of Kiev society. I would now give my name automatically as Pyatnitski: I had been born in Tsaritsyn, my family had been killed by peasants in 1905, I had been brought up by relatives in Kiev, Odessa and Petersburg. This was, of course, fundamentally the truth. To have mentioned our rather ramshackle suburb to the crème de la crème would have raised too many eyebrows and closed too many doors. My mother’s family, of course, had been well-born, so I had an innate ability to mix with the very best people. Many of Kiev’s nobility were envious of my ‘Petersburg manner’. They attempted to imitate it. Quite often
people made gestures I had made only a moment or two before, or repeated little remarks of mine. I considered adding the title ‘prince’ to my adopted name, but this would have been inappropriate, given the volatile political situation.

  I still saw women-friends at The Cube, but I had moved back to The Yevropyaskaya, where many of my German acquaintances also stayed. I preferred the classical elegance of silver and gold, of big, clear mirrors, of plush and crystal, of properly-dressed waiters and clean, white linen. All this had returned as the Bolshevik butchers departed. The Germans appreciated it, as did the latest wave of Russian émigrés.

  If Kiev were becoming packed again, at least it was packed with a better class of people: people with money, common-sense and concrete notions of how to counter Bolshevism. Factory-owners from Petrograd and Moscow had always argued for faster and better industrialisation. They had foreseen the Revolution and blamed the Tsar for his short-sightedness. They said the ‘socialist experiment’ would last about as long as Cromwell’s Commonwealth. It would be a bad time: a time of destruction and intolerance. Cromwell had killed the King, torn down churches, destroyed cathedrals, but there were still kings, churches and cathedrals in England to this day. It was a powerful argument and an encouraging one, but it was a delusion. Now I know all that can save the world, to paraphrase Lenin, is God plus electricity.

  My mother found the changes alarming. While the Bolsheviks had occupied the city and red flags had flown and I had been in prison she had seemed cheerful and content. Every vicissitude had been met with a joke. Esmé and I had marvelled at her courage. She had bluffed the Reds away from a search of her home. She had wheedled them into providing her with extra rations. She had become personal laundress to a Chekist commissar. She knew the names of many minor Bolsheviks. She praised Comrade Lenin to the skies. She casually dropped the names of Zinovieff and Radek as if they were old friends. She had almost certainly delayed my execution and thus saved my life. But the strain had taken its toll. As the Bolsheviks retreated, she had had an attack of her old bronchial trouble and had gone to bed. By the time the Hetmanate was established, she was still coughing but insisting on going to work. She began to smell of sal-volatile and carbolic soap. The flat was returned to its previous impeccably clean state. She kept apologising for her ‘selfishness’. She said she had been a ‘bad mother’ to me, that it was her fault I had no father.

  ‘I should never have gone with him,’ she would say. ‘He was bad for me and I was bad for him. We were never suited. But it was ten years. And they were not all miserable.’

  I found her reasoning difficult to follow. She had overtired herself in every way. She became worried by the new wave of pogroms in Podol. I assured her the fires would not spread. Then she said she was afraid the Hetman’s army would conscript me. I set her mind at rest. My friends would look after me.

  ‘You were never any trouble,’ she told me one evening at supper. ‘Everyone said so. They envied me. “He’s so good. How do you do it?” You were always good. From a baby. You’re too kind-hearted, Maxim. Don’t let some woman hurt you.’

  ‘I won’t mother. I’m only eighteen...’

  She smiled. ‘The girls love you, eh? Esmé! Don’t the girls all love him?’

  ‘They must do,’ said Esmé. ‘He’s quite a dandy.’

  ‘Remember when you and Esmé used to sleep here? You over the stove, Esmé in her room?’ She became excited. ‘Didn’t we all have fun?’

  I did not remember anything in particular. But I could not bring myself to say so. ‘It was great fun,’ I said. I had to leave then, to do some business.

  It was still light as I turned the corner into Kirillovskaya and began to walk down the hill towards the city. The summer evening had a lazy yet unsettled quality to it. There were fewer factory chimneys smoking. Many of the smaller concerns had completely closed down. There was a darker mass of smoke over Podol. The sounds were muted in the streets, yet I heard the wail of a river-boat quite clearly, as if it were only a few feet from me. Gold and green domes of distant churches had a dull, deep shine; yellow brick was warm, it seemed to radiate heat; and the smell of grass, trees and flowers from the wooded gorges mingled with scents of soot and oil and that hint of leather always associated with a large occupying army. I could smell horses, too. Here it was as if the town and country met and blended in almost perfect harmony. I wanted to pause, perhaps hoping a tram would come by, but I knew better than to make myself prey for the gangs occupying some of the outlying parks. I glanced automatically up at an embankment. There was nothing but evening haze on hedges. As I walked down the hill into the city, I had a definite sense of God’s biding His moment. What puzzles me, to this day, is in what manner we failed. Certainly, the churches, both Orthodox and Catholic, were never fuller, from morning to night, than in that uncertain summer.

  I returned to my hotel to enjoy a second dinner with a Prussian major, an Austrian colonel, a Ukrainian banker and two émigrés recently arrived from Vologda where, they said, anyone with a vocabulary of more than two hundred words was liable to be shot by the Cheka out of hand. I heard stories of Bolsheviks capturing ‘government’ officers, of stripping them naked and cutting their rank-insignia into their living flesh before killing them. The days of the French Revolution, the days of the Commune, were as nothing compared to the years and years of the Bolshevik Terror. And what did we have to counter it? Humanity? Religion? All we had was pazhlost, that grey, half-dead spiritual state one is in during the winter, when nothing is worthwhile and one can only hope to survive until spring.

  In those days ordinary military operations did not exist; the entire pattern of war had gone crazy. It was gradually to become our Civil War. In the North-East were Czechs and Japanese, Russian Whites and small numbers of Americans and British. Finns, Letts, Lithuanians, Baltic Germans, Poles, French, Greeks, Italians, Rumanians and Serbs were all fighting somewhere. Few of these groups, even if they had been allies against the Germans, were able to agree either strategy or a common aim. Out of China, across the border, there were even raids from mixed groups of Chinese and renegade Cossack bandits bent entirely on looting and pillaging whatever they could get away with. It was like the Middle Ages, only worse. Tanks, machine-guns, aeroplanes and armoured trains were available to vicious, uneducated barbarians. In America it had been a crime to sell guns to Indians. This crime was as nothing compared to that of the British who put arms into the hands of Tatar tribesmen. It is like Africa today, where grenades and rocket-launchers replace the knobkerry and assegai. A small war, with few casualties, becomes a total war with thousands of civilians killed.

  We face the Dark Age and we go into it whistling The Red Flag as if it were a music-hall song. Only a few stand back, shouting warnings. Soon they shall be sucked into the black maelstrom, too. There will be no escape this time, no little island monasteries where enlightenment can flourish. The whole world shall be conquered in the name of Zion and Mao. Yet we must resist. If it is a test, we must succeed or be eternally deserted by God. Sometimes I fear He has already left this planet to its fate; that there is another planet, in a distant star-system, which has proven itself a worthier place; where Eden still flourishes.

  My mother took, in the coming weeks, to sending me notes in which she apologised for disturbing me, told me not to visit her and insisted I look after myself and be careful. The notes were brought by various means, often left at the hotel by Esmé on her way to work. Sometimes she would enclose a message of her own, insisting I stay away ‘for your own sake and your mother’s’. My poor mother was suffering from hysterical exhaustion. She would soon recover. I continued to feel extremely uncomfortable.

  My days and evenings were spent advising people on the installation, siting or repair of machinery. For these services I was paid in a variety of ways. Sometimes they were direct cash transactions. Sometimes shares or bonds. I was able to invest money in France, Switzerland, England and, of course, Germany. Without even possessing an office,
living entirely out of the hotel, I was becoming a man of means. I knew this could not last forever. I had still not received decisive backing for my main projects. The political climate remained too unsettled for anyone to consider serious investment in Ukraine. There was, as well, a certain amount of ‘pogromchik’ activity in Kiev and outlying regions. This made the German financial people nervous. Many of them had Jewish connections of their own: Jewish masters to whom they were liable. I considered travelling to Berlin, but my mother’s health stopped me from coming to a proper decision.