It was a Chekist commissar in the leather jacket they all wore (many still wear such jackets, as easy to spot as Special Branch anoraks). He had yellow hair and a wide, prudish mouth. There were three Red Army guards behind him. They wore sailor uniforms, with red stars and bandoliers. They carried long rifles with fixed bayonets. The Chekist held the hotel register in his hands. He turned the pages. ‘You have stayed here frequently, citizen. Is this your home?’
‘I lost my own home,’ I told him. ‘It was looted by the Hetman’s people and by Petlyura.’
‘You don’t seem to have lost much.’ He came into the room.
‘I was poor. I worked with the Soviets. Pyatnitski?’ I hardly knew what lies to tell. I was desperate to talk my way clear of this terrible man.
‘You’ve stayed here and left, stayed here and left. Why’s that?’
‘I was in prison,’ I told him.
‘What had you done?’
‘Nothing. Bolshevik sympathies are enough to get you jailed in Kiev.’
‘You weren’t here during our previous occupation?’
‘I was in Kharkov, visiting comrades.’
‘And who do you support? The Kiev group?’
I knew no more about the different factions of the Party than I did about the sorts of flowers one might discover on a country walk. ‘I was non-aligned,’ I said. ‘My sympathies are with Moscow. I had made attempts to get back there.’
‘Have you any papers?’
I knew better than to give up my real papers, but I still had a spare set in my luggage. I opened my suitcase and took them out. ‘You’ll see I’m a scientist.’
‘Doctor Pyatnitski, is it? You’re very young.’
‘I did well at Petrograd, comrade.’
‘Your degree is from Kiev.’
‘I was transferred. That’s why I found myself here in the first place. You’ll discover that Comrade Lunarcharsky is an acquaintance of mine. He’ll vouch for me.’
‘You’re well-connected.’ He was sardonic. ‘One meets a lot of well-connected overnight Bolsheviks.’
‘I knew many comrades in Petrograd. Before the Revolution. I had a reputation. There are people there who know me.’
The Chekist sighed and scratched himself under his chin with my papers. He replaced a wide-brimmed hat on his head and looked at me through green, almost sympathetic eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was about to kill me. He turned away. A ritual had begun. ‘You’ll let these comrades search the rooms?’
‘If you think it necessary.’ There was a growing scent of death. I had smelled it once or twice before. I would learn to identify it easily in the months and years which followed.
‘You’ve been living very well.’
‘I’ve been lucky.’
‘How have you earned your money?’
‘As a mechanic.’
He sniffed. I wished I had stayed at Mother’s or had risen early enough to catch that Odessa train. ‘My working clothes aren’t here, of course.’
He removed his hat again. One of the sailors found an envelope in a drawer and brought it to him. ‘We still need skilled mechanics, comrade.’ He emptied all the Petlyurist military insignia into his hand.
I began to laugh.
He rounded on me. He was one of those unimaginative men who finds laughter baffling. I stopped, ‘I was offered a commission. Of course I refused it. That’s a souvenir.’
‘A major?’
I would normally have become impatient at this school-masterly malice, the stock-in-trade of so many Chekists and, indeed, policemen everywhere. They have no wit, but they have power. The worst abuse of that power, in my view, is in its employment to make bad jokes.
‘Is it major? I’m impressed.’ I was frightened.
‘Why did they offer you a commission?’
‘They wanted my help with their industrial problems.’
‘Running factories? Or motor-cars? Or what?’
‘Advice. I’ve helped keep most of Kiev going.’
He rubbed at his light-coloured eyebrows. He drew his puritanical lips together as if he had remembered a particularly unpleasant sin, either of his own or someone else’s. ‘You wouldn’t have had anything to do with the fire in that church? It was like a damned beacon. It helped us move in last night. I heard Petlyura or the French had installed a secret weapon up there. It had gone wrong. Was that you?’
‘It was,’ I said. ‘I sabotaged it.’
He smiled.
‘I was fired at by Petlyura’s men,’ I said, ‘while I was doing it. I’d been asked to work with it. I agreed. It was about to be turned on our forces when I set the sights out of alignment. There was a fight. It exploded.’
‘I think we’d better shoot you,’ said the commissar. I had irritated him. Over the months he had been doing his job he had evidently ceased to listen to words. He listened only to the sounds his victims made. He had learned to recognise desperation and anxiety and to identify these, as the simple-minded always will, with guilt. I could only continue to repeat the names of certain Bolsheviks whom I had known slightly in Petrograd. These names produced what Pavlov calls ‘a conditioned response’. It made him hesitate. He probably hated uncertainty, but he would hate those who made him uncertain so it was a dangerous game I played. These Moscow leather-jackets were famous for their snap decisions: a look at the clothes, a glance at the hands to see if they had done manual work, a quick check to ascertain ‘bourgeois background’, and off to the firing squad. Someone had since mentioned that the whole of the Bolshevik leadership could, by this yardstick, have been shot by the Cheka. My hands were not soft. I held them out towards the Chekist. I was mute. He frowned. I held my hands out to him, showing the fingers and palms calloused by the mechanical work I had been doing. He hesitated. He coughed for a second or two and drew a cigarette from a cardboard box he carried in one of his pockets. He had to shift his holster to get at the cigarettes. He struck a match. I looked around for my own cigarette. I had dropped it, but nothing was on fire. My papers went into his other deep pocket. ‘You’re wasting my time. You’re under arrest.’
‘House arrest? What have I done?’
‘This room’s needed.’
There was a sound of feet in the passage outside. A woman’s voice. Mrs Cornelius came in. She was wearing a loose, one-piece dress made of bright red silk and she had a red cloche on her head. Her lips and cheeks were carmine and emphasised the blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair. When she saw me she stopped dead and began to laugh.
‘ ‘Ullo, Ivan!’ She embraced me. ‘Yore a proper littel bad kopek, ain’t yer!’
‘You’re with the Reds?’ I said in English.
‘Been wiv ‘em all ther time, ain’t I? Lucky fer me, eh? Well, they’re more fun than the ovvers. Or were. I’ve got a noo boyfriend. ‘E’s ever so important.’
The Chekist was now looking firmly at his polished boots and frowning. He said something very sharp to the sailors. They began to carry Mrs Cornelius’s trunks into the room. She glanced round. ‘I’m not kickin’ yer art, am I? They’ll do anyfink fer me. But it’s too much, reelly. Sort o’ musical chairs. Yer never know ‘ose bed yore gonna sleep in next, eh?’ She threw back her head and bellowed with laughter. She giggled. She put a soft hand on my arm. ‘Yer gotter larf, incha?’
I did my best to smile and to adopt an easy stance which might convince the Chekist, who remained in the room, that I was one of the party elite. ‘Is Lunarcharsky here?’ I asked.
“E stopped bein’ any fun ages ago. And ‘is wife or somefink got stroppy. Nar. I’m serposed to be wiv Leo, but ‘e keeps goin’ ter ower places. I jest carn’t catch upwiv’imat all. I don’t reelly mind.’
‘Leo?’
‘Lev,’ she said. ‘You know. Trotsky. Littel trotty-true-ski I corl ‘im. Har, har, har.’
‘You’re his - paramour ...’
‘Lovely of yer ter say so, Ivan. I’m ‘is bit o’ all right, if that’s wot yer mean. Well,
it’s fer the best. I’m tryin’ ter get back ter the sarth. Is that wot you’re doin’? I couldn’t stand anuvver winter’ere, could you?’
‘To Odessa?’
‘Seemed a good idear. ‘E don’t speak a word o’ English,’ she confided of the commissar, who was looking very sourly at both of us, ‘and ‘e ‘ates me. ‘E don’t seem too bloody fond o’ you, by ther look of it.’
‘I don’t think he is. You are going to the coast, then?’
‘I’ve orlways liked ther seaside.’ She winked. ‘Funny time ter pick fer an ‘oliday, innit?’
She knew I was in trouble. It was a knack she had. ‘Wot’s ther service like ‘ere?’ she asked casually.
‘It depends who you are.’
The leather-jacket said: ‘Would you mind speaking Russian, comrade. When in Rome...’
‘Russki?’ Mrs Cornelius replied in her abominable and attractive Russian. It was easy to see how, with her beauty and her spirit and her accent, she had won the hearts of the top Bolsheviks. She baffled the Chekist far more than I had. She laughed. He turned away to hide his scowl, ‘If yer like, Ivan.’ It seemed she addressed everyone by the same name. ‘This is a very good comrade. He is on his way to Odessa to work for the party there. He is known to many leading comrades from Petrograd days. I think you will find he and Comrade Stalin are old friends.’ The so-called ‘Siberian’ Bolsheviks had more weight with the rank-and-file at that time. Stalin was then just a name to me, associated with various rather incompetently waged Civil War campaigns and not popular with the Jewish intellectuals who controlled Party policies.
I said, taking out my watch, that I had probably missed the Odessa train. The Chekist went to put his cigarette out in a spittoon. ‘It was stopped. It’s being searched at Fastov.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ I make no attempt to imitate Mrs Cornelius’s Russian. ‘You can send a telegram and tell them to hold it up a bit longer.’
‘But how can I get to Fastov?’ I asked a reasonable question.
‘Same way as the troops,’ she told me. ‘By motor.’
‘I am not fortunate enough ...’
She slapped me on the shoulder. She began to pull on a huge fox-fur coat with a matching hat. ‘Daft!’ she said in English. ‘We’ll go in my bleedin’ motor, won’t we!’
On her instructions, the sailors picked up my bags. They took them down to her large Mercedes which was still parked outside the main doors. There was oil on the snow. I thought it was blood. ‘‘Op in,’ she told me. I climbed into the back seats. I had never experienced a car like it. It felt warm under the canopy. In Russian she said to the driver: ‘What’s the benzine situation?’
‘To go where?’ The driver wore a Red Army cap with earflaps, and a huge red star sewn on the front. Otherwise he was dressed in the regular khaki of a Tsarist soldier: trenchcoat, gloves, scarf wound round the lower part of his face against the cold, and goggles.
‘Fastov, was it?’ Mrs Cornelius turned to me.
‘Fastov,’ I said.
‘We can get there.’ The driver was amused. ‘And probably back.’
‘Perfect.’
The Chekist stood outside the hotel. His hands were deep in his pockets. He looked smug. I remembered. ‘You have my papers, comrade.’
As one robbed of his last consolation, he gave them to me. He must have been fondling them. Plainly he disapproved of Mrs Cornelius, but he had no power over her. Now he had no power over me. He had become like a demon in a pentagram.
‘Don’t forget about the cable,’ Mrs Cornelius told him. ‘And if Comrade Trotsky’s in touch asking for me, tell him I’ve put Comrade Pyat on the train to Odessa will you?’
‘Yes, comrade.’ He glared at us. The Mercedes, its engine cranked by grinning sailors, began to shake and mutter. Two of the sailors jumped into the front seats beside the driver. A third stood on the running board, his rifle on his shoulder. The driver engaged the engine, and we were off in style, flying the red hammer-and-sickle flag: an official Bolshevik car! More than once, as we left Kiev behind, we were cheered by the conquering Reds. It was an irony I think Mrs Cornelius appreciated. She would often wave back, but more like a queen than a comrade. It was then that I experienced one of my first ‘releases’. There are a number of them. I value them greatly. They are all specific to this century (i.e. I do not include the release of sexual fulfilment): the Release of Flying; the Release of Steam-liner Sailing; the Release of Rapid Train Travel; the Release of Motoring. In that monstrous German automobile, guarded by elite members of the Revolutionary Army, with a beautiful foreign woman at my side (her rose perfume, her furs, her wonderful complexion, her stylish self-assurance) I knew the Release of Motoring. I resolved to obtain such a car as soon as possible. She too was enjoying the ride. She chuckled. ‘Wot a pair o’ survivors we are, you an’ me, Ivan. That’s ther fing I like most abaht yer, I fink.’
I was still dazed by what had taken place. It was she, after all, who had rescued me. Without her, I should be dead. She nudged me in the side. ‘Never say die, eh?’
Suddenly I was laughing as she, alone, has been able to make me laugh. I laughed like a child.
Between avenues of lime trees, we travelled towards Fastov. I remembered my gypsy Zoyea. I imagined myself driving her in this car. It was not disloyalty to my rescuer to enjoy this fantasy. Mrs Cornelius had no sexual claims on me. I had none on her. She is the best friend I ever had. And all because I had visited a dentist in Odessa and been able to speak English! My luck since then was chiefly to stem from her. She became my mother, sister, goddess, guardian angel. And yet most of the time she hardly noticed me. I amused her. She had as much affection for me as a woman might have for a favourite cat. No more and no less. And, like a favourite cat, I survived to give her some comfort, I hope, in her old age. She wore very well. It was only, really, in the fifties that she began to decline and run to fat, though she had always been built on proper feminine proportions. I hate these skinny girls who try to look like boys. No wonder everyone today is a homosexual. We had thin girls in the twenties, but Mrs Cornelius was always feminine. I cannot say I have been as completely certain of my own sexuality as she, but for that, I suppose, I must blame Prince Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff and perhaps even my cousin Shura. Unwittingly, Shura showed me that women are not to be trusted: they try too hard to please too many people. It is a man’s world. Those idiots who come mincing into my shop have no idea what I have witnessed. I understand every word, every hint, every gesture. The world did not begin in 1965. Perhaps it ended then. Affection, moderation, understanding; these are now only of value to the elderly. And the elderly are no longer respected. In Russia, if I lived there, they would be calling me an old bore: boltun. We laughed at them in Kiev: the Jews of Podol who had nothing but gossip and memory, which they mistook for experience. It was that sentimentality which used to irritate me. It still does. It is not surprising their sons rebel and become cruel, pragmatic revolutionaries; cynicism is the other side of the sentimental coin.
The sailors were surprisingly good-natured about the trip. I think they enjoyed the motor-car. They had seen a great deal of the world. They had known what it was to risk their lives. They were, in their way, men of good will. They have not changed much, our Russian sailors. When I go to the docks for my vodka, as I still try to do, I meet them and speak to them. They are just as self-confidently tolerant and tough. They were fond of Mrs Cornelius. They flattered her with all sorts of purring Russian endearments, as they would flatter their sweethearts. She responded by blowing them kisses and sharing her food and cigarettes with them.
Scores of dead horses were piled alongside the Fastov road. They were stiffening. Some were still warm; you could smell them. There were human corpses as well, sprawled in the winter sun; young peasant bodies left behind as Petlyura had tried to leave me behind, to cover his escape. Petlyura had been another sentimentalist who betrayed all he claimed to stand for. As usual he had accused as traitors tho
se he had misled; sacrificing them to his enemies when they had come to doubt his lies. They probably deserved their fate. Some still held their booty: a pair of women’s shoes, a length of cloth, an ornamental sword. But most had already been stripped by the followers of Marx and Lenin. We passed a black line of dead Orthodox priests. The line had fallen neatly against a snow-drift. Behind the drift was an almost identical line of birches. It was as if shadows had been reversed, for the sun was on our side of the trees.
There was blood, too, and that was black. The priests had been dead for some while. Their crucifixes had been cut from them, of course, as well as their rings, but otherwise their clothing was neatly arranged. Some pious woman had come upon them in the morning and attempted to give them a semblance of dignity. I remembered the church and the singing. The sweet girls’ voices. I think Catholic Petlyurists had shot the priests.