Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  ‘I’m not a supply officer. I’m Major Pyatnitski.’ My youth and rank had a peculiar effect. He thought it was an impossible combination. But this was now a world of impossibilities. If I was so young and yet a major, I must therefore be an important political person. The cocaine quieted my stomach-pangs, as well as my nerves, though my bowels were constricting uncomfortably, ‘I have to send a telegram to Odessa.’

  He put weary arms on his desk in despair. ‘Have we taken Odessa?’

  ‘Not yet. But we have agents there.’

  ‘A telegram would have to go via Ekaterinoslav.’

  ‘I don’t care how it gets there, comrade.’ I spoke quietly, ‘It will naturally be in code, as a personal message.’

  He was baffled. ‘Perhaps we should have the advice of the political officers.’

  ‘I am a political officer.’

  ‘I have no authority.’

  That was the cry which resounded through Russia. It echoes on to this day. Once authority came from God, via the Tsar, to his officials. They knew where they were. Their authority was God’s. Now, in the name of Communism, they slither away from authority. I should have thought a Communist’s first duty was to accept his own responsibility and that of his fellows. Perhaps I am too stupid to understand the complicated reasoning of Marx.

  ‘Where are the political officers?’ I asked. It was a dangerous game, but it was the only one to play now. ‘This is of utmost urgency.’

  ‘Upstairs, comrade.’ He pointed as if to heaven. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘There has been no train.’

  ‘I came, my friend, in a truck. I was abducted by an undisciplined bandit who should be punished as soon as possible.’

  ‘I do not understand, comrade. Who was this?’

  ‘Sotnik Grishenko.’

  This meant something to him. He frowned. He wrote the name down. He circled it. He dipped his pen in his ink and underlined the circling. He pursed his lips. ‘Grishenko can be over-enthusiastic.’

  ‘He abducted me from a train taking me to Odessa. Now do you follow me?’

  These military clichés rang from my lips like little bells. They pealed for me. I did not have to think. Everyone spoke like that if they had any education. Only the illiterate and stupid used original phrases in Hrihorieff’s army. Those in command did nothing but ape the officers they had killed and robbed in their various mutinies and desertions. I had learned this instinctively. Such instincts are of considerable use, but they can complicate a life.

  ‘You’ll deal with Grishenko?’

  ‘I’ll report it to the appropriate division-commander, comrade major.’

  ‘Many other comrades were inconvenienced. Some were killed. I was captured. Is that serious enough?’

  ‘It is very serious.’

  ‘Grishenko should be severely reprimanded.’ I would have my vengeance. ‘Reduced to the ranks.’

  ‘He’s a useful field-officer,’ began the man at my side. I rounded on him. ‘Useful? At shooting comrades?’

  All the women were looking up. Some were pretty. They were like innocent nuns working quietly, unthinkingly, in Hell. We returned through this pleasant warmth of femininity to climb wooden stairs carpeted with red pile. On the landing a group of men were talking in intense, grumbling tones. They stopped as we appeared.

  ‘Pyatnitski,’ I said. ‘From Kiev.’

  None of these were partisans. Some were dressed as I was. Others wore smart, featureless uniforms of the kind affected by Trotsky and Antonov. They had the fresh-minted Bolshevik insignia: metal stars on their caps, carefully-sewn felt stars on their sleeves. The Reds were manufacturing such things on a large scale. Half the people in Bolshevik-occupied Russia were employed running up fresh red flags and pressing out brand-new metal stars.

  They greeted me. Some put their hands forward to be shaken. ‘I was on my way to Odessa. Party business. I was kidnapped, literally, by one of those bandits from the railway yards.’

  ‘Keep calm, comrade.’ A small, prematurely wizened creature with soft lips and white hands: ‘I’m Brodmann. It’s a problem already familiar to us. Let’s go in here.’ He put his hand on my spine and took me into a room full of hard, straight-backed chairs. There was a map of Southern Ukraine on the wall. Someone else closed the door quietly behind us. They seemed to relax. They were more frightened than me. Brodmann said, ‘We are political people. Bolsheviks and Barotbists. There’s been a suggestion Hrihorieff should be liquidated. That’s out of the question for the moment. He’s the best commander here. I say nothing, of course, against Comrade Antonov. He has also done brilliantly. Hrihorieff commands a huge army. He’s sympathetic to our cause. But he’s impossible to discipline. He has no real ideological education. That’s why it’s so important to keep him sweet while we educate his troops. When that’s done our problems will be much simpler.’ He went on in this manner for at least twenty minutes. Anyone who wants a larger bucket of the same drivel need only read one of those novels which wins the Stalin Prize with the regularity of a steel-press. I picked out all the useful information and then said, ‘Is there no way for me to get to Odessa?’

  ‘You were on the last train.’ A tall, thin man in a leather overcoat spoke from near the window. He had been observing a convoy of trucks and artillery. ‘You were very unlucky. The French have forbidden further trains.’

  ‘Can I send a telegram?’

  His moody, lugubrious features showed a degree of amusement. ‘Hrihorieff controls the telegraph as his personal means of communication. One of our people is supposed to be keeping an eye on him but he’s completely under Hrihorieff’s spell. He’ll do nothing without direct orders from the Ataman. We’re only allowed to use the telegraph to communicate with Hrihorieff, or sometimes Antonov.’

  ‘And where is Antonov?’

  ‘Trying to catch up with Hrihorieff. The bastard moves fast. It’s why he’s gathering so much support.’

  I was furious. This was socialism in action: death, destruction and slow strangulation in red tape. None of my risks had been worth a kopek. I should have remained with Yermeloff. My best plan was to board a train to Kiev where at least I would be on home ground. Mrs Cornelius might be able to help me. ‘Is there a train to Kiev?’

  ‘Probably,’ said the thin man. He drew on his cigarette as a starving baby draws on a teat. ‘They never give us any information.’

  ‘And Grishenko? Can he be punished?’

  ‘It depends how Hrihorieff feels. As his confidence grows he ignores us more.’ Brodmann offered me a chair. Fastidiously he helped me off with my coat. He placed it in a corner of the room. I must have looked odd in my blood-stained suit and felt boots. I sat down. I had a view from the window of the passing convoy. It was impressive.

  ‘Have you made an official complaint?’ asked the thin man.

  ‘If the officer downstairs took any notice.’

  ‘He’s efficient. One can’t say that for most of the others. The complaint will go to the appropriate DivCom.’

  I was satisfied that at least Grishenko would be severely embarrassed. It was less than he deserved for cutting me off from my family, calling me foul names and forcing me into the company of coarse oafs, of cynics like Yermeloff. My new comrades asked me what I had been doing in Kiev. I said I had been sabotaging Petlyura’s defences. This impressed them. I explained how Grishenko had made me fix his broken truck. I was a trained engineer. I had crucial work at the Odessa docks. I felt my importance growing as I spoke. The gaps in my knowledge of party etiquette were thus glossed over. I was not only a ‘political man’; I was an ‘activist’. Therefore I ranked very highly in their fanatical hierarchy. I drew on acquaintanceships from Odessa days, from my months in Petrograd. I spoke casually of trains wrecked and guns put out of action. Two or three of those in the room said my name was familiar. My abduction, instead of being a familiar affair, came to be seen in a serious light. My eloquence, my
anger, also helped me. I think I could have formed my own socialist group there and then. Thousands would have followed me.

  It was easy to become a leader in those days. Most Russians found it impossible to think in terms of self-sufficiency. We must stick together, they said, against the common enemy. The only common enemy I ever found was iconoclasm and egotism. But Trotsky did not want Russia saved. He wanted to be a god. As a god, he would stand on the roof of his Red Train and issue a proclamation: ‘Let there be peace.’ Trotsky desperately wished to be acknowledged our Saviour, like an Old Testament prophet. Robbed of this, he turned against Stalin. I wonder how he faced God after Stalin kicked him out and he wound up in a Mexican bordello with a pick-axe in his back. I can imagine the scene. Did God stand on the roof of a train and say to Trotsky: ‘You are forgiven’? I doubt it. That pick-axe is probably proving useful in Hell.

  My new friends took me down to the back of the hotel. Here was a small dining-room. The thin man left us. We sat at bare tables and good simple food was brought to us (Party people always have the best in Russia). I ate little. I still felt the effects of my sickness. There was coffee. I drank several cups. This settled my stomach. The thin man came back. They had been discussing the problem of billeting me. Only a few places were available. Most of the political people slept in Wagons-Lits at the sidings. I, of course, had no wish to return there. I explained why.

  ‘I’ve spoken to our friend at the telegraph post,’ said the thin man. ‘He has had a thousand messages from Hrihorieff. They all conflict, as usual. I sent a complaint about that officer who kidnapped you. It was received and acknowledged. The officer is to be shot. I saw the order.’

  Though the brute deserved it, I did not want any man’s blood on my hands. ‘Could he not merely lose rank?’ I asked. ‘Or be whipped?’

  ‘Hrihorieff only has one punishment. Death. You’re generous, comrade. But we might not get another chance to teach those pogromchiks a lesson.’

  One less Grishenko would be no bad thing for the world, but I had had no wish to take such a cruel vengeance. I do not possess the killing-instinct. I am a scientist first and foremost. If Fate had given me a slightly better hand of cards I would now be working happily at the National Physical Laboratory or teaching at London University.

  It was decided I should share Brodmann’s room. Brodmann’s partner would go to the yards. As I left with the small revolutionist I asked the thin man, ‘When will the punishment occur?’

  ‘Immediately. An arrest. An accusation. A firing squad. I gather he’s not a popular officer.’

  ‘That’s true.’ I only hoped Yermeloff would not blame me and seek me out.

  ‘Then we should not have much trouble.’ He stopped himself in mid-gesture as if realising he had committed a social blunder. ‘Did you want to witness it?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘He must be shot. Hrihorieff could return, change his mind and have us shot instead. It’s happened.’ His lips moved in a smile.

  I walked with Brodmann through the roaring darkness of a town troubled by excited military preparations. Trucks towing guns honked, teams of artillery horses whinnied. Troops of cavalry and infantry quarrelled and cursed and went their ways. Men in full kit ran rapidly across the street into their division headquarters. We passed through all this to the far side of Alexandriya and reached a street of prosperous cottages. Here, so far from the sidings, it was relatively peaceful. We came to a walled garden with a gate in it. Brodmann admitted us with a large key. It was an old-fashioned latch. It had been polished. We strolled along a stone path. This part of the town was almost idyllic, with trees and fences and widely-separated little gabled houses. ‘Our landlord,’ said Brodmann, ‘is a retired doctor. He hates us. He calls us vampires. Of course, “Jew” is his favourite form of insult. I advise you not to let yourself be drawn into an argument with him. He’s harmless.’

  ‘Jews! Vampires! You killed the Emperor!’ A high-pitched voice shrilled from what I guessed was the parlour.

  Brodmann and I crept up the stairs. The doctor did not emerge. I think he was frightened of us. A mouse content to squeak from the safety of his hole.

  The room was fairly clean. The beds were unmade, the linen was somewhat grubby. But it was better than Yermeloff had offered me before Grishenko had evicted us. Grishenko would soon regret that action. He was probably already dead. There was little furniture, save an old screen, an ordinary military lamp for light, a pile of pamphlets and hand-bills evidently not the property of our landlord, a couple of cane-seated chairs and two wooden-framed beds of the sort peasants or servants slept in before the Revolution. Brodmann drew down the blind. He went behind the screen and undressed to his red vest and his long underpants before putting on a thick flannel nightgown. ‘He’s sold or given away everything. He’s afraid of looters. He probably has a few bits and pieces hidden in the garden. I don’t think he made much from his doctoring. Not in this village. He knew Hrihorieff when the Ataman was a child. Nobody in Alexandriya seems to dislike the Ataman much. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with him, that he’s protecting the interests of the Tsar. He might as well believe that, eh?’ Brodmann continued in this vein. He was one of those politicians who loves to sound ‘realistic’. His cheap cynicism no longer bothered me as I went behind the screen, undressed, and got into bed. I wore only my blood-stained shirt, from which I had removed the collar and cuffs. It was very cold. I was restless from the cocaine, but Brodmann’s drone helped me sleep peacefully and well.

  I became alert early in the morning. Noises from below had awakened me. There were heavy boots on the stairs. I was terrified. The doctor’s squeaks came along the landing. I cleared my throat, but could not speak. I peered through the half-light as the door opened slowly. I at once recognised the silhouette of Grishenko the Cossack. He had escaped death. Anger poured from him like heat from fresh-cast metal. I knew that this was not a nightmare. I could see the whip at his belt.

  I remember only his outline; my sense of his brutality. None of his features are clear to me. I remember his powerful hands. I knew, of course, that he had come to kill me. He held two guns. I was shivering as I sat up.

  I waited for the pain of the shots.

  But the guns were reversed. He was giving them to me. Like an accusing ghost. Did he want me to kill him? I put my two trembling hands towards the offerings: Yermeloff’s pistols with their rounded pommels. I clasped them awkwardly. There was bile in my throat. I did not put my fingers on the trigger-buttons. The guns weighted my wrists. They were too heavy. Grishenko was challenging me, I thought. I did not speak.

  His voice was a throbbing, furious whisper. ‘They’re from Yermeloff. A gift.’

  Brodmann moaned in his bed. Grishenko glared at him absently. Then he appeared to dismiss him as he returned his attention to me. ‘He said to bring them. Now they are yours.’

  I did not understand.

  Grishenko had a tear in his left eye. He pulled one of his long daggers from its red velvet sheath. He leaned over me. ‘We are free. We have our own laws.’ He put the knife under my chin. ‘Up.’

  ‘Why?’ I began to cough and then stopped, fearing that I would impale myself on the sharp tip. The knife-point touched my jugular. I felt the vein pulsing against steel.

  ‘Up, yid.’

  I recalled Yermeloff’s warning. Grishenko was a savage dog who would only attack if you showed fear. I pulled at the triggers. The guns were not cocked. They would not fire. Grishenko put his face closer to mine. His breath burned me. ‘Up.’

  I had no choice. I dropped the pistols to the bed. I stood in my shirt. My legs and genitals froze. I was dizzy. He placed his free hand on my chest and pushed me against the wall.

  Brodmann began to whine slogans from where he sat in his nightshirt. He babbled about ‘rights’ and my ‘importance’. The Cossack said absently to him, ‘I’ll kill you. Be quiet.’

  I think my neck had begun to bleed.

  Grishenko
gripped my shoulder. It felt as if it was going to break. The knife slid slowly down my stained shirt and the shirt parted. The blade touched my groin. ‘He said you would know what the guns meant to him. He was a holy one. I loved him. I protected him. I thought you would cheer him up. He was not a happy man.’ The point was drawn down one leg and then another. I hardly felt it, yet blood trickled. I did not beg. My honour was in me. I did not beg as the others begged. When he told me to face the wall, I obeyed. ‘He wanted you to live. To survive, he said. I did not understand. But Yermeloff was closer to God than I am. Do you accept his gift?’