Byzantium Endures

FIVE

THE FOG IN ODESSA grew thicker and colder, muting the slow moans of the last ships in the harbour. People occupied the streets less frequently. They put on their long coats, their mufflers, their fur caps. Christmas approached and the better shops were filled with light and wonderful displays; posters started to appear for Winter Balls and entertainments, many of them to raise funds for the war-effort; ice-cream sellers gave way to chestnut sellers under the hissing gas-lamps, and the stevedores on the docks put on quilted jackets and gloves, their breath mingling with the thick, low-lying steam from the ships. My mood grew steadily worse. In winter Odessa became a fairly ordinary city. I was scarcely seeing Katya at all (she was tired, she said) and I was using cocaine in stronger and stronger doses to relieve an almost suicidal depression. I had overdone my adventures. I had packed years of experience into a few months. I had neglected my work at the very time I should have been concentrating on it. I tried to stay with my books and forget about Katya. It was impossible. I decided to get up early one morning and go to see her, to offer her anything if she would forsake her profession and see more of me. She was an intelligent, beautiful girl and could easily have got a job in an office, or in a shop. Uncle Semya would probably help.

I bought her a present. A few days before Christmas Eve I wrapped it in silver paper, tied it with green ribbon (it was an ornamental clown of the best Ukrainian ceramic, bought at Magasin Wagner) and set off for Slobodka. In my dark suit, white shirt, bow-tie, dark-brown bowler and matching English top-coat, with the present under my arm, I must have looked the picture of a young man on his way to ‘pop-the-question’ (although I was not yet fifteen). I bought an expensive imported flower (already becoming scarce) to complete the effect. I also carried a white ivory stick with a carved head. This had been a present from Shura about a week before.

I arrived at the broken-down house in the alley where Katya lived. The front, used by the ironmonger, had not yet opened, but I knew a trick of jerking the door open, even when it was locked. I entered the dark, cluttered interior of the shop and tip-toed through to the narrow stair leading to Katya’s room. She would have got rid of any customer by this time, but I did not want to risk embarrassing her. Determined to go away if a man was with her, I crept up the stairs and opened the door a fraction. I saw a form huddled in the bed with its arms around my Katya. I suppressed my jealousy. Then I realised I recognised the shoulder. It was young. A boy’s shoulder. It was, of course, Shura’s shoulder.

I did not behave then as I would behave now. I lost all control. I screamed and flung the door back. I realised why Shura had shown me such kindness, why Katya’s time with me had become so limited, why she and Shura never spoke when they met at Esau’s. I had been betrayed.

I recall only the emotions; the way in which the blood became a drum in my brain, in which my hot hand gripped the cool ivory of the stick as I advanced on Shura. He scrambled up with a yell, laughed at me, became terrified, tried to protect Katya, threw a pillow at me. I raised the stick. His naked body flew at me and caught me below the waist. I struck his back, his buttocks. I fell over. The fight had no proper end. I lost the stick. We became exhausted. I remember Katya weeping. ‘Can’t you see I loved you.’

Shura sat panting against a wall down which, as if to witness the drama, cockroaches climbed. ‘She loved us both, Xima. I love you both.’

I said the usual things about treachery, trickery, double-dealing. I have been betrayed too many times since then to recall anything specific. Katya wanted Shura’s maturity and my innocence. Fundamentally she was a whore. She could not resist any of us. There were probably other lovers, as opposed to customers. I think she was one of those kindly, slightly frightened girls who gives in to the slightest pressure then spends her life trying to reconcile everyone, far too afraid to tell the truth which would extricate her from such situations. It is a characteristic of our good-natured Slav girls, particularly in Ukraine. There are even Jewish girls who are like it. They are incapable of scheming, but weave the most impossible webs of deception. These girls are so frequently treated as femmes fatales when, in fact, they are the very opposite. None of this occurred to my fourteen-year-old self. Drained by a drug which in later years would prove beneficial, exhausted by an unequal physical encounter, weeping with misery at the terrible thing done to me by my little Katya, I lay in a corner and picked cobwebs and dust off my fine suit, while my cousin Shura, trying to mollify me, got dressed, and Katya wailed, wishing she had never met either of us.

Shura suggested we go for a drink. I accepted. We went to Esau’s where Shura cracked and chewed sun-flower seeds and talked about ‘the world’ and how he had been going to tell me but that Katya had been afraid it would hurt my feelings. Slowly the onus was transferred onto the woman in the case. Two or three glasses of vodka made it seem we had both been badly deceived by a little bitch. Another two or three glasses and I was close to weeping. I told Shura I had nearly killed him. Shura said it was appalling how trollops like Katya could make two friends fight so savagely. We drank to the doom of all women. We drank to eternal comradeship. When the question arose as to which of us was to stop seeing Katya we were both insistent we had ‘no rights’; then insistent that each had ‘greater rights’ because of ‘loving her more’. And so it went on, with recriminations creeping back and Shura rising and turning his shoulder to me, and me deciding to go to see Katya to demand from her a guarantee she would dismiss Shura for good. We left Esau’s. We both had the same destination. We stopped at the corner of her alley. A woman went past, leading two cows (still kept for fresh milk in cities in those days) and we were separated by them. Both of us dashed past the beasts and tried to reach the ironmonger’s first. This ludicrous and undignified scene resulted in the pair of us reeling drunkenly into stacks of pots and pans which we knocked onto the cobbles. Out of the shop came the middle-aged Jewish proprietor, screaming and waving his arms and cursing the lust of men and the venality of women. Why had God decided that he, a respectable shop-keeper, must support his impeccably virtuous family by letting rooms to women of easy virtue (I knew that an ‘extra’ on his exorbitant rent was an afternoon every week with Katya’s mother)? We demanded he step aside and let us through.

‘To have my shop destroyed by drunks!’ He took a great axe from his display. ‘To bring the police down on my poor head! Wonderful! Cossacks in the Moldovanka! Let’s have a new pogrom, eh! Stand back, both of you, or I’ll give the police fair cause to visit me. I’ll split your heads and hang myself rather than let you in.’

Katya’s orange-haired sluttish mother appeared behind him. She was pulling on a grubby Chinese robe. ‘Shura? Maxim? What’s the matter with you? Where’s Katya?’

‘We have come to see her,’ I said. ‘She has to choose between us.’

‘But she left half-an-hour ago.’

‘Where did she go?’ asked Shura.

‘To Esau’s, I thought.’

‘Was she laughing?’ I asked significantly.

‘Not that I noticed. What do you want with her? You boys shouldn’t quarrel over a girl. She likes you both.’

‘She’s a deceiver,’ I said. ‘A liar.’

‘She’s a bit weak, that’s all,’ said Shura. ‘I told her...’

‘I won’t have such discussions in my street, outside my shop.’ The Jew advanced with the axe. We retreated.

Katya’s mother shook her head. ‘Calm down. Go for a walk together. Go for a swim.’ She seemed unaware that it was winter.

‘She was not frank with me,’ I said.

‘Frank? What is frank?’ asked the shop-keeper. He gestured with his huge axe. ‘Jews are not the bogatyrs of Kiev. They have no room for such podvig luxuries.’

‘They have a great penchant for hypocrisy instead,’ I retorted.

He smiled, ‘If we are here to indulge in some rabbinical discussion, some orgy of self-criticism, let us settle down around the book, my young Litvak.’

Did he think I was a Jew? I was shocked. I looked at his dirty skin, his stringy beard, his hooked nose and thick lips and realised what a terrible mistake I had made. To believe that Jews could be my friends, that I could exist in their company without some of their traits rubbing off on me! I backed away. I began to run through the alleys of the ghetto, knocking aside old men and children, treading on cats and dogs, breaking down washing lines, kicking cans of milk, until I was back at Uncle Semya’s house, bedraggled, my coat flapping, my hat missing, my ivory cane lost in the struggle at Katya’s. Straight up the steps and into the front door. Up the stairs and into my room. I lay on my bed weeping and swearing never again to have anything to do with Jews, with the Moldovanka, with my cousin Shura, with coarse, corrupt, vulgar Odessa.

When Wanda came in, she found me recovered from the worst of my rage but still weeping, still dressed in what was left of my finery. ‘What happened, Maxim? An accident?’

I looked up at her warm, fat body, her plain, concerned face. I decided that Wanda was the girl I needed. Wanda would never make herself available to more than one man. She would be grateful that she had a man at all.

‘Only in love,’ I replied heavily. ‘A girl turned out to be unfaithful.’

‘That’s terrible. Dear Maxim!’ Feminine sympathy seeped from her pores like sweat. ‘Who on earth could do such a thing to you? What a bitch she must be.’

I remember a pang or two at this description, but when I considered the situation I decided Katya had been more cynical than I had guessed. I made some attempt to defend her, remembering Shura’s words. ‘She’s just weak ...’

‘Don’t you believe it, Maxim dear. Not a word. Weakness is a wall women hide behind. And it’s a wall, I assure you, as strong as steel. You’ve been deceived.’

‘By a Jewish harlot,’ I said.

This seemed to make her hesitate. I think she was a little upset that I had been sleeping with a Jewess.

‘Never again,’ I said.

‘She didn’t give you anything ... ?’

I shook my head.

Wanda sat on the bed and began to stroke my dusty hair. She helped me off with my overcoat and my jacket.

In time, as these things go, she helped me off with the rest of my clothes. Then she undressed and climbed into the narrow bed beside me. Her soft, yielding flesh, her massive breasts, her great, warm private parts, her bottom, like two comfortable cushions, her strong, engulfing legs and arms, her wide, hot mouth, all brought immediate relief to my anguish. I began to congratulate myself that I had not only recovered from my pain but that I would always have another woman waiting. So different was Wanda from Katya that it was almost like making love to a different species. Slender, boyish girls like Katya and huge, peasant girls like Wanda, each has her virtues. To know a hundred women is to know a hundred different forms of pleasure. I was lucky to understand this while still so young.

Rising from the damp and overheated bedding, Wanda said she had duties in the house. She kissed me. She asked me if I felt better. She told me she had been a virgin. She had always loved me. Now I would not need to go out for my consolations. With an awkward wink and a blown kiss, she left me. I slept for an hour or two and woke to find the room in cold, pale twilight. I thought, now that my temper had cooled, of going to visit Katya. The prospect of having two lovers, as she had had, pleased me. But I realised it would be hard to accomplish. Wanda was in a position to watch - and watch jealously - my every move.

I felt vengeful towards Shura. I had confided in him. I had told him I loved Katya. He had given me cocaine, white clothes, ivory, to distract me from his dark plots. He had pretended to be my friend and mentor in the ghetto and had exposed me to its worst aspects. All the while he had laughed up his sleeve. I could not beat him in a fight. He was too strong. I could not go to the police and say he was a criminal. I had been involved in some of those crimes, as had friends of mine in the Moldovanka. Not that I regarded them any more as friends. Probably they had all known about Shura’s making a fool of me and been amused. I had been treated as a naïf. A village idiot. There must be half-a-dozen good stories about Max the Hetman all over Odessa. I had lost face. I wondered how I could in turn humiliate Shura. Nothing came to mind. He was too certain of himself. Anything I did he could turn to his advantage. There was only one person to whom he owed something, whom he respected (aside from Misha the Jap) and that was Uncle Semya. I grinned to myself. It would be nothing less than dutiful to go to Uncle Semya and ‘warn’ him of Shura’s involvement in crime. My uncle would be horrified. He would send for Shura. He would punish him. It was an ideal revenge because it showed me in a good light and Shura in a bad one.

I turned my attention to Katya. I might be able to involve her in the revenge by mentioning her to Uncle Semya as the hussy who had led my cousin into evil ways. But Uncle Semya was not shocked by such things. He was tolerant of young men who sowed their wild oats. What would he think if I told him Shura was Katya’s pimp? It would not make Uncle Semya take reprisals on Katya. Somehow I would have to work out my own revenge on Katya.

I am not very proud of those thoughts. But I was a hurt youngster believing himself utterly betrayed by his friends and by a race. I behaved in a bigoted fashion. I have not a bigoted bone in my body. My dislike of Jews, my anger at being identified with them, was because we Ukrainians were inundated by Jews. The Revolution was directly inspired by Jews. To be a Slav in Odessa was to be in a minority. As a member of a minority, I am anxious to disassociate myself from those of Oriental origin who control our press, our publishing, our radio and television stations, our industry, our engineering plants, our financial world. How many Ukrainians occupy such positions in England?

Katya could quite easily be reported to the police. But that would mean her arrest and deportation (since she and her mother were from Warsaw), possibly her imprisonment. Even in my most vengeful moments I balked at my little Camille of the ghetto going to prison. Also I wanted a more personal revenge.

I remembered the clown from Magasin Wagner which now lay smashed on her floor. I would send her another Christmas present. From an unknown admirer. I knew she hated spiders: spiders horrified her more than anything. I would collect together a huge box of them and I would send it to her, wrapped in wonderful paper. She would open it on Christmas Eve and her screams would bring the whole Moldovanka down about her ears.

In the meantime I was distracted from my vengeance. Lovely, simpering Wanda brought me tea and cake, stroked my body and made herself familiar with my private parts as if she saw them as being quite independent of me, as if she played with a tame mouse, or a snake, which she would kiss, fondle and laugh at. She had something Katya had never possessed: while Wanda made love to me I could continue to exist in my private mind, keep myself to myself. It is a great advantage of such girls. I have always valued it.

Another advantage to Wanda, of course, was that she had slept with nobody else. She was clean. I did not have to take precautions with her. This was a relief. That night I did little but scheme against Shura and Katya. Uncle Semya had to go out to dinner, so I was not in a position to betray either Shura or myself. After our meal, Aunt Genia played some popular Jewish melodies on her gramophone. Wanda and I made an excuse and retired early. I was in a far better position with her than I had been with Katya. With Wanda, the relationship between Katya and myself was reversed. I became the teacher, instructing my wonderful, passive pupil in every delicious debauchery.

My enjoyment of Wanda nonetheless left me with a passionate determination for revenge. I began to collect the spiders for Katya’s Christmas present. Soon I had about a dozen in an old tea-box. But I wanted more. So that they should not fight and devour one another I found various insects and fed the spiders every evening. Wanda did not know what I kept in the box. I refused to tell her. In the meantime I purchased gifts to present at Christmas Eve dinner. My uncle did not celebrate the Season elaborately. Like my mother he had little use for formal church services. The day before Christmas Eve I asked to see Uncle Semya in his study. He was rather distracted. The War, of course, was making his business difficult. The partial blockade had delayed certain important shipments. I determined to get my revenge on Shura as quickly as possible. Uncle Semya stood behind his desk, his back to the window. He wore a heavy black frockcoat and a black cravat.

‘I have distressing news, Semyon Josefovitch,’ I began, it is my duty to tell you what it is. You, of course, must take whatever action you think fit.’

This amused him. His mood of distraction appeared to lift. He asked me to sit down in one of the hard, cane-bottomed chairs he favoured. He leaned back in his own leather-padded chair and lit a Burma cheroot. The room began to fill with heavy, oily smoke.

‘I hope you are not in trouble, Maxim.’

‘I hope so, too, uncle. My mother would be horrified if she learned what had happened.’

‘Happened?’ He became more alert.

‘Or almost happened, I suppose. I believe Shura to be involved with crooks.’

He was surprised. He put his cheroot into his brass Persian ashtray. He scratched his head. He produced a thin, puzzled smile. ‘What makes you think so?’

‘He is mixed up in the rackets. He could be working with Misha the Jap.’

‘Misha the what?’

‘The Jap. A notorious bandit in the Slobodka district.’

‘I believe I’ve heard of him.’

This was no surprise. Misha’s exploits were the raw material of all the popular papers in Odessa. He had even been mentioned in the Nick Carter and Sherlock Holmes dime-novel pulps we had in those days.

‘He is a kidnapper,’ I said, ‘a hold-up man. He forces local people to pay him protection money. If they don’t, he shoots them or burns their shops. He deals in drugs. In prostitution. Illegal alcohol. He owns cabarets, taverns. He bribes police-inspectors, city officials, everyone.’

Uncle Semya became amused again. ‘Such a Jew should join the Black Hundreds.’

‘And he recruits young lads,’ I continued. ‘Of all races. Ukrainians, Katsups, as they call Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Muslims, anyone. He has a web like a—’ I felt uncomfortable ‘— like a spider.’

‘Heaven preserve us! Are you sure this bandit doesn’t just exist in your Pinkerton magazines?’

I told him I spoke the truth. ‘And,’ I added, ‘he has Shura in his grip.’

‘I cannot believe it.’

‘Shura tried to recruit me, too. He used me as an interpreter. I went aboard an English ship. He bought drugs.’

Uncle Semya turned his head away. He looked through the window. There was a yard with an entrance into the alley running between the houses. He watched a small child balancing on the wall. The child fell off and disappeared. He turned to look at me again, ‘I think you’re mistaken, Maxim. Shura works for me.’

‘Of course he carries messages between the ships and merchants and keeps a look-out for good cargo when it’s unloaded. But for the rest of the time he works with crooks, prostitutes. There’s a place called Esau’s. A Jewish tavern. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?’

‘I don’t often visit taverns in Slobodka.’

‘It’s a terrible place. Shura has slipped into bad company. He tried to involve me, too. I refused and now he’s angry with me.’

‘You had an argument?’

‘I objected morally to his life.’

‘He’s a young bohemian. You, too, have been living such a life.’

‘There’s a difference, Semyon Josefovitch, between bohemianism and criminality.’

‘And young people do not always recognise it.’ He waved a tolerant hand.

I was disappointed. ‘I think Shura should be sent away from Odessa.’

‘To where? To Siberia?’ He sounded the word slowly and sardonically.

‘Possibly to sea. It would do him good. The education.’

‘Did he ask you to tell me this?’

‘Not at all.’ Shura would hate to be removed from Odessa, from Katya. With Shura gone I should have both Wanda and Katya. Even when Katya opened the box of spiders she would not know it was from me. I could resume where we had left off. The notion of sending Shura to sea had been an inspiration.

‘Shura isn’t much of a sailor. Also, we are at war...’ Uncle Semyon re-lit his cigar.

‘Think what he would learn.’

‘Have you told him you were coming to me?’

‘No, Semyon Josefovitch.’

‘It might have been more manly to have done so?’

‘He needs an adult to tell him.’

‘And you’ve mentioned this to no other adults?’

‘Only yourself.’

‘I will speak to Alexander. But you must keep this a secret, Maxim.’

‘Because of the family scandal?’

‘Quite so.’

He sighed. Perhaps he was grateful that at least one of the younger members of the family was honest. ‘Off you go, Maxim. If you see Shura ask him to come here.’

‘I will, Semyon Josefovitch.’

Not an hour later, as I went downstairs to find wrapping paper for Katya’s present, I saw Shura arrive and go through the door connecting Uncle Semya’s business with the house. I had only seen these premises once: dark-painted wood and little glass windows, and oak, mahogany and brass desks, with clerks sitting at them who might have been there since the days of Pushkin. I wondered why Shura should go into the offices rather than into Uncle Semya’s study.

I waited on the landing, watching the door, but Shura did not emerge again. I assumed he had left through another exit.

Feeling mightily pleased with myself, I went to ask Aunt Genia for the fancy paper. She handed me a sheet, together with some scissors and ribbon. I was not, she said, to disturb Uncle Semya if I saw him. He was in an unusually difficult mood.

‘Was it to do with Shura?’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. He doesn’t seem too pleased with you, either. Have you been up to anything?’

‘Nothing, Aunt Genia.’

I returned to my room. I was just a little puzzled. I wrapped the parcel. I called Wanda in and asked her if any boys in the street could be paid to take a parcel to Slobodka. She said that she would see. I had marked the parcel with Katya’s initials, and her Polish surname, which was something like Grabbitz.

‘Who are you sending a present to?’ Wanda asked. ‘It looks a very nice one.’

I kissed her. ‘It is nobody I love. A friend of mine. Someone to whom I owe a favour.’

With a few kopeks, she took the box downstairs and eventually returned to say one of the street-urchins from the square had agreed to deliver it. Now, if Katya asked who had given the boy the box, Wanda and not myself would be identified as the sender.

Wanda and I made love very briefly. I was not really in the mood. I was still wondering what had happened to Shura. The way my luck now ran, he could be on the next ship out of the Quarantine Harbour.

I had asked Wanda to leave me alone for half-an-hour and was reaching for the drawer where I kept my cocaine when the door opened softly and closed. I expected Wanda. To my horror, it was Shura. He was grinning at me in a very menacing way. He had abandoned his tie and shirt and was wearing a laced peasant blouse with a loud, heavy scarf tied around his throat; over this was thrown a fur coat whose surface had worn away in patches. In his hand was a three-eared cap. He looked almost pathetic.

‘You little stool-pigeon,’ he said. ‘You stupid, silly little Kiev gilt-goyim. You wouldn’t have it out face to face. What a crook I am! That’s a laugh. Uncle Semya’s the biggest crook of all.’

I was familiar with these revolutionary arguments. ‘Capitalism isn’t a crime.’

‘Isn’t it? Well, your plan misfired. I’m not to be sent to the galleys. I’m merely to be more cautious about what I let green little sneaks see.’

‘Did Uncle Semya say that?’

‘Not exactly. But it’s the substance.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘You don’t have to. I thought we were friends. Max.’

Shura spoke as if I had betrayed him! I now remember him with nothing but kindness and have long since forgiven him, but at that moment the fact that Shura considered himself a victim was almost laughable. I smiled. ‘Shura, it was you who broke the friendship.’

‘You idiot. I was sleeping with Katya before you even turned up. I asked her to be nice to you. I slipped her money. Why did you think it went so easily for you?’

‘She loved me.’

‘I suppose she did. As much as she could. She’s been my girlfriend for years. Ask anyone.’

‘You’re lying. It’s despicable.’

He went bright red. His face was a match for his cropped hair. ‘You don’t have to take my word. Katya will tell you.’

The door opened slowly. Wanda came in. ‘What is it, Shura?’

Shura told her to leave. I nodded in agreement. ‘This is between us.’

‘Don’t start fighting, or I’ll call Aunt Genia.’

‘I wouldn’t touch him,’ said Shura. This relieved me.

‘At least you’ve made it clear how you feel,’ I said. ‘What about me? My rival’s a Jew-loving lout who can hardly speak his own name. A crook.’

‘Jew-lover?’ He laughed. ‘And why not? Do you know what our name originally was?’

‘Your father’s you mean? I’m surprised you know it.’

‘Coming from you, that’s rich.’

We were hurting one another quite unfairly, as only those who have been close can wound. It was I who turned my back first, refusing to continue. If Shura was going to flaunt the fact of being half-Jewish, that was his own affair. It only confirmed what I thought.

‘I feel sorry for you,’ he said. ‘You could have been happy here. You could have had friends here. People liked you. But not now. I advise you to get out of Odessa as quickly as possible.’

Was it a threat? I said, ‘Odessa has no further attractions for me.’

He opened the door, drawing his moth-eaten fur about him. ‘You won’t say that when your sneg runs out.’ Sneg was the slang term for cocaine, meaning ‘snow’.

Then he was gone. Did he think he had turned me into a drug fiend? I became alarmed, then reassured. I was not the type to become addicted. I have gone for months without touching the stuff. Indeed, in recent years, with prices the way they are, I have all but given it up. It is possible to burn the candle at both ends sometimes and feel the results of that, but as for withdrawal symptoms, I have never known them. One has to have withdrawal symptoms to be an addict. They made cocaine illegal after the First World War. It was one of the silliest things they did. They should have made asprin and gin illegal at the same time.

On the morning of Christmas Eve I was called again to my uncle’s study. Concerned that he had not heard from her, he had sent my mother a telegram. A reply had reached him from Captain Brown. My mother had bad influenza. She was worrying about me. It seemed that providence had given me a perfect excuse to leave Odessa and escape any attempted vengeance from Shura. Uncle Semya agreed I should rejoin my mother as soon as the Christmas holiday was over, when the trains would be running as normally as could be expected in wartime. A place had been found for me at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. I would begin there in January. A full wardrobe would be provided for me. I would draw a small allowance from his agents in the city. They would also find me accommodation. In return, I might be called upon to translate in matters of business or carry small parcels to other agents of his. I told him I would be honoured to serve him.

He had confirmed my place, he said, by telegram. A number of telegrams had gone back and forth in the past twenty-four hours. He had spoken to Shura and had received Shura’s faithful promise not to engage in acts likely to embarrass the family. My revenge was frustrated. There was no time to plot a fresh one. At least, I thought to myself, Katya would be opening her spiders by now.

I went back upstairs to tell Wanda what was happening. We decided to make the most of our time together. I gave her a little of my cocaine to help her stay awake. We spent as much of the Christmas holiday as possible in an orgy of love-making.

When my suitcases were packed and my first-class ticket (a gift from Aunt Genia) was in my pocket, I realised I would miss Wanda. I told her I would come back to Odessa as soon as possible. She must visit me in Kiev. I never did see her again. She became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and was looked after by Uncle Semya until she vanished three or four years later in the terrible days of famine and revolution.

Wanda and Aunt Genia saw me to the Kiev train. The station was crowded with uniforms. I was already missing Odessa, with her docks and shops, her fog and coal-dust and her vital, noisy life. I believe I wept a little. Wanda certainly wept. Aunt Genia wept. The train began to move away from the platform, heading inland once more. I thought I saw Shura standing near the gate, raising his hat sardonically, Katya at his side.

It was snowing heavily as the train pulled into open countryside. I sat back happily in the padding of the heated carriage. This was more comfortable than the last trip. I was already making progress. I wore a Petersburg suit, a good quality fur cap, an English top-coat with a fur collar, and black, patent-leather boots. Over the course of a few months, I thought, I had become not only a man. I had become a gentleman.

In the main I received good service from the train staff. With my first-class ticket I was able to sit in a deep plush armchair with my books and magazines close by on a little folding table. Soon after we left Odessa we ran into a blizzard. The further north we went, the deeper the snow became. All I could see was undulating banks of whiteness, interspersed with the roofs, smoke and domes of villages, the silhouettes of trees, the occasional snow-drenched forest. I could almost smell the snow through the windows, though of course the carriage was insulated and the motion of the train so regular one might not have been travelling at all. Just for the pleasure of it I took the ‘large breakfast’ in the restaurant car. I ate cheese and cold meats and watched the snow clinging to the windows. Sometimes it built up a layer before the speed and heat of the train melted it away, to reveal the steppe again. I strolled into the saloon-car which bore the sign of the Romanoffs, the two-headed eagle, over the door. Here I remained, in a small chair close to the ornate stove, listening to the murmurings of generals and priests, aristocrats and fine ladies; they were already drinking, many of them, for prohibition extended only to the lower classes. Their well-bred tones would from time to time be broken by sudden, loud laughter. They were cynical, in the main, about the War news.

Being in the saloon and unable to join the occupants depressed me. I returned to my carriage, where an old lady dressed all in black took a fancy to me. She began to tell me how she was the widow of a certain general killed in the war with Japan.

She spoke in the slightly Frenchified accents of St Petersburg. I was soon able to catch the sound and reproduce it. She decided I was well-educated, a well-bred boy. She shared some of her chocolates with me. She asked where I was bound. I told her Kiev. I was to go on almost immediately to St Petersburg. She said I should come to see her and wrote down an address in a small notebook. The other travellers in the carriage were a high-ranking military man who said nothing, studied maps, read The Voice of Russia, and sometimes left to go to the saloon-car to smoke a cigar; a theatrical, rather haughty, young woman who claimed she acted in Moscow and was soon to tour the provinces. She smelled of the same perfume as Mademoiselle Cornelius, whom I still remembered with great pleasure. This actress had none of that lady’s character; she was a typical, neurotic Moscow ‘beauty’. I doubt if she was an actress at all. Probably a general’s mistress, travelling separately to avoid scandal. Her brocades and furs had the look of trophies rather than familiar clothing.

The snow did not stop. It became dark quite soon and the gas was lit in the carriages. So comfortable and warm was the train that I was more and more reluctant to have the journey end. I hoped for delays on the line, some minor disaster which would extend the adventure for another day at least. Lunch came and went, and dinner. I talked to my old lady, telling her of my ideas, my plans, my expectations of ‘doing good for Russia’. She said I would love Peter, ‘It is really Russian there, not like this awful province. This is a land of Jews. They are impossible to avoid.’

Feelingly, I agreed with her.

‘But in St Petersburg,’ she said, ‘there you will find the embodiment of all that is best in Russia.’

The actress claimed that Moscow was ‘more Russian’ than the capital. There were too many Europeans in Peter. The place had been founded by a Tsar who had looked to Germany for inspiration. See, she said, where that had got us. Attacked by the very people we had courted, to whom we had shown hospitality. Half the Royal Family was German. They were the scourge of the Earth. She wished she could remain in Moscow all her life. No socialists there. No nihilists. No assassins. There were no Jews and no Germans, either. It was a true Slav city, not some imitation Berlin or Paris.

The old lady listened with amusement. Her husband had been just such a radical. A Pan-Slavist who wished to turn his back on Western Europe. ‘But Western Europe will not turn her back on us, my dear.’

‘No, indeed!’ said the actress. ‘She comes towards us with hands extended. With a knife in one fist and a sword in the other. We should have expelled all foreigners years ago. Including those who call themselves Russians.’ This was a reference to our ‘German Empress’ and a number of nobles in St Petersburg who were of German origin and still had German names. Even some of the generals at the front and the ministers in the Duma were of recent German ancestry, including the prime minister. There were plenty of rumours of German traitors working against Russia from within: a tendency, especially in Moscow, to put the blame for our military failures on corruption in the capital: a suspicion that the Court had no real interest in the progress of the War, that the Tsar might be inclined to negotiate a peace at any time. I make this clear to show how bad morale was. Russia had never started a major war. We had never wanted to go to war; Germany had attacked us. As a result of this, almost the whole of the civilised world was now in arms. Although I felt more patriotic than many at this time, I could understand why they were so aggrieved. It could be argued to this day that Germany, who gave the world Karl Marx, prepared the ground in which Marx’s pernicious doctrines could flourish. Many believe the German race the creator of the terror and chaos which is our twentieth century. I do not agree with this depiction. The Germans were very kind to me in the thirties, by and large.

My wish for delay was in part to be granted. The train was late. Because of snow-drifts on the line, precedence given to military trains, and the general inefficiency of the railway company, whose best men were now engaged in war-work, we stopped frequently. The temperature never became absolutely uncomfortable but the saloon-car with its stove grew crowded and eventually we put on our top-coats and returned to our seats. The actress remained in the saloon, drinking cognac. We were brought frequent tumblers of tea to console us. By dawn the old lady in black had begun to shiver. At last the train moved slowly forward between high banks of snow. It was impossible to see anything but snow. It was as if we travelled through a brilliant ice-cavern, a tunnel whose roof was illuminated by glowing grey felt.

Even as we crawled forward (we were only a few miles from Kiev) the snow came down again. Great sheets of it fell vertically. There was no wind. I was very tired, but I went to the observation platform behind the guard’s van and looked back at the line. There were two dark parallel tracks in it created by the wheels of the train. Even as I watched they began to fill. It was as if the whole of the past, the entire landscape behind us, were being erased. I had a feeling of freedom which quickly gave way to a sense of loss. I remembered Odessa in the summer; the quick, babbling people, the gaiety of it all, the wit, the kindness, the comradeship. This blizzard had fallen on that Odessan summer like a final curtain. The Frost Gods were taking vengeance on those who, for a few short months, had dared to be happy.

A little later, as if celebrating escape from disaster, we came steaming and whistling into Kiev. The station seemed bleak, though as crowded as ever. The great baroque pillars where pigeons nested, the stone walls and ceilings, the looming renaissance bas-reliefs, all gave an impression of coldness. With my bag (containing new clothes and gifts) I stepped down onto the platform, bewildered once more by the rush of the porters, the shouts of the passengers, the sense of panic which seized everyone the moment the train had stopped. But now I had no Shura to guide me.

I began to walk as best I could through this press. I ignored porters, vendors, touts. I had some idea of getting the tram to Podol and from there walking or getting another tram home. As I reached the main entrance and saw people fighting for cabs, crushing one another to get on the trams, I felt a terrible regret at the absence of Shura and his comradeship. I was never really to know such warmth and spirit again. I went past the terminus. The roofs and streets were piled with snow. There were braziers on the pavements, bundled-up old snow-sweepers, peasants selling hot tea and chestnuts, troikas going past. It was familiar. I hated it. I had in a strange way become a person without a context. We Russians will do anything to ensure ourselves a context. If slavery is the only one offered us, we will accept it rather than have none at all. It is what Kropotkin realised. It is why the Red Napoleon, Lenin, and his gang were so successful.

As a stranger, I looked at the city which I had left a few months ago and in which I had been raised. As a stranger, I did not enjoy what I saw. The War had already begun to affect us. The people were not as friendly, or at least as gregarious, as those in Odessa. There were not the smiles, the rapid exchanges, the gestures full of ambiguous meaning. So I thought.

I made my way to what was then called Stolypinskaya. If I walked along this street, it would eventually lead me to Vladimirskaya and St Andrews, where I would be able to get an ordinary tram all the way home. I was anxious to avoid the crowds. I had turned into Stolypinskaya, with its tall, yellow buildings which, with snow at top and foot, resembled a kind of unappetising seedcake, when I heard a shout behind me. I gripped my suitcase and felt a touch or two of anxiety until, turning, I realised it was Captain Brown, a hobbling old bear in black fur, rushing after me. ‘Maxim! I thought I’d missed you. Didn’t you get the message?’

He had sent a telegram to Odessa. Because of the War it had not arrived until I had left. I was to have waited near the gate of the platform where he would meet me. He had no transport, so we continued to walk along the Stolypinskaya together. He insisted on carrying my bag. He said he had been waiting several hours, because of the train being so late. He thought I must be exhausted, but of course I had been far more comfortable than had he. He looked older. His face had become almost a modern artist’s idea of a face, all in bright reds and blues. But I was glad to see him, even if he did smell of vodka. My mother had been desperately ill. Between them he and Esmé had nursed her to health. Now she was ‘sitting up and complaining’, drinking soup and no longer ‘getting ready to meet the Reaper’. I had had no idea, of course, that she had been so ill. I assumed her influenza to have been relatively mild. But there had been something of an epidemic in the poorer districts. Many had died, said Captain Brown. Esmé had not written to tell me this because she had not wanted me to worry. He had written to Uncle Semyon asking that I not be informed of the danger. She was much better now and anxious to see me. He commented on my fine clothes - ‘a little too smart for Kiev, eh?’ - and on my complexion which was at once healthier and ‘more mature’. I had cut down radically on the cocaine. I now no longer used it daily. The supply in my luggage might be the last I was to find for some time. I must treasure it.

We took a Number 10 tram up to our district. The streets of Podol below looked meaner and dirtier, even with the snow, and the people were wretched compared to those I had known in the Moldovanka. My dislike of Jewish poverty, Jewish passivity, Jewish greed, Jewish pride, welled within me, but I suppressed it. I had been shown kindness, too, by Jews. There were, I’ll argue to this day, Jews and Jews. In aggregate, however, they can be depressing. Our little street was piled with snow-drifts taller than me. Through them channels had been cut to doorways, and along the middle of the road. It seemed horribly seedy. I felt depressed as we turned into the building where I had spent most of my life. We climbed stairs smelling of cabbage and over-brewed tea, of kvass and sour dumplings. We entered the apartment and its oppressive darkness - the blinds were half-drawn - where my mother lay on her couch pulled close to the black iron stove. Esmé, pale and weary and as sweet as ever, ran forward to take my hand, leading me to my mother. Mother coughed the most horrible racking cough I have ever heard. She spoke in the croaking tones I had learned to recognise from past illnesses of all kinds; it was her ‘ill’ voice.

‘Maxim, my dear son. Such a joy! I thought we’d never meet in this world again.’

I embraced her, letting her kiss me on my face while I kissed her cheeks. She smelled strongly of embrocation. She was swathed in layer upon layer of bodices and blouses and shawls and I must admit that I was, after the style and good living of Odessa, just a little repulsed. The room was extremely warm. I broke free, in the end, and patted her head. She winced. I stopped patting and said to Esmé, ‘You have been so good. I was sorry to hear of your father. You are a princess.’

She blushed. It was almost as if she wished to curtsey to me. ‘You’ve become so manly, Maxim. Your manners! A prince, at least.’ She spoke with slight irony, but I was flattered.

A great, expressive cough came from where my mother was propped. ‘He must eat!’

‘I have the broth ready.’ Esmé disappeared into the next room and came back with a pot which she placed on the stove, ‘It’s warm. It will not be long.’

I looked miserably at the old familiar pot. The smell from it was no longer appetising. The pot had sustained me since I was weaned. It had been filled, as it were, by my mother’s sweat. I recalled the turnips and onions and beets and potatoes which had gone into it. And I longed for that spicy, tasty, Odessa food. The variety of bortsches, and yushkas, the kuleshnik, the schipanka, the zatirka, kulish and rassolnik, the herrings and boiled sturgeon and sardines, the roast meats with sauerkraut and prunes and buckwheat hash.

‘You must be hungry,’ said my mother.

‘I ate on the train,’ I said. ‘There was a lot of food. I’m not hungry. Don’t worry.’

‘There’s meat in the soup,’ she said. ‘Chicken. You must eat.’ She began to cough again, from the chest, her eyes watering.

‘I’ll eat later,’ I said, ‘I brought you a present.’ I was embarrassed because I had nothing special for Captain Brown. I produced the black and red shawl I had bought for my mother.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Real silk. Is it from Semyon?’

‘It’s from me,’ I said, ‘I earned the money.’

‘Earned? How?’

‘Bills of lading,’ I said. ‘A profit on cargo.

‘You’re going to work in Semya’s office?’

‘This was a private matter,’ I told her. ‘Here Esmé. What do you think?’

It was a beautiful apron, embroidered with intricate stitching. It had come from Wagner’s. Esmé clapped her hands with pleasure. Her blue eyes widened as she inspected the embroidery. I had chosen well. It went perfectly with her colouring, her blonde hair. I found a packet of ‘Sioux’ tobacco in the bottom of my suitcase. I was by no means an habitual smoker. I decided to give this to Captain Brown. He was delighted. ‘This is the best imported American tobacco,’ he said. ‘Virginian. You don’t often get hold of it. I have seen where it is grown, you know, in the Southern States of America. Miles of fields, full of niggers picking the weed, and singing. Beautiful music, particularly in the distance. I once crossed America from Charleston to Nantucket. By the railroad. I’ve seen New York, though I was only there a few hours. And Boston, too. And Washington. And Chicago, where I still have friends.’ He fondled the tobacco and I was glad I had given it to him. He was the most pleased of all. ‘It’s strange,’ he continued, ‘that I should have wound up here.’ He began to say something in English in a low tone. I only caught a few words and part of a phrase which had something to do with ‘worthless relatives in Inverness’. At some stage in his life he had written to his family asking if there was ‘a berth’ for him. He had received no reply. He claimed to be the black sheep of his family, though it was hard to see why. He was the next best thing to a father to me and a loving husband to my mother.

‘The War is producing many shortages.’ Captain Brown pocketed the tobacco. ‘Everything is hard to get. I suspect profiteers. Hoarders. Things are worse, I gather, the further North and West you go. People from Moscow say we’re lucky.’

‘They’ve always been envious of Ukraine,’ said Esmé. ‘Father believed the Germans were fighting the entire War just to annex this part of the Empire. We’ve the best industry, the most food, the best ports. It stands to reason.’

‘Your father knew what he was talking about, Esmaya.’ Captain Brown tried to lean against the stove without burning himself. ‘I speak as a soldier. They want Russia as far as the Caucasus which they’ll split with Turkey. You can be sure some power-drunk Hun and some scheming Musselman have made that decision already. Why else should Turkey enter the War?’

‘We fought back the Tatar hordes,’ I said, ‘It should be an easy matter to drive the Germans and Turks from our borders.’

‘God is with Russia,’ said Esmé. ‘We always win in the end. We always shall.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

This discussion was terminated by a terrible fit of coughing. My mother, her hair streaming about her white face just as if she were having one of her nightmares, flung herself half off the couch. Paroxysms of coughing threw her body this way and that. She gasped for something, holding herself steady on the floor with one hand, gesturing with the other.

‘Water?’ said Esmé.

‘Medicine?’ said Captain Brown.

I made to help her up. She shook in my arms. It was a peculiar, spasmodic shaking, as if at first she tensed herself, then released the muscles she had tensed. Her teeth began to chatter.

‘Should we send for a doctor?’ I asked.

‘It sounds callous,’ said Captain Brown, ‘but he will only charge money to tell us what we know. Your mother has become overexcited at the prospect of her only son being returned to her. She speaks of you all the time. She is proud of you, Maxim.’

‘Proud,’ gasped my mother. ‘Have some soup.’ I could tell that she felt both concern and pleasure.

‘You must sleep, Yelisaveta Filipovna,’ Esmé told her. She produced a bottle of chloroform, saying to me, ‘She has waited all night for you. You were expected sooner.’

‘The train,’ I told her. ‘The War.’

Noisily, almost greedily, my mother accepted the spoon. Soon she had fallen back on her pillows and was snoring. I looked miserably around the room. It now seemed impossibly small and cluttered. I saw my shelf. I had once enjoyed sleeping on my shelf. Now I longed for a bed, no matter how tiny. A bed with a white sheet on it and white pillows.

For almost a week I was to live in that apartment while my mother alternately coughed and snored, or occasionally broke into one of her old familiar nightmares. Esmé, at least, slept on the shelf, while I had her mattress in the other room. It was not quite so bad as I had expected. At least I had a degree of privacy, though the cooking utensils and food were kept near me. Water was fetched from a pump on the landing below, but we had a sink and drainage. We shared a lavatory with the drunken couple next door. The couple were only about twenty, but dedicated alcoholics. When the stricter drink laws came in, they continued to be as inebriated as ever. They were drinking all kinds of bad alcohol. Eventually both of them died a few months after I had gone to St Petersburg. At that time, however, they disturbed me every night.

I spent some of my first day taking a walk with Esmé. I retailed a censored version of my adventures. She was impressed. I elaborated some anecdotes: going aboard the English tramp, for instance, and encountering Greeks and laskars. In the main it was enough to tell her about all the wonders: the pleasure resorts of Fountain and Arcadia, the sideshows at the fair, more impressive than any we ever saw at the Contract Fair in Kiev, the myriad ships and races. She took my arm as we wandered through the muffled white streets into the grounds of St Kyril’s, where it was deserted save for an old snow-clearer, swathed in felt, who seemed to be there for our convenience alone. We stood looking down over the grey and yellow world and I spoke of the turquoise Odessa seas, the luminous days, the warm-hearted, quick-witted people. Esmé clutched my arm so tightly and listened so attentively that I began to suspect she had designs on me. But that was a terrible thought. Esmé was pure; above such desires. At least, she was unaware of any desires and her gestures were innocent. I pulled away from her. We continued to walk. Kiev seemed small and provincial compared with Odessa, for all that this was our major city. I missed the sea, the sense of the world beyond the water waiting to be visited. I told this to Esmé when she asked if I were glad to be home.

‘I want the opportunity for escape,’ I said. ‘My soul has the scent of foreign parts. I want to travel. I want to build machines in which we shall all be able to sail through the air. Remember when I flew, Esmé?’

‘I remember.’

‘We shall both fly. I shall go to Petersburg and get my diplomas. Then I shall possess the authority I need to convince the sceptics. Then I shall go to Kharkov and get finance. Then I shall build all kinds of flying machines: passenger liners, individual planes, everything. And gyro-carriages. And sailing-dirigibles which can land on water or fly, depending on the whim and needs of the pilot.’

‘You will be famous,’ she said. ‘Kiev will honour you. You will have your name in the newspapers every day, like Sikorski.’

Sikorski was in St Petersburg already. Having abandoned the ideas he had borrowed wholly from Leonardo da Vinci, he was no longer experimenting with helicopters. I had dropped a similar line of research as being impractical. Another idea, involving the use of a cyclist powering his own propeller, was taken up some fifty or sixty years later. Sikorski never replied to my letter offering him fifty per cent of the profits if he helped me develop the invention. His plans had become more grandiose. He was virtually the inventor of that terrible weapon, the bombing aeroplane. Too late, however, to give Russia the air-supremacy she needed. We could have transferred the theatre of operations into the upper atmosphere. We should no longer have had to depend on unreliable, untrained peasants whose empty heads were fitting repositories for Red propaganda. Stalin, ‘the Man of Steel’, has been blamed for a great deal. But Stalin, like Ivan the Terrible before him, realised the worth of encouraging Russians to rely on purely Russian brains and skill. Sikorski, in disgust, soon went to America to earn a fortune and an exaggerated reputation. Other Russians simply never got the credit they deserved. Stalin knew what Russian aeronautic expertise was worth. We needed someone of his ilk at the time of the First War. Then, ironically, we should not have found ourselves saddled with him later.

Of course, I said little of this to Esmé as we walked through the St Kyril gardens, in the last week of 1914. I had a certain gift for predicting the development of engineering ideas, but I was no Cagliostro!

During the week I was at home I was pleased to see my mother improving. Soon she was able to move about the flat. Uncle Semyon, it seemed, had granted her a pension. ‘He wants a gentleman in the family.’ My mother flourished his letter. ‘He will do anything to see you succeed.’

‘Will you give up the laundry?’ I asked. It was now a source of distress to me that my mother earned such an undignified living.

‘I am drawing a small rent on it,’ she said. ‘At present I am too ill to do much.’

‘You’ll make yourself worse by returning over-soon,’ Esmé agreed.

‘You should go to Odessa in the spring,’ I suggested. ‘It is wonderful there. The sunshine will make a new woman of you.’

This amused her. ‘You’re not happy with the old one?’

‘Not in her present condition. Stay at Uncle Semya’s.’

‘And be shot by Turks? This is the worst time to be visiting the seaside, Maxim.’ She was almost accusatory, as if I had suggested she put herself into danger. ‘We’ll wait, eh? Until after the War.’

‘It will be over by spring. See what a Russian winter will do to our enemies. We’ll thrive on it. They’ll die in millions in Galicia. The corn will be nourished on enemy blood.’

This raised a horrified ‘Oh, Maxim!’ from Esmé, a small groan from Mother and a chuckle from Captain Brown as he entered from the other room where he had been washing up. ‘You’ve become a Russian warrior, Maxim.’

‘We must all be warriors of some kind.’ I had read this in one of the newspapers. ‘Every Russian is a soldier, helping to bring Victory.’

‘Every Russian?’ Captain Brown winked at me. He had accepted my manhood whereas my mother still considered me the boy who had left Kiev in September. ‘What about Rasputin, eh? Do you think he’s doing his bit? If so, I’d like to help him.’

He was drunk. My mother exclaimed ‘Captain Brown!’ and suggested he go for a walk until he felt better. Esmé was blushing. I was surprised at the old Scot. Normally, drunk or sober, he was a gentleman. Perhaps his consumption of vodka had increased lately. With a murmur of apology he made a little bow to my mother and Esmé and left. He did not return for several hours. In the meantime I sat at the table and did my best, as I had done since my arrival home, to refresh myself on basic engineering principles. I had a place at the Polytechnic, but I would need to go through a preliminary oral examination when I arrived. I wanted to be sure of passing it. I continued to study at night while Esmé and Mother slept. My little store of cocaine got smaller, but my store of knowledge increased rapidly.

As I studied, ideas began to come back to me. These were projects I had set aside when I had left for Odessa. I developed a method of building underwater tunnels to link various parts of Petersburg divided by the canals and rivers; I toyed with the notion of bridging the Bering Straits to produce a direct land link between Russia and America; naturally new kinds of steel would be required and I considered different alloys. I was beginning, in short, to settle comfortably into my studious and creative mood again. Sometimes I would go for walks alone: to the gorge, now deep in snow, where Zoyea’s camp had been; to the Babi gorge, where I had flown. Once I visited the run-down house of Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian, only to discover he had given up his business. It was the matter of the bakery engine, apparently, which had made him decide to leave Kiev. Business had become harder to find, possibly because people were reverting to pre-industrial methods as the War progressed, and he had gone to Odessa not long after me. From there, I was informed, he had left for England. He had relatives, said an old female neighbour, in Manchester. I felt some remorse and asked her if she thought it was my fault. She shrugged. ‘He was afraid of the Turks. The moment they entered the picture he became nervous, you know. He saw a Moslem Khan on the throne of Kiev. So he went to the one country where he could be sure the Moslem presence would never be felt.’ (This is an irony. Manchester is now full of the Sons of Allah. They run local councils, lend money at inflated rates of interest, own most of the private housing.)

As my mother’s health improved she began to worry more about my impending trip. ‘Odessa was one thing,’ she said, ‘but Petersburg is another. In Odessa you had relatives. In Petersburg you’ll have no one.’

‘It’s not true, mother. Uncle Semya has given me the names of his agents. They are a respectable English firm. From Messrs Green and Grunman I’ll draw my allowance and I can go to them any time I am in difficulties.’

‘Petersburg is the centre of revolutionary schemes. Everybody knows that. Your father was never political until he went there. They started all the trouble. The arrests. The pogroms. It’s easy for them. They’re the sons and daughters of the rich. If they’re caught, they get exiled and have to go to live in Switzerland. But we get shot.’

‘I shan’t get shot, mother.’

‘You must promise to do nothing to put yourself under suspicion,’ Esmé begged me.

‘I’ve no time for Reds.’ I laughed at their fears. ‘Cadets or Social Revolutionaries or Anarchists. I hate them all.’ In those days the Social Revolutionaries, as opposed to Lenin’s Social Democrats, were regarded as by far the most fanatical radicals. Lenin, needless to say, hiding away in some luxury chalet, had never been heard of by anyone. It was only later, confident that his dirty work had been done for him, that he was paid to come back to Russia by the Germans and claim the Revolution as his own. People like that exist in all walks of life. They let the real workers exhaust themselves, then stroll in to take the credit.

I have had exactly that happen to me, with my inventions. Thomas Alva Edison’s reputation was based on the brainchildren of his assistants. Since this commonly happens in the scientific field, it is not surprising it should also happen in business and in politics. Many Germans have told me that Einstein stole all his ideas from his pupils. There is a young man in the pub who tells me he wrote all the Beatles songs and received not a penny in royalties. Even Sikorski’s much-vaunted helicopter experiments were preceded by the Cornu brothers’ successful French attempt of 1907: but you did not read much about them in the Kiev newspapers two years later. In the worlds of science and politics it is the man who has the most luck, seeks the most publicity, meets the right people, who gives his name to cities and to great companies. I am reconciled to obscurity, but at least these memoirs will set the record straight.

Obscurity seemed impossible to the boy who told Esmé of his plans for the future; of his visions of great, elegant skyscraper blocks rising above the ruins of the slums; towns with moving pavements and covered streets, with aerial transport, food dispensers, genetic selectors ensuring that all children were in perfect health. We were developing the technology. That was how we should use it.

Esmé for her part talked of when she would be old enough to become a nurse. ‘It will be too late, soon,’ she said, ‘the War will be over.’

‘Pray for that.’ What would she do in the event of peace? She would still go into nursing, ‘I want to do something useful with my life.’

I squeezed her hand in gratitude as we sat on a bench in the winter sunshine, looking down over Babi gorge, ‘In the meantime you are keeping a brave woman alive. I owe everything to Mother, Esmé.’

‘When one only has a single parent, one appreciates them so much more,’ she said.

I agreed. She had become sad, thinking of her dead father.

‘He was a brave man,’ I said.

She became bleak. ‘Brave enough. But will there be justice in this clean, scientific world of yours, Maxim?’

‘Justice is a scarce commodity,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘You could be a great teacher.’

I had considered this, ‘I might decide to run my own laboratory, with assistants to whom I can pass on my knowledge.’

‘I shall become your resident nurse.’

‘We shall each do our best, in our different spheres, to improve the world.’

It was rare for me to make the mistake of believing knowledge could be used in the service of sentiment. It is no more the job of the nun to be ‘of the world’ than it is for a pure scientist to design more efficient soup-kitchens. It is mere intellectual arrogance to believe that science can cure human ills. But in Esmé’s company I was often temporarily infected with her own feminine sentimentality. And I am the first to admit that without such creatures, the world would be an even less tolerable one than it is.

On my birthday I received suitable gifts from my little family. Books, pencils, paper, a rare German pencil-sharpener and a proper attaché-case, all of which I should need in Petersburg. My mother wept and coughed and lay on her couch, looking at me through sleepy eyes and begging Esmé and Captain Brown to tell me to be sure I did not fall in with Reds and loose women.

I told her they were very strict at the Polytechnic Institute. I had looked it up on the map. It was not even in Petersburg proper.

The next day I had a letter and some silver roubles from Odessa. My uncle told me to make the most of myself in Peter, to meet the right people and to make a good impression on my professors. He told me I should be known there as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff and he enclosed a passport in that name. My own photograph was on it. This was a shock. Because of the War he had evidently had to pull strings, but I had not expected to enter the Institute under an assumed name. I might have to use this name for the rest of my life. It would be on all my diplomas. I had not at this time become used to the idea of changing names as one changed clothes. The Revolution soon familiarised me with that particular procedure. I knew from Shura that many people had identity papers in different names. Some had changed a dozen times. But these were criminals, radicals, who were forced to do such things. The passport was authentic. Uncle Semya reminded me to let my mother know the name I would be using.

I could not speak of this at once either to her or to Esmé. I put on my English topcoat and wandered out towards the park. Here, on the hill, I thought the problem over. I could see how it had all come about, of course. With the War on, places at the Polytechnic were hard to come by. Many Ukrainians wished to study in Petersburg. Obviously there were too many applicants. Presumably this Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff had given up his place so that I could go. Possibly he had died. He might have joined the army. There were a dozen possibilities. If I wished to learn I should have to learn under a pseudonym. It would make no difference to the quality of that learning. Perhaps later I could admit my real name and get my diplomas properly inscribed.

I have hated hypocrisy and deception all my life, yet all my life I have been victim to it. That is the terrible irony. Here I was having to live a lie not because I had done anything wrong, but because my Uncle Semya had been willing to go to any lengths to ensure me a good education. I had learned that the world is made up of lies.

I informed my mother. She was not surprised. She had had some hint, she told me, in Uncle Semya’s recent letters. Kryscheff was a good, respectable name. It had a ring to it.

I think that she was distressed, however. It could have been part of her general distress. In some ways it was bad for her that I had remained so long at home. Even Esmé was of the opinion that although my mother’s spirits and health had improved her nerves had deteriorated.

On my last evening, Esmé and I went for a walk. I told her that I was to pose as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch and that she must keep the secret of my real name. That secret was my parting present to her. She smiled and said she would treasure it. She was not especially puzzled by this sudden change of identity, either.

We held hands, like brother and sister, and Esmé reassured me that she would look after Mother, that I must dedicate myself to becoming a great engineer. If I became famous as Kryscheff, what did it matter? My mother would still be proud and I would still be able to look after her.

By the next morning I had managed to fit myself into the role and was D. M. Kryscheff boarding the Wagon-Lit which was to carry me in the comfort to which I had become accustomed to the capital.

Uncle Semyon had sent the ticket together with a sheet of instructions as to where I should go and how I should behave in Petersburg. He was anxious I should act like a gentleman in every aspect of my life. He was prepared to spare no expense to this end. I was deeply touched by his kindness. My mother was overjoyed. She had been too ill to see me to the station and for this, I must admit, I was somewhat grateful. It would have been humiliating to have been seen with a sickly, weeping mother coughing out her last goodbyes. Instead Esmé and Captain Brown came. They helped me with my luggage, saw that the porter took it to the appropriate compartment.

I was over-excited. I had never slept in a special Wagon-Lit coach. As I entered the coupé I saw that the top bunk was already occupied. I was to share with another gentleman. This was usual, unless one were very rich, and I had known there would be very few spare places on the train. Almost the whole of it was occupied by high-ranking military men and their families. Never had I heard so much drawling, well-bred Russian spoken - or so much French, for that matter. The girls spoke French in preference. I think they even liked to pretend they were French. Their accents gave them away. I could tell this, even though French is not the language I speak most fluently. It is the language of love; the language which these same girls would be speaking in a few years time as they tried to attract Bolshevik protectors on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow.

The compartment astonished Esmé. She had never heard of such things. She had expected, she told me, a row of cots, side by side in the carriage: a mobile dormitory. She discovered next door the little wash-basin, with its polished wooden top which could be a table when the basin was not in use. Even the lavatory was disguised to look like a chair, its livery matching the rest of the coupé. The whole effect was of dark pink and white, glowing in the snowy light from the windows. The upholstery was the colour of a confection later sold in Paris as Fraises a la Romanoff, presumably because it had been popular with the Tsar. The sheets were the purest white and the blankets matched the upholstery. There were small sets of drawers and tiny wardrobes. My fellow-traveller had already established himself. A smell of cologne filled the compartment and he had hung up an elaborate Arabian dressing-gown. I read the notices on the door. They were in Russian, French and German. They drew my attention to the bell, which could be reached from where one lay in bed, and to the various services available. We were required not to smoke in bed and to call the attention of a guard at the slightest hint of fire. The list included all the usual rules of rail travel.

Captain Brown said the compartment compared favourably with the best he had experienced (‘in India and elsewhere’) and that he would have enjoyed coming with me. Esmé agreed and said she envied me. I was now used to a certain amount of comfort, but to Esmé this carriage was more magical than anything she had ever seen. She could not stop touching the blankets, the sheets, the fixtures. She was almost mesmerised by them and asked me, ‘Was this what it was like at your uncle’s?’ I laughed, ‘It wasn’t, so different.’

She looked at me as if I had been elevated to the ranks of the gods. ‘You must do well at the Polytechnic,’ she said seriously, ‘It is a great honour, Maxim.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘Dimitri,’ I reminded her gently. ‘All this depends on my being Dimitri Mitrofanovitch, son of a priest from Kherson.’ (These details were in my papers.)

‘I hope you don’t meet any clerical friends from Kherson.’ Captain Brown patted my arm. ‘Make your mother happy, boy. It was her letters got you this. If she hadn’t bent her knee to your uncle... Well, he’s the only decent member of that family. I thought my own was bad enough, but at least they don’t pretend I’m dead.’

I had not heard this before. ‘I don’t understand you, Captain Brown?’

He smiled sympathetically, ‘It’s all right, boy. You’re not to blame and neither is she. They disapproved of your dad. Made themselves judge and jury. It’s the religion, I suppose.’

I was to hear no more. The guard shouted that visitors should leave the train. Whistles began to blow. Captain Brown patted my arm, Esmé kissed my cheek. I returned the kiss and made her blush. They stood outside the window of the coupé, smiling and nodding and making gestures until the whistle blew, the carriage jerked, and I was once again steaming towards the white landscape of the steppe.

This time my home-town was, in turn, obliterated by the falling snow. The train rushed into the silence of frozen lakes, stripped silver birches, pines, little stations whose telegraph cables were hung with icicles; old, grey, huddled villages where peasants dragged sledges containing babies, firewood, milk-churns, and the white, howling smoke of the train was the only warmth to fall upon that whole, cold landscape.

A large young man entered the compartment. He was flamboyantly dressed in a high-collared shirt, a lilac cravat, black silk waistcoat, tight-fitting trousers and a frock-coat. His fair hair was pomaded and piled into waves on his large, handsome head. He had wide blue eyes and a thick-lipped mouth of a sort I would normally mistrust. But he was very friendly in his greeting. He held out his big hand to shake mine. He bent his body forward in a pose which seemed familiar. He must be, I realised as he spoke, connected with the stage. ‘Bonjour, mon petit ami.’

His accent was gushing, exaggerated. I replied with a dignified: ‘Bonjour, m’sieu. Comment allez-vous?’

‘Ah, bon! Très bon! Et vous?’

‘Très bien, merci, m’sieu.’

This ludicrous schoolroom exchange continued until names were presented.

‘Je m’appelle Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff,’ I told him.

He was Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov and he was, he said, a day behind the rest of his ‘gang’. To our mutual relief, we returned to Russian.

‘Gang?’ I said, amused. ‘Are you a bandit?’

He laughed for some moments. It was artificial, trilling. A stage laugh. ‘You could call me that. Can I say “Dimka”?’ It was the diminutive of Dimitri. He had dropped formalities rather more rapidly than I might have preferred, but there was nothing I could do. He was, after all, a far more experienced traveller than I. I agreed. ‘You can call me Seryozha,’ he said. ‘We’ll be pals on this trip. After all, we’ll be intimates for a long while. It’s freezing, isn’t it?’

I found the compartment rather warm. Again I decided it would seem more sophisticated if I remained silent, offering no opinions until I had the measure of my companion.

‘My gang’s the Foline Ballet.’ This explained his dandified clothes, informal use of first names and soft, gesticulating hands. I had heard of the Company. I had seen it advertised in Kiev. I felt flattered to be sharing a coupé with so eminent a personage. I said that I had been in Odessa for some months and had not had time to see a performance. He said they had been terrible. It was an awful stage, he said. But they had gone down very well. Was I, then, from Odessa? Or had I been travelling?

I said I had travelled a little.

‘We’ve been all over the world,’ he told me. ‘Do you know Paris? You must do. And London?’ He made a face. He did not think much of London. ‘Philistines,’ he said. ‘New York is so much more cultivated. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? All those cowboys! But then you’ve been to New York?’

I could not deceive him by so many thousands of miles. I shook my head.

‘You must go there as soon as possible. Away from all this War. They appreciate art in New York. They are so starved of it, you see, poor things.’

I had become almost as captivated by S.A. Tsipliakov as I had been by Shura. I was flattered by the attention, by the friendly and direct warmth of my companion. I went with him into the dining-room. He bought me breakfast and insisted I have a glass of champagne.

We returned to our coupé and sat side by side on my bunk while he told me of his adventures abroad, the disasters and triumphs of their company (a small one but highly regarded in the capital). He complained that the ‘awful War’ had cut down badly on their travelling. That was why they had been in Kiev. They had been scheduled to go to Berlin at Christmas. ‘We’d been so looking forward to it, Dimka, mon ami. Christmas in Berlin. The lovely decorated trees, the Christmas songs, the gingerbread. The Germans invented Christmas as far as I’m concerned. It’s all so wonderful. Tinsel and velvet and everybody so happy.’ He blamed the whole war on a few Prussians and ‘those greedy Austrians’. It was not, he thought, the fault of the Hungarians. ‘They love music and dancing and all the arts. The Austrians think the waltz is the highest thing anyone can aspire to!’

He complained he could not even go to France, except in uniform. He rang for the steward and ordered a bottle of Krug. It was with almost fainting astonishment that I found the order accepted. Within a quarter-of-an-hour we had an ice-bucket from which emerged not Krug, but the dark green neck of the finest, sweetest Moët et Chandon. ‘It’s almost impossible to get Krug in Russia any longer,’ he said. ‘Luckily the railway companies have some champagne. If you want to drink it, you must travel everywhere by Wagon-Lit!’ He laughed, rolling the bottle in the ice. ‘Every capital is closed to us, for one reason or another. Of course people in the provinces are only too pleased to see us. We play to full houses wherever we go. We’re probably making more money here than we ever made in the rest of Europe. But it’s so dull. I like amusement, Dimka. I work hard on stage so I must find proper ways of relaxing. What do you think?’ He lifted the bottle from the bucket. I held out my glass.

With a flourish, my new friend filled it. ‘We’re going to have a wonderful time. Happy New Year.’ He drank his glass off in a single movement. He sighed and was about to speak when the guard knocked on the door and opened it. He had coarse, red features, greying moustaches, a thick, dark uniform covered in gold braid. He saluted. ‘I’m very sorry, your excellencies. I was asked to keep an eye on the young gentleman by his parents. Any problems, just call for me.’ He closed the door.

Seryozha scowled. The guard was ‘an interfering old fool!’ I was flattered by so much attention. My ‘parents’ must have been Captain Brown. Doubtless he had tipped the guard to look after me all the way to Petersburg.

Outside, the snow continued to fall and Seryozha and I continued to drink. He told me about Marseilles and Florence and Rome and all those ‘wonderful warm places we shan’t be able to visit for months’. As he got drunk, his speech became looser. Luckily I was used to it. Indeed, I found the strain of being a gentleman somewhat relieved by Seryozha’s company. I giggled at his jokes and told him some of my own, at which he laughed as heartily as he laughed at his. ‘We should have some music,’ he said. ‘What a pity the other members of the troupe took the earlier train. We have so many wonderful people who can play the guitar and the mandolin and the balalaika and accordion, you know. We could have a little party. With girls. Do you like girls, Dimka?’ He smiled and put his large arm around my shoulders. ‘I suppose you are a little too young to know what you do like, eh? But you have the feelings?’ He winked.

I assured him I had the feelings. He squeezed my shoulder and then my leg. He suggested we order a further bottle of champagne ‘to keep us warm’. He rang the bell. The guard answered it. Seryozha said impatiently, ‘I wanted the steward.’

‘He’ll be along soon, your excellency.’

But an hour passed and the champagne was finished before the steward arrived.

‘Another bottle of this,’ said my friend. ‘Better make it two.’

The steward shook his head. ‘All the champagne is gone.’

‘We’ve hardly been travelling an hour!’

‘We’ve been moving for three, your excellency.’

‘And you’ve run out of champagne?’

‘I’m very sorry. It’s the War.’

‘Oh, it’s a wonderful War, isn’t it, when artists are no longer allowed to take the few pleasures left to them? You give the public everything and what does it give you? Champagne-rationing.’

‘It’s not our fault, your excellency.’

‘Then bring me a bottle of brandy.’

‘There’s no brandy available in bottles. We have to keep our stocks for the dining-cars.’

‘You mean if we wish to have a drink, we must dine?’

The steward took out his pad. ‘Shall I book you a table?’

‘You had better.’ Seryozha stood up, looming over both of us. He flexed his legs, his arms. ‘I shall be in agony by morning.’ He reached into the pocket of his frockcoat which he had flung on his bed. ‘Can’t you get us just one bottle, steward?’ He produced a silver rouble. The man looked at it as if he saw his child dying and was unable to save it. ‘There is no way, your excellency.’

From where I sat, I noticed the shadow of the bulky guard behind him. He was keeping an eye on the steward to make sure he was not bribed.

‘It’s all right, Seryozha,’ I said. ‘We’ve had plenty of champagne. More than most people will be getting for a while.’

The dancer slumped down again, waving the steward away. ‘When shall we have dinner?’

‘From five o’clock on, your excellency.’

‘Then make it at five.’

‘Very well.’

‘And ensure we get an aperitif.’

‘I hope so, your excellency.’

Seryozha rose in anger, but the steward scuttled off down the corridor. ‘Dimka, my dear, we must all suffer a little in the cause of the War.’ He gave me a strange look from beneath hooded, shadowed eyes. ‘You do not blame me?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I did my best.’

‘I saw.’

‘I think I’ll rest for a while, until dinner. Why don’t you do the same?’

I was feeling sleepy. I agreed it might be a good idea. Seryozha clambered to his bunk. I could see his bulging outline immediately above my head. I lay, in my shirt and trousers, with my jacket and waistcoat neatly hung up, trying to sleep. But the general atmosphere of excitement which I had experienced a few moments earlier now gave way to something akin to depression. I had been looking forward to that second bottle.

A moment or two later I heard a rustling from Seryozha’s bunk. He was now sitting cross-legged, judging by the shape in the mattress overhead. A little time passed. I heard him give one quick sniff and then another. It was a familiar sound. I got up, in time to catch him unawares, and sure enough he held a short silver tube to his nose. It extended to a little box, like a snuff-box. Deprived of his wine, Seryozha had resorted to cocaine. He looked at me and put the apparatus away. ‘You’ve caught me taking my medicine.’

‘You have a headache?’ I spoke with deliberate innocence.

‘Just a small one. The fizz, you know. And then that awful experience with the steward.’

‘You should sleep.’

‘I don’t feel sleepy. Do you?’

‘I’m quite drowsy.’ This was not entirely true. I thought it politic. I hoped to be offered some cocaine. I still had a little more than a gram in my luggage. I had decided to save it for an emergency, when my studies demanded. Now I had found a new source. I determined not to lose touch with my ballet-dancer. I must be sure to get his address. From him I could contact a source of supply. One of my secret worries would then be quieted.

Seryozha put out a soft hand and rumpled my hair. ‘Don’t worry about me, my dark-eyed beauty. I’m feeling better already.’

I pulled away. At the time I had very little experience of the ballet fraternity, but some instinct warned me. I believe the guard and steward must have guessed Seryozha’s intentions and had done what they could to thwart him. People today think that Seryozha’s is a modern aberration. It has always been with us. Virtually everything characteristic of the present day - every vice, political theory, tyranny, argument, art-form had its origin in the Russia of my own time. The degenerates of St Petersburg set the tone, one could say, for the entire century.

I dined with Seryozha because I had agreed I should, but I drank sparingly, almost calculatingly. When we came to retire he let me undress in the little wash-room. I put on my nightshirt and climbed into bed. He disappeared into the wash-room. I heard normal sounds of ablutions. Then he came out.

He was quite naked. This was not unusual amongst men in those days, who always bathed together nude. What alarmed me was the size of his penis swinging a few inches from my face as he seemed to have trouble climbing into his bunk. The train had begun to move a little faster, but this was not why he found himself floundering over me, his warm, stiff private parts striking my neck and shoulder. He made a great show of apologising. I, of course, in my confusion, told him I did not mind. He sat on the edge of my bunk as if to recover, steadying himself with a hand on my arm. ‘Oh, Dimka. What a shock! Are you feeling all right?’

I said I was fine.

His hand stroked my arm. ‘I’m so sorry. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was startle you.’

‘I am not startled,’ I said.

‘But you are upset, I can tell.’

‘Not in the least.”

‘You have become so formal.’ There were tears in his eyes.

‘You have no cause to apologise.’

‘Ah, but I have. I am a monster. You know the kind I am?’

‘It is a perfectly honourable profession. Russians have always been great dancers.’

This seemed to upset him. With a grunt he lifted his great body upright and climbed slowly into his bed. Shortly afterwards I heard more noises and judged he had begun to masturbate. Feeling some stirring in my own loins at his I began privately to indulge myself, also.

I fell asleep.

I awoke with a sensation of extreme discomfort. The lights were out. There was a peculiar silence everywhere in the train. It had grown colder. I was wedged tightly against the wall of the carriage and realised that my companion was lying on my bunk. As I tried to move my arm, which had pins and needles, his thick, almost sluggish voice spoke from the darkness. I could feel stale breath on my face. ‘You seemed cold. I thought I’d warm you.’

‘There’s not enough room for two in here.’

‘You’ll freeze.’ He placed a hand upon my arm. He was sweating. I wondered if the drink and cocaine had caused a form of delirium.

‘I’m extremely uncomfortable,’ I pointed out.

‘I can cuddle you.’

‘Thank you, Sergei Andreyovitch. I would rather not be cuddled.’

‘It’s my duty.’

‘It is not. Why is the compartment so cold?’

‘The train is stuck. The heating has gone wrong. We have stopped in a drift.’

I struggled up. He tried to hold me down.

‘I appreciate your concern, Sergei Andreyovitch, but really I am in some pain.’

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You know that you love me.’

‘All men are brothers, Sergei Andreyovitch. But we are almost complete strangers.’ I began to crawl over his body. My hands touched the carpet. I felt his hand on my back. It began to caress my bottom.

‘You are beautiful,’ he said.

‘I’ll call the steward,’ I suggested. I stood up and reached for the gas. I lit it. ‘Some black coffee will make a new man of you.’

‘What do you know of men?’ The light illuminated his heavy, sulking features. He glared at me from beneath hooded eyes. ‘Why do you play such games? Go on, call the steward. Have me put in prison.’

‘Prison?’ I was mystified. ‘What for?’ He could not go to prison for trying to keep me warm in bed. I had an inkling he wished to make love to me, of course, but I was not experienced enough to be sure.

He looked at me with lugubrious gratitude. ‘Thank you, at least, for that.’

I had learned tact in Odessa, so I did not push the point. However, I wished to escape the oppressive atmosphere, so I donned my dressing-gown and slippers and opened the door.

He gasped. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Stretch my legs,’ I said. ‘Get fresh air. I suggest you resume your own bed, Seryozha.’

‘Thank you.’

As I left he was beginning to climb unsteadily back to his bunk.

Walking along the corridor and looking out at the grey banks of snow through the frost on the windows, I felt at once confused and elated. I appeared to have put Sergei Andreyovitch in my debt. I did not know quite how, but I was prepared to exploit the situation if the opportunity arose. I had no security. I would have to fend for myself in St Petersburg and the more well-connected friends I could make, the better it would be for me.

As I stood at the window I saw a shadow appear at the far end of the corridor and a young woman, wearing a red and green robe, with her dark hair bound on top of her head, came walking slowly towards me. She was a little older than me, round-faced and pleasant, with oval brown eyes and large even teeth. She smiled at me. ‘You can’t sleep?’

‘I seemed to be stifling.’ I nodded back at my coupé.

‘I’m travelling with my awful old nanyana,’ she whispered. ‘She’s a peasant, really, though she’s from Scotland. But she has all those habits. Ugh!’

‘Habits?’

‘She speaks in English all the time. In her sleep.’

‘Scarcely a peasant habit.’ I was amused.

‘In England, surely, it is?’

This encounter began to seem as illogical as the one I had just escaped. ‘They have peasants in England,’ I told her. ‘Although they are more refined than ours.’

‘You have been to England?’

‘I am familiar with that country.’ This was true. I owed my familiarity primarily to Pearson’s and Captain Brown.

I had impressed her. ‘This is the first time I have travelled. We are from Moldavia, you know. We have some land there. A house. The country is very pretty. Do you know it?’

I regretted that I did not.

‘You’d love it. But it’s dull. Father retired there. Before that, he had travelled, too. In England. That’s where he found my nanyana. She’s not a proper Scottish governess. She looked after me because Mother was frequently in poor health.’

‘Your mother is dead?’

‘Certainly not. She’s as fit as a fiddle. She had anaemia. Now she’s cured. She rides a great deal. She has started an English hunt. With dogs and horses and red coats and all that. But I think you need a different sort of fox.’

‘The English fox is a wary little beast,’ I said. ‘And much admired.’

She drew a pendant-watch from her bosom, it’s gone midnight.’

I was anxious to keep her company. ‘You are travelling on from Peter?’ I asked.

‘No. I’m to go to university there.’

‘At the Koyorsy?’ I had familiarised myself with most of the other seats of learning in the capital. The Koyorsy was for women.

‘Yes!’ She was delighted.

‘I am also a student,’ I said. ‘I shall be at the Polytechnic. Although rather younger than most, I have a special medal.’

She was not impressed. Many people in those days saw a Polytechnic as a rather low-grade sort of academy. Science and engineering are still not regarded, in many walks of life, as suitable subjects of study for gentle-people.

‘The War,’ I said, ‘requires new kinds of weapons. And new kinds of men to develop them. That is why I have been called to Peter.’

She giggled. ‘You’re a boy.’

‘I have already flown my own aeroplane,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps you read about it last year? In Kiev. I flew for some minutes in an entirely new type of machine which I designed myself. It was in all the papers.’

‘I remember something about a new kind of flying machine. It was in Kiev, yes.’

‘You are speaking to its inventor.’

I had won her over. She said with some coyness, ‘I can’t recall your name ...’

This, of course, was difficult. I hesitated.

She raised a hand over her mouth, ‘I am so sorry. You are not allowed, perhaps ... The War?’

I bowed, ‘I am not at this point my own master. I can only give you the name by which I am known in the world.’

‘Spies?’

‘There is some slight chance of it, mademoiselle.’

‘My name is Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky.’

I bowed. ‘You may call me Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff. It is the name under which I will go in St Petersburg.’

She was delighted by the romance. Quite without deliberate deception I had learned how to appeal to a lady’s sense of mystery. I had turned my whole dilemma to my advantage, with this young girl, at least.

‘Will you be able to visit me in Peter?’ she asked.

‘If you will write down your address, I shall try.’

‘Wait here.’

I waited, my imagination making designs in the frosted windows, my breath adding a further layer to the cotton-wool whiteness surrounding us. Soon she returned with a piece of paper torn from the fly-leaf of a book. I accepted the paper, bowed, and put it into the pocket of my dressing-gown.

‘You must not feel obliged,’ she said, ‘to visit. But I have hardly any friends, you know, in Peter. I hope to make some, of course, at the Koyorsy.’

‘I will do my utmost,’ I told her, ‘to make sure that you are not lonely.’

‘You will be very busy.’

‘Naturally. However, a beautiful, intelligent lady is forever irresistible.’ I flattered her partly from natural courtesy (I have always had a sense of courtesy towards the fair sex) and partly because I remembered Shura’s advice to make contacts with young ladies whose fathers could finance my inventions. This motive might seem ignoble, but in one sense it was absolutely noble. I was prepared to sacrifice myself to further my work in the field of science.

She smiled as I kissed her hand. ‘Nanyana Buchanan is awake,’ she said. ‘She heard me tearing the paper. I must go.’

‘We shall meet again.’

‘I hope so’ - she dropped her voice - ‘M’sieu “Kryscheff”.’

She fled away down the corridor. I was feeling pleased with myself as I returned to my coupé. I had made two excellent and useful contacts already.

My mood was spoiled by the sight of a fat, great-coated major with handle-bar moustaches and a single glaring eye (the other was covered by a cap), stumping up from behind me and growling: ‘You should be in bed, young man. What’s the matter? Think the Boche have captured the train?’

‘I was wondering why we had stopped.’

‘Because of the snow. I’ve been to investigate. We’ll be hours late. Cold’s cracked a rail, apparently. Too many trains. They’re doing what they can. They say. A lot of people working out there now. I’m supposed to be joining my regiment. They’ll be at the front by the time I arrive in Peter.’

As on the Odessa-Kiev express, I would normally have been glad to have spent as much time on the train as possible, but Sergei Andreyovitch’s peculiar behaviour had stressed my nerves.

With some reluctance I returned to my compartment. The dancer lay with his arms thrown out of the bunk, dangling down, a dead swan. I had to dodge past the arm to resume my own bed. I kept the light on for a while as I read an old copy of Flight magazine which Captain Brown had found for me. The main article was about Curtiss’s experiments with sea-planes in America. The thought of a ship capable of travelling on air, land and sea had occurred to me before. Under the shadow of Sergei Andreyovitch’s gently swaying limb, I fell asleep planning a gigantic vehicle, part airship, part plane, part locomotive, part ocean-liner. The size of the Titanic, it would be capable of flying over obstacles (such as icebergs) and therefore be the safest vessel known to Man. I imagined my name painted on its sides. All I needed were a few industrialists with faith and vision, and I would change the whole nature of travel. No longer would trains be stuck in snow-drifts, reliant on lines and the weather and workmen digging with shovels. At the touch of a switch they would be able to lift into the sky. Was it possible to produce a form of hot-air cannon able to melt the snow in front of a train? The old-fashioned snow-plough blade was not very efficient.

Our Russian trains in those days frequently ran on time no matter what the weather. The War had begun to affect everything very quickly. Or rather, I suspect, the War became an excuse for the inefficient, just as the Revolution was later to supply similar excuses. Now the excuses have somehow become incorporated into the system itself. Delays in trains are deliberate. Part of some five-year-plan to make the rails rust from lack of use. And if the reader should wonder why all the inventions I dreamed of half-a-century ago are still not a reality, do not blame the inventors. Blame the fools who were too lazy to build them; blame the unimaginative bureaucrats who introduced politics into science and instead of developing, for instance, the Zeppelin range of airships, or comfortable flying boats, or high-speed monorail trains, chose to devote their energies to making useless economies. I sometimes think Icarus must have crashed simply because someone supplied him with sub-standard wax.

The train had moved forward a little by morning. At breakfast Sergei Andreyovitch stayed only to take a cup of coffee and then sauntered back to the coupé when his request for a glass of vodka was refused. I guessed he was going to avail himself of his cocaine. Marya Varvorovna gave me a lingering, conspiratorial look, which I found very pleasurable. She sat some tables distant, with her stiff-backed Scottish nanny: a woman who wore plaid as if she were going into battle at Culloden. It was loud enough to be a weapon in its own right. I imagined people were grateful when she wore her street clothes, which were of an ordinary battleship colour. She had a long, red nose, fading red hair and even her eyes had a distinctive red glint. I was glad Marya Varvorovna thought it inappropriate to admit our meeting of the previous night. If the nanny had approached me I believe I should have dived into a snowdrift rather than cope with that hideous creature. Even Marya had been clad in a tartan dress, though of a less vulgar collection of hues. She wore what I later learned was ‘Royal Stuart’. By special decree any non-Scottish commoner is allowed to wear this particular pattern. Nanny, I now know, wore the plaid of her own Buchanan clan. It emphasised the tight sallowness of her skin.

I have never shared the romantic attraction of many Slavs for the Scots. It is an affliction common to most Europeans. I remember in later years meeting an Italian who ran a fish-and-chip shop in the Holborn area of London. This Italian had been so obsessed with the Scots he had kept a complete Highland kit under his bed throughout the Second World War. When the British took his garrison, he simply donned the costume and, complete with a full set of bagpipes, fell in with a column of English troops who accepted him, bizarre accent to boot, as someone separated from a Highland regiment. He was eventually repatriated to England where he started his business which was called The Cutty Sark, which means ‘little shirt’ in Gaelic.

But I was a long way from fish-and-chip shops as I sat in the strawberry-coloured luxury of the Wagons-Lits Internationales dining car on the Kiev-St Petersburg Express and filled myself with delicious croissants, marmalade, apricot jam, cheeses, cold meats, steamed egg, aware of the admiring gaze of a lovely young Russian girl who had all but guaranteed me the sexual companionship I had begun to need. I reminded myself to get hold of Sergei Andreyovitch’s address. If I could make contact with his friends I would know where cocaine was sold and might also have an entree into bohemian life. Cocaine, Shura had once told me, was much more expensive in the capital. Most of it was actually imported via Odessa.

The train crawled forward a few more miles and stopped again. This time we waited in a siding while a long military train went past. This camouflaged train had armoured coaches and huge steel plates protecting the loco. It flew various flags and had positions on the roof for machine-gunners. On flat cars sandbagged artillery was guarded by half-frozen soldiers in greatcoats and woollen caps, vast felt mittens gripping long rifles. Not a few of the passengers waved and cheered at the stolid soldiers, who did not wave back.

‘On their way to the Western Front,’ said a young captain to his pretty wife. ‘That’s the sort of stuff we’re sending the Boche. He’ll be done for in a matter of weeks.’

I was heartened by this news. I reported it to Seryozha as he lay, fully-dressed and shivering, in the compartment. He complained about the cold. ‘I’ll never arrive on time. So many envy me. Foline’s bound to give someone my best parts. That will be the end of my career. You don’t know what a fight it is, Dimka, to make a name for oneself in the ballet. Particularly in Russia. It’s easier abroad, where there’s hardly any competition.’

‘Go to Paris,’ I suggested, ‘and astonish them all.’

He gave me an odd smile. ‘I’d rather stay in Peter.’

‘It’s likely every train will be late,’ I said. ‘For all you know the rest of your troupe is still stuck somewhere outside Kiev and we’re ahead of it. That’s been known to happen.’

He told me I was a dear and I had a good heart and that he was grateful to me for all I had done. It was little enough, I thought, but I took the opportunity of asking for his address. He wrote down the address of a friend instead: Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff. He said that he had not yet decided on permanent lodgings in the city. If all else failed and I wanted to contact him urgently, he would always be glad to see me at the Foline, God willing. They would be leaving for America, he hoped, in the spring. He prayed that America would not come into the War or there would be absolutely nowhere to go. ‘At least people are glad of entertainment in wartime. The number of new theatres and clubs opening in Peter in just the last month or two, I’m told, is incredible! It used to be such an unfriendly city, you know. Not like Moscow. I love Peter. It’s the only civilised place in the whole country. But it isn’t really friendly, even now.’

I was disturbed to hear this. I had a feeling there was something Teutonic and arrogant about the St Petersburg citizens. When we eventually began to pull into the station it was grey and smoky and somehow characterless. It was too big.

Sergei was in a hurry to leave the train and get to the company to ensure himself of his position. He kissed me on both cheeks and lugged his cases down the corridor while old ladies and generals grumbled at him. I was glad he had left in such a hurry, for I had acquired his snuff-box, which he had left in his bunk. He would easily be able to replenish it. But it would keep me going for a long while. I would return the box itself as soon as I had used the contents.

My first impression of that noble city, created by the founder of modern Russia, Peter the Great, was poor. It seemed like a mausoleum. The station was crowded enough, full of uniforms, but lacked the casual bustle of similar stations in Ukraine. There were comparatively few hucksters, the porters were smarter and considerably more servile than any I was used to. I had no trouble getting one. There seemed to be izvozhtiks a-plenty waiting outside for fares. There were also motor-cabs which tempted me, since I had never ridden in one. They would be much more expensive, I was sure. The streets of the capital were enormously wide, but there seemed hardly any life on them. Everyone was dwarfed. Perhaps all the life was in the great suburbs where the workers lived. In a sense it was, like Washington or Canberra, an artificial city, very conscious of its dignity. The double-headed eagle could be seen everywhere. Portraits of Tsar Nicholas and other members of the Royal Family abounded. The whole place felt like a series of extensions of the royal palaces. It seemed one could not even raise one’s voice here, unless it was to berate a servant.

I was also astonished at the way in which porters, cabbies and others were treated. Sharp, commanding voices carried through the cold air and bags were loaded into Carriages, horses were whipped into rapid trots (vehicles moved at an incredible pace in Petersburg, as if everyone were racing everyone else). Trams and motorcars, even, seemed better-bred than any I had seen before. They hardly made a sound. And when I gave the address of Green and Grunman, my uncle’s agents, to the cab-driver, I had to speak to him two or three times before he heard me. Partly this was because of the vast fur cap he wore, with his scarlet coat-collar folded around it, partly it was my soft ‘Southern’ accent which was unfamiliar to him. The whip snapped, the horse picked up her feet, and off we went, trotting past tall buildings which seemed to contain nothing but bright electric light and no people at all.

I was much impressed by the width of the streets, the classic beauty of the buildings. Our capital had been called the ‘Venice of the North’ because of the rivers and canals intersecting the streets, the palaces and public buildings, hotels and barracks laid out with precision to provide the effect of maximum grandeur. Odessa could not bear comparison in size or scope and seemed small, comfortable and welcomingly provincial to me. I regretted the trouble with Shura and wished I had elected to study in Odessa after all. I felt like a yokel. If St Petersburg had this effect on everyone (save, presumably, indigenous aristocrats) it was no wonder she had become a hot-bed of revolution. Such cities create more than envy, they create self-consciousness. And many who feel self-consciously inferior will resort to aggressive politics. There was something brooding and haughty, something distant about the city. The sky above was too wide. I could understand, at last, how the characteristic literature of Russia came to be written and why writers of light-hearted stories turned into melancholies as soon as they arrived at the centre of our cultural life.

The cab came to a halt outside a tall, grey building. A haughty commissionaire stepped forward to take my bags and to help me to the ground. I paid the cabby what he asked and added a small tip. The commissionaire wore an elaborate blue-and-gold uniform. I was used to a preponderance of uniforms, for almost everyone had one in Russia, but I had never seen quite so many as in St Petersburg. I told him to look after my luggage and I took an electric elevator to the third floor of the building to where the firm of Green and Grunman had their offices.

I knocked on a glass door. Behind it moved several shadows. There was a pause. One shadow loomed. The door was unlocked. A tall, white-haired man stood bending over me. He was one of the thinnest people I have ever seen. His hair fell over his face and almost reached his drooping white moustache which in turn touched his chin-beard (known in those days as a ‘Dutch’) which then appeared to blend naturally with his collar and shirt. He spoke good Russian in a whispering lisp I assumed to be some kind of English accent. He asked if he could help me.

I told him my uncle’s name. I understood that I was expected. He seemed relieved and he ushered me in. He took me through two offices where girl typewriters and clerks were hard at work at small, wooden desks, and knocked upon a polished oak door. ‘Mr Green?’ he said.

‘Enter,’ said Mr Green in English.

As we came in, Mr Green moved away from his bookcase towards his large desk. This was inset with panels of green leather. He lowered himself into a matching padded chair, opened his plump mouth and said: ‘Dobrii dehn’ (Good afternoon) to me in Russian. I replied ‘Zdravstvyiteh,’ or ‘How do you do.’ He raised dark brows to the lisping, white-haired gentleman and said, ‘Does the boy speak any English?’

‘I speak a little,’ I replied.

Mr Green smiled and rubbed at his jowls. ‘Good. And French? German?’

‘Some of both.’

‘And Yiddish?’

‘Of course not!’ One might wish to learn Hebrew, but not that ugly patois combining the worst features of all tongues. Moreover, there was no need for it in Petersburg where Jews, in the main, were banned.

He laughed. ‘Surely a smattering?’

‘A few words, of course. How can one live in Kiev and not come to know them?’

‘And in Odessa.’

‘And in Odessa.’

‘Excellent.’ He appeared amused and distracted at the same time. He picked up a grey folder. ‘And we’re giving you the name of Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff. A good Russian name.’

‘I hope so,’ I said, ‘Is he a real person?’

‘Aren’t you real?’ Mr Green’s eyes held a wary kindness, as if I were an attractive animal likely at any moment to bite him.

‘His place at the Polytechnic...’

‘He gained it easily. With his gold medal.’

‘I hope you don’t think me over-inquisitive, sir. I wonder if you know a little more. After all, I’m supposed to be from Kherson where my father is a priest. I have never been to Kherson. I know very little about formal religion, my mother being a God-fearing woman but not a great church-goer.’

‘An Orthodox priest. That was a stroke of luck. You couldn’t get any more respectable, eh?’

‘I appreciate the respectability of it, sir. The mystery, however, is hard to fathom. Won’t I be asked questions?’

‘Of course not. Dimitri Mitrofanovitch was educated privately, at home, by his father. He was a sickly child. Just before he was due to take his place at the Polytechnic last term, he fell ill. Influenza. The unhappy lad was already tubercular, do you see? The priest was a relatively poor man and at his wits’ end. Your uncle’s friends in Kherson were approached for a loan to send the boy to Switzerland. They did better than that. They paid for the boy to go to Switzerland, to an excellent sanitarium where he may be cured. He will continue to study, of course. In Lucerne under your name. You come to St Petersburg under his. Everyone is catered for and everyone gets a good chance in life.’

‘It seems very complicated,’ I said. ‘And very expensive. After all, I don’t think I’m worth - ‘

‘You are worth it to your uncle, it seems. You’ll be of great help to him later. You can speak all these languages. You have a grasp of science. You are good-looking, charming, personable. You have a bearing about you. Why you could be the Tsarevitch himself!’

I was pleased.

‘But healthier,’ added Mr Green, and spread his hands. ‘Thank God.’

‘Where shall Dimitri Mitrofanovitch be living?’ I asked.

‘We had thought close to the Polytechnic. But that is such a long way from the centre and it would be useful if we could get in touch with you sometimes, or you with us. So we’ve found you lodgings not far from Nyustadskaya. It’s very handy for the steam-tram, for the Finland Station and so on. The tram will take you to the Polytechnic. What’s the address, Parrot?’

‘Eleven, Lomanskaya Prospect,’ said the white-haired Parrot.

It sounded excellent.

‘We’ll take you there immediately, I think.’ I had a vision of the fat Mr Green and the thin Mr Parrot escorting me through the streets, each carrying one of my bags. But ‘we’ meant a member of the firm. ‘Will you see to it, Parrot?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the term begins in four days?’ said I.

‘Four days. Make the most of ‘em.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Mr Parrot will show you where the tram leaves and will give you details of which professor to see. I gather there’s some sort of oral entrance exam. A formality. We’ve spoken to the professor. There will be no difficulties. What’s his name. Parrot?’

‘Doctor Matzneff, sir.’

‘He was very obliging?’

‘He was, sir. His son left this afternoon.’

‘Straightened out, now. You’ll find Doctor Matzneff helpful to you, my boy.’ Mr Green beamed and patted my head. I wondered at these cryptic references. My uncle’s influence must be considerable. He had pulled strings in every department.

Rightfully I was up to gold-medal standard and had only been robbed of the medal by War and Herr Lustgarten’s departure. It was satisfying to know I had received my fair deserts. Uncle Semya was a great adjuster of rights. It was a relief that my professor would be favourably disposed to me. St Petersburg was no longer quite the threatening place it had seemed.

Mr Green gave me an envelope containing ten roubles. I would collect my allowance monthly. I should make careful use of it. The fares to the Polytechnic were about twenty kopeks a day, there and back. There might be opportunities to ‘make the allowance up to more’ in the future. I thanked him, put the money in my pocket next to Sergei Andreyovitch’s snuff box, and shook hands. Then I accompanied Mr Parrot, now clad in a maroon fur-trimmed greatcoat and top hat, to the ground floor. Here my bags were recovered and a cab called for us by the commissionaire. It was snowing. The hood of the cab was raised. It was already dark, but this part of the city was brilliantly lit. Once again I noticed that almost everyone in the street, civilian or military, wore some kind of uniform. We crossed a long bridge over the wide Great Neva, a forbidding stretch of ice. To my surprise I saw in the distance a tram apparently trundling over the surface of the river. Mr Parrot told me that it froze so hard it was possible to lay lines on the ice in the winter.

We entered an area much more crowded and familiar to me. I suppose it was poorer. Here were ordinary people, gas-lamps, open-fronted shops, crowded apartment buildings, stalls selling food, clothing, crockery, magazines, the smells of cooking, the sounds of street-musicians, children, quarrelling and laughter. There were flights of darkened steps, alleys, half-starved dogs. I was more nervous of the district than I might once have been: however, the street in which we found ourselves was fairly quiet and it was comforting to arrive at it. St Petersburg was not going to be an easy city, I thought, in which to find my feet. There were far wider gulfs between the classes. Even in Kiev, where there were many snobs, where poor people could find themselves driven from parks or certain streets, it had not been so bad. I was going to need all my confidence and might require the extra courage residing in my stolen snuff-box.

St Petersburg was to teach me much about the nature of wealth and poverty. Not only was it a city of extremes, it was a city of almost oriental decadence, of cruelty, of mindless authority. I was to realise why Tsar Nicholas was unpopular with so many middle-class people. The court was presided over by a crude, insane monk from Siberia who would come, just as in medieval times, to be murdered in cold blood by a group of aristocrats. They would poison him, shoot him and eventually push his body under the Neva’s ice to ensure he was dead. From Court to the meanest alley, the capital was rotten with superstition. Charm-sellers, occultists, mediums of every kind flourished. Their predictions filled columns in the most respectable newspapers. And all this in the twentieth century, when telephones and motor-cars and wireless sets and aeroplanes were in common use.

The ferocity of the Bolsheviks was the ferocity of a race of slaves. They had none of the instincts of civilised Europeans. They were savages into whose hands were placed terrible means of destruction and who were given the most sophisticated means of communication. Yet the Tsar himself and all his Court were probably scarcely more civilised or they would at least have had some intimation of their own fate. I blame the Tsar’s advisors, of course. Most of these were foreigners.