Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  All the gold would soon be gone from Russia. You see it in the Kensington antique shops still, just near the Soviet Embassy.

  It was August, I learned. It grew hotter and hotter. Whenever possible, the hatches would be left open. We would take turns in the turret, trying to cool ourselves. My face and hands became quite brown. I was happy and very content by the time we entered a range of low wooded hills; it might have been Dorset, said Captain Wallace. We halted. Wallace conferred with Kulomsin. Kulomsin indicated a small, dusty road, wide enough to take a carefully-steered tank. He would go ahead in the car.

  The leaves of the trees were shimmering. The smell of earth, recently damp and now drying in the sun, had the effect of further relaxing me. I have since discovered that the scent of flowers, rather than the by-product of the poppy, can calm me quite rapidly: hyacinth, roses, lilac and sometimes lilies do this.

  I had just taken my turn in the turret, when we emerged from the wood and began to roll across an overgrown lawn leading down to an old ornamental lake with ruined balustrades. There was an artificial island in the middle. On it were willows and the gutted remains of a Japanese gazebo. Far across the murky waters I saw a large, neo-classical mansion. It was pitted by recent artillery bombardment. Its southerly side was half caved-in from what I took to have been a recent fire. Doubtless peasants, Bolsheviks, Nationalists, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, bandits of all descriptions, had had their way with house and estate. But it retained a good deal of its antique dignity. The Volunteer Army colours were flying from the roof now. The owner, doubtless dead or fled, would have been reassured to see the flag, if not the rather battle-weary White troops who moved around the grounds, setting up a camp.

  The tank followed the curve of the water until we reached a kind of paddock where several more tanks were already at rest. To my absolute joy I saw, near a jetty on the far shore of the lake, two seaplanes. They had been hastily painted with Volunteer insignia and obviously had belonged to the Germans. There was a large machine and a very small single-seater. The first was a double-biplane with huge sets of wings fore and aft: an Oertz Flugschooner. The other was a Hansa-Brandenburg W20, meant to be flown from U-Boats but never actually used for that purpose. It could be collapsed and stored very quickly and was just as easily re-assembled. It was an ideal plane for this sort of campaigning where water, of course, was not always available. Hansa-Brandenburgs were wonderful aircraft. The Oertz on the other hand had a bad reputation. It was difficult to bring in on even the calmest waters. I could not take my eyes away from either plane until the tank cut its engine. We began to disembark, the Australians exchanging loud, friendly greetings and complaining about their Russian allies. Eventually Captain Wallace came up to me. He would introduce me to our Russian CO. We walked around the lake to the mansion. There was a smell of decay I found pleasant. The Volunteer units had made the house their GHQ.

  I knew more than a little regret for the idyllic past, when the house and estate had represented the acme of civilisation in South Russia. However, I was glad enough to enjoy what it still represented. I imagined how it must have looked in the days of Turgenev who wrote so beautifully about such places you might have imagined yourself in France. The hall was wide and cool. A spiral staircase led off it. As usual all pictures and anything of the slightest value had been carried off. There were a few camp-chairs and collapsible desks for the staff, maps on the wall; an atmosphere of lassitude created, I suspect, by the heat. The majority of the soldiers were Russians in the smart uniforms of Tsarist times. There were also French, Greek and British officers among them. We were, I learned, less than twenty versts from Odessa and were quite near the coast. I could almost smell the beloved scent of flowers and saltwater. As I entered a large room, I thought I recognised one of the Russians. He was of average height, with a monocle and a small moustache, wearing a dark leather jacket open to reveal a light blue army shirt. The uniform, with its red, yellow and black flashes, was that of the Russian Engineers. He was a Second-Lieutenant. He was someone I had met in Petersburg when he had been home on leave. I saluted Major Perezharoff, the Russian ranking officer, who sat moodily on his desk smoking. Captain Wallace introduced me to him as ‘Major Pyatnitski, Intelligence’. Major Perezharoff regarded me with a scowl. He had a dark, unhappy Crimean face. He spoke in the purest French, asking me how things were in Nikolaieff. I explained I had been serving with the tanks. He nodded. ‘You speak English. That’s something.’ He sighed. ‘And you were spying on the Reds?’ He glanced with distaste at my clothes. ‘We have no spare uniforms.’

  ‘I was captured. And rescued by Captain Wallace.’

  ‘Where were you last?’

  ‘Hulyai-Polye. Before that Alexandriya. Before that Kiev.’

  ‘Do you know what Antonov’s up to?’

  ‘The different factions are at loggerheads, unable to agree amongst themselves. Their movements, I regret, are now a mystery to me.’

  ‘Well, their morale’s no better than ours. I’m glad.’ He turned away from me. I saluted the Second-Lieutenant and brought my heels together, unable to match the precision of the true Russian soldier. ‘I believe we are acquainted. Are you not Alexei Leonovitch Petroff, cousin to my old friend Prince Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff? We met at the Mikhishevskis some years ago. In Peter. You knew me then as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He blinked and removed the monocle from his eye. He had become more expert with it now. ‘We talked about Rasputin.’ He uttered a rather unpleasant laugh.

  ‘Kolya and I were very close. I was studying science.’

  He looked at me with a familiar insolence. I had not really experienced anything like it since Petersburg. I remembered how irritating he had been. But we were now, after all, equals. Indeed, I outranked him. ‘Do you know how Kolya is? Where he is? I know he went into politics.’

  ‘Kolya?’ The laugh was challenging, as if he laughed at a conqueror. He was puzzling. He said: ‘Who knows? Cheka?’

  ‘He’s in prison?’

  Petroff laughed again. ‘Unlikely. They don’t keep too many prisoners for long, do they? Particularly Kerenskyite princes.’

  I knew a terrible sadness. He spoke almost accusingly. I wondered if he associated me with Kolya’s political comrades.

  ‘You have English, I hear?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was mourning Kolya. He had been the best friend I had known. ‘I’m in Intelligence. I was acting as interpreter with the Australians.’

  ‘I could do with an interpreter. It always takes half-an-hour to translate a report. We’ll lose Odessa at this rate. Why don’t you come up with me, as my observer?’ The engineer’s uniform had deceived me. I remembered his conversation, then, in that Petersburg drawing-room. He was, of course, a pilot-officer. His was one of the planes on the lake. It could be my first trip in a machine not of my own making. I was curious to experience the differences.

  ‘In the Oertz?’ I said.

  ‘It’s the only two-seater. Done any observing before?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It’s fun.’ He laughed again, still sardonically, still as if I had somehow cheated him at a sport. ‘What do you say, Kryscheff?’

  ‘If your seniors agree ...’

  ‘I have none. I’m a flyer. Like the tank people, I’m my own man. They need us too much to make us go through all that palaver. I’m going soon. There’s something I have to do in Odessa. You know the Church of the Vanquisher?’

  ‘It’s a strange name for a church.’ I tried to join in whatever his joke was. But Kolya’s memory was too strong.

  ‘Isn’t it? There’s a map in the plane. You can make notes of positions.’ There was a despairing quality about him. All his ideals had gone. He wanted to be revenged on something but could find nothing to blame. I should have been more nervous of him, but I wanted to forget about Kolya and I desperately wanted to take the aeroplane trip.

  Petroff saluted Major Perezharoff. ‘Sir, this
officer will be of considerable use to me as an observer. He can also relay reports directly to the English liaison people. I should like to take him up with me.’

  Perezharoff shrugged. ‘He’ll be out of our way.’

  Having said farewell to Captain Wallace I left the mansion. I wandered with a suddenly silent Petroff down to the lake. A small wooden jetty had been repaired and led out to where the seaplanes were moored. ‘Do you know the Oertz?’ he asked.

  ‘I know the Germans rejected them for war work.’

  ‘Not at the end. That’s how we got it. They’re devils to handle, but they’ve their own beauty. The little Hansa is a gem. You’d hardly know you were taking off or touching down. Like a dragonfly. But she’s a one-seater.’

  ‘You use both?’

  ‘I’m the only airman left. You’ve had some plane experience, didn’t Kolya say?’

  ‘Mine were experimental.’

  ‘Yes.’ He was thoughtful. ‘Kiev, of course.’

  ‘I owe Kolya much.’

  ‘You were a special friend? He was a true Bohemian. But he knew his duty.’

  ‘Politics?’ I shrugged. I was missing a clue to the nature of this exchange. We reached the end of the jetty.

  ‘Hot as hell, eh?’ Petroff removed his cap. it’s cooler up there.’ He seemed to yearn for the sky. The sun caught his monocle. It blazed like a dragon’s eye. ‘You survived, however. You’re a bit of a fraud, aren’t you? So you went into Intelligence.’

  I ignored the insult, ‘It was my only possible contribution.’

  ‘Spying.’

  ‘Sabotage, too. As an engineer, I had to make the best use of my talents. In the struggle.’

  ‘You were always against the Reds?’

  I wondered why he was interrogating me so intensely. ‘Profoundly opposed.’

  ‘You disagreed with Kolya?’

  ‘On that alone.’

  ‘I supported him. I was with Kerenski, you know. We’re all guilty.’

  ‘Kerenski’s revolution cost me my academic career.’

  He looked down at rainbow oil on the water. ‘We’re all guilty. But you and I have survived Kolya.’

  ‘Guilty? For what?’

  ‘For not listening to our hearts. Everyone possesses precognition, don’t you think? It’s just that we refuse to accept what we see.’

  ‘The future?’

  ‘In a tea-cup or on our palms. In the cards, or in a cloud.’

  ‘I am not superstitious. I regret I’m an unmitigated rationalist.’

  ‘Ha! And you’re alive, while Kolya’s dead.’ He called over to a group of mechanics who lay on the grass at the water’s edge. ‘We’ll be wanting the Oertz started up.’ Then his attention seemed drawn to some distant willows.

  ‘We’re going now?’ I asked.

  He grimaced. ‘Why not?’ He was abstracted. I thought he was unstable. ‘There’s something I want to do. For the future.’ I assumed he was thinking about death and meant to write a will.

  ‘You want to give it to me?’

  ‘What? If you like.’ He rubbed under his left eye with a gloved finger. He grinned, ‘If you like. You can’t see the future, then? And you a scientist!’

  He had picked up some fragments of fashionable mysticism at the Mikhishevski ménage, perhaps from his sister Lolly, that ‘Natasha’ of happier days. ‘Come.’

  I returned with him to the mansion and a small ground-floor room evidently shared by several people and which had formerly been a pantry. It still smelled of bread and mice. From under his mattress he drew an unopened bottle of French cognac. ‘You like this?’

  ‘I did once.’

  ‘Good. We’ll drink it. For Kolya.’

  ‘I cannot refuse.’

  We sat on the ledge of the little window. There was an untidy kitchen garden outside. Two privates were trying to make something of it. They were working expertly, like peasants. Petroff uncorked the bottle and handed it to me. I drank sparingly, with relish. He took it from me impatiently and tilted his head back to drink nearly half the old brandy in a single swallow. War had evidently coarsened his palate. He gave me the bottle. I drank deep but there was still a fair amount left. He laughed that irritating laugh of his. I remembered it from Petersburg: universal irony tinged with tension and resentment. He finished the stuff off, but for a few drops, ‘It’s how airmen drink. We need it. Did you hear about those silly bastards who dragged their own planes on sleds for hundreds of versts to get to fight for Deniken? They were keen, eh?’

  ‘The drink doesn’t impair your control over the plane?’

  ‘It improves it. I’m the last member of the entire squadron.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ I was by now a trifle drunk, ‘to crash.’

  ‘You do?’ He smiled.

  ‘I designed several experimental planes. One went out of control while I was testing it. In Kiev.’

  He drained the bottle. ‘That’s to the Wright brothers. Damn them to hell. And all inventors. Faust deserved no redemption.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you rest?’ I suggested. I could make neither head nor tail of his references.

  ‘Very soon, doctor.’ He searched under his mattress, ‘I’m sorry. That was the final bottle. Let’s go aloft now.’

  Less nervous than if I had been sober, I followed him back to the lake where the Oertz was ready. Her propeller was spinning and she was pointing out at the long stretch of water. Mechanics, grateful for the breeze, held her by her tailplane and huge rear wings, as Cossacks might hold ropes on a fierce, unbroken stallion. The smell of oil was sweet. ‘You go forward,’ said Petroff. ‘Get in the front cockpit. You’ll find a harness. Strap in. There’s goggles and stuff, too. All you’ll need.’ He was tucking a bulky object, wrapped in a piece of calico, into his jacket. I wondered if it were a bomb. I was rather uncertain of my chances of reaching the cockpit. The fuselage was only wood and fabric. But I climbed through the struts on the rocking aircraft until I managed to lower myself into the small observer’s cockpit with its bucket seat and spring brackets where, in the other cockpit, the controls would be. There were binoculars fastened to the inside edge; a pistol in a holster, a map-case and a clipboard, some pencils and a pair of goggles whose rubber was frayed and hardened. Still in my kaftan, with my own Cossack pistols pressing to my hip’s, I settled myself and buckled on my harness, putting the goggles over my eyes. Petroff was behind me, now, signalling. The engine and propeller were, of course, making too much noise for him to bother trying to talk.

  The machine suddenly moved forward at a rapid, almost maniacal, speed. It was like a bucking horse, an erratic sleigh-ride, at once exhilarating and alarming. Foul spray flew into my face. I almost drowned in it. The lake was stagnant.

  The plane began to vibrate, to slew in the water, tipping to starboard. Then I saw ailerons move on the wings and we were rising over the green lake and the willows, banking steeply, and the brandy suddenly warmed my whole body, my mind and my soul. We were up, flying over the woods, the damaged house, the neglected fields; flying towards hills and the blue sea, a haze between sky and land. I saw the limans, with their abandoned resorts, glittering and shallow: columns of marching men; riders; motor-vehicles; gun-tenders and artillery. This was the Release of Flying. There is no greater pleasure. Why did people bother climbing mountains when they could gain so much more from this? The air was roaring and yet at peace; it is a combination of adventure and tranquillity no jet-setter will ever capture. A grey mist became the city. Odessa from the air, with her factories and her churches, her ports and railways, looked exactly as she had looked when Shura first took me there: exotic in her aura and golden in the sun; but so great was my experience of Escape that I did not care if I saw the city again for months. I was conscientious. I began to do my job. There were large groups of people on the docksides, filling the wide quays. There were few ships on the turquoise sea. There were pieces of large artillery. In the outer suburbs were guns, cavalry, infantry, but appare
ntly few. The Reds were ill-prepared to meet Deniken. There came banging from below. For a moment the engine stopped and all I heard was the guns and the yelp of Petroff’s laughter. He dropped the nose. I felt groggy. We were being fired upon. The engine started again. Flak burst around us. Shrapnel tore at our canvas. It did no real damage.

  Down into smoke and yelling murder went Petroff, flying low over office buildings, hotels, flats, while I scribbled on my maps. We went over the St Nicholas steps where I had gone on my first day with Shura. We flew round and round the dome with its huge ornamental crucifix, the cliffs on one side with their gardens and trees, the fashionable Nicholas Boulevard, the sea and its ships on the other; round and round, like a toy on a stick. This was stupid and risky. Petroff was still laughing. The guns from the docks continued to fire at us. Was he daring them to shoot us down? There were clouds of smoke everywhere. Petroff fumbled open his flying jacket and took out the object he had placed there. He held it in his gloved left hand. The calico fell away from us like a dead bird. It was not a bomb he held but a large hour-glass in a marble stand. I think it was Fabergé. The marble was white with pronounced blue veins. The glass glittered. The sand was silver. Petroff stretched out his hand, then banked even more steeply towards the dome. I felt as if I were going to vomit. Guns continued to bang. I could hear them through the engine-notes, as if far away.