Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet

  My mother hurried about laying the table, heating the soup, cutting the bread, complaining it was like sawdust. She had found two cockroaches in the last loaf. She had had to queue for those cockroaches the best part of an evening after work, in the freezing cold. She knew of several women who had caught bronchitis or pneumonia and died in bread queues. It was ridiculous when everyone knew Ukraine was the bread-basket of Russia. This sounded almost like the cry of a nationalist. I said we were luckier than people in Petrograd, but there were some living better than the Tsar in parts of Siberia and the Caucasus. Supply trains had been diverted and they had to eat their produce or let it rot. (All those nationalists ever aspired to was fat bellies and brainless contentment. I still see them with their silly banners and hunger-strikes near the Russian Embassy. I laugh at them. If I were in the Embassy looking out I would think what idiots they were. Their ‘nation’ is more independent now than it ever was. I wonder why they will not return. Could it be they prefer life in a country where they can complain freely as they fill themselves up with soup and meat every day? At home they would not see so much as a cabbage or slice of goose from one week’s end to another. I long to be buried in my native soil. It is Russian soil. But the Bolsheviks have long memories. They hanged Krassnoff, then over seventy, because he had been Hetman of the Don Host. They found him in Germany in 1945. They had his name on their list of enemies. He had done nothing except lead his Cossacks into honourable battle and write good books about the Russian problem. But the Reds took this doddering, harmless old fellow from his flat and hanged him. I, too, have attacked Bolshevism.)

  Captain Brown woke to seat himself at the far end of our table. He stared for some while at the bowl of soup before he picked up his spoon and then, as one unused to the exercise, began to eat. My mother watched him affectionately. ‘I haven’t been able to feed him properly.’

  Considering her long hours and hardships, I thought she looked well. She agreed. Something had brought out the best in her. She had gathered her strength. Doing the work herself was easier than supervising those girls. She had been more like a Mother Superior, sometimes, than a laundress. Captain Brown laughed at this and splashed some of his soup. He apologised. Placing his spoon neatly in the plate, he lapsed into sleep again. ‘He has not been well,’ said my mother. ‘The drink’s at the root of it. I’ve been too tired to cook for him every day, you know. We eat our main meal at the laundry to save time. I come home,’ she shrugged, looking about her, ‘as you see, to sleep.’ It was true the flat had a neglected air, but I preferred it. Flat and mother both seemed more relaxed. ‘Of course, I miss Esmé.’ She sighed. ‘Such a beautiful girl.’ She asked me when I intended returning to Petrograd.

  ‘I was advised to let things settle down a bit,’ I said. ‘A month or two and I can collect my Special Diploma. It will be useful. I’d hoped to serve the government, but now I’ll try for a job, perhaps in Kharkov, with a good firm. I have plenty of ideas to be patented. It’s even possible I could work independently.’

  ‘What shall you do until you get your Diploma?’

  ‘Sleep.’ I patted her shoulder and bent forward to kiss her cheek.

  ‘You shall have Esmé’s bed,’ she said.

  NINE

  I WAS SOON more at ease in a chaotic Kiev than I had been in Petrograd. I knew my city’s streets, its alleys, its short-cuts between buildings. I knew the areas hooligans preferred and where I could avoid the worst of them. I knew houses where I could hide. Our district, being a suburb, was relatively undisturbed. It was poor, offering very little for the wandering riffraff. We were also lucky in that Podol was a main target for the looters. As the Dnieper ice began to break up, sending huge creaking, groaning and snapping sounds echoing throughout Kiev, I found I had developed something of Mother’s resilience. The ghost of my father had been laid to rest. My mother, as the widow of a martyred revolutionist, could not now be more respectable. Things might get worse, but it would make a change, as we used to say. In fact things improved for me. I decided to try taking over some of Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian’s old customers. Engineers were in short supply. I had met one or two people who had asked desperately after my ex-boss. Since he had left Kiev half the local machine-shops no longer operated. I had only a tenth of the Armenian’s practical experience and his feeling for broken-down engines. Even so, I knew I should have plenty of business.

  I did a few small jobs for the Podol Jews who had been Kouyoumdjian’s main customers. They were overwhelmingly grateful. They paid almost anything I asked. Like my former master, I became a jack-of-all-trades, fixing electrical equipment, steam engines, internal combustion engines, all devices not powered by man, child or beast. Indeed, I was willing to do what I could with anything containing cogs or levers. Thus, I soon had a fair bit of money with which to buy myself more sophisticated tools and some to set aside at home (the banks were not trustworthy). I used Captain Brown as a part-time assistant. With a job to do he became more sober during the day. My mother could have given up her laundry work, but she, too, was enjoying herself. It would have been pleasant to have seen Esmé from time to time, since we had been such good friends. She would have relished my success. There were more than enough women to satisfy my sexual needs. With money in my pocket, I became a very popular fellow in the cabarets where I spent an evening or two a week. The only shadow on my mind was the fact that I still had not heard from Professor Matzneff about my Diploma. Until I had it, I could not write off to the important engineering concerns applying for the job which would also help keep me out of the army. I had reduced my cocaine consumption to almost nothing, though our ‘Mother City’ became one of the main supply centres. Several of the women I saw were old friends from Petrograd. There were poets here, and painters and entertainers who knew me. My social contacts became very wide and useful. I took to dressing in expensively fashionable suits. Spring grew warmer. I bought myself a straw boater with an English-style band, and a silver-topped cane. I could go into any shop in Kreshchatik and purchase what I wished. I could hire carriages. And all this with honestly earned money. By day, and sometimes by night, I was a mechanic, in dirty blue cotton covered in oil. When I visited the centre of Kiev, I became the most elegant of youths. I always took the precaution of keeping only a minimum of money about my person and I preferred to travel in company. Many new little theatres and cinemas had opened up in the city, just as they had done earlier in Petrograd. The Foline Ballet Company arrived in Kiev and with it my old friend Seryozha Andreyovitch Tsipliakov. He greeted me elaborately when he came, at my invitation, to a private room of The Hotel Arson. The place had been renovated and taken over by Ulyanski. It was decorated in bizarre, explicitly sexual murals which never could have been tolerated a few months before. I found it convenient for a number of reasons. I chose to turn a blind eye to its vulgarities. It had become one of the main artistic and émigré meeting places in Kiev. Seryozha was impressed by my elegance and surroundings. He hugged me to him. I returned his embrace with affection. If it had not been for him I should never have met Kolya. We sat down to dine. I asked him if he had seen our mutual friend recently.

  He told me Kolya had become too proud and had dropped everyone, that he was now a Prince and involved in the Arts Ministry but was unwilling to look after his old friends. Seryozha said he was planning to leave the Foline and go to America at the first chance. He asked where he could find some little boys and some cocaine. I told him and we parted. I had become oddly homesick for Kolya and Petrograd. I even considered returning there. But the fanatics were steadily gaining the upper hand in the government. The ‘Bolshevik coup’ of October was a natural consequence and everyone had expected it. Kerenski unleashed the whirlwind and was consumed by it. It is a shame Stalin could not have taken over at once, but History, that mystical force Bolsheviks invoke in place of God, was against him. He would never be able to rid himself of the Tatar Lenin and the Jew Trotsky sitting on his shoulders, whispering into his ears, ev
en though he had killed them both.

  Ivan the Terrible is sometimes depicted as Russia’s Macbeth. Stalin was our Richard III. He killed millions. He sat on his own in a vast Kremlin kino watching Mickey Mouse films while Russia died at his command. He had been close to God once. Though he resisted with all his might, God was still in him, still working through him. He killed in the name of the Future as Cossacks killed in the name of Christ. But he could not rid himself of the ghosts: Bolshevik princelings who had died as Boyars died under Ivan. Stalin said Ivan should have destroyed all the Boyars. If Stalin had been given the span of Methuselah, there would not have been a single person, save himself, left alive. He would have had his peaceful heaven on earth. He killed in the hope of shutting every accusing eye. They say murderers cannot sleep. It is the other way about: those who cannot sleep become murderers. Cut off from their dreams, they translate harmless nightmare into horrible reality.

  I had plans to make reality of my own dreams. While I worked as a jobbing mechanic I continued to develop a stream of inventions, drawing up detailed plans on proper graph paper, giving every sort of accurate specification. When I applied for work in Kharkov or Kherson, I would be able to make the best possible impression. The summer was a good one. From Saint Alexander’s I could look across at Darnitsa, where the big German POW camp was, and see the prisoners bathing. They were in dreadful condition. They had endured hardship during the fighting and we could not afford to feed them. They were eating lice. I had a plan for them. It involved interesting local industrialists in certain patents I had. The Germans could be used as workers to develop them. They would be happy to work for food alone. But materials were short as well as men.

  I also had a particularly exciting scheme: a machine to concentrate light. This was an admittedly primitive precursor of modern lasers and masers which are revolutionising medicine and astronomy today. I planned to harness invisible light (what is now called ‘ultra-violet’). With proper equipment and more faith from those nervous Ukrainian businessmen, at that time interested in getting their money out of Russia rather than investing in our War Effort, I might have turned the tide of conflict. The machine had drawbacks and would have been difficult to transport, but would have done more to spread alarm amongst the enemy than the most dashing and effective of cavalry or tank charges.

  Mother began to display an informed intelligence which surprised me. My simpler ideas induced quite specific questions. I told her about my compressed-air machine-gun and my pilotless ‘fire-ship’ dirigible which could carry an enormous bomb, be towed into position by aeroplane, released over its target, then deliberately shot down. I was pleased to explain to her what was involved. I had even more schemes than I had had in Petrograd. Now I possessed the time and confidence to clarify them. I anticipated among other things the communications satellite (for which I have never received a penny in royalties), the television, the radio-printed newspaper, the war-rocket and the transport-rocket. Domestic automata were another idea of mine (the Czech word for serf, robot, had not yet been popularised by the leftist writer Chapek). I was also working on a scheme for pilotless aircraft controlled from the ground by radio-signals. I realise now that I spoke too much and too freely. Not only in Russia, but also when in Germany, America and England, where many of my schemes were ‘borrowed’ by unscrupulous men claiming my inventions as their own and selling them, needless to say, to Jewish firms who are still making fortunes from them. I need not name names here. It is enough to say that Marx and Spenser did not invent, I think, the underpant.

  Looking back on those strange Kiev days, I suppose I must have seemed a peculiar figure to people who knew me. My mother, however, was not at all disturbed by my entering our flat as a grease-spotted mechanic and leaving as a man-about-town. I was gaining experience in every way. Primarily I confined my activities to Podol. There was more than enough work in the ghetto. The Jews would do anything to keep their sweat-shops going. I rarely had to travel more than a few streets. The trams had begun to run roughly on time. It seemed to us that things were settling down.

  In my white suit, my boater, with my silver-headed cane, I would take a Sunday stroll along the banks of the river. I would hire a carriage to go for picnics in the countryside with Mother and Captain Brown. Esmé returned on leave, looking exhausted and thinner than I remembered. For once I was able to be of use to her. Rather than have her suffering the discomfort of our apartment, I decided she must stay at a good hotel, The Yevropyaskaya on Kreshchatik. She was welcomed as a countess and received every courtesy. She was delighted. She hugged me and kissed me and said it was a wonderful present. She was pleased about my Diploma and full of questions. I could see she needed sleep so left her in that elegant summer room, full of silver and gilt and silk. I would call for her in the evening. Meanwhile I had a variety of clothes sent round to the hotel and ordered a four-wheeler to be outside by six o’clock.

  At six she was wearing a perfect blue dress, a fashionable matching head-band, feathers, ‘tango’ shoes. She wore little make-up, and her large blue eyes looked lovely in their setting of pink and gold. I was proud to be seen with her as our carriage took us to Tsarskaya Square and one of the best restaurants in Kiev. She tasted course after course, but was unable to eat very much because of the excitement. ‘They told me everyone was starving at home!’

  ‘Not everyone,’ I said. ‘The food is simply not getting to the soldiers. So it has to be eaten.’ I told her I knew of people who made special trips to Moscow and Petrograd with just a couple of baskets of provisions. They came home almost millionaires.

  ‘Is that how you’re living?’ she asked.

  ‘Good God, no! I’m doing proper work.’ I was rather hurt by the suggestion. She became apologetic. I poured her more French wine and calmed her. ‘I’ve taken over Sarkis Mihailovitch’s business. The profiteers, you could say, are giving me my profits. But mostly they’re honest enough. Everyone buys and sells something. Have you seen the markets? Bessarabskaya? A Contract Fair going all year round! Peasants bring their produce to the city because no one can get to the country. They drive whole herds into Kiev. And you can obtain literally anything in the Bessarabskaya.’ I was too delicate to do more than suggest my meaning, but she understood. Working amongst soldiers had evidently given her a knowledge of the world.

  A band started to play. It was Gypsy music, very sad. Esmé began to relax. She was immensely beautiful now, in her prime as a girl. I still considered her a sister. I could not regard her as a sexual partner. I wished her to keep her virginity. I could now help her marry well. I was a brother and a father to her. I wanted to do for her what her father would have wished. A number of my friends and business acquaintances saw us together. I was winked at more than once and when Esmé was not in earshot I was congratulated. I explained nothing. It suited me to be seen with her. When the War was over I would need to give dinners to great industrialists. Esmé would make a perfect hostess. I could employ her in my firm. I had begun to evolve what the Germans call ‘a lifeplan’. I would model myself as far as possible on Thomas Edison, the American inventor and entrepreneur. My name would become as famous throughout Europe as his was in his native land. It would become a synonym for progress and enlightenment, possibly mentioned in the same breath as Galileo and Newton. But I would be practical. I would keep control of my own patents. I spoke to Esmé of this and of certain details I had already worked out. ‘You will be a full partner,’ I told her. ‘It is only fair. Your encouragement, and mother’s, made me what I am.’

  She looked down at her plate and she smiled a little. ‘I had aspirations to become a doctor,’ she told me. ‘I think I have a vocation.’

  ‘And perhaps Captain Brown could become a laundress!’ The humour was meant to be harmless. The image of my feminine Esmé in mannish suits, carrying a doctor’s bag, was ludicrous. ‘Why not? Anything is possible in the New Russia!’ I parodied a popular phrase of the Provisional Government. I changed the subject: ‘There’s
talk of mutiny. Will you be safe at the Front?’

  She looked up and laughed spontaneously. ‘Safer than walking up Kreshchatik. Dear Maxim. The soldiers are like children. You get the odd agitator, of course. But their loyalty depends on respect. If they like an officer, or a nurse, they’ll do anything for them. Conditions are unspeakable. They’ re so grateful if you merely wipe the sweat from their foreheads. They’re honest, decent, Russian lads.’

  ‘All the virtues you mention can become vices overnight.’

  She did not want to listen. She frowned and shook her head.

  ‘Children can turn against you,’ I said.

  ‘We’re their nanyanas. They trust us. They know we suffer as they do. They know we volunteered to help them.’

  I called for the bill. She had reassured me a little. But she was still innocent.

  We took the carriage through the steep Kiev streets. There were lights of sorts burning, candles and oil-lamps. I wished we had been able to paint the town red in proper style, the old style, when Kreshchatik would have been full of electrics and gas-light; the pleasure gardens along the river would have had different coloured lanterns glowing in the trees. German bands would have played waltzes. Then I should truly have enjoyed my triumph and her enjoyment.

  Esmé said she felt guilty. So many were now homeless, sick and crippled. I told her that I was not oblivious to the misery. I spent my own money freely, giving to beggars and to various church institutions, to organisations set up for the aid of the needy. Even the Jews of Podol knew me for one who could be relied upon to put a coin in a collecting box. Meanness has never been one of my vices. When I had money, I would give. And, of course, I was saving. I had a duty to my mother, to myself, to all those I loved, to make sure that political events would not affect them. The day would come when Mother would be too frail to work at the laundry. A man can live as he chooses, I said, so long as he is insured. Freedom is based on a sense of responsibility. That is what the Bolsheviks never realised. The only slogan I ever hoped to see strung out on a banner over any street was ‘Live and let Live.’