Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet

  She was amused. ‘Look at me, Max. Do you want the bathwater? It’s still hot.’

  Esmé had been my virgin sister; without vice or passion. My oldest admirer. My friend. My rose. And she spoke foul words and had no shame. She told me to bathe. I was still drunk and dazed. I let the women take off my clothes. I did not mind if they saw my stigmata. I have suffered much from Cossacks with their whips and little knives! And I let them wash me. Esmé was soft. She murmured to me as she soaped my head. They put something in the water. It stung. It killed the lice.

  They washed me with their hands, one in grey, the other naked but for a worn sheepskin. ‘I thought it was you,’ she said. She had been fucked so often she had calluses on her cunt. I shivered. I was still weeping. I became very cold. I shivered. I was swaddled. Esmé took me to a dormitory where there were two rows of empty beds. I had a fever, she said. A mild form of typhus. I don’t know. Where have you been? Everywhere, I told her. With the Bolsheviks? With that Brodmann and his gang who came? I was away. No, I said, I was only with them because I was searching for you. I thought you were in Odessa. Are you an Anarchist, Esmé? She said she did not have to be. She was a nurse. She worked on the education train. There were two doctors, both Jews, who also helped. Seamstresses. It was a community, she said, in which some sort of order flourished. Though it was protected by Makhno’s bayonets. Soon these would go. Why? Because the Whites were advancing. The Don Cossacks were on their way and Makhno had let too many units help the Reds. But it would be a while yet, she thought. Who raped you? I asked her. Many, she said. Who? It was true, she said, a Cossack whipped you. The beast. Did Brodmann rape you? I asked. That swine! She said no. Makhno? He saved my life, she said. It was not much of a rape. It was a token. His wife knows what he does. She tries to stop him. He feels bad afterwards. He’s drunk. His men expect it of him. Not here, but out there. The ones here know him and his two brothers. He should not have raped you, Esmé. It was a token. You should have been there when the first one happened. I trembled. I felt sick, but all there was in my stomach was vodka. It returned as bile. Esmé! Esmé! I can nurse you for today, she said. It was good I came here. Who else? Raped me? She laughed. Lots. It’s silly. It’s over. I’m doing my job again. I have a boy. He wants to marry me. It was quiet in the dormitory. There was no one there. I was confused. She stroked my whole body. My new, clean, body. She held my cock. She stroked it. I began to relax. I love you, Esmé. I love you, Max. She stroked my cock. She stroked my nipples. She stroked my face. She put ointment on Grishenko’s marks. She told me I would be better. She loved me. Esmé. Raped by Jews and Bolsheviks, yet still you were full of pity. We could have been married as Mother wanted. Lived in that village. Where are you? You said I had a fever. I did not know you left while I slept.

  A week later she returned. Now the dormitory was filled with dozens of wounded men. She was tired. She was slatternly. She was a slut. She helped the others more than she helped me. I was her own brother. She nursed the very men who raped her. I was sweating. Without vodka, which had controlled it, the fever increased. Those Jews had poisoned me. They put a piece of iron in my stomach. I had been ill for months. I was dying. She soothed the others, just as if they were me. Mrs Cornelius would not have done that. She would have left me alone. They had poisoned me. I had been right to mistrust them. I had been a fool. The men made too much noise. They stank of gangrene, of blood and cordite. They were hideous.

  I was taken with them, in carts to a train. I saw Esmé in the crowd. I think she was looking for me, but could not see me because of the other bodies. Then she was gone.

  Sie fährt morgen in die Egypte. Sie hat ihre Tat selbst zu verantworten.

  Such practices are common in Egypt. My cities are silver. They rise into a brazen winter sky. Through them I shall celebrate the glory of God. Wagner has crossed the desert. Anubis is my friend. Ya salaam! Ana fi’ardak! Allah akhbar! Allah akhbar!

  SEVENTEEN

  I THINK THE GIRL in grey had mended my clothes. They were clean. Everything was in order. I had a different coat. My pistols and papers were still there. Yermeloff’s gifts were in deep ‘gun-pockets’ in a dark blue kaftan. The chill was still in me. There was firing. We were taken from the train and put in ordinary peasant wagons. Makhno had disappeared. Riding a horse, someone said. Makhno rarely used a horse, because of a wounded ankle which made it hard to mount. The others went with him. Hulyai-Polye had been taken. I do not know which side was victor, White or Red. Perhaps both. They came and went.

  The Whites began by fighting for God; they ended fighting for their own pride. The Reds began by fighting for the people; and ended fighting for their own authority. The Russian is naturally communal. We never needed Marx and his corrupted philosophy of revenge and destruction. Tolstoi and Kropotkin sought a philosophy suited to our national character. Communism emphasises the group, giving the community priority over individuals. It does not seek a balance. To survive, the world must always be in harmony. God’s greatest signs are Man and the universe itself. That is the balance we should try to find again. Human decency. If only the Jew would leave me alone. Vengeance! he cries. Russian chivalry is condemned. Tanks crush the Russian heart. Barbarian wire rips Russian flesh. Alien cunning exploits us. The Heroes of Kiev drove back the Turk and Mongol but made the city safe for their enemies. We could have developed so much. It is all lost.

  They have destroyed the Russian mind, our language, the Russian heart. For a kopek’s worth of Western nonsense. They deny us our peaceful soil, our ancient cities, our Church. They go courting with Islam. How many mistakes can they make in all these years of mistakes? They breed a race of brutes who now confront the world, a hydrogen bomb in either hand, a mindless snarl upon the lips, unable to distinguish truth from lies. Dark forces threaten from within. Fear Carthage.

  There were enough voices raised: Kropotkin, Tolstoi, Blok, Bely. Look inward! Look to Russia! But they looked to Germany. They came creeping back through Finland in the German train. Marks. What made Hitler threaten that great alliance? The whispering Jew? Not the Greek. I put my faith in Hitler. He betrayed us all. The Teuton always envied the Slav. He waited a thousand years until he was ready. Then he crossed the mountains at last. Marching against the Slav. Marching against Greece. They lost their centre. They always will. It is a tub of beer and a stick of pigmeat. All made sense when Turk and Teuton allied. And the British, as usual, swung this way and that, paving fifty roads to Hell. Jewish marks. They burn my soul. They brand my flesh. Let me go!

  Little teeth suck the marrow from my bones. Esmé: How coarsened by despair you must have become as your life and idealism faded into the grey scum of Bolshevism. Mother: Did the Teuton kill you where I flew my first machine? Did the Teuton kill you, for I’ll swear I heard you scream? Your world flared in 1941. And then it died. The conquerors made you happy. Was it because you fought Satan all your life so whenever you saw Him marching along Kreshchatik you welcomed Him as a familiar adversary? I did not mean to lose you. Love was never in your eyes. But you were happy.

  Western Europe is too easy, too warm, too soft. The hardness of our climate gives us everything—our isolation, our inner life, our language, our genius. We are lost in the crowds and the heat. Let me go back. They dispossessed us; they drove us away. Now we live in crannies. We are humiliated and mocked. We might have survived. But God deserted us. He deserted Deniken. Makhno and Hrihorieff might, like Villa and Zapata, have fought for liberals allowing freedom of religion and pushed the Bolsheviks into the Baltic, to become the émigrés. But the Whites were too proud, the Nationalists were too small-minded, and the Allies never will understand what goes on in Russia. A Russian has himself. He retreats there as the Englishman retreats into rationalism. Borrowed, foreign rationalism has always been the bane, the destruction, of the Russian soul. Faith in God and His authority provides the only true freedom: the freedom to live an inner life.

  It was Makhno who avenged me. He went to Alexandriya for a pa
rley with Hrihorieff. Makhno denounced the Ataman’s pogroms Hrihorieff laughed. He was disbelieving. Was it so important? One of Makhno’s lieutenants (Keretnik, I think) drew his Colt and shot the Ataman. Makhno finished him off. The other Anarchists killed Hirhorieff’s bodyguard. Makhno shot Grishenko between the eyes and down he went, whip and all, into the July dust of Alexandriya. Makhno, with his eloquence, won over Hrihorieff’s men in an instant. It was an old-fashioned act of bandit audacity. It impressed the remnants of the Zaporizhians, many of whom were now ragged and barefoot, for Hirhorieff had never consolidated his gains. They agreed to follow the Batko. But they were doomed. That Jew-loving Anarchist dismissed them in the end. He fled into Rumania and went to Paris, haunted by the knowledge that he had deserted Russia. He was no Nationalist, at least. He and his wife and daughter loved the whole of Russia. They spoke Russian. I met them again in Paris. It was hard for his wife. I think his daughter went back. He lived off the other émigrés. He drank the cheap French wine which makes sickly sentimentalists of everyone.

  The carts rolled into the summer and there were poppies and fields of wheat and the stink of gunpowder and the hum of bullets. I had almost recovered but decided it was unwise to leave the wounded. Who would bother the near-dead? We reached a village, half-burned already, and we were left in a Catholic church which had been stripped. We lay amongst refuse not even valuable to peasants, on the stains of horse-droppings; the droppings themselves were worth something. We watched thin rats who, in turn, watched us, wondering who would die first, who would eat whom. The peasants would not release us. Our comrades never returned. The doors were locked and the windows were high. The peasants were too cowardly to kill us.

  My cocaine had been stolen, I think by Esmé. It would have given me strength. It would have helped me. In turn I could have helped the others. We called out for mercy. Our weak voices echoed in the empty church. The priest was dead; hanged by some militia or other. The peasants hated us. They listened to our voices. They were probably inspired as others might be by the Dnes Spaseniye Miru. This day salvation has come to the world. Dnes spaseniye miru byst. Poyem voskresshemu iz groba. Let us sing to the One who rose from the dead—7 nachalniku zhizni nasheya: I nachalniku zhizni nasheya: Having destroyed death by death, Razrushiv bo smertiyu smert, He has given us victory and great mercy. Pobedu dade nam, i veliyu milost. Our spirit. Our spirit. They were slipping away from us, our souls. And not one of us could be sure either God or His Heaven still existed. We sank into that easy euphoria which comes between being alive and being dead.

  There was the firing of machine-guns and artillery. It might be salvation. The starving wounded stirred amongst the corpses. I still had my pistols, but no powder. We heard artillery limbers go through the town. Horses. We heard shouts. The church began to shake. I heard the blessed noise of engines. An argument outside the door. A shot. I cried for joy as a White officer stood in the doorway. He held a smoking revolver at his side. He pressed a handkerchief to his face. He wore the pale grey infantry jerkin, with red and gold epaulettes. He wore a cap with the old Tsarist badge. He wore blue breeches tucked into black boots. There were medal ribbons on his jacket. There was a sword at his side. He had a well-trimmed beard and though his face was filthy and his uniform patched with powder-smoke he represented something I had never expected to see again. He called out to the soldiers in their helmets and khaki. They ran into the church with their rifles. They began to cough. Some of the wounded had been dead for several days. I crawled forward and raised myself to my feet. I was smiling. But I had been deceived once more.

  The White officer said: ‘Get those who can walk out. Shoot the rest where they are. It will be a mercy.’ An NCO ordered the men to advance. I was pushed into the sunshine. It was a small unit of infantry. There were some horsemen with the long whips and wide red stripes of regular Don Cossack cavalry. Both riders and horses looked weary. There were two khaki tanks: massive things, with gun-turrets and side-firing Lewises. There were three good-sized artillery-pieces and about ten machine-guns. There was a large, open car. I tried to speak to the officer, but he was striding over to the tanks which were opening their hatches. Behind the tanks, as if worshiping new gods, peasants were on their knees in a line, holding their caps before them. I was pushed. I protested. ‘I am a loyal subject of the Tsar.’

  ‘Tell him yourself,’ said one of the soldiers, shoving his helmet onto the back of his head. ‘You’re going where he went.’

  I was too weak. I waved again at the officer. They were going to rob me. It was of great urgency to me that they did not take my remaining property. My life seemed unimportant. ‘Captain! Captain!’

  Four of the wounded men were thrown against the wall and began to slide down it even before the bullets drew their blood. It was a waste of everything. The men would have died in a few hours.

  A tall, slender officer, wearing khaki shirt and shorts, with a large nose and long jaw, his cap reversed, goggles on his forehead, moved rapidly in our direction. He was shouting in English. The soldiers were taking me to the wall with three more partisans. ‘Stop! You bloody-handed bastards. Can’t you see he’s a gentleman!’ They hesitated, looking towards the White captain, who had turned. The sun was making me squint. The captain shrugged and said in Russian, ‘We’ll find out who he is.’ He spoke French to a short, broad-faced lieutenant who translated this into bad English. ‘They say to question.’

  The tank-commander was Australian, as were both his crews. He wore an expression of permanent disgust on his long face. He complained he wanted to get back to Odessa and from there take a ship straight to Melbourne. He rubbed at his nose all the time, as if it itched. I spoke to him in English as he leaned, sighing, against his tank. ‘I am most grateful to you, sir.’

  I was startled by his reaction. I did not know him. He grinned at his men. They had clambered out of their machines and were lounging on the warm metal, drinking from their canteens.

  ‘Someone who speaks real bloody English.’

  The shots continued from inside the church and from the corner of the street where the walking wounded were being executed. ‘Jesus!’ said the tank-commander. ‘What else can you say?’

  ‘I am familiar with your language,’ I told him. ‘Blimey O’Reilly, not half!’ This to show I could speak the common dialect, as well as what Mrs Cornelius insisted on calling book-talk. ‘I learned in Kiev. I am a Doctor of Science from the University there and a qualified engineer. I have the rank of major.’

  ‘In whose army?’

  ‘Loyalist, I assure you.’ I began to explain, but then I had fainted. I awakened in twilight. An Australian soldier was waving a mug of sweet soup under my nose. I was not interested in food. It made me feel strange.

  ‘You got to eat, mate.’ He was like a Russian babushka. For him, I sipped the soup. Some of it remained in my stomach. ‘They’re bastards, these peasants,’ he said. He was about the same age as me. ‘I hate them worse than the Reds, don’t you?’

  ‘They have suffered,’ I said.

  ‘They certainly have.’ He shook his head. ‘Our Russkies are doing horrible things to them now. They’re all bloody savages. It don’t matter what bloody uniform they’re wearin’.’ He sighed. He did not understand. He did not want to be on Russian soil. Like his commander, he longed for the bush of his native outback. ‘We’re going to give you a lift. We need an interpreter and we could do with an engineer. We’ve lost two of our chaps from typhus already. Know anything about tanks?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Carbs?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Spiffing. Now, then, you have some shut-eye. Some brekker in the morning and you’ll be fit enough to look at Bessie.’ Almost all tanks, I was to learn, were called Bessie by Australians. I have asked more than once why this should be. Nobody knows. He spoke with kind assurance, as one chanting a spell whose efficacy has been thoroughly proven.

  I slept in a sack beside a tank. The Russians w
ere piling what little booty they had been able to find on the ground, under the eye of the captain, Kulomsin. He was thought lenient by his men. They called themselves, of course, Volunteers. Few of them were actually that. The Australians were contemptuous of them; ashamed of their association. The French-speaking liaison officer was a Serb. I guessed he was some sort of failed adventurer who had taken up with the Whites in order to save his skin. I breakfasted on bread and more soup, which they thinned with water. They kept their own stores and refused to share them with the Volunteers. They gave me a cigarette. It was milder than I had been used to. It was real Virginia tobacco. I cleaned their carburetor for them and reconnected it. They tested the engine. It ran well enough, but it had been badly overtaxed; driven too hard and too soon. I would have no more trouble servicing it, however, than if it had been a tractor. We were leaving the village. The Whites burned it. For harbouring Reds, they said. I did not see it. I was excited by my first experience of the choking interior of a tank. Those machines were even more cramped than the modern kind, which are Rolls-Royce limousines in comparison. We moved slowly ahead. The Australians hardly spoke at all amongst themselves. I asked where we were going. They were joining up with other units, they said, for ‘some real fighting’. By this, I gathered, they meant an attack on a city.

  The tank was hot and stuffy. I did not care. In it I felt secure for the first time in over two years. Every so often we stopped. Maps were inspected. I translated between Captain Wallace, the Australian commander, in his tank, and the Russian officer, who had a staff-car. My heart was singing. We were on our way to Odessa! The Serb glowered at me. His function had gone. When I last saw him, through one of the observation slits at the side of the tank, he wore an expression of morbid despair. I was called upon to tune the other machine’s engine as best I could. I was worth, said the Australians, my weight in gold.

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