Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  The dark man with the newspaper was puzzled. ‘We’re not refugees.’

  ‘They don’t know that, do they? What bastards these people are. Worse than the Poles.’

  ‘You’re from Galicia?’ asked the woman.

  ‘I spent years in Moscow. And two years in Siberia.’

  ‘Where in Siberia?’ asked the man opposite him.

  ‘Near Kondinsk. Then I was a few months in the army.’

  ‘I know Kondinsk,’ said the man who had asked the question. He looked at me. ‘Are you a “Siberian”, too?’

  ‘Happily,’ I said, ‘not.’

  ‘It’s an experience,’ said Potoaki. ‘It gives you a better idea of what you’re fighting for. You live like the peasants. All our people should do it voluntarily. It keeps your feet on the ground.’

  ‘Or under it,’ said the dark man. Only I and Marusia Kirillovna did not laugh at this.

  ‘You get your milk in slices up there.’ Potoaki became nostalgic.

  ‘You had milk?’

  ‘The peasants did. They were often very kind. You have to saw it. Have you watched them sawing their milk?’

  The man opposite nodded but now he was looking sceptically at Potoaki, as if he did not believe the man had been a political prisoner at all. There was a great deal of elitism involved. Whatever your intelligence, the length of your Siberian sentence gave extra weight to any argument you might make. They were like savages. And all obviously were originally well-educated.

  The train was going faster. Soon it was moving as rapidly as any pre-war Express. This cheered us. ‘We could be in Odessa by morning,’ said Potoaki. He relaxed.

  His fellow Siberian said quietly, ‘I never feel lonely now. Not after so much solitude. Every spring I am utterly re-born. A new person. But with the same political convictions, of course. That, however, is the mind. The mind remains. But the spirit is re-born every spring.’

  He was becoming as much a bore as Potoaki. The man by the window uttered a choking, tubercular cough. The coughing grew worse. He began to snort and wheeze.

  ‘It’s asthma, I think,’ said the woman. She made to open the window. We all protested.

  ‘Get him into the corridor.’ Potoaki helped the man to his feet. Blood was on his lips. He tried to suppress the coughing and at the same time gasped for air. ‘What we need is a doctor.’

  From boredom and to show I was a good comrade, I got up and moved along the carriage, asking if a doctor were present. Naturally, there was not. Any person with a real profession would have refused to be in the ‘political’ carriage. They would have had proper work to do. The coughing subsided as I returned. Ice was falling away from one of the forward windows, melted by gusting steam. I saw a few bare trees and small, snow-covered hills. We passed what I took to be gypsy fires. I felt much better now that we had picked up speed.

  I remained in the corridor for the next hour or two, smoking and thinking. I had been lucky. None of the Bolsheviks had questioned me. All assumed I must be on important business because I had arrived in an official car. Dawn came, miserable and cunning. The train’s pace did not slacken. We were at least half-way to Odessa. The woman emerged from the compartment. She was stiff. She stretched her legs and arms like a dancer. Her pistol was on her hip. I realised, with a hint of amusement, that both skirt and black blouse were of heavy silk. She had not had a deprived childhood. She was used to the best. She nodded to me and asked for a cigarette which I willingly gave her. I had several hundred with me. They were likely to prove invaluable. We smoked. She rubbed at her neck. She seemed paler. I wondered if she were Jewish. There was something about her mouth. She yawned, looking out onto the grey snow. The sky was heavy and melancholy. There was yellow-grey mist hanging between it and the land. I have never really seen anything like it since. It seemed to depress her. I had a stupid impulse to put my arm around her shoulders (though she was almost as tall as me). I motioned. She looked into my face. She seemed startled. She said rapidly: ‘You’re tired. You should rest.’

  ‘Aha,’ I said. This was significant, even to me.

  ‘You must have a great deal on your mind. Too much thinking is exhausting, eh?’

  ‘Oh, indeed, Marusia Kirillovna.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m disturbing you?’

  ‘Not at all.’ I put my hand out to her without touching her. ‘I’m bored.’

  This relieved her. ‘I can’t stand being still. It’s what makes a revolutionary, I suppose. Impatience.’

  As one whose main virtue is patience, I could say nothing. Perhaps her generalisation was correct and that was why I was not a revolutionary. I have no patience with fools; but you will not find me complaining after five minutes if a bus does not come along.

  She continued. ‘One desires to create Utopia overnight. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it, why people resist? They haven’t the imagination, I suppose. Or the vision. We have to supply that. It’s our function. We all have a role.’

  I nodded. The train slowed, then gained speed. It drummed down a gradient, turning in a long curve, and everything was grey, including the locomotive, part of which I could now see. Our skins were grey. The windows were grey. The smoke from our grey cigarettes blended together to form a single grey cloud near the ceiling.

  ‘But what is duty, I wonder?’ asked Marusia Kirillovna.

  There came a noise from outside the train. I looked up at the embankment. I saw men in heavy coats squatting behind machine-guns. Others were mounted. They fired at us with carbines.

  The glass shattered. I fell to the floor, bearing Marusia Kirillovna with me. The train began to shriek and shudder. Cold air filled the squealing corridor. The train jolted as if mortally wounded, skidding down the gradient for a few more yards. It twitched and became lifeless, save for the sound of steam escaping, like the last breaths of a corpse.

  Marusia Kirillovna’s blood stained my shirt and jacket. It warmed my hands. Her face was all blood. The only thing I could recognise was one sad and disapproving eye. Even as I crawled back towards the compartment I thought she had died exactly as her romantic nature might have demanded. Few of us are given the opportunity.

  The Bolsheviks in my compartment were searching in their luggage for the pistols they all seemed to carry. I was astonished to see so much metal in those limp hands. I pulled my own bags down from the rack and, pushing them ahead of me, scrambled through the connecting door into the next carriage. I had no wish to be identified with the Reds.

  I found myself in a press of peasants who screamed uncontrollably or sat with their hands covering their heads. The glass here had also been shattered. Several people were wounded while others were quite dead, sitting bolt upright between fellow passengers who could not or did not wish to move. It was a peculiar moment. The peasants thought I was an official. They began asking me what had happened. I said I intended to find out. They must let me through. They pushed one another back, some even removing their caps, to allow me to pass. There were more machine-guns firing. It was from our side. Another volley. There were shouts from the embankment and from our own soldiers. The firing stopped. They seemed to be parleying.

  I reached the end of the second carriage and decided to wait where I was. The lavatory was occupied. I balanced my bags on top of some sacks and moved a little distance away, as if I were merely waiting to use the lavatory. Through the broken glass I saw stocky figures stumbling down the embankment. They made dark scars in the snow. They were laughing and using words like ‘comrade’ and ‘soviet’. I began to feel a little less anxious. These were Bolsheviks who had fired on us by accident. They were a long way from Bolshevik lines and wore no red stars. Indeed, they had no identifiable uniforms at all. I guessed they were irregulars.

  * * * *

  THIRTEEN

  THEY WERE USING a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian which was easy enough to understand. At least half of what they shouted was slogans. The attackers had begun to argue with the defenders. They needed s
upplies. The Red Army soldiers pointed out that the train only carried passengers. I heard one of the newcomers laugh. ‘They’ll have supplies. What are they? Katsupi on their way to France?’

  ‘There are important comrades on board. They have work in Odessa.’

  ‘We have work, too. Give us the Jews and a Katsup or two. We need food. Do you know how long we’ve been out here?’

  ‘Who are you with?’

  ‘Hrihorieff.’

  ‘He’s turned against us.’

  ‘He’s turned back again.’

  ‘How do we know?’

  There was silence. Then murmuring. Then some oaths. A few moments later sailors came alongside the train thumping with their rifle-butts on the doors. ‘Everybody out for an inspection, citizens.’

  They stopped when they got to the ‘Party carriage’. I began to make my way to it, but now the peasants were even more confused, trying to get their bundles together. I was pushed back. I managed to grab one suitcase. The other was left behind. I decided to return to my compartment by way of the ground. I had no galoshes. I plunged through melting snow. It was freezing. My shoes and trousers were soaked by the time I reached the carriage. I was climbing up when a soldier shouted. ‘Stay where you are!’

  I looked at him, smiling. ‘I’m merely going to my carriage, comrade. I’ve been trying to help the people back there who were shot.’

  The soldier, a heavy-faced Russian, paused. He thought for a moment. I continued to climb. He said, ‘Why do you have a suitcase with you?’

  ‘I picked it up instinctively. My comrades will vouch for me.’

  I opened the carriage door. The guard drew back the bolt on his rifle. ‘Stay there for a moment. I’ll have to check this.’

  ‘You’re being foolish.’

  ‘I must be careful.’

  I was glad I had the suitcase with my spare papers in it. At least they would show me as nothing more than an innocent engineer, my ‘cover’, if they liked, for Odessa. There were more people out in the snow now than there had been at Fastov. I heard a peasant ask an insurgent where we were. Near Dmitrovka, he said. It was a town some fifty versts from Alexandriya. It meant we had not been on the direct express route at all, although we were certainly heading for Odessa.

  I was relieved that we had not yet reached territory controlled by the notorious ‘Batko’ Makhno. Batko meant ‘Little Father’ or ‘Elder’, but with a more democratically affectionate ring. Makhno was supposed to be fighting on the Bolshevik side but was notorious for his treachery. He had almost defeated the Nationalists singlehanded at Ekaterinoslav in November.

  Hrihorieff’s men were a small unit left by the line to stop any passing train. People began to argue that the loco had been flying red flags. The Haidamaki claimed they had been confused. Nationalists were not above playing tricks.

  Their swarthy leader appeared. He was a barrel-bodied brute with heavy black eyebrows. He was dressed in a dark red-belted kaftan, with bullet-pouches, a sheepskin shapka, French army trousers, riding boots. He carried two Mauser pistols, a variety of knives and, of course, a Cossack sabre. He sported a vicious horsewhip. Like all Cossacks, he knew the value of that whip in inducing terror. It could kill. The villain was enjoying his power. I began to think I should have been better off with the Chekist.

  He stopped, as I had expected, when he got to me. He looked with some amusement at my good-quality clothes. They were wet to the knees and I was still covered in Marusia Kirillovna’s blood. ‘What’s in the suitcase?’ He spoke superciliously. ‘Gold?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m on Party business.’

  ‘From Moscow?’

  ‘From Kiev.’

  ‘They’re all yids in Moscow now.’ He fingered his whip reminiscently.

  I nodded.

  ‘And in Kiev. That’s what I don’t like about this. We’re actually helping the yids.’ He looked away from me in disgust and turned as if for support to the frightened peasants. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Odessa,’ I began.

  He turned back. ‘I was talking to these. Where are you going?’

  They chorused the names of various towns and cities. He scratched his heavy eyebrows. ‘That’s enough.’ He pointed with his whip at some obvious Jews, including two who wore skull-caps, and told them to stand forward. They came shuffling through the crowd. They looked hopeless.

  ‘Everyone else back in the carriage,’ he said.

  I started to climb the steps again but it was ‘not you’ and ‘back here’. I became impatient. ‘This won’t do, comrade.’

  ‘You’re a bloody Bolshevik yid.’

  I was shocked by the double insult. ‘My name’s Pyatnitski. I’m an engineer.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘I have a passport,’ I told him. I put my suitcase on its side on the step and opened it. I removed my spare set of papers. I offered them to him. It was the look of rage he gave me as he took them which made me realise he could not read. But he held them to his nose, going through them slowly. He put them in his sleeve, having studied the photograph very carefully. ‘Pyatnitski. That’s a Russian name.’

  ‘I can’t help my name, comrade. I’m working for Ukrainian interests.’

  ‘Nationalists?’

  ‘I don’t care what they’re called. I’m trying to free Ukraine from all foreign interests.’

  ‘Including yids?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘So you’re a traitor, too.’

  ‘I’m not Jewish.’

  ‘Then you’re the only Bolshevik who isn’t.’

  ‘May I return to my carriage?’

  ‘Why aren’t they outside, too?’ He glanced at the windows.

  ‘We’re Party people.’

  ‘Yids going home to Odessa.’ He struck at a pane of glass with his whip. It cracked. He laughed. ‘Come on, comrades. All out. In the snow with the proletariat.’

  They would not come. Eventually some of the bandits had to board the carriage and drive everyone down. They stood in groups like angry chickens. They had put their revolvers back in their pockets or in their luggage. Many were protesting. Not a few displayed special cards and passes. They made more noise than the whole of the rest of the train. ‘Shut up!’ shouted our persecutor. ‘What money have you got?’

  ‘Money?’ It was, I think, Potoaki speaking. ‘Hardly any.’

  ‘Bloody Red yids. Gold!’

  ‘Pogromchik!’ said a thin-faced woman in a head-scarf. ‘You’ve killed half the people in there. Corpses all over the place. You killed a girl!’

  ‘We’re used to killing, lady. It doesn’t mean a great deal to us.’

  ‘Trotsky will learn of this,’ said someone else.

  ‘Then Trotsky will find out how we treat yids in Ukraine. We’re not working for yids, Red, White, Green or Yellow. We’ve had enough of them.’

  ‘Anti-semitic, ignorant, capitalist. ..’

  ‘I’ll admit to all of that, comrade. Hrihorieff is fighting with your masters because it suits him. To get rid of the landowners. You think you’re using us. We’re using you.’ He lashed out with his whip. Its thongs whistled over the woman’s head. She sucked and sobbed. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘We want gold and supplies. We were promised them by Antonov. Where are they?’

  ‘They’re on the next train,’ I said. ‘A special train.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We discussed your supplies before I left. We knew it was urgent.’

  ‘Coming down this line?’

  ‘Following us.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Someone had guessed what I was doing, it shouldn’t be more than half-an-hour behind.’